The Wisdom of Psychopaths Read Free

irreverence.
    Cartwheels and strip shows beat shaves and cucumber sandwiches any day of the week.
    Who cared if it was crap?
    Okay. You’re right, It is six. But now take a closer look at the man’s hands. Notice anything unusual?
    1 The other three basic emotions are anger, happiness, and disgust. There is some dispute about the inclusion of a sixth, surprise, in the list.
    2 Most of the time, it
is
a “he.” For the possible reasons why, see the notes section at the end of the book.

AUTHOR’S NOTE
    The names and identifying details of certain people featured in this book have been changed. Such necessary demographic camouflage, however, does not in any way compromise the voice of these disguised individuals—and every step has been taken to report encounters and conversations as accurately and as authentically as possible. It should be noted that on account of the restrictions regarding recording equipment, this was especially the case in Broadmoor, where some degree of narrative license became inevitable in striking a balance between maintaining patient confidentiality and preserving the unique landscape of both the characters and the dialogue.

ONE
SCORPIO RISING
    Great and Good are seldom the same man.
    — WINSTON CHURCHILL
    A scorpion and a frog are sitting on the bank of a river, and both need to get to the other side.
    “Hello, Mr. Frog!” calls the scorpion through the reeds. “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the water? I have important business to conduct on the other side. And I cannot swim in such a strong current.”
    The frog immediately becomes suspicious.
    “Well, Mr. Scorpion,” he replies, “I appreciate the fact that you have important business to conduct on the other side of the river. But just take a moment to consider your request. You are a scorpion. You have a large stinger at the end of your tail. As soon as I let you onto my back, it is entirely within your nature to sting me.”
    The scorpion, who has anticipated the frog’s objections, counters thus:
    “My dear Mr. Frog, your reservations are perfectly reasonable. But it is clearly not in my interest to sting you. I really do need to get to the other side of the river. And I give you my word that no harm will come to you.”
    The frog agrees, reluctantly, that the scorpion has a point. So he allows the fast-talking arthropod to scramble atop his back and hops, without further ado, into the water.
    At first all is well. Everything goes exactly according to plan. But halfway across, the frog suddenly feels a sharp pain in his back—andsees, out of the corner of his eye, the scorpion withdraw his stinger from his hide. A deadening numbness begins to creep into his limbs.
    “You fool!” croaks the frog. “You said you needed to get to the other side to conduct your business. Now we are both going to die!”
    The scorpion shrugs and does a little jig on the drowning frog’s back.
    “Mr. Frog,” he replies casually, “you said it yourself. I am a scorpion. It is in my nature to sting you.”
    With that, the scorpion and the frog both disappear beneath the murky, muddy waters of the swiftly flowing current.
    And neither of them is seen again.
Bottom Line
    During his trial in 1980, John Wayne Gacy declared with a sigh that all he was really guilty of was “running a cemetery without a license.”
    It was quite a cemetery. Between 1972 and 1978, Gacy had raped and murdered at least thirty-three young men and boys (with an average age of about eighteen) before stuffing them into a crawl space beneath his house. One of his victims, Robert Donnelly, survived Gacy’s attentions, but was tortured so mercilessly by his captor that, at several points during his ordeal, he begged him to “get it over with” and kill him.
    Gacy was bemused. “I’m getting around to it,” he replied.
    I have cradled John Wayne Gacy’s brain in my hands. Following his execution in 1994 by lethal injection, Dr. Helen