Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives (7 page)

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violence. An individual with a disturbing concentration of all three

traits could be extremely dangerous.

Even though Paulhus and his fellow researchers have not applied

the Dark Triad to murderers, having studied it only in general

community populations, I believe that the concept provides the

missing link needed to explain the complex and often contradictory

psyche of eraser killers—whose actions at one moment may be

expertly calculated and at the next astonishingly self-defeating. It

would explain why these killers are described by friends, by police, and

sometimes even by their victims as charming yet callous, generous yet

self-centered, solicitous yet highly controlling. The use of the richer

psychological vocabulary of the Dark Triad allows us to describe and

make sense of behavior that has heretofore seemed incomprehensible.

Q

Let’s explore the three psychological traits in a little more depth,

beginning with psychopathy.

Not all psychopaths are like the humorless killing machines

depicted in an entire genre of true-crime books and movies. Many are

likeable, charismatic charmers, but their charm is slick and insincere.

They may be able to mesmerize and manipulate others with finely

honed skills of persuasion and flattery, but beneath the glossy surface,

their words are devoid of any real meaning or honest emotion.

Some psychopaths can fake normality better than others. We may

occasionally pick up on the sense that something is not quite right,

the vaguely queasy feeling one gets when a movie and its soundtrack

are out of sync. But more often than not we are fooled, even dazzled

by the show they put on for us.

They know how to draw us into their web because psychopaths are

masters of studied communication. But nothing they say connects

to anything genuine inside. The classic description of psychopaths is

that they ‘‘know the words but not the music.’’ They move through

the world with the deceptive verisimilitude of computer animation,

their emotions painted on, their words spoken as though by an actor

reciting lines. It is all a performance, calculated for the effect it will

have on a select audience, to get what they want by pretending to give

us what we want.

Psychopaths are practiced liars and expert manipulators. ‘‘Some

psychopaths get this huge joy out of duping people,’’ says Paulhus.

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‘‘Being on the sly, having a secret life: that is the greatest part of what

they are doing.’’ As one man who topped out on Hare’s psychopathy

test said, ‘‘I lie like I breathe, one as much as the other.’’ They lie when

there is no reason to lie, even when they are certain to be caught.

In a nationally televised interview with
Good Morning America
’s

Diane Sawyer, Peterson said he told police about his affair with

Amber Frey the very night Laci went missing, a statement police

immediately contradicted, and he had to retract before the second

part of the interview had even aired.

‘‘A psychopath will look you in the eye and lie when the truth

would be easier because they get a kick out of lying to people like

Diane Sawyer,’’ said former FBI profiler Candice DeLong. ‘‘They feel

superior.’’ When caught, they just shamelessly roll over into another

lie or, in the words of Robert Hare, ‘‘rework the facts so that they

appear to be consistent with the lie.’’

Even veteran researchers are taken aback by the sheer emotional

emptiness of psychopaths, and the remarkable ability many have to

hide that fact from those around them.

‘‘[W]e are dealing here not with a complete man at all but with

something that suggests a subtly constructed reflex machine that can

mimic the human personality perfectly,’’ Hervey Cleckley wrote in

The Mask of Sanity
. ‘‘. . . So perfect is this reproduction of a whole

and normal man that no one who examines the psychopath in a

clinical setting can point out in scientific or objective terms why, or

how, he is not real. And yet we eventually come to know or feel we

know that reality, in the sense of full, healthy experiencing of life, is

not here.’’

Now let’s examine the second dimension of the Dark Triad:

narcissism.

Narcissists have a grossly inflated sense of their own abilities and

importance. They believe they are unique, special, blessed, touched,

golden, and they want to be recognized for it—even without the

achievement to back it up. Like the mythological Narcissus, who

died of excessive pride because he could not stop gazing at his

reflection, pathological narcissists have an insatiable need to be

admired. They also have what forensic psychiatrist Martin Blinder

calls ‘‘an overweening sense of entitlement’’ and are consumed with

fantasies of unlimited success, power, sex, brilliance, and love. Yet

they have little capacity for genuine love because they are only

interested in being loved. Narcissists live life behind a mask, and

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many lead elaborate double lives, pretending to be something or

someone they are not.

But the flip side of narcissism—what lies behind the mask, on the

other side of the mirror—is insecurity. Any evidence that does not

fit the grandiose view a narcissist holds of himself must be denied,

devalued, avoided at all costs. A highly narcissistic person’s need for

constant external self-validation may be so great that if access to his

‘‘supply’’ is frustrated, he may act out violently.

Blinder, who has consulted on hundreds of domestic homicide

cases over the last four decades, believes intimate partner killers

are intensely narcissistic and somewhat psychopathic. They feel no

remorse or guilt for their crimes because they don’t believe they have

done anything wrong. In fact, they often see themselves as the victim.

Psychopaths, narcissists, and Machiavellians are all manipulators,

but narcissistic manipulation is the most emotionally insidious, the

kind to which an unsuspecting woman is most vulnerable. When

Scott was forced to admit to Amber that he lied about being married,

he spun another more elaborate and self-serving lie about having

recently ‘‘lost’’ his wife, something so difficult to talk about that he just

pretended he was never married. It was a lie so emotionally loaded,

told with Academy Award–caliber drama, that within seconds
she
was

feeling sorry for
him
.
She
was holding
his
hand.
She
was comforting

him
and forgiving
him
. And she was no longer asking any questions.

The third aspect of the Dark Triad is Machiavellianism. Like the

author of the sixteenth-century political treatise who advocated an

end-justifies-the-means approach to wielding political power, people

with a high degree of Machiavellianism have a strongly utilitarian

view of the world. Other people are just pawns in their game, objects

to be used for their own gratification.

A high degree of Machiavellianism is associated with sexual aggres-sion and has been found in otherwise ‘‘normal’’ college students who

commit date rape. ‘‘High Machs’’ are schemers who use every means

at their disposal— flattery, manipulation, deceit— to gain advantage

over others. Where the psychopath acts impulsively without any

concern for the consequences, a Machiavellian is a more strategic

manipulator.

‘‘One can connect all three of these characteristics in someone like

Scott Peterson,’’ said Paulhus. ‘‘If indeed he is a major narcissist he

feels like he is special, like laws don’t apply to him. He’s entitled to

do things that other people are not supposed to do. That leads into

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Machiavellianism. That sense of superiority means he can manipulate

others because they are not as clever as he is. Then you work your

way down into psychopathy: remorselessness, impulsiveness.’’

When I asked Dr. Paulhus why someone like Scott would continue

to call and pursue Amber Frey even when it was so against his own

interest, he explained by showing the relationship and differences

between the closely linked Dark Triad concepts.

‘‘A pure Machiavellian would not be that stupid,’’ said Paulhus.

‘‘If you’re driven purely by Machiavellian self-interest, the last thing

you do is set yourself up in any way to get caught. But narcissists

are driven by more than self-interest, or at least a different type of

self-interest: a superiority, a grandiosity that needs to be nurtured.’’

Machiavellianism may account for the almost perfect plan Scott

came up with to get away with murder. But his continued commu-nication with Amber—against his attorney’s strict orders, and when

only a fool would not realize she was working with the police—seems

to be a reflection of his narcissism. He needed her to fill up a vacuum

inside him, to admire and adore him—to believe, as he begged

her to believe in one of their calls, that he was ‘‘not a monster.’’

Despite her nationally televised appearance at the police station, it

was inconceivable to him that she would betray him, that he would

not be able to keep her in his thrall.

Thomas Capano was so strongly narcissistic and Machiavellian that

he insisted on controlling every aspect of his defense—a strategy that

backfired horribly and certainly contributed to the jury’s decision

to recommend death over life in prison for the murder of his

girlfriend. He then unsuccessfully used the mistakes caused by his

own orchestration to claim ineffective assistance of counsel and

demand either a new trial or a lighter sentence. In papers his

lawyers filed in response to Capano’s motion, the extraordinarily

manipulative nature of his personality was revealed.

Capano hired four accomplished attorneys to represent him at

trial, one of whom was the state’s former attorney general, but

refused to follow their advice and ordered them to do his bidding.

He forced one to deliver an opening statement that stunned everyone

in the courtroom, acknowledging for the first time that Anne Marie

Fahey was dead but blaming her death on a ‘‘tragic accident’’—while

refusing to tell the attorney what might possibly back up such a claim.

(He would ultimately claim that a second mistress found him and

Fahey together and pulled a gun out in a jealous rage, which went

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off as she and Capano struggled over the gun—a woman who had

nothing to do with the murder but whom Capano had manipulated

into buying the gun he used to kill Anne Marie.)

He insisted on testifying in his own defense against his attorneys’

better judgment and refused to allow them to prepare him for

cross-examination. Grossly overestimating his abilities, he claimed

he didn’t need any preparation, but then became so belligerent on

the stand that the judge at one point had him removed from the

courtroom.

Just as he had carefully planned his crime and its cover-up (in

addition to obtaining a gun that he believed could not be traced to

him, he bought in advance the 40.5 gallon cooler he would use as a

coffin), he told his attorneys what questions to ask and exactly what

words to use in asking them.

Capano seemed to delight in the way he pulled the strings on his

own advocates and parceled out information only when he felt like

it. As counsel Joseph Oteri remarked in contemporaneous notes he

took just thirteen days before trial, Capano admitted that ‘‘he was

playing with our heads about his defense’’ and wouldn’t tell them any

facts about what happened. Even with his life on the line, and despite

his intelligence and legal prowess, Capano could not overcome his

darker instincts.

The trial judge, and subsequent appellate courts, rejected his argu-ment of ineffective assistance of counsel. However, seven years after

his conviction, the Delaware Supreme Court set aside Capano’s death

sentence because one juror had held out on the issue of premeditation

and planning. The state could have retried the penalty phase before

a new jury and sought another death penalty verdict, but that would

have required remounting virtually the entire six-month case. Not

wanting to put Anne Marie’s family through that again, prosecutors

agreed to a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Q

The cardinal feature of all three syndromes, which plays into all the

individual characteristics of Dark Triad disorders, is the absence of

empathy. The ability to empathize with others, to ‘‘feel their pain,’’ is a

core part of what makes us human. People with this ugly constellation

of traits can lie, cheat, use, manipulate, hurt, and kill with impunity

because they are completely indifferent to the suffering of others. The

The Dark Triad

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utter callousness displayed by eraser killers is all the more astonishing,

considering that their victims are supposedly their ‘‘loved’’ ones.

When it came to disposing of his wife, Katherine, ironworker

Joseph Romano exhibited no more compassion or remorse than the

professional assassins in Brian de Palma’s blood-soaked remake of

Scarface
. After beating his thirty-nine-year-old spouse to death, most

likely with a baseball bat, in their Quincy, Massachusetts, home in

1998, he carved up her corpse with a power saw he had borrowed

earlier that month from a neighbor. He placed her severed remains

in fifteen plastic garbage bags, which he helped city trash collectors

hoist into their truck the following day. He then set about cleaning

up, repainting the basement where the dismemberment took place,

and hosing down Oriental rugs in his yard—the latter act so strange

that neighbors noticed and remembered it.

Their two-year-old son witnessed the dismemberment of his

mother, acting out the scene with dolls when questioned later by

pediatric trauma specialists.

‘‘The last memory that Bruno talks about is seeing his mother’s

head in a bucket,’’ said Mary Louise Fagan, Katherine’s sister, con-fronting her brother-in-law at sentencing. ‘‘That’s what you gave

Bruno, Joe: nightmares, memories, and horror.’’

The Romano’s marriage had been breaking down for years, and

Katherine had given her husband a deadline to leave the home she

owned by the first of the month. Three days before that deadline,

she disappeared. Like many eraser killers, Romano was dead set

against sharing anything with a soon-to-be ex-wife, even if it actually

belonged to her. When police came to his door after her father

reported her missing, Romano expressed a profound lack of empathy

and indifference to her absence.

‘‘Who the hell knows where she went?’’ he told the astonished

officers.

Romano had once threatened to put his wife ‘‘where her family

would never find her.’’ In that, he succeeded. Her body was never

found, the trash bags incinerated before police could ever search the

dump. But bits of bone, cartilage, and deep-body tissue were detected

on hidden parts of the saw after Romano returned it to the neighbor,

and minute amounts of blood spatter were found in the bedroom

and basement.

For months before the murder, Romano had been talking about

how much he hated his wife and wanted to kill her. Only one juror at

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