Prologue
Can a person be born evil? And can an incident that took only thirty seconds create ripples that have an impact decades later?
On a still, cold night in New Mexico, with the Milky Way brilliant in the sky, a little girl stood in the bedroom she shared with her sister – a bedroom that used to be hers alone. Her younger sister was two years old and she slept peacefully in her warm, safe bed. Her honey-brown hair framed her face and her green eyes hid behind lids with long lashes. She breathed slowly and steadily.
The girl, who now had to share her bedroom, was five and had blonde hair and blue eyes. She stood over her sister’s bed holding a pillow in both hands and looked down at the sleeping girl with a cold hatred it would seem impossible in a child so young. But then, the little girl sleeping so peacefully was a thief. She stole her perfect life, the life where she was Mommy and Daddy’s special girl.
The sleeping girl awoke and screamed just as she lowered the pillow over her face. The thief struggled and scratched. She pushed harder to stop the struggling, but more importantly, to make the thief go away.
A strong adult hand pulled her back, “Stephanie, what in the world are you doing?”
She looked up calmly at her father and said, “Diane had a nightmare and was screaming. I tried to make her stop.”
The average person, far removed from any contact with such terrible events asks in the dark as they drift to sleep, “Is a small child capable of cold-blooded murder? What biochemical impulse fired in that developing brain and pushed them to do the unthinkable? Was it a one-time anomaly or something hardwired into the child? And, what will that child become and do when they have the experience and education of an adult?”
What about the intended victim? Will she erase the whole episode from her mind rather than deal with the cruel reality? Will her mind devise a way to protect itself that will have repercussions for the rest of her life?
And the parents—what questions haunt them? Do they agonize over how one child could do such an evil thing? Do they cast blame or try to comfort each other?
The reality is that the ‘why’ doesn’t matter much to the victims of evil. The person killed by a serial killer is still dead. The addict who dies from an overdose of the poison peddled by a drug dealer still died. The poor widow swindled out of her house by a faceless and heartless real estate developer still sleeps on the street.
No, the real dilemma isn’t why psychopaths are the way they are. The problem is recognizing them and protecting yourself before they can hurt you. Sadly, most people don’t understand the extent of the problem and are ill-equipped to deal with the reality when it confronts them.
Nearly five of every 100 people you pass in the mall are psychopaths. Does that frighten you?
If there are 10 people seated at a boardroom table, you can be assured two are psychopaths. Is there any wonder the average person just can’t seem to get ahead? Scared yet?
Look out over a prison yard and for every ten inmates two or three are psychopaths—about the same percentage as in the boardroom. The only difference between those in prison and those in the boardroom is that those in the boardroom are better at their crimes. Is cynicism setting in yet?
How about that rarest of murderers, the serial killer? Nearly 70% of them are psychopaths. They are out there and many have been active for more than ten years. So, you could say that, like the denizens of the boardroom, they are very good at what they do and just as hard to stop.
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to know you were the target of a serial killer? And what about the little girl who screamed and struggled beneath the smothering pillow? How will she cope with the impact of those thirty seconds?
