Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives (48 page)

E R A S E D

the partner has no serious interest in finding out what happened

to the ‘‘missing’’ woman. The point here is not to dismantle the

Fourth Amendment, but rather to allow the moral claim that one

ought to permit, and can be expected to cooperate with, the kind

of intensive investigation that every missing adult and missing child

case demands.

Allowing eraser killers to block the ability of police to conduct

a search at ‘‘ground zero’’ is to make the twisted claim that the

Constitution was meant to provide a moat around a killing field.

The need for extremely rapid response is something no one

doubts when children are abducted by predators. Former prosecutor

DiBiase believes that police, district attorneys, and judges need to

view warrants as a necessity when a woman’s life is at high risk.

‘‘Ideally, you get permission to search,’’ he says, ‘‘but if the person

won’t give permission, then by the end of one week, you have to be

able to get that search warrant. When I look at these cases where it

took months or even years to get a search warrant, I just think it’s a

tragedy.’’

DiBiase believes that when investigators are faced with a case

of a suspiciously missing woman who has no known risk factors

pointing to a voluntary disappearance, and whose partner or husband

appears to be sandbagging the legitimate requirements of a missing

and endangered person search, then the requirements of ‘‘probable

cause’’ must be altered to reflect new realities. He believes that when

asked to grant a search warrant, judges should consider not just the

individual facts of the case at hand but what we have learned in recent

years about similar planned and staged disappearances.

‘‘We have a history of these cases, and we should be able to give a

judge the argument that there is a pattern here, from Chandra Levy

to Laci Peterson and many others. We need a search warrant because

these women do not just disappear. They are crime victims. They are

likely to be murder victims. This involves change in the way people

look at these cases, but now is the time for the change. It may involve

educating judges, helping them to understand that they should take

into account the history of all of these women who seem to have

disappeared, but who have really been murdered. They are not your

ordinary missing persons case, and time is very critical.’’

This is not to presume in any way that all husbands or all partners

of women who disappear are or ought to be murder suspects.

But as every detective who handles cases of suspiciously missing

Conclusion

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children and adults will tell you, the only viable way to proceed

with an investigation is to eliminate as suspects family members

and whomever was the last person known to have seen the missing

individual alive.

John Walsh, the relentless anticrime crusader who successfully

fought for what became the first round of stronger child protection

measures, describes what he and his wife had to go through in order

to be completely cleared as possible suspects when their six-year-old

son, Adam, disappeared in the toy department of a suburban Florida

Sears store. ‘‘They took my wife and I into separate rooms in the police

department for almost twelve hours, cross-examining us separately.

And we took polygraphs repeatedly, two polygraphs each, to dispel

any doubt, any innuendo even that could hang over us. That’s because

you have to eliminate the immediate family or friends when there’s a

missing kid who has been abducted.’’

Marc Klaas, whose life was forever changed by the stranger

abduction of his little girl, who, like Adam Walsh, was eventually

found murdered, accepts and understands what the police must do

to eliminate the suspects who are closest at hand— clearing, in effect,

anyone who was at the ‘‘ground zero’’ of the crime. As part of his

life’s mission in fighting for better systems and methods of protecting

children, he has dealt with many people in the midst of a missing

persons investigation involving a loved one and always urges them to

provide full and complete cooperation.

‘‘I took a polygraph,’’ said Klaas about the investigation into his

daughter’s kidnapping. ‘‘You don’t want to. It’s intimidating. You

hear defense attorneys say it is so discredited and unreliable that you

think you’re going to be the guy who gets a false reading. But I put

her needs ahead of mine. I had to eliminate myself in the eyes

of police so Polly could be found.’’ He also answered every question

police asked him throughout their investigation. ‘‘They said ‘The

more you tell us, the more we have to work from.’ ’’

Klaas strongly recommended the same course of action to Scott

Peterson when he spoke to his sister Susan Caudillo during the first

week of the search for Laci. ‘‘I told her to make sure everybody

cooperates with police and that you don’t put lawyers between you

and police. And she said ‘We’ve already got a lawyer lined up for

Scott.’ ’’

Q

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E R A S E D

Many of the cases explored in this book are, indeed, resolved.

Although the fate of the victims is immutable, at least justice is often

able to prevail—sometimes against astonishing odds. But too many

cases still go unnoticed, uninvestigated, uncharged, and without a

killer’s ever facing his day in court.

‘‘The men who do this, who plan these crimes and carry them out,

they are getting creative,’’ warns DiBiase. ‘‘This is very, very serious.’’

The question for the rest of us is whether we too can become more

creative. I believe we can begin by naming those who violently erase

women who loved and trusted them with a label that casts light

on everything they attempt to hide from the world. They are eraser

killers. And by understanding the dark triad of traits that lie behind

the crime, perhaps we can someday confront the problems of what

Robert Hare calls ‘‘the psychopaths among us’’ without having to

have another dead or vanished woman to alert us to the danger.

Q
Bibliographical Sources

This book is a result of five years of research into the psychological

etiology, the legal challenges, the criminal characteristics, and the

history and magnitude of the vexing social problem of eraser killing.

My research has been guided by a search for ‘‘motive’’ in a kind of

crime that often seems to have no real motive or to which have been

attached such all too simplistic motives as ‘‘he wanted freedom’’ or

‘‘he didn’t want to share his money.’’ The research is also an attempt

to answer questions that began with, then transcended, the legal

challenge presented by seemingly normal men who kill their wives or

girlfriends and attempt to get away with murder by committing their

crimes in the most deceptive and secretive fashion. Although many

men (and women as well) desire personal freedom, want to escape or

avoid permanent obligations, and attach extraordinary importance

to wealth, very few commit murder in acting on such motives. Fewer

still attempt to kill in total stealth and ‘‘erase’’ someone they claimed

to love, as if their victim had never existed.

What puzzled so many people about Scott Peterson was not

only how someone so successful, engaging, and seemingly normal

could brutally take the life of his wife and child, but also how

he was able to carry out all the gruesome tasks needed to plan

the murder and dispose of his wife’s pregnant corpse and lie to

everyone he knew without a glimmer of conscience or remorse. The

deadly twins—lack of remorse and lack of empathy for the pain and

suffering of others— are the most decisive indicators of psychopathic

personality, and several commentators in the broadcast media were

quick to notice this fact.

But I puzzled over what this kind of diagnosis might really mean.

Classic psychopaths were people who shared this lack of remorse and

empathy, but they usually exhibited great criminal versatility and

had long histories of violence by the time they were as old as Scott

Peterson. Were there varieties of psychopaths who could be just as

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B I B L I O G R A P H I C A L S O U R C E S

emotionless in their remorse and empathy deficits, but who were

highly functional in other aspects of their lives? Whereas some, like

Scott Peterson, seemed driven by a need for approval (and endless

female attention), others, like Barton Corbin, seemed driven by a

more classic need to control.

Q

Although I interviewed hundreds of individuals, ranging from

witnesses, attorneys, forensic experts, and police to psychologists,

psychiatrists, prosecutors, and criminologists, this section on bibli-ographical sources will focus primarily on books, papers, research,

and other works that are available to anyone. Because the core of

my book involves weaving together strands from diverse threads in

psychology, criminology, case law, and law enforcement, I believe

I have an obligation to provide the information and resources for

other people interested in exploring these issues. My intent here is to

reference those materials that have been most pivotal and essential

in my work in order to acknowledge my debt to these writers and

researchers and to encourage further research into this very costly and

troubling area of psychology and human behavior. In many cases, the

most formative books and research that underlie much of what I have

done do not give rise to direct citations. But I want to acknowledge

the research, investigation guides, and resources on which I have

relied in order to provide the most open access for others.

Q

To understand the psychology of these killers, I began researching

the major theories and approaches to psychopathy, all of which build

on the life’s work of one man: Dr. Hervey Cleckley. A professor

of psychiatry and neurology in Georgia who began his work in the

field in the 1930s, Cleckley published his landmark work in 1941

as
The Mask of Sanity
, the founding text on the study of psychopaths.

The Mask of Sanity
went through many editions and revisions over

several decades and is still regarded as an essential text. It was Cleckley

who took the old ill-defined idea of ‘‘moral insanity’’ and attempted

to analyze a set of individuals who everyone agreed were psychopaths,

even if there wasn’t yet agreement on exactly what that meant. I have

relied on the last major revision of Cleckley’s book, the fifth edition,

published by Mosby in 1982.

Bibliographical Sources

3 1 1

Cleckley’s work began with people, predominantly men, who

were confined in institutions. He discerned ten common behavioral

characteristics and began to turn what had been a vague notion into

a first brilliant attempt at an empirical definition. He thus founded

the science of studying this strangest of personality disorders, one

in which people are quite sane—that is, able to distinguish reality

from unreality, right from wrong— but also very deceptive in their

appearance of normality.

The ten characteristics Cleckley found in his psychopaths included

a high level of selfishness or egocentricity; an inability to form any

real bond of love with another person; frequent and sometimes

uncontrollable lying; a superficial kind of charm; and, perhaps most

important, a complete lack of guilt or remorse no matter what the

person might have done, coupled with an utter lack of empathy

for others. After the initial publication of his book, Cleckley was

continuously bombarded with urgent requests to study, analyze, or

explain the strange behavior of dozens, then hundreds of psychopaths

referred by mental institutions, wives, families, hospitals, prisons, and

lawyers from around the world.

Cleckley’s work provided the starting point for the person who

is now regarded as the second great researcher in the field of

psychopathy: Dr. Robert Hare at the University of British Columbia.

Hare systematized the concept and through years of research and

testing developed and revised what is now the internationally accepted

test for identifying psychopaths. Although there are other approaches

to psychopathy, I have relied very heavily on the ideas first advanced

by Hare in some of his key research papers, including those in which

he partnered with the growing number of scientists who use his core

methodology:

Hare, R. D. ‘‘Psychopathy, Affect and Behavior.’’ In D. Cooke, A.

Forth, and R. D. Hare (eds.),
Psychopathy: Theory, Research and

Implications for Society
. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer

Academic, 1998.

Hare, R. D. ‘‘Psychopaths and Their Nature: Implications for the

Mental Health and Criminal Justice Systems.’’ In T. Millon,

E. Simonson, M. Burket-Smith, and R. Davis (eds.),

Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior
. New

York: Guilford Press, 1998.

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