Ignoring the Predator in the Room

None of us are immune to being charmed. There are skilled individuals and social players who know how to connect with us in a way that we end up liking them; even when we understand that they don’t have our best interests at heart and are even morally reprehensible. It is possible for us to compartmentalize a person’s character traits – along with their behaviors – so that we are able to down-play and ignore the bad things that they do to us and others, in order to be able to accept them in other roles; including friends and even intimate partners. This may in fact be innately programmed into our genetics. In our early days as “humans” our survival and success became not so dependent on our individual strengths and weaknesses, but on those of the social group to which we belonged. This would mean that we might have to work together with individuals we did not particularly like, in order to achieve our goals. If group members showed open hostility towards each other due to personal differences concerning likeability, etc., it would likely impact on the success of the group. Other animal species, such as dogs and wolves, developed rituals to deal with conflict, whilst humans learnt to suppress feelings and emotions, and compartmentalize negative and positive thoughts in order to achieve social cohesion. To illustrate the extent to which we do this, and others exploit it, I want to look at and to a certain extent analyze Judge Edward Cowart’s latter remarks post-sentencing Ted Bundy to death.     

“The court finds that both of these killings were indeed heinous, atrocious and cruel. And that they were extremely wicked, shockingly evil, vile and the product of a design to inflict a high degree of pain and utter indifference to human life. This court, independent of, but in agreement with the advisory sentence rendered by the jury does hereby impose the death penalty upon the defendant Theodore Robert Bundy. It is further ordered that on such scheduled date that you'll be put to death by a current of electricity, sufficient to cause your immediate death, and such current of electricity shall continue to pass through your body until you are dead.

Take care of yourself, young man. I say that to you sincerely; take care of yourself. It is an utter tragedy for this court to see such a total waste of humanity, I think, as I've experienced in this courtroom.

You're a bright young man. You'd have made a good lawyer and I would have loved to have you practice in front of me, but you went another way, partner. I don't feel any animosity toward you. I want you to know that. Take care of yourself.”

To give some context to the statement, Bundy was being tried for the killing of two women and had decided to represent himself – demonstrating the grandiosity i.e. nobody can do it better than me, which is a characteristic of psychopathy. He had a law degree, but had never practiced criminal law, and had not passed the bar; having taken law at undergraduate level and without having taken it further, Bundy was relying solely on wit and intelligence, rather than a deep understanding of the intricacies and arguments that would be necessary in a double homicide trial. He later confessed to 28 more killings (though this is probably a gross underestimation, and it is likely that he started killing during his teens, rather than something he started to do in his late twenties), but at his trial there were only two that had enough evidence to warrant a prosecution.

Although acknowledging the brutality of the killing, Cowart’s expression of remorse is not for the victims’ loss of life, but for Bundy’s i.e. “It is an utter tragedy for this court to see such a total waste of humanity”. This is quite a remarkable statement, especially to be made in a professional setting, where it will go on the record. It would be one thing to express such a thought/feeling to somebody else in private, but quite another to make it public in the way that Cowart did – in terms of a legacy, this is probably what he is best remembered for. Despite what he had done, which Cowart acknowledged, Bundy had won the judge over with his charm, to such a degree that one has the feeling that if the law allowed Cowart a way out from sentencing Bundy to death, he would have taken it, and perhaps exonerated him all together. Cowart regrets the fact that Bundy was not and would not be able to practice law, “in front of me”. He was able to separate Bundy as the killer from the lawyer, viewing them as separate and distinct individuals i.e. the “bright young man”, from the individual who had, “utter indifference to human life”. This is not a failing on Cowart’s part but an acknowledgment of Bundy’s skill as a social contortionist, able to convince another person of the individual they want them to see. The evidence against Bundy was compelling, and he knew that his defense rested largely on him presenting himself in a way that would make it difficult for anyone to condemn him. In this regard, he may have made the right decision to represent himself, as an experienced defense team would have focused on undermining the evidence and/or finding a way to make it inadmissible, rather than focusing on the individual and their ability to charm and appeal to the sympathies of the Judge and Jury.

Cowart’s statement is almost akin to an apology, and a request to Bundy, not to blame him for the verdict/decision. It may seem strange that Cowart would want to seek the approval and recognition of Bundy and go on the record for it, especially when he knew that Bundy’s appeals against the death penalty would be denied (and he would be dead in a few years), however Bundy knew how to get somebody to want to like and recognize him in a certain role – this was how he’d been so successful in luring and disarming his victims. Over the course of the trial, he convinced the Judge to think of him not as the killer, but as the budding law student with an innate intelligence that would have made him an entertaining and convincing prosecutor/defender, that the judge might have seen as some protégé.

Ted Bundy is an extreme example, however there are many people who play the games he did in the way that he presented himself e.g. a dedicated and respected teacher may molest teenage boys, a successful businessman who provides for his family and appears to be the devoted father, may abuse his partner, etc. In each case, we may choose to see the individual in one of these roles, rather than both. It may be easier for us to deny or discount a family friend who has an unnatural interest in our children, and rather recognize and identify him in other capacities, such as his being married, professional and middle class i.e. he doesn’t seem to conform to the stereotype of somebody who would want to cause harm to us or our family, etc. If Ted Bundy could convince an experienced Judge to see him in a certain light, feel sympathy for him, and wish him well while knowing all that he’d done, we should understand and recognize that none of use are immune to the charm(s) that somebody can display. It is one thing to recognize and even admire, it is another to be taken in.