Last month Dr. Liane Leedom wrote an article called Fred Brito: A con artist profiled by Dateline. Dr. Leedom's observations about the Dateline story were: Fred fooled many people who should have known better Fred fits the profile of a sociopath Fred projects positive energy that is nearly euphoric Fred has an enormous sense of entitlement Fred sought the company of high-status individuals Fred doesn't appear to have a love life Dr. Leedom's comments about Fred strike me as being fairly mild. They aren't the type of comments that a man who agreed to be interviewed by a national investigative television show, or someone who is running for state senator in New Mexico, …
Book review: Win Your Child Custody War
Lovefraud receives many e-mails and phone calls from parents who are in child custody disputes with sociopathic ex-partners. If this is you, you are desperate for help and advice. Personally, I think these are the most tragic cases involving sociopaths. Sociopaths are incapable of loving anyone, including their children. Children, therefore, are pawns in their game, and the game is to torture you. In the worst cases, the game is also to turn your child into a Mini Me, a budding sociopath. To make matters worse, sociopaths are capable of putting on such convincing appearances—smoothly blending partial truth with lies and accusations—that judges frequently believe them. Sociopaths also ma …
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: This is not love, but poison
Editor's note: The following letter was sent by a reader to Lovefraud. It is posted with the permission of the author. After dating Charles for a year (“the four seasons” — a term he used often in our relationship and his simultaneous relationship with Sue, it was the marker of when we would marry), I got the answer I was looking for. I had added “Family Locator Service” to my cell phone, placed my extra phone is his car and waited until 4 a.m. to have the nerve to do the fatal search. There it was in black and white — my worst fears are true. He was living with another woman. Her name is Sue, widow and mother of two children almost the same age as my own. Another family in the making less …
Gambling with a sociopath
Over the last 30 years, the United States has seen an explosion of legalized gambling. Slot machines, blackjack tables and lotteries are a growth industry. Casinos are flourishing not far from me; I could be there every day if I wanted to. But I don't go. I'm not a gambler. Still, I know how gamblers feel because I was with a sociopath. It didn't take long for ex-husband, James Montgomery, to start taking money from me. He called his first suggestion that I give him $5,000 an "investment opportunity." Subsequent requests were described as "building our future together." Then I shouldn't worry about putting expenses on my credit cards because he would "pay everything off when the projects …
Sociopaths, psychopaths–just call them evil
Medical and mental health professionals have differing views and opinions about the personality disorders that are the topic of Lovefraud—sociopathy, psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. You could also include narcissism and borderline personality disorder. There is disagreement among professionals about how the disorders should be defined, what causes them, and what can be done about them. As an example, take a look at a recent post along with the comments: ASK DR. LEEDOM: Is there a gender bias against men in the diagnosis of sociopathy? No matter what discussions are raging in the professional world, here is what the rest of us need to know: There are evil people among u …
Fake doctor Jeffrey Marsalis acquitted of date rape
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has been transfixed in recent weeks by the trial of Jeffrey Marsalis, 34, who was accused of raping seven women. After five days of deliberations, a jury acquitted Marsalis of 24 counts of rape, and could not reach a verdict on one charge of rape by forcible compulsion. They did convict him of two counts of sexual assault. He could be sentenced to as many as 20 years in prison. Met on Match.com Marsalis met six of the women—all of them professionals—on Match.com. He told them he was a doctor. In fact, he walked the floors of Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia wearing scrubs and a lab coat. He had hospital ID badges and carried a stethoscope. His former fia …
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Is Tony Soprano a sociopath?
Tonight, in the final episode of the HBO series The Sopranos, we find out what happens to Tony. Will he get whacked? Will he escape? Will he go into the federal witness protection program? As a prelude, last week's episode, called The Blue Comet, showed Tony as a man alone, losing his family, friends and even his psychiatrist. Early in the show, Tony's shrink, Dr. Jennifer Melfi, is at a dinner party with other mental health professionals, including her own shrink, Dr. Elliot Kupfenberg. The conversation turns to sociopaths: Doctor #1: I Googled stuff on sociopathic personalities. Apparently the talking cure actually helps them become better criminals. It was fascinating. The study was …
How to find out if someone is truly military
My ex-husband, James Montgomery, told me he had earned the Victoria Cross, Australia's highest military honor, for his heroism during the Vietnam War. He said he continued his military service for 30 years, as an Australian attached to American Special Operations, including Navy SEALS. He said he became an intelligence analyst for the Special Operations Command and the National Security Agency. I saw the reports that he wrote about Islamic terrorists. Montgomery was the keynote speaker at a New Jersey Veterans Day ceremony in 1995. His photo, standing at the podium in a camouflage uniform and Special Forces beret, appeared in the newspaper. In 1996 and 1997, I accompanied him to a local …
Anthony Owens has 8 wives, tries for 4 more
"Bishop" Anthony Owens, one of the original Lovefraud case studies, was back in the news last week. Perhaps you remember Bishop Owens. He married eight women, and divorced none of them. His last wife found out about his multiple marriages and turned him into the police. Owens was convicted of one count of bigamy and spent 17 months in prison. He was paroled in November 2005. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Owens is back in jail because he violated his probation. He left the state of Georgia to re-establish his traveling ministry. And while he was traveling, he was proposing to more women. The newspaper reported that at least four women claim Owens has proposed to them …
Optical illusions: autostereograms and sociopaths
Editor's note: The following essay was contributed to Lovefraud by Kenneth Royce at www.javelinpress.com. Ken discovered that a "friend" was a pathological liar, serial thief and con artist. "Though he made off with over $10,000 of my property in a very complicated scam," Ken says, "it's had the ironic benefit of outing him for the sociopath he is, and thus warning many other unsuspecting people." Autostereograms produce an illusion of depth using only a single image. The image is usually generated by computer, by repeating a narrow pattern from left to right. By decoupling eye convergence from focusing operations, a viewer is able to trick the brain into seeing a 3D scene. How to see …