Crazy, Not Insane (2020) - full transcript

Okay, here are
the two copies, Mom.

I got it. I'm ready.

And again, by the way,
feel free to say "yuck."

But you know, you, feel free to say,
"Mom don't say that." Okay?

Uh, okay.

"That Joseph Paul Franklin was crazy,
there could be little doubt."

The New York Times
called me "The Slayer".

I like the term "multiple slayer"
better than serial killer anyway.

You know what I'm saying?

Got it? Okay.

"No, not 'cause he hated Jews.



Lots of ostensibly sane people
hate Jews.

Bigotry and insanity are different,
at least my mother thought so."

Wait, can you hold on one sec?

It's saying "bigotry and insanity" then
it goes from there to, "My mother..."

"My mother seemed to know the names
of every anti-Semite alive and dead.

Henry Ford, Richard Wagner,
Joe Kennedy, even Walt Disney."

And then I have in quotes:
"'Not Walt Disney, Mom!'"

Unquote, okay? Close quote.
"'Yes, Walt Disney,' she declared.

Still, she took me to see Bambi
and I cried and cried."

Now it goes up to the upper left-hand
corner, okay? Dot, dot. Got it?

The memories that come back to me
when I'm, you know, when I'm writing,

they have nothing to do
with the case, but it's sort of fun.

Now we're going back to,
"As I write this...

...I ask myself why I agreed
to examine Mr. Franklin."



How are you supposed to act
if you've killed people? You know?

You're supposed to have blood
dripping from your mouth

and all that? Fangs?

"How could I be certain
that I would not be prejudiced?

Looking back in time
I think examining Mr. Franklin

was as close as I would ever come
to examining Hitler.

Hitler has always been a mystery.

A man responsible
for the deaths of so many

but someone who,
to the best of my knowledge,

never personally killed anyone."

"My regret is that nobody had
the chance to study him,

to find out what made him tick.

How did he get that way?

Could I get that way?
Could anyone?"

"I look back on the many killers
I have come to know

over the past four decades.

There are diagnoses I make now

that I didn't even know existed
because of my own ignorance,"

comma, "because I didn't ask
the right questions."

It's nice to be able
to correct one's mistakes.

More often, we probably don't
even know when we make them.

Doctor, looking at the evidence
of this case,

are you able to tell us whether
the defendant is insane or not?

CRAZY, NOT INSANE

THE NUREMBERG TRIALS

When I was very little,

I remember reading
about the Nuremberg Trials.

In Berlin, the defendants
are to plead guilty or not guilty.

Lying on the carpet, we lived
in New York in an apartment,

and the newspaper in front of me,

and seeing pictures
of Goebbels and Goering.

Defendant Hermann Wilhelm Goering,

the International Military Tribunal
sentences you to death by hanging.

I was aware that people were
deliberately killing other people,

and I was aware of my own anger
and my own aggression.

And I remember thinking:

"How come I don't kill?

How come when I get so angry
I don't kill?"

It's fascinated me. I've been
horrified by the fact that,

I think any one of us, myself
included, could become a Nazi.

Maybe I went to medical school
or became a psychiatrist

in part to learn about why.

Don't you ever wonder
why you don't murder?

- I do.
- Yeah.

"I never planned to work
with violent people,

certainly not murderers.

I went through medical school in order
to become a psychoanalyst.

I saw myself in a private office,
seated behind a supine patient..."

listening and commenting
as he struggled to resolve

the violent internal conflicts
between his id and superego.

Instead, a series of unexpected
events drew me deeper and deeper

into the study of violence.

In the early 70s, I was working at the
Juvenile Court Clinic in New Haven,

examining delinquents.

Most of the delinquents who crossed
the threshold of my office

had horrendous backgrounds:
car accidents, falls, burns,

even carbon monoxide poisoning.

A good number of the injuries
were not caused by reckless drivers,

broken tree branches,
or overturned coffee pots.

They were caused by parents.

Gradually I was gathering clues.

I was discovering
why one person cried in pain,

while another lashed out
in response to it.

I managed to get a small grant

to study the prisoners
on the Bellevue Forensic Wards.

I examined Mark David Chapman,
the man who shot John Lennon.

We also saw a less famous,
but more flamboyant inmate

who cut off
his father's head and penis

and chucked both out the window.
It was a colorful period.

So, how did you first start working
with Dorothy?

By accident, yeah, so I saw this ad
for a research assistant.

"Juvenile delinquents"
is what the ad says,

"grant to do a project having
to do with delinquency."

It happened to be Dorothy,

I happened to say
"I'll give it a shot,"

we hit it off
and it started everything.

We became a bit of a team
working together

and we saw so many children
at Bellevue.

A study of the patients
on our Childrens' Psychiatric Ward

revealed that of 55 children
admitted in one year,

21 had been homicidal.

One child was admitted
after trying to strangle her sister,

another set fire to the couch
on which his mother slept,

a four-year old held a knife
to his mother's throat.

We tried to look at the variables.

Was there any difference between
the homicidal young children

and the ones who were
on the psychiatric ward,

but had not been homicidal.

And we found
that the homicidal kids

were much more likely
to have been abused

and they were much more likely
to have

signs of organic impairment,
brain dysfunction.

I was an ambitious academic
neurologist at the time,

and a faculty at Yale.

I thought that there was
nothing neurologically wrong

with violent people.

She convinced me to participate
in the study.

What's the relationship between
the brain damage and the behavior?

What we saw was
if you have battered a child,

shaken it,
knocked it against the wall,

then you could often see
little hemorrhages in the brain.

Sometimes that distinguished
the super aggressive kids

from the psychiatrically-ill
but not aggressive kids.

I had written an article
in a psychiatric journal

and Diane Sawyer,
her assistants had read it,

and they called me
and she wanted to interview me.

We're going to take a closer look
at violent children, teenagers or...

It was the first time
I'd ever been on television.

Doctor Lewis, thank you very much
for coming this morning.

It's a fascinating study and
a pioneering one as I understand it.

We did a study of the medical
histories from hospital records...

I talked about the brain dysfunction
and the history of abuse

that a lot of the violent kids had.

Forty six percent had
major neurological problems...

Either that day or the next day

I got a call from Dick Burr,
just an incredible public defender,

and he said, "I saw you
on the news yesterday."

She's talking about how you can't
begin to evaluate somebody

who's committed a violent crime

unless you have a really thorough
and complete life history.

And at that point in the death penalty
defense community,

we had always thought
mental health was important,

but we didn't understand it.

He said, "I have a client
on death row here in Florida."

We had a case, William Elledge,

that I was the primary lawyer on,

moving into the state
post-conviction process.

"Would you be willing to come down
to death row and examine him?"

And she came and helped us
and taught us.

Sure enough,
the guy had brain dysfunction

and a history of hideous abuse.

A few weeks later, I saw I got a call
again, "We have another guy."

His name was Nollie Martin.

Apparently, someone had run over
his head with a car

and there was a dent in his head.
So I wrote it up.

A colleague of mine said to me,

"Dorothy, think of it this way,
if you put your finger in a haystack

and you get tapped by a needle
that's by chance.

But if you put your finger
in the haystack a second time

and again you are stuck
by a needle,"

he said, "there are
a lot of needles there."

When a murder happens
you wonder why.

I've always been of the view that there
are some reasons that they happen,

not because people are
inherently bad or evil.

I don't believe in evil.

Anybody who pulls a trigger and
squeezes a life out of somebody

for the calculated reasoning
of starting a race war

where other people would be killed,
is evil.

Evil is a religious concept,
it's not a scientific concept

and what society wants to do with
a person like that is up to society.

But, it at least helps to know
what motivates a serial killer

or what motivates a sniper.

Right, hatred,
that's what's motivating, I mean...

There's much more than that.

You know,
we all sort of just saw the light

and began to realize
from working with Dorothy

that we had to get a lot more
information about peoples' lives.

We had defense attorneys
from different parts of the country

start to call us as a team
to see their tough cases.

These tended not to be
open-and shut cases

of people doing violent things,
these were puzzles.

I have now seen 22 serial killers,

a lot of other plain old killers,
but 22 serial killers.

And what we tend to find

is when you couple either
a predisposition to psychosis

and or some kind
of brain dysfunction

with a history of horrible,
early, ongoing abuse,

you get
a super dangerous person.

And, what is fascinating
is you can find

what were the social, the
psychological, the biological forces

that came together to create
this murderous human being.

You know it's like being a detective,
which I love. I truly love it.

- Thanks so much, thank you.
- You're welcome.

The only way to approach
a drawing is to feel free.

If you have that freedom in you
it's gonna show in your drawing.

As long as we keep in mind,
stepping back,

looking at what we doing and then
going back and making changes.

Changes are very important.
I always say to the students,

remember those first drawings
you were doing,

and then you were unhappy
with them?

Those drawings allows you actually
to do what you have been doing now.

So that's why I always talk
about the process

and making changes
all the time.

Any case I've worked on I came as a
blank slate and saw whatever I saw.

Over time the complete picture
came to light.

Early in my career,
I evaluated a woman, Marie Moore.

She lived in an apartment
with her fourteen-year-old daughter

and her daughter's boyfriend.

The boyfriend was a particularly
sadistic kind of person.

Somehow Marie got sexually
involved with the boyfriend

and a girlfriend of her daughter
came over

and Marie and the boyfriend
took her captive.

They kept her naked,
just in diapers.

They handcuffed her
and toe-cuffed her to the floor.

They shoved things
into every orifice that a person has.

And then one day,

the fourteen-year-old boy
dragged her over to the bathroom

and knocked her head
against the tub and killed her.

The body was discovered
and they were arrested.

The boy ratted on Marie, now it was
the boy who had actually killed her.

But being a juvenile
he was offered a plea,

and Marie was tried
for this murder.

I got a call from an attorney
asking me

whether I would do
an evaluation of Marie.

The lawyer said something to me about
how he thought she was a multiple.

Well, I had been trained
that there was no such thing.

I went to see her
and she reminded me of me.

I was wearing big glasses
and she was wearing big glasses.

We were talking and I asked her had
anyone ever bothered her sexually

and she said,
"No, no, no, absolutely not."

I had been told that people
around her said that she changed,

that sometimes her voice became gruff
and she wanted to be called Billy.

So I asked her about this
and she said,

"Well, people tell me that I get
that way, that I become like a boy,

but I don't remember it.
I don't think so."

It was getting to be
about five o'clock

and the investigator stuck his head
in the door and he said,

"You know, we have to go."

And I said, "Marie I have to stop now
but I'll be back to see you"

and she said, 'Don't go,'"

she said, "there's something
I have to tell you," in just that tone.

And so I sat and sat and I said,

"You know, Marie,
I really have to go."

And then I gathered up my papers

and I turned my back
and put my hand on the doorknob

and I hear behind me a voice
that said, "Don't go!"

You know the hairs on my arms
stood up.

And I turned around
and I said, "Billy?"

And he said, "Hello."

I said, "Billy, how long
have you known Marie?"

And he said,
"I've known her all her life."

I said to him, "Did her father
ever bother her in any way?"

And Billy said "Sure he did.

He used to put pencils
in her vagina, in her rectum.

When she was twelve years old
he went to bed with her

and he had sex with her."

And I said, "Billy, I really need
to talk to Marie again."

But Billy said,
"I could kill her,

I could make her take pills,
I could make her hang herself."

That turned out to be
the very first multiple,

not the first I've ever seen,
the first that I ever knew I saw.

I had her have
psychological testing

and on the Rorschach test,

which is a projective test, you look
at inkblots and see what people see,

and there are
certain normal responses

and certain psychotic
kinds of responses,

and Billy's test results were
as psychotic as they come.

And Marie had absolutely
the most normal Rorschach

that you would expect.

I'm fascinated
by how can there be

such different functioning
in the same brain.

My daughter Gillian says,

"Mom, you're the only one who does
group therapy with one person."

I would never again see people
as I had before.

My innocence,
which sprang from ignorance,

would be stripped away,

and I would learn things
about human beings

that I had not been taught
during my training as a psychiatrist,

things most of us
would rather not know.

Violent alternate personalities
are usually caricatures of evil,

created in the minds of tormented
children to take their pain

and defend them against real
or imagined enemies.

They embody the strength, courage,

and wiliness needed
for a tortured child to survive.

Though some
mental health experts

say Multiple Personality Disorder
doesn't exist,

the American Psychiatric
Association says it does,

calling it
Dissociative Identity Disorder,

and adding in most cases it involves
severe abuse or trauma in childhood.

Parts of the mind splitting from each
other to keep pain away...

Before Freud, people like Janet

talked about consciousness
at many different levels

like streams running parallel
to each other.

Haven't you ever driven and been,
kind of, into your own thoughts

and you pass the exit
that you meant to get off at,

'cause you were really thinking
about something else?

We all, from time to time,
dissociate. It's a continuum.

There are degrees all the way
to where, for a period of time,

the individual truly believes himself
to be someone else.

At Bellevue we ran a clinic

for children
with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

And it became clear that it starts
very, very, very early.

I worked with one child,
let's call her Nancy,

and she had
an alter named Amanda.

Tell me Amanda, how old was
'Nancy' when you came?

Around seven or eight.

Seven or eight?
What did you do for her?

I talked to her.

You talked to her?
What about?

What happened.

Nancy was referred to me
by a social worker.

She had been abused
by a relative.

And he put his pri-pivate?

Private part in my mouth and...

I have videos of Nancy going through
so many different kinds of stages.

Also, Nancy kept a diary.

Her different personas had different
handwriting, different spelling.

Alternate personalities leave evidence
of their existence all over the place:

teacher reports,
social service records,

medical charts, journals,
diaries, drawings.

All are pieces of that puzzle

that reveal the picture of a divided,
often fragmented mind.

These constitute
the evidence needed to show

that multiple
personality disorder existed

years before the diagnosis
was even considered.

They are proof that the interviewer
did not create the disorder.

So, when you start to present
some of your findings

to other psychiatric colleagues, what
was their reaction? Was it welcoming?

Oh sure. No.

If you were an esteemed clinician,
researcher, psychologist, psychiatrist,

you did not take that seriously.
That was a bogus diagnosis.

I got ridiculed a lot, at Yale

where I showed some of the most
poignant pictures of small children

and you saw them switch,

and you could give the history
of what had happened to them.

Even when they saw it,
right in front of their faces,

the head of one
of the departments said,

"There must be
another explanation."

And so I thought, "Tell me
what it is, I'm open to that."

But... So there was...
I think there still is a skepticism.

At Bellevue we had
a lot of room to spread out our data

and to video tape,
and stuff like that.

And then they hired someone
who was very hostile to our work

and took away all our space,
and eventually I left.

These files are filled
with death row inmates or evaluations

that we've done on murderers
who were going to trial.

They're also records
of what we discovered,

and then what the law
was willing to accept.

She was just snatched
off the street.

Found a body.

Possibility of a strangulation.

You would not be able to recognize
the face of the body.

Post-mortem mutilation
of the victims.

It is one of the most
significant arrests.

Arthur J. Shawcross.

Served fifteen years in prison
for the murder of two children.

1987 he was released on parole.

He is a severely
emotionally disturbed man.

Claimed that he had cut out
my brother's heart and ate that.

Whether this defendant
was legally insane,

is a question of fact for you
to decide.

Arthur Shawcross was preparing
to go to trial in Rochester, New York.

Before I even laid eyes
on the defendant,

his lawyers had obtained
an MRI of his brain.

The MRI had shown that at the
very tip of his right temporal lobe

was a small, fluid cyst.

The brain is
a very sensitive organ.

The tiniest scar or tumor or cyst can,
under certain circumstances,

trigger abnormal electric activity
and seizures

associated with bizarre,
animalistic behaviors.

Here is the frontal lobe.
And the frontal lobes restrain.

They're the part
that kind of says,

"I might want another piece of cake,
but I'm not going to have it."

Or "I might like to rape this lady,

but maybe I can find some
more appropriate... whatever."

There's a deep part of the brain
called the limbic system.

This limbic system has to do
with food, with sex,

with anger, with you name it.

It's the very primitive part
of the brain.

There are a lot of connections between
the lobes and the limbic system.

I think of it
as reigns on a horse.

So, with Shawcross,
the cyst in his temporal lobe

would excite the limbic system
and put it out of whack.

But then Jonathan Pincus said,

"Dorothy, what about the scars
in the frontal lobe?"

And, you know, it's incredible.

The reigns on the horse
had been cut

and he was triggered
if somebody said,

"I'll tell the police
or I'll tell your mother."

That would snap him
and he would kill.

- Do you know me?
- No.

I'm Dr. Lewis. Would it be okay
to talk with you a little bit? Yeah?

I videotaped Arthur Shawcross, yes.
Yeah, oh he was a character.

I want you to tell us
about what happened.

I just grab her by the shoulders
and I'm laying on her.

And, you know, she's trying
to scoot out from under me,

and I just panic,
and I just grab her by the throat,

and I said, "hold still."

Some sensation come over me
and I start sweating like crazy.

And the daylight around me
got brighter and brighter,

and I didn't even hear the birds,

didn't hear anything around me,
and I just...

From day one I said, "I think
he has temporal lobe seizures,"

from everything he told me.

The person may see
very bright lights,

the person may get nauseated,

the person may feel headache
or dizzy, followed by sleep.

And I feel my, like,
like I'm floating away.

I'm not even in the car,
but I can see in the car.

It's hard, I can't explain it.

It's okay you're doing fine.
What do you see?

What would happen is, the girl
would be in his car or his van,

and he would kill her
and he'd fall sound asleep.

And he'd wake up and it was kind of,
"Oops I must have done it again."

Opened up the door and,
and pushed her out

and she went right over the guardrail,
laid on the ice, face down.

Something that was telling
about how his brain worked

was we interviewed
the wife separately,

and she did not believe
he had done anything bad.

She saw him as this loving man
who worked nights.

He was a cook in a cafeteria

and then he would be done
early in the morning

and her best guess was
if he was going to commit a murder,

it would be some time in the dark
in the middle of the night

or towards dawn.

And he would tell his wife,

"You know there's a serial
murderer around. Don't go out."

So when she told us that,
at that point we had an inkling

that there was
something not right.

I want to talk to the person
that Art saw kill.

- What's your name?
- Bessie.

- What is your name?
- Bessie!

- Buzzy?
- Bessie!

- Bessie? Who are you?
- His mother.

Really? Bessie, would you be good
enough to sign your name for me?

It became clear that Arthur Shawcross
experienced dissociative states.

At these times, he would hear
his mother in his head

berating him
and the women he was seeing.

No one was good enough for Artie.
They should die.

Bessie, did you hurt
any of the girls?

I hurt all of them.

- What?
- I hurt all of them.

So how come he confessed
to all of that stuff if you did it?

He does everything I tell him to.

Bessie, how did you kill them?

Prove it. What did you do?

He lifted up his fist.

There was no way
that I could get out,

and I thought
that he was going to attack me.

- What's that in your hand, Bessie?
- A knife.

A knife? What are
you gonna do with a knife?

- What are you doing Bessie?
- Cuttin'.

Who are you cutting?

- Who are you cutting?
- A girl.

One of his victims had been sliced
from her neck

all the way down
to her pubic area.

Art, what's happening?

Mommy, you're biting me.

Where is she biting you, Art?

Where is she biting you, Art?

Art, Art where is she biting you?
She's biting your penis?

What happened, Art?

I had no question that Mr. Shawcross
had been severely abused.

School records described his mother
as punishing and rejecting.

In grade school, the young Arthur
cowered under radiators

while the other children
sang songs.

Psychological tests revealed
a seriously disturbed child

lost in a fantasy in which
he perceived himself a new person.

I don't know, I just...
A funny feeling sometimes.

I'm there,
but it's like I'm not there.

I'm fightin' with myself.

It's like I'm two different people
doing something bad.

Opening arguments began today
in the Shawcross murder trial

and late this afternoon the first
witnesses were called to the stand.

Defense attorney, Thomas Cocuzzi,
contends

that his client's sanity
is in question.

Cocuzzi told jurors that
he will put an expert psychiatrist,

Dr. Dorothy Lewis on the stand.

And you're going to hear aspects
of his medical records

and his school records
and his prison records,

reflecting his behavior, not since
his arrest, but throughout his life.

You were testifying for the defense?

Yes, I was.
But, what's interesting with him...

To keep him from being executed?

Not really 'cause it was New York and
they don't execute people in New York.

But the defense was arguing he should
be in an institution, not in prison.

And I had said to the lawyers,
"We're gonna be educating the public.

Look, you can show the jury
pictures of the MRI.

You can see the cyst, you can see
the scars in the frontal lobe.

Go with that." And they didn't.

Instead they ran
with the dissociative symptoms.

Why did he have to be punished,
Bessie?

He did bad things with girls.

But that's a much tougher diagnosis
for a jury.

I mean it just seems so fantastic.

Bessie, how many people
have you had to get rid of for him?

- Eleven.
- Eleven?

Did you have any help?

- No.
- No?

I had been tricked. What about
the neurological findings?

By the time I took the stand,
it was clear

that Shawcross's attorneys were
not going to produce a neurologist.

Your Honor, I was lied to

and therefore
I cannot credibly testify

without clarifying what I was told,
what I was told was being done,

and then what I discovered finally.

Dorothy had a hard time
on the witness stand.

She was always involved
in so many things

she would come to
wherever the hearing was

and she wouldn't have,
sort of, gathered her thoughts

and, you know, kind of systematized
her thinking. Dorothy's not linear.

And that's part of her genius.

But it's also part of frustration
in trying to bring her into a linear,

a system that requires linearity
like the legal system.

Your Honor, may I please request
a recess for 15 minutes,

because I do not feel prepared
to go on right now.

I was repeatedly chastised
by the Judge

for not responding directly
to questions with a succinct yes or no.

I looked clumsy
and disorganized.

This is not the way psychiatry works,
it is not the way...

The prosecution hired Park Dietz,

one of the most highly regarded
forensic psychiatrists in the nation,

a man who had been a consultant
at the FBI and CIA.

He was a handsome, confident man
who never appeared hassled.

It was very clear what was happening
on the video tapes,

that Dr. Lewis was inviting him
to play various performances.

She invited him
to play the role of his mother,

even telling him that he could
take on the role of his mother

and talk like his mother, and he even
does it in a falsetto voice.

Do you buy the whole idea
of Multiple Personality Disorder?

No. I think it's a hoax.

I think it is a sad fact that people
in my profession

were so eager to find something
that they did a form of interviewing

that can cause vulnerable people
to believe

they have
more than one personality.

And now,
we're going to count... Three...

Now I want you to roll your eyes
upwards but keep your eyes closed.

Dr. Lewis subjected Shawcross
to a kind of hypnosis

during part of her interview.

And you're going
to open your eyes.

And now you're gonna tell me
what is happening.

You don't like to use hypnosis
if you can avoid it,

but it was early in my career
at the Shawcross trial.

Hypnosis is questionable.

People who can be hypnotized,
can also... Are very suggestible.

If you do use hypnosis,
you want to confirm

what was said either
from other relatives, friends,

hospital records, school records,
you just can't believe everything.

During a hypnotic session,

he identified himself
as a thirteen century cannibal.

- Took his heart out.
- Yeah.

Cut his penis off. Testicles off.

Took his testicles, yeah.

- And then what?
- Ate them.

He exhibited none of that with me.

Have you had
some medical problems?

I've got an injured elbow
on my right side.

He answered to his name,

as he had to everybody else throughout
his entire life, except Dorothy Lewis.

And understood how, where, when, and
why he did every one of those murders.

I just panicked.

She didn't scream, didn't holler,
didn't struggle, didn't fight.

And I choked her.

Any popular notion that serial killers
are crazy people is just wrong.

We have no way to know how many men
have as their favorite sexual fantasy,

strangling a woman to death until her
tongue protrudes from her mouth

and you hear
the last breath leave her body.

But I bet it isn't related only to
those few men who do that routinely.

This was a guy who did some
pretty grizzly things to his victims.

Well, he ate
the vagina of one of them

and, you know, I thought
that was pretty bizarre.

And I've seen a lot.
Nobody with the taste for that.

I cut her from here down to here,
cut the vagina, you know,

cut the outer part out, and ate it.

On the stand, Park Dietz said,
"He ate the vagina to hide the DNA."

"Surely, doctor, there must be an
easier way to get rid of the evidence."

Ultimately, it was my opinion

that Shawcross was not insane
under the law.

That he knew what he was doing,
knew it was wrong.

"What kind of sane person would eat
the vaginas of his victims?"

I guess would be what
an average person like me might say.

One has nothing to do
with the other.

Whether you are responsible
for a murder you did,

is unrelated to whether you once ate
a raw rabbit or a raw vagina.

Cold, calculating,
and remorseless,

for whom killing was not
an emotional disturbance...

Siragusa was the prosecutor
on the case

and he was running for office.

And so I think she was
the recipient of his need

to show
that he's a tough guy on crime.

Okay, you said...

I said that they might
have been caused by a stroke.

Excuse me...
Excuse me, Doctor,

can you answer... Can you try,
Doctor, just to answer my question?

Can you hear me, Doctor?

And he was going to put her
into the mud

because that would help his cause,
and he did get elected.

I would never say anything about
Doctor Lewis other than to comment

that, I think her performance
in court speaks for itself.

You know, Dorothy paved the way

for a whole generation
of mental health professionals

who followed in her steps.
But she was a pioneer

and pioneers are often,
you know, not treated well.

I think there was an intuitive
recognition on the part of prosecutors,

that what she had to say
bore heavily on the truth.

And the truth is not
what some prosecutors wanted.

She swallowed the stories
he told, hook, line, and sinker.

So when you were on the stand
the attorney on the other side,

the prosecuting attorney
was making fun of you for...

Yes.

...thinking that there was such
a thing as Multiple Personality...

Yeah, yes, yeah.
Or for anything else, you know.

The local radio station
made up jingles about me.

The boys have written a song
in Dorothy's honor,

and hope it comes out alright.

Hey look who's on the stand again

Back to defend her killer friend

Got her psychiatry degree

Now she's on Arthur's side you see

She tries to justify what's wrong

Because his mother
Played with his dong

Hey hey! Yakety Yak!
Dorothy's back. Hey! Alright!

They were making
fun of you because,

just because you were on his side

or because you were evincing
a particular theory about him?

How about all of the above,
all of the above. You know...

Yeah.

Members of the jury,
how do you find,

in the matter of the People
of the State of New York

versus Arthur Shawcross?

Guilty.

It took the jury less than two hours
to find Mr. Shawcross sane

and guilty of the murders
of ten women.

It took me three years to recover
from my three weeks on the stand.

No one had believed a word I said.

Do you think Dorothy Lewis
let you down?

No, don't you,
don't block me please.

I have no comment
on Dorothy Lewis. Thank you.

What's happening?

No more.

Was Arthur Shawcross crazy
when he murdered his victims

and consumed their genitalia?

Of course, he had to be.

Insane? Not necessarily.

When a defense attorney hires you,

in the legal system,
for what purpose do they hire you?

Well, you know,
I don't really care for what purpose

'cause I do the same evaluation.

They're probably hoping that I will
find the person is stark raving mad.

But...

The law has a lot to learn
from psychiatry,

and instead psychiatry accepts
the legal definition

of what's crazy
and what isn't crazy.

They have a notion of competence
and a notion of insanity,

both of which don't make sense
psychiatrically.

There are different levels
of competence.

"Oh, well, I know
what a courtroom is,

a courtroom is where
there's a judge and there's a jury."

"And do you know
what you're accused of?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm accused of robbery,
of murder, and of this..."

Done. You know? Uh, he's competent.
This is the law, period.

In the Middle Ages in England,
they had the death penalty.

And the legal system had the view
if somebody had become mad,

that madness itself
was enough punishment.

That's part of
the English Common Law

that came with the English colonists
to North America.

At some point, though, in death
penalty cases in the United States,

that notion got lost, that madness
was punishment enough,

and people could be executed
despite being very psychotic.

And as late as the 1950s

the U.S. Supreme Court had examined
a case like that

and said that it doesn't
offend the Constitution,

it's not cruel and unusual
to do that.

You're competent to be executed

if you know
what you've been found guilty of

and if you know
what it is to be executed.

Now that's a pretty low bar,
wouldn't you say?

By and large, the law has taken
on very simple-minded criterion

that ignores all that we know now
about how the human brain works,

about some
of the genetics of disorders.

When Clinton was running
for president,

he was called back to Arkansas
to sign a death warrant

because he was governor.

Apparently, Ricky Ray was used to
having his dinner at a certain time

and saving the dessert for later.

And he saved his pecan pie
for after the execution.

Now, I would say he didn't know
what it meant to be executed.

But my colleagues found him perfectly
competent to be executed.

And I don't know
who ate the pie.

Mrs. Mooney has a pie shop

Does good business
But I've noticed something weird

Lately all her neighbors' cats
Have disappeared

Wouldn't do in my shop

Just the thought of it's enough
To make you sick

And I'm telling you
Them pussycats is quick

No denying times is hard, sir

Even harder
Than the worst pies in London

More pies, more pies, more pies

More pies
Eat the flesh

Eat his body
Drink his blood

I am haunted by the prospect
of condemning to death a person

whose upbringing and brain function
have made it hard, if not impossible,

for him to control his acts.

Granted the person
may be a menace.

I have no problem locking him up
and throwing away the key.

Until we know how
to treat such individuals,

the public must be protected.

I feel like committing suicide
because...

- Oh please don't do that.
- Because I, you know, because of...

Because of what, Max?

Because of what happened
to Michael.

Max was brought to the prison ward
at Bellevue,

because this was the second time
that he had tried to kill a lover.

I was called by one of the doctors

because they believed that he had
Multiple Personality Disorder.

I was asked to confirm the diagnosis,
and then we kind of clicked.

So I went to see him frequently.

As far as we could tell,
Max had been tortured by his mother.

Where would she hit you?

She used to say I'm gonna put you
to bed so fast your head will swim.

She used to knock you around, your
head did feel like it was swimming.

She punched, she punched
and she's had big long nails

and she used to rake them,
she used to dig them into you.

- Really?
- Into your skin.

Do you have any marks
where she hurt you?

Do I have any marks
where she hurt me?

I see marks here, little bit. Yeah.

And also right there,

marks where
I had to kneel on glass.

What do you mean
kneel on glass?

I had to, I'd broken some,
and so she said, "Well clean it up."

And so, she pushed me
down the floor and I,

you know,
there was glass on the floor,

and I said, "Well let me get up,"

and she said "Clean it up,
you broke it, clean it up," she said.

Stop it!

- He is there now.
- He hears whatever we...

But you cannot see him?

Why is it that we can see him and...
Can you see him?

- No.
- He's there.

You cannot see him?

There was a very strong,
often cruel part of him, Kalki,

who was almost god-like
in the way he viewed himself.

I am Avatar.
Whatever I do is for the benefit.

Whatever I do is good.
Whatever I do is good. But it is...

But, Kalki,
why was it good to stab Michael?

He was the one
who stabbed Max's lovers.

It was the game. It was the game.

And then there was Jabreel, and Jabreel
was an old man, a zen monk.

You see that is love there,
that is love.

She would hold him, sometimes...

He seemed to have developed
as a comforter for Max.

Max also talked about a baby.

He was a very bright young man

and had some insight into
what was going on in his head.

So, we would say to him,

"Max, if a twelve-year-old kid had
the same kinds of switching

that you have, what kinds
of questions would you ask?"

I would ask them

if they had a place

that they could go,
that nobody else could go to.

A place inside themselves
where nobody else could go to,

that would seem like,
that no one else is there.

And I would say,
"Is it a beach? Is it trees?"

I would say,
"What is it? Where do you go?

Where do you go when you just
feel like going someplace else?"

"'Cause it's a very special thing to
do and not many people can do that.

It's very special."

- So you'd say it's very special?
- I'd say, "It's very special."

And then we would try it out
on the kids, and he was spot on.

That's how bright and insightful he was
but he couldn't help himself.

What games are you playing?

The last time you played games
you got him into a lot of trouble.

What are you doing, Kalki?
Don't pull that 'hm hm hm' on me.

- Hello, Kalki?
- I am here.

Yeah I know you're there.
I know you're there

and I know most people
don't talk to you straight.

But I am miffed.
I thought we had an agreement.

- You and Jabreel had an agreement?
- I thought we did.

- We did not.
- I thought we did.

I thought we did, I thought
that went... Do you speak any French?

You know "ca va sans dire?"
"It goes without saying."

Maybe we clicked
because I didn't play favorites.

If you notice I am empathic
to every one of them.

Well Kalki certainly
has a lot of strength.

Yes, he is very strong, isn't he?

You never bad mouth,
especially the abuser.

That is an,
that's an invitation to murder.

One day, I came into my office

and my secretary handed me
one of these telephone slips.

And it said,
"Mr. Scorsese's office has called

and would like you to call back."

So I called back
and an assistant of his said,

"Mr. Scorsese has discovered
that you see murderers.

Robert De Niro is going to be
in a remake of Cape Fear,

and he would like
to meet some murderers.

Can you arrange that?"

You know it's so funny, I felt like,
would you say a casting director?

So, I asked Max. He really
had attempted to murder twice.

Oh yes, I could talk to him.

Max said, sure he would talk with him.
I said, "Well, how about Kalki?"

Yes.

"And Jabreel?"
And Jabreel said:

Yes.

So, we made an arrangement
for De Niro to go into the prison ward.

At first, Max seemed puzzled
and I said,

"Max, you must know him,
you've seen Taxi Driver."

And he said,
"No I've never seen Taxi Driver."

I said, "Max, Mr. De Niro is going
to make a movie out of a man

who has trouble with his temper."

And I said, "I know
Kalki has had trouble with his temper.

I would like very much
for Mr. De Niro to meet Kalki."

And the next thing I know
Max really metamorphoses

to this haughty,
the chin came up,

he really looks different, the whole
visage is different, the muscles.

I said, "Kalki, this is Mr. De Niro.
Mr. De Niro, this is Kalki."

And Kalki says,
"Oh! You were so good in Taxi Driver."

Tell me what has happened
in your case, since...

No, nothing's happened.
It will take a long time.

I do not care what happens.
I wish they had the death penalty.

I wish they had the death penalty,
I would happily have it. Since...

- Why?
- Because when...

I will tell you why, because...

When a dog goes mad
you shoot it, don't you?

And a person's
worth more than a dog.

And if, and if...

If you are that kind to a dog,

why not be that kind
to a human being

and just shoot him
or something?

Max had some good lawyers
who cared about him

and they asked me
if I would write a note

saying that he was
no longer dangerous

and that he should be discharged.

And I said no. He had twice,

in his altered states, tried to kill,

and I had no reason to believe
that he wouldn't do it again.

And, even though
we had a lovely relationship,

you know, I've seen enough to know
that people can turn on a dime.

They were very, very angry at me,

but they found another psychiatrist
who was willing to write a note,

and he was discharged.

I think
Max never really forgave me.

Where is Dad? Where is he?
And a professor.

- Here's Dad.
- Is this Dad?

I like that Royal Army
Medical Corps, huh?

- I love all three.
- Yeah, I think the design is so nice.

Beautifully done.

It says, "Scholar, editor, teacher..."
I forgot that we put that.

Yeah you left out, you know,
husband, father...

- Cool dude.
- Funny guy.

We, I bought four places.

So would you, now, which one of you
wants to be where... I wanna be there.

- I think we have that.
- Yeah, you have to be next to Dad.

And then the one back there
and one back there. Yeah.

- That works.
- This is the weirdest conversation.

I first met Mel
in medical school at Yale.

I was a student and he was
an assistant professor in psychiatry.

I bumped into him
in the Medical School Library.

That night I got a call.
He asked me out.

And I remember sitting in my chair
and it spun,

and just spinning around
and going "Weeee!"

I knew in a week,
I really, really liked this person,

and I didn't forgive Mel

because it took him two weeks
to ask me to marry him.

You know he was
a lot older than I.

And so, I spent a fair amount of time
when he was going off to meetings

and things like that,
I was back here.

When we were little Mom
brought us to our music lessons,

and we'd do art projects
with her.

Whereas my Father,
I remember climbing over him

and wrestling in the living room,
or stuff like that.

They were two very complementary
forms of bringing up a kid.

My father was the very playful one,

while, and my Mom was
kind of the inspirational one.

My career took off in a way
I hadn't planned it.

My work on juveniles
condemned to death

was cited in several
Supreme Court decisions.

But, success
did affect my family.

I made some teaching tapes
of Arthur Shawcross,

and some of the things
that he went through...

She squeezed my thingy.

...were terribly
unsettling to my kids.

Now they're kind
of interested in it.

My mom does her writing
by hand

and then I type up
what she's given me.

I'm like a fast hunt and peck
type typist so, it could be worse.

- Hey, Mom! I'm done.
- It's beautiful, Eric.

Thanks, Mom, but read it over 'cause
I thought I made a few mistakes.

I love you.

I love you.
Oh, thank you so much.

You're so welcome.
I'll be back soon.

Yeah, okay.

- Alright, I love you, Ma.
- I love you.

- Uber carefully.
- I will.

I will never forget that moment,
or never forget that day.

The loss, the tragedy.

He strangled, raped,
and murdered her.

The guy oughta just be killed.

Johnny Frank Garrett had climbed
into the window of a convent,

and he had gotten
into the room of a nun.

He left all the fingerprints,
he left the knives.

This was not a genius we were
dealing with, an archcriminal, uh-uh.

It was not always easy
to understand Johnny Garrett.

He was forever changing.
Shortly after confessing,

he insisted that he had nothing
to do with the murder.

Hence, he refused to sign
the confession he had just provided.

To the trial court,
he was a liar, pure and simple.

Johnny Frank Garrett,
thief, rapist, murderer, liar,

was not crazy, he was bad.

Johnny was dispatched to death row
in Huntsville to await execution.

We were doing a study of fourteen
juveniles under the age of eighteen

who were sentenced to death.

Johnny related in a bizarre fashion

and he talked to voices,
he clearly was hallucinating.

We wrote reports on everybody
we saw and sent them to lawyers.

But this one I was more detailed
about, because at that point

he was the sickest of the death row
people I had ever seen.

I'd never seen somebody
so flamboyantly psychotic.

I diagnosed schizophrenia,

with brain damage
and a history of seizures.

But then, I saw a video.
48 Hours interviewed him.

You're saying
you didn't commit the murder?

No I didn't. I didn't commit neither
one of them, rape or murder.

The hell would I go on and do
something like that for?

Johnny Garrett claims he talks
to his dead Aunt Barbara...

Sometimes she'll answer,
sometimes she won't.

...who he says often appears
in his death row cell.

What does she tell you?

That they're not going to kill me.
That they can't kill me.

Immediately,
I realized he's a Multiple.

And that's all she'll say,
is they cannot kill me.

Years later,
I was reading The Times.

'Pope asks for clemency for death
row inmate Johnny Frank Garrett'.

And I couldn't believe it.

Ann Richards, the Governor of Texas,
found herself in a quandary.

According to the material
she had read,

the condemned
was obviously demented.

Texas was about to execute a crazy man
for an act committed as a crazy boy.

If there was ever a case deserving
of clemency, this was it.

On the other hand, Texas was still
the no-nonsense state.

In fact, Texas was running
neck and neck with Florida

for the distinction of executing
the greatest number of criminals

since the death penalty
was reinstituted in 1976.

No governor of Texas
who granted clemency, outright,

could rely on reelection.

The Texas Governor
would convene a clemency board.

It would act as another jury.

If, after pondering
all the evidence,

it voted to spare
the prisoner, so be it.

Nobody could then accuse this
governor of being soft on crime.

Who was the political pawn
whose life hung in the balance?

Johnny Frank Garrett.

He was coming up
for a clemency trial...

See, you can see a light in here,
and you can see if its playing.

So I found out who his lawyer was
and called her.

And I said,
"I goofed, I made a mistake.

I will come down to Texas,
no fee, no charge, nothing.

It's pretty clear
that he dissociates."

He had a persona,
a violent one, Aaron Shockman.

How long have you known
Aaron Shockman?

Well, about... I guess I had to be
in fifth grade 'cause I met him...

Well, I didn't meet him...

- How did you meet him first?
- I got beat up.

And what happened
when you got beat up?

I became Aaron Shockman.

At that time?
And what did you do?

- Well, he, he beat them up.
- Really?

He's older than me, mentally.

- He's older than you?
- Intellectually.

He's smarter than I am.

He would pause between
what he was telling me

and his eyes would kind of go up.

And you see that often with people who
are talking to someone in their head.

Aaron, I need to talk to you now.
Have you been listening?

- Who am I?
- Dr. Lewis.

That's right.
What made you come?

He needed a friend.

So he made one.

He needed someone to take pain.

He needed someone to take pain?
And could you do it?

Oh yes.

He was being fucked.

- Who was fucking him?
- Everybody.

- Who?
- His Father.

Yeah, and who else?

Other men that he met
through him, boys, a dog.

Why the dog and the boys?
Tell me about that.

- What was going on? What?
- We were being filmed.

I'd once heard a lecture
by an FBI agent.

He talked about how children
used in pornography

feared for the rest of their lives
that their identities,

and the perverted acts
they were once forced to perform,

will someday come to light.

Johnny was more terrified of being
recognized in the pornographic films

he had made as a child, than
he was of his impending execution.

When he doesn't want to remember,
he gives me the memories.

Aaron was talking with me, again,

Johnny's eyes kind of looked up
and I said, "What's happening?"

Is someone talking to you now?
Who's talking to you, Aaron?

- What's going... What's happening?
- That bitch.

Aaron said, "That bitch Barbara,
she wants to get rid of me."

- Aunt Barbara?
- Yeah, there was Aunt Barbara.

She was another alter of Johnny's
and she was nearsighted.

I can't see.

- What?
- I can't see you.

- What do you mean you can't see me?
- You're blurred.

- And what's your name?
- Barbara.

A condemned person must understand
the nature of the crime

for which he is being executed.

He must also understand the fact
that he is about to die for it.

In Johnny's case,

Aunt Barbara had promised repeatedly
that Johnny would not die.

I'm not gonna let that happen to him.

- What do you mean?
- I'm gonna stop it.

How could you do that?

They will kill me, not him.

Really? They would kill you,
and then what would happen with him?

He would still be alive.

I testified the following day.

We had reams of data about his
intelligence, his mental condition.

This is how you create
a psychotic individual.

And we had clips of him
in some of these states.

When he doesn't want to remember,
he gives me the memories.

But the clemency board
didn't give a damn.

Board members came out to vote
17-to-1, to carry out the execution.

Garrett's only real hope now is
a personal pardon from the Governor.

That's unlikely and he faces
death by lethal injection.

The poison will kill me,

and he will live
and they will bring...

They will have
to give him a life sentence.

They will have
to either give him...

They would have
to maybe even release him.

To no one's surprise, Aunt Barbara's
plan did not come off

and the poison flowed
into Johnny's veins.

Witness accounts of the execution
led me to believe

that, before the poison
was injected,

it was Aaron, someone
far tougher than Johnny,

who came to help him
through his final ordeal.

His last words were something like,
"I'm sorry to my Mother,

sorry to the family of the nun, and the
rest of you can go fuck yourselves."

And I thought, "Way to go."

Na-na-na-na,
hey-hey-hey goodbye!

To this group
of mostly college students,

Johnny Frank Garrett represented
all that's wrong with our legal system.

With chants and candles,

they applauded Garrett's
death by lethal injection,

saying the punishment
must fit the crime.

Texas! You know,
the row has got to go!

On the same side of the street
but with an opposite view,

were members
of Amnesty International.

The human rights group argued

that by executing
a mentally unstable convict,

a greater crime was committed.

These hardened criminals will never
again murder, rape, or deal drugs.

As Governor I made sure they received
the ultimate punishment: death.

And Texas is a safer place for it.

Back when we were doing
a lot of this work,

the tenor of our culture at that time
was really crime-and-punishment,

and not rehabilitation.

They are not
just gangs of kids anymore,

they are often the kinds of kids
that are called super-predators.

No conscious, no empathy.

I don't wanna ask,
"What made them do this?"

They must be taken off the street.

She's the only Democrat for governor
for the death penalty.

She's Dianne Feinstein.

When Dorothy and I
first started working together,

and we were seeing our juveniles
that were growing up.

So these were kids
that she had seen at fourteen,

I saw them
when they were in their twenties.

And, initially the state prisons
had a rehabilitative model.

So they were teaching people
how to read, write,

balance a checkbook,
get a job, write a resume.

And then as we were getting more and
more into the work we were doing,

the culture was changing, and the
politicians were getting the message

that crime and punishment
is what's important.

We don't want to rehabilitate,

it's too expensive
and who cares anyway.

If you come into our state
and you kill one of our children,

you kill a police officer,
you're involved with another crime

and you kill one of our citizens,

you will face the ultimate justice
in the state of Texas.

And that is,
you will be executed.

What do you make of...

The rationales
for the death penalty

have always been
retribution and deterrence:

keeping other people from engaging
in the same behavior.

And all the studies,
social science studies have shown

that there is no deterrent effect
from executions.

In fact, executions sort
of bring the act of killing

into the mainstream
as acceptable.

In states where executions
have gone up,

homicide rates
have often gone up.

The legal system, at this point,

is most interested
in incapacitating these people.

And you can't really blame
them for that.

Their interest is
in the public safety.

But if you have that and only that,
and you don't try to figure out

what it is that creates
these very dangerous people,

then you just run the risk of making
more and more and more prisons

and never preventing.

Ever since 1976 juries
have been obliged to consider

the mitigating as well as the
aggravating circumstances of a murder.

Aggravating circumstances focused,
for the most part,

on the grotesqueness
of the crimes.

Was the victim tortured
or raped or mutilated?

Was there
more than one victim?

Then there are
the mitigating circumstances.

These often focus on the
defendant's abusive childhood

and on the issues
of mental health.

Herein lies the contradiction:
the gruesomeness of the murder

is directly proportional
to the craziness of the murderer.

Now ask a jury to wrestle with that
equation and come up with an answer.

It can't be done.

The Supreme Court has always used
that word "compassion"

in describing what's important
about mitigation, that it's something

that allows a compassionate
impulse to work in jurors.

You know, my hope and others',
our hope in our community was

that it would expand to a view

that serious mental illness
would exempt people

from even being sentenced
to death to start with.

And it hasn't,
hasn't moved that direction.

Are the courts becoming
more receptive?

Are juries becoming
more receptive to this?

No.

This is Yale psychiatrist,
Dorothy Lewis,

and her partner neurologist Jonathan
Pincus of Georgetown University.

They're trying to get courts
to give Multiple Personality

different treatment under the law.

Which brings us to David Wilson,
convicted of murdering a stranger

who stopped to help when he thought
Wilson's car was broken down

on the highway.

He was shot point blank
with a twelve gauge shotgun.

His wallet was still in his glove box.
A savage act.

What can you say after something
so shocking happens?

David went into some kind of state,

and he mistook the guy
who had stopped to help him

for somebody dangerous,
somebody in his life,

and shot him and killed him.

Personally, I remember being in the
car, but in the back seat sleeping.

I didn't know anybody got killed.

Working?

I went and examined him after he was
found guilty and sentenced to death.

I was quite startled when I saw

he had scars all over his chest
and all over his back,

and there was a burn scar.

- His mother burnt him.
- How?

- Scarred the shit outta him.
- How'd she do that?

Boiling water.
He run out of the house.

He couldn't get it.
He was in pain.

He had an alter named Juan.

Well first I want to know your name.
I don't know who I'm talking to.

- I'm Juan.
- Juan?

Who was I just talking to
a few minutes ago?

- Lee.
- Lee?

And then he had another alter.
I think there were three of them.

- In the house...
- Tell us who you are.

His mother burned him,
set him on fire with newspaper.

- Tell me your name.
- Bobby.

- Who are you?
- Are you David?

You'll know in due time.

I'll know in due time.
Well, you sound pretty scary.

I protect somebody.

How do you protect him?
What do you do for him?

- I hurt anyone that hurts him.
- You do?

You ask a lot of questions
for a doctor.

I do. That's the kind of doctor I am.
But I'm on David's side.

David ain't never had no friends,
nobody but me.

I'm the only one that ever cared.

David's father used to hang David up
by his stomach with his trousers off.

He had these...

- Like balls.
- Yes.

He put them in my butt,
push them in,

and kick me in the stomach
and they would fly out.

Hurt. Hurt bad.

- I'm sorry. I can't do this no more.
- Who are you now?

- I'm David.
- You're David?

Who am I supposed to be?

David, do you remember
what you were crying about?

Just a lot of pain, and I don't
wanna go through this no more.

- Do you remember what it was?
- No.

You don't remember what it was?

What is, to you, the most telling
thing that convinces you?

It's a constellation of things...

And you've documented
this independently.

Oh yes.

- It's not just his word?
- No, absolutely.

Because, again, people sitting at home
would say he's got a lot to gain here.

What?
What does he have to gain?

Getting hospitalized
instead of jailed.

But he doesn't want that.

I had a different impression
from yours

which was that he really did not
want us to see these switches,

and indeed he doesn't really
believe that they occur.

David touched me.

There was something about him that was
so vulnerable and, and so innocent.

There's a part that was...

I got called to testify at the appeal

and David was there.

I was explaining
his dissociative states

and I stopped myself and I said, "Your
Honor, may I interrupt for a moment

because David is not here right now,
but Juan has come. "

He switched.

It was after that hearing that the
judge reduced the sentence to life.

- Do you remember me?
- Yes.

- Yeah? What's my name?
- Dorothy Lewis.

That's right.

No civilized nation throughout history
has executed its insane.

So from a moral point of view,
you don't kill people

who, because of an illness,
act in an uncontrollable way.

But does this really mitigate
the horrible crime he committed?

He should be punished
and punished severely.

But should he be put to death for that

if the main operative factors
in producing his violence

were completely
out of his control?

Under the law, he is still competent
enough to know right from wrong.

The issue is really whether the
individual has that degree of control

to conform his behavior
to the requirements of law.

My daughter believes that the judge
who sentences a person to death

should be responsible
for carrying out his sentence.

He should spring
the trap door under the gallows,

press the button to deliver
the current, inject the poison.

She thinks then
there would be fewer executions.

Most people, she believes, would
have trouble doing those things.

I'm not so sure.

Do you wonder what it is like
to witness an electrocution?

Insert twenty-five cents then
quickly pull the control handles

to administer
capital punishment.

My question is,
within our own society,

are there individuals
who are able to kill repeatedly

and whose only psychopathology,
if you could call it that,

is a lack of empathy
for other human beings.

Are there real sociopaths?

The man on the left has killed
almost twenty men in Louisiana

since December 1983.

He is sought after by the authorities
but only when it is time to kill again.

Sam Jones is an executioner.

How many people
do you think you've executed?

I don't know the exact numbers,
18 to 19, I'm not sure. I lose track.

Sam usually works
out of the Death House

at the Angola State Prison
in Louisiana,

but today he is some one thousand
one hundred and forty-eight miles away

up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

where he's working at his other job
as a licensed electrician.

He was a traveling executioner,

so he would go
wherever the execution needed to be.

People Magazine had found
this guy

and I think he was probably advertising
his services pretty widely.

Warden, this is Sam Jones.

I was checking to see
if I had any dates coming up.

He executed some of my clients.

He lived in a trailer park
in Louisiana.

Cathy and I go down
and we meet this guy.

I think I had said to you before,

not too many people
have made me frightened.

He did.

Sam came with I think a six-pack,

and he opened for me and for him
and we started talking.

Are you ready?

The first time that you did
an execution, what was it like?

I was nervous,
didn't know what would happen.

- Yes. What did you do?
- Didn't know what to expect.

But other than that, no. Once
I did that I knew it was over with.

Why worry so much about why,
what is so humane for this person,

when they had no worries about
the humane way they executed,

the way they murdered,
mutilated their victims.

He had no insight into
what this was doing to him. He...

How do you feel
about executing kids?

I don't feel a damn thing about it.

- You don't think it matters at all?
- How many people you think he killed?

Now I had met someone
who told me

he had no qualms about killing anyone:
man, woman, or child.

I have never executed
no one that was retarded.

I don't care what they say
in the news media.

Would you?

If they was, if it come down to it,
yes, I would do it.

Was Sam Jones the character
I had been seeking for years?

The cool, premeditated killer without
a trace of psychosis or brain damage?

I did all the stuff
that I do with my murderers.

Let me ask you something else.
What are your moods like?

Has anyone in the family
had psychiatric problems?

How were you disciplined?
What uh...

I knew what I could get away with
and what I couldn't.

I could get away
with a lot more,

I could, with my mother
than I could with my pa.

Yeah, like what?

Old man tell us Monday morning
he was going to whip us Friday,

we knew we was getting
a whipping Friday.

I'd rather it be him
that whip me than Mama.

- Why?
- Mama didn't know when to quit.

Has anyone else injured you?

Oh god, I don't know. You know men
get to drinking, I work construction.

- You get in bar rooms...
-Do you have any scars?

This is scar,
that's from a twenty-two magnum.

Went through there and...
The first one went through here

and I caught the barrel
on the second time.

I beg your pardon.
Someone was after you?

I just happened to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time,

that's all we can say about that.

A bar? Or what?

No, no I was stabbed in the back
at a bar and had my lungs collapse.

I'm gonna tell you right now,
when I go visit people

I will not let their children
sit in my lap.

- Why is that?
- Why?

'Cause I don't want some crazy broad
saying, "Ew, he molested her!"

Sam was as confused and
muddleheaded, as battered and beaten,

as the violent men
I had interviewed on death row.

And by his own admission
he had a violent past.

His serial executions were but

the latest manifestations
of his paranoid rage.

He had served time only for assault
and battery, not for murder.

But that seemed
more the luck of the draw

than a reflection of mental health.

By his nineteenth execution
he had had a lot of experience.

I suspect each press
of the button further inured him,

making it easier and easier
over time to do his job.

No, I don't see no nightmares.
I sleep good at night.

No ghosts and goblins
coming after me.

When he was really
talking about himself

and really getting
into his philosophy on executions

and he's just doing a job,
he told us that...

I paint a painting
after each execution. Acrylic.

Acrylic? Is that
the only time you paint?

Yeah, that's about it.

The only time is
after you each execution.

What are you feeling
when you are doing it?

It's hard to say.
I'm feeling nothing.

He would blank out
and he would do a piece of artwork.

The pictures got
more and more bizarre,

more and more psychotic,
and more and more violent.

Just paint on canvas.
To me they're just paint on canvas.

There you saw the real person
who had this façade

that he was a cool guy cause
he was doing this terrifying work,

that should upset anybody.

Although he was very cool about,
no big deal,

his paintings showed
his humanity.

You could see the upset.

There's no reason
in normal life for me

to go out there
and kill him, her, her, or you.

Why should I walk
in a convenience store

because some poor girl,

or some young man is trying
to work their way through college,

no matter what their race is

and go in and kill them over
twenty-five or fifty dollars?

There's no reason
I can comprehend that.

Now taking that low-life son
of a bitch, putting him in a chair

and zapping him,
that I can understand.

- That doesn't bother you?
- No.

It's puzzling.

It's, you know, you certainly wonder,
was, did he dissociate?

Or did he think killing is
different from executing?

No, my kid's for it,
my grandchild's for it.

Your grandchild?
How old is your grandchild?

He knows about it.
He's four or five.

- How does he know?
- He tells me to, "Zap 'em, Grandpa."

There's mold on these things.

Oh for god's sake.

Hey, Er! Eric?

Eric, guess what I found!

"1/23/89. Tape 2."

You know what that is?

Yeah, I wouldn't even put
Bundy's name on it

'cause I thought in case
anyone got a hold of these,

I didn't want them to know
what it was.

That's my last interview with him.

Take a look. Don't get DNA on it!

It is now thirty years
since Theodore Bundy,

arguably the most notorious
American serial murderer

of the twentieth century,
was electrocuted.

Bye bye, Ted Bundy, goodbye.

For readers unfamiliar
with this case,

Theodore Bundy was
a young male, sexual predator

who terrorized the United States
from coast to coast during the 1970s.

He committed over thirty homicides
of young women,

decapitating some
and saving their skulls as trophies.

Attractive, articulate,
and charismatic,

he convinced the court to allow him
to represent himself,

turning his trials
more into performance pieces

than serious legal proceedings.

After numerous
unsuccessful appeals,

Bundy was executed in Starke, Florida
on January 24th, 1989.

Why write about Bundy
decades after his death?

Hasn't everything of importance
already been said? No.

The authors resurrect this case
to call into question

the widely held belief
that Bundy had a normal childhood

and that he simply had an innate
predisposition to extreme violence.

That he was simply born evil.

Bundy himself
perpetuated the fantasy

that he came from this perfectly normal
childhood, and so he must be evil.

Because, I grew up
in a wonderful home

with two dedicated
and loving parents,

one of five brothers
and sisters.

That's fodder for us to say
now, wait a minute.

We know that people are not born evil,
that has to develop somehow.

I hope no one will try to take
the easy way out and try to blame,

or otherwise accuse my family
of contributing to this because...

So I'm interested,
in particular why you,

you're so interested in him,
even today.

Well, uh, first of all,
'cause I got it wrong.

In 86' Bundy's attorneys asked,

"Would you work with the defense
team," because they were appealing.

And I said, "Sure."

We had our psychologist,
our neurologist,

our neuropsychologist
and did a computerized EEG.

We did not find
any gross neurological problems,

but we did find some abnormalities that
are often seen in depressed people.

Bundy had already been evaluated
by several other professionals.

They diagnosed psychopathy,
they said he was just a psychopath.

- Did you ever see the Dobson tapes?
- Yes.

You know, you know.

Ted, how did it happen?
Take me back.

What are the antecedents
of the behavior?

The basic humanity and the basic
spirit that God gave me was intact,

but unfortunately
it became overwhelmed, at times,

through the kind of fantasy life

that was fueled
largely by pornography.

Do you realize how many serial killers
you would have out there

if pornography could do that?
It's so simple-minded.

I think it's clear
that sexual sadists like Ted Bundy

are very much interested
in pornography.

Research I've recently done with
Roy Hazelwood of the FBI indicated

that more than fifty percent of
sexually sadistic offenders like Bundy

had sizable
pornography collections.

Would curbing pornography
make our society any safer?

It would do more good than
banning assault rifles would do.

What kinds of materials
are perhaps more harmful?

Well number one on my list,
as of 1986,

was the covers
of detective magazines.

Bundy's grandfather had
a real collection of pornography

that he was exposed to
very young.

Pulp fiction, sex, and murder
and stuff like that.

And he would fantasize about these
sexual murderous kinds of things

and he said
it would build and build

and then it had to be released.

Those of us who have been so much
influenced by pornographic violence,

are not some kind
of inherent monsters.

We are your sons
and we are your husbands.

We grew up
in regular families,

and pornography can reach out and
snatch a kid out of any house today.

You know, clearly
it had some influence on him,

but I think there were
other explanations.

And, so I interviewed family members:
his aunts, an uncle, his mother.

I learned that his grandmother
suffered from a depressive disorder.

She was psychiatrically
hospitalized

and treated
with electroconvulsive therapy.

I was talking to Aunt Julia

and I said,
"What was he like as a little boy?"

And she said,
"Well, when he was three years old

he used to come up
with kitchen knives

and he'd stand at the door,
then he'd come in.

He picked up the blanket

and he put the knives
around her on the bed.

And he had that glint in his eye."

This was the first,
the very, very first time

that we realized how aberrant
he had been. I was so stunned.

Convicted murderer,
Theodore Bundy,

is taking new steps
to avoid Florida's electric chair.

Armed guards brought Bundy
to the Orlando Federal Building

for a hearing to determine
his mental competency.

When I testified, I had enough data to
make a diagnosis of a bipolar disorder.

He had episodes of highs

where he could keep going and going
and going and he was grandiose,

but these were interspersed
with periods of terrible depression,

when he'd drop out of school, he would
weep, he would go off by himself.

On the stand
I said he was not competent

either to represent himself
or really to go to trial.

I'm not going through this,
and you knew that, Your Honor!

But the judge ruled
that he was competent enough

and he upheld the death sentence.

Salvador Dali was 84.
In Florida, a convicted serial killer

is continuing his string
of eleventh-hour confessions.

As NBC's Ed Ravel reports,

Ted Bundy is apparently trying
to delay his execution

scheduled for
the electric chair tomorrow.

A few years after I first saw him,
I got a call from his lawyer

saying he wanted to meet with me
before he was executed, so I did go.

The attorney, she said,
"Ted wants to know if you can say

that he is incompetent
to be executed."

And I said, "I would be laughed
out of town, I just can't do that."

And I said, "And all the work
that we've done to understand people

who do these kinds of things
will not be considered valid

if I say something
as ridiculous as that."

But he clearly knew
he was going to be executed.

- He knew what an execution meant.
- That's right.

And he knew what he had done.

And I said, "Besides, the Warden
has three other psychiatrists out there

waiting to refute this.

- What was his reaction?
- He said he could understand that.

He gave me permission
to tape the conversation.

January 23rd, 1989.

I asked him why did he ask
to see me. And he said...

Dr. Lewis,
you're more interested in me,

in what was going on in my head
and how this developed.

I was not fascinated
by his perversions.

I was far more interested
in how he got the way he was.

Whatever his motives for asking me
to come to Starke, and mine for coming,

our four and a half hours together

on the day before his execution
were riveting.

Your sisters, did you ever look at them
while they were dressing? Bathing?

Since that, you said,
was a curiosity you had.

In my teens, yeah.

Well...

This is something
I've never told anyone,

and I always promised myself
I never would.

- Should I stop the tape recording?
- Well, yeah, yeah but...

When the tape recorder was off,

Bundy told me that he had a sexual
encounter with one of his sisters.

Later, his mother told me
that he had told his sister

that she should be careful because
there was someone out in the world

who was killing women
who looked just like her.

Bit by bit,
I was beginning to see

a very different story
in Bundy's family life,

one that would upend
the myth of pure evil.

- Hello, Dr. Lewis. How are you?
- Hello!

The last interview I did tape,

and there was a point
in that interview

when he said I want you
to turn the tape off, only once,

and that was when he talked about
his relationship with his sister.

I didn't talk to him
about his sisters.

I was basically talking
about crimes with him.

Really. Did, but, even earlier on
he didn't tell you that he had...

No I didn't. He was always
protective with his family.

I mean, he would tell me things
that I wouldn't even ask him about.

Bill Hagmaier, he was
the major FBI agent on the case,

he had spent a lot of time
with Bundy, much more time than I did.

So that's
why I wanted to see him.

Each of us was close to Bundy
in a different kind of capacity.

We were the ones
that Bundy trusted.

I was assigned
to the Behavioral Science Unit

and they had already started to do
some research on murderers

and Bundy's name came up.

So I wrote him a letter,
just general letter

and Ted invited me
to visit him.

Were you able to get Bundy
to talk much

about his family
and his childhood?

We talked about it quite a bit.

He wasn't telling the truth
in all this, I know,

everything was cotton candy
for him and his family.

He didn't want to say anything bad
about his family at all, or his mother.

Bundy's mother was impregnated by
someone, we are not sure who it is.

I asked her something about how she
felt when she knew she was pregnant,

and I don't know if I actually said
abortion or if she brought it up.

But she said, he,
now meaning the father,

"He took me to a doctor. The doctor
gave me pills for an abortion.

But nothing happened and..."

So it was an attempted abortion
that didn't succeed.

Yeah, which is not supposed
to be so good for the baby.

Her father made arrangements for her
to go up to a home for unwed mothers,

called the Lund Home.

She was at the Lund Home for two
months and then gave birth to him.

She wouldn't allow
her father to come up at all

until after the baby was born.

And she signed papers saying
he could be put up for adoption.

And then, her father came up and
brought her home, back to Philadelphia.

However, for two months
he kept saying,

"We have to get the baby back,
we want the baby back,"

and finally she gave in.

She went and picked the baby up,
brought the baby home.

And then her father insisted
that he be known as the baby's father

and that the baby call him Father

and that Louise be known
as his sister.

He was an incredibly violent man

and apparently a very,
very disturbed man

according interviews
that I've had with relatives.

Your grandfather had an extraordinary
temper, a violent temper.

That may well be true.

The only time I can remember my
granddad being angry

was one time I left
the chicken coop door open,

and he got angry
and I ran away.

The whole family knows the story
that in the car,

while the grandfather was driving,

one of his younger brothers,
I believe, said,

"Oh, tell us
about Ted's real father."

And apparently the grandfather
was out of his mind filled with rage.

He had total control
over Bundy's mother,

he had total control over
how this child was gonna be raised.

And the family told Dorothy

that they had to help
the mother and the child, Ted,

escape from the father and go
cross-country to get away from him.

Things were horrendous for Bundy
from conception on.

Several years
after Bundy was executed,

I got a phone call from his wife,

and whom I had never spoken to,
never heard from before

and I think I couldn't even
contact her while he was alive,

and she said a friend of hers
was coming to New York.

She was going to give her
a packet of love letters

that Bundy had written to her.

The handwriting was
all very much alike,

but the signatures were different.

See look, this would be an ordinary
thing, an ordinary writing, yeah.

But here,
look at the difference.

That is so aberrant
and out of control and different.

He often signed different names
to his letters,

but the most important one is
that some of them are signed Sam.

Oh, look, here is Sam, here is Sam.

Here is another Sam. No, it says
Sambo, it's a version of Sam.

It turns out that Sam was
the name of his grandfather.

People who are multiples
or who have DID,

it's very common for them
to have an alter who is the abuser.

When I saw that, I thought,
"How did I so miss this?"

We realized
that Sam was the grandfather

and that he had taken
on this persona and...

With all the work
that we have been doing,

there are numerous data
that show

he is somewhere on the continuum
of Dissociative Identity Disorder.

When he was going to be sentenced,
he said to the judge...

I'm not asking for mercy,
for I find it somewhat absurd

to ask for mercy
for something I did not do.

And there was one time after he had
told me about many of the murders,

he came in and he sat down
and his demeanor was different.

And he said, "The person sitting
before you never killed anyone."

I don't think that he is kidding
or pretending that he's innocent.

I think
that there is a Bundy state

where he did not do
any of those murders.

In fact, he referred to the person
who killed, he called that The Entity.

Let's say the late winter,
early spring of '69

is where we're starting to see this,
this entity begin to reach the point

where it was necessary to,
I mean, to act out.

It takes over the basic,
consciousness mechanism

and more or less dictates
what's going to be done.

It was inobtrusive at first. It was
something that kind of grew on me

that began to visualize and fantasize
about more violent things.

By the time I realized
how powerful it was,

it was big trouble.

Tell me...

I had a clue then, that he might
suffer from a Dissociative Disorder.

But then
when I saw the writing

and I saw that he did, at times,
seem to become his grandfather,

who is a very violent kind of person,
that's when I got interested.

So yeah, I'm not the first
to have wondered

whether his grandfather
was indeed his father.

May I ask you a question?

There are a lot of reasons
that I think this would,

you've heard this also before,

other people
who have thought that.

I've said he's his own father,
but he isn't.

I think the grandfather
may have been...

I don't know. I know
that was one of the first things

that Louise said to me
when she met me. She just said,

"I just want you to know right now
that my father is not his father."

I didn't even ask her the question.

That is amazing
because I did not...

A number of people have suspected
that there was incest

but nobody has ever come out

and said that there is incest
in the family.

If we were to get blood,

we could look at the genes
in the blood sample, the DNA.

We all have a certain number
of identical matching genes.

But, if you have more than a certain
number of identical genes,

it is an indication of incest

because you have
too much from the same family.

Basically, what you are getting to,

does incest influence
serial killer development.

I doubt that the FBI lab is going
to give out that for that purpose.

Not saying it wouldn't help,

help us understand
behavior in people.

But, but it's just, you know...

So were you able to get
DNA from the FBI?

Oh, no.
The FBI isn't generous that way.

But I was able
to get a sample elsewhere,

and, according to that report,
his grandfather was not his father.

He was not the product of incest.

Was there some actual disappointment
when you discovered that?

Oh yes. Oh, yes.

And why would it be so important
to know

whether or not Bundy's grandfather
was also his father?

I don't think genetically it matters,
that I really don't believe.

You know, it might, it may be that
he had more, a greater likelihood

of having a bipolar disorder.

But I think that, I think he was
treated throughout his lifetime

as though he were some kind of child
that you don't want to have around.

His mother, when I spoke with her,
said "I can't wait 'til it's all over."

- You mean the execution?
- Yeah.

I find it hard to interpret it
any other way. Yeah.

But can you imagine,
"I can't wait 'til it's all over."

There was the atmosphere
of a public hanging

as hundreds of singing,
chanting death penalty supporters

gathered at the Florida State Prison,

demanding the execution of serial
killer Ted Bundy be carried out.

And when the official witnesses
came out of the prison,

signaling the death of Bundy,
there were cheers.

You know, it's taken me thirty years
to get to this point,

but we could have learned
a whole lot more from him.

If he were not killed,

we could have learned a lot
about serial murderers

but they killed him. They...

And we have breaking news today
from the Justice Department,

a new directive
from Attorney General Bill Bar,

to reinstate executions
of federal death penalty prisoners

for the first time
in nearly two decades.

Attorney General Barr says
it's time to restore the death penalty

for the sake of victims
and their families.

He points out that under
administrations of both parties,

attorneys general have approved
seeking the death penalty...

When I heard that,

I thought that all of the advances
that we'd made,

in terms of being humane,
were lost.

Barr, he puzzles me.

These five people, if indeed they've
done the most grotesque things,

we know that the most disturbed,
the most psychotic,

or the most brain-damaged killers
do the most bizarre,

grotesque,
horrendous kinds of things,

so he was picking
the sickest of the sick to execute.

You know I'm not sure that we've
come as far as we think we have.

It feels as if all the work that
I had done, that Dick Burr had done,

that for the moment it had been,
it was like flushed down the toilet.

As if we'd gone back
to, like, the Middle Ages.

I remember, one time,
someone asked me,

"When you see in a movie or read
about a witch being burned,

are you watching it
or are you the witch?"

I'm always the witch.

I think what a horrible,
horrible thing,

and picture the flames
coming up around me

and wondering how someone
could do that to someone else.

It appalled me
and it fascinated me.

It reminds me of taking
a tour of death row.

First, it was the area
where the visitors watch,

and then they took us around
to go right into the execution room.

This wooden chair
with leather belts.

I did picture myself there.

Ted Bundy, Johnny Garrett,
Marie Moore, Jonathan, me.

Could any of us
become a murderer?

Could anyone in the world
become a murderer? I think so.

Murderers are made, not born.

The more we understand
about the genesis of violence

the harder it is to draw a line

between guilt and innocence,
sanity and insanity.

As human beings we struggle to cope
with the need for protection,

the desire for revenge,
and decency and morality.

But to understand sometimes
means to forgive

and these days people aren't
in a very forgiving mood.

Maybe Ted Bundy was right.

We are all far more curious
about what the murderer did,

the gory details of the crime,
than about why they did it.

It's the act of murder
that fascinates us

and tickles our own limbic systems.

No wonder people fight
for seats at executions.

Is that, at least in part,
why I do the work I do?

Maybe. I wouldn't be surprised.