Alden Carole - Cold-blooded kindness: neuroquirks of a codependent killer, or, Just give me a shot at loving you, dear: and other reflections on helping that hurts

A wonderful, intelligent, and engaging study that illuminates the disturbing relationship between some of those who appeal to our better instincts, as victims, and those on whom they prey, including ourselvesit will grip the general reader and should be compulsory reading for anyone working in the caring professions. For many, the world will never look the same after reading this book.

Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist,
author of The Master and His Emissary

Barbara Oakley has written the most ambitious kind of true crime book, one that goes beyond a story well told and takes the lid off the simmering conditions and psychopathology that cook up into a tragic killing. There are haunting warnings for all of us in Cold-Blooded Kindness, as well as a fundamental truth: Homicide is self-will run rioteven if it wears a smiley face.

Lowell Cauffiel,
New York Times bestselling author of House of Secrets

Cold-Blooded Kindness is a masterful fusion of analytic depth and powerful narrative. A singularly incisive expos of the fallacy of simplistic moral dichotomies we routinely deploy to judge (and misjudge) the intricacies of human nature. And a gripping read to boot.

Elkhonon Goldberg,
clinical professor of neurology, NYU School of Medicine, and
author of The New Executive Brain and The Wisdom Paradox

Barbara Oakley sets her sights on a seemingly mundane act of domestic violence to reveal the many hidden layers beneath. To make sense of those layers, Oakley uniquely dissects the dynamic psychological, social, and cultural forces that led an artistically gifted and seemingly kind and caring woman to kill her husband. Was she an abused victim or a conniving victimizer? Read Cold-Blooded Kindness and find out.

Mark Blumberg,
F. Wendell Miller Professor of Psychology, University of Iowa,
and author of Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies
Tell Us about Development and Evolution

Finally someone has exposed the ugly, vicious underbelly of kindness. Dr. Oakley reminds us that the expenditure of energy or emotion is not in itself naughty or nice, it's a question of how they are channeled or directed. So-called good and evil can look an awful lot alikethe devil is indeed in the details. Cold-Blooded Kindness is an excellent piece of investigative journalism and a riveting read all rolled into one. Dr. Oakley does Truman Capote proud, you won't want to put it down!

Dr. Margaret Cochran,
author of What Are You Afraid Of?
and host of Wisdom, Love and Magic!

This brave and important book reminds us that even our best intentioned assumptions become prejudices if they go too long unexamined. Truth and justice deserve our rigorously honest attention and we must trust that they will protect us better, in the long run, than convenient lies. The book is also an excellent readlively, suspenseful, strange, and as insightful as it is disturbing. You should read it.

Jennifer Michael Hecht,
author of The Happiness Myth and Doubt: A History

Published 2011 by Prometheus Books

Cold-Blooded Kindness: Neuroquirks of a Codependent Killer, or Just Give Me a Shot at Loving You, Dear, and Other Reflections on Helping That Hurts. Copyright 2011 by Barbara Oakley. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover illustration Media Bakery, 2011.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oakley, Barbara A., 1955
Cold-blooded kindness : neuroquirks of a codependent killer, or just give me a shot at loving you, dear, and other reflections on helping that hurts / by Barbara Oakley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9781616144197 (alk. paper)
ISBN 9781616144203 (e-book)
1. Alden, Carole, 1960 2. MurderUtahCase studies. 3. Abused womenUtahCase studies. 4. Battered woman syndromeUtahCase studies. I. Title.

HV6533.U8025 2011
364.152'3092dc22

2010049898

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

C old-Blooded Kindness is based on police records, trial testimony, and interviews. Dialogue is reconstructed from the best memory of those involved, or the best available sources, and rechecked wherever possible against testimony, documents, and other reliable sources. Statements presented as facts are taken from sources deemed reliable and have been checked wherever possible against other reliable sources. Every effort has been taken to eliminate erroras such, however, human error may still occur due to the fallibility of human memory or my own misunderstanding. I would like to emphasize in this regard that any errors of fact or interpretation remain my own.

Carole Alden's own thoughts regarding the events recounted here are taken from nearly one hundred pages of letters she wrote to me over a several-month period, from November 2008 to May 2009. Carole's words have been paraphrased per copyright laws, but great care has been taken to retain the original meaning and context.

For convenience, I have referred to Carole Alden by her maiden name, although she has gone by other names.

I am not a healthcare professionalany observations made can in no way be taken as a clinical diagnosis.

The first use of a name that is a pseudonym is always in italics.

Note: pseudonyms are in bold italics.

Carole Alden: A Utah artist whose fanciful works and cloth sculptures have been featured in galleries and at the Utah Arts Festival. The mother of two boys and three girls by her first two husbands. When she was forty-six, on the morning of July 29, 2006, she called police to report that she had shot and killed her third husband, Marty Sessions.

Melloney Bozeman: Carole Alden's first daughter, from her first husband, Richard Senft. Age twenty-three at the time of the homicide.

Andy Bristow: Carole Alden's drug-addicted boyfriend between her second and third husbands. Died due to combined drug intoxication under mysterious circumstances.

Morris Burton: A sergeant in the Millard County Sheriff's Officeone of the first to arrive, along with Deputy Tony Pedersen, at the scene of the killing.