The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience (11 page)

Perhaps the most salient historical evidence about his early years comes from a confession Charles provided the Oneida community
prior to being accepted into their communal living environment in upstate New York at age eighteen. He confessed that he had, from very early years, been a very disobedient boy to his father; that he had, while a clerk in a business house, between his thirteenth and seventeenth years, robbed his employer’s money drawer repeatedly of considerable sums of money; that he had frequented brothels; that he had contracted venereal disease; and that he had been addicted to self-abuse to the extent of seriously injuring his health. Charles reported a serious fight with his father around age eighteen, to the point where he wanted to hurt his father.
⁸

With this symptom, we are generally concerned with very early childhood, and I have been able to find only limited evidence of Guiteau’s early years. The little evidence we do have suggests that Guiteau demonstrated problem behavior at an early age. But without being able to interview Charles about his early childhood and in the absence of other solid sources of information, such as school records, social worker reports, and accounts from older siblings, it is best for us to omit this item. The practical consequence of omitting an item is that the total score on the Psychopathy Checklist is prorated, based on the rest of the item scores.

Today, a high score on this item is typically reserved for children who are taken from the home by social services before the age of twelve, even when the parents are taking care of other children without serious incident. The child’s behavior should be relatively independent of the environment.

With respect to Booth, there is much documentation about his early years from his siblings, and there is very little evidence he had anything other than a typical childhood. Edwin reported that John Wilkes was the parents’ favorite (of ten) in the home (only six would live to adulthood—a cholera epidemic killed three siblings in a single month in 1833 and another died from smallpox four years later). His sister recounted a story of fireworks gone wrong, in which a passerby was slightly injured. When the constable arrived, John Wilkes confessed to setting off the fireworks, but he refused to name his friends and brothers who contributed, solely taking the blame himself. He practiced and maintained an interest in music,
musicals, and theater from a young age. He shows no evidence of aberrant behavior early in life.

Here we are concerned with whether the individual can make realistic plans for the future, stick to goals, and carry them out. Charles failed on all attempts. His plans for the future were always misguided and often grandiose (see Item 2). At various times Guiteau had applied to be the minister to Austria, consul to Liverpool, and consul-general to Paris, yet he had no real hope of ever obtaining such posts.

Guiteau planned to (re)marry rich, telling his former wife he had numerous wealthy women at his beck and call and, once married, would be in a position to pay her the alimony to which she was so deservedly entitled. Several years prior to the assassination, he wrote the following letter to then–General Garfield:

Apparently, Garfield was shown the letter, and several times afterward referred to it humorously as an illustration of unparalleled audacity and impudence.

Guiteau had an unbridled, unabashed, and unwavering penchant for making unrealistic long-term plans.

During the Civil War, John Wilkes Booth retired from performing in the theater and began investing in land and oil. Apparently,
these investments did not do well, and he had made plans to return to the theater to continue to support himself.

Booth and his conspirators had initially plotted to kidnap President Lincoln to force a prisoner swap for Southern troops being held in the North. As the Confederacy started to collapse, the plan quickly escalated to a coup d’état. The plan that fateful night was to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. The conspirators’ hope was that the US government would go spinning out of control and the South could regain traction or force a revised settlement. Booth successfully executed Lincoln; his coconspirators were not as adept. One coconspirator gruesomely stabbed Seward in the head several times, but Seward miraculously survived, and the assassin assigned to Johnson lost his nerve. Thus, although the plan had goals, it is not clear what would have happened if their ploy had succeeded. It’s actually quite scary to think about what might have happened. In any event, Booth had no problems making plans in the various domains of his life, and he was effective at carrying them out.

Impulsivity is a multifaceted construct. In assessing this trait we are mostly concerned with behaviors that are unpremeditated, unplanned, or opportunistic.

Despite normal or perhaps even above-average intelligence, Guiteau was never able to maintain a steady job, despite the “ability” to do so. He moved from job to job, rooming house to rooming house, never thinking ahead. In relationships, he did not maintain either close personal friends or romantic relationships. He moved frequently, and at various points in his life lived in California, Maine, Illinois, and New York.

Guiteau was clearly capable of designing and completing con jobs and swindles. He also planned and stalked the president, going so
far as to practice shooting his new handgun prior to the assassination. However, it is clear that these plans were always short-lived and not well manufactured (he never really made a lot of money, and he got caught right after shooting Garfield). Given that, Guiteau scores high on this item.

Booth described himself as impulsive in thought, but there is little evidence that he acted without planning or would be considered impulsive. However, there are enough stories regarding his drinking behavior, the occasional barroom fight, and a few other examples that merit a moderate score on this item for Booth.

This item is generally concerned with a person’s sense of responsibility in all domains of life. Guiteau had no loyalty with respect to any area of his life, in relationships with family or in romance, education, or business dealings. According to newspaper stories, Guiteau owed money to nearly every hotel in New York City, Boston, and Chicago for skipping out on room, beverage, and food charges. He was charged with paying alimony, but his ex-wife reported he never paid a dime. He was disbarred in Chicago for fraud over a settlement agreement for some $275. He borrowed money from everyone and anyone who would lend it to him on his “word of honor,” but there are no accounts of him ever paying back anyone. He is the epitome of irresponsibility.

Booth was motivated singularly by his sense of duty to the Confederacy. It was this sensibility that pushed him into the violent act he committed. It is impossible to justify Booth’s act, but it is clear his motivations were driven out of a perverted sense of loyalty and duty to the South. In the rest of his life, we see no evidence of irresponsibility.

Guiteau’s most famous quote is, “The doctors killed Garfield; I just shot him.” In other words, he failed to take responsibility for killing the president. Guiteau blamed his wife for their stark financial situation, saying he should have married a rich woman. He blamed the
New York Herald
for destroying his reputation by publishing facts about his questionable business dealings. When he started a newspaper called
The Daily Theocrat
with an investment from the Oneida community and the business venture failed, he blamed the Oneida community for not giving him enough money. He sued them, unsuccessfully, and resorted to blackmail, threatening to sell stories about the inner workings of the community to newspapers. Guiteau’s ex-wife claimed that he was unable to accept responsibility for anything he ever did.

Booth, in the letter reprinted earlier, owns his crime. He accepts responsibility, even his own death, for what he has done. He was willing to, and did, sacrifice himself for his beliefs, however misguided history might record those beliefs to be. This is the essence of accepting responsibility for one’s behavior.

The flavor and intent of this item is to address the fact that the psychopath is willing to jump into (often without thinking) marriage and then jump out (again often without thinking). Some psychopaths I have interviewed have been married six or seven times.

Guiteau has only one marriage that we know of, to Annie Bunn. Perhaps his cons and swindles left no time for Guiteau to engage in other significant romantic relationships.

Booth never married, perhaps because he died at a relatively
young age, twenty-seven. Booth was reported to be engaged once, but that does not warrant a score on this item.

The symptoms of psychopathy start early in life and accelerate in adolescence. This item is concerned with the severity of delinquency during the teenage years. Many adolescents engage in moderate levels of troublemaking, but the vast majority of teens mature out of those behaviors without serious incident. Here we are looking for evidence of severe and chronic antisocial behavior that would likely lead to arrest and serious charges as a youth.

With respect to Guiteau, one of the pieces of information we have is his confession for robbery, use of prostitutes, and the occasional assault during his teen years. Reports from family, neighbors, and friends all suggest Guiteau was unmanageable and a terrorizer of the town he grew up in. Many of these stories were documented prior to the assassination, minimizing the concern that postassas-sination reports would inflate the antisocial behavior of his youth. It is safe to score him high on this trait.

I was unable to find any reports indicating that Booth had any serious trouble with the law as a teenager. All collateral reports from siblings and friends reported no significant antisocial behavior during adolescence.

Here we are looking for repeated failure when given an opportunity to redeem oneself. Most criminal justice systems have mechanisms
to attempt to curb antisocial behavior. Probation, in lieu of jail time, is one such mechanism. The point of probation is a warning shot across the bow—don’t get in trouble again or you are looking at a stiff penalty. The first-time offender is hopefully taught a lesson and learns from his or her experience and from the threat of punishment. As discussed, psychopaths fail to learn from experience, and the threat of punishment has no bearing on their future behavior. This item helps capture that trait. It also assesses the willingness of an individual to breach trust from a source other than family and friends. When a government releases someone early from prison, in the case of parole, some readily fail that trust.

Guiteau has both breach of bail and failure to appear charges. Multiple incidents of breaching warrant a high score.

For Booth we have no evidence he was ever arrested, so we have to omit this item and prorate his final score.

Guiteau’s list of transgressions is a long one: murder, fraud, theft, assault, robbery, threatening use of handgun, possession of a weapon, forgery, jumping bail, assault on a law enforcement officer (fight with a guard while in jail), unlawful confinement (reports during his divorce described at least one event when he forced his wife into a closet and held her there until she nearly suffocated before finally letting her out), vagrancy, and public drunkenness. Guiteau is an equal opportunist when it comes to antisocial activity.

This item chronicles not just how much antisocial activity has been committed, but also a willingness to engage in a wide variety of criminal activity. The psychopath tends to engage in many different types of criminal activity, which differentiates the psychopath from the typical offender who just commits, say, burglaries to support his or her drug addiction. It’s the variety here that is important.

Booth had a few vices, and while he did commit murder in
assassinating Lincoln, there is no evidence of criminal activity in multiple domains of his life.

This exercise illustrates how scientists assess psychopathic traits, through the lens of two nineteeth-century presidential assassins. Both men committed heinous crimes with which their names will forever be associated. However, as this analysis has revealed, the two men could not be more different with respect to their psychopathy scores.

Guiteau scores in the 99th percentile of psychopathy (37.5 out of 40) (noting the half point is due to the prorated item). In other words, of the thousands of individuals studied with the Psychopathy Checklist, Guiteau is an exemplar for nearly every trait—close to a perfect score. In addition to meeting nearly all the modern criteria for psychopathy, Guiteau meets all of Cleckley’s criteria as well. Notably, Guiteau never suffered from delusions or hallucinations or experienced anxiety—even on the way to the gallows. Even his assassination of President Garfield was poorly motivated. Dr. Spitzka, who testified for the defense during the assassination trial, went a little beyond moral insanity and stated that Guiteau was “a moral monstrocity.” Guiteau’s behavior at trial was theatrical, to say the least. He testified using poems he had written, he openly and repeatedly sought to represent himself in court, and he berated his defense team. Sentenced to death, he requested an orchestra play during his execution (the judge denied the request). On his way to the hangman, Guiteau continued to display psychopathic exuberance, as he danced up the stairs, waved to the audience, shook hands with the executioner, and, as a last request, recited a poem he had written.