Crazy?
MSNBC is running a story on its web site entitled “Crazy’ rapist arrested after cops find 6 bodies“ which might lead one to think that the alleged rapist is someone who’s clearly “crazy.” Not so fast! According to MSNBC, this is a 50-year-old Ohio guy who’s a convicted sex offender, spent 15 years in prison for choking and raping a woman in 1989, and was rearrested over the Halloween weekend in connection with a recent rape. When cops searched his house, they reportedly found the bodies of six deceased women, at least five of whom had apparently been strangled, concealed under his basement stairs. A female neighbor of his told MSNBC she’s glad he’s in custody because he’s “crazy,” but let’s look at the alleged facts.
He apparently has lived independently for years, earned money by collecting recyclables and registered as a sex offender as required by law, indicating a mind working well enough to figure out how to survive and stay out of prison. More to the point, he’s alleged to have lured women to his home for “drinks” (indicating a mind working well enough to engage in planning), raped and killed them there, and then hidden their bodies underneath his basement stairs (indicating consciousness of guilt). Now I’m certainly not saying this is a mentally-healthy guy. What I’m saying is that people jump far too quickly to the conclusion that criminals like this guy (allegedly is) are “crazy.” Legally speaking, I’m not jumping to that conclusion at all. Sounds to me like a guy who probably knew exactly what he was doing and that it was wrong (by society’s standards at least). If that’s the case, then he’s not “crazy” legally — he’s sane, which actually means he’s something even scarier to most people: a person who knowingly chooses to viciously attack and kill others purely for his own gratification.
As much as some people want to hear me explain exactly why and how that happens and how we’re eventually going to be able to diagnose and treat that condition before it ever becomes lethal, the truth is that psychology can only go so far in explaining wanton destructive behavior. At some point, psychology leaves off, and philosophy gets involved. We just had Halloween, and I saw a lot of costumes essentially depicting what we’re dealing with here. So what do you call it? What do you call the knowing, conscious, deliberate, wanton, pleasure-driven choice to hurt/kill innocent people? Some people may not like it, some may not think it’s scientific enough, but even with all of the expertise I’ve acquired in this area, I still don’t have a better word for it than “evil.” How about you? And of course this story also (allegedly), once again, illustrates the (un)wisdom of giving “second chances” to people like this guy. Imagine, just imagine, how many fewer sex crimes we’d have if we didn’t have the ones committed by people who had been convicted of such crimes in the past. A lot fewer!
(Update: Last Thursday, I told you about a missing Kansas City area teen who was missing and feared to have been abducted by an abusive ex-boyfriend. Thankfully, she has since been found by police, with the ex-boyfriend in fact, but alive. It’s not yet clear how she ended up with him or whether, what, and against whom criminal charges will be filed.)
‘Crazy’?” follow-up
A New Jersey mother with extremely poor English skills has been hospitalized along with one of her three children after she allegedly stabbed the child with a kitchen knife and then turned the knife on herself. An older sibling apparently stopped the attack on the little boy and saved his life by using paper towels to stop the bleeding until the police and ambulance arrived. The mother will undergo further psychiatric evaluation of course, but she’s reportedly offered the explanation that she thought some recent correspondence from the boy’s school meant that her children were about to be taken away from her. That was incorrect — the school reportedly says she got normal things like permissions slips and report cards — but so what? She very well could have developed a paranoid delusion, perhaps exacerbated by her poor English, that she was about to lose custody of her kids, BUT, if she then DECIDED that it was better to kill the kids (apparently, if we believe her story, she was going to kill all three) and then herself so they could all go wherever she believed they’d go (e.g. Heaven) instead of being separated, she very well could nevertheless have known A) what she was doing and B) that it was wrong (i.e. illegal), which would make her perhaps practically insane but still sane legally and therefore guilty of attempted murder.
