Understanding the Mind of a Psychopath

Have you ever wondered what goes on in the mind of a Psychopathic killer? What makes them tick? What makes them kill without any remorse whatsoever? I have always wondered how a human being can kill another human being without shedding a tear or blinking an eye. I finally got my answer on the show "Most Evil" on the Discovery Times channel.

Dr. Michael Stone is a forensic psychologist who has profiled some of the most evil killers of our time. He has done intense research and has also rated them from level one, people who kill in self defense, to level 22, the most evil psychopathic killers who kill without any remorse and torture their victims for fun.

He first profiled Ted Bundy who killed around 30 women within 5 years. He killed mostly college women and used his charm to lure them in and make them trust him. He was caught and convicted once in Utah but he ended up escaping and ran to Florida to kill some more. He started killing young teenage girls between the ages of 12 and 18. In fact his last victim was a 12-year-old girl who went missing from school. When he was finally caught in Florida he put up a big fight but was eventually controlled and arrested.

He decided to be his own lawyer and ended up putting his current girlfriend on the stand to question. The question he asked her shocked everyone. Bundy asked his girlfriend to marry him right there in the courtroom in front of everyone because of this crazy law that Florida had at the time that if the subject of marriage was brought up in the courtroom in front of court officers that meant the marriage was legal from then on. So as soon as he asked her to marry him they were considered husband and wife and that also meant she could not testify against him. However, after this silly proposal, Ted Bundy was sentenced to death and put on death row soon after. He was finally electrocuted on January 24th, 1989 and was pronounced dead at 7:16 am. The world was finally rid of this monster. Dr. Stone placed Ted Bundy at a level 17; A sexually perverse serial killer.

Next on Dr. Stone's profile list was Gary Ridgway. He was even more brutal and evil than Ted Bundy if that is possible. During the two and a half year period in the early 1980's it was believed that he killed 50 women, although he confessed to have killed 70 altogether. The police have never been for sure that he actually killed 70 women because they were not able to find all of the bodies and remains.

Gary killed women and his victims were mostly prostitutes and teenage runaways. He had been married 3 times and had one son. He carried his son's picture in his wallet with him and used it to lure his victims into his truck. He strangled these young girls and women and dumped their bodies in or near the river. He was named the Green River Killer.

On December 18th, 2003 Gary Ridgway was sentenced to 48 life sentences with no possibility of parole and one life sentence to be served consecutively. He is currently serving his life sentence at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. The reason he didn't get the death penalty is because Ridgway helped police find the bodies of the still missing victims. I still think he should have gotten the death penalty. His victims didn't have a choice and neither should he. Dr. Stone placed Gary Ridgway at a level 18; Torture murderers with murder their primary motive.

John Wayne Gacy Jr. was next on Dr. Michael Stone's profile list. Gacy was a well-liked man in his community and was very active with community services. He was a businessman and when he wasn't conducting business he was dressing up like a clown and entertaining the children of the community. No one really knew the real John Gacy. The man they saw was a respected man who had a wife and children and was always there to help the community with whatever needed to be done. But behind the clown mask hid a totally different man.

Gacy had homosexual tendencies and was first arrested in 1968 for sodomizing a young boy. He was sentenced to 10 years but only served 18 months and was paroled in 1971. Eight months after his release he was arrested again for attempted rape and disorderly conduct on a gay youth. The young man didn't show up for court so the charges were dropped.

On December 22nd, 1978 Gacy realized his dark secrets were about to be exposed so he decided to go to the police and confess to the killings he had done. He told the police that there were 4 John's: John the contractor, John the clown, John the politician and the fourth John went by the name of Jack Hanley. "Jack was the killer and did all of the evil things," he told the police.

During confession, Gacy told the police that he started killing in January of 1972. He confessed to over 2 dozen murders and even drew them a map of where the victims were buried in a shallow grave under his house and garage. He also admitted to leaving the bodies under his bed or in his attic for several hours before he buried them in the crawl space under his house. He further told the police that he dumped 5 bodies in the Des Plaines River.

As the police were digging up the bodies the body count was 27 in the crawl space under the house and 5 in the river. As the identities of the 32 victims were starting to surface they discovered that the ages of the young men ranged from their early teens to mid 20's.

On March 18th, 1980 John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to the death penalty and was sent to Menard Correctional Center in Illinois. He remained there for 14 years before he was sent to Statesville Penitentiary for execution. He was executed by lethal injection just after midnight on May 10th, 1994 and his last words were "Kiss my ass." Dr. Stone placed John Wayne Gacy at a level 22 on his scale of evil; psychopathic torture-murderers with torture their primary motive.

Tommy Lynn Sells was the last to be profiled on this episode of "Most Evil." He is no doubt more evil than any of the other killers Dr. Stone has profiled and I have talked about in this article. He is also still alive today sitting on death row waiting to die.

Tommy Sells didn't have a preference to whom he killed. Men, women and children, it didn't matter to him. He may not have killed as many as Gary Ridgway but he is proclaimed to be most evil because of his actions. He killed children and babies, mothers and fathers. Like I said it didn't matter to him. He drifted from state to state and killed as many as he came across. During his last murders he killed a 13-year-old girl and thought he killed her 10-year-old sister by slashing her throat like he did her older sister. But she only pretended to be dead because she knew that if he knew she was still alive she would have been lying near her sister on the floor dead.

The girl who survived his last rampage went to the neighbors to get help and from there to the hospital in total shock from her throat slash. Her name is Krystal Surles and she is the reason this sick and evil man is sitting on death row now awaiting execution. Upon his arrest he confessed to a string of 20 murders across America that went on for 3 decades.

Sells faced trial for these murders in September of 2000 and was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Dr. Stone had a face-to-face interview with him while he was sitting on death row. While watching the interview I came to realize just how sick this man truly is. He told Dr. Stone he had no remorse for killing any of these people. He said when he had his first kill at the age of 16 he became instantly addicted. He admitted to Dr. Stone it was an adrenaline rush to watch the blood and to watch these people die. Dr. Stone asked him if he felt like some sort of God with having this power over his victims and he laughed at Dr. Stone and said, "You believe in God? You're full of shit because there is no God." Tommy said that maybe one day when the shattering noise left his head maybe then he would feel remorse. He said that if or when that ever happened he would kill himself. Dr. Stone placed Tommy Lynn Sells at a level 22; Psychopathic torture murderers with torture their primary motive.

Those are the only ones that Dr. Stone profiled on this episode. I looked up other episodes but I can never catch it on T.V again after this one. Dr. Stone also worked with researchers and scientists that do tests on certain individuals to find out if they are psychopaths or not. This was interesting to watch what they did and learned from their experiments. Psychopaths are literally wired different form the rest of us. They are truly cold blooded and have no conscience at all. They totally think different than we do and have no emotions and are pretty much fearless.

What they do to find out who are true psychopaths and who are not is test different individuals to see how their reactions are to different tests they perform on them. They attach an EEG machine to their head to keep track of their heart rate and pulse and watch their reactions. They place a screen in front of them that shows a timer count down from 12 to 1 and then different words show up on the screen.

Now to those of us who are normal, the scientists say, would usually get nervous as the time counted down to 1 because we don't know what to expect and as we get nervous our heart rate should speed up and we should start to sweat. The certain individuals that do not get nervous at the count down and do not sweat would be considered Psychopaths because they are emotionless and completely fearless. After the count down the words appear and some of these words such as kill, dead, evil and words in that nature would get a reaction from us such as being scared or upset. But to those that are considered to be Psychopaths would not have a reaction like this to these words because this does not bother them. Nothing bothers them at all. This is why they say they are literally cold blooded and emotionless.

It is believed that 1 in every 100 people are considered to be Psychopaths, warped by nature and nurture.