Murderous Minds (2 page)

People have been proposing biological causes of criminality for over a century, often citing physical features such as the shape of the skull, size of the ears and jaw, and other unsubstantiated “signs” and “evidence” that leaves us shaking our heads today. One of the remarkable achievements of modern neuroscience is its ability to routinely show us living brains at work. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, allows us to see the flow of blood to large clusters of brain cells as they deal with an increased workload in response to a specific mental challenge. The
purpose of neuronal activity is to support communication between brain cells—which occurs at points of contact called synapses—and to establish neuronal circuits that underlie our behavior, both good and bad. “Neurological and mental disorders are going to be about synaptic function. We know this. They’re going to be about failure of communications between brain cells,”
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Baylor College of Medicine professor of neurology, molecular and human genetics, and pediatrics Huda Zoghbi, M.D., told Kayt Sukel of the Dana Foundation in 2013.

Unfortunately, telling someone that their occipital frontal cortex or amygdala is sluggish compared to others when performing certain tasks does not yet provide an explanation of why someone has no conscience or otherwise behaves in an antisocial manner. We now know that personalities and personality disorders, like the majority of mental disorders, cannot be traced to one cause or factor, to bumps on the skull or to poor parenting. They are the result of complex processes that include genetics, brain development, and neurobiology, which are then influenced by experience and the environment. A person with brain-activity patterns identical to those seen in the brains of psychopaths may not be a psychopath. A person with genetic traits associated with violent behavior may not be a psychopath. A person who was abused as a child, or who was exposed to violence, may not turn into a psychopath. But when these factors are combined in one person, watch out. All the ingredients for creating a psychopath are then present.

A secondary goal of this book is to provide readers with some background so they might answer a few questions they have about the psychopathic brain. But its major purpose is to prepare readers to be more critical of news stories and even scientific claims about psychopathy
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and other intriguing topics in neuroscience. Ideally, it will be a starting point for further exploration into neuroscience and the brain using a fascinating subject—people who lack a conscience and empathy—as an introduction.

We are far from having a complete picture of how the brain works, or even how its parts are connected. “Most people really want to understand the mind, not the brain,” Allison Gopnik, Ph.D., pointed out in a Wall Street Journal column.
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The brain is the physical organ and the center of the nervous system, whereas the mind is the sum total of the brain’s product: awareness, perception, emotion, memory, reasoning, thought, and
imagination. The University of California at Berkeley psychology professor describes the last twenty years of brain imaging studies as “an important first step.” But it is safe to add that this first step has brought the study of the brain and the study of the mind closer together than ever before, and nowhere is this truer than in the study of criminal psychopaths.

Chapter One

Who Would Do Something Like This?

I
T’S CLOSE TO TWO O’CLOCK
in the morning on Saturday, January 8, 2011. In Tucson, Arizona, twenty-two-year-old Jared Lee Loughner calls Bryce Tierney, a friend he has known since middle school. Bryce doesn’t answer, so Jared leaves a message: “Hey, man, it’s Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later.”
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At six a.m., Jared leaves his parents’ home, driving his father’s green 1969 Chevrolet Nova. He returns in an hour, but minutes later he heads out again. He may be in a hurry because he has something important to do today. Perhaps thoughts are rushing through his head. Perhaps he is distracted by voices only he hears. He is under stress.

Around 7:30 a.m., Alen Edward Forney, an officer with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, sees Jared run a red light.
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Lights flash and spin on Forney’s patrol vehicle. Jared pulls over. His license and registration are up-to-date and legal. Officer Forney admonishes him for speeding: “It’s bad for your health. You’re gonna kill somebody. You’re gonna kill yourself.” Jared gets off with a warning. And he starts to cry.

“Are you okay?” Forney asks him.

“Yeah,” Jared replies. “I’m okay, I’ve just had a rough time and I really thought I was gonna get a ticket and I’m really glad that you’re not [going to give me one].”

Forney asks him again if he is okay.

“I’m fine. I’m just heading home,” Jared answers. “It isn’t too far, and I’ll be okay.”
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By the time he returns to his parents’ house at 8:30 a.m., he has visited two Walmart stores to buy ammunition for his 9-millimeter Glock semiautomatic handgun. He had legally purchased the pistol from a local gun shop 39 days ago. The sporting-goods associate in the first Walmart Jared visits is wary. The associate finds Jared rude and impatient. Without thoroughly checking the inventory, he tells Jared the store is out of 9-millimeter ammunition.
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An associate at a second Walmart has no problem with Jared. Jared acts friendly as he asks if there is a limit on how many rounds of 9-millimeter cartridges he can buy. The sales associate checks Jared’s ID and finds nothing wrong. He double-bags six or seven boxes of ammunition for Jared.
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Around 8:30 a.m. at his parent’s home, Jared removes a backpack from the trunk of the car before he enters the house. His mother and father are concerned about their son’s behavior. They try to confront him. They want to know what’s in the backpack. What’s he going to do with it? Jared says nothing and flees, running down the street. His father drops his coffee and tries to catch up with him. But Jared is gone. His father goes back inside.
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By around 9:20 a.m., Jared is in a convenience store. His final destination is too far to walk in the Sketchers shoes he’s wearing today. He needs a ride to reach the site of a “Congress on Your Corner” event being held in the parking lot of the Safeway supermarket. He asks the clerk to call a cab company for him. Nervously waiting for his ride to arrive, Jared looks at the wall clock.

“9:25,” he says, “I still got time.”
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He means he still has time to see United States Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the parking lot in front of the supermarket where she is hosting the meet-and-greet event for her constituents.

It’s been three to four years since Loughner fixated on Giffords. During one of the Congresswoman’s public appearances back then, he asked her a question. He was seriously, bitterly disappointed when he didn’t get an answer. He felt insulted by her lack of response. He had asked her: “What is government if words have no meaning?”
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Jared will see Giffords again soon. He gets into the cab and tells the driver to take him to the Safeway in Tucson. Like Jared’s parents, the cab driver has no idea Jared is carrying his 9-millimeter Glock. He drops Jared off in the parking lot in front of the supermarket. It is the most important address on Jared’s schedule today. For scores of people, it will be the most traumatic day of their lives. They have no idea Jared is coming, no hint of what he is about to do.

Jared joins the people who have gathered near Giffords. Among them are U.S. District Court Chief Judge John M. Roll, Giffords’s aide Gabriel

M. Zimmerman, her constituents Dorothy J. Morris, Phyllis C. Schneck, and Dorwan C. Stoddard, and nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green.

It’s close to 10:10 a.m. Jared has inserted peach-colored earplugs into his ears.
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Constituents write their names on a sign-up sheet offered by Giffords’s intern, Daniel Hernandez. Hernandez offers the sheet to a man wearing a black beanie and a black hooded sweatshirt. It’s Jared.

“Gun!” someone yells.
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In an instant, Jared’s pistol changes from a concealed weapon into a murder weapon.

He pulls the trigger of the sleek black pistol again and again. The semiautomatic handgun fires with each pull of the trigger—33 times. Bullet after bullet after bullet slide up the long ammunition clip into the pistol’s chamber and out the barrel. In twenty seconds, the gun is empty.
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People scream. And run. Jared tries to reload. He has two more ammo clips stuffed into the left front pocket of his khaki pants.
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He’s made sure he has plenty of bullets. Altogether, he has two long ammo clips and two short ones, plus a folded pocket knife.

Congresswoman Giffords lies on the ground with a bullet in her brain. Her intern reassures her and tries to keep her from slipping into unconsciousness. Her eyes closed, she mumbles. Her breathing becomes shallow, but she survives with brain damage.
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She faces a long rehabilitation.

Judge John Roll, Gabriel Zimmerman, Dorwan Stoddard, Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck, and Christina-Taylor Green do not survive. They are now mortally wounded or already dead. A dozen others, in addition to Giffords, are injured.
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As Jared tries to reload, bystanders tackle and disarm him. They

undoubtedly save many lives and prevent many injuries. Jared wants more victims, but the angry and brave bystanders hold him down until police arrive and arrest him.

Now wearing handcuffs, Jared is driven away in a police car, accompanied by two deputies.
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“I just want you to know that I’m the only person that knew about this,” Loughner tells the police after his arrest.

He leaves behind six dead, thirteen wounded, a bloody parking lot, and many questions. Most of the questions begin with “Why” or “How.”

Before we look inside Jared’s brain to try to answer some of these questions, it will be useful to contrast Jared’s horrendous actions with those of a very different murderer, Eric Harris.

Jared and Eric are both young, white males who carry guns to crowded places to shoot people they know and people they don’t. They both see their acts as nihilistic, but meaningful, while most people see them as deranged and pointless.

Although Jared acts alone and Eric has a weak, depressed, and impressionable accomplice, both Jared and Eric are the driving forces behind their murderous plans. They both leave behind dead and wounded victims, confusion, blood—and the same questions.

This Is Not Awesome

Eric Harris doesn’t care that he is late for class today. He’s more concerned about falling behind his own schedule on this Tuesday morning, April 20, 1999.
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He and his friend Dylan Klebold have plans for their fellow students and for the teachers at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
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Today, just eleven days before Eric’s eighteenth birthday, his day planner reads:

10:30 set up 4 things

11: go to school

11:10 set up duffel bags

11:12 wait near cars, gear up

11:16 HAHAHA
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Sometime after 10:30 a.m., he drives to a spot near the intersection of

Chatfield Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard, three miles southwest of the high school. He drops off a couple of backpacks stuffed with propane tanks, aerosol containers, and pipe bombs. When they go off, he figures, local police and rescue services will be distracted by the size and surprise of the explosions. They will rush to this intersection far from the school, slowing their response to the awesome end-of-the-high-school-world apocalypse he has planned for over a year.

At 11:10 a.m. Eric pulls his thirteen-year-old light gray Honda Civic into a parking space in the school’s south parking lot. His fellow high school senior and co-conspirator, 17½-year-old Dylan, drives his black 1982 BMW into the west parking lot across from, but within sight of, Eric’s parking spot.

Dylan has coordinated his agenda with Eric’s. His “to do” list for this morning includes:

Walk in, set bombs at 11:09, for 11:17

Leave,

Drive to Clemete Park. Gear up.

Get back by 11:15

Park cars. set car bombs for 11:18

get out, go to outside hill, wait.

When first bombs go off, attack.

have fun!
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Soon after Eric arrives, his off-and-on-again friend and fellow high school student Brooks Brown approaches him in the parking lot. Brooks excitedly tells Eric that he has missed a psychology test. Eric says it doesn’t matter now.

“Brooks, I like you now. Get out of here. Go home,” Eric tells him.
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Of the 1,945 registered students and approximately 140 teachers and administrative staff at the school,
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Brooks will be the only one to get a warning and a break like this today.

Eric and Dylan pull out duffel bags—one orange and one blue—from their cars and carry them into the cafeteria. Unnoticed,
they set them on the floor near some tables in the crowded cafeteria before returning to their cars. The bags conceal homemade bombs amateurishly constructed with 20-pound propane tanks, flammable liquid, timers, and detonators. The homemade devices are set to explode at 11:17 a.m. But it is already 11:14 a.m. Eric and Dylan are leaving themselves dangerously little time to drop off the bombs and get out. They needn’t worry.