Michael Prescott's Blog

Book review: Conan Doyle for the Defense

Conan Doyle for the Defense, by Margalit Fox, tells the gripping story of Oscar Slater, a German-born Jew who was arrested in Glasgow  for the brutal murder of an elderly, wealthy woman, Marion Gilchrist. Sentenced to death, Slater won a reprieve at almost the last minute when his sentence was changed to life imprisonment at the notorious Peterhead Prison, where convicts labored in all weather to hack out chunks of granite to build a breakwater. For 18 years Slater suffered at Peterhead, until – almost miraculously – he found himself released and eventually exonerated in a second trial. His good fortune was due largely to the efforts of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had already made a name for himself as an amateur detective capable, at times, of the same feats of ratiocination that characterized his most famous fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes.

Doyle* was brought into the case soon after Slater's conviction and quickly became convinced of his innocence. He wrote a scathing book on the subject, but changed few minds. Years later, a personal message from the convict – smuggled out in the form of a rolled-up scrap of paper hidden under a paroled convict's dentures – convinced Doyle to renew his involvement in the controversy. This time he was assisted by an intrepid journalist, William Park. Together the pair put out a new book on Slater that succeeded in rousing the public.

There seems little doubt that Slater was the victim of a frame-up by the police and the courts. Originally the police pursued him after hearing that he had hocked a diamond brooch at a Glasgow pawnshop; a diamond brooch was missing from Miss Gilchrist's personal effects. They quickly learned, however, that the pawnshop brooch was not the same one, and moreover, it had been hocked nearly a month before the Gilchrist murder. Doyle scathingly wrote,

Already the very bottom of the case had dropped out. The starting link of what had seemed an imposing chain, had suddenly broken … The original suspicion of Slater was founded upon the fact that he had pawned a crescent diamond brooch … It was not the one which was missing from the room of the murdered woman, and it had belonged for years to Slater, who had repeatedly pawned it before. This was shown beyond all cavil or dispute. The case of the police might well seem desperate after this, since if Slater were indeed guilty, it would mean that by pure chance they had pursued the right man. (emphasis in original)

Nevertheless, authorities continued to see Slater as the prime suspect, for no evident reason beyond an unwillingness to admit they'd made a mistake. Slater's conviction ultimately rested on eyewitness testimony that had changed markedly between the night of the murder and the day of the trial, months later. A competent defense attorney would have brought out these damning changes of memory, but Slater's lawyer fell down on the job. Slater's fate was sealed by the instructions given by the presiding judge, who told the jury:

About [the defendant's] character … there is no doubt at all. He has maintained himself by the ruin of men and on the ruin of women. And he has lived in a way that many blackguards would scorn to live …

I use the name "Oscar Slater." We do not know who that man is. His name is not Slater … He is a mystery … We do not know where he was born, where he was brought up, what he was brought up to, whether he was trained to anything. The man remains a mystery as much as he was when this trial began … A man of that kind has not the presumption of innocence in his favor which is … a reality in the case of the ordinary man.

Most of this was simply untrue. By the time of the trial, Slater's birth name (Oscar Leschziner) was known, as were the circumstances of his early life.

The judge's instructions point to one reason why the police were so keen on Slater as a suspect, even in the absence of any tangible link between him and the crime. Slater was widely seen, not without reason, as a shady character. He had used multiple aliases, of which the name Oscar Slater was one; others included Otto Sando and A. Anderson. He had told his neighbors he was a dentist, but this was not true, and his actual source of income was unknown. It was rumored that he was a gambler and loan shark and, less plausibly, a pimp who used his own common-law wife as a prostitute. Beyond all this, he was a foreigner and a Jew in an age when xenophobia and anti-Semitism were rampant.

In the book, Fox  does her best to broaden the scope of the story by relating the Slater case to conflicting trends in the police methodology of the era – on the one hand, the analysis of physical characteristics as evidence of criminal tendencies, an approach pioneered by Cesare Lombroso**, who believed that certain physiognomical features, such as a protruding brow or sloped forehead, correlated with "primitive" personality types; and on the other hand, the scientific study of the crime scene and the subtle physical clues it might afford. Naturally, she disparages the first approach, which has no adherents today, while celebrating the second approach, which served as the foundation for modern forensic criminalistics of the CSI type.

The trouble is that the Slater case doesn't serve as a very good illustration of either point. Slater was not suspected by the police, or arrested or convicted, because of his physiognomy, except perhaps in the limited sense that he looked "Jewish." He was suspected for entirely different reasons, as mentioned above. Moreover, forensic criminalistics did him no favors; the highly regarded criminalist who testified at his trial misstated the evidence left at the crime scene so badly, and made so many questionable or even absurd inferences, that he was instrumental in securing a guilty verdict. Among other things, he insisted that a small, fragile hammer found in Slater's possession could have been the murder weapon, while ignoring a chair in the murder victim's room, the legs of which were spattered in blood. The extensive damage done to Miss Gilchrist was obviously the result of being battered by the chair, which was in fact the conclusion of the first doctor on the scene. But the criminalist never even mentioned the chair or the doctor.

In any case, Doyle was for the most part refreshingly untouched by the prejudices of his era, though Fox occasionally tries to paint him in a less flattering light. Quoting Doyle's account of the trial that exonerated Slater, Fox claims that "his description is suffused with the Victorian idea about the link between physiognomy and character." I don't see it that way. Doyle describes Slater's lawyer as "a Pickwickian figure. His face is as pink as a baby's, and a baby might have owned those eyes of forget-me-not blue. A little heavy the face, but calmly and fresh-complexioned withal, redeemed from weakness by the tight, decided lips." As for Slater himself: "It is not an ill-famed face nor is it a wicked one, but it is terrible nonetheless for the brooding sadness that is in it. It is firm and immobile and might be cut from that Peterhead granite which has helped to make it what it is." I see no pseudoscientific theories of physiognomy in this description. It is simply a case of a literary man writing (quite ably) in the somewhat florid style of the time.

What comes through most clearly in Conan Doyle for the Defense is Doyle's basic decency and dogged determination to clear a man of a wrongful conviction, even though he had no personal acquaintance with the man and clearly held a low opinion of him. For Doyle, the fact that Slater was a disreputable fellow, even a rogue, did not mean that he could be abandoned to the hellish confines of Peterhead prison for life if he had been denied an impartial hearing. Doyle devoted months of strenuous effort, on and off over a period of two decades, to freeing Slater, even paying most of the cost of Slater's defense in his second trial. (Slater's refusal to defray any of the costs even after he had been awarded a 6000-pound settlement by the state upset Doyle's sense of fair play and brought their association to an acrimonious conclusion.)

Doyle's implacable commitment to justice, undimmed after nearly twenty years of involvement in the case, is readily apparent in his introduction to the book written by William Park (published by Doyle's own company, the Psychic Press). Doyle writes,

It is certain that the case of the alien German Jew, who bore the pseudonym of Oscar Slater, will live in the history of criminology as a miscarriage of justice of a character very unusual in the records of our Courts. There is not one point of the evidence which does not crumble to pieces when it is touched …

I fear very little can be done for Slater. Who can restore the vanished years? But his name may be cleared, and possibly some small provision be made for his declining years … Above all, for the credit of British justice, for the discipline of the police force, and for the teaching of officials that their duty to the public has to be done, a thorough public inquiry should be made into the matter … Only when this has been done will the public mind be at ease … It is indeed a lamentable story of official blundering from start to finish. But eighteen years have passed and an innocent man still wears the convict's dress. (emphasis in original)

You might wonder how Doyle's interest in psychic phenomena figures in the book. The answer is, it scarcely figures at all, because Fox is clearly somewhat embarrassed by it. She prefers to see Doyle as a rationalist and a humanist, and for her, his devotion to spiritualism does not fit this picture. She writes:

On questions of spiritualism, it is clear that Conan Doyle's ardent personal longing eclipsed his scientific acumen. By the 1920s, he had come to believe almost unreservedly in ghosts, fairies, and the reality of life after death.

This is not entirely unfair. Doyle did embarrass himself by his overly enthusiastic embrace of some paranormal claims, most notoriously in the Cottingley fairies fiasco, as well as by defending rather obvious frauds like the Davenport brothers. Still, it would be more correct, I think, to see Doyle's steadfast defense of the essential truths of mediumship and life after death, not as a contradiction of his behavior in the Slater case, but rather as another instance of that same behavior. Just as he became convinced of Slater's innocence and insisted on broadcasting this opinion to the world regardless of the world's indifference or hostility, so he likewise, once convinced of the immortality of the soul, never ceased to proselytize for "the new revelation," as he titled one of his books. The same courage, tenacity, and independence of thought that defined his approach to Oscar Slater also defined his approach to spiritualism.

The book includes an amusing anecdote excerpted from a biography of Conan Doyle written by Russell Miller in 2008. Miller writes:

At Windlesham [Doyle's home], Conan Doyle became accustomed to receiving hate mail [about his spiritualist stand], most of which he disregarded, but there was one particularly vituperative letter, dated 16 December 1919, from Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's former lover and a relatively recent convert to the Roman Catholic church: "Sir, What a disgusting beast you are with your filthy caricatures of 'Christ.' The proper way to deal with such a man as you would be to give you a thrashing with a horse whip."… Douglas accused Conan Doyle of promoting spiritualism for the sake of money and notoriety, "in short for the same purposes and with the same flat-footed low persistence as you worked your idiot 'Sherlock Holmes' business." He went on to prophecy that Conan Doyle's "blasphemous ravings" would bring a "dreadful judgment" on him and signed himself "Yours with the utmost contempt." Conan Doyle replied the following day, with a masterful and succinct dismissal: "Sir, I was relieved to get your letter. It is only your approval which could in any way annoy me."

----

* Margalit Fox refers to Sir Arthur as Conan Doyle throughout, explaining that he took the name Conan as part of a double surname. Some other writers refer to him as Doyle, treating Conan as a middle name. Fox is no doubt correct, but I'm accustomed to calling him Doyle and it's a hard habit to break.

** Cesare Lombroso, in addition to his now-discredited work as a physiognomist, was also known as a pioneering figure in psychical research.

Son of anarchy

Continuing the discussion in my last post, I'd like to look at one particular serial killer — David Berkowitz, aka the Son of Sam, who terrorized New York City in 1976 and 1977 — and see if the spirit-possession hypothesis fits the facts of the case.

First, here are the relevant parts of Berkowitz's biography, taken from the Wikipedia page on Son of Sam.

Berkowitz, who was adopted as an infant, was said to have a "troubled" childhood.

Although of above-average intelligence, he lost interest in learning at an early age and became infatuated with petty larceny and starting fires. Neighbors and relatives would recall Berkowitz as difficult, spoiled, and a bully. His adoptive parents consulted at least one psychotherapist due to his misconduct, but his misbehavior never resulted in legal intervention or serious mention in his school records.

When Berkowitz was twenty-three, after a stint in the Army and an honorable discharge, the killings began. One theory is that the murders were triggered by Berkowitz's discovery that he'd been born outside of wedlock, and that both his natural father and a prospective stepfather had been unwilling to care for him. Why this should have upset his mental balance and produced an animus against young women with long dark hair is unclear.

Berkowitz began ambushing couples in parked cars, shooting them with a .44 revolver. As his crimes gained notoriety, he left a message at the scene of one killing. It was a long rambling missive written in crude block letters with many misspellings.

I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater. I am not. But I am a monster. I am the "Son of Sam." I am a little "brat". When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood. "Go out and kill" commands father Sam. Behind our house some rest. Mostly young — raped and slaughtered — their blood drained — just bones now. Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic, too. I can't get out but I look out the attic window and watch the world go by. I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wave length then everybody else—programmed too kill. However, to stop me you must kill me. Attention all police: Shoot me first — shoot to kill or else. Keep out of my way or you will die! Papa Sam is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart attacks. Too many heart attacks. "Ugh, me hoot it urts sonny boy." I miss my pretty princess most of all. She's resting in our ladies house but I'll see her soon. I am the "Monster" — "Beelzebub" — the "Chubby Behemouth." I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game — tasty meat. The wemon of Queens are z prettyist of all. I must be the water they drink. I live for the hunt—my life. Blood for papa. Mr. Borrelli, sir, I dont want to kill anymore no sir, no more but I must, "honour thy father." I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don't belong on Earth. Return me to yahoos. To the people of Queens, I love you. And I wa want to wish all of you a happy Easter. May God bless you in this life and in the next and for now I say goodbye and goodnight. Police — Let me haunt you with these words; I'll be back! I'll be back! To be interrpreted as — bang, bang, bang, bank, bang — ugh!! Yours in murder Mr. Monster

It was this message that gave the killer his nickname. On the basis of this document, psychological profilers described him as a paranoid schizophrenic who "believed himself to be a victim of demonic possession."

A letter to prominent New York City columnist Jimmy Breslin followed. This one was more polished in spelling, grammar, and printing.

Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C. which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood. Hello from the sewers of N.Y.C. which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of N.Y.C. and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the dried blood of the dead that has settled into the cracks. ... You can forget about me if you like because I don't care for publicity. However you must not forget Donna Lauria [one of his victims] and you cannot let the people forget her either. She was a very, very sweet girl but Sam's a thirsty lad and he won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood. Mr. Breslin, sir, don't think that because you haven't heard from me for a while that I went to sleep. No, rather, I am still here. Like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest; anxious to please Sam. I love my work. Now, the void has been filled. ... [I]f I shall be fortunate enough to meet you I will tell you all about Sam if you like and I will introduce you to him. His name is "Sam the terrible." Not knowing what the future holds I shall say farewell and I will see you at the next job. Or should I say you will see my handiwork at the next job? Remember Ms. Lauria. Thank you. In their blood and from the gutter "Sam's creation" .44 Here are some names to help you along. Forward them to the inspector for use by N.C.I.C: [sic] "The Duke of Death" "The Wicked King Wicker" "The Twenty Two Disciples of Hell" "John 'Wheaties' – Rapist and Suffocator of Young Girls. PS: Please inform all the detectives working the slaying to remain. ... Son of Sam

 

The Daily News sold a record-breaking 1.1 million copies when it printed the letter to Breslin. 

About three months later, Berkowitz was captured. By all accounts he showed no distress when placed under arrest. One version has him ask the police what took them so long, while in another version he tells the detective, "I'm Sam," adding, "Sam. David Berkowitz."

Berkowitz's apartment was a mess, "with Satanic graffiti on the walls." Police found diaries kept for years, recording "hundreds of arsons that he claimed to have set throughout New York City."

In his initial interrogation Berkowitz "quickly confessed to the shootings and expressed an interest in pleading guilty. During questioning, Berkowitz claimed that his neighbor's dog was one of the reasons that he killed, stating that the dog demanded the blood of pretty young girls. He said that the 'Sam' mentioned in the first letter was his former neighbor Sam Carr. Berkowitz claimed that Carr's black labrador retriever Harvey was possessed by an ancient demon and that it issued irresistible commands that Berkowitz must kill people."

Berkowitz's capture

In a post-arrest letter to a New York newspaper, "Berkowitz alluded to his original story of demonic possession but closed with a warning that has been interpreted by some investigators as an admission of criminal accomplices: 'There are other Sons out there, God help the world.'"

Two years later, however, Berkowitz publicly disavowed his earlier claims of demonic possession. "Berkowitz stated in a series of meetings with his special court-appointed psychiatrist David Abrahamsen that he had long contemplated murder to get revenge at a world that he felt had rejected and hurt him.Berkowitz claimed he felt particular anger due to his lack of success with women, and thus singled out attractive young women as victims."

In ensuing years,

Berkowitz began to claim that he had joined a Satanic cult in the spring of 1975. In 1993, Berkowitz made these claims known when he announced to the press that he had only killed three of the Son of Sam victims.... In his revised version of the events, Berkowitz said that other shooters were involved and that he fired the gun only in the first attack ... and the sixth.... He said that he and several other cult members were involved in every incident by planning the events, providing early surveillance of the victims, and acting as lookouts and drivers at the crime scenes. Berkowitz stated that he could not divulge the names of most of his accomplices without putting his family directly at risk....

Berkowitz did name two of the cult members: John and Michael Carr. The two men were sons of the dog-owner Sam Carr and they lived on nearby Warburton Avenue. Both of these other "sons of Sam" were long dead: John Carr had been killed by a shooting judged a suicide in North Dakota during 1978, and Michael Carr had been in a fatal car accident in 1979.

Although an investigation into Berkowitz's claims was opened, nothing came of it, and most authorities see his story as a fantasy.

After ten years in prison, Berkowitz became an evangelical Christian. He has said he does not deserve parole. He remains in prison today. He is now 65 years old.

That's a bare summary. What I'd like to do is look at this story from the standpoint that Berkowitz really was possessed (or obsessed or harassed) by a controlling entity — not necessarily a "demon" in the Biblical sense, but some malevolent postmortem personality that remained earthbound. Please note that I'm not by any means insisting that this interpretation is correct. This is more in the nature of a thought experiment, a "what if" scenario.

It's clear that Berkowitz was somewhat unstable in his formative years, yet he doesn't appear to have begun committing homicides until age 23. This is a bit late for the arrival of full-blown schizophrenia in males, but not implausibly so. I think it can be assumed that Berkowitz was genuinely psychotic.

This fact in itself doesn't rule out possession. Dr. Carl Wickland, in his pioneering 1924 study Thirty Years Among the Dead, offers many examples of schizophrenic patients who were apparently cured or at least greatly improved by a session with his wife, a medium, who would contact the obsessing spirit and persuade it to leave the patient alone. If there are harassing spirits, it seems likely that they would focus their attention on the most vulnerable humans — those who are already weakened by mental illness or by an addiction to alcohol or drugs. This, in fact, is the consistent message conveyed by mediums and automatists.

Although Berkowitz later denied his claim of demonic possession, it's noteworthy that even before he was caught, psychological profilers attributed this belief to him on the basis of his first message, and that, after his capture, "Satanic graffiti" was found on the walls of his apartment. One possibility is that Berkowitz really did believe he was possessed, but later rejected the idea under pressure from his psychiatrist, who likely saw it as an unhealthy fixation and an attempt to disown personal responsibility. Even after publicly disavowing the possession idea, Berkowitz continued to insist that there was a Satanic connection to the attacks, speaking of a mysterious cult populated by people who went unnamed or were conveniently dead.

"There are other Sons out there, God help the world," Berkowitz wrote after his arrest. This has been interpreted as possibly pointing to accomplices, but another reading is that there are other people on Earth who are targets of harassing spirits and who will be driven to the same homicidal behavior. "God help the world" takes on a different meaning in this context.

In his first, semiliterate message, Berkowitz presents himself as a kind of demonic entity:

I am a monster. I am the "Son of Sam." ... Sam loves to drink blood. "Go out and kill" commands father Sam.... Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic, too. I can't get out but I look out the attic window and watch the world go by. I feel like an outsider.

There was no real-life attic. Could this image reflect the experience of a person trapped in his own body, with no will of his own, compelled to watch "like an outsider" as he does unspeakable things?

I am on a different wave length then everybody else — programmed too kill. However, to stop me you must kill me. Attention all police: Shoot me first — shoot to kill or else. Keep out of my way or you will die!

"On a different wave length" is an interesting choice of words. It's become a cliche in spiritualism to talk about levels of vibration, with the lower frequencies corresponding to undeveloped earthbound spirits. Note also that part of him, at least, seems eager to die. ("You must kill me. Shoot me first.")

I am the "Monster" — "Beelzebub" — the "Chubby Behemouth." I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game — tasty meat.... I live for the hunt — my life. Blood for papa. Mr. Borrelli, sir, I dont want to kill anymore no sir, no more but I must, "honour thy father." I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don't belong on Earth. Return me to yahoos.

This is tolerably explicit. He is Beezelbub, hunting victims ("tasty meat") to provide "blood for papa." He must kill to "honour" his father. He doesn't belong on Earth. Even the enigmatic words "return me to yahoos" could be significant. Yahoos are low-level, unevolved, semihuman creatures — "a race of brutes ... who have the form and all the vices of humans," according to Merriam-Webster.

And I wa [sic] want to wish all of you a happy Easter. May God bless you in this life and in the next and for now I say goodbye and goodnight. Police—Let me haunt you with these words; I'll be back! I'll be back!

The mocking reference to Easter is just what we would expect to hear from a possessed person, and the references to the next life and to haunting also suggest a strongly supernatural cast to his thinking. No wonder the profilers concluded that he believed he was possessed.

The letter to Breslin is essentially more of the same.

Sam's a thirsty lad and he won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood.... I am still here. Like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest; anxious to please Sam. I love my work. Now, the void has been filled.

Berkowitz's thinking is obviously deeply confused. I suspect it always will be. He seems to veer from one explanation of his behavior to another — demonic possession, a pathological response to female rejection, membership in a Satanic cult. But perhaps all these explanations contain an element of truth.

Let's suppose that Berkowitz, in his instability and vulnerability, became prey to a malign influence from the spirit world. He would indeed have been possessed or obsessed. At the same time, his focus on young women could well reflect his personal frustrations, which the possessing entity used for its own purposes.

Moreover, why should we limit our hypothesis to a single possessing entity? Perhaps, like the Biblical demoniac infested by a "legion," Berkowitz was harassed by multiple entities that ganged up on him. Could this be the source of his later confused account of a Satanic cult, of which he was only a member? Maybe his accomplices were real enough, but not anything earthly.

Berkowitz today

In prison Berkowitz has become a born-again Christian. He is said to be a model prisoner. He has expressed remorse and declined to seek parole. The mother of one of his victims even forgave him. He seems to have found some kind of peace. Could it be that by aligning himself with a more benevolent supernatural mythos, he has closed the door to "demonic" intervention? The Tibetan Book of the Dead advises the recently deceased person not to believe in the frightening thought-forms that may appear before him. But if he is unable to see through these illusions, he can try instead to align himself with a more positive thought-form, such as the image of an iconic deity. For many Westerners, this would be the image of Jesus Christ, which may be why Jesus crops up in many Western near-death experiences and mediumistic communications. The same effect may be found in our earthly state; focusing on Jesus as a source of "higher vibrations" may help ward off the entities that feed on "lower vibrations." Perhaps Berkowitz's fundamentalism is a crude but necessary psychological defense against the unseen forces that have assailed him throughout his life.

Again, this is only a thought experiment. I don't know what really made David Berkowitz become the Son of Sam. No doubt it was a combination of things. Was one of those things the intense mental pressure of a harassing low-level spirit (or group of spirits)? I can't say. But the case itself arguably provides some support for this interpretation.

The killer angels

Without doubt, we humans took an important step forward when we stopped attributing every unexplained phenomenon, whether in the world around us or in our own psyches, to the action of supernatural forces. But is it possible that we've carried this undeniably successful and productive approach too far? Perhaps in some cases, especially cases of extremely aberrant human behavior, there is a supernatural component, whether we're talking about miracles performed by saints or heinous crimes committed by the type of people we still characterize as "monsters."

In other words, can some varieties of evil be better understood in terms of spirit possession or obsession, rather than as a simple breakdown of neurochemistry in combination with subconscious drives?

I became more interested in this question after reading about the serial killer Charles Cullen, who, in his capacity as a nurse,  murdered at least forty patients and probably many more.  Throughout his life, Cullen  made repeated suicide attempts, starting at the age of nine, when he drank chemicals from a chemistry set. After joining the Navy, he attempted suicide seven times before receiving a medical discharge. His first confirmed murders occurred a decade later, after which he attempted suicide on four occasions – three times in 1993 and again in 2000.

Now, it could be argued that these suicide attempts were not serious, since none of them succeeded. But at least some of them do appear to have been legitimate attempts at ending his own life. It's doubtful that, as a nine-year-old, he would have been sure that the chemicals he ingested would not prove fatal. And his last attempt, in 2000, was thwarted only because neighbors smelled the smoke coming from a charcoal grill he'd lit inside his apartment in the hope of poisoning himself with carbon monoxide.

At the very least, it appears that Charles Cullen was a deeply divided personality. On one hand, he murdered scores of people over a long period, with no apparent hesitation or remorse. On the other hand, he repeatedly tried to take his own life, as if he found his homicidal obsessions intolerable. Is this inner conflict rooted only in psychological or neurological dysfunction, or could it be indicative of an external personality trying to control and distort his behavior, and of his increasingly desperate attempts to escape?

The latter argument is in line with the position taken by Dr. Terence J. Palmer in a 2008 paper titled "Are They Evil, Mad or Possessed?" Palmer argues that "previous investigations have neglected important data due to an epistemology that is fundamentally physical and rationalistic." He focuses specifically on Dr. Helen Morrison's 2004 book My Life Among the Serial Killers.

Morrison, a forensic psychiatrist, interviewed more than eighty serial killers. She wrote:

I have found that serial murderers do not relate to others on any level that you would expect one person to relate to another. They can play roles beautifully; create complex, earnest performances to which no Hollywood Oscar winner could hold a candle. They can imagine anything. They can appear to be complete and whole human beings, and in some cases are seen to be pillars of society. But they are missing a very essential core of human relatedness.

It is this "dark, barren core" (Morrison's term), this absence of normal human feeling, that Palmer interprets in spiritualist, rather than positivist, terms. He takes a close look at Morrison's descriptions of the killers she interviewed and finds alternative explanations for their psychology.

One of them, Richard Macek, "wanted to be more than he was" (Morrison's words). Palmer observes that this observation implies a duality in Macek, "one personality that was human and one that wasn't." Morrison's sole attempt at hypnotizing Macek  ended in disaster with Macek "suffering severe emotional and physical trauma." As a result, she never used hypnosis again, which meant she had no means of uncovering any hidden memories and buried motivations. This approach tended to limit her to physicalistic explanations.

Morrison interviewed the sister of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. The sister recalled that Gacy once passed out after drinking too much, and when he came to, "he was like someone who was drunk, but he wasn't drunk. Something in his voice was different. It was not his voice." Palmer takes this story as additional evidence of a deep-rooted duality consistent with possession or obsession by an external personality.

Another killer often "appeared frightened for no reason, and his eyes darted about the room" (Morrison's words). Still another was so overcome by fear that at times he would run into his closet to hide for no apparent reason. Palmer writes:

It could be argued that at a deep unconscious level all serial killers are terrified of what possesses them, and an understanding of how we all protect ourselves from something mysterious and terrifying would shed much light on why some people become serial killers. To put this principle into ordinary everyday life, it is known that the bullied often becomes the bully.

Some killers have heard voices ordering them to kill – usually a commanding, terrifying voice. Schizophrenia, or something more? Palmer notes that psychiatrists using so-called "spirit release" techniques have had some success in treating such symptoms. He cites the work of Alan Sanderson (a 2003 paper called "Consciousness as it Relates to the Nature of Psychiatric Disorder") and Andrew Powell ("The Contribution of Spirit Release Therapy to Mental Health"). A more familiar example may be Thirty Years Among the Dead, the famous 1924 book by Carl Wickland.

The killer Bobby Joe Long once spontaneously wrote "I am Darkness. I have always been." Morrison dismisses this writing as mere self-dramatizing hyperbole, but what if it was more than that?

Writing about the emotional immaturity of serial killers in general, Morrison asks:

Who, other than an infant, feels like he is controlling not just the world, but the universe around him? Who else but an infant feels so important that he thinks he is the center of the universe? And who else but a child would think in this way for no particular reason, not for wealth, not for power, not for human domination, but just to maintain and protect his own personal cosmos?"  

Palmer notes that true accounts of possession and exorcism written by M. Scott Peck and Malachi Martin indicate that "the emotional development of the subject was impaired by the possessing entity. The subjects were not able to grow emotionally and reach their true potential until they had been relieved of the possessing entity." Furthermore, an evil entity in touch with ultimate powers of darkness might well regard itself in such terms. 

Not all medical practitioners reject the possession hypothesis. Dr Hans Naegeli-Osjord, writing in 1988, observed:

This phenomenon [of dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personalities] should not be viewed exclusively as possession or multiple personality, but [rather] some cases may be a result of dissociated personalities, while others are more likely to be cases of harassment by the spirit of a deceased person.… Both multiple personality and harassment should be considered when viewing the entire range of such disorders.… In cases of weakened ego and/or extreme stress, external entities may invade or harass the person to the point where counseling or treatment is indicated to enable the patient to return to a normal state.

The killer Bobby Joe Long once dreamed that someone asked him if he believed in God. In the dream he replied that he did not. His interrogator then "went hysterical, pointing at me and laughing." Palmer notes:

We can perhaps see how Bobby Joe's demon had justification for his hysterical laughter. Bobby Joe in his rejection of a belief in God was in no position to have a belief in demons either, rendering him helpless and defenseless and holding himself responsible for his crimes.

Palmer sees such dreams as "the soul of the serial killer … expressing his fear and screaming out for help," a cry that Morrison missed because she simply assumed, on the basis of Long's absence of affect, that there was no emotional connection between Long and his dreams.

After watching a movie about the Boston Strangler, Long wrote to Morrison:

It was the most scary f-----g  movie I ever saw. It was like watching ME in action. ... I remember him tying one to a bed and she started fighting. I had been through the same thing. I knew how the guy felt. Like a mirror. I swear. [The word "ME" is in all caps in the original] 

 Morrison also noted that Long frequently complained about a strange feeling in his head, as if part of his head "had a kind of life of its own… Long said that something in his head and even in his body changed when someone close to him … did him wrong." Long himself said:

It's similar to before I used to get into a fight, or just before I bust somebody's face. The anger. The blank thought. It's like I was void of thought. Like I left for a little while, then came back after.

 At one point he wrote to her in all caps:

IT'S NOT A GOOD FEELING TO KNOW MY LIFE IS OVER. TO KNOW THAT AT THE VERY BEST I'LL BE LOCKED UP LIKE AN ANIMAL THE REST OF MY LIFE. ALL BECAUSE I KILLED A BUNCH OF SLUTS AND WHORES AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW - WHY? 

Frankly, I don't know how much credence to place in the spirit-harassment hypothesis. I was fairly impressed with Wickland's pioneering study, but I haven't kept up with more recent work. As time permits, I intend to do more reading, starting with some of the links listed above. Other possible sources of information are Alan Sanderson's paper "Spirit Release in Clinical Psychiatry" and Terence Palmer's website.