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Posts Tagged ‘sociopath’

After a short hiatus I’m back in business.  Greetings, a belated Happy New Year and Happy Holidays.  There are a couple internal blog matters to cover.

Donations of any size are gratefully accepted.  If there are any deep pocketed individuals or organizations that would like to sponsor my work that would of course be great (this must be the eternal plaint of independent bloggers).  I currently simply don’t have the time to do more indepth studies.  At some point I’d like to do a study of Ronald Reagan concentrating on his autobiography, “Where’s the Rest of Me,” and his “I filmed Buchenwald” lie – was our president a sociopathic pathological liar (a pseudologue),  a longer piece on Adolf Eichmann’s sociopathy (as I see it) along with an attempt to understand Hannah Arendt’s error, a reading of Orwell’s Burmese Days as a blueprint for sociopathic murder by suicide, and I’d like to have the time to spend in the Paley Museum of Television and Radio tracking down documentaries of interest.  All this would take time which equates to money.

Concerning the comments, they often go straight into the spam folder.  Unfortunately some spam seems to be deleted immediately, though it is not supposed to be that way.  I’ve never not published a non-spam comment.  If a comment does not show up, feel free to email me the comment at pathwhisperer@yahoo.com if you wish.

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Ah, the fruits of an economy that gives corporations sociopathic freedoms. The economy is such a perfect match to sociopathic skills that it is hard to believe it wasn’t designed by sociopaths.  If a corporate liars culture is allowed to develop, sociopaths will take it to the limit and beyond. Sociopaths are incapable of self regulation, they need adult supervision (literally, due to their existing in an arrested development state — morally,  judgementwise, personality, sexually, etc.).

Bernard Madoff

Bernard Madoff

Charles Ponzi

Charles Ponzi

Quoting Mike Lupica’s NY Daily News column, Unbridled greed chips away at last remnants of the American Dream, http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/12/14/2008-12-14_unbridled_greed_chips_away_at_last_remna.html:

There is an old line from Fay Vincent, the baseball commissioner who suspended George Steinbrenner for conspiring with a known gambler, Howie Spira. Steinbrenner paid Spira to get some dirt on Dave Winfield, for whom Steinbrenner had no use, and Vincent caught him doing that and kicked him out of the game.

Vincent said at the time that Steinbrenner had heard no moral alarm because “none sounded.”

There was no moral alarm for Bernie Madoff as he systematically ruined fortunes and pension funds, and ultimately lives, and didn’t get stopped until now. He is the biggest thief we know about, but only for now, because he is caught. You wonder how many more like him end up in orange jumpsuits before this is over.

I love that phrase, “no moral alarm sounded” — never does for sociopaths, must be quite an advantage over us.

Attorney Mark Mulholland (representing Madoff investors), http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/12/14/2008-12-14_new_jersey_couple_joins_heartbreak_list_.html:

“He had this polished, magnetic approach that made folks want to invest their money with him. Everyone wanted in. From time to time, he would also reject potential investors. That just made other folks even more keen on getting into the Madoff fund.”

What a con! Folksy, magnetic. Laid a trail of candy for his marks to follow.

I have often heard it remarked that these conmen are soft sell artists.  I believe that is only superficially true.  I think that they are actually using all their abilities and concentration.  One way of looking at it is that they are running quintuple time mentally, so much so that they appear relaxed and nonchalant on the surface.  I once knew a sociopathic Don Juan who was so talented that his targets thought they seduced him, but really he was that far ahead of them (all the while adjusting his personality to his reading of the mark’s ideal and again laying a trail of bread crumbs/candy).

Top rank sociopaths are so good at what they do that their manipulations approach the realm of “weaving reality.” I would predict that Madoff approached this level.  When I was in management at E.F. Hutton I hired a couple of sociopaths.  One had eyes that were just pools of trustworthiness – it was almost impossible not to trust him.  In turned out that he was a fraud, he couldn’t do half the things he had said he could do.  Obviously I should have tested him more.  The other one also interviewed very well, including great eye contact.  Hutton went out of business soon after, I later heard that he had been fired as a psychopath by a law firm.  He was said to be a workplace bully and a puppetmaster manipulator whose specialty was turning people against each other and getting individuals fired.

Charles Ponzi was so smooth that many victims begged the government to set him free to continue his magic. Apparently, sociopaths gain this persuasiveness and manipulative ability due to a different brain structure.

Habitual Liar Brains Look Different On Scans

Adrian Raine and Yaling Yang have found that habitual liars have more white matter and less gray matter in their brains as compared to less lie-prone people. [ emphasis in original]

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/003035.html

Finally, I would recommend paying close attention to those regulatory officials who gave Madoff a pass or looked the other way.  Due to both personal experience with corporate human resource departments and outside observations I believe that sociopaths recognize and protect each other, even to the extent that non-criminal sociopaths will often protect criminal sociopaths.

More Madoff:

How could Madoff not have made any trades for 13 years?


More Madoff — for sociopaths there is no such thing as an ingroup

Earlier posts:

Welcome to our sociopaths-gone-wild-economy

Commonalities between Wall Street speculators and/or Fed bankers and sociopaths

Low hanging fruit – the idiots who lead America

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The following websites are examples of individuals being driven to share their knowledge, come to grips with their experiences or warn the unwary.

Dealing With Diabolical Danielle Weblog
http://able2love.wordpress.com/
A “Beware of Poison Ivy” site.

Holy Water Salt
a blog about irradiating evil through “light”

http://holywatersalt.blogspot.com/

Both a personal experience and general knowledge site.

Charmed, I’m Sure
http://documentarycharmed.wordpress.com/
Seems to be notes of personal experience intended to be used in a documentary.

Questions About the Book
http://www.whenyoucryicry.com/blog/
The emotional devastation of falling for an emotionless sociopathic mimic.

Lovefraud Blog

How to recognize and recover from the sociopaths – narcissists in your life


A big get together — shared stories, outrages, speculations.  The testimonies here may seem unbelievable to the inexperienced or uninitiated but they’re very real.  A few quotes below (emphasis added):

I too raised a psychopath, who has murdered once and tried to murder me. I also raised two young men who are fine men.  . . .

. . .

This past year when my P son and his cronies were trying to kill me (at least, but probably other members of the family would have been targeted after I was gone and when I fled and they couldn’t find me, they tried to kill my son C) in any case, I WAS FREAKING OUT, TOTALLY INSANE, UNABLE TO THINK OR FUNCTION. . . .

. . .

I understand the pain of realizing (finally) that your child, the child you planned for, gave birth to, nursed and loved is a monster beyond redemption. I understand the emotional and yes, PHYSICAL PAIN, of turning your back on that child (even though they are now an adult) and emotionally burying that child in your heart, as if they were dead, to at least preserve the memories you had of when the child was an infant, a toddler, and a young child that was the shining light of your life. I sort of feel like my child died and his organs were donated, but the MAN who has his organs is a monster, and not my son, any more than it would be if his kidneys or his eyes had been donated instead of his whole body.

The memories of the “morphing” years when he quit being the shining child and became the monstrous adolescent, then murdering man, those were the most difficult years of my life and I held on to toxic hope for 20 years after I should have “let go”—but I guess I thought the letting go was so painful I couldn’t handle it, but I know that the NOT LETTING GO was MORE PAINFUL and became so painful it was LET GO OR DIE. I chose, finally, to let go and live. It was so hard, harder than anything I have ever done.

Unlike Todd, I have my own monster out of my house, but I keep the guns CLOSE because I never know as long as he is alive when he might send another of his friends to try to kill me, for revenge, if no other reason. Both of my other sons and I are armed, or within reach of a gun at all times, day and night

http://www.lovefraud.com/2008/10/10/sociopathic-children-and-psychopathic-traits-during-childhood/comment-page-1/#comment-13740

She uses the kids as pawns. She molested her son, he told his therapist (at 4 years old). Drew pictures of her vagina, doesn’t like hair in his mouth, wet the bed, the whole nine yards. She got out of it. We’ve been in custody hearings for a year and a half. The judge feels SORRY FOR HER!!!

http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2008/09/22/letters-to-lovefraud-how-can-we-deal-with-the-sociopathic-ex-wife/#comments

pathwhisperer says:

I’m with Holywater (10/10 9:53 am) when she says:

“I think once you’ve been around a p you know the difference- they’re not insane, and once the mask slips, or you catch a glimpse, it’s nothing you’ve ever seen before unless of course you’ve known other p’s.

I recently was asked to prove my p was/is unfit for a position, nothing I said/experienced matter…lucky for me I track him- so I proved through concrete evidence “he says one thing, does another”

Recognising a p is not rocket science.”

It’s that “oh, moment” you look for . . . . To decide if someone may be a s/p I at first follow a rough checklist but then I wait for a gestalt type emotional/mental “click” or “oh, moment.” It is only at that point, if the answer is yes, that I can say ‘yes, that person is a s/p.’ And I agree it is not rocket science, anyone with normal emotional intelligence can do it.

I also agree that to communicate with others you have to concentrate on the s/p’s behavior. The “oh, moment” of recognition is not transferable to others. They have to go through their own emotional/mental processes to get there.

http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2008/10/09/the-sociopath-next-door-probably-not/#comments

The New Yorker writes about researchers’ struggle to study psychopaths

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_seabrook

. . . Although the story is comprehensive, one of the points made me think that we at Lovefraud have a better understanding of psychopaths than researchers.

“Unlike most academic psychopathy researchers, Kiehl has spent many hours in the company of his subjects. When he meets colleagues at conferences, he told me, “they always ask, ‘What are they like?’ These are guys who have spent twenty years studying psychopaths and never met one.” . . .

This is scarymany researchers in psychopathy never met one? We should consider ourselves better informed, because we’ve all had extremely close encounters with these predators. And we know exactly how the ones who are not in jail behave.

http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2008/11/10/the-new-yorker-writes-about-researchers-struggle-to-study-psychopaths/

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Obviously I think they are.  It’s why I write this blog. From my Mission Statement:  [My aim is] to share information about sociopathy and sociopathic behavior in everyday life. “It’s as though there’s a dangerous fish in all the waters of the world, that is never mentioned”  https://pathwhisperer.wordpress.com/about/.

To the best of my knowledge, the term SAPs originated with Roger Canup.

In the last section I pointed out that the problem of plausible lies is the most serious problem facing humanity today. I will now discuss the people who have been telling plausible lies: the Socially Adept Psychopaths or S.A.Ps (pronounced SAPS) of the world. An example of S.A.P. thought processes is in order.

Most people have heard of Ted Bundy; the serial killer who was executed in Florida several years ago. Not many people are aware of the fact that Bundy was studying to become a prosecutor, and that eventually he hoped to become a judge. Those that do know that fact see it as some strangely ironic twist – an inexplicable quirk in Bundy’s bizarre makeup. It never seems to occur to most people that the perfect place for a psychopathic serial killer to hide in society is as a prosecutor or a judge; but I assure you that it occurs to the Psychopaths of the world. I would estimate that about 10% of the prosecutors and judges in the United States are in fact, S.A.Ps. The ONLY difference between them and Ted Bundy is that they were able to control outward signs of their Psychopathy until they achieved their goal of being in a position of authority.

http://users.hal-pc.org/~rcanup/sap.html.

For most of their lives Thomas Capano and Ira Einhorn passed as SAPs, in my opinion — it was only the insult to the ego of a lover leaving and the subsequent murder of same that exposed them.

Thomas Capano
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Capano

Ira Einhorn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Einhorn

If the murdered women and others in their position had known enough about sociopathy to suspect it in these cases perhaps they wouldn’t have gone back one last time, gone back to retrieve their belongings alone, tried to do the right thing and explain why they were leaving in person, tried to stay just friends, agree to meet in private, etc.  In my opinion, it’s incredibly irresponsible of law enforcement and the media not to inform the public about sociopathic criminals.

Brain Scans Show Abnormalities In Psychopaths

Adrian Raine’s “successful” psychopaths are essentially the same as SAPs.

In the study of the hippocampus, the research team [led by Adrian Raine of USC] expanded the scope of previous studies by comparing the brains of two groups for the first time: “successful” psychopaths – those who had committed crimes but had never been caught – and “unsuccessful” psychopaths – those who had been caught.
. . .
The difference between successful psychopaths (those who avoid getting arrested) and unsuccessful psychopaths is that the more successful ones have a greater ability to learn fear of getting caught and to therefore guide their own behavior to minimize the chances of getting caught.
. . .
“There’s faulty wiring going on in psychopaths. They’re wired differently than other people,” Raine said. “In a way, it’s literally true in this case.”

He found that the psychopaths’ corpus callosums were an average of 23 percent larger and 7 percent longer than the control groups’.
. . .

With an increased corpus callosum came less remorse, fewer emotions and less social connectedness – the classic hallmarks of a psychopath, he said.

“These people don’t react. They don’t care,” Raine said. “Why that occurs, we don’t fully know, but we are beginning to get important clues from neuro-imaging research.”

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001998.html

More recent and widespread research can be found at the linked Swedish site, It Affects Us All.  Their research page is Forskning, http://user.tninet.se/csz433c/homepages/evah/html/forskning.htm.  The research links with English synopses are towards the bottom.

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I look for news items featuring (in no particular order) preternatural lying abilities, an arrogance with no discernible justification (and a related contempt for others and extreme “watch me get-over” attitude), beyond-the-pale crimes, a willingness to simulate the most intimate emotions, individuals who view others as pawns to be manipulated or even destroyed for the enjoyment or greater glory of themselves, the ability to effortlessly and artlessly turn on sincerity, etc.  All of these have to be far above and beyond normal faults, crimes and vanities.  As always I’m simply suggesting that the following news stories merit the consideration of sociopathic elements.

Celeb Designer Guilty of Rapes, Assaults – Anand Jon Alexander

LOS ANGELES (Nov. 14) – Celebrity fashion designer Anand Jon was convicted Thursday of raping and sexually assaulting aspiring models as young as 14.

“He humiliated, degraded and took what he wanted from them. He was a predator who took advantage of the weak people around him. He has no criminal sexual borders. If he didn’t use force, he laced their drinks,” prosecutor Frances Young told the jury. Jon, whose full name is Anand Jon Alexander, denied the charges. His lawyers said the girls and young women were revenge seekers who had made up their stories or who had “invited what happened,” and that there was little physical evidence.

Blaming the victim is very frequent in the defense of sociopathic crimes.  Also one will often see sociopathic defendants testifying in their own behalf (or even representing themselves) when it is not at all in their interest to do so.  However their imperial ego can’t imagine defeat, they can be almost pathologically optimistic.

Jersey City Councilman Steven Lipski is No. 1 threat at Washington club

A drunken Jersey City councilman was arrested for urinating on a crowd of concertgoers from the balcony of a Washington nightclub, police and club sources said Saturday.

. . . . .

“He was very drunk,” the source said, noting that it wasn’t the first time Lipski had caused a ruckus at the popular concert venue. “We’ve dealt with this man before,” the source added. “He’s never peed on anybody, but he gets really belligerent and drunk.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2008/11/08/2008-11-08_jersey_city_councilman_steven_lipski_is_.html

IMO, one should always pay very close attention to anyone whose behavior goes totally off the scale when intoxicated – no matter what the individual’s station in life, education or title.  The slim self control a sociopath may have in the best of times can be totally lost when drunk.  Hervey Cleckley in the attached Mask of Sanity (p. 355) writes:

57. Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink and sometimes without

A major point about the psychopath and his relation to alcohol can be found in the shocking, fantastic, uninviting, or relatively inexplicable behavior which emerges when he drinks

. . . . .

Alcohol, as a sort of catalyst, sometimes contributes a good deal to the long and varied series of outlandish pranks and inanely coarse scenes with which nearly every drinking psychopath’s story is starred. Free from alcohol, such a patient would scarcely sit under a house all night idly striking matches, or, concealing himself behind book stacks, urinate from the window of a public library on passersby in the street below.

http://cassiopaea.org/cass/sanity_1.PdF

Woman Says Father Held Her Captive and Fathered Two Children She was Forced to put up for Adoption

His wife, identified as Teresa B., said on private TVN24 television that the man used to order her to watch television whenever he went into the girl’s room, closed it and took out the door handle.

“My daughter was frightened and did not want to talk about it,” the mother said. She learned the facts when she found her daughter’s diary, the mother said. She said the man beat her and her daughter when they asked that he stop the abuse. “He intimidated us; he threatened that my daughter will be dead, that he will destroy us all, if anyone learned about it,” Teresa B. said.

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/1284642-father-held

This story is both similar to and quite different from the crimes of Josef Fritzl (https://pathwhisperer.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/reflections-on-josef-fritzl/) — illustrative of the complex crime and ramifications of incest.

2 Dutch men guilty of injecting 14 with HIV
All victims tested positive after being drugged, assaulted at a sex party
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27681660/wid/11915773?GT1=31037#storyContinued

How AIDs and its spread hasn’t put sociopaths on the public radar is beyond me.  I can very easily imagine sociopaths doing the above.  At their level of personality development if they hurt they want the world to hurt.  To hurt and not act on that hurt is interpreted as an attack on the self.  Many of them never reach the stage where there is a self separate from their wants and hurts.

An early job of mine was as an international phone operator, back in the days of electrical switchboards with multiple leads.  I had a co-worker who was friendly and fun loving but with some odd habits.  Whenever he had a difficult customer that left him feeling insulted he would afterwards call up one of his standard “whipping boys,” customers that he considered good for a few laughs.  As a sociopath, which I certainly didn’t know then, he was unable to internally handle his emotions.  If he was hurting someone had to pay, even if that someone had nothing at all to do with the hurt.  Not to express that hurt would have left him feeling angry and frustrated.

I recall a case from a few years ago of several dental patients who came down with the same strain of HIV that their dentist had recently died from, but no likely transmission mechanism could be found.  I think it was probably intentional for the same reasons.

The so-called AIDs Patient Zero, Gaetan Dugas, was a sociopathic flight attendant with hundreds if not thousands of lovers of both sexes (since sociopaths only know friction orgasms, the more, the merrier).  Since then, sociopathic AIDs victims with no concern for others have been a real problem for both gays and straights.  I once read in a Gay Men’s Healthcare article a discussion of whether to publicize the role of amoral sociopaths in the spread of AIDs, but the decision was not to, since they wanted the focus to stay on the danger being the disease AIDs and not the carriers, as I recall.

Woman With 5 Dead Spouses Leaves Jail

RALEIGH, N.C. (Oct. 16) – A Georgia grandmother who came under suspicion because all five of her husbands had died was released Thursday from a North Carolina jail where she had been held on charges in one of their deaths.
Betty Neumar, 76, posted $300,000 bond late Thursday morning at the Stanly County jail, where she’s been held since her arrest in May, Sheriff Rick Burris said.
Skylar Deleon Convicted in Gruesome Yacht Killings

SANTA ANA, Calif. (Oct. 20) – A man was convicted Monday of murdering three people, including a couple who were tied to an anchor and thrown off their yacht off the California coast [after posing as a prospective buyer].

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That’s combining, of course, the title of Chris Hedges column in Truthdig of Oct. 20 and a phrase from Andrew Lahde’s So long, Suckers letter. Hedges column, including a section of Lahde’s farewell letter: The Idiots Who Rule America The elites have just made monkeys of themselves. The only thing greater than their greed was their stupidity (or is it the other way around . . .). This is, literally, a defining trait of sociopaths — childlike, they just can’t see tomorrow, can’t anticipate the likeliest of events (even the high IQ ones). And then Andrew Lahde comes along and beats them at their own game, beats the Masters of the Universe. Then, sauntering off with his winnings, calls them “Low hanging fruit.” I claim to know the sociopathic mind. If I’m right, then that one is going to hurt.

I don’t know what percentage of the financial elite are actually sociopathic — but that percentage does seem to have been in the driver’s seat. Or maybe it’s simply that corporations, having been given sociopathic freedoms, evolved that way. I tend to think that there’s a bad seed core of actual sociopaths, their corrupt hangers on (IMO the corrupt often seek to learn the secret of conscienceless evil from sociopaths) and then the many who go along to get along.

Sociopaths are non-self referential. They only know they are doing well if others are doing badly. For them, and their corrupt friends, there is no such thing as a rising tide lifting all boats.

What motivates workaholics? A hatred of life. Most people want to work hard enough to take care of their families and a little more. Workaholics live a two-dimensional life: me superior, you POS. This lifeless drive for superiority is all they have — this is doubly true for sociopaths. Lahde: “I will let others try to amass nine, 10 or 11 figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck” So long, suckers. Millionaire hedge fund boss thanks ‘idiot’ traders

It is worth noting that our true leaders are mega-corporations and the mandarins who lead them. The people who we think of as leaders such as politicians are no more than servants or cabana boys and girls to them. They proved this in their rolling over for the “bailout bill” against the clear wishes of the American people.

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The Talented Mr. Gerhartsreiter

Phony Rockefeller
Eyed in 1985 Case – Cops Say Suspect Is German Con Man

Multiple identities.
Claim of amnesia.
Repeatedly inspired confidence.
Ease of lying.
Full expectation that lies will be believed.
Unlimited nerve.
The complete chameleon.

A special report in the Boston Globe (by Levenson & Ellement) on Clark Rockefeller:
Detailed story

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News link

This story of a faked death, insurance scam and bewildered immediate relatives (sons Anthony, 29, and Mark, 31) just screams sociopathy.  I don’t understand how the word is not used in all the news articles.  Anne Darwin is the complete manipulative, lying, contemptuous sociopathic-to-the-core actress.  The pair make the classic “evil couple.”

It is worth noting that the sons never suspected anything or were ever aware that their mother is almost certainly an “equivalent of an alien passing as human” level sociopath (or the more pejorative term, psychopath).  Their unawareness is not at all surprising however.  Also from the articles, I see no sign that they have been told (or figured out) that their mother is sociopathic.  Instead they are left trying to explain what happened to their family within the framework of normal human motivations — which is an impossibility.

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Fritzl, of course, is the Austrian accused of imprisoning his daughter in a cellar and fathering a family with her (three of the children also imprisoned, three raised in the aboveground household), BBC. All incest fathers are vampire fathers, they truly are draining the child’s lifeforce, but this is absolutely the most extreme case in my memory.

The question here is whether Fritzl is a sociopath. Roughly what I do is check facts and behavior against an informal checklist and then attempt to flesh out the individual and understand his motivations. For those interested there are well-thought out formal checklists for sociopathy. The linked Mask of Sanity lays out a checklist in Section III, Clinical Profile, pgs 337 – 366, or see the Table of Contents. Robert Hare, author of Without Conscience, has a formal diagnostic one, which can be used informally by anybody, in my opinion — not to diagnose, but in an attempt to understand behavior. This seems to be a reasonable overview: PCL Overview. His own site is www.hare.org.

Fritzl certainly appears to be a sociopath. There is no internal prohibition against incest for sociopathic fathers at all. Non-sociopathic incest fathers need to overcome their conscience and a very severe prohibition against such acts. For sociopathic incest fathers it is merely childhood sexplay, as is all their sex. They are absolutely, totally unaware of any “soul effect” on the daughter (or often, the son). The sociopathic sense of entitlement is absolute — check. Urge to dominate — check. Lying ability — check. Telling his wife the imprisoned daughter had run away and joined a cult. Explaining three foundlings to the authorities and his wife (the three infants he brought up from the cellar). This ability to lie while appearing totally sincere, with complete eye contact with the target to be duped is one of the key sociopathic abilities. Self confidence — check. Arrogance — check. Optimism — check. No remorse or guilt — check.

I understand he’s been complaining that his wife hasn’t visited him. Sociopaths don’t understand the “beyond the pale” aspect of their extreme behavior. For them it’s not beyond the pale, it’s not extreme. Presumably they believe all of us are capable of the same behavior or would behave the same if we thought we could get away with it. So now he’s hurt and perplexed that his wife doesn’t visit.

It’s reported that the possibility that he also molested his 19 year old daughter/grand-daughter, Kerstin, is also being investigated. (It was the hospitalization of Kerstin that exposed the whole situation.) It would be shocking if he hadn’t.

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