How to Save Your Daughter's Life

by Pat Brown

There once was a girl who, after having a fight with her boyfriend, left their apartment in a huff. While she as out wandering around, she decided she might as well check a few places to see if there were any jobs available she might apply for. She walked into the local bowling alley and talked with the manager. She filled out an employment form and they chatted. He was cute and sweet, and he asked if she wanted to hang out and go smoke a joint when he went on break. She was in a bad mood, so she said yes.

He directed her to a door that led into an unused area of the building. He said he would slip in through the back and let her in; he didn't want the other employees to see him sneaking out with her. She followed his directions. He let her into the other part of the building, and they sat down just inside on the floor and smoked the weed and chatted. Not so abnormal for a couple of young people (she was just twenty-two and he was about thirty).

After twenty minutes, his break was over, and he told her he had to get back to work. He instructed her to follow him out the back so he wouldn't get caught "playing hooky" with her. He indicated they would need to go down some stairs into the basement and out the back way.

Suddenly, the girl felt something was wrong. She felt the "gift of fear," as security specialist Gavin de Becker would call it. (Becker is the author of the book of that name in which he advises women to pay attention to their gut feelings about danger.) She told the man she wouldn't go out that way, and she stood next to the glass door at the front. 

He looked at her with dead eyes and said, "You think I am going to kill you, don't you?"

She looked straight back at him and said, "Yes, I do."

He let her out the  front door. Whether he did this because he knew she would put up one hell of a fight or because he admired her for being so direct with him, we will never know.

One thing I do know: I am happy to be alive, because that dumb girl who went off to smoke dope with a stranger was me.

(excerpt from How to Save Your Daughter's Life: Straight Talk for Parents from America's Top Criminal Profiler by Pat Brown)

For more on the book, listen to my interview on Elliot in the Morning.

                 

How to Save your Daughter's Life by Pat Brown available now in local bookstores and online at from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.


Included in this book, what parents of teen girls need to know about:

The Early Years
Partying, Drinking, Drugging, Casual Sex (Hooking Up), and Gangs
Date Rape
The Dangers of Social Networking and the Internet
Risky Relationships
Stalkers
Child Predators, Serial Rapists, and Serial Killers
The Sex Trade and Sex Trafficking

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There is only One Word for Casey Anthony: Psychopath

by Pat Brown

Give up attempting to understand Casey Anthony or what makes her tick; she is a psychopath and that makes her the kind of person you shouldn't waste time trying to figure out. The argument over whether psychopaths are born or made – nature versus nurture – will continue decade after decade, century after century. For all of our scientific progress, why a person becomes evil, chooses to murder simply for the fun or convenience of it, is something likely to remain a mystery forever. She is a snake, a snake who needs to be caged or exterminated if found guilty of murder, regardless of how she turned into a serpent.

Let's take a look at the nurture aspect of Casey. Many think that her home was severely dysfunctional. I tend to agree that there was a bit of a twisted dynamic going on there, a battle of wills and a fight for power and control between Cindy and Casey; the two men, George and Lee basically just got out of the of the line of fire. Cindy appears to have a pretty high level of narcissism herself, which is not unusual to find in one parent of a psychopathic individual. An absent or distant father figure, either physically or emotionally, also is often in the mix.

Usually, if there is a set of parents in the home, we tend to find one parent, usually the male, who is cold, stern or uncommunicative with the child and the other parent, usually the female, who then overcompensates by giving far too much and coddling the child as she is growing up. Sometimes, that female is actually narcissistic, and what looks like love can be more about being the winner within the couple, getting more of the attention from the child, and controlling what happens. We sometimes see this narcissism lead to Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a personality disorder in which the caretaker of the child uses the child as a pawn to gain massive attention, sometimes even causing the child to become ill or die just to get a jolt of importance.

Then again, sometimes we don't see too much amiss with the parents at all, and, yet, they are still stuck with a psychopathic kid who they have no idea what to do with.

We also see an increase in psychopathy when there is some kind of attachment disorder occurring at a very young age; children who have been abandoned to orphanages or tossed around the foster care system so often that they have trouble connecting with human beings. This can lead as well to serious personality disorders.

Then, we mix in the individual personality and the cultural issues, financial issues, etc., stir, and whammo, a psychopath emerges, usually by the age of eight, if not by the even earlier age of five, which I have observed in children not even in school and find quite disconcerting. What then? Well, not much, because at this point treatment usually fails and the only thing that has an effect of sorts is behavior modification.

Essentially, once you are dealing with a psychopath, the only way to improve their choices is to show them a way to get what they want in a way that will be less trouble. You can't impress upon them that doing right is a good thing or making others happy is worth it, but you can help them find a way to get what they want in a less destructive way. Dr. Stanton Samenow who spent years at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC, recognized how the criminal mind was rigidly set, could not be changed, and, therefore, he set out to find ways to deal with what simply was a reality.

So, I don't know how Casey Anthony got to be a psychopath, but there she is-lying, manipulating, ignoring how others feel, seeking constant attention, and wanting to have her way all the time. She exhibits the hallmarks of psychopathy; total narcissism and complete lack of empathy for anyone else, including her own daughter. When she does act like she cares, she is doing just that: acting. This is a recognizable trait of a psychopath that Casey exhibits because one can see how quickly she can change mood or expression.

I remember walking in on a "friend" I later realized had a serious personality disorder. She was sobbing on the phone to her boyfriend, telling him how horrible she was feeling, how upset she was. When she saw me, she put the phone down in her lap, flashed me a big smile and mouthed "I'll be with you in a sec!" and then went back to sobbing on the phone. When she hung up, she turned to me just as cheerful as ever, lit a cigarette, and started chatting about our evening plans. The friendship didn't last long after that. I didn't trust much genuine was going to come from this particular woman.

Sound like Casey? You bet. And you can see those same behaviors in murderers like Darlie Routier, Scott Peterson, Karla Homolka, and just about any serial killer you can think of.

If the jury takes a look at Robert Hare's list of psychopathic traits, I am sure they can check just about every one of them off for Casey.

• Glibness/superficial charm
• Grandiose sense of self-worth
• Pathological lying
• Cunning/manipulative
• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)
• Callous/lack of empathy
• Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
• Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
• Parasitic lifestyle
• Poor behavioral controls
• Lack of realistic long-term goals
• Impulsiveness
• Irresponsibility
• Juvenile delinquency
• Early behavior problems

Why is it important to know what Casey Anthony is? Because knowing she is a psychopath means she is perfectly capable of murder. The jury needs to recognize this, add this information to the body of physical and circumstantial evidence the prosecution has presented, and convict the snake.

Not all psychopaths are murderers, but most murderers are psychopaths. I believe Casey Anthony is both and needs to be removed from society permanently so she can't do any more harm. And, Caylee, innocent little Caylee, deserves justice.

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Will Casey Anthony Commit Suicide As A Final Act of Control If She Gets Death Penalty?

by Dr. Lillian Glass

In examining Casey Anthony’s behavior, her body language ,and communication patterns throughout the years, it is my view that there are significant signals of sociopathy or psychopathy. According to the characteristics set forth by Canadian psychologist Robert D. Hare in his Hare Scale of Psychopathy, Casey Anthony appears to fit most of the characteristics seen below:

Factor 1: Aggressive narcissism

1. Glibness/superficial charm
2. Grandiose sense of self-worth
3. Pathological lying
4. Cunning/manipulative
5. Lack of remorse or guilt
6. Emotionally shallow
7. Callous/lack of empathy
8. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Factor 2: Socially deviant lifestyle

1. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
2. Parasitic lifestyle
3. Poor behavioral control
4. Promiscuous sexual behavior
5. Lack of realistic, long-term goals
6. Impulsiveness
7. Irresponsibility
8. Juvenile delinquency
9. Early behavioral problems
10. Revocation of conditional release

Traits not correlated with either factor:

1. Many short-term marital relationships
2. Criminal versatility

When a sociopath or psychopath is cornered and there is no way out for them, they often become severely depressed. Because of that, it is not uncommon for them to commit suicide. That is  what happened with Craigslist Killer, Philip Markoff (right). He knew there was no way out of his predicament. So he found a way to kill himself in his jail cell and as a final act of control, write messages in his own blood on his cell wall. This could possibly happen with Casey Anthony as well.

Sociopaths and psychopaths do not commit suicide for the same reasons non-psychopaths or non-sociopaths would commit suicide. Instead, they commit suicide as a final act of control. So if Casey is found guilty of the crime of murdering her daughter Caylee and is sentenced to death by the State, she may very well attempt suicide and succeed. In doing so, it may serve as her final act of defiance and control. She may commit suicide as an act of controlling her own death on her own terms.

While many may believe that Casey is too narcissistic to kill herself, that may not  at all be the case. If and when she is housed in a prison’s death row, Casey will get a rude awakening.

Right now, she is the center of attention, and she appears to be loving it. She gets to show off her different outfits and hair styles in the courtroom. For Casey, it is important to her that she always look good. That is why you always see her grooming her hair or adjusting her clothing. She also gets the pleasure of seeing her crush and attorney Jose Baez, and whomever else she fancies at the moment. She gets the pleasure of sharing a smile or a laugh with Jose. Most of all , she gets the joy of seeing her parents agonizing over her in the courtroom, while she purposely ignores them. She gets the thrill of knowing that her every move is televised and scrutinized by the press and that she is the subject of websites, news articles and television shows. There is no doubt that she flourishes with all of this attention bestowed upon her.

But if she is found guilty and sentenced to death, all of that external attention will suddenly disappear. Instead, she will experience hours and hours of complete isolation and boredom. There will be a disturbing lack of visual and auditory stimulation on a regular basis.

So stimulus-seeking Casey, who needs all of that attention to survive, may have a terrible time dealing with and tolerating her newly imposed boredom. Because the lack of stimulation may be so intolerable and such torture for her, it would be highly possible for her to attempt to take matters into her own hands and kill herself because she may feel there is no way out.

Even though Casey would no doubt appeal her conviction, the legal process would be agonizingly slow. It could take years. There would not be daily, weekly or even monthly visits from attorneys. Even though she will no doubt continue to receive countless letters from fans who support her innocence, or receive marriage proposals from emotionally disturbed people who are captivated by her beauty, it may not be enough to sustain her.

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Why the Barefoot Bandit has more Facebook friends than I do

by Pat Brown

BREAKING NEWS! The Barefoot Bandit was captured in the Bahamas on Sunday!

Who is Colton Harris-Moore, the so-named Barefoot Bandit, fugitive burglar and Internet bad boy who just had his two-year crime spree brought to a screeching halt on a small tropical island not far from Florida? Is he a despicable little two-bit teenage thief with no respect for decent people or the law? Or is Harris-Moore a handsome, dazzlingly clever, real-life Pink Panther-type folk hero, a thief with Catch Me if You Can nonviolent con artistry?

However you answer, Harris-Moore's antics have garnered him headlines, even The Today Show's attention. Perhaps not surprising with so much media coverage, he's amassed a huge following, including a Facebook Fan page where more than 65,000 people kept up with his crime spree, as the cops chased him across the globe. Harris-Moore even has a song written about him on YouTube (which sucks, by the way). His supposed Twitter page lists his present location as "Wouldn't you like to know?" (Well, we know now, don't we? In jail.)

A recent tweet read: "I love how Twitter just asked me if I'd like to 'Add Location' to my tweets. Nice try. :-D."

I don't know if it was really Colton Harris-Moore running the Twitter account, but I'm sure whoever is behind it had a good time. Social media and cable news surely made him infamous, but the exposure also backfired, making him recognizable to folks on the lookout. The Bahamians managed to ID the 6'5" blue-eyed blond, and law enforcement closed in. Spree ended.

Let's take a look at this kid. Nineteen-year-old Harris-Moore has a long criminal history starting at the age of twelve. It appears that he got at least some of his criminal mentality from his own mother, a sort of in-house Fagin. Her comments to the press are quite disturbing and revealing. The Tribune out of the Bahamas writes this of Mommy Dearest:

Pam Kohler, Harris-Moore's mother, said she wasn't surprised her son might be responsible for the plane theft because he had taught himself how to fly.

She has publicly defended her son, and claims the allegations against him are exaggerated. She told The Associated Press she would have preferred he fled to a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the United States.

"The furthest he gets from the US, the better," she said from her home on Camano Island. "I'm glad he's able to enjoy beautiful islands, but they extradite. It doesn't help matters at all."

Furthermore, Mum whines that he was accused of crimes he didn't do although he managed to get charged with 23 felonies just in his home county.

"It was ridiculous," Kohler said. "They made such a big damn deal of everything. He was blamed for everything that happened in [the] county. [The police] even took some of my jewelry, tried to say that he stole it, and put in in evidence against him."

She doesn't think he's hurting anyone? Let's just ignore the monetary losses, the gun he waved at people, terrifying them. I guess if sonny boy hasn't killed anyone, he's a sweetie-pie.

So Harris-Moore continued his criminal life, presumably with his mom's blessing. Then, a couple of years ago, he ran from a halfway house (undoubted Mom would say he was railroaded) and started his own crime wave. He sometimes committed crimes in bare feet (once he was actually totally naked) and in one burglary he left chalk footprints as his calling card (ooh, so Hollywood). He's a suspect in more than seventy crimes which include burglaries of businesses, home invasions and stolen cars, boats, and airplanes. He is being investigated in Washington State, Oregon, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois (and other places I'm sure). Then he got really cocky and stole a plane which he crashed into the island of Abaco in the Bahamas.

I guess Mom didn't realize her boy wasn't going to be a terrorist and failed to make sure he knew how to land? It was a dumb place to go. Didn't he realize he was going to an ISLAND? A place surrounded by water and no bus to jump on or car to boost to get away? He did try to steal a speed boat, but he got caught before he could motor off.

Mum may yet come out on top. There's already a movie in the making as 20th Century Fox has bought the film rights to the book "Taking Flight: The Hunt for a Young Outlaw." Pamela Kohler has retained an entertainment lawyer for her own book and possible movie deal.

Colton Harris-Moore's mother says: "I think it is kind of neat." I do too. I think it's kind of neat that he's in custody and going to spend a long, long time in prison. The only thing I don't think is neat that this poor excuse for a mother may think getting pregnant has finally paid off.

I hope all of Harris-Moore's fans are bummed today. People should be cheering those who give to our country, not egging on those who work to destroy it and the good citizens within it. No lazy, victimizing, coldblooded psychopath should have so many folks rooting for him. I hope at some point they see that they're encouraging crime, criminality, and lawlessness.

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Here Kitty Kitty

by Pat Brown

My daughter, Jennifer, the tough child abuse detective, called me the other evening in tears. One of her kittens, Baby Norris, was in a freak accident; a board fell on it causing a bad concussion. She had arrived home from work and found the kitten lying under the board, unconscious, blood coming out of its nose. She took it to the emergency animal hospital where she forked out hundreds of dollars for medicine she hoped would prevent brain swelling and save the cat's life. The doctors didn't seem all that hopeful that the medicine would work, but Jennifer felt she had to do all she could to help the kitten survive. After two treatments she took the still near comatose cat home. She put Baby Norris in bed with her and stayed awake most of the night watching him. He was still alive but weak in the morning and so she called for her brother to come over and stay with him while she was at work. She called home regularly for updates on Baby Norris's condition.

What makes Jennifer's concern doubly touching is that Baby Norris wasn't even a kitten she was keeping; it was one of the five she was giving away. And she didn't ask Daddy Norris, the future owner, to help with the bill. She felt responsible for the accident and so she forked out the money herself on a cat that, if it lived, wasn't even going to be her cat.

The story has a happy ending. Baby Norris made a complete recovery and went off to his new home.

A little Bronx kitty didn't fare so well. Tiger Lily, an adorable orange and brown kitten with big pointed ears, was tortured and murdered by 17-year-old Cheyenne Cherry. Cherry tossed Tiger Lily into a kitchen oven, closed the door, turned up the heat, and roasted the poor creature to death. Apparently, Cherry thought it was pretty funny and no big deal as she "doesn't like cats" anyway. Besides, she wanted to get back at her roommate and I am sure she got a big giggle thinking about her ex-friend's face when she opened the oven door and found the charred body of her beloved pet inside.

A week after that despicable story came out, we hear that a Florida teenager has been arrested in string of brutal cat slayings, charged with torturing, mutilating, and murdering at least nineteen of his neighbor's cats. Eighteen-year-old Tyler Hayes Weinman is accused not only of horrific abuse of animals, but also of displaying their mutilated bodies in grotesque positions on the lawns of their owners. Weinman, the serial cat killer, like the coldblooded Cheyenne Cherry above, has no empathy for either animals or humans and gets his kicks out of causing extreme suffering, both physical and emotional, to other living creatures.

These two disgusting so-called human beings join a long list of violent psychopaths who enjoyed torturing and murdering animals in their youth. Serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer liked to stick heads of animals on sticks in his yard. Serial killer Edward Kemper decapitated his pet cat and stuffed it down the disposal just like he did his mother sometime later. Child murderer Earl Shriner stuck firecrackers into dog's rectums and spree killer Andrew Cunanan liked to stick lit matches into the eye's of crabs and then watch them stagger around blindly. And let's not forget the Columbine mass murderers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who bragged to their friends that they got a kick out of mutilating animals.

The list of killers who started violent crime careers with animals abuse is extremely lengthy. If fact, studies cited by the Humane Society found 46% of serial killers admitted to committing cruelty to animals as juveniles and 50% of school shooters had a history of animal cruelty. I can bet the numbers are actually much higher but some psychopaths hide their crimes better than others and some are simply lying about their past maltreatment of animals.

Does this mean all young people who torture and kill animals will become serial killers or mass murderers? No, but I think society needs to recognize the danger we are putting innocent people in when we don't deal with these psychopaths harshly enough. It is not okay to give them probation or a few weeks or months in jail and then send them back into our neighborhoods. It isn't even okay to suspend their sentence if they agree to get psychiatric help because no amount of therapy is going to cure them of their sadistic desire to inflict pain and suffering on others.

So what do we do with serial killers who haven't yet chosen humans as their prey? Our country is huge and our population transient. Neighbors often don't know each other at all and there is no way for citizens to be aware these predators are in their communities.

I think it is time we require violent repeat offenders and violent offenders of one extremely heinous crime to be registered, tracked, and "outed" just like sex offenders. In olden days, criminals had a harder time hiding because everyone knew who the bad guy was in their neighborhood. We should return to those days: if the violent criminal tries to hide among people who don't know him, we should do those people a favor and rat him out.

Violent offenders don't need a break; innocent people do.

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To Believe or Not to Believe

by Pat Brown

The opening paragraph of the New York Times story reads:

A man shot and killed his wife and five young children before taking his own life Tuesday, apparently out of despair after the couple lost their jobs at a hospital, the police and city officials said.

This kind of story is sadly no longer out of the ordinary and, in these harsh economic times, many people feel the man must have been driven to take out his family; his world must have fallen apart and he no longer knew how he could care for his wife and children.

Mr. Ervin A. Lupoe, the family mass murderer, explains his actions in a two-page suicide fax to a local news station. He tells us because "he was despondent over a job situation and he saw no reasonable way out," he and his wife started planning their own deaths. His wife then encouraged the murder of their children with her comment, "Why leave the children to a stranger?" Furthermore, Mr. Lupoe wrote, the manager who later fired the couple had told the two of them "You should have blown your brains out rather than come to work."

Okay, hold up here! Psychopath alert! Psychopath alert!

First of all there was a dispute with the boss. Why? We haven't heard. Next Mr. Lupoe not only blames his employer for his rash decision to off his family but also insinuates the boss was responsible for actually idea of the murder-suicide. Finally, he claims his wife told him to kill their children, the eight-year old, the five-year old twins, and the two-year-old twins.

One of the traits of psychopathy is a refusal to accept responsibility for one's actions. Mr. Lupoe did this three times over within his fax. Pathological lying is another and, in his fax, we see this clearly as well. We also find out that he was under investigation for lying about employment to get child care. Then, after he sent the fax, he called the police and claimed someone else has shot his family. He apparently has trouble deciding which false story to go with.

Lupoe once had been charged (though not prosecuted) for carrying a concealed weapon which indicates he may have difficulty being a law-abiding citizen, another trait of psychopathy. He also exhibits quite a bit of egocentric and grandiose thinking, which his actions expose. Not only did he commit a horrific crime, he essentially bragged about it to the media. Finally, the hallmark trait of psychopathy is a lack of empathy. When Mr. Lupoe coldbloodly shot six innocent people, five of them little children who trusted him, he qualified himself quite well as a psychopath who cares nothing for other human beings.

As a criminal profiler, one of my jobs is statement analysis which involves reading the words of an individual and discerning what the person is really saying, what he is trying to accomplish with his communication. Is he being honest and open? Is he applying spin to make himself look better? Is he trying to manipulate someone? Is he attempting to justify some action to another or, perhap, just to himself? What does his statement say about him?

Many times the words of a criminal are quite eye-opening if you don't take them at face value and spend some time examining them. A great example is serial killer Harvey Louis Carignano.

“… I had a teacher who used to sit at my desk and we would write dirty notes back and forth. I was either 13 or 14 at the time – and just show me a 14-year-old boy anywhere who wouldn’t willingly and happily sit in a schoolroom and exchange porno notes with his teacher. I never got to lay a hand on her without getting slapped, but she would keep me after school and make me stand before her while she masturbated and called me names and told me what she was going to make me do – none of her threats she ever kept, damn it! The bitch wouldn’t even let me masturbate with her! I took my penis out and she beat the living shit out of me! She had enormously large breasts. She was truly a cruel woman…” (Berry-Dee, 2003)

How much of any of this is true is questionable considering who it is coming from. However, if we assume the possibility he is blaming the victims for his early behavior problems, I can rewrite his statement which is likely closer to the truth:

“… I had a teacher I used to write porn notes to and that got me in big trouble. I never got to lay a hand on her without getting slapped (because she was disgusted with me), but she would keep me after school (as punishment).Once she made me stand (in the corner) where I started masturbating and called her a bitch. I took my penis out and she beat the living shit out of me!”

I have no doubt Mr. Carignano had some social worker or a parole board member who believed this childhood experience really happened as he said it did; after all, such a sick relationship forged by his schoolteacher would surely damage a young boy and offer an explanation as to why Carignano turned out to be a vicious killer who lured women with personal ads and then raped and beat them to death with a hammer.

But simply accepting a psychopath's explanations for their behavior distorts history, their true motives, statistical studies, and the correct psychological understanding of criminal behavior. Worse, it may cause us to fail to recognize danger signals from psychopaths in our own communities and families until it is too late. While we don't want to be overly suspicious of every word that comes out of a human being's mouth, it wouldn't hurt us -and may well protect us - to be a little more skeptical of what we hear and read. In fact, it could save our lives.

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How Children Become Expendable

by Pat Brown

A while back I went to see We Are Marshall, a movie about the horrifying plane crash that killed an entire football team and their coaches in 1970. Because the film was a typical Hollywood flick, we hardly got a few minutes to meet some of the players and their families before the airplane crashed. I spent the rest of the movie not feeling all that sympathetic to these devastated families or to the girlfriend of one of the players, whom we follow for the rest of the film, watching her pick up the pieces. I can't recall what any of them looked like and, when the movie was over, I tossed my popcorn in the trash and the movie quickly flew out of my mind.

On the other hand, after I saw an Indian movie called Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota (Rough translation: What if . . . ?), I cried when the plane crashed into the World Trade Center and all but one of the main characters died. I am still bothered by this movie and I can picture all of the protagonists and remember the looks on their faces in the last moments of their lives. Why the difference?

Well, Bollywood does something Hollywood does not: they spend an immense amount of time in character development during their movies, so by the time tragedy hits, you are fully invested emotionally in these people. They have become real to you and you know their hopes and dreams and it is horribly painful to see them suffer and lose out on their futures. We also get to know those who loved them and we feel terribly sad for them as well.

What does all this have to do with crime? A lot in a world that is spending less and less time in human interaction and more time in artificial worlds where humans are devalued and depersonalized.

Two little girls were just used as target practice out in the small town of Weleetka, Oklahoma. Police theorize two shooters using different guns both shot each of the girls, 11-year-old Skyla Whitaker (pictured left), and 13-year-old Taylor Paschal-Placker (right). The two little girls were doing nothing more than walking from one house to the other in the middle of the day. They were not enemy combatants, they were not opposing gang members, and they did not get killed because they saw something they shouldn't have or wanted out of a romantic relationship. They were killed because they had no meaning to the killers except as moving targets. Their murderers had zero empathy.

Zero empathy or great fear are the only two explanations for why human beings can take the lives of others. Great fear of children or harmless people cannot be justified, which leaves only zero empathy as the remaining answer. Fear and low empathy is achievable in war which allows soldiers to kill little children (especially those they think are attached to explosives). Low empathy is certainly present in terrorists who claim to have only killed children (as collateral damage) for a cause. But zero empathy is what is present in homegrown murderers who take lives of children merely for the fun of it.

I got a closeup view of zero empathy by a young adult toward children in action during a ride-along with my police officer daughter. We--and I say we because all of us ride-alongs feel temporarily part of the team!--were called to a public library at seven at night. Two little boys, six and eight, had just spent the last eight hours while Mommy was off with her girlfriends at an amusement park. She had dumped them there, without any lunch or snacks, and told them they would get picked up around 7 PM. The police beat Mom to the library. When Mom arrived, she was forced to sit while CPS was contacted. She complained the whole time about how long she had to wait . . . in all, about 45 minutes . . . and how she was hungry. Finally, the decision came down, and the children were placed in the police cruiser to be taken into protective custody.

Not once did the mother of these boys look at them, talk to them, or apologize to them. She only had concern for herself and for what she had to go through because "these cops were being ridiculous." Zero empathy for the little boys. One day if she decides she has had enough of having to "care" for them, we might find them dead.

Society will be surprised at how this could have happened! What kind of pressure must the mom have been under to do such a thing? Is she psychotic? Did she snap? No, folks, Mom has zero empathy and the boys are expendable. Zero empathy is the hallmark of psychopathy and psychopathy is a growing menace in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

Children and teens who grow up in an emotional abyss and are raised on media that devalues human life in quantity through violent television and video games show increasing signs of reduced empathy towards their families, classmates, and communities. Then these young people grow up to be teenage killers or full-grown adults who have no empathy toward anyone younger.

When the two men who killed Skyla and Taylor are caught, we undoubtedly will hear from the defense lawyers as to what drove these men to kill innocent children. What we are unlikely to hear is that these two men simply have zero empathy for other human beings. Like rabid dogs with an incurable disease, human beings who have zero empathy are damaged beyond repair.

Our country needs to take a strong look at what is causing young people to become emotionally estranged from their fellow man and work hard to restore in society what is necessary for creating love and empathy in our youth and remove what is detrimental to their healthy emotional growth. Otherwise, children will become more and more expendable in the eyes of those who feel nothing for them.

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