Sing like a nightingale, sting like a scorpion

kw: book reviews, criminals, killers, psychopaths

Two young men of my acquaintance went wrong. One might be restored, the other...it's quite unlikely. The latter is a psychopath, the former, a seemingly normal fellow who snapped one day. They are about the same age, but I knew them at different stages of their lives, and mine.

Just after finishing college, I lived for two years with a family in California. I was a roomer; I shared a bedroom with another single guy. We were all in the same church. The family had two boys, and the younger one was as heartless as the elder was generous. The younger one, who I know now is a psychopath, cared only for the thrill of shaking others up. From the ages of six to eight, while I lived there, I found him to be a thief, a vandal, and a pathological liar (you know, one who lies just to keep in practice). He could be as charming as anything, but only when it suited his purpose, to put something over on you. He was incorrigible. His parents, us roomers, church leaders, psychologists...nobody made a dent in him.

I got married and moved a few blocks away. The next year, we moved out of state. Shortly after that, so did that family. I didn't hear about them for more than twenty years. A few years ago, I met the father again, through a mutual friend, who knew we were both in the same town for a conference. A joyous reunion, except for the news about his younger son. He'd spent all but one of the past twenty years in jail or prison. Offenses of all kinds; the DA just tried him for those they could get a conviction, and so far, it had been enough. What conclusion? I have to conclude he was born that way. There was no difference in how the two boys were raised.

A number of years after leaving California, we were in yet a different state, and we knew one family with several kids; the oldest was a boy. They were also 'church friends' of ours. Ten years had passed. This oldest boy was a pre-teen then, so he is younger than the aforementioned psychopath.

At some time during our friendship with this family, things went sour. The mother developed a paranoid personality, and in the time it took us to realize she needed medical help, a lot of psychological damage was done. She didn't get so flagrant that she could be forced into a psychiatric hospital, but she really began to put unusual burdens on the rest of her family (I guess that's the best way to put it). We were all relieved when the oldest boy graduated from high school and went into the Navy. About that time, the parents' marriage broke up.

The young man was a good seaman, and kept a good relationship with his father. That caused him a lot of grief from his mother, who by this time hated her former husband. He was OK while in the Navy. Then, as I was told it, one day after one of her tirades, he took the car keys, drove off, and went several states away, to where an aunt lived. However, when he got there, he robbed a bank, was caught, and wound up in prison. I haven't heard the end of this story, because we haven't kept up contact. But I know the nature of this young man, now in his thirties. He has probably been released, and I expect he'll stay out of future legal trouble. I am certain, from my experience with him, that he is no psychopath, though he certainly has mental or emotional damage from his mother's behavior.

I have a lifelong interest, almost a fascination, with abnormal and near-normal psychology. In particular, I have read several books about or by psychotics and psychopaths. Most recently, I read Blood Relation by Eric Konigsberg. The author's great-uncle is Harold "Kayo" Konigsberg, a contract killer who has been imprisoned since 1963, first for an extortion conviction, then for murder. I'll use the given name and the nickname, respectively, to distinguish them.

Bottom line: Kayo is a classic psychopath. He can charm or intimidate almost anyone into almost anything. Where these don't work, he figures the person has lived long enough. In the 1960s, he tried (successfully) to get certain preferences and privileges while in prison by informing for the FBI, and he confessed to at least twenty murders (This is one meaning of "sing" in my title). Because of the agreement, the FBI kept the confession files secret. But one of these murders was solved by the police without FBI help, so he was tried and convicted just before his extortion sentence was about to end.

Most of the time, Kayo lived (from age 13 on) by a number of criminal rackets. He did little killing on his own behalf, reserving that "business" for his Mob clients. As a freelancer (He was Jewish, so the Italian Mafia wouldn't "make" him), he even "worked" at times for both sides in a power struggle. Though he was a very tough guy, he was also canny. So far as Eric has related, Kayo always did a killing with the help of two or three others. He wasn't the kind to kill from a distance, preferring strangulation or a lead pipe followed by a close-range bullet.

Eric didn't know he had a famous criminal in the family until he was in early middle age, on his own, living in the midwest. He got a phone call from his "uncle Harold", calling from Auburn penitentiary, and eventually conducted nine interviews with him over two years. He was, of course, drawn at least partway into Kayo's web. He said he was preparing material to write the story, and Kayo seemed to go along. Eric was at first fascinated, then repulsed, eventually reluctant to see Kayo any more. He could see clearly that Kayo was a real monster. Even as a 73-year-old fatso, he could be terrifying.

The tenth visit, which was in no way an interview, was the corker. Having some premonition, Eric chose to sit nearest the guards' table, rather than at the far end of the room as before. He told Kayo he was about to publish his article. In short order, he was threatened with at least six kinds of gruesome death. He was terrified, and when he realized he really might get attacked, right there, he left. However, he did publish the article, and updated it into Blood Relation.

How to explain a puzzle like Kayo? He was born into a closeknit Jewish family, devout and conservative. From a young child, he was different. If the stories he told on himself are right (or even sorta close), he was running a numbers game, and had chased off one extortioner at gunpoint, before he was fourteen.

In the nature-nurture debate, most of us probably are 50-50 cases. Here is a case where nurture made hardly a dent in an evil-born personality. Such a case adds credence to 'strong Calvinism,' with its doctrine of 'double predestination': those who are saved were pre-chosen to do so, and those who are not were pre-chosen to be lost. As one preacher puts it, "Some folks were created to be the fuel for the Lake of Fire." I find that rather harsh, but in a case like Kayo's I cannot rule it out.