Crime in Time

T his is another entry taken from a true-crime book which I'm writing, a book about a series of murders set against the backdrop of a sleepy American town. This part is a digression dealing with the fabrications of caged psychopaths, the phenomenon of the serial confessor, who claims credit for crimes which he had not committed. While this is only a cursory look at the subject, I felt it formed something of a mini-story of its own, and was more or less ready to be posted. P sychopaths, particularly high-functioning psychopaths, are well skilled at adapting their presentation – or, in other words, their mask – depending on the rewards and punishments available in a given context. If incarcerated, a psychopath will exploit the venues for his own gains, and will often seek replacement stimuli in place of those no longer available. He may, for instance, have to replace physical domination with ...