Kent A. Kiehl PhD - The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience

Copyright 2014 by Kent A. Kiehl

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kiehl, Kent A.
The psychopath whisperer : the science of those without conscience / Kent A. Kiehl, PhD.First edition.
pages cm
1. Antisocial personality disorders. 2. Psychopaths. I. Title.
RC555.K54 2014
616.8582dc23 2013032204

ISBN 978-0-7704-3584-4
eBook ISBN 978-0-7704-3585-1

Illustrations by Fred Haynes
Jacket design by Oliver Munday
Jacket photograph: JazzIRT/Getty Images

v3.1

For Mom and Dad

Fact: One in four maximum-security inmates is a psychopath.

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 prisons 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 wordsdata 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. Id 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 cant 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 keydont 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. Ive 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 tightlyno 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 bubblea 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 wasnt 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