Editor’s Note: The author of this piece, Travis Vining, told his story to Lovefraud readers back in 2008. He is the son of a psychopath, and wrote about how confusing it was to know that the man was his father, and also a murderer. Travis’ previous blog articles are listed under “True Lovefraud Stories.”
Travis helped get his father, John Vining, convicted of three murders. The Orlando Sentinel recently published a three-part series of articles about Travis and the murders. You can read the articles here:
Part 1 of 3: In ”˜o4, killer’s son recalled dad admitted to 2 killings
Part 2 of 3: Plan by killer John Vining’s son involves betrayal, lies, audiotape
Part 3 of 3: Search for killer John Vining’s 4th victim ”˜not over’
Since I first wrote for Lovefraud in October of 2008 my life has become a series of extraordinary events and real life miracles as A Witness to Healing. It is astonishing what can happen when we realize that we really are not alone, ask for help and become honest with ourselves and others.
In January of 2010 I was finally able to help cold case detectives solve one final murder that my father committed in 1987. It was his first victim, the one that started it all. After months of “pressure” I was finally able to convince my father, who is still on Florida’s Death Row, to give a written confession that included the location of the body. Although the remains have not yet been recovered, the confession and details about the crime are enough to close the case. I have now been able to bring closure to three unsolved murders that my father committed.
I have also written a book that is soon to be published (Son of Terror—A Confrontation with Evil Reveals the Truth about My Father”¦and Me) and become an inspirational and educational speaker. I speak to dozens of groups a year, detailing my experience with sociopaths and the 17 months when I was my father’s “trusted confidante” as he planned and murdered four people. This journey may have started in hell, but it ended in heaven. My story is really about overcoming life’s tragedies. My hope is that this book will inspire readers to transform their own challenges and tragedy into peace, joy and a deeper understanding of divine wisdom.
In 2009, I was given the opportunity to team up with Toni Furbringer, PhD., a licensed clinical social worker and founder of Heartwork to introduce “Victory Through Peace,” a project dedicated to helping people and families affected by similar devastating relationships and experiences, as well as anyone suffering from addiction, compulsive behavior, depression or trauma. This wonderful relationship and project have turned the liabilities of my childhood and early adult life into one of my greatest assets.
More importantly, I have come in contact with the children of three of my father’s victims and it has been a truly extraordinary experience. It is through these relationships that I am beginning to see true healing, in ways that I never thought possible. These events that have occurred are not by chance and cannot simply be explained away as “coincidences”.
If I use my experience with my father as a measuring stick I should no longer question circumstances in my life or try to label them as “good” or “bad.” Those 17 months with my father looked pretty bad at the time. In fact, it seemed like the end of the world. And today? It’s one of my greatest assets. It is a gift. A gift of experience that seems to provide others who are suffering in life with inspiration, hope and a willingness to believe that all things do work out for the better, maybe even helping them take a step closer to our creator.
If you don’t believe in miracles, imagine this for just a minute. All that evil stuff that my father did in his life is now helping people who are suffering find their way to a higher power that can help them bring meaning, peace and joy into their lives. My father”¦he wanted to harm people and now his story is helping people find the very peace that he tried to destroy. He tried to take life and now his story gives it. This is what happens when we become willing to ask for help, and more importantly, accept that help.
Sharing my experience with sociopaths openly in the right forum and finding others that have had similar experiences was one of the most important steps towards recovery. It helped to teach me about the importance of true forgiveness. That forgiveness led me to a life that is full of peace and happiness. Much of it started with my writing on this site. I am grateful that Donna Andersen provides this forum. It is an extremely useful service for those of us that have had experiences with sociopaths. And for that”¦I am forever grateful.
Travis F. Vining
Skylar
You know, this made me think.
Why is it that we all dodge the obvious issue when spaths LIE to us? So few of us are willing to call them on the carpet. We want to pretend it didn’t happen. We feign ignorance. We pretend it didn’t happen.
Why is that? What is it about US?
What do spaths do when we finally call them on it?
Do they admit? Not react? Deny?
SK,
There might be more to it than this, but right now, I’d say, it’s about social graces.
When I was 17, I wasn’t the most diplomatic person, so when he lied, I just pointed it out. And he raged.
Years later, I remember that I felt embarrassed for him when I thought he was lying. So my choice was either to believe his lies, or else feel embarrassed for him and see him as “less” in my eyes. I chose to believe his wild stories.
It’s not as black and white as that though. In my gut, there was confusion and a WTF? feeling, but since there were no answers, I just ignored it.
People talk about putting two and two together and figuring out the answer is 4, but in my case, I had no concept of 4. Two and two was always just two and two. Nobody told me about spaths.
Sky
Yeah, I do think it is about social graces. We are horrified, so we turn a blind eye to the lies. Even when they’re outrageous. Even when it’s not outrageous, but clearly a lie, and when truth would serve them better.
My spath lied to me all the time and I didn’t call him on it.
I knew. I just didn’t say anything.
We turn a blind eye to the lie to give them grace.
Yet they are affronting us, assaulting us, humiliating us, hurting us with their lies.
Do I have this right?
Sky, I too confronted my spath early on with “STOP LYING TO ME”. He was totally enraged. He blew off work, bought an airline ticket, flew across the country, took a picture of himself at an airport there, texted it to me, and flew back, to “prove” that he wasn’t a liar. Of course, the whole thing just proved that he WAS a liar. But what did I do? I cried. He angrily stomped away. I didn’t know WTF.
Wow Superkid,
if that doesn’t prove he’s a spath, nothing does. The spaths have no limits to what they will do to create and maintain the “reality” of their facade. It’s so important to them to be able to manipulate reality itself. Just like Scott Peck said.
And yes, you do have it right. We take responsibility for their self-esteem as they work desperately to destroy ours.
As much as they seem infantile, there are times when “alien” seems to fit better.
Really? That episode nails him as a spath?
So many pieces of his facade he lets me see behind it – he admits he hides in his basement, he admits he has no friends, he admits he is terrified of human interaction, he admits he’s “empty” in his head, he admits that he finds people ” uninteresting”. He’s roped me into lying for him, once. But he doesn’t really admit to his lies. And I still turn a blind eye.
Teach me, please, why you think this proves he’s a spath?
SK
You said it yourself SK. He lies and lies and won’t admit to them, but then he admits to other stuff. That means he’s lying about what he admits to.
When spaths “admit” to something, it is just about Frame Control. That is, he is trying to create a picture of what he wants you to see and by looking inside the frame, you won’t be looking outside the frame.
He hides in his basement and has no friends. Not true, he has had a job and he had enough interest in his wife and in you and probably other women.
There is a certain truth to being terrified of human interaction IF he’s not in control. That’s what the lies and the frame control are for. If he’s in control, he’s loving it.
It’s like my spath said, “you’d be so easy to poison because you take so many vitamin pills”. That was truth meant to distract from other truth. He was poisoning my food, not my vitamins. But I ignored the whole thing, since I didn’t imagine that he was poisoning either.
I should have known, since I couldn’t eat without my body aching. I thought I had terrible digestive problems….
Sorry I went off on a tangent.
My point is that they are the people of the lie. Your spath jumped on a plane to take a picture of himself across the country. That is desperate FRAME CONTROL.
Can you tell me more about that incident?
Skylar
I hadn’t heard of “Frame control” before but it’s an interesting concept. He wants me to see him as a person with anxiety problems. He doesn’t want me to see him as a spath, but he knows I know he is one.
I told him once when I was reading THE MASK OF SANITY he was shocked, and asked me, “what are you doing? investigating me”? As you know I read over 70 books, textbooks, etc about sociopathy and personality disorders. He brings it up ALL the time – that I know him better than “anybody” because I investigated him. Those are his words. He’s thrilled about this.
I think he’s hinting that it’s because I know he’s a spath.
He wants to talk about it – he hints at it – he throws it out there – and then he dodges the ball.
It’s like what your spath did to you, I think, with the poisoning and the vitamins. He threw it out there and dodged it. Right? Aren’t there parallel actions there?
here is what happened. When we met my spath lied to me. He said he was in the military, full time, one level below a colonel.
He said he also worked full time at a bank. He said he took a year off from the bank to be deployed in Iraq. He said he came back, the bank took him back, but he needed to fly to Florida once a month for some training with the Army. He said he took a military flight to get there and back. I offered to come see him off at the airport and he refused.
Over time i realized there was no pattern to these Florida trips – like there wasn’t every third weekend or anything. I also realized that his text messages, while he was there, were extremely terse. “Hot Today” or something. It seemed like he wanted to say as little as possible. I could just sense it. His departure/arrival times made no sense. The whole thing reeked.
Anyway I was at a movie theater on a Sunday, he texted me some bullshit about being in Florida, and I was fed up, I replied “I think you are a pathological liar. Please stop lying to me.”.
Within a few hours, he booked a flight on SW Airlines to fly to Tampa and back the next day. When he got to Tampa he took pictures of himself holding up a Tampa newspaper, by a Tampa flight arrival sign. He texted it to me. Then he flew back to to our home town.
I was horrified. I went to the airport and waited for him for hours to arrivve home. Finally he got off the plane and I saw him in the baggage claim area. He bristled at me and glared at me. I cried. He left.
I don’t know why I cried. I knew the whole scene was bullshit.
I think I felt pity at him for the whole scenario and I didn’t know what to do.
The picture he took of himself and sent to me is posted for public viewing on FLIKR.
So it’s about Frame Control.
Hmmm.
Superkid,
that’s hilarious that he would go to such extreme measures to prove his lies are true. Furthermore, there is nothing he enjoys more. Because in his mind, it kind of IS true. It’s true because he can imagine it to be true, and really what’s the difference? If he can experience it in his head or in reality, there’s no difference. And the more people actually observe this “truth” the more real it is. Their brains are truly discombobulated! 🙂
Have your read the story of Walter Mitty? It’s kinda like that.
My spath loved to set up a con. Creating the scenery was as much a high for him as the actual con.
You can google the words Frame Control, there are con artists who post about it online.
Oh and BTW, could you read the date on the newspaper?
How about the flight arrivals? could you see that they were arriving several hours after the text while you were in the theatre?
No, I will look into Walter Mitty.
I did google frame control. Amazing.
Yes, I actually did check the newspaper dates and articles and I researched flights to Tampa. I made sure. He also texted me pictures of his airline ticket. I checked the flight numbers. He really did it. Which is hilarious.
Sky, thank you, you saved me tonight.
Superkid