Anyone who is interested in the topic of domestic violence should read Why Do They Kill? by David Adams. The book describes Adams’ detailed interviews of men who were convicted of killing their partners, and women who were victims of attempted murder.
The breakthrough here is that Dr. Adams’ findings are in complete agreement with those of Dr. Dutton. There is now little doubt that terroristic batterers have psychopathic personality traits.
Because David Adams’ findings are so important I want to summarize them here, then so as not to throw too much at you at once, next week I’ll relate these findings to psychopathic personality traits and explain why I would call these individuals “sociopaths”.
First, both Dutton and Adams are clear, violence and emotional abuse occur in the context of one person attempting to control another. So they are similarly motivated”¦ The motivation is control.
According to Adams, violence happens because the perpetrator wishes to punish the victim and others in her life. That reason was given by 95% of victims.
All relationships started with a “honeymoon” where the perpetrator’s true character was not apparent.
All perpetrators who killed or attempted to kill their partners threatened to do so prior to the act. On page 200 of the book, specific threats and the context of these threats are listed for a number of victims. Adams believes that the threats facilitated perpetrators psyching themselves up for the act.
Access to firearms was a leading factor in murder and attempted murder. Adams recommends we address the issue of firearms in the hands of these men.
If you are reading this and have been involved with a sociopath who has threatened to kill you and has access to weapons you are in a very serious situation. Though most people in your situation are not killed or nearly killed, all those killed or nearly killed come with these risk factors.
Next week: How is killing connected to the other aspects of sociopathy?
Dear Liane,
I think you address an aspect here of psychopaths that many people don’t “get”—again we (the rest of humanity) have difficulty believing that someone could actually say and MEAN “I could kill you” or “I would like to kill you,” especially someone whom we have loved, shared intimacy with, lived with.
I think the first time or two when they make the threat they are using those words to scare victims into compliance with their control attempt, but they eventually lose it and in a fit of temper kill the victim, or they decide very cold-bloodly to plan and execute their plan to rid themselves of the person they can no longer control or who stands in the way of whatever it is that they want.
I very well understand the cold blooded nature of a psychopath and the ability they have to execute others for revenge or for gain. Though many are not murderers or even legally criminal, I think that any psychopath or person without conscience can become a killer.
Thank you, Liane, for the article – it is so important for non-spaths to accept that these people can, and DO, kill people that they claim to “love,” simply because they believe that they have the right to take someone’s life, and that they can.
Ex spath used to threaten me, constantly: if you leave, I’ll shoot the kids, you, then myself; if you leave, I’ll hunt you down like the animal you are; if you leave, I’ll see you dead before you ever get your hands on MY (his) kids.
3 years ago, a woman who worked with my spouse was attempting to leave her abusive boyfriend. Everyone around her, coworkers and friends, knew that he had been physically abusive with her, but claimed that they “…had no idea how bad it was…” until she failed to appear for her scheduled shift. The ex boyfriend went to her home as she was waiting for her son to come off the school bus before she left for her shift. He entered her home and drew out a shotgun. As she ran from him, he shot her in the back and walked up to where she lay and blew her face off. Then, he turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.
People KNEW that he was violent. She had taken out an order of protection. To what end? A tragic one.
I knew the P was potentially a killer..it’s not something you can measure or predict easily that’s why I welcome the 10 years research this book has done, with real investigation into why and who etc so that some EVIDENCE is produced that we can SEE
We can KNOW till the cows come home….but until he kills someone there is no evidence.
I listened to my own intuition. Thank God I had a morsel of common sense left and I didn’t marry him. Honeymoon period flawless, no cracks, he described himself as a peaceful man….yes until I started finding out what was underneath his mask.
He turned dangerous in direct relation to my worry, fear and eventual fury. I always think that for him he was watching me happy, in love, smiling at the beginning (if you want to hide from a P, act this way as it could buy some precious time to get away)
my expressions back at him must have began to get more worried looking, unhappy, sad and angry…this he would interpret as ‘defective’ she is not what I wanted…(someone to reflect how wonderful he is 24/7)
it’s when I started to ask him to ACCOUNT for missing thousands of Euro I sent him to renovate the house…and confront him about on line conversations with other women…that’s when I felt the pure evil coming from him. the message was sent via looks, vibes, little sentences was loud and clear
I will do Exactely what I want to do. I am not answerable to you or anyone. You are here because you are stupid… get smart and see what happens. I will move on and nothing or no one will stop me. If you try and stop me I will steamroll you into the ground no problem. So take me to court or whatever silly lttle thing you need to do, that tells me I am still in control and I will enjoy wasting your time (in a way you do the killing of yourself! ha ha what a good trick) I will never give you back anything, it’s gone and over and that’s it! you can’t ever take from me the fact I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU AND YOUR PATHETIC LIFE
He would kill me to “remove the mess” He would kill me if he could not MOVE ON…from you know the crazy woman who whines and moans at him. He would never HEAR a confrontation, that is why it’s dangerous to confront them as the “truth” means nothing to them anyway. They live according to their own laws. Even when locked up in prison.
I hope he does not kill anyone obviously and factors have to conspire in a certain way before that’s going to happen…HE WILL however continue to cause awful damage to innocent naive and trustworthy people unless they are pushed like us here on LF to wake up and smell the coffee.
The psycho/philosphical stance of a P ‘I feel nothing, therefore I am’
Dear Bulletproof,
It is interesting to me that there have only been three of us comment on this particular thread. I wonder how many have actually READ this thread.
Is this a possibility that others don’t want to think about because it is too threatening to their internal safety to think about it?
I don’t guess any of us want to think about someone killing us, but with people who are domestic abusers (especially ones who are physical) it is a very real possibility! It happens frequently in the US and I suspect all over the world.
The psychopath feels owner ship of the significant other rather than caring about the welfare of, I think.
I realize that after a few comments on the particular subject by several posters that the topic may veer way off the subject line, but very FEW articles posted here, and especially very few posted by Liane Leedom get almost NO responses—-actually, the lack of responses here is I think an article in itself.
WHY are YOU (that’s all the other bloggers) NOT responding to this article?
Given that from what I learn, the person who used to be here, has never had a woman leave him in the past without a two year PTO,
I am concerned. However, I am alone in it. Could he be very dangerous- well, yes. I do respect the possibility. Especially since who he really is is NOT known. Or at least none of the folks who know feel obligated in any way to tell me.
Eerily I remember he said something to me about being owned and how he liked it before his untimely departure.
Want me to say its not a terryfying notion? I can’t. There was no physical or verbal abuse in the time I was with him. We had a lovely honeymoon phase in that respect.
He was just googling his online dates before the Marriage license got cold. Literally. Beyond that, I have no idea. I have no warning of physical violence. I have no reference from anyone who has known him in the last 10 years.
Did he show all the signs of being a P- yes.
In my situation, this calls to mind a story about a phone that was wired to tell a deaf person that the phone was ringing. Good. What next?
I can’t prove he is a P, I can’t prove there is any reason for a PTO and I can’t hang around to find out.
Its too, too weird
OxD, this article touches me on many levels – I’ve known of serveral people who were murdered by their spouses or S/O when they tried to leave. In the same town where the woman’s ex b/f shot her, a cop shot and killed his soon-to-be-ex-wife alleging that she “attacked” him with a knife, and him still in his kevlar vest. He was 6’4″, she was 5’2″, and he wanted everyone to believe that his years of training escaped him and he drew his service weapon and shot her to death in her own kitchen.
The idea that someone we “know” could be capable of brutally and callously taking another human being’s life is probably too much for most people to acknowledge or accept. I know what the ex spath and spath son were/are capable of, and I don’t believe that the spath son is above murder. For me to pretend otherwise would simply be an act of enabling.
I think about my P-son’s victim. BEFORE he killed her he was at a party with her friends, waiting for her to show up…HE TOLD ALL HER FRIENDS HE INTENDED TO KILL HER. I’m not sure if her friends (probably in the age range of 16-20) told her what he said or if any of them took it at all seriously.
When she came there, he got her to go with him. He took her to a deserted field on the edge of a major city, shot her in the head, took her jewelry, her purse and I.D. WENT BACK TO THE PARTY WHERE HER FRIENDS WERE….TOLD THEM HE KILLED HER, and gave her stuff back to the friends, also telling them, he didn’t get her leather jacket as it had blood all over it. Went to the place he lived, put the murder weapon under his matress and WENT TO SLEEP.
THE NEXT DAY, (I’m not sure what time) her friends contacted her family who contacted the police who arrested my P son (he was on parole) and lodged a “Missing persons” report for her.
Eventually my P son told another inmate he had met in jail where the body was and asked the inmate (who was out by now) to move the body. TALK ABOUT trusting someone immediately with your fate as a murderer….can we say STOOOOOPID!? The cops of course, found the body.
Then my P-son, criminal genius that he was, called his cousin’s house on the jail phone and asked his cousin’s son to move the gun which was under his mattress.
It was almost a year and a half before Texas actually brought him to trial, I would have been there by my son lied to me about the date of the trial and I didn’t have enough sense at the time to find out except by his word of the date when or where it was. He actually didn’t want us to see or hear the testimony or the evidence against him….after it was over I spoke to his attorney who told me WHAT THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED WAS. (Not a violation of client confidentiality)
It still i s “UN-belkieveable to me” that a kid with an IQ in the 99th percentile of “intelligence” could be so arrognat that he thought in light of how he incriminated himself that he could “get away with” what he did to her. He still brags about it, and how it was much WORSE than the cops even knew.
When he tells other inmates about his crime though, he makes up stories that he killed some drug dealer….he doesn’t even tell other murderers the truth. He really believes though that she DESERVED that she got and that he did the RIGHT thing since she had RATTED HIM OUT to the cops for the petty crimes the two of them had committed together. Credit card fraud, etc. not exactly robbing a bank and killing a teller, just money crimes. Sure it was illegal and sure it was a felony for him at least as he was on parole, but to KILL HER FOR THAT?
I also turned him in to the law for a robbery when he was 17, and he had mentioned that “betrayal” time and time again even when we were “on friendly terms” that “you shouldn’t have done that.” When I would ask him “What should I have done to try to keep you from doing those things?” His answer was always “I don’t know, but turning me in wasn’t it.”
Of course the times he had robbed his family members, stolen from us, taken our vehicles to commit crimes, etc. we were never allowed to bring that “old stuff” up.
His expectation that we (and everyone else) should show him “unconditional love”—i.e. put up with whatever he did to us or anyone else and still trust him and cater to his needs, desires, or wants without question–was his idea of how we should behave.
One of the profiles reads with so many of the same words….The characteristics appear to speak for themselves, don’t they?
I will not question you about past events in your life, or criticize them. I believe in unconditional love and fidelity.
Go figure, He’d been married for three weeks at the time this was posted….
Yes, “unconditional love” as defined by the P seems to be that you DON’T QUESTION THEM OR THEIR ACTIONS OR EXPECT ANYTHING OUT OF THEM.
I have a copy of a letter my P son wrote to a minister friend of ours telling him how we were not “christians” because we didn’t give him UN-conditional Love. i.e. love him even if he tried to KILL US! And, not bring up those nasty past events like robbery, murder, lies, threats,, and so on….oh, well, he’s right, I do NOT love him unconditionally. I don’t love ANYone 100% unconditionally. I have conditions on my feelings. If people treat me abusively I retract my affections and trust. DUH! Just sorry it took me so long to figure it out.
OxD……same with me. I don’t have “conditions,” per se, but I have a limit to what I will accept as reasonable.
OxD, you’re a source of strength, courage, and incredible wisdom. God bless you.