I’ll show you a mugshot of two ten-year-old murderers.
On the left, we see Jon Venables and on the right, Robert Thompson. They had just been arrested for the 1993 murder of two-year-old James Bulger. Out of nowhere, and without cause or reason, the two older boys took the toddler, abducted him and killed him in a remote location…
If you study the two faces, you’ll see two things — first, Robert Thompson is terrified. He’s scared, broken, quite likely guilty. What has come over him, what has he done, and why? He hardly knows… but he’s aware of the fact that what he did was horrible. Unforgivable.
Jon Venables has a different expression altogether — he was the ringleader, the whole thing was his idea. And his eyes are cold. Dark. Soulless. His face shows zero remorse. He’s just studying the photographer like a shark studying his prey; cool, calculating, enturely free of emotion of any kind beyond perhaps a slight sense of annoyance at the inconvenience of being caught.
In 2001, Thompson and Venables were released. While Thompson was initially seen by psychiatrists as the more sociopathic of the two boys, he eventually did change his behavior in a significant way. Upon release, he never re-offended. Venables learned to become a “model prisoner” in treatment, adopting the appropriate and socially desirable responses to therapists and was seen as “reformed”… but he did re-offend, and he’s currently in prison.
The longer I live, the more I become convinced that a sociopath can be recognized, first and foremost, by the eyes. When caught and confronted with what he has done, a sociopath will not be visibly affected, unless he is savvy enough to realize that being visually affected will make people more sympathetic. After doing something heinous, the sociopath can sleep like a baby at night… unless he’s not sure he covered his tracks well enough. His only emotions are related to his own well-being, and everything else is a mask.
No comments:
Post a Comment