Last week Lovefraud posted a new True Lovefraud Story about a con artist named Dennis SanSeverino. The creep pretended to be loving and rich long enough to convince his victim to trust him. Then he took her home and inheritance.
This story is a classic case of a sociopath targeting the vulnerable.
When the victim, Trish Rynn, met SanSeverino, she had just endured a difficult breakup with her boyfriend. In the months that they got to know each other—Rynn initially refused his many dinner invitations—he must have been listening intently as she chatted about her life. Rynn’s ex-husband was physically abusive. After the marriage ended, Rynn spent 10 years in court fighting child custody and child support battles. The strain sent her into clinical depression, from which she was just beginning to recover.
Rynn was vulnerable, and SanSeverino was attracted like a shark to blood in the water.
SanSeverino started taking Rynn’s money—under the guise of helping her, of course. When Rynn found herself in serious debt due to him, she slipped back into depression. That’s when SanSeverino took her house and the rest of her inheritance.
Sad stories made worse
Lovefraud has heard these truly sad stories over and over again: Grief-stricken people who have lost a spouse or a child, and then lose their insurance settlement to a sociopath. Disabled people who are targeted because they get a minimal subsidy from the government. People struggling to care for someone else—like children or elderly parents—who learn that the assistance promised by a sociopath makes their burdens worse.
And then there are the lonely. Anyone who is lonely for any reason is walking target for a sociopath.
Vigilance when vulnerable
It’s sad, really. When we have problems and need help, we want to be able to trust that offers of assistance are real. When we’re looking for companionship, we want to be able to believe that the person pursuing us is sincere.
But the truth is that when we’re vulnerable, we need to be especially vigilant. Sociopaths are predators, and wounded prey make for an easy kill.
My P-biofather used to say “Murder is the easiest crime to get away with unless you are found standing over the body with a smoking gun screaming ‘I did it’ ” I personally know of two individuals he killed, and he claims to have killed more, but he lied so much I was never sure about that. He did get away with both of the murders I knew he did, as there was never any body found and they were done outside of the US.
My P-son, though, and this is one of the unbelievable parts too me anyway, told his victim’s friends he intended to kill her and why (ratting her out) left a party with her (after making the threats) came back to the party with h er purse, her jewelry and said “I killed her.” Well, the next day they arrested him when she had gone “missing.” DUH.
They had no body, but put a jail house stooge in the cell with him, then released the stooge (a cop) and later my P-son called this guy and asked him to move the body, telling the location of it. At that point the cops had a body. Then my P-son called his cousin and asked him to move the gun–DUH, on a monitored jail phone, well, before he hung up the cops had the gun. DUH. He had put it under his bed!
Now this is a kid who scored in the 99th percentile for IQ. But this is just about as bad as the bank robber who wrote the note on the back of his deposit slip with his name and address on it. HOW INCREDIBLY STUPID. Yet,, my son still gloats that his crime was “more horrible than the cops even knew.” SO?!!! Does that make him some sort of criminal genius? Sounds like a retarded thug to me. Yet HE fancies himself some sort of successful con man. Looks down on everyone else in the world, especially the cops, as STUPID. Well, I think I KNOW WHO IS STUPID, regardless of what his IQ score says.
Your comment about my “interesting life” is one that my P-bio father used frequently. It is an old “Chinese Curse” that you “live an INTERESTING LIFE”—of course if your life is boring there is nothing horrible going on, and if it is “interesting” it is because there is trauma, tragedy, war, and chaos etc. The people in the Nazi concentration camps lived “interesting” lives—a good and wonderful and peaceful life is “boring” by contrast. LOL Yes, I have led an INTERESTING LIFE, and now it is time for BORING. LOL
Actually, I’m NOT “bored” by having PEACE in my life. I am now able to concentrate on the wonderful things that chaos and terror prelude you from noticing. The first flower of spring, the SMELL of spring just before the flowers bloom and the trees start budding. I noticed that this year, a SMELL, and I had noticed it in the past and it just said “spring is close” I never really connected to it until this spring when there IS peace here.
I have the luxury now to enjoy the many blessings that I have by living out in the country away from the noise and pollution, to sit and watch my few cows lick their babies as the babies suck their supper just before sundown, to see the care that the cows have for their babies. To see that the older sibs from last year are gentle with their new brothers or sisters when they play with them.To see the family groups of the cattle lie down with each other, to notice the similarity in facial features between the cows and their offspring, although they are the same breed, they all have just as much an individual face as you and I and the babies resemble their mothers.
When you live in chaos and terror, pain and grief, you become so egocentric, so turned inward that you can’t enjoy the simple pleasures of life and the world. You only eat because to not do so would hurt you, and I can’t even remember the number of times I realized I hadn’t eaten in 48 or more hours without even realizing I hadn’t.
How could I have run fevers daily last summer for two months and not realized I was ill? How could I have become so weak I couldn’t walk up a single flight of stairs and not realized something was wrong with me? Because I was so stressed that my touch with reality, my own body was totally overwhelmed by the fear, the grief, the confusion, the chaos of the situation with the Ps.
It was only after I finally realized that my enabling mother was a P-by-proxy for my son that I finally started getting some sanity back into my life, to start to take care of me instead of trying to convince her that my P-son was dangerous, that he was EVIL. Only by stopping trying to convince her, and by stopping trying to reason with her have I been able to gain any ground toward healing.
The “recruits” into their crazy-making, the toxic enablers, are JUST AS TOXIC AS THE Ps themselves. They aren’t “true” Ps in a sense but they FUNCTION as extensions of the Ps. They do the bidding of the Ps almost like robots, and they are convinced without a doubt that YOU are the EVIL one and you are out to hurt their beloved P—and at all costs they must protect the P, even if it means hurting you. The righteousness of their crusade to protect the P keeps them in the FOG.
I have no doubt that my “saintly” mother (to everyone else that knows her) is totally convinced even denying all evidence, that I am the EVIL one and that she must protect my P son from my “unjust punishment” and “revenge” (my trying to keep him in prison) which will keep her from achieving her fondest dream of him coming home before she dies and the two of them living happily ever after.
It is almost like I am the “wife” and she is the OW, protecting him from the property settlement I am trying to get in divorce court. Convinced I am an evil witch. (I just thought about that right now and it really does FIT) If I hadn’t been such an evil “wife” he would still be with me, not her. She is the only one that ever really understood him, cause he said so. GOSH, that FITs so well—-it really doesn’t make any difference with the Ps, the PLOT of their “plays” is ALL THE SAME—just different people playing the “roles” that they write for us. (sigh)
Maybe there is a P-school where they learn to write the scripts for the plays with interchangeable roles. LOL There doesn’t seem to be a lot of variation in the plots.
Your note about the life insurance and him putting you on his policy and wanting you to put him on yours is an interesting ploy. I just watched Empire, on DVD last night, and Anthony gave Octavius a note saying that if anything happened to Antony that his legions would go to Octavos, and of course Octavius did the same, and then of course Anthony tried to kill him, and in the movie (not history) thought he had done so and used that document to seize power.
Sounds like you may have “dodged a bullet” there yourself by not putting him on an insurance policy. One of the almost FATAL mistakes I made was telling my P-son anything about the trust documents. I knew he didn’t “approve” of them, but they apparently concerned him quite a bit, especially when I later told him (again, my mistake in giving him information) that I had cut him out of my will.
When my husband and I had married, we had a good pre-nup because we both had children and we wanted to make sure that our wishes were respected in whatever events came. I was very fortunate in that my step-kids are and were wonderful to me about the estate, but so many times that isn’t the case and at a death the relatives descend like vultures. Our advance estate planning, the pre nup etc. was very wise. I would advise anyone who contemplates marriage or living together have something in WRITING that takes into account death, divorce etc. As well as a will and/or a trust. Even if you think you don’t “have very much”–you’d be surprised what people will do for ANYTHING.
Sounds like your S was definitely DANGEROUS. Many of them are, and not only the ones in prison. Not all of them are as STUPID and arrogant as mine was….but sometimes like with Scot Peterson, the law does catch them. I am hoping that Drew Peterson (several wives dead or missing) gets his too. I have a feeling sooner or later the law will get him.
Used Brauer–sounds like you and Peggy are talking about the same man!
Yes, it is scary when you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The toxic enablers in the family helping out the poor P—
HALLOWEEN PARTIES! Sounds like Scot Peterson or OJ type behavior. Not even a “good fake” of emotions, and yet he gets away with it.
Sounds like he may have forced her to swallow the pills but used a gun just to be sure. Women, by the way SELDOM shoot themselves in the head as a way of suicide. The pills overdose might be a logical way for a woman to commit suicide as they perceive it as painless and not disfiguring, but the pills AND the gun? Sounds suspicious to me.
His confronting her at work with the e mails, and grossly humiliating her MIGHT provoke a woman already stressed out to commit suicide with the pills, but not the way it happened I would think. I’m paranoid, I know, but sounds too fishy to me. Just doesn’t compute.
OxDrover- Peggy and I could very well BE talking about the same man! Nothing surprises me anymore.
It’s good to hear that someone else thinks the story is fishy too. I have thought about going to the police and asking them to re-investigate but his semi-wealthy family is well known in that city and I’m sure they’d all dismiss me as just a vindictive ex-wife. The suicide happened on Halloween, 1997.
This is a big dose of reality. When I read these stories, I can easily see how the sociopath can commit murder or commit “murder by suicide”. My ex immediately tried to cut off all of my resources by blind-sighting me. It’s the shock factor. They try to assume all the power by cutting off money and resources, essentially cutting off your ability to survive as quickly as possible ”“ just like a killer.
Brauer,
That is what is so hard to grasp for so many people is that these people ARE capable of cold blooded murder in order to get revenge or to get what they want, or to get an “inconvenient” pregnant wife out of the picture–Scot Peterson–why not just get a divorce? I mean, that makes sense to me and you? But they want to “appear” good so instead of appearing “bad” and divorcing their pregnant wife, they KILL HER. I sit here shaking my head, realizing that what I am saying is true, yet I have so much difficult really comprehending how they think. How they “reason” and what “reasons” make sense to them that are not apparent to us.
Because most ordinary people have never really “known” a psychopath up close and personal (or if they did, they didn’t really realize WHAT IT WAS) it is so difficult for ordinary people to think that “that could ever happen in OURfamily”
I am a big reader and trade books back and forth with some of my friends, and a couple of them and I started reading these “true crime” stories of people murdering their family members, etc. I realize some of these books are “sensationalized” for shock value, but jimminie Christmas, the lengths to which people will GO for money, pride, revenge,or just to get rid of an inconvenient spouse is unbelievable, and these are “ordinary” folks. Look at the guy in Kansas who was an “ordinary” guy yet he killed raped and tortured for DECADES before he was caught.
I knew a horrible child molester years ago when I lived in a small town of 3,000 east of Little Rock. His name is Charles “Jackie” Walls III (you can look him up on google or see his photo on the Arkansas prison inmates site) and he had molested 1500+ boys during his years as a Scout Leader in the Boy Scouts of America. His father is a very close friend of our family’s. I knew Jackie was a jackass and I didn’t like him, but never NEVER realized how EVIL he was.
In an effort to get some good statistics etc for writing the letter to the Arkansas parole board about my Trojan Horse P’s upcoming parole hearing, I bought two great books on child molesters and violent criminals and “assessing” them for risk of further violence…sheesh, I haven’t even been able to totally read these books as they turn my stomach.
The one “Predators” says that only 3% of child molestations are ever prosecuted. Many molesters (mostly men) have thousands of victims EACH–yes EACH–and are still walking the streets or have not been apprehended for YEARS after they started, and many specialize in toddlers because they are not believed even if they do tell.
Many are so brazen that they will molest a child in an office at school, or in the house with the parents present, or their own children while their wife sleeps.
I would assess each of these molesters as a psychopath, they do not have any remorse over it to go on like this—and the reoffense rate is horribly high even with treatment–so I cannot believe the NUMBER of EVIL people in this world.
When I was working in the public clinics I made several reports to DHS (which we were required to do) of rapes of young children—and I was always suspicious if a young girl came to the clinic with a bladder infection. Some cases I reported were substantiated as rape or abuse, and others that I am SURE were, were not substantiated.
I had one little girl who was 10 or so, and she refused to move her bowels. Eventually she would “have” to and they would move in her pants or on the floor…I have no doubt that this child had been raped (I knew her parents and they were squirrely) but nothing was ever done for this child. She got no therapy, no true investigation, etc.
The book on Predators also goes into the author’s frustration in KNOWING a child was molested and still not being able to protect that child.
I can well understand that feeling in the author and in her professional work. Many years ago when I started working with patients that were head and spinal cord injured and who we would have in the rehabilitation facility from a day or so after their injury for maybe a year until they left. It was impossible not to get attached to these patients and their family over this length of time. Sometimes when they left I would have to go into the bathroom and cry, but I told myself if I ever got to the point that I CRIED ALL THE TIME, or if I got to the point that I NEVER CRIED, I would get out of that line of work.
My best friend now, that I have been as close to as a sister, is the parent of one of my patients from those years long ago. I have to laugh, her son still calls me the “nurse from hell” but still calls me if he has a problem (we live in different states) because a rehab nurse often has to use “tough love” on patients to force them to become independent as much as they can. He was a very rebellious 15 year old at the time of his injury though his injury was not caused by motorcycles or drinking and driving which is common in that age group, and I had to set some firm boundaries for him, including “take your medication NOW or I will put a tube down your nose and pour it in” (he did, but after that we became quite good friends when he realized he could not get anywhere with his teen aged games with me LOL) At his high school graduation 15,000 people stood up and cheered and there was not a dry eye in the crowd when he rolled his electric wheel chair to get his diploma. He lives a very successful life today even though he is paralyzed from the neck down. He is married, finished college and lives independently with his wife and a part time caregiver.
The thing that is so frustrating about all this is with all my “education” about psychological things, I did not put any of it to work for me in my personal life–I knew the right thing, yet I acted just as any non-professional would have, I let myself behave in dysfunctional ways, enabled my son, let my mother enable him, etc. got sucked in by a BF that was a P after my husband died–in short, all my “knowledge” and “education” didn’t do me a damn bit of good until recently.
So, all I can say is if I know so much and I’m so smart, what the hell am I doing HERE?
Well, the answer is although I hate to admit it, but I am HUMAN. I have emotions. I don’t always listen to my good sense, put my education and smarts to work, tried to please others too much, didn’t trust myself, didn’t set proper boundaries, and in short didn’t behave in a healthy manner in spite of “knowing better.” I think in my own arrogance that I could “fix anything” I held on to the malignant hope for my son, the malignant hope that my BF was my next “soul mate” after I lost my husband—and the malignant hope and blindness to my mother’s toxic enabling.
But I’m no blind any more, I no longer REFUSE TO SEE what is right before my eyes. It may not be a PRETTY truth, but none the less, it is TRUTH and I have to face it, pick myself up, dust the dirt off and move forward or I can lay there and cry for the rest of my life. There’s not but ONE acceptable choice out of the two available as far as I am concerned.
If along the way I can help some other poor soul who has lived through the same chaos and pain, more’s the better and at least I can find some MEANING in what I have finally FINALLY learned if it will help someone else as well.
This summer I plan to volunteer at the women’s shelter near here, but in the meantime if I can post here and help anyone, that is a way for me to give back what I have been blessed with, PEACE.
DEar dear Free,
YOU ARE SOMEONE, YOU ARE AN IMPORTANT SOMEONE.
I am so sorry that you had such terrible pain, and that he hurt you so. I am SO glad though that you didn’t let him kill your soul! That right there tells me that you have strength that even you don’t know about yet! They may can push us down, but we DO have the strength to over come this pain, this horror that you lived through, that we all have.
I am so glad also that you are getting therapy, and that it is helping you recover from this living nightmare. You deserve so much better than that horrible existence (it isn’t even life) and he deserves a “hot spot in hell” for making someone else suffer so–and my faith tells me that he will eventually get that.
Your perception that you were truly unloved (by him) is TRUE, and that is painful to accept I know, but his “ownership” of you is over, you are your OWN person now, and you can grow and blossom and have a good and a happy and a loving life, you can LOVE YOURSELF, and that is more than he can do. He not only doesn’t love you, he can’t even love himself. He seeks “empty” things, he is “hungry” for what he knows must be out there, but he can’t even see it when he has it. Can’t appreciate or see the value in love, kindness, etc.
So even though I believe he will get his “hot spot in hell” I also think that he is in some ways LIVING IN HELL NOW. How empty they must be….they crave other’s attention, but yet, it is meaningless to them when they get it.
I am so glad that you are recovering, and I will say a prayer for you today that you continue to recover and blossom into what you were meant to be, that your strength continues to grow and that you find peace and happiness, the things you DESERVE. God bless.
Oh,Free,
Reading your post made my eyes well up with tears, but HAPPY TEARS! I am so glad for you! I am glad that you are not only healing mentally and physically and emotionally but spiritually as well. I don’t think without the spiritual aspect that I could heal at all–not completely.
Growing up my mother had equated “religion” with pleasing her, that she was the direct pipeline to God and if I did anything that displeased her, it also displeased God and I would burn in hell forever. I have talked to so many people who have also been religiously “abused” by either their parents or their P—and I definitely was. Now, I have a completely different view of my relationship to God, and His to me. I firmly believe that there is a God, and that He cares for us and wants us to be healthy and happy. Sure good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people, but I think there is a lesson in anything that happens to us, good or bad.
The Bible contains so many stories about Psychopaths, and enablers–read the story of King David in Samuel 1 &11–David’s son Absalom was a psychopath, and David was enabling him. When Absalom revolted and led the country to war against David, David’s biggest concern was that his generals “deal gently with the young man”–HUH? When Absalom died, he tore his clothes and screamed his grief. One of his generals said to David, “I perceive if the young man had lived and we all (the people) had died, you would have been well pleased.”
David, always willing to listen to rebuke and change his ways realized that what the general said was true. He got up, washed his face, put o clean clothes and went to thank the people for their sacrifices for his reign.
I guess one of the most painful things about my own case was that my enabling mother felt the same way about my son as David did about Absalom. It would have pleased her if my son P had gotten out of prison before she died, even if it meant he had to kill me to do it. That was something that really struck deep inside me, because I didn’t realize how toxic an enabler can be, they can become P-s-by-proxy, lost in the fog of the P, doing just what the P wants, no matter how bad it is. The difference in my mother and King David is that she refuses to let go of her delusions about my son. Refuses to face the truth, even though she knows he is a murderer without remorse.
I thank God every day for my deliverance and the safety of my son C, and for all the belessings and protection we have had from His hand. Mostly I thankk him that my own vision has cleared up, and I am no longer in the FOG of EVIL. God bless!
Free, that was so beautiful it left tears in my eyes. God speaks to all of us. People might think I’m crazy to say that, but when I’ve been really low about this whole P experience, feeling hurt and wondering what the point of anything is, I asked God what he wanted from me, what was the lesson of all this, aside from showing me that wanting things is a foolish human pastime — and I heard, clear as day, “I want you to heal
As a fellow abuse survivor, it doesn’t seem a coincidence that we both walked away from these bad circumstances feeling that God wants us to heal. He does.
Even the abuse itself…I think makes some of us better people. We can empathize more. We’ve got insider information on trauma, pain and forgiveness.
Thank you for such a beautiful and truthful post.
This is an interesting post. When I first met my sociopath I recently broke up with my boyfriend of three years and was struggling getting by day to day afterwards. He was a friend of my brother so he was at my home often and as soon as he found out I no longer had a boyfriend and I was feeling bad he started making his moves. He is not as charming as most sociopaths I have read about because outside his appearance is very “mysterious” but it lured me in and once we started talking it was great. He said everything I wanted to hear and even gave me a small ring after only three weeks. Immediately he told me about how he suffered depression and knew what it felt like to be alone and he “appeared” to connect with me on a deep level. Telling me about his neglecting parents and horrible childhood and his many suicide attempts. Now I look back and I think to myself… why was I even attracted to someone like this? Because I was vunerable. Because he knew exactly what to say to me. He played on my kindness and good heart and wanted me to pity him. A couple months after being together I was in an accident and now in an insurance lawsuit where money is involved. Three years later up to this day he asks me all the time what I am going to do with that money and tells me I should buy a house and he will come live with me. Oh, did I mention he is a parasite? For a year he didn’t have a job and let me pay for everything and once he got a very low paying job he had the nerve to complain to me about money saying I take all his money?! How is that possible when I pay 98% of everything. And now he was looking at my insurance settlement with hungry eyes. I almost feel like he stayed for that reason… he was going to live off of me. He hates working and doesn’t feel he should have to and hates the government and our way of life. He seems to think he is entitled to everything and becomes resentful. Now that I look back a lot of our conversations were about money, my money, and where we would go and what we can do and me buying homes and cars…. wow… do I feel stupid. I’ve made no contact now for over a week after months of being tortured after a break up of an almost 4 year relationship. The lawsuit didn’t settle yet but I almost wonder had I been awarded money… would he have left me with nothing? When he did leave my bank account went from a couple thousand to about $200… I was left alone and with no money or any friends after he had driven everything and everybody away from me. Thanks for posting this it brouhgt just more of a reminder to stay away from him.
Free you just did! that little paragraph Speaks Volums! LOVE jere
Trinity, did you have a joint bank account with him? It’s amazing how smooth con artists are. If you ever get a chance to read Martha Stuart’s book “The Sociopath Next Door”, there is a story in there of a sociopath who married his wife for her swimming pool. He ignored her and ignored his own son, but spent his days lounging by the pool. Even after the divorce, he still would come over to sit by their pool. She couldn’t get rid of him! Pretty creepy. There should be a movie made about this. I’m on a little bit of a tangent but your post about a sociopath coveting your home reminded me of this.