By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Last week I wrote an article about the captain of the sunken Italian ship who said he “fell into a life boat by accident” and that was why he got off the ship very early, not waiting for the rescue efforts. It also turned out this married man was with his lover and was drunk at the time the ship was steered, on his command, closer than normal to an island so he could show it off to the residents and his friends there, crashing it into known rocks.
Even after the ship had hit the rocks and was stuck, he denied to the company and potential rescuers that anything other than an electrical “black out” occurred and delayed even issuing an “abandon ship” until it was on its side an hour later, making the ability to abandon ship at that point almost impossible. Amazingly there was actually a small number of dead and missing out of about 4,000 people on the ship since it happened close to shore. I stated that his unbelievable lie (alone) made me think the man was a psychopath, and subsequent information confirms this to me that the man is high in P-traits.
Josh Powell
Another horrible tragedy, which also had significant “Red Flags” displayed, was reported this past week in the news. Josh Powell, whose wife had “disappeared” a couple of years ago, blew up his home, killing himself and his two young sons on a “supervised” visit. His father, who had lived in his home, had previously been arrest for secretly videotaping others undressed.
Read: ”˜Mommy’s in the turnk’: Sons of missing woman gave chilling account of her disappearance before father killed them in gas blast, on DailyMail.co.uk.
Here is a short quote from the article:
It is a horrific end to a long, bizarre tale. Josh Powell was under investigation in the disappearance of his 28-year-old wife Susan from their West Valley City, Utah, home in December 2009. He claimed he had taken the boys on a midnight excursion in freezing temperatures when she vanished.
His explanation of how and why his wife “disappeared” is bordering on the unbelievable level of the Captain of the Concordia “falling into a life boat by accident.” His children later said that they went camping and “mom was in the trunk.”
Another red flag to me is that the Josh Powell’s father is a pervert, and was arrested in the home with pornography he had secretly recorded of girls and women. He is currently in prison awaiting trial. Since we know that psychopathy and dysfunction tends to run in families, both by genetics and by environmental influence, I would say that Josh’s father being a sexual criminal would put him high on my list of “red flag” people associated with Josh, and would give Josh a second look from me.
Learning from the news
Learning about “red flags” doesn’t have to be done by being around people. We can “practice” looking for red flags in the evening news, the news we read online, in the papers and the stories we hear about. When we hear about some horror story, or just some person’s divorce, we may be able to use that as a “learning experience” and see the red flags that, as we practice, will become more and more obvious to us.
I was also glad to see an article in yesterday’s Sunday paper by Carolyn Hax in her column Tell Me About It. A young man talked about catching his girlfriend in a lie and how controlling she was ”¦ and he asked Carolyn her opinion of this relationship. Carolyn didn’t call the woman a controlling witch but she told him to dump the woman, that there was no chance a control freak who was a habitual liar was going to be rehabilitated. Good advice. I’m glad to see more advice along this line in some of our “advice to the lovelorn” columns.
If we look around us in the news, in our neighborhood, we can watch for the “red flags” that show themselves all over the place. The Flags that tell us “get out of that relationship” or “don’t start a relationship with that person” or “aren’t we glad we didn’t have a relationship.” Not all of these people will be full fledged murdering psychopaths or sexual perverts, but they will have some character flaws that we don’t want to deal with ”¦ like pathological lying or controlling behavior. It helps us learn and the “tuition” cost is zero.
Ox Drover,
Wow, I hadn’t heard about Susan Powell in a long time. When she went missing, I only suspected one person of doing away with her, her husband, Josh. In time, I heard about his father, Steven, going online to read up about this man, finding him to be an odd person, a sicko. Both the father and the son are disordered. So now, Josh has killed his wife, Susan, his two young children, and lastly, himself. Another tragedy caused by a spath.
Back when it came out that he said he took the kids out in FREEZING weather at midnight I KNEW HE HAD TO BE THE KILLER…no one but a psychopath would come up with such a far out story as that and EXPECT ANYONE TO BELIEVE IT.
I don’t know if his kids comments were what they remembered and were now able to verbalize (they were so young when it happened) or if their grandmother had planted those memories in their minds, but I have NO DOUBT that Josh killed her, even before the blast, just by his FAR OUT LIE that not even a 5 year old would believe….any more than that the Capt. of the Concordia FELL INTO A LIFE BOAT.
The “tell” of the OUTRAGEOUS LIES for one thing is just too much “evidence” to me that someone’s brain isn’t functioning on a normal plane…like Hare said they will lie when the truth is right in front of them. Like I say “they will LIE WHEN THE TRUTH WILL FIT BETTER.”
Oxy
I see certain type of stories (lies) as being red flags.
For instance, the Captain said he’d done this kind of close shore showboating before and that he was authorized to do it this time. Not quite so true.
Yes true, he did it before, BUT he failed to say the REST of the story… that the ship was damage on rocks, not severely, but scraped rocks and had to be repaired and repainted. He was reprimanded.
Yes true, he filed a route, yes. and the route was approved yes. But they did not approve a route close to shore, SHOWBOATING was NOT approved. They assumed he filed a route in compliance with his orders, that he was NOT going near the rocks b/c of the previous incident.
And while true he did NOT go the EXACT SAME route as before, he did NOT route the safe passage. HE QUIBBLED on his words.
When married to my spath, I called those weazel words. (depends on the meaning of “is”) My spath could spout a whole speech of truths and slip in only ONE lie, but that ONE little LIE negated EVERYTHING he’d said.
That same trick still causes me trauma. I work SO HARD to write sometimes, b/c I try to avoid wrong messages, b/c even ONE wrong word and my husband would dismiss EVERYTHING I said, or condemn me for ALL I said if one word was wrong. I have had a poster here on LF encourage others to join her ridicule of me, all b/c I still sometimes fall into that trap, trying to make sure each word is right and not give him wiggle room to invalidate me. The lack of empathy and cruelty was crushing to me. That another LF member treated a VICTIM of a mfn spath with ridicule.
There’s a difference b/t trying to get the words right and how these spaths try to AVOID being held accountable to their deceitful words.
I watched the interview with Todd. His evasion, his lack of drive to find the truth, his MOVE in with a father who was a nutcase, his lack of openness and transparency, ALL told me that he murdered his wife. I think the word “killed” is too gentle. HE MURDERED her, just as he eventually murdered her kids (and I think it was so her parents could not retain custody of them.)
KatyDid,
Rat poison is 99% pure corn meal, fit for human consumption and good for building your body…it is the 1% LIE (poison) that kills you, not the 99% pure corn meal.
Lies are the same way….and the psychopaths know that, and they use “partial truth” in their lies to try to disguise the taste of the LIE. Funny thing is though, sometimes their lies are so STINKING (like “I fell into a life boat by accident” or “I took the kids out for a walk at midnight on a freezing cold night and when I came home the wife was no where to be seen.”) that NO one over the age of 5 would even consider that the lie could possibly be true. LOL
That’s why at a distance we can SEE these lies as BRIGHT RED FLAGS.
BTW quit being so sensitive to people dis-ing you, on LF or anywhere else, kiddo. If I had a buck for every time a poster here had been snarky to me I’d be rich. I admit the first time it happened when Ii was new here and RAW it traumatized me, but you’ve been here a while now my KatyDid, so let it roll off yer back like water off the duckie’s backs. ((((hugs))) Just consider the source, it is obvious they are either having a bad day or whatever but if they are snarking at you, they are at least giving some poor newbie a break. (((Hugs)))
Tori’s Eminem cover ’97 Bonnie and Clyde was what this “disappearance” and “story” reminded me of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YxrYKQBP8
KatyDid ~
I think your statement “I think it was so her parents could not retain custody of them” was right on the money. I believe that is WHY he killed the kids.
I believe he did it NOW because the Judge in the custody case had ordered him to have a complete psychosexual evaluation and lie detector BEFORE she would consider returning his custody. He was afraid the evaluation would expose him without his mask and he would rather be dead than have that happen. He blamed this on her parents, if it not for them, this would not be happening to him. So he took away something precious, their grandchildren.
Both times we ended up with custody of our grandson it was because our daughter “signed over” custody of him to us. Both times it was immediately after a judge had ordered her to have a complete forensic psy evaluation. She could not bare the thought of having her mask ripped off. Retaining her mask was more important than custody of her child.
Thank you Oxy,
I have processed the jerk behavior. It wasn’t just mean, it was that she encouraged others to ridicule me without taking into consideration that as a victim of spaths, many of us learned to “walk on glass” (lacked empathy). While it makes me a weirdo (I embrace my inner weirdness), “who does that?” The answer is: VICTIMS OF SPATHS who were mindfarked do.
Being here a while does not mean all my pain has been resolved or that I stopped feeling hurt when attacked. But it does mean it doesn’t send me into long term depression either. Still worth a lesson that we can all disagree or share differing perspectives, and the more the better, but it’s not appropriate to ridicule ANY victim of an spath.
Nevertheless, I posted the example b/c I wanted to share with others how to discern the weazel words of an spath misleading and manipulating, whether by lies of omission or by slipping in One tiny lie that negates all the truths ,or as in the example of the captain, telling a story but leaving out the one bit that changes the whole story – versus someone trying to get their words just right, And that the difference is an example of how to discern a RED FLAG.
MiLo, I am sure this whole thing must have made the hair stand up on the back of your neck….I sit here shaking my head at this guy’s excuse of what happened to his wife, but shaking it even more at the death of these two babies just to hurt someone else and to cover up his own evil face. Of course we will never know the total reason behind what he did, for one thing he’s dead and can’t tell us, even if he would tell the truth (not likely even if he was alive) but the other thing is even if he did tell us the truth, how could we comprehend it? It is so foreign to our way of seeing things.
All we can do though is to realize that right after the man’s wife disappeared he told a LIE SO OUT OF THE REALM OF TRUTH THAT NO ONE COULD BELIEVE IT….IT WAS A RED FLAG.
Red Flags signal danger folks. DANGER. *D*A*N*G*E*R* and people who do things that are so outrageous as murder or ship wreck and then tell the ULTIMATE lie…we need to keep them at least as far away as possible. I guess these grandparents didn’t have a choice though. Who knows, maybe the judge didn’t have a choice either….the way the stupid laws are these days because of the “experts.”
MiLO
I did feel immediately angry that there were reports of blaming the court or the grandparents for not returning custody. Like, oh poor man, He snapped. NO. MURDERING innocent children is not the behavior of someone who “snaps”. This PLANNED act is consistent with an angry murderer who was hiding a secret and did the ultimate act of revenge rather than let others hold him accountable. What is so terrible is that NO ONE seemed to answer the question, if it’s likely he murdered his wife, and he defends his pedophile father as “not that bad”, then why trust him with innocent children? BECAUSE THEY WANTED HIM TO ENJOY PARENTING??? Mindboggling wtf moment.
Well, obviously he did NOT “enjoy” parenting and decided not to do so….sorry, I couldn’t make myself behave! The devil made me do it. I’m sorry I just can’t believe this guy was able to do this and get by with it. Makes me angry that I can’t do something to make him pay for what he did…”justice is mine saith the Lord.” I guess I will have to let God handle it and let it go myself. Jesus said that “anyone who harms one of these (children) would be better off with a mill stone around his neck and tossed into the sea” (paraphrased) so I guess the guy is facing a JUST GOD right about now….and God is pithed!