The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience

The snap of the lock releasing shattered the still morning
air as the large metal gate, adorned with rows of razor wire, crept open along an iron rail. The “lock shot,” as it was known, echoed off nearby buildings, amplifying the eeriness of an already macabre scene. Two twenty-foot-high parallel chain-link fences stretched a quarter mile in either direction of the gate. In the space between the fences was an eight-foot-high column of razor wire, a gauntlet not even the most agile convict could vault. There was not a soul in sight. The gate appeared to mysteriously recognize someone was approaching and opened to welcome me to my first day working in a maximum-security prison.

That morning I had driven sixty miles through the rain from my residence in Vancouver to the town of Abbotsford, the home of several high-security prisons in the lower mainland of British Columbia, Canada. The Matsqui complex is just minutes off the freeway, surrounded by a collection of gas stations and delis, no doubt to feed the hundreds of vehicles and staff who commute to the location each day. The entrance to the compound is nondescript except for the sign indicating that all visitors and vehicles on the property are subject
to search and seizure for contraband. The vista stretches as far as the eye can see, rolling hills of dark green grass dotted with castle-like structures surrounded by moats of high fences topped with razor wire and fifty-foot-high turrets placed strategically at each bend in the fence. At the end of a long road is the Regional Health Centre (RHC)—a name that belies its guests. RHC is a maximum-security treatment facility for sex offenders and violent offenders. Its 250 beds contain some of the most dangerous criminals in Canada. It was my new place of work.

I was a twenty-three-year-old freshman graduate student. On the early morning drive, I thought about how wholly unprepared I was for my first day of interviewing prisoners in the violent offender facility. For the past several years, I had divided my time between studying the research literature on psychopaths, undergoing training in brain-imaging techniques, and engaging in a loosely related line of research on a study of the brain electrical activity associated with auditory processes of killer whales, comparable in many ways to those of humans. Becoming ever more fascinated by psychopathy research, I had also been vigorously pursuing mentorship with my academic hero, the founding father of modern research in psychopathy, Professor Robert D. Hare, who only recently had accepted me as a graduate student. Yet now, as I walked past the metal detectors at the entrance to the compound, surrounded by razor wire, I paused and wondered what the hell I was thinking. I would be working, all alone, on the forbidding task of conducting in-depth interviews with the prison’s most violent inmates, many of whom had been assessed as psychopaths. After the interviews, I planned to administer EEG (electroencephalogram) tests, measuring electric impulses in the brain in response to emotionally loaded words—data that would help us understand the connections between psychopathic brain processes and behavior.

I cleared security, received my ID card, and was given directions to the department of psychiatry by a guard, pale and gaunt, who looked like he had spent fifty years behind bars. The next lock snapped open with a now familiar audible crack and the heavy lead-lined
door popped open; I gently pushed it forward. As I took my first few steps into this new environment, I smiled to myself that my first concern, a cavity search, had not come to pass as I went through security. I made a mental note to get even with the senior graduate student who had told me that cavity searches of new staff were common in Canadian prisons.

Inmates dressed in white T-shirts, jeans, and dark green jackets milled around the laundry, barbershop, and chapel as I walked from the administration entrance to psychiatry. The halls smelled like disinfectant, and I pondered what chemicals were used to clean up blood.

I entered the large, ominous building at the end of the walkway. I wandered down the hall like a lost child until I came upon a sign on an office door that said
DR. BRINK
. Sitting there, oddly facing away from the open door, almost inviting me to sneak up and scare him, was Chief Forensic Psychiatrist Dr. Johann Brink. I’d met Dr. Brink just three months earlier at a NATO-funded Advanced Study Institute on psychopathy in Alvor, Portugal. Over numerous dinners and bottles of wine, I had convinced Dr. Brink to collaborate with me on my EEG studies of psychopaths. He helped me get my protocols approved by the prisons and the university ethics boards. With all this paperwork in hand, I tapped lightly on the door frame to his office. He spun around, only partially startled, and greeted me with a huge smile.

“Kent, great to see you! Welcome to maximum security!” he bellowed in his distinctive South African accent.

Johann proceeded to walk me down the hall and show me my office, empty except for a phone, desk, and two chairs on opposing sides. A bright red silver-dollar-sized button was positioned chest high, right in the middle of the wall.

“I recommend you take the chair closest to the door; just in case you piss one of them off, you can run out quickly. Better than getting caught on the other side of the desk. If you can’t get out, hit that red button and the guards should come running.” He spoke so casually I could not help but wonder if he was kidding.

“And here is your key—don’t lose it!” I was handed a six-inch brass key with large, odd-shaped, forbidding teeth. The key, made by
only two companies in the world, was specific to prisons. It opened most doors.

He pointed down the hall to a large door. “The guys’ cells are through there. I’ve got to run now; we can check in at the end of the day, eh?” Johann smiled and turned away as he was finishing his sentence. As I inserted my new key into the shoulder-height lock in the door, I faintly heard him say what I thought was “Enjoy!” as he closed his office door tightly—no doubt to keep the next visitor from sneaking up on him.

I pushed open the hallway door to the prisoners’ cells, turned and closed it, inserted my key on the other side, and spun the heavy-duty lock 180 degrees. I tugged on the door to make sure it was locked, took a deep breath, and proceeded down the 100-foot-long hallway to the inmate housing units.

I arrived at a “bubble”—a round security room, with one-way, tinted windows, no doors apparent. I gazed down the four hallways that radiated from it like spokes, as maximum-security inmates milled about, staring coldly. I wasn’t afraid, but rather nervous about whether anyone would agree to talk with me. By way of training, Professor Hare had handed me a worn copy of the introductory book on life in prison titled
Games Criminals Play
the previous day and said, “Read this first, and good luck tomorrow!” It was trial by fire, sink or swim.
I should have read the book last night
, I thought.

A small office with glass windows and a half door was across the hall; a forensic nurse was handing out shaving razors to a line of inmates. She looked at me curiously and waved me over.

“Can I help you?” she asked cautiously.

“I’m the new research guy from UBC. I’m here to sign inmates up for interviews and EEG studies.” UBC stands for University of British Columbia, where I was a freshman doctoral student studying psychology and brain science. EEG stands for electroencephalography (also electroencephalogram), or the recording of brain electrical activity using noninvasive sensors attached to the head, amplified, and recorded on a computer for subsequent digital analyses.

“Come in and sit down then; let’s talk about it.”

I leaned over the half door and looked for a latch.

“On your left,” she said. I found the latch and flicked it open and
sat down in the closest chair. She finished handing out shaving razors to the last of the inmates and turned to look at me.

“The inmates get razors?” I inquired with a puzzled tone.

“Yes,” she said, laughing, “and they often disappear; I don’t ask where they go.”

I realized that Dr. Brink was wise to tell me to sit closest to the door during my interviews.

Dorothy Smith was a twenty-year veteran of the maximum-security prison. Despite her long stay in prison, Dorothy was no worse for wear. Her slim athletic build was topped with an infectious personality that won over even the most hardened inmates. She would become one of my closest friends during my seven-year term in Canadian prisons. And she shared my interest in figuring out what made psychopaths tick.

“I’ll set you up with a nice one for your first interview,” Dorothy said as she glanced up to the housing chart taped to the cabinet. I followed her gaze and noticed headshots of inmates on the cabinets behind me, their names listed underneath: last name, first name, and index crime. Attempted murder, rape/murder, arson/murder, murder 3x, murder/rape. I pondered if “rape/murder” and “murder/rape” were the same thing and was about to ask Dorothy when I thought better of it. I didn’t want to know; I had enough on my plate for my first day.

The inmate she selected, “Gordon,”
*
seemed courteous enough as he sat down in the chair on the far side of my office. He was forty-two years old, balding, gray haired, and soft spoken; the crime listed under his headshot was “attempted murder.”

A fascinating guy, Gordon turned out to be a serial bank robber. He told me his crimes had financed a lavish lifestyle, including first-class international airplane tickets, front-row seats at hockey games, and girlfriends and prostitutes in many different cities. After his most recent arrest, Gordon had to explain to the police why he had
more than $75,000 in cash, despite being technically unemployed. With his lawyer, he negotiated immunity throughout Canada on the condition that he help police clear up a number of unsolved bank robberies. The number of robberies that Gordon was directly involved in reached close to fifty, but he was never charged in any of them. Gordon regaled me with story upon story of successful bank robberies. He told me how to case a town or city, then the banks, how to get in and out in less than sixty seconds, how to steal a getaway car, and how to launder the money. I asked him how a bank could keep him from robbing it? He gave me hours of insights. I started making notes about how to design a better bank—
Perhaps
, I thought,
I can consult with bank executives if my academic career doesn’t work out
.