Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives (8 page)

E R A S E D

his 2002 trial, however, pushed for a first-degree murder conviction. A

conviction for first-degree murder requires a finding of premeditation

and intent, that the killer thought about and planned the murder

in advance. Another juror actually wanted to vote for manslaughter,

which would have meant Romano did not even intend to kill his

wife—an option the jury was not allowed to consider. Instead, the

panel found the forty-four-year-old guilty of second-degree murder,

making him eligible for parole in fifteen years.

‘‘I guess he did feel as though he was backed into a corner

and acted out in a rage without any thought or plan,’’ juror Jane

Palermo said after the verdict. Under Massachusetts law, jurors could

have convicted Romano for first-degree murder on the basis either

of premeditation or that he acted with extreme cruelty. But the

panel discounted the dismemberment as evidencing extreme cruelty

because Katherine was already dead when her husband cut her up.

In another case demonstrating a killer’s incredible lack of empathy,

Gerald Miller offered nothing but shrugs and sarcasm in response

to the ‘‘mysterious’’ disappearance of not just one but two different

wives. First his childhood sweetheart and wife of twenty-nine years,

Crystal, disappeared without a trace from the Oregon farm where they

were living in 1984. Then, in 1989, his second wife, Carol, vanished

from the ranch where he was employed. Miller was not investigated

in the disappearance of his first wife until his second wife followed

the first into the ether. Neither body has been found. No physical

evidence was discovered indicating that a crime had occurred, and

Miller denied having anything to do with their disappearances.

Unlike Scott Peterson, who at least attempted to appear to be a

grieving husband in front of the police and media, Miller could not

bring himself to act as though he cared that either of his wives went

missing. Both before and after each disappearance, he was pursuing

other women he met in local country-western bars, plying them with

offers of marriage and money. He made no real effort to search for

either wife, gave away some of their possessions soon after they went

missing, and made contradictory and cavalier statements about what

may have happened to them—claiming sarcastically that one had

been abducted by aliens. Only because he had the nerve to erase

a second wife was he ever charged with a crime. In 1993 he was

convicted of murdering both women based wholly on circumstantial

evidence.

The Dark Triad

4 5

Peterson was a better actor than Romano and Miller, but his

publicly expressed concern for his missing wife—noticeably absent

in his discussions with Amber or with the sister with whom he

spent so much time after the crime, Anne Bird—was an act. As

Robert Hare has noted, ‘‘Some psychopaths are more concerned with

the inner workings of their cars than with the inner worlds of their

‘loved’ ones.’’

These are not merely theoretical observations. Numerous scientific

studies have measured the actual autonomic response in individuals

exposed to a series of distressing images, such as a photograph of

a crying child, and watching others receive what the participants

believed to be electric shocks. In all the studies, psychopaths showed

markedly less distress about the suffering of other people than control

subjects.

Physiological studies of skin conductance, startle response, and,

before such studies were banned, actual electric shock have also

shown that psychopaths experience fear and anxiety at far lower

levels than the rest of us. This complete indifference to the feelings

of others, coupled with a lack of fear, may account for how Scott

Peterson could spend time dawdling on the Internet on Christmas

Eve morning before embarking on the task of disposing of his wife’s

corpse. As Cleckley noted in
The Mask of Sanity
, psychopaths are

almost as incapable of anxiety as they are of empathy and remorse.

Q

Many men experience some ambivalence about having children,

but for eraser killers these feelings seem to be particularly acute.

A pregnancy, its impact on the relationship, and the impending or

already strained responsibilities of fatherhood seem to have been

a primary motivation for the murders committed by Peterson,

Mark Hacking, and numerous other eraser killers profiled in this

book.

These men felt nothing for their children, whose lives they took

along with their mothers’: no warmth, no empathy, no sense of

responsibility. The kids were virtual nonentities to them. Perhaps a

child is the biggest threat imaginable to narcissistic men because they

don’t want to share. They want to remain the center of attention.

They want to be in control. They are like children themselves in their

selfishness and grandiose sense of entitlement.

4 6

E R A S E D

Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonald, very much a narcissist in

the Scott Peterson mold, seems to have been motivated by the same

desire as Peterson for a free and unencumbered life when he killed

his pregnant wife, Colette, and their two small children in their home

on the Fort Bragg Army base in North Carolina in 1970.

To this day he maintains that a gang of ‘‘drug-crazed hippies’’

stabbed him and butchered and bludgeoned to death the rest of

his family in a satanic rampage reminiscent of the Manson Family

killings. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi believes that MacDonald staged

the scene himself based on an
Esquire
magazine article on the

Tate-LaBianca killings that was found inside the home—down to

scrawling the word ‘‘pig’’ in Colette’s blood on the headboard of their

bed as the Manson Family members did with actress Sharon Tate’s

blood on the front door of her Los Angeles house.

Although Colette’s family supported their son-in-law through a

military inquest at which he was acquitted, forensic findings later

convinced them of his guilt, and his wife’s stepfather hounded the

Department of Justice until MacDonald was tried again and convicted

in federal court.

During the dozen years between the crime and MacDonald’s

imprisonment for three life terms, the doctor completely transformed

his lifestyle from dependable soldier and humble family man to

swinging hedonist. Working in the private sector but free of medical

school debts due to his military service, his income skyrocketed. He

moved three thousand miles away to Southern California, bought a

$350,000 beachfront condo, a Maserati, and a thirty-foot yacht, and

dated a bevy of beautiful women—enjoying precisely the kind of

lifestyle Scott Peterson probably imagined for himself after he got rid

of his inconvenient wife and child.

As little feeling as Scott seemed to have about his ‘‘missing’’

wife, he had even less concern about his unborn son, whom he and

his wife had decided to name Conner. I don’t believe Peterson felt

anything for his son except for the pressure of a ticking clock as

his birth drew near. In every interview he gave to reporters after

Laci’s disappearance, he had to be prompted even to mention his

unborn son. In his taped conversations with Amber, he never refers

to Conner as his baby, only as ‘‘Laci’s baby.’’

Even when Amber asks him directly if Conner is his child, he

refuses to say. I believe he did not think of the baby as his, but

not because he thought Laci was cheating on him or that anyone

The Dark Triad

4 7

else could have been Conner’s father. He simply felt no emotional

attachment whatsoever to his child.

In reality, Scott Peterson was a fertilizer salesman with a glorified

title who was running a failing start-up business that was not per-forming up to the expectations of the parent company. He was living

in humble Modesto in a modest home, a married man with a baby

on the way. With that baby would come a new set of responsibilities,

new demands on his time, and an inevitable change in lifestyle, which

was contrary to every fantasy he had of his life.

In his mind, he was someone very different. A star golfer. A

successful entrepreneur with a collection of homes and condos. A

footloose, irresistible ladies’ man. A guy who could swan around

Europe, partying with imaginary French friends, who could pick up

his life at a moment’s notice and do as he pleased, as he portrayed

himself to Amber, and who could expect that woman to trust him

implicitly even if he lied to her about everything that mattered.

He could carry on for years as though he weren’t married—have

his cake and eat it, too— but a baby was an altogether different

proposition. The more he and Laci prepared for the baby, the more

real it became. Ultrasound sessions and Lamaze classes. Baby showers

and the nursery. The bigger Laci’s belly grew, the more she turned

from wife to mother, the more real it all became. His life was about

to change forever. He couldn’t deny it anymore. Anyone who stood

between Scott Peterson and the fantasy he held so dear, the narcissistic

fix he desperately craved, was in mortal danger.

The jury’s decision to convict Scott of first-degree murder for the

killing of his wife but just second-degree for Conner mystifies me,

because I firmly believe that if Laci had not been pregnant, she would

probably be alive today. I think Scott would have gone on having

affairs and leading a double life, while pretending to be the perfect

husband. In my opinion, it was the impending birth of Conner that

triggered his murder plan, not his romance with Amber Frey. It was

the idea of becoming a father, especially father to a son, that he could

not abide.

‘‘To use the baldest example of the Theodore Dreiser story,’’ says

Martin Blinder analogizing the Peterson case to the story depicted

in
An American Tragedy
, ‘‘once the woman is pregnant the man is

trapped, in his mind. There is no escaping the domestic responsi-bilities. And any purely sexual fantasies he had about the woman

are now shattered by the onset of all the trappings—and I mean

4 8

E R A S E D

that in both senses of the word—of domesticity. If he’s profoundly

disturbed, disposing of both the mother and the child in a criminal

fashion seems like a logical, reasonable way out of that trap. Rather

than going the route of divorce, however painful, the sociopathic part

of him chooses a darker solution—which in his mind is low cost.

Being a narcissist, he has a heightened sense of his own capability.

He believes he can get away with it. He believes he can commit the

perfect crime.’’

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern

University and the author of numerous books and studies on the

subject of homicide, says narcissistic partner-killers view love in

purely instrumental terms—‘‘by what their beloved does for them.’’

When the role of husband or father no longer suits these men, wives

and children become expendable.

Narcissists crave the admiration of others. Murder is more palat-able than divorce for men like Scott Peterson because simply leaving

or divorcing a pregnant wife would tarnish the image they have

crafted of themselves, however false—that of the nice guy, perfect

husband, loving father. Fox believes that they may even look forward

to playing the role of grieving widower and enjoying the attention

and sympathy that would involve.

‘‘Never underestimate the overconfidence of a narcissist,’’ Fox

wrote in a 2006 op-ed piece for the
Boston Globe
on this very

special breed of killers. ‘‘Sure Scott Peterson may have failed despite

elaborate steps to cover up his wife’s murder, but others smugly

believe they can pull off the perfect crime. While we often hear about

men who tried successfully to beat the spousal murder rap, how many

unsolved killings involved men who fooled everyone—not just their

slain spouses?’’

C H A P T E R

T H R E E

The Real American

Tragedy

Q NearlyonehundredyearsbeforeScottPeterson’s

‘‘fishing’’ expedition on San Francisco Bay, a seemingly ordinary

young man named Chester Gillette took the woman who loved him

out for an afternoon excursion on Big Moose Lake in New York’s

Adirondack Mountains.

With a mixture of fear and excitement, Grace Brown stepped

gingerly into the seventeen-foot rowboat her boyfriend had rented

for the day. Not only did she not know how to swim, but she was

four months pregnant. Yet a boat ride in beautiful surroundings on

a warm July day seemed like such a romantic gesture that she felt a

surge of hope that the day would end with what she wanted more

than anything else in the world: for Chester to propose marriage.

Although few could have imagined it on that bright summer

day, within a few months Chester Gillette would be known as

the most famous murderer in America. Gillette’s murder of Grace

Brown was the first intensely documented eraser killing in American

history.

4 9

5 0