Sociopaths do not change. As living proof, consider the case of Theodore Sypnier.
Sypnier is a convicted child molester. He is 100 years old. He is about to be paroled, and the city of Buffalo, New York, is on edge. According to an article by the Associated Press:
“Whether he’s 100 or 101 or 105, the same person that was committing these crimes 10, 25, 30 years ago still exists today and has an unrepentant heart,” said the Rev. Terry King, director of Grace House, which has twice taken Sypnier in from prison. “He is someone that we as parents, as members of the community, any community, really need to fear.”
The incident that landed him in jail took place in 1999, when Sypnier was 90 years old. He was babysitting two girls—portraying himself as a friendly grandpa—and he molested them. The girls were ages four and seven at the time.
Even though he pleaded guilty—twice—Sypnier claims his case was a miscarriage of justice. “Those children crawled into bed with me because they were frightened, but there was never any sexual hanky-panky,” he told the Buffalo News.
Yeah, right.
This wasn’t Sypnier’s first arrest. In 1987, he was given three years’ probation for sex abuse—he was 78 years old then. In 1994, at the age of 85, he spent a year in prison for sexually abusing a minor. Who knows what he got away with during his life—his daughter came forward and said he abused her as she was growing up.
The former Erie County District Attorney, Frank J. Clark, said that as long as Sypnier “can walk and talk, he remains a threat.”
Here is more information about the case:
Oldest sex offender about to be freed here, in the Buffalo News.
100-year-old N.Y. child molester to be freed, on Msnbc.com.
For more eye-popping stories, take a look at the Parents for Megan’s Law website page on Senior Sex Offenders.
Sociopaths do not change
Some researchers and mental health professionals have said that sociopaths may “improve” with age. Do not take this as a reason to hope. A more accurate description may be that senior sociopaths no longer have the energy to pull off the stunts that they did in their youth, or they may not have the stamina to be violent. But they do not change.
I’ve received several e-mails from Lovefraud readers describing sociopathic women, now well beyond “a certain age,” who are as mean and manipulative as ever. Several sociopathic women plotted to pit their children against each other. One woman is swindling friends to obtain a free place to live. Another, after her husband’s death, played the sweet, bereaved widow so she could quickly move on to the next meal ticket.
A few months ago, I heard that my ex-husband, who is now 68, is still trying to find sugar mommas on the Internet. He talks a good game, and writes convincing e-mails. But when it comes time to close the deal, to try to convince a woman that they really were meant for each other, and they’ve been waiting all their lives for each other, all he can do is fall asleep on the couch.
It seems that the only way these people will stop is if they suffer a debilitating stroke. As long as a sociopath can talk or communicate in any way, he or she will continue to manipulate.
It is amazing to me that neither the “media” nor most law enforcement, social agencies or the public doesn’t seem to “get it” that sociopaths do not reform simply by getting older, especially the ones that have been in prison for violent and/or sexual crimes.
My opinion is that ALL sexual offenders, pedophiles and rapists are psychopaths, there is an almost zero “reform rate” in sexual offenders, even the ones that have literally been castrated (RAPIST Wayne Dumond, who was released by Gov. Huckabee of Arkansas as a “humanitarian” gesture because before his arrest citizens had caught and literally castrated this man) went on to rape again and this time, he killed the victim–before he had been out a year)
Huckabee also released the guy who killed the 4 cops AND molested a child up in Washington State recently, in fact, he released either by putting pressure on the parole board or clemency, over 1,000 convicted felons, waaaay over the number by any other governor. Many of his “compassionate” releases quickly returned to crime. This is only the ones that made the NATIONAL NEWS because of the nature of the offenses.
Psychopaths can NOT be “rehabilitated” and are the highest percentages of recidivism, and the highest percentages of the violent and sexual crimes, so if this 20% of the criminals were kept in prison on a 3-strikes you go to prison for life policy, society would have in the neighborhood of 60-70% less violent crime in short order.
I saw a 48 hours Mystery show the other night were a couple and an expatriot American STOLE over 100 kids from Samoan families and for lmoney, got American couples to adopt them. One parent got suspicious and found out the truth that his adopted daughter and these others were KIDNAPPED BY DECEPTION from their families, and one samoan child even died from STARVATION while in the custody of the “Nanny House” which many of the children said was VERY abusive to the children, and the federal government even with AL:L THE EVIDENCE AGAINST THESE PEOPLE (I would think psychopaths to do what they did) they plea bargained 100 counts of kidnapping, etc. and fraud down to MISDAMEANORS and they got 5 years probation and a $100K fine which they will probably never pay. The $100K fine, even if they did pay it is onlly $1000 per child kidnapped. Not much to help these children. Some of the Samoan parents still desperately want their children back and the Feds are not getting involved in this so the American parents who are not willing to let their adopted kids get to even know their Samoan parents are still holding these children against the wills of the real parents.
One man actually allowed his daughter to go back to her family, and many others have taken their children to Samoa to meet their biological families and they have sort of an “open adopting” with visits to Samoa though tyhe parents are now willing to let their Americanized children live with their American parents for the better opportunities here.
All around the whole thing was nothing but a kidnap and sell babies and toddlers and these people got PROBATION and got to keep the BULK of the “ransoms.” Kind of makes you mad doesn’t it?
Donna:
I’m not sure a stroke stops them either. The New York POst recently ran an article about a conwoman, aged 78. She has been in and out of jail most of her life. During her most recent incarceration, she developed some kind of brain infection which has supposedly left her paralyzed, incontinent and unable to communicate.
Last week she was being arraigned for yet some other crime. Her boyfriend drove her to the courthouse, but said she couldn’t get into the courtroom. The judge is obviously smart enough to have figured her out. He said that since she refused to appear in his court, he was issuing a bench warrant for her arrest. And he did.
great post. Educational. I never even wondered about them years on…you quote an e-mail saying:
A few months ago, I heard that my ex-husband, who is now 68, is still trying to find sugar mommas on the Internet. He talks a good game, and writes convincing e-mails. But when it comes time to close the deal, to try to convince a woman that they really were meant for each other, and they’ve been waiting all their lives for each other, all he can do is fall asleep on the couch.
That really sums it up for me. I have no doubt that is what the P that robbed me was doing, is doing and he was even showing signs of getting tired of it. Any passion he has goes into the act, like shift work they lie energetically for as long as they can until the cracks appear….sugar momma, that was me!
Did you guys hear on the news last night about the 98 year old woman in MASS. arrested for murdering her 100 yr old room mate, by putting a plastic bag over her head and then strangling/suffocating her? People can be violent at ANY age! P or not. May, of course have been some dementia involved in that case, but who knows.
ps–above post. My son cracked that “holding her in jail over night might be a LIFE SENTENCE.”
A 100-year-old child molester……that’s quite a legacy.
Shall we put that on the tombstone?
He’s 100 years old, because even God doesn’t want him.
I noted that even with alzheimer’s in one case, and dementia in the other, my elderly parents or parents in law core personality remained the same. One was a gracious hostess to the end, graciously introducing me to people though she wasn’t certain who I was or even who she was or who they were. The other was still telling lies, claiming to be playing the piano when it was obvious she had no strength in her hands to do that. and worse stuff than that as well.
Back when I was working with my professional genealogist friend we used to keep a scrap book of FUNNY things we found in old records, and some of them were people’s great grandpa’s being prosecuted for SEX WITH ANIMALS. The way the prosecutions were worded itself was a SCREAM, and how would you like to be researching your ancestors 4-5-6 generations back adn find out that one of them was that 100 yr old PERVERT!
My friend and I started a “tongue in cheek” “Association” called the DAB (daughters of American bastards) and to join you had to have an ancestor that was a bastard of some kind and that could be an out of wed lock marriage birth, or an “attorney” or a “televangelist” or some con man, convict or otherwise a crook. All you had to do to “join” was send us proof of your “bastard” ancestor and $5,000 and we would let you “join” our group. If you had TWO of such ancestors you could send us proof of that and $10,000 dollars and we would give you a red sash to wear at “conventions” and if you had 3 or more qualifying bastard ancestors you could pay $15,000 and get a RED FEZ and got to sit on the PODIUM at conventions and wear your red sash of course! She and I figured with the ancestors we had discovered for ourselves that we KNEW about that would QUALIFY us we could have 10-15 such qualifying ancestors EACH. LOL ROTFLMAO I found a counterfitter, a bigomist (actually my great grand father) a murderer P, my sperm donor, a couple of moonshiners, my psychopathic grandmother, my other psychopthic gggf, and so on! We never could get anyone else to “join” much less send in their initiation “fee” LOL But she did have one client that we found her ancestor had been hanged.
The woman listed “cause of death” as FELL FROM A PUBLIC BUILDING without mentioning it was a SCAFFOLD! LOL
It is amazing how a lot of people want to trace their family trees and find all these ROYAL and SUCCESSFUL ancestors, when, in fact, most of us have more of the NOT so successful, crooks or drunks in our back ground than “royalty.” I have one whole line that I can trace back to a man born in 1800 and about every descendant of this man to this day is disordered. He was murdered in 1860 by someone who I guess had had enough of his violence. The family stories vary on WHO murdered him. There were a great number of suspects at the time, but no one was ever convicted. Personally I thinnk it was either his BIL, his wife, or one of his kids, they all had reason to want him dead from the court records I read. 287 hand written pages of it!
JAH, that’s a very good point, though many times male alzhiemers patients do tend to be more violent than females do, but I had an uncle like your aunt, very gracious in younger years and even so in dementia when he no longer knew me.
In Geri-psych though, sometimes it takes the right combination of medications to calm them down if they become violent, but NOT to “gork” them out like used to be done with geri-patients who were violent, but to correct the brain’s deficits so that the “real them” can shine through. I have seen this happen many times, and the patient is still utterly confused, but lives happily in the past, talking to their loved ones, or mistaking you for the loved ones, and very very happy though they don’t have a “brain in their head” where TODAY comes, but happy nonetheless, and to me that is what matters.
I had a patient once in a nursing home who thought she was in a bus station waiting for her husband, as long as you played along with that fantasy, she was completely happy and calm, but if you tried to “correct” her and tell her her husband was dead and she was in a nursing home, she became aggitated and upset and combative. I sometimes think that dementia is God’s way of letting the elderly live in a happy fantasy place and that’ s not always a bad thing. I ithink maybe our eye sight going helps us not be able to focus on our own wrinkles when we look in the mirror. I take mine off before I brush my teeth, I LOOK A LOT YOUNGER that way!!!
OxDrover:
One branch of my family can be traced to the Mayflower. As I always tell people who are impressed with this facet of my lineage “the only difference between my family and yours is that mine was released from prison a little bit earlier.”