Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Psychopath or Psychotic?

Lancaster’s coroner, Dr. G. Gary Kirchner, has been accused of compromising the investigation of the Haines family, three of whom were slaughtered in their home on May 16 in a gruesome and frightening crime. Basically, the guy said there were multiple stab wounds and some psychotic answering voices in his head out on the loose. The district attorney, Donald Totaro, said that information about the wounds should have not been released because it is something the police didn’t want the public to know and that Kirchner wasn’t a criminal profiler so he shouldn’t be analyzing the offender.

Kirchner fired back that the police weren’t doing so well in their investigation and were down to interviewing school kids.

Well, I have to weigh in here with the DA if these are things Kirchner really said. First of all, he is involved in the investigation and he shouldn’t be giving out information without the blessing of the detectives. Secondly, the police absolutely should be interviewing the kids at school because the crime may well be the work of some violence obsessed kid who wanted to make his fantasies come true.

Finally, Kirchner doesn’t know the difference between a psychopath and a psychotic. This is no psychotic who did this. This is a psychopath who knows exactly what he is doing and no voice in his head is directing him. This is why the police are struggling to catch him. If he were psychotic he would not have selected a family in the night, targeted these specific people, snuck in and snuck out, and left no trail back to his house. His brain was functioning just fine, Mr. Kirchner, and that is why psychopaths are so much more dangerous than psychotics.

I don’t know Kirchner’s motivation behind his comments. Maybe he is fed up with the way the police keep too much information from the citizens in open cases and he wants to see this change. Maybe he wants the public to have enough information to identify the killer. Maybe he just wants publicity. But, one thing is for sure – there is still a violent psychopath running around Lancaster and I only hope the police have some leads they are not telling us about.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Does the Innocence Project help innocent men or criminals?

The Innocence Project has struck again. Curtis McCarty has been freed from prison after twenty years on death row because a judge finally ruled that the state improperly dealt with the physical evidence and, in the eyes of the Innocence folk, railroaded an innocent man. Now, this man, like the many others the Innocence Project has gotten a ticket out of jail, is oddly not overly bitter about spending two decades of his life behind bars. Many people think this is a wonderful thing, a man wrongly convicted can forgive the authorities and his country for such a horrific injustice and they also applaud the Innocence Project for rescuing this poor individual from a terrible fate.

What the Innocence Project and most reporters don’t want people to know is that Curtis McCarty is a scumbag who should never be allowed back on the streets among decent people ever again. He is hardly an innocent man, some docile schoolteacher ripped away from his loving wife and children, and tossed into a hellhole with a type of humankind he is totally unfamiliar with. McCarty is a useless piece of garbage, a violent criminal, a drug user, and a rapist. He was convicted of raping a fourteen-year old girl in every manner possible and choking her during the act. Luckily, she lived. Nice man McCarty also led the police to the body of a woman his friend supposedly raped and murdered although his friend said McCarty was the guilty party. Then, there was the other woman that he was convicted of murdering…but, now he has been found not guilty due to supposed DNA exclusion and bad behavior at the police lab.

I don’t know the full circumstances surrounding the murder of Pamela Willis – maybe Curtis killed her and maybe he didn’t or maybe he didn’t rape her but her murdered her or maybe he used a condom and another of his friends killed her. What I do know is that Curtis is a violent rapist who has been involved in burying a raped and murdered woman. Why these crimes don’t keep him in jail forever is beyond me. But, now, Curtis is a free man and because the truth about him has been buried, the Innocence Project will seem a band of angels instead of the criminal loving left-wing anti-victim group that they really are. It is one thing to work to be sure the State does not abuse its powers; it is another to make people believe the State is putting law abiding, decent citizens on death row. The Innocence Project doesn’t want folks to know the truth that almost all of the people they get freed are violent criminals who either committed the crime they were accused of, involved in the crime they were accused of, or committed a crime just like the one they were accused of. While creeps still shouldn’t be railroaded by the justice system, they shouldn’t be treated like heroes either.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Understanding the Upstanding Paris Hilton

Poor Paris! She is still fighting to keep herself out of prison and her distraught fans are working overtime to help her with their petition to Arnold. All of this is pretty silly and goofy (and rather amusing, actually especially when she is getting slammed right and left and told to just grow up and stop whining and now there is another petition labeled "Jail Paris Hilton" getting a ton of signatures!). However, there is one rather seriously note in all of this. In the petition her fans conjured up, they included this incredible statement about Paris: “She provides hope for young people all over the U.S.” Hope? Hope to do what, to be what? Hope to grow up to be a lucky rich kid of a billionaire? Hope to grow up to be a brainless twit? Hope to grow up to be a lawbreaker, a drunk, and a drug abuser? Hope to grow up to be the anti-paragon of virtue?

Is this the beacon of light for our young people? Are they looking up to Paris instead of someone who is really achieving something in this life or giving something to the world that has merit? Is Paris the new Mother Theresa? Good God, tell me the next generation hasn’t gotten so shallow and narcissistic that becoming Paris is their actual hope for their future?

What a sad thought this is that any young person would see Paris Hilton as a role model instead of just a silly, irresponsible, Hollywood celebrity who might wear some cool clothes and have a neat hairstyle. Paris might be someone we enjoy reading gossip about and we may even get a laugh out of her antics and this I can accept, but to actually take her seriously and wish to be like her is a pretty sorry state of affairs.

(Photo courtesy of Yahoo Images)

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Violent Video Games are not Healthy for Kids

Louisiana State Representative Roy Burrell meant well when he misquoted me, but now I am having to deal with the fallout. In trying to get something done he said this to the press:

“One expert, Pat Brown, a national top criminal profiler and parent, said that these video games are causing our children to become psychopathic killers by 9 years old.”

Well, no, I didn't say that and below is a correction of this statement he claimed I said (which by the way, I was never contacted by Rep. Burrell or his office for any quote).

Dear Rep. Burrell, While I agree with your concerns and approve heartily of working to legislate control over violent video games, I need to correct the quote you attributed to me that these video games create psychopaths by age nine. Violent video games alone cannot create a psychopath. What I have stated often in television interviews is that a psychopath is already a psychopath by age nine. It is a combination of personality and child rearing (by the family and community) that helps create that psychopath.

Violent video games can be a part of this picture as they lend to the loss of empathy that is a hallmark of psychopathy and young children viewing repetitive violence and participating in "killing" via video games are living in an unhealthy psychological environment. Furthermore, teenagers who are already psychopathic and then spend a great deal of time with violent video games are being inspired to act out their psychopathy in a similarly violent manner. Violent video games do not make well-adjusted older teens or adults into mass murderers (although there still could be more positive pastimes and inputs for these game playing individuals). Unfortunately, however, we must be our brother's keeper in a civilized society and just because not all people will be damaged by these video games, enough of our vulnerable young children and emotionally disturbed teens will indeed be affected (and consequently become a danger). For this reason, we would be remiss as a society to ignore this public health hazard that has gotten so far out of hand.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiing Topic of the Day: Serial Killer Chester Turner

Chester finally got his comeuppance. He was convicted of murdering ten women and an unborn baby. What finally nailed him was the DNA he gave up when he was convicted of rape in 2002. Apparently, it showed up in a whole string of dead women. Of course, the defense attorney tried to claim that this was just coincidence since the women were drug users and prostitutes and, therefore, Turner could have had consensual sex with them. I guess he has a point, but I think it rather odd that the women all were murdered so soon after Turner left his sperm in them. What a coincidence!

Turner is now called the worst serial killer in Los Angeles history with his known murders falling between 1987 and 1996. He is an African-American serial killer (which goes to prove again that race has nothing to do with serial homicide), lived within a very small range of all the murders (which is very common), was a pizza delivery guy and a security guard (very common jobs for serial killers) and did what I call bop-and-drop murders (quickly taking down the victims, raping and murdering them on the spot, and leaving the bodies where they falls). Bop-and-drops are actually the most common kind of serial homicide; the fancy kidnappings and torture scenarios we see in the movies are much rarer. Bop-and-drops are also the most difficult to solve because there is so little evidence to go on (which is why getting lucky with DNA really helps close those cases).

One more thing, the DNA never would have done Chester in if the victim of the rape that got him convicted hadn’t identified him. Why he left the woman alive is a puzzle, but that he did certainly was a good thing for both her and any possible future victims.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown