Aggression and Violent Behavior xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Aggression and Violent Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aggviobeh

Psychopathy and pathological violence in a criminal career: A forensic

case report
Matt DeLisi a, *, Alan J. Drury b, Michael J. Elbert b
a
Iowa State University, 510 Farm House Lane, 203A East Hall, Ames, Iowa 50011, United States of America
b
United States Probation, United States of America

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Extreme criminal careers illustrate the effects of multiple forms of psychopathology especially the confluence of
Psychopathy psychopathy, multiple externalizing behaviors, and homicidality. Here, we present a forensic case report of Mr.
Career criminal Z, an offender whose antisocial conduct and criminal justice system involvement spans the late 1940s to the
Murder
present, whose criminal career dovetails with significant events in correctional history in the United States in the
Homicide
Inmate behavior
middle to late 20th century, and who was a multiple homicide offender while incarcerated in both state and
Prison murder federal prisons. The case report method provides rich qualitative data to supplement quantitative findings on
Security threat group psychopathy, career criminals, the severe 5%, and life-course-persistent offender prototypes. Given the
extraordinary behaviors and psychopathology of the most severe offenders, forensic case reports are useful to
refine criminological theory and research, and inform correctional practice.

1. Introduction
Although they are not identical constructs, psychopathy and criminal
careers are so robustly interrelated that it is usually the case that the
most psychopathic offenders also have among the most extensive
criminal records and justice system involvement, and, if analyzing the
personality functioning of the most violent career criminals, psycho­
pathic features are usually present. When one considers the behavioral
dispositions and tendencies that unfold from this personality disorder,
psychopathy is highly conducive of criminal offending and violence
perpetration. One reason for this association is that the affective,
interpersonal, lifestyle and behavioral features of psychopathy are
facilitative of criminal opportunities, of the proactive victimization of
others, and of repeated refusal to comply with court orders and condi­
tional sentences. As Hare (1999, p. 186) noted, “in spite of their small
numbers—perhaps 1 percent of the general population—psychopaths
make up a significant portion of our prison populations and are
responsible for a markedly disproportionate amount of serious crime
and social distress.” To illustrate, a study of a nationally representative
sample of Americans found that the most psychopathic participants
were two to five times more likely to get arrested, sentenced to proba­
tion, or incarcerated compared to less psychopathic persons (Beaver
et al., 2017). Thus, psychopathy constitutes a pressing and costly
societal burden (DeLisi, Elbert, & Drury, 2018; DeLisi et al., 2018; Hare,
1999; Reidy et al., 2015) given its role in the most severe variants of
criminal offending.
Voluminous research studies employing data from Belgium
(Declercq et al., 2012), Canada (Corrado et al., 2015; McCuish et al.,
2015), China (Wang et al., 2020), Cyprus (Andershed et al., 2018),
Finland (Lindberg et al., 2009), the Netherlands (Garofalo, Bogaerts, &
Denissen, 2018), Portugal (Pechorro et al., 2014; Pechorro et al., 2017),
Sweden (Salihovic & Stattin, 2017), United Kingdom (Piquero et al.,
2012), and the United States (Driessen et al., 2018; Hawes et al., 2018;
Vaughn & DeLisi, 2008) show that psychopathy is strongly predictive of
serious or career criminality such that the more varied and extensive the
psychopathic features, generally the earlier emerging, more chronic,
and more serious the offending career. Similarly, a bevy of meta-analytic
studies on antisocial conduct (Leistico et al., 2008), delinquency
(Geerlings et al., 2020), serious delinquency (Asscher et al., 2011),
instrumental/proactive and reactive violence (Blais et al., 2014), ho­
micide (Fox & DeLisi, 2019), and recidivism (Asscher et al., 2011; Edens
et al., 2007) substantiate that psychopathy is an important feature of
serious offending and recidivism after a correctional intervention. In this
way, the most severe and restrictive components of the criminal justice
system, such as maximum-security prisons and death rows are dispro­
portionately populated by clinically psychopathic offenders.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: delisi@iastate.edu (M. DeLisi), Alan_drury@iasp.uscourts.gov (A.J. Drury), Michael_elbert@iasp.uscourts.gov (M.J. Elbert).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2020.101521
Received 13 July 2020; Received in revised form 5 October 2020; Accepted 23 October 2020
Available online 4 November 2020
1359-1789/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Matt DeLisi, Aggression and Violent Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2020.101521
M. DeLisi et al.
1.1. Current focus
The most extreme criminal careers illustrate the effects of multiple
forms of psychopathology especially the confluence of psychopathy,
multiple externalizing behaviors, and homicidality. Building on the
bedrock empirical finding that the most chronic offenders also engage in
the most serious forms of crime (Blumstein & Cohen, 1987; DeLisi, 2005;
DeLisi et al., 2015; DeLisi & Piquero, 2011; Wolfgang et al., 1972), a
variety of research streams in forensic science, developmental psycho­
pathology, and criminology have shown that the most pathological in­
dividual criminal careers are noteworthy for their behavioral extremity.
Although this knowledge base is very valuable, it generally obscures the
extraordinary criminal burden that an individual offender with this
profile can impose on society and on the criminal justice system entities
that respond to their offending. A biographical richness about the most
pathological offenders and granular insights into the criminal career is
missing. Here, we present a forensic case report of Mr. Z, an offender
whose antisocial career and criminal justice system involvement spans
the late 1940s to the present and whose behavioral odyssey dovetails
with significant events in correctional history in the United States in the
middle to late 20th century, and who was a multiple homicide offender
during his decades of confinement.
2. Method
The case report methodology is commonly employed in medicine
and psychiatry to illustrate an individual or patient whose symptoms,
characteristics, developmental course, or behaviors are rare, unusual,
and pathological. As a qualitative method, case reports provide unique
and interesting information in copious detail and although rare in
criminology, case reports are somewhat common as a method to docu­
ment the life history of multiple homicide offenders or serial sexual
offenders (e.g., Carabellese et al., 2011; Martens & Palermo, 2005;
Meloy, 1997; Myers et al., 2005). Case reports are reliant on exhaustive
access to information about the individual. The current case report
utilizes over 50 years of archival records including official and self-
reported criminal history, state and federal correctional records, psy­
chological reports, case history information, archival interview data,
archival forensic interview data, archival supervision data, and collat­
eral legal documents. The Chief District Judge in this federal jurisdiction
provided research approval for the study and Mr. Z voluntarily signed an
informed consent form granting release of anonymized information.
2.1. Social background and antisocial/delinquent development
Mr. Z is a 77-year old white male born in 1943 into a conventional,
prosocial family that is unremarkable for adverse childhood experi­
ences. He had a normal rearing environment and both parents were
employed. From his earliest memories of early childhood in the late
1940s, Mr. Z exhibited significant conduct problems and difficulty with
emotional and behavioral regulation. He indicated feelings of low
frustration tolerance, rage, and invincibility and is uncertain and curious
about the etiology of these emotions. Highly aggressive and confronta­
tional, Mr. Z reported that his early school career was marked by
bullying perpetration, poor conduct, peer rejection, and that he had no
friends. In reflecting on his childhood, Mr. Z indicated feelings of
rejection, persecution, and pronounced hostile attribution bias. Mr. Z
engaged in diverse delinquent acts throughout childhood including an
incident in 1951—at age 8 years—where he burglarized his school
during the summer and intentionally set it on fire. At age 12 years, Mr. Z.
physically assaulted the assistant principal and was expelled from the
entire school district. Recurrently in juvenile detention upon referrals
for a variety of delinquent offenses, at age 14 years Mr. Z engaged in a
multistate auto theft and armed robbery spree, was adjudicated, and
committed to a juvenile reformatory for two years. Upon release at age
16, Mr. Z initiated heroin use and was opiate dependent (on heroin and
2
Aggression and Violent Behavior xxx (xxxx) xxx
dilaudid) for more than a half century. In late adolescence, Mr. Z was
waived to adult court, convicted of numerous counts of burglary and
theft, and placed on probation. During his childhood and adolescence,
Mr. Z met diagnostic criteria for what would today be known as ADHD
Predominantly Hyperactive/Impulsive Subtype, Oppositional Defiant
Disorder, and Conduct Disorder, Childhood-Onset Type, Severe.
2.2. Adult criminal career
Upon adulthood in 1961, Mr. Z was convicted of burglary and felony
theft and sentenced to state prison. It is at this point that Mr. Z indicated
that the person he had been died, and a new person emerged in response
to the various deprivations of prison life. In his words, prison “served as
a device for those of us who were already enraged to become incorri­
gibly vicious and evil.” Mr. Z engaged in extensive institutional
misconduct and was beaten for his recalcitrance by correctional officials
and other inmates acting as building tenders. It was also during his
initial exposure to prison that Mr. Z developed pronounced animosity
toward African American inmates, an animosity that would contribute
to the founding of a white supremacist security threat group approxi­
mately two decades later. To the present, Mr. Z sees the world in stark
racial terms of white, brown, and black.
Mr. Z fared poorly in prison and the community. Paroled in 1963, he
returned to prison in 1964 for two drug charges and was paroled again in
1965. Between 1965 and 1970, Mr. Z remained in the community and
sustained himself by pandering for his wife who worked as a prostitute.
In 1970, Mr. Z was convicted of burglary and forgery and returned to
prison, then paroled in 1974. A mere six weeks into his parole, Mr. Z
perpetrated a series of armed bank robberies and received a life sentence
at the state level. Aside from the 1965 to 1970 period, Mr. Z was
effectively continuously confined by local, state, and federal authorities
from 1957 to 2012.
Mr. Z exhibited a considerable capacity to escape from correctional
facilities. In 1978, Mr. Z escaped from state prison and perpetrated
multiple armed bank robberies across several states for which he was
convicted. Also in 1978 while in a Midwestern state appealing convic­
tions for federal armed bank robbery, Mr. Z and his codefendant escaped
from a county jail. The escapees immediately stole an automobile and
perpetrated still more armed bank robberies before their capture two
months later. Because he perpetrated crimes in numerous states and
recurrently escaped from custody, Mr. Z was usually under both state
and federal supervision and these overlapping jurisdictional issues
facilitated his ultimate release from custody. By 1980, upon convictions
for numerous counts of armed bank robbery, conspiracy to commit
armed bank robbery, and escape, Mr. Z was serving two life sentences at
the state level and 64 years imprisonment at the federal level. Despite
the extremity of his criminal career to this point, the most violent phase
of his developmental course had yet to begin.
In 1981, Mr. Z transferred from state prison to the United States
Penitentiary (USP) Marion within the federal Bureau of Prisons due to
his involvement in litigation against the state prison system and his
repeated institutional misconduct. He arrived at USP Marion during the
midst of a nationwide race war among prison gangs primarily between
the Aryan Brotherhood and an African American gang called the DC
Blacks. It was during this era that Mr. Z was a contemporary of some of
the most infamous prisoners in American correctional history many of
whom had murdered multiple inmates and correctional officers. For
instance, Mr. Z’s codefendant (now deceased) on the jail escape and
armed bank robbery spree was ultimately sentenced to multiple life
sentences for the murder of several federal prisoners including an inci­
dent where he killed two rival inmates on the same day. In 1982, Mr. Z
was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon on a federal corrections
officer during an incident in which he nearly murdered a gang rival. For
the conviction for the assault on the officer, Mr. Z received an additional
8-year sentence pushing his total federal sentence to 72 years. In 1983,
Mr. Z transferred back to state custody where he founded and led a
M. DeLisi et al.
dangerous white prison gang that would participate in its own race war
with black gangs similar to what he experienced at the federal level.
While reflecting on this phase of his life during a forensic interview in
2018, Mr. Z labeled himself a “horrible fucking monster” and suggested
that his life was so deviant, so wantonly antisocial, and so completely
committed to violence that he did not even feel that he was human.
2.3. Homicide career
The precise number of homicides for which Mr. Z is responsible is
known only by him, and episodically in his interaction with correctional
officials, Mr. Z offered various estimates of his murderous involvement.
While on federal supervised release, Mr. Z admitted to his supervising
officer in 2012 and 2013 that he personally stabbed four inmates to
death in addition to perpetrating numerous other stabbings of inmates
that were nonfatal. However, also in 2012, Mr. Z stated that he was
reluctant to disclose all of the murders and the orders to murder for
which he was responsible and that legal authorities never discovered.
During a forensic interview in 2018, Mr. Z acknowledged that he was
personally responsible for 10+ murders while in state or federal prison.
Various archival records similarly provide discordant estimates of Mr.
Z’s homicidal activity with the earliest potential murder occurring in
1974 and the last in 1985. A legal affidavit indicated Mr. Z was
responsible for potentially eight murders between 1980 and 1985 and
that dozens of inmates expressed fear of him due to his reputation for
killing other inmates. State correctional records indicate 13 murders in
1984 and 1985 alone for which Mr. Z bore some responsibility in
perpetrating, co-perpetrating, conspiring, or soliciting.
Despite his involvement in numerous prison murders, Mr. Z was
ironically never convicted of a homicide offense. The reasons for this are
several and include dispositions of not guilty in which his homicidal
conduct was viewed as self-defense (during mutually combative fights
with armed rival gang members), the refusal of witnesses to testify
against him (in part because of his propensity to murder witnesses or
order their murder when he was in disciplinary segregation), and his
legal status as a lifer. During the 1960s to 1980s during his state custody,
prison murders were the responsibility of local prosecutors and since Mr.
Z was already serving two life sentences, authorities felt there was little
reason to expend resources to prosecute him. Other murder charges
during his custody were never formally filed for some combination of
these factors. Although Mr. Z avoided murder convictions, he was
sanctioned repeatedly for other major infractions and occasionally
accrued new state convictions for possession of a deadly weapon in a
penal institution.
There is no official evidence that Mr. Z ever perpetrated a homicide
while in the community, but it is highly plausible for several reasons.
First, Mr. Z exhibited acute homicidal ideation throughout his life and
during the late 1970s threatened to murder potential witnesses and the
U.S. Attorney that was prosecuting his case. Although the Federal Bu­
reau of Investigation investigated these threats, no charges were ever
filed. Second, Mr. Z engaged in extremely violent crimes while in the
community and viewed himself as a professional armed bank robber.
During some of these robberies, he engaged in violent acts including
disarming security guards, menacing victims with weapons including
placing the weapon on or near the face of the victim, and threatening to
kill victims and witnesses. Third, as a lifelong drug addict, Mr. Z was
immersed in innumerable settings that provided opportunities to use
lethal violence. Fourth and most critically, Mr. Z acknowledged that “he
got away with” murders that were never discovered by authorities, and
some of these likely occurred while in the community.
2.4. Post-homicide correctional career and release from custody
Due to his continued homicide offending while in custody, Mr. Z was
placed in administrative segregation in late 1984 yet continued to inflict
violence by ordering gang subordinates to perpetrate additional inmate
3
Aggression and Violent Behavior xxx (xxxx) xxx
murders. However, by 1995 after a spiritual awakening, Mr. Z stepped
away from involvement in his security threat group, a move that
correctional authorities disbelieved, and he remained in administrative
segregation until 2007. Thus, Mr. Z was in administrative segregation
for 23 consecutive years. In 2008, he successfully completed the gang
renunciation and disassociation program and completed his state prison
sentence in general population without incident. Having served 36 years
in state custody, Mr. Z was parole eligible and transferred to the Bureau
of Prisons in 2010. Due to the datedness of his convictions, Mr. Z was
eligible for release after serving two-thirds of his federal sentence and in
2012 was discharged to a federal halfway house and placed on super­
vised release.
Mr. Z was thoroughly unprepared for life outside a prison setting. He
reported to his supervising officer that he considered committing bur­
glary to steal a gun to perpetrate another armed bank robbery spree but
decided against it. He developed situational depression and was pre­
scribed an antidepressant, which proved effective. It is the only evidence
of an internalizing symptom in a life that was otherwise completely
externalizing. Having been confined since the 1970s, Mr. Z faced a va­
riety of difficulties in terms of basic living skills, but slowly he obtained
employment, secured an apartment, and purchased a bicycle for trans­
portation. The spiritual awakening that arose during the latter phase of
his time in administrative segregation was now full-fledged and Mr. Z
was very active in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.
For the first time since middle childhood, Mr. Z also abstained from
substance use.
Although Mr. Z was sentenced to supervised release until age 107, his
cases were so old that they qualified for federal parole, which had been
abolished in 1987. He petitioned to have his supervised release termi­
nated in favor of parole and this petition was granted. Released from
federal supervision in 2019, Mr. Z remains on state parole as part of the
interstate parole compact and will remain on state parole supervision
until his death.
2.5. Psychopathy and comorbid psychopathology
As evident by his extraordinary criminal career, Mr. Z exuded pro­
nounced psychopathic features throughout his life; indeed, it is not
hyperbolic to suggest that he instantiated the condition of psychopathy.
A forensic assessment scored him at 35 on the Psychopathy Checklist
Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003) which places him in the 97.7th percentile
for male criminal offenders in North America. Mr. Z had a multifaceted
interpersonal style that involved lying, deception, and manipulation and
this was most evident in his extensive litigation career where he would
challenge the constitutionality of his sentence and the various correc­
tional procedures imposed on him. In many of these proceedings, Mr. Z
would represent himself pro se, which certainly conveys a sense of
grandiosity, but his overall interpersonal style reflected elements of
misanthropy, humility, and a brutish straightforwardness. Although Mr.
Z was cagey about his homicide offending due to legal liability that
comes with the offense having no statute of limitations, he was
remarkably candid at other times about the overall severity of his
offending career. Many of his claims to correctional officers and clinical
staff even those that were so extreme they appeared untrue were vali­
dated by official records and legal documents.
On the affective dimension, Mr. Z was remorseless, cold, callous,
unemotional, and repeatedly refused to accept responsibility for his acts.
He had penetrating eye contact that conveyed a sort of emotional
desolation, and once during an interview, waived his hand in front of his
eyes and indicated that he was “all black in here” indicative of an
absence of emotion. At times these affective deficits became apparent
during interpersonal interaction. For instance, during a forensic inter­
view, Mr. Z described an attack on a black inmate during his confine­
ment at the USP Marion. While describing the incident, Mr. Z raised his
fist as if holding a knife and simulated the stabbing for the interviewer
by showing all of the body parts on which he stabbed the victim. He
M. DeLisi et al.
performed this simulation by stabbing at his own torso. This simulation
lasted for approximately 1 min as Mr. Z described the event in a clinical,
methodical, dispassionate tone. When asked if the stabbing was fatal,
Mr. Z shrugged his shoulders, wryly smiled, and replied “No, I guess I
didn’t get him in the heart.”
During his confinement, Mr. Z’s parents and former spouse died, and
when correctional staff informed him of these events, Mr. Z had no
emotional reaction. It is on this family dimension that Mr. Z has devel­
oped a sense of remorse and feelings of shame that he did not care
enough about his family to mourn their passing. When discussing his
family, Mr. Z has clear emotional responses including plaintive language
and crying, but he struggles with emotional non-acceptance and reports
that having emotion is a sign of weakness. To this day, Mr. Z views
emotions as unnecessary and strange. In contrast, his affective de­
scriptions of his criminal career are largely robotic and insincere; he has
indicated regret at murdering other inmates, but there is no emotional
display accompanying his words. “Take care of business” was the motto
of Mr. Z’s gang, and the scores of murders and assaults that he perpe­
trated appear to be just that to him: instrumental business operations
against victims who, to him, had it coming.
On the lifestyle and antisocial dimensions, Mr. Z was floridly psy­
chopathic. He reported to his supervising officer that he basically lived
to use heroin and enjoy the exhilaration of committing crime. He never
worked in a legitimate job and was thoroughly exploitative in his life­
style primarily by pimping his wife or living off the proceeds of bank
robberies. When released from federal prison in 2012, he had no form of
identification. His utter and complete failure at conventional adult
functioning makes his current status as a functioning, employed parolee
all the more remarkable. On the antisocial dimension, Mr. Z’s life history
of core self-regulation problems, versatile criminal acts, and racist ho­
micidal violence is incomparable. Until his federal supervised release,
Mr. Z never complied with court orders or any conditions of supervision,
and indeed admitted that he continued to use heroin in federal prison
until 2011, just one year before his ultimate release. Even into his se­
venties, Mr. Z exhibited significant criminal thinking as measured by the
Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles. He evinced both
proactive and reactive criminal thinking with elevations in the areas of
Cutoff (ignoring responsible action), Discontinuity (getting side­
tracked), and Superoptimism (feeling of being able to get away with
anything). During adulthood, Mr. Z met diagnostic criteria for Antisocial
Personality Disorder, Paranoid Personality Disorder, Intermittent
Explosive Disorder, Opiate Dependence, Cannabis Dependence, Alcohol
Abuse, and Nicotine Dependence.
3. Discussion
Theoretical and empirical works (DeLisi, Elbert, & Drury, 2018;
Jennings & Reingle, 2012; Jolliffe et al., 2017; Moffitt, 1993, 2018;
Vaughn et al., 2011; Vaughn et al., 2014) substantiate the small sub­
group of career criminals who are responsible for most of the incidence
of crime in a population. Although this corpus of research produced
numerous findings, what is generally missing is an in-depth under­
standing of the life history and psychopathology of an offender who il­
lustrates the life-course-persistent offender prototype. The current
forensic case report of Mr. Z fills this void with rich biographical and
autobiographical content to bring those theoretical accounts and
empirical findings to life and has multiple implications for theory,
research, and correctional practice
The lengthy and convoluted course of Mr. Z’s criminal career reveals
the importance of the integrity and veracity of criminal sentences and
sheds light on unintended consequences of judicial and correctional
policy. Concurrent sentences and combining cases from multiple juris­
dictions permit offenders serving life sentences plus lengthy additional
sentences to ultimately be parole eligible, and although Mr. Z served
decades in confinement, it is reasonable to argue that his release was
unjust. His life history also shows the miscarriages of justice that arose
4
Aggression and Violent Behavior xxx (xxxx) xxx
with avoiding prosecution for the prison murders merely because he was
already serving a life sentence. That he was able to avoid conviction for
all of the prison murders is partially attributable to the historical era in
which they occurred, his ruthless effectiveness at dissuading witnesses
from testifying against him, and, quite simply, luck.
Mr. Z’s criminal career also provides unique insight into philosoph­
ical and practical issues of deterrence and incapacitation. In the com­
munity, he was a veritable crime wave onto himself and was wholly
unfazed by the efforts of the correctional system to rehabilitate his
conduct. His confinement provided obvious incapacitation benefits for
the community, unfortunately, his perpetration of murder, attempted
murder, gang intimidation, threats to correctional officers and staff, and
repeated heroin and alcohol use created hazards for the prison envi­
ronment and the correctional staff therein. The restrictive policies of
disciplinary segregation and administrative segregation often receive
facile criticism (for an important exception, see Morgan et al., 2016), but
they are an essential mechanism to control the violence and disruption
that a small handful of inmates like Mr. Z can impose. A practical and
potentially life-saving benefit of this study is its impact on the safety of
probation officers, pretrial officers, caseworkers, judges, and attorneys
who are required to have contact with individuals like Mr. Z. Although
his pathology represents a relatively small percentage of defendants or
persons under supervision, his offending career is a sobering reminder
for all who work in the correctional system to remain vigilant and
extremely cautious when dealing with these cases due to the high po­
tential for assault and homicide.
It was not until his eighth decade of life that Mr. Z desisted from a life
of violence, substance use, and declension and made any effort to
conform his behavior to societal expectations. Offenders like him
continue their heinous crimes over the life course and are highly
recalcitrant from “aging” out of crime. Although this supports notions of
life-course persistence in antisocial conduct (Moffitt, 1993, 2018), it is
also amazing to us that an individual with so much antisocial inertia was
able to achieve prosocial change. Mr. Z himself attributes his behavioral
convalescence to advanced age, sobriety, spirituality, and the efficacy of
support groups like Alcoholic Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. It
also took the isolation of 23 years in administrative segregation and the
nearly 40 years of straight confinement to set into motion the contem­
plation needed to want to desist from gang involvement and the violence
it entails. Thus, Mr. Z evinced both constancy and change, which appeals
to multiple sides of life-course criminology debates about the develop­
mental course of criminal careers (cf., Blumstein et al., 1988; DeLisi,
2016a; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1986, 1988; Sampson & Laub, 1993).
Several investigators conceptualized desistance as a process as
opposed to a discrete, state dependent event (e.g., Bushway et al., 2001;
Laub & Sampson, 2001; Morizot & Le Blanc, 2007; Serin & Lloyd, 2009).
Mr. Z’s development certainly supports a process-based explanation
albeit a desistance process took decades to unfold. Although his current
behavioral functioning is the most conventional and productive of his
adult life, Mr. Z’s rehabilitation is nevertheless somewhat precarious.
Although he was generally compliant on federal supervised release, Mr.
Z would also drink alcohol despite a proscriptive condition and despite
the risk it presented as a relapse mechanism for narcotics use. Despite his
age, it is critical that Mr. Z remain on parole supervision to ensure that
his progress (e.g., employment, sobriety, conventional behavior) con­
tinues and his desistance process achieves resolution.
Mr. Z’s life history exemplifies the intimate bond between psy­
chopathy and antisocial behavior as suggested by general theoretical
approaches (DeLisi, 2009, 2016b, Hare, 1993, 1996, Hare & Neumann,
2008). He engaged in daring, bold, malevolent behaviors throughout his
life, was highly litigious and grandiose enough to challenge virtually
every court order and correctional sanction imposed on him, and terri­
fied even other hardened prisoners with his implausibly vicious conduct.
For most of his life, Mr. Z was armed with a deadly weapon on a daily
basis—a firearm while in the community and a manufactured knife
while in prison—and using that deadly weapon was a reflexive,
M. DeLisi et al.
unquestioned mode of conduct. During a forensic interview, Mr. Z
expressed “in state prison when you were stabbing a guy to death, the
guards would come and beat you half to death, so you’d have to stab
them too. But in the federal system, they [officers] just wanted the body
and the knife so you usually wouldn’t have to fight them.” Consistent
with research indicating that homicidal ideation is significantly associ­
ated with diverse criminal offending and externalizing psychopathology
(Carbone et al., 2020; DeLisi et al., 2017; Vaughn et al., 2020), the
current case report reveals that among the most psychopathic offenders,
the willingness to murder is a foundational part of the offender’s
behavioral functioning. Indeed, Mr. Z was so willing to murder others
because homicide made cognitive and practical sense to him.
Mr. Z’s personality functioning poses challenges for theories of
psychopathy particularly relating to affective and interpersonal features
of the disorder. By his own admission, Mr. Z experienced little to no
emotion until his mid-sixties other than a dysphoric rage and invinci­
bility that he moderated by continual substance abuse and violence
perpetration. Although the cold, remorseless, guiltless response to his
offending history remains, he clearly experiences regret, sadness, shame,
and embarrassment for his treatment of his family. This suggests the
emotional life and emotional regulation of acutely psychopathic of­
fenders is more nuanced than traditionally believed (see, Garofalo et al.,
2019; Garofalo, Neumann, & Velotti, 2018). On the interpersonal
dimension, Mr. Z repeatedly lied, manipulated and exploited others, and
viewed his criminal exploits with a sense of grandiose pride; however,
he generally lacked the glib, superficial, slick interpersonal style and
was not interested in impressing others or massaging his ego. Instead,
Mr. Z was chillingly frank about his criminal career and homicidal
involvement and was straightforward, honest, and unflinching in his
conservations with correctional and clinical staff. Mr. Z’s surprising air
of humility and matter of fact conversational style conflicts with notions
that the interpersonal feature of psychopathy is most salient.
Mr. Z’s life history and correctional career have additional practical
applications. First, during his federal supervised release, Mr. Z was quite
willing to talk with correctional officials and clinicians about his back­
ground and offending history in part to provide data that could poten­
tially be useful for understanding other offenders in the system, such as
those currently involved in security threat groups. In this way, Mr. Z
offered considerable expertise about the life and functioning of a psy­
chopath and the inner-workings of prison gangs. Other correctional
professionals can similarly view pathological offenders on their caseload
as experts, and can glean insights from their expertise to inform their
own understanding of clients on supervision. Second, Mr. Z’s correc­
tional experiences show the radicalization that can occur when a psy­
chopathic, violent offender is housed along with similar types of
prisoners. His federal confinement and involvement in the race-based
gang war therein was effectively an internship for the race-based gang
war he later initiated in state custody. Although importation factors
relating to violent criminal history and severe psychopathology are
critical for understanding inmate misconduct (DeLisi et al., 2004; DeLisi
& Butler, 2020; Reidy & Sorensen, 2017; Tasca et al., 2010), it is also
true that deprivation and other facility-specific factors mold violent
inmate behavior (Day et al., 2015). In Mr. Z’s case, the coming together
of a cadre of severely psychopathic, highly homicidal career criminals
resulted in an extraordinary toll of prison murder and institutional
misconduct.
4. Conclusion
Finally, the human and fiscal toll of Mr. Z’s malignant criminal
career is difficult to estimate. During a forensic interview, one of Mr. Z’s
most sobering and affecting statements was, “I was the worst asshole that
you’ve ever seen,” which was his unvarnished, brutally honest attempt to
convey the full scope of his psychopathy and life of crime. Mr. Z is not
alone in this assessment of his life. A former state district attorney
protested Mr. Z’s parole because he considered him one of the most
5
Aggression and Violent Behavior xxx (xxxx) xxx
dangerous offenders he has seen, one who should never be released from
confinement. In our collective 70 years of working with criminal of­
fenders, Mr. Z is by acclamation the most severe and pathological
offender we have met.
Disclosure statement
Matt DeLisi receives consulting income and travel expenses in
criminal and civil litigation relating to criminological and forensic
assessmentof criminal offenders, receives editorial remuneration from
Elsevier, has received expert services income from the United States
Department of Justice and the Administrative Office of the United States
Courts, and receives royalty income from Cambridge University Press,
John Wiley & Sons, Jones & Bartlett, Kendall/Hunt, McGraw-Hill, Pal­
grave Macmillan, Routledge, Sage, University of Texas Press, and
Bridgepoint Education. No direct remuneration is associated with the
current study.
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