What Part Of "She's a Psychopath" Aren't You Getting?

I have been watching Mexican telenovelas (soap operas that last one season) so I can improve my Spanish. The newest one I have been viewing on a daily basis is "Rubi." The lead character, Rubi, is a beautiful young woman from the barrio (a poor area) who wants to escape poverty and be someone important in the world. She is sexy and very attractive and she uses her looks and wiles to find a man to save her from her life of economic struggles. She lives with her mother and her sister in a poor but friendly neighborhood, sharing a bedroom with the sister who works to put her through college. She is clearly a social climber and men fall easily for her. One could forgive her desire for wealth if only she weren't a complete psychopath....which a good number of people in the show seem not to realize. If this were real life, this would be no different....it is amazing how many people...especially family...do not realize when a psycho is in their midst, in spite of the many times the individual exhibits each and every psychopathic trait. Let's take a look at Rubi and see how many time we can put a checkmark next to the traits of a psychopath as listed by psychologist Robert Hare.

•  glib and superficial charm

Rubi is always smiling and flattering, clearly not being at all genuine.

•  grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self

Rubi not only believes she deserves more than the life of a low income Mexican, she wants to be filthy rich.

•  need for stimulation

Boy, does Rubi get bored! The day after her mother's funeral, she throws a party for 200 people in spite of the fact her husband says that the timing is totally inappropriate.

•  pathological lying

Rubi lies to pretty much everyone a good portion of the time in order to get what she wants.

•  cunning and manipulativeness

Rubi is always scheming. She pretended to be the best friend of a rich girl and then set up situations where she could come onto and steal her friend's fiancé. 

•  lack of remorse or guilt

Rubi slipped an expensive necklace into her sister's fiancé's shopping bag and got him arrested and imprisoned for five years. Even though she confessed to her mother (in a moment of spite) and her mother collapsed and died as a result, and even though her sister was pregnant, she refused to admit to her evildoing and get the man out of prison. In fact, she paid a lawyer to screw up the case, so he would be convicted. Ruby never showed a moment's remorse. 

•  shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness)

When Rubi ruined two families (by stealing her best friend's fiancé) and cost her sister her job, she was only annoyed that her sister refused to continue paying her bills.

•  callousness and lack of empathy

Rubi calls her "best friend" who has a problem with her leg "the cripple" and "the limp."

•  parasitic lifestyle

Rubi's sister paid her school bills, her friend gave her clothes and jewelry (and her friend's father paid her school bills as well, but she never told her sister because she wanted to use the money for more clothes and jewelry), she married a rich man for money, and when he started losing his money, searched for the next wealthy man to take advantage of.

•  poor behavioral controls

Rubi does what she wants.

•  sexual promiscuity

Actually, Rubi was a bit controlled here because she used sex as a weapon and if she wasn't going to get rich through sex, she wouldn't waste her ammunition.

•  early behavior problems

Apparently, Rubi's mother suffered many years of hoping she would change.

•  lack of realistic long-term goals

Rubi supposedly fell in love (I say supposedly because I think the writer of this telenovela doesn't understand psychopathy) with a surgeon because she thought he was wealthy (he was living with a rich friend, the one she eventually married) but dumped him when she found out he came from a middle class family. Ruby couldn't seem to wait for him to move up in his profession which likely would have given them a fine lifestyle in the future; she wanted to be rich right away and so she only was willing to marry him when her husband's fortune being to wane and he had become a millionaire.

•  impulsivity

As soon as Rubi married, she demanded the largest of mansions, went on big shopping sprees, and wanted to travel and stay in the best hotels.

•  irresponsibility

Rubi rarely cared about the effects of her behaviors as long as she got what she wanted at that moment.

•  failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Rubi blamed everyone else for anything that went wrong and for all the bad things she did. She always blamed the victim.

•  many short-term marital relationships

Rubi had a short term love affair which ended when she found out the man wasn't rich and as soon as her husband got sick and lost income, she was scouting out a new provider.

•  juvenile delinquency

Rubi apparently did not commit crimes in her youth (at least that she was caught doing), but she committed crimes as an adult which she got away with.

So this is Rubi, an unquestionable psychopath. Her mother seemed to get the picture but held out hope for a miracle. Her sister decided to end their relationship after Rubi set her fiancé up and got him imprisoned. Her husband seemed to have no clue in spite of all the bad things she would do and the lies she clearly told. Her surgeon boyfriend seemed to understand she was pretty evil but kept letting her get under his skin and revving up his emotions for her. A good number of others around her didn't trust her but they often still allowed her in their houses or social circle. Her fashion designer friend seemed to recognize her psychopathy when he said, "She is as beautiful as she is evil," but he hung around with her because she amused him. I am not sure how this all ends up as I am only on episode 68 of 115! But, I am hoping Rubi gets her just desserts in the end.

Although much is exaggerated in this telenovela, Rubi's behavior are red flags for psychopathy and in real life, people often see red flags from the psychopaths they are dealing with but fail to accept the label or the fact that they are dangerous or people they should completely cut off. That lack of willingness to see reality often sets innocent people up as victims of these psychopaths....they lose their money, their freedom, their children, and, sometimes, their lives.

If you have someone like Rubi in your life, take heed....run, run, run, and don't let them ruin your life.

Pat Brown

Criminal Profiler

September 23, 2015

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Chris Benoit and Bobby Cutts: Did They just Snap?

Once again we have stunned and confused friends and relatives of a killer swearing that he was a great guy. We heard this story when Bobby Cutts was arrested for murdering his girlfriend and unborn baby and we are hearing it again in the case of wrestler Chris Benoit who killed his wife, son, and then himself. There is a sense of disbelief among these folks who cannot match the person they thought they knew as friendly, fun, kind, and sweet to a cold blooded killer who would brutally slay his significant other and an innocent child to boot. They claim there must have been drugs that radically changed brain chemistry or some bizarre circumstance that sent a decent man over the edge.

What most of these truly well-meaning people aren't understanding is the nature of abusive men. Abusive men often take out all their insecurities and feelings of failure inside the home while they keep up their pretense on the outside. In the world, usually the world of men, abusers want to appear manly, one of the guys, a great buddy, etc. They work overtime at being a stellar person in the public eye. Often this is the type of man who will leave his wife alone on the Saturday he promised to spend with her to go help a friend move. He will fix his brother’s car while his wife’s car still has the bad brakes he promised to fix one month ago. He will complain about his wife spending ten dollars and then turn around and give a relative one thousand dollars to pay off a gambling debt. He won’t raise his voice in public but he will beat his wife so badly she won’t leave the house for weeks.

Bobby Cutts murdered (allegedly) Jessie and the baby because he wanted to party with other women and he didn’t want to support another child. Although he made good jokes at work and coached kids’ sports, he was also a liar, a cheat, an abuser, and likely a psychopathic murderer. Chris Benoit, Mr. Good Buddy to the outside world, was also likely a role-playing psychopath who found when he couldn’t control his wife and child the way he wanted, preferred to strangle them and have done with it. He only likely killed himself because he realized he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison (and since he took so long to get around to it I am guessing he wasn’t all that suicidal to start with).

Not all people toward the end of the psychopathic continuum are serial killers or even murderers. They may be successful lawyers, politicians or preachers! They may be con men or abusive husbands or womanizers. Some may be violent and some might not be. Some of those who aren’t quite so far down the continuum to obtain the full psychopathic label may get a lesser designation because they don’t lie, cheat and manipulate quite as much; they may be labeled as borderline personality disorders or narcissists. These men and women might actually be fairly decent citizens (because they get kudos for doing so) and, at times seem quite normal. Still they will have difficulty with remorse and empathy because they cannot understand or care about another person’s needs or rights. There are a lot more of these in the world than there are those at the very end of the spectrum and we deal with them quite often in business and family. We may never even realize that they have that much of a problem because they function so well within society. Often, we think we are the ones with the problem: that we are being unreasonable or too demanding or too critical. They make sure we feel that way.

It is very difficult to recognize exactly how far down the psychopath continuum our friend or mate is lurking. Some human beings slide further down the scale as they lose more power and control in their lives. Perhaps Chris Benoit could be labeled borderline personality disorder, one who is always seeking attention and validation and as long as he got enough of it, he wouldn’t go off the deep end. But when age starts threatening one’s career, the wife is not the babe she used to be that made you feel good as a man (and you now wants some younger one), the wife is not the doting young thing she was when she married you (and now is older, wiser, and more demanding), and your son is an embarrassment (because it is hard to brag over your special needs kid as your creation), then maybe you get angry that everyone is doing you wrong. Maybe Bobby Cutts would have continued as the narcissistic/psychopathic womanizer for years if he had learned the meaning of birth control but, since he kept the babies coming and money problems were increasing, he decided these women and babies were messing up the life he deserved.

As the weeks go on, the truth about the private lives of Cutts and Benoit will come out bit by bit. I can guarantee you we won’t be hearing about domestic bliss. Never have I found a case where, in spite of the fact the man was truly a wonderful husband in all his behaviors and a fine dad as well, he suddenly murders his family. It simply doesn’t happen. A pussycat doesn’t suddenly become a pit bull just because he drank too much one night or took some steroids. The personality and concerning behaviors were always there before the drugs or alcohol came along and, for that matter, may be the exact reason why he uses them to begin with. Nothing comes from nothing anywhere in nature and this includes homicide.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: That nice "Mr. Brooks."

The scariest thing about the new Kevin Costner film isn’t that Demi Moore looks like a wax mannequin, or that there are more plots in this movie than can be found in a veteran’s cemetery, or that a number of well known actors are so desperate for work that they agreed to be in this ridiculous piece of crap. What is really frightening is that I, a criminal profiler, apparently had no clue that serial killers could be such totally wonderful human beings (minus the killing stuff). It seems that Mr. Brooks doesn’t have a psychopathic bone in his body, just a little glitch in his brain chemistry that suddenly makes him need to do a thrill kill, a glitch of biology that he has sadly passed down to his daughter who also interrupts who her fine behavior with a violent hatchet slaying.

Mr. Brooks, as far as I can see, is able to work hard and achieve long term goals, marry and be faithful to an intelligent woman, raise and adore his daughter and be willing to do anything for her (yeah, like kill another person in her college town while she is home to get the police off her trail), enjoy a hobby with a high level of expertise, show depth of emotion, be forthright and honest (except about the killing), and truly feel remorse about being a killer (but oddly never about the victims – wait, that might be an odd bit of psychopathy).

Oh, Mr. Script-hack, please call me next time you write a serial killer movie for a bit of consulting! Serial homicide isn’t in the genes; you don’t inherit it. Psychopaths become that way through early childhood problems coupled with a personality type. And they don’t grow up to be fine members of society without a trace of creepiness. All the serial killers I have met or studied show every psychopathic trait without exception. They are all pathological liars, manipulators, have flat affect and have shallow emotions, lack empathy, have grandiose thinking, are narcissistic, and refuse to accept responsibility for their actions, etc. Few serial killers accomplish much in their lives either, outside of racking up murders.

Actually, we can be thankful that this movie is full of hooey. If serial killers were really like Mr. Brooks, we would have zero warning signs to go on and we wouldn’t be able to trust anyone out there. While people often say after a serial killer is arrested, “He seemed like a nice man,” or “I can’t believe he would do something like this,” the serial killer has always shown psychopathic behaviors that a good many people recognized and preferred not to be around.

I think the most upsetting thing about this movie (besides the fact I tossed $8.50 to see it) is that we are actually supposed to like the serial killer. We feel sorry for Mr. Brooks and hope he feels better soon. Never mind those pesky victims that he so cold-bloodily shot. We didn’t like them nearly as much as we like him. How sad is that…..

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

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: Minnesota Cho in the Making

I went to my local library today to spend a few hours studying and writing, thinking this would be a good place to work with no distractions (like my refrigerator and the Internet and that newspaper lying over there). I set up my computer and books in a study corral in the back of the library (far away from the kids section). I walked by the row of adults at the computers and noticed a gentleman sitting in one of the chairs by the window, reading a book about Greece. I started into my work, happy to work peacefully in this nice location.

Then they came by my desk; a middle-aged man and a scrawny teenage boy, about fourteen or fifteen, sipping on a soda. They sat down behind me and the man started chatting away with the kid. He kept his voice lowered – after all this was a library – but, nonetheless, his constant jabbering was extremely distracting for anyone trying to study or work. I put up with it for about ten minutes and then I turned and asked the man to stop talking. He told me he couldn’t, that he was tutoring the boy, and he had to do it in a public place. I asked him how long he planned on continuing the noise making and he told me it would be two hours.

I then asked this man how he thought other people could concentrate if he used the library as social hour, considering one was not allowed to talk on cell phones in the room. He ignored me and started on with his tutoring. The boy laughed at me. So I asked the man what kind of example he thought he was setting for this boy by breaking the rules of the library and annoying the other patrons. The boy laughed again and then he said, “Bitch.” The man said nothing. I asked the man why he was ignoring the fact the boy just called me a bad name. He ignored me again. I went to the librarian who told me the man was an instructor for at-risk youth. At-risk youth! I guess that man was sure teaching the boy how to act right! My guess is that this useless excuse for an adult male was a do-gooder who thinks buying a juvenile delinquent a drink and helping him do his homework is all he needs to become a worthwhile citizen; how he behaves should be ignored. I got the librarian to move this charming duo to a back room and on the way the boy called me a bitch again, but my guess is they will be back in the library next week even if they break the rules and abuse the other patrons.

This is why Cho Seung-Hui got as far as he did; no one ever told him to stop. No one ever told him other people have rights. No one ever punished him for his mistreatment of others. He grew up to think others didn’t matter. My guess is this boy is learning just those same lessons from the moronic adults around him. When he kills one of them someday, we shouldn’t say we didn’t see it coming.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Sex Pervert Copycat sends Anthrax Style Letters

Investigators are wondering who has been sending dozens of letters with insecticide powder since September of 2004 threatening violence if the news networks don’t start showing more cheerleaders and sportswomen in skimpy clothing and lingering frontal shots of female basketball and tennis players, especially when they jump! Below is an excerpt of one of the first letters:

“"We are fed up with networks exploiting women in sports coverage. ABC/ESPN exploit collegiate and professional cheer squads in their coverage of football and basketball. They also screw WNBA players and WTA Tennis players. Compare coverage of cheer and dance squads based on their outfits they wear. Compare quality of shots, length of shots and number of shots Pigs park their cameras on us close up, front view, dozens of times each game, yet rarely ever show on TV in this manner, unless squads are wearing sweaters, jackets, under shirts, etc... Watch how they always zoom in on WNBA players shooting free throws then leave at the last second as she starts to shoot, disrupting the flow. Watch on ESPN how they will show women serve, close up, from every angle (side, back) EXCEPT when they zoom in close front, they will leave as she starts to serve, disrupting the flow. We have asked nicely for them to respect us and all women, yet they refuse. They exploit innocent people, so we will too. When they start respecting us, we stop mailing these out."


This particular sexual psychopath has a paraphelia (a sexual obsession) with “bouncing boobs”! I don’t think one will actually find that particular sexual perversity listed in a psychiatric manual, but this is apparently what this loser spends an inordinate amount of his time attempting to see by watching hours upon hours of ESPN. Clearly, even though a great many of the women are not wearing that much clothing and their breasts actually do move up and down while they play their sports, this man just can’t get enough of this action and each time an opportunity is lost, he gets upset.

Bouncing Boob Bob apparently thinks he can scare the networks into providing the sports equivalent of twenty-four hour soft porn. If anyone out there knows a guy who fits the facts of this case – a man who watches an awful lot of sports television, is obsessed with the media, has lived or traveled to Portland, Seattle, and Chicago over the last four years – and has a big thing for bouncing boobs, please give the police or FBI a ring – they are getting quite sick of this guy and would like to make him a new home where not many breasts exist. They need your help.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: We LOVE you, Seung-Hui Cho!

Cho has made it. He is now poster boy for the lonely, the bullied, and the ignored. He is our hero and we owe him our respect, we owe him our tributes, and we owe him our love. At least this seems to be what that insensitive, self-centered sick twit of a schoolgirl thinks who made a memorial for Cho Seung-Hui at Virginia Tech alongside the innocent people he slaughtered as though he deserved the same sentiments as the others. Apparently, this stupid girl is not alone in her perverse thinking as it seems others have gone so far as to place flowers and notes of sympathy by the memorial stone for this lousy piece of garbage and a good portion of the media is oohing and aahing over how wonderful it is that there is so little anger and hate levied against Cho.

Well, let me levy some. While I feel pity for the little boy Cho was before he turned into the antisocial beast that committed such a hideous mass murder, I feel nothing but disgust for the vicious cold-blooded killer he became. He deserves no empathy considering he had none for his victims and their families. He deserves no forgiveness from us folks who did not lose a loved one to this psychopath because only true victims of this man have the right to make that choice. For that matter, Cho deserves no forgiveness from anyone because he has asked for none; the matter is now between Cho and God and let’s let God decide for Himself what to do with Cho’s soul if he has one.

If this act of honoring Cho is the right thing to do, well then let’s name a hall after Ted Bundy at the Florida university where he slaughtered a number of his victims. Let’s start Hitler Day and Assassins Week. Let’s take a killer out to dinner.

For God’s sake, America, how much lower can we sink then when we blur wrong and right to such an extent we can’t even distinguish the difference in the worth of the life of a brutal mass murderer who never gave society anything but destruction, sadness, and misery and the lives of thirty-two innocent victims whose loss is devastating to all of us? My guess is we have hit rock bottom.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Motive of a Mass Murderer

We keep hearing how the investigators are working hard to find the motive in the mass murder at Virginia Tech, that somewhere in the life and writings of Cho Seung-Hui there is the answer to why he committed such a horrible act. I say, why are we wasting so much time to search for an answer that is meaningless and also impossible to prove as being the actual truth of the matter?Cho was a psychopath who hated the world. If he were alive, he might pick this motive or that motive in an attempt to justify his actions. This supposed motive might be something he feels comfortable with as his reason for committing a heinous crime or it might be a motive he picks just to make himself look better in the eyes of the world. He might choose a motive to punish his classmates, his family, or some girl who didn’t give him the time of day. He might pick a motive just to play games with us. If Cho were alive, we might get some sort of answer but we would never know the veracity of it.

But, Cho is dead. We can peruse his mind through his writings and behaviors and take a wild guess at a motive, but we will never get his confirmation that we have the right one (the one he wants us to buy which makes it a nonsensical exercise anyway). So what is the point of this exercise in futility? I guess folks just want some answer they can live with, an answer that will assure us that this horrifying act was an anomaly which only happened because of one specific issue in Cho’s life. Then we can breathe a sigh of relief and say, well, there is nothing we can do about some that one circumstance that set him off..

However, if we admit that Cho is a violent psychopath who simply wanted to get his revenge at the world for damned near everything that he felt went wrong in his life, then we have bigger problem: other psychopaths may come out of the woodwork and repeat Cho’s crime just for the hell of it. To stop future mass murderers we must address the creation of psychopaths and how we enable them to eventually take revenge on us. Accepting Cho as a psychopath is much scarier than just thinking he is a psychotic who misinterpreted some incident and snapped. If we finally accept that school mass murders and serial killings are on the rise in this country, we then know it is just a matter of time before we see another tragedy in the news.

Let’s stop looking for the “motives” of psychopaths and start spending our time figuring how to keep our children from developing antisocial personalities and how to protect society from those psychopaths that are already among us.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Will a Psychopath ever change?

Today I walked into the television studio here in Minneapolis to do MSNBC Live Daytime and ran into a grandmother and granddaughter who just finished doing a local news show. The grandma was holding onto a very cute puppy and the teenage girl was wiping her eyes with a tissue. I wondered if a relative had gone missing or had been murdered and I wondered why they had a dog on the show; that was something I had never seen before. Then I heard the story and it made my stomach turn.

One month ago, seventeen-year-old Crystal Brown's dog went missing, a dog who was her best friend. She put fliers up around the neighborhood and hoped someone would bring her pet home to her. Then -

Two weeks ago, a gift-wrapped box was left at the house Crystal shares with her grandmother. The box had batteries on top, and a note that said "Congratulations Crystal. This side up. Batteries included."
Crystal opened the box and found her dog's head inside. The box also contained Valentine's Day candy - Read the full story.

Can you imagine? That poor girl. What a bloody sicko would do such a thing. Well, a psychopathic bloody sicko who probably knew Crystal and loved the movie "Seven" where the police officer gets the head of his wife in a box. They haven't found the creature yet who did this, but what kind of sentence do you think he will get? My guess is he is a juvenile; if we are lucky, he will be over eighteen, if only by a year, so he might actually do some time. Of course, it is "only" a dog, so he won't get much of a sentence and possibly even probation with a little side trip to the shrink for counseling. Oh, joy, joy. I feel so confident that the community will be safe after this demented individual gets a few hours on the couch.

This leads me to the question I am often asked: can a psychopath be rehabilitated? Can this sick person who did this to Crystal and her dog get a little mental health help, change his nature, and become a good and decent citizen? Are you kidding? Think about this! What kind of person kills a dog, cuts it head off and thinks it is funny to give it wrapped up to the teenage owner? I don't know about you, but I don't want to know this person, I don't want to live next to this person, I don't want to hire this person, and.....I can't think of any reason I would ever want to be around this person.

No, he will not change. He is a soulless human being and he will always be one. If we leave him on the streets and don't watch him carefully, the next head that shows up on a doorstep will be a human one.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: What Kind of Man Mugs a 101-year-old Woman?

A lot of people were shocked and horrified when they watched a 101-year-old woman get mugged coming out of her Bronx apartment. This poor woman was punched a number of times by this despicible man and, thankfully, lived through the attack and still has a great spirit (which is no doubt why she has made it past the century mark). I was asked by The Today Show why we are so mesmerized by this particular videotape because crimes like this happen everyday. I answered that this woman's age and vulnerability forcefully illustrates to us the absolute callousness of this kind of crime. It is hard for people to understand the mentality of street criminals, to understand that their psychopathy is such that people and cockroaches are not so distinct in their minds. This establishing of value is not unique to psychopaths, however. We all place different values on people, animals and things. For example, meat eaters in America often think nothing of eating a cow but eating a dog is horrifying to them. Why? Is a dog any more worthy of life than a cow? Not necessarily but many people assign dogs special places in their lives. I remember when I was a child, I found an ant crawling about the pink rug in the bathroom. I named the ant Jimmy. A few days later, I found Jimmy curled up and dead in the corner. I was very sad. I had assigned Jimmy a "friend" designation and so it hurt me when he died, even if he was just an ant. Likewise, if a person labels a cow "meat" and a dog "man's best friend," the dog is going to take on more importance in the life of that individual.

So, what do psychopaths label people? Either "useful" or "in the way." Now, this mugger of the elderly may have designated his grandmother "useful" and, therefore, he is nice to her, but this unknown old woman was just "in his way" of getting money (hers). What makes a psychopath a psychopath is how few people (if any) he assigns value and, if he does assign someone a value of any worth, he may devalue them in minutes (like Scott Peterson when he suddenly decided his wife was cramping his newly desired lifestyle).

Seeing this video can be of value to all of us to help us understand the absolute lack of humanity in the psychopathic soul. These types cannot be trusted and cannot be rehabilitated. Although we might like to believe that all men have some good in them, psychopaths prove otherwise. We need to understand this in order to encourage our criminal justice system not to be lenient on these criminals and not to allow them back out on the street to prey on us.

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Are You with a Psychopath?

Stephen Grant has confessed to murdering his wife, Tara. The man who said he has no conscience turns out to be the one who did his wife in. What a surprise! (not) This sad ending to Tara Lynn Grant should be a warning to all those young women or men out there planning to marry someone with concerning behaviors, behaviors they should not be ignoring or minimizing. Just because a person is capable of keeping a job, telling a joke, saying "I love you" and doing other sorts of seemingly normal behaviors does not mean he or she is a mentally healthy human being. This person without a third eye or a horns protruding may be a psychopath playing a role, the role of a boyfriend or girlfriend, a husband or wife, or a father or mother. The key phrase here is "playing a role" as one cannot actually act the part twenty-four hours a day. There are those moments when a psychopath forgets to be on stage and acts like his or her true self. Stephen Grant is a good example of this. In the beginning when this story hit the news, we heard the usual shocked statements by people who knew him. "I can't believe he would do this!" and "We never saw him as a danger." But, as usual when as the shock wears off and people who knew him actually start reflecting on the creep's past behaviors, they start to admit the signs of psychopathy were there, if only they had known they were psychopathic signs and had not denied their importance. How much heartache could have been prevented if Tara or her family and friends had seen Stephen Grant for what he was early on.

So, to all of you in relationships out there who are considering making them a permanent part of your lives, ask yourself, "Does this person do or say things that are inappropriate? Does this person lie to me or tell me questionable stories? Does he or she have grandiose thinking, either glorifying past events that never really happened or have big plans for the future that never are implemented? Does this person have problems in relationships with others, blaming them for all kinds of issues that have cropped up? Does he or she have problems with employment, getting fired or working in jobs that are obviously below his or her abilities? Is this person you are thinking of marrying actually a manipulative, self-centered person who actually is not all that well-liked by others? Have people ask why you are with this person and if they point out their concerns, do you defend him 0r her and justify each one of their questionable behaviors? If this sounds like you, spend a little extra time reading up on psychopaths and when you realize this is the type of person who you are hanging around with, run, run quickly before you end up in pieces on the garage floor like poor Tara Lynn Grant. Don't be so desperate to have someone in your life that you end up losing your life in the process.

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: How to Get Labeled a Psychopath

Sometimes when I am doing crime commentary on one of the network news shows, the host will toss out, “So you are a criminal profiler, Pat Brown, what kind of guy do you think this is?” I am being asked to label a person of interest in psychological terms based on his behaviors and at times I have identified that individual as a psychopath. In fact, I have been accused by some of tossing this label out awfully quickly without the benefit of doing a clinical analysis. These critics would be right. I have made a determination in a matter of minutes. But, truthfully folks, sometimes it doesn’t take that long to figure out what kind of character we are dealing with. Take the case of missing Michigan wife, Tara Lynn Grant, who disappeared on February 9, 2007. Her husband, Steven Grant, claims his wife returned from a business trip that day and then around 11 PM that evening, he overheard her talk to someone on the telephone and then he sees her walk out of the house and get in a dark-colored sedan. She hasn't been heard from since.

Steve Grant doesn’t bother to report his beloved wife and mother of his two young children missing for five days. He claims he wasn’t worried. He figured she would show back up. Meanwhile, he has been spending time emailing an ex-girlfriend and saying how he would like her to give him a sponge bath and do a naked modeling session with him. During those emails he notes how he “doesn’t care about being married” probably due to “that no conscience thing” he has and how marriage is like speed limits; meant to be broken and the only issue is to not get caught.

The police check into that phone call his wife supposedly made and to no one’s surprise neither her cell phone or home phone records have any phone call made at the time hubby claims he overheard her conversation. Since Tara disappeared, her cell phone and credit cards remain unused. Meanwhile, Grant refuses to turn over the home computer because he probably has a lot of incriminating behavioral evidence (I am guessing lots of pornography and emails as he was likely trolling the net for sex - the stuff he wrote to the ex-girlfriend is predator language).

So, while this criminal profiler cannot say Steve Grant is a psychopath, I will copy the language style of the Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel who said Grant isn’t a suspect but his behavior is “suspect.” Steven Grant may not be a psychopath but he sure behaves like a psychopath. He claims he has no conscious which is a hallmark of psychopathy, he doesn’t care if he breaks rules, he lies, he manipulates, and he has a lack of affect and a lack of empathy, all more signs of being a psychopath. So, if Steve Grant isn’t a psychopath, he is doing a fine job imitating the behaviors of one. Grant is whining that he is being over focused on as a suspect in his wife’s disappearance. Well, tough luck, Steve. If you don’t want to be a suspect in a crime, don’t act so suspicious. Oh, wait, I forgot. Blaming others is yet another behavior of a psychopath. Keep racking ‘em up, Steven!