WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- OK, I admit. I blew it. I -- like most forensic experts quoted in the media -- thought the phantom sniper, who terrorized millions of people in the Washington area was insane, and if not insane, overpowered by brutal urges to murder. We all focused on someone like Son of Sam or Jeffrey Dahmer -- the infamous cannibal.
Now I believe John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo are not crazy. In my opinion, Muhammad is a brutal con artist, a master manipulator and a serial killer. In my opinion, Malvo is a brainwashed mental slave and a serial killer. Jointly, they are more in the category of pairs with warped minds such as Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, the Hillside murderers, or the two female nursing-home workers, Gwendolyn Gail Graham and Catherine Wood, who hideously made murder an extension of their lesbian sexual pleasures.
There is no evidence that Muhammad and Malvo are delusional killers or insane. As far as we know now, they never heard voices, never communicated with invisible forces and seemed to understand what they were doing.
They were not insanely driven to kill and totally controlled by obsessive urges such as experienced by Thomas Dillon, the solitary sniper who experienced overpowering urges to hunt hunters in southern Ohio in the early 1990s. Nor is there any evidence that Muhammad and Malvo are Jeffrey Dahmer types -- not insane yet mentally troubled enough to find comfort and joy in cannibalism and in incapacitating their victims into helpless zombies. Interestingly, Dahmer knew he was evil and often wished that somebody would stop him. He met his poetic justice in prison when he was bludgeoned to death.
Let us explore Muhammad and Malvo's past. There is nothing particularly surprising about their chaotic parentless childhoods except that emotionally and physically abandoned children are more likely to become unhappy adults. Muhammad never knew his father and at the age of 3, lost his mother to cancer. No father existed in Malvo's life until Muhammad appeared in his life, telling great tales of power, hope and adventure.
It's an easy speculation that 17-year-old Malvo was mesmerized by the deceptively grandiose yet comforting stories of an Army veteran. To many, Muhammad and Malvo might have looked like father and son and introduced themselves as such, but the nature of their relationship is a mystery.
The short answer is we just don't know, and of course it would be wrong to jump to any premature conclusions -- there is no evidence of any sexual bond.
But there have been serial killers like Graham and Wood, who mercilessly killed elderly women and immediately after the slayings, rushed to a private corner for sex and exhilaration. So, a sick possibility like this should at least be entertained.
Muhammed and Malvo have different yet warped brains. They share one thing. They have no sense of pain or emotion for others: In shrink-speak, this is called empathy. They are accused of murders that cannot be explained by the hollowness of their childhoods or the neglect they suffered as infants, children or teenagers. After all, there are millions of kids who grow up in much more deprived and hostile environments and never become mass murderers.
Mental illnesses are common in any society, but mental illness does not explain or justify -- and must not be used as an excuse by -- people who are willingly and consciously being wicked when they have a reasonable chance of being in control over their behavior.
It is important to differentiate Muhammad from Malvo and vice versa.
First, a few words about Muhammad. To hell with psychiatry, psychology and forensic sciences. I fully realize that I may find myself in deep trouble with my colleagues for saying this, but Muhammad is just a wicked deadly virus dressed as a human who manipulated a teenager.
He knew exactly what he was doing. Even his letter to the authorities appears to have contained an attempt to create the false impression that he was a delusional killer. Why else would he sign the letter "Call me God"? He knew he was not God. He never acted like an obsessive killer. After all, no obsessive killer even in public discussed his future plans of violence and killings as Muhammad reportedly did at a bar in Seattle, Wash., in the spring of 2002.
Muhammad is the prototype of people with damaged brains and hollow souls, destined to fail, not insane, not brilliant, yet smart enough to know that he would never quite make it.
How about Malvo? What happened to Malvo was similar to what happened to Patty Hearst, the young California heiress, who was kidnapped by the self-proclaimed liberators/bank robbers of the SLA in the early 1970s. Soon, she was robbing banks and acting with apparent recklessness in imitating her captors' philosophy and behavior.
Patty Hearst was an example of the Stockholm syndrome: identification with the aggressor after imprisonment and adoption of the aggressive and hostile methods of your captors.
Yes, it is speculation, but perhaps a reliable one, to think that that is exactly what happened to Malvo once he met Mohammad. He was hypnotized by Mohammad's powers and soon became his mental slave, lost his identity and became an obedient and loyal servant.
And what are the lessons for us?
The lesson may be a simple one: There are many sane people with warped minds and hollow childhoods, abandoned and forgotten by society, who have the potential to be infinitely destructive.
Sadly and frighteningly the signs of their destructive potential are not obvious until it is too late.
On the positive side, it is possible that if we ever find a way of recognizing these early signs of trouble, particularly for youngsters like Malvo, it will be possible to rescue them from the grasp of predators before they become prey.
(Dr. Alen J. Salerian is the author of the upcoming book, "What is the Color of Your Brain.")
(UPI Outside View commentaries are written by experts in a variety of fields.)
