By Dr. Katherine Ramsland

About three miles from Locust Grove in northeastern Oklahoma is a piece of wooded acreage formerly known as Camp Scott. Some say it’s haunted, while Native Americans call it desecrated ground. Justice has seemed elusive for this shocking triple homicide, but Cherokee wisdom suggests that the debt might be paid. This is a tale of murder, shapeshifting, and forces beyond.

More than 140 girls had arrived at Camp Scott on that hot June day in 1977, where each was assigned to one of ten groups for her two-week stay. They’d be in these groups for games, lessons, hikes in the woods, and sleeping arrangements. Each section was named for a Native American tribe – Oklahoma has 37 recognized tribes – and on the night of June 12, the girls went to bed down.

Like most girls camping out, they probably thought up ways to scare each other. In fact, just a few weeks earlier, a hanging stick figure was discovered in the woods nearby. A few who knew each other played hide-and-seek, shrieking with laughter until a thunderstorm broke and pelting rain drove them into their tents. That’s what the watcher was waiting for.

He moved quietly through a counselors’ tent, taking personal items. It was easy to pull up the anchoring stakes and slip underneath a flap, or to silently cut a hole. He looked into another tent, startling some girls, before he headed for the most isolated area – the Kiowa section, where the youngest girls were. A little girl on her way to the shared central bathroom in the dark bumped him and he grabbed her but let her go. Another girl dropped a flashlight near him, screaming when she saw his legs. He fled to the edge of the camp. To his amusement, a counselor assured the girl there was no man in the woods.

Eventually, things quieted down and the rain stopped. He stared at tent #8, so vigilant and woods-savvy he could hear the slight intake of breath as the little girls slept. He timed his breath to theirs. Lori Lee Farmer, 8, Michelle Guse, 9, and Denise Milner, 10, were inside. The empty bunk was for a girl who’d been mistakenly assigned to the Seminole unit. A counselor had told her to stay where she was for the night. Denise Milner had been homesick for hours, but she’d put on a brave face as she rolled out her bag on the north-side cot. The empty one was next to hers. She’d asked the counselor if she could call her mother but was told to wait until morning, so before she’d slipped into the sack she’d written a letter home. She hoped that sleep would blot out the ache as she watched the empty cot.

She didn’t know that a man had just looked into tent #7 and moved on. He was coming for her. She was too young to have learned that the camp director had received and dismissed a threatening note that claimed, “We are on a mission to kill four girls in tent 1.” As she drifted to sleep, he entered and hit her over the head. Denise went unconscious.

Early the next morning, around 6 AM, a counselor walked toward the shower. Under a tree where the trail crossed the road, she spotted a child’s yellow sleeping bag. Nearby was another one, closer to camp. Why were these girls sleeping away from their tent, she wondered, and went closer. She saw Denise on the ground, naked from the waist down, gagged across her bruised face with electrical tape, and obviously dead. She lay face up, with her hands behind her and her legs spread apart. Horrified, the counselor ran for help.

The other girls were woken up, herded in to a quick breakfast, and out for a hike, to get them away from the camp. The girl who expected to join her Kiowa group grew confused as a counselor hustled her away. She did not know that the error that had sent her to the wrong tent the night before had saved her life. Other kids caught a glimpse of the sleeping bags still lying in the woods. Most had no idea what was happening, but when they returned from the hike, they were told to retrieve their gear and return to the bus. When their parents met them it was clear that something was terribly wrong. No one returned to Camp Scott that day…or ever again. Some of these girls, now grown up, describe on cold case chats how the incident is burned into their memory.

Investigators swarmed in, but it was mid-morning before a doctor finally opened the sleeping bags to examine the other two girls from tent #8. The blood on their heads testified to the beating they’d received before being zipped inside their bags and carried from the tent. One had been bound. All three had lengths of cord wrapped around their necks and there were signs that each had been sexually assaulted. An autopsy later would confirm it.

Piecing together a reconstruction based on pools of blood in the isolated tent, detectives theorized that the killer had entered through the back. He’d hit each girl with a blunt implement to keep them from waking and crying out. He’d raped the two youngest girls in the tent, strangling them with a cord before putting their bodies back into their bags. He’d had to carry them past seven other tents to leave them where they were found--150 feet from their beds. So he was bold. Denise may have revived upon his return, and from her footprints in the mud it appeared that he’d forced her to walk to the trail before he’d raped and strangled her. She’d probably been gagged in the tent. A pair of women’s glasses and a flashlight with a cover over the lens were found nearby. There was also a bloody footprint from the waffle-sole of a boot not far from the children’s blood-soaked clothing.

The bodies were removed and a massive manhunt began for the killer. The police soon focused on a local sports hero, Gene Leroy Hart, who’d been in considerable trouble. In 1966, Hart had abducted two pregnant women from a Tulsa club and raped them. He’d pled guilty and was sentenced to three 10-year terms, but got out in less than three. Shortly thereafter, he was convicted of four counts of first-degree burglary and sentenced to 305 years. This, too, was a short stint, as he’d escaped in 1973, managing to survive in a series of local caves where many outlaws had successfully dodged the law. In addition, it was rumored that medicine men had given Hart ancient magic to enhance his ability to hide. The Cherokee believed in such transformations, or at least in the skill of deflecting people from seeing who you really were. In a way, they understood the chameleonic nature of a psychopath.

Investigative teams, dog handlers, psychics, heat-seeking devices, and helicopter surveillance all failed to locate the elusive Cherokee. When a cave yielded photographs that Hart had developed on a job, his presence was affirmed. Inside another cave, from which someone resembling Hart had fled, a phrase was written on the wall, “The killer was here. Bye Bye fools. 77-6-17.” On June 23, Hart was charged in absentia with three counts of first-degree murder, among other things. However, he remained free. Many locals believed he was falsely accused.

Hart was spotted from time to time, and a book on this case, Someone Cry for the Children, discusses an intriguing conversation about his ability to elude the police. One investigator with a touch of Cherokee visited a medicine man named Crying Wolf. He learned that the tribe believed that if Hart had indeed raped and killed the girls, he’d be struck down. No matter where he was, in prison or out, he’d have to pay for such evil with his life. No one had to send him to prison; it would just happen. Crying Wolf offered medicine to facilitate the investigation, and Hart was soon under arrest.

His trial began a year later, focused on two aspects of physical evidence: sperm from the bodies was similar to Hart’s (despite a vasectomy), and Hart’s hair proved microscopically consistent with hair found on the bodies. (This supposed science is now under scrutiny.) In addition, items found in the caves where the photos were discovered had been claimed by camp counselors, and a roll of duct tape there was similar to that used to bind the girls. Women’s glasses had been found near the bodies, and Hart was wearing women’s glasses when arrested. Circumstantially, it made sense to link Hart to the murders, but it was far from a definitive case.

The defense attorney poked holes in the theory and accused the sheriff of planting evidence. In addition, a thumbprint on the flashlight believed to belong to the offender did not match Hart. However, one theory said he’d had an accomplice, so this fact failed to get him off the hook. The town was divided between Hart supporters and those who believed he was guilty.

After 10 days of testimony and different medicine men using their magic, it took the jury only six hours to acquit Hart. However, since he’d escaped before finishing his time on the burglary charges, he was returned to the state penitentiary. About two and a half months later, this wilderness survivor and athletic young man died from a heart attack while jogging. It came as a complete surprise, except to those who believed in higher forces.

In 1989, with the girl scout murders still unsolved, the FBI performed blood and semen tests, but the results were inconclusive. DNA testing, announced in 2008, was similarly disappointing, due to the poor quality of the samples. One girl had told authorities that she’d seen a man in camp that night much taller and heavier than Hart, and like many other who still follow this case, she believes he had an accomplice who got away with murder. That is, of course, unless the “medicine” has tracked him down.

Top left: Denise Milner
Middle right: Michelle Guse
Bottom left: Lori Farmer

Dr. Katherine Ramsland has a MA in forensic psychology from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a master's degree in clinical psychology, and a Ph.D. in philosophy. She has published thirty-five books, including True Stories of CSI, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers, The Human Predator: A Historical Chronology of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation, The Criminal Mind: A Writers' Guide to Forensic Psychology, and The Forensic Science of CSI. With former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary, she co-authored The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators among Us, with Professor James E. Starrs, A Voice for the Dead, a collection of his cases of historical exhumations, and with Henry C. Lee, The Real World of the Forensic Scientist. She has been translated into ten languages and has published over 900 articles on serial killers, criminology, forensic science, and criminal investigation. She writes a regular feature on historical forensics for The Forensic Examiner (based on her history of Forensic science, Beating the Devil’s Game) and teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University in Pennsylvania. Her most recent book is The Devil’s Dozen: How Cutting Edge Forensics Took Down Twelve Notorious Serial Killers. In addition, she has published biographies of Anne Rice and Dean Koontz and penned three books about penetrating the world of “vampires” (Piercing the Darkness), ghost hunters (Ghost), and the funeral industry (Cemetery Stories).

By Dr. Katherine Ramsland

When I first began writing about forensic science, I noticed how cool forensic history had been during the 19^th century. It was full of tales of new inventions and remarkable cases that were solved when a scientist stepped in. In fact, this was Conan Doyle’s inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. For the most part, these compelling tales have gone unnoticed, aside from the occasional reference or quote, but one short-lived television series tried to incorporate them as plot twists.

As the C.S.I. fad inspired countless crime shows, the USA Network aired one in 2003 that stood out: Peacemakers, starring Tom Berenger as U. S. Marshal Jared Stone, was C.S.I. meets Deadwood. Or, maybe C.S.I. meets Gunsmoke, since it’s much more family-oriented than that, um, colorful Calamity Jane or Al Schweringen. The basic idea for Peacemakers is that a Pinkerton agent trained in forensics at Scotland Yard arrives in the Wild West mining town of Silver City, Colorado, to help investigate a land baron’s murder. It’s the 1880s, and by then we’d had a number of innovations in such areas as toxicology, handwriting examination, microscopy, fingerprints, and photography, so we get to see how these things were initially conceived and applied. (Admittedly, I was disturbed when some of the devices and techniques they used were yet in the future, but I’m probably among the few who noticed.)

Peter O’Meara co-stars as Detective Larimer Finch and Amy Carlson is Katie Owen, the town mortician who gets thrown into the job of medical examiner (although Colorado had no such death investigation system at the time.) The pilot opens with tension between Finch and Stone over the old vs. new ways to investigate. The mayor says that “detectives these days are more like scientists,” which sums up the series.

I’ll admit, the first episode was the most fun as the two investigators were thrown together to work the case—who doesn’t love Berenger? However, Finch has doubts about Pinkerton’s politics, so he decides to remain in town. Once they formed a team, however, the natural tension dissolves. Still, it’s engaging (if you like forensics) to see how Finch introduces the various methods: autopsies, linkage analysis, footprint analysis, toxicology, forensic art, and ballistics. Katie takes an interest in the “new science,” so she allies with Finch. In one episode, they use the latest tools (by 1880 standards) to make a burned letter legible and to determine that victims of a fire had been murdered before the fire was set.

Besides 19^th century inventions, the series also uses plots from famous cases. In one investigation, Stone pours water on the floor to watch it run to where blood would have pooled under the floorboards. This idea came from a famous nineteenth-century case in Paris: Water from a well in the cellar of a restaurant had made several customers ill, and an investigation located a fabric package that contained a decomposing male leg. Detective Gustave Macé then pulled a second leg from the well, also wrapped in fabric. He learned about a man who’d wandered around with smelly packages and believed it had been a tailor name Pierre Voirbo. When the victim was identified, Macé discovered that Voirbo had recently quarreled with him over money, which made Voirbo a prime suspect. Macé went to question Voirbo and noticed that his lodgings had recently been cleaned. The cleaning woman said that Voirbo had done it. Macé was afraid any evidence he might have found there was now lost, but then he realized that the floors were tiled, with alleys between the tiles. He poured water on the floor to see where it ran, and then lifted the tiles in the area where it had pooled. Beneath them was enough blood to indicate that something violent had occurred in that room. Voirbo, who watched the incriminating demonstration, broke down and confessed.

Peacemakers is more than just a whodunit on horseback; the show also deals with difficult topics that forensic scientists face even today: exoneration of the innocent, tunnel vision, domestic abuse and justifiable homicide, racial bias, the credibility of people on society’s fringe, and the rush to judgment by those who wear a badge. It’s sad to realize that we’re still making some of these same mistakes, and this angle brings it home.

The show went off the air after an abbreviated first season, and while some say there’s a DVD, it’s difficult to locate. (Neither Netflix or Blockbuster-online have it.) But the good news it that if you’re interested, you can see full episodes on hulu.com.  I’m not going to say it was the best acting or most compelling plots; in fact, the episodes are fairly predictable, and they can drag at times. But Peacemakers is unique among the many forensic investigation series in that it presents historical forensics in a unique context, offering a sense of authenticity as well as highlighting the struggle to change old ways and trust new ideas.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland has a MA in forensic psychology from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a master's degree in clinical psychology, and a Ph.D. in philosophy. She has published thirty-five books, including True Stories of CSI, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers, The Human Predator: A Historical Chronology of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation, The Criminal Mind: A Writers' Guide to Forensic Psychology, and The Forensic Science of CSI. With former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary, she co-authored The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators among Us, with Professor James E. Starrs, A Voice for the Dead, a collection of his cases of historical exhumations, and with Henry C. Lee, The Real World of the Forensic Scientist. She has been translated into ten languages and has published over 900 articles on serial killers, criminology, forensic science, and criminal investigation. She writes a regular feature on historical forensics for The Forensic Examiner (based on her history of Forensic science, Beating the Devil’s Game) and teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University in Pennsylvania. Her most recent book is The Devil’s Dozen: How Cutting Edge Forensics Took Down Twelve Notorious Serial Killers. In addition, she has published biographies of Anne Rice and Dean Koontz and penned three books about penetrating the world of “vampires” (Piercing the Darkness), ghost hunters (Ghost), and the funeral industry (Cemetery Stories).

Recently, a network reporter asked me about members of the vampire subculture and we looked up and down the street “to see if any vampires were nearby.” I had to smile. For all we knew, it was the camera guy or the young woman keeping notes. Maybe it was the reporter. It’s not as if there’s a clear signal, like picking a mime out of a crowd, but many people believe there is.

I’m often asked if I can spot a vampire. Likewise, I’m often asked if I can spot a psychopath. These questions are related because my experience with both populations has shown me this: the clever ones avoid detection. Vampires, like psychopaths, can best feed off others by moving with the crowd. It’s tactical. They know that if they stand out, they’re less likely to get what they’re after.

There’s a lot of interest these days in both subjects, and with Internet access to the Psychopathy Checklist by means of which psychopaths are diagnosed, plenty of people think they can identify a psychopath on sight. In fact, certain TV anchors do it pretty often. But they probably don’t know what they’re talking about any more than when they ID some skinny, pale kid who dresses “Goth” as a vampire. Truthfully, such assessments are superficial and often based in silly stereotypes. While we’ve seen plenty of exhibitionists who claim to be vampires, as well as needy narcissists who publicly strut their stuff, in fact skillful members of either group can fool even the experts.

The smart ones stay hidden. They might not get on some realty show or write a book about how evil they are, but they usually gain in more productive ways. If they remain under the radar, they can extend their manipulations for longer periods—perhaps indefinitely—and tap out quite a large range of victims.

Gary Ridgway was ordinary, yet he managed to murder at least 48 women over two decades; Dennis Rader was a husband, father, and church leader with an ordinary demeanor. He tortured and killed for nearly three decades. (He made his mistake when his narcissism caused him to publicly act out.)

And speaking of vampires, think about the remorseless CEOs who have fed off so many people’s resources to enrich themselves before the economy collapsed. (See American Casino, The Corporation, or Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room if you don’t believe me.) They were most successful when no one suspected them. In fact, many of their colleagues encouraged and enabled their swindling ways, taking delight in victimizing others. Vampires of any stripe who wish to feed for a long time and from many people benefit from dressing normally, acting normally, and having no need to be noticed. They don’t want attention; they want the goods.

I most enjoy vampire tales in which the vampire “passes” as one of us –no red eyes, no flamboyant garb, no obvious fangs—because they offer a solid metaphor of how a clever psychopath operates. In The Science of Vampires, I devoted a chapter to what I called psychological vampires (as opposed to psychic vampires). These people con, manipulate, and deplete us without remorse, and usually with ease. They are seducers, white collar criminals, swindling business partners, and even the predatory serial killers who know how to play us with charm, promises, pseudo-intimacy, and false excuses. They can only succeed as vampires if we believe they’re trustworthy, genuine, honest, and without guile. Thus, they must seem normal, not different. They go to great lengths to mimic normal relationships before they make their move. Then when they take everything and leave, we’re left in a daze, depleted and wondering what happened. How did we not see who they were? How could they so easily have duped us?

That’s why the most clever vampires blend in; they can more easily lull us into surrendering everything.

So, the answer is, yes, you can spot a vampire or a psychopath –at least, the ones who want to be noticed--but they won’t be successful predators like the ones who remain in the shadows. Often, they’re closer than you think.

By Dr. Katherine Ramsland

This week, my latest book will be released. It’s called Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers which pretty much explains the content. Many people think healthcare serial killers (HCSKs) are all alike, but that’s not the case. Whenever I give my undergraduate students a choice about whether I should talk about doctors and nurses who intentionally kill patients vs. some other type of killer, they inevitably pick anything else. Like them, few people realize just how unusual - and fascinating - some of these killers are. They’re not mercy killers, although most claim to be. They generally have other motives, and they’re among the few types of serial killer for whom we can actually do a fairly accurate risk assessment. In retrospect, the red flags were all there. Among the strangest is Dr. Michael Swango (pictured above), who pled guilty to several counts of murder in 2000, although we may never know how many people he actually killed. Now here’s a guy who...

...during medical school and an internship, avidly collected stories about car accidents, deliberately poisoned coworkers, and openly admired Henry Lee Lucas, who he believed had wandered the country killing without consequence. Ted Bundy and Jim Jones were among Swango’s heroes, as was James Huberty, who slaughtered customers at a McDonald’s in 1984. Swango once told a female paramedic he’d like to plunge a hatchet into her head and to other colleagues he revealed a violent fantasy: he wanted to rush to the scene of an accident involving a school bus and a truck filled with gasoline. Another bus would slam into the truck, causing an explosion that sent kids' bodies flying. Nothing excited him more, except perhaps to tell families of patients that their loved one was dead. For him, that was truly erotic. A few people saw the warning signs, but most of Swango’s superiors did not. They kept ignoring the obvious and when Swango finally managed to work on patients as a doctor, a number of them died. He wasn’t called Double-O Swango for nothing – he had a license to kill.

Like many HCSKs, Swango succeeded by moving on from one facility to another, and even going overseas. It was in Zimbabwe that one of the most bizarre stories emerged about him, as recorded in James Stewart’s excellent true crime narrative, Blind Eye. (It was also in Zimbabwe where his killing career was finally stopped.) He rented a room in a house that provided meals and every morning he demanded the same breakfast: two eggs, four slices of toast, and a kilogram of fried bacon. Time passed and one day a servant went into Swango’s room. On a closet shelf she found dozens of neatly wrapped bacon sandwiches piled on top of one another, and in a drawer there were more. He hadn’t been eating all this bacon and bread, he’d been hoarding it – without refrigeration. Bizarre, but interesting, and very likely related to his desire to kill. I find facts like this to be so revelatory of how these offenders develop.

The cases of known HCSKs have increased over the past decade and each one has its own peculiar stamp. Although it was my editor who suggested that I write the book, I found it a subject worthy of analysis - and disturbing as well – and my hope is that what emerged from my study will help make our healthcare facilities safer. At the very least, if my collection of cases is taken seriously, someone who poisons associates and fantasizes about dead kids won’t just be ignored or encouraged to work elsewhere.

As the O. J. Simpson trial heated up, the defense team debated over presenting the evidence. Each lawyer wondered how the jury would process complicated information like blood analysis, but it was DNA expert Barry Scheck who had an idea that shifted the strategy. Based on what he said, lead attorney Johnnie Cochran, quickly changed his strategy and constructed a case that resulted in one of the most controversial verdicts in legal history - in his favor.

Thus far on this blog, we’ve talked about cases and issues but have said little about how writers try to make nonfiction true crime compelling. So I’ll offer some of my own ideas.

But first I’ll give up the goods. Scheck knew what effective writers know: Jurors transform testimony into a story that makes sense to them. As they listen to evidence, they build a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, and then absorb all subsequent information through it. Thus, he said, the key to winning a case is to tell a solid story.

Truman Capote is often credited, for better or worse, with being the founding father of what he called "the nonfiction novel," subsequently dubbed "the new journalism" and currently known as creative or narrative nonfiction. He investigated the 1959 mass murder of the Clutter family in a small town in Kansas, but rather than tell it as journalists were doing, listing the names and facts, he transformed it into a story, as if he were writing a novel. He aimed for "a narrative form that employed all the techniques of fictional art, but was nevertheless immaculately factual." In other words, he made the reader feel it rather than just know about it.

There are many writing devices that assist in this process, but among the three most important are the hook, the scene, and character development.

First, the hook. The first line, paragraph, and page should lure readers and thrust them right into the tale. When I wrote an undercover expose of the vampire subculture in America, Piercing the Darkness, I started with a potential crime: New York reporter Susan Walsh was investigating "vampire cults" during the 1990s when she inexplicably disappeared. I combined the hint of violence, the mystery, and the edgy image of the vampire to construct the initial hook. But it was also about me, an ordinary person, going into a vampire club after hours to ask around.

As soon as the hook is set, the first scene should be in motion, for drama and pace. Let's return to Capote's strategy: Capote went through records and interviewed people so he could reconstruct what it would have been like to walk into the silent Clutter home, to sense that something happened there, and then to come upon the bodies, one by one. You, the reader, “see” a dead body, you’re shocked, and you wonder about the other family members. So you keep going.

Capote provided a full description of the house, the eerie atmosphere, the family, the fear that various people felt as they went slowly from room to room, as well as their disgust over what the killers had done. Capote conveyed an effect by showing rather than telling. He situated readers in a time and place, so they could feel the moment as if they were there, too.

Scenes generally involve setting, dialogue, a feeling tone (suspense, conflict, resolution), deepening of character, and information. It should advance the story while keeping readers fully involved. Scenes are the building blocks, and when vividly presented, move the narrative as well as imprint the tale in the reader's mind for a long time afterward.

The best part of scene, I think, is character. Stories are about whom something happens to and who else is a player, and all need to have personality dimensions, not just the status of populating a scene. I once worked with a woman writing her memoir who wanted to talk about a meeting with a national leader, but all she could say about him was that he was "nice" and wore a brown suit. She recalled nothing else, so on the page he was lifeless, faceless, and without character, and there was no way to bring the scene to life. To develop characters, you need to know the finest nuances about their physical appearance, as well as the ways in which who they are shows on them---in their posture, the way they dress, the lines in their faces, and the kind of jokes they tell. External and internal elements should be interrelated.

I’ve written about a fifteen-year-old Catholic school girl with a heroin addiction who goaded three boys to bludgeon another boy to death so they could steal his money for dope. After they were all arrested, she pretended she was just a girl who hadn’t realized what they were doing, even as she wrote letters to the boys in jail about the ease of manipulating attorneys. She told two of the boys she wanted to have his baby and praised the third for his sexual prowess. Then she made a deal for herself and betrayed them all in court. That’s a little better than a nice man in a brown suit, eh?

As much as possible, put the person into some kind of action that will further draw out his or her character. In Cemetery Stories, my book about people associated with graveyards, I met a woman who said that she often had personal encounters with the figure of death – even sexual ones. She lived in a purple and black house in New Orleans, and was tall and thin and only wore black. She offered layers of character, so rather than just sit and interview her I invited her to accompany me to a cemetery, where I wanted to see a religious relic hanging in a vault that reportedly healed people. Not only did I have an interesting setting but walking among the aboveground monuments of the decadent city of New Orleans with this woman drew forth more from Death’s lover than a Q&A session might have done. (She did invite me to meet Death, for which she had a gruesome after dark ritual, but, well…that’s another story.)

By Dr. Katherine Ramsland

I’m often asked about the difference between a psychopath and sociopath, and it’s difficult to respond because the answer is complex. Many people mistakenly believe the two terms are interchangeable, which is no surprise since both politics and religion have influenced the long evolution of the concept of psychopathy. Thus, I’m using my first blog to discuss why we haven’t settled on a single name for a certain type of personality disorder that most true crime writers eventually encounter.

While psychopathy was the first personality disorder that psychiatry formally recognized, it wasn't easy to crystallize a workable concept for analysis. Pinel, a French psychiatrist, used a phrase during the early 1800s that translated as “mania without madness.” He described impulsive people whose actions had negative consequences for themselves and others, yet they were fully aware of what they were doing. It was a mystery.

In America, Benjamin Rush designated the same behavior as "moral derangement" and observed that such people developed socially disruptive behavior early in life. In his opinion, they were more bad than ill. An English physician, calling it "moral insanity," viewed psychopathy as an emotional disorder.

The term, psychopath, first showed up in Germany, during the latter part of the 19th century, but it included biological disorders, and by the early part of the twentieth century, “constitutional psychopathic inferiority” had become a catchall term for most mental and physical defects. Then brain damage and physiological conditions were placed in a different medical category.

The next step was to remove ‘constitutional’ from the classification, leaving the unworkably broad ‘psychopathic personality’ with no diagnostic criteria: it was for those people who were not psychotic or neurotic but who caused distress in the community.

More psychiatrists worked out ways to refine the concept, but it wasn’t until 1941 that the notion of a psychopath was ably crystallized. Hervey Cleckley published The Mask of Sanity, in which he offered 16 criteria for diagnosis, including hot-headed, manipulative, irresponsible, self-centered, shallow, lacking in empathy or anxiety, and likely to commit more types of crimes than other offenders. They are also more violent, more likely to recidivate, and less likely to respond to treatment.

Now, what about the sociopath? As the concept of psychopathy continued to evolve, in psychiatric circles, diagnosis replaced a combination of traits and behaviors with just behaviors. To reflect this different emphasis, some older concepts were renamed. In 1952, in the psychiatric nomenclature, the word ‘psychopath’ was officially replaced with ‘sociopathic personality,’ and both terms were often used interchangeably under the heading of ‘personality disorder.’ Then with the second edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II) in 1968, ‘sociopathic personality’ yielded to ‘personality disorder, antisocial type.’

Twelve years later, the DSM-III introduced a list of explicit criteria for people we'd long viewed as psychopaths, but calling it "Antisocial Personality Disorder" (ASPD). The criteria emphasized the violation of social norms rather than personality traits, and many researchers were dissatisfied with this approach because it had no diagnostic utility.

During the seventies, some researchers ignored the DSM and devised better diagnostic assessment tools for the traditional notion of a psychopath, as Cleckley had viewed it. Robert Hare and his colleagues in Canada devised the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R), with 20 items covering both traits and behaviors. Yet most mental health professionals in the U.S. stuck with the DSM, as if ASPD meant the same thing. But it didn’t.

ASPD is a broader category, inclusive of people who would not qualify on the PCL-R as psychopaths, and while some psychopaths might also be diagnosable as ASPD, it would not apply to all people diagnosable as psychopaths. Thus, the terms refer to overlapping but nevertheless different categories of people. (Try saying all of that five times, fast.)

Researchers who used the traditional concept viewed psychopathy as a disorder characterized by such traits as lack of remorse or empathy, shallow emotions, manipulativeness, lying, egocentricity, glibness, low frustration tolerance, episodic relationships, parasitic lifestyle, and the persistent violation of social norms. According to Robert Hare, “Psychopathy is one of the best validated constructs in the realm of psychopathology."

Without getting into the politics surrounding the different diagnostic systems, people who were unaware of the need for precision and accuracy for research and assessment adopted a preference for using either ‘psychopath’ or ‘sociopath’ and came up with their own workable definitions. In other words, things got a little sloppy. I’ve even seen professionals use the term 'sociopath' but rely on the criteria specific to the concept of a psychopath. However, for researchers in psychopathy, ‘sociopath’ has a different connotation.

Which brings me back to the original question: the difference between a psychopath and sociopath. If you subscribe to the Hare criteria for a psychopath, then you see the conning, manipulative narcissistic liar and user as a psychopath, as long as he or she is completely lacking in remorse or empathy. The sociopath, however, is capable of guilt, caring, building relationships, etc., but only within a certain context. He or she will have loyalties to a specific group but not to society at large. They care nothing for social norms and will break them with impunity if it serves their purpose. So, on the surface, they may resemble psychopaths. However, they might genuinely feel remorse over harming someone within their group or family. They will have a moral code specific to that context: they might not lie, exploit, or manipulate within the group. Thus, they exhibit psychopathic behaviors in certain contexts but not all.

See? I warned you the answer was complex. Does it really matter? In a practical sense, yes. The PCL-R has been proven to be the best predictor of repeat behavior in criminal populations, and the best predictor of future criminal diversity and brutality. For those who are working with (or writing about) this type of person, grasping their motivational construct can be crucial to understanding what they’re all about…and what they might do in the future. As far as I know, there is no equivalent diagnostic tool for a sociopath.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland has a MA in forensic psychology from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a master's degree in clinical psychology, and a Ph.D. in philosophy. She has published thirty-five books, including True Stories of CSI, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers, The Human Predator: A Historical Chronology of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation, The Criminal Mind: A Writers' Guide to Forensic Psychology, and The Forensic Science of CSI. With former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary, she co-authored The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators among Us, with Professor James E. Starrs, A Voice for the Dead, a collection of his cases of historical exhumations, and with Henry C. Lee, The Real World of the Forensic Scientist. She has been translated into ten languages and has published over 900 articles on serial killers, criminology, forensic science, and criminal investigation. She writes a regular feature on historical forensics for The Forensic Examiner (based on her history of Forensic science, Beating the Devil’s Game) and teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University in Pennsylvania. Her most recent book is The Devil’s Dozen: How Cutting Edge Forensics Took Down Twelve Notorious Serial Killers. In addition, she has published biographies of Anne Rice and Dean Koontz and penned three books about penetrating the world of “vampires” (Piercing the Darkness), ghost hunters (Ghost), and the funeral industry (Cemetery Stories).