Looking Evil in the Face

In act one of Shakespeare's Macbeth, the idea that guilt shows on a person's face is a motif that runs throughout the play. Lady Macbeth warns her husband early on "Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men may read strange matters." She advises him to "...look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't."

Macbeth has a conscience - Lady Macbeth doesn't. By the end of act one, he tries to take her advice, "False face must hide what the false heart doth know." A person with a conscience cannot pull that off - unfortunately, a sociopath can. By the end of the play, King Macbeth has become a serial killer, through his henchmen, of men, women, and children.

Cesare Lombroso

The idea that criminal traits can show on a person's face gained popular acceptance near the end of the nineteenth century. An Italian criminologist and physician named Cesare Lombroso was credited with the theory "...that some types of people are closer to our primitive ancestors than others." He utilized the work of Pierre-Paul Broca to create this "new science" of criminal anthropology which relied upon facial measurements and anomalies of the skull, face, and body to determine who was a criminal type and who was not.

Broca believed in the concept of the born criminal who was a "throwback to earlier hedonistic races." In the twentieth century, this theory was strongly reinforced in the popular culture through movies, dime novels, pulp fiction, radio mystery shows, and television crime dramas. Rather than scientific, these ideas broke along racial, ethnic, and religious lines more often than not. The Nazis made great use of this junk science which they proudly documented in the last century.

Today, crime science has reliable and irrefutable tools like fingerprints, DNA analysis, and chemical and fiber labs to help catch and convict sociopathic killers. The trouble is that someone must lose their life before any of this science can be put to work.

Understanding "the construction of the mind" simply by looking at someones physical traits does not work. Sociopaths who kill usually look normal and blend into the background, so their behavior often requires psychological profiling before they are caught. Regrettably, profiling only becomes more accurate as the body count rises.

Dancing with Devils (Part One of Four)

Since September of 2011, my research partner and I have been investigating the John Norman Collins murders in the Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor area between July of 1967 through July of 1969. These seven murders of young women became know as the Co-Ed Killings and have since become a local legend - partly because five of the murders are as yet unsolved - partly because of shoddy police work. Despite early media attention nationally, the trial was overshadowed by the Tate/Bianca murders and the Charles Manson family, which occurred at the same time as the Collins trial.

My research into this matter includes studies of many of the most infamous serial killers, sex criminals, sociopaths, and pathological narcissists in twentieth-century America - almost exclusively angry white males. If ever there was a Rogue's Gallery in Hell, this collection of psychopaths would make their blood run cold.

What makes these people different from the rest of us? They lack something called a conscience. These people are lost in a deep and dark existential void where their actions don't have consequences for them - until they are caught, of course. Then they justify their crimes. These people live in a mirrored reality where they are in control - where they are God.

Dr. Martha Stout, PhD, in her book, the sociopath next door (sic), convincingly purports that one in twenty-five people are sociopathic. That is four percent of the population. Many of these people find their niche in society, but too many others carve their way into our consciousness. At their best, they manipulate and use people heartlessly - at their worst, they unleash havoc and horror on an unprotected and terrified public.

What is even more scary is that most of these characters have charm and cunning to mask their heinous acts and desires. Reminds me of Lady Macbeth's advice to her husband, "Appear the innocent flower, but be the serpent underneath." Even in Shakespeare's time, this "deceptive" feature of psychopaths was known. More the pity, there is no known cure for their madness. But when push comes to shove - Beware! - they will stop at nothing to manipulate reality to suit themselves and satisfy their ravenous rage against a society that hasn't learned to appreciate or acknowledge them.

The study of  sociopathy is in its early stages, and there are many unanswered questions about it. How do we identify sociopaths? Once we identify them, what do we do about them? How can society protect itself?

Lawyers avoid using the term in court because it has not been precisely defined. The term "serial killer" was not used in court until the 1980's, when an FBI man used it in court to describe the dramatic increase of this crime after World War Two. In Colin Wilson's incisive work, The History of Murder, he states that the FBI estimates serial killers kill 300 to 500 people yearly in America.

People just don't become killers. What makes them that way? And if there are natural born killers among us, surely that tendency displays itself early in their lives. Why isn't sociopathy addressed in public schools? We give lip service against bullies, but what is done with these kids who prey on other students - driving an increasing number to suicide? More often than not, we simply transfer them to another school and seal their records? Presently, there is no known treatment to cure these demons among us, but ignoring them is not an option. 

San Diego Notables #2 - Marion Ross - "Mrs. C"

One of the nice things about volunteer ushering at the Globe Theater in San Diego is, of course, seeing some amazing theater; the other thing is occasionally getting to meet some of the actors.

Recently, I noticed Marion Ross of Happy Days fame in the theater as a patron rather than an actress. Marion holds an Associate Artists status at the Globe for her many years of dedicated service to the theater.

Over the years, I've seen her perform in several Globe productions, and I've seen her in Balboa Park, most notably at the Prado restaurant, where many of the Globe actors go to eat between performances.

When I first arrived in San Diego thirty-five years ago, the Old Globe theater had burned to the ground like its more famous predecessor had over four hundred years before.

Our local theater survived the wrecking ball after the Pan American Exposition in the 1930's, when the local community players raised the $200 to save the building. During World War II, the Navy took over the park for the war effort, and many radio stars, Bob Hope among them, broadcast and performed for the troops on the Globe's stage.

In 1978, disaster struck the Globe; a transient trying to warm himself or maybe an arsonist, no one ever found out who, built a fire next to the cheap wooden structure and the worst happened. The building burned to the ground. The community pulled together to raise money for the rebuilding of a far grander theater.

This is when I fell in love with Marion Ross. She was appearing on a local telethon to raise money for the new theater and the phones were barely ringing. She took her position in front of the camera and made her teary appeal.

Marion is a local San Diego State graduate and long time resident, so she started calling people out who she knew in town. She talked about what this theater meant to her and this community, and the phones lit up and the tote board went wild. She stayed with it for the rest of the telethon. I tear up just thinking about it.

Fast forward thirty-five years later. I see Marion Ross sitting with her personal assistant during intermission on a bench in the theater's lobby a couple of weeks ago. I gently walked up to her and said politely, "Miss Ross?" she looked up at me. "You really freaked me out a few weeks ago."

She must have been thinking, "Where's security?"

"I saw you on an episode of Showtime's Nurse Jackie," I told her and rolled my eyeballs in disbelief. She had played a bag lady of shocking decrepitude about to die in the hospital emergency room.

Her defenses immediately went down. She reached out and touched my forearm and her eyes lit up, "I sat in a makeup chair for four hours," she told me, "and when they gave me a mirror to see myself, I was shocked and cried." Marion Ross was barely perceptible under all of that masterful makeup. I went back to work and was thrilled that I finally got to talk to her after all these years.

I've been a fan of Marion Ross for a long time, since I saw her in a supporting role in Operation Petticoat with Cary Grant and Tony Curtis. To see Miss Ross in one of her early roles and compare her with her most recent Showtime appearance brings to mind what Macduff says in Shakespeare's Macbeth, "Two extremes - too difficult to comprehend at once."

wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Ross

Dancing with Devils (1 of 4)

Since September, my partner and I have been investigating the John Norman Collins murders in the Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor area between July of 1967 through July of 1969. These seven murders of young women became know as the Co-Ed Killings and have since become a local legend - partly because five of the murders are as yet unsolved - partly because of shoddy police work. Despite early media attention nationally, the trial was overshadowed by the Tate/Bianca murders and the Charles Manson family, which occurred at the same time.

My research into this matter includes studies of many of the most infamous serial killers, sex criminals, sociopaths, and pathological narcissists in twentieth-century America - almost exclusively angry white males. If ever there was a Rogue's Gallery in Hell, this collection of psychopaths would make their blood run cold.

What makes these people different from the rest of us? Something called a conscience. These people are lost in a deep and dark existential void where their actions don't have consequences for them - until they are caught, of course. Then they justify their crimes. These people live in a mirrored reality where they are in control - where they are God.

Dr. Martha Stout, PhD, in her book, the sociopath next door (sic), convincingly purports that one in twenty-five people are sociopathic. That is four percent of the population. Many of these people find their niche in society, but too many others carve their way into our consciousness. At their best, they manipulate and use people heartlessly - at their worst, they unleash havoc and horror on an unprotected and terrified public.

What is even more scary is that most of these characters have charm and cunning to mask their heinous acts and desires. Reminds me of Lady Macbeth's advice to her husband, "Appear the innocent flower, but be the serpent underneath." Even in Shakespeare's time, this "deceptive" feature of psychopaths was known. More the pity, there is no known cure for their madness. But when push comes to shove - Beware! - they will stop at nothing to manipulate reality to suit themselves and satisfy their ravenous rage against a society that hasn't learned to appreciate or acknowledge them.

The study of  sociopathy is in its early stages, and there are many unanswered questions about it. How do we identify sociopaths? Once we identify them, what do we do about them? How can society protect itself?

Lawyers avoid using the term in court because it has not been precisely defined. The term "serial killer" was not used in court until the 1980's, when an FBI man used it in court to describe the dramatic increase of this crime after World War Two. In Colin Wilson's incisive work, The History of Murder, he states that the FBI estimates serial killers kill 300 to 500 people yearly in America.

People just don't become killers. What makes them that way? And if there are natural born killers among us, surely that tendency displays itself early in their lives. Why isn't sociopathy addressed in public schools? We give lip service against bullies, but what is done with these kids who prey on other students - driving an increasing number to suicide? More often than not, we simply transfer them to another school and seal their records? Presently, there is no known treatment to cure these demons among us, but ignoring them is not an option.