I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked the question ‘Doc, are some people just born evil?’
It is a question frequently posed to me in court: ‘Witness, do you have an opinion as whether or not the accused is mad, or simply, bad?’
If only it was that simple. I have examined more than 30,000 clients over the past thirty-nine years. The answer is complex and multifaceted. Mad, crazy people are obvious. You don’t need any sort of qualifications to spot a loon in the supermarket or on a bus. Their insanity is generally immediately apparent. When it comes to assessing baddies, however, the process is more challenging.
I firmly believe that some of the men and women I have assessed are purely evil. They were born that way and they have no redeeming features. They deserve to be in jail and, in my view, should never be released.
These individuals are psychopaths. They have no empathy, no remorse, no insight and, given the opportunity, will reoffend. They are not interested in therapy, they are typically motivated by greed and continue their evil ways in prison. Their prognosis is beyond bleak. I am referring here to hit men, serial paedophiles, large commercial drug importers, sex trade traffickers and a host of other repugnant categories of criminal.
I have written reports about these individuals stating that they should remain in jail. Those reports never see the light of day, however, because my exclusive client base for much of my career has been defence attorneys who are understandably not interested in producing a report which damns their client to years of penal servitude.
History is replete with examples of pure evil – Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini. In more recent times, the atrocities of Rwanda, the murderous Pol Pot regime, Saddam Hussein and ISIS all tick the boxes.
When it comes to garden-variety crooks, however, in my view pure evil is mercifully rare. Of those I have dealt with, there are common themes of superior intelligence, lateral and at times gifted creativity, as well as a ruthless drive to win at any cost, even if it means killing witnesses or accomplices.
When I worked at Parramatta Gaol, I was surrounded by end-of-the-line psychopaths. Johnny Cribb was one of them. Convicted of three counts of murder, three counts of kidnapping, as well false imprisonment and a raft of other serious crimes, his tale of evil still chills my spine. Shortly after I commenced work at Parramatta, Cribb was on parole and broke into a Western Suburbs home, abducting a young mother and her two young children. Their bodies were discovered days later, stuffed into a car boot. Evidence revealed he had raped the mother in front of the children before murdering them in front of her. He killed all three with a knife taken from the family home. Cribb ended up at Parramatta. He was universally loathed by the crooks and the screws. His crimes breached all the codes. It was a real-life horror story. He was kept in solitary confinement as the authorities recognised that he would last mere minutes if he was released into the mainstream prison community.
About a year after I commenced at the jail, the superintendent, Harry Duff, called me. ‘The fuck’n dog wants to see you, Tim . . . Do you want protection? You can only see him in his cell.’
I was young and fearless back then. ‘Thanks, mate, I don’t think there will be any problems.’
I shudder now at my cavalier attitude.
And so I went into the den of evil to converse with this satanic reincarnate.
‘What can I do for you, Johnny?’ My demeanour was icy, yet professional.
‘It’s your eyes, mate,’ he retorted, ‘they freak me out.’
Where to from here? Thinking on my feet, I responded. ‘You’re freaked out, mate. What about your eyes? . . . People in here are terrified.’
It was a risky approach, but it diffused his paranoia and provided him with a sense of control.
The tension dissipated and, after a brief chat, I left his cell.
I never saw him again.
Cribb and another notorious, evil psychopath, Billy Munday, convinced the mental health authorities that they were mad. They were consequently transferred to the Morisset Psychiatric Hospital, where they were lodged in a section for the criminally insane. I had assessed Munday in Parramatta; he was far from insane. Rather, he was a cruel, calculating rapist who was convicted to fifty-eight years with no parole.
Both men escaped from Morisset and, before their recapture in Bondi, had abducted two teenage girls, raped them repeatedly and held them hostage for nearly two days.
As a final demonstration of the power of evil, Cribb was befriended by a nun. She had felt sorry for him and with the liberal exchange of letters allowed at the time, she fell under his satanic spell.
Harry Duff called me to his office one morning to show me a recent letter from the nun which had been intercepted. Its content was pornographic, describing in lurid detail how she was going to fellate Cribb ‘until your eyes pop out’ during a planned contact visit.
‘What are you planning to do?’ I casually enquired, fully expecting that the visit would be cancelled.
‘Nothing, Tim,’ Harry chuckled. ‘Let’s see what pops out.’
The visit occurred later that day. The officers were on standby with strict orders that if the nun’s head disappeared from view in the cubicle, they were to act.
And they did, bursting in during the final moments of the vinegar run.
Harry was keen to debrief. ‘It was a terrible mess in there, Tim.’
Cribb was banned from future contact visits and God only knows what happened to the nun.
It may surprise some to read that despite the horror associated with the Hoddle Street massacre, I do not consider Julian Knight to be purely evil. When I re-examined him a couple of years ago, he expressed remorse for his actions. When I first met him in 1987, he was a bewildered teenage boy who had committed the worst mass murder in Australian history at the time. His actions were extraordinarily evil, but the boy I met was not. He was angry, misguided and, at the time, heavily intoxicated. Knight clearly was carrying a heavy emotional burden. He was suffering unresolved rage and had nowhere to dump it. His behaviour indicated an escalating psychological malaise, which regrettably had not been detected or treated when he was placed in the army hospital following The Bin nightclub episode. It would seem that the confluence of his car breaking down, the presence of firearms in his mother’s home and the rejection of his associates all contributed to his actions on the night in question – what unfolded was the reaction of a psychologically fragile mind to a compounding series of small but distressing events, rather than the manifestation of any inherent evil.
In contrast, the offenders responsible for the brutal murder and rape of Anita Cobby in the ’80s were purely evil. I should know, they were lodged at Parramatta Gaol when I worked there.
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Many of those I examine who find themselves before the court are there not because of evil intent but rather due to the conflation of mental disorders, an absence of treatment at critical times in their development, poor parenting, woeful social skills and rapacious substance abuse.
When I commenced my career in 1978, these fundamental dynamics were no different except the substances were generally alcohol with the older crooks and heroin rather than ice with the younger ones.
In the wrong place at the wrong time, caught up with the wrong crowd, depressed, anxious, rejected and vulnerable. There for the grace of God goes many of us. Given the wrong mix of these ingredients, I believe there is always the potential to break the law.
The critical debate has always centred around ‘nature versus nurture’. Are we doomed because of our genetic composition or, even with a bad stack of cards, can the right environment lessen the odds of these genes being activated? Yes and no, is the answer. In some cases, clients who have been raised in deprived, emotionally impoverished homes, exposed to shocking developmental trauma, overseen by chronically intoxicated, abusive psychopathic parents, have nonetheless overcome the odds and, with treatment, become productive, social citizens. They have seized the opportunity for change when it has been offered. Others, no matter how many opportunities they are given, no matter how much support, continue with their misguided ways.
There is no doubt that the bruising impact of drugs has the potential to rewire the brain and, consequently, impulse control, anger management, judgement and behaviour. In other words, some drugs, such as ice, can reduce the user to a person who is driven by primal urges, devoid of reason and oblivious to consequences. Therein lies the potential for evil behaviour. And sadly, this seems to be increasingly apparent in the community. Random acts of violence, including murder, committed by otherwise seemingly normal people who led productive lives until their free will was surrendered to their addiction. I can recount hundreds of examples of this process in the individuals I have assessed, particularly over the last decade. And when they eventually detoxify in the bleak light of day in a police cell, or as a scheduled patient in a psychiatric ward, they are generally horrified by revelations of their actions and the charges they face. Criminal acts with inevitably lengthy terms of imprisonment certainly have a sobering impact. These people are not evil, but rather through a process of osmosis, through their exposure to the underbelly of the human psyche, compounded by drugs and the combination of alcohol, they perform evil acts.
This process is not confined to the criminal justice system. I have also encountered evil people who occupy the boardrooms of successful public companies. They ply their destructive skills with the same non-empathetic, ruthless approach as the worst crooks I have examined. In recent years, my practice has moved beyond exclusive criminal work. I am increasingly assessing and assisting victims of workplace bullying. Hard-working, dedicated employees whose lives are reduced to chronic anxiety, destroyed self-esteem and unemployment as a consequence of a sociopathic boss.
While not breaking the law, these workplace sociopaths are driven by power, lust, greed and a desire to succeed at any price. Lies and ‘alternate facts’ are the bread and butter of their daily interactions with others.
I have encountered evil in all walks of life. Does it keep me awake at night? Certainly, on occasions it has and does. But I have also been blessed with the love and understanding of a wonderful family, which over many decades has served to keep my feelings in check