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

A word of introduction: this article narrates the story of the silent plague that has been creeping across the United States for almost four decades, consuming and corrupting everything it touches like an unstoppable river of acid and filth, taking away lives, livelihoods and hope. It is the story of the American meth epidemic, and its blight upon rural and small-town America. It is, in fact, a chapter taken out of a book which I'm writing. The book tells the tale of a decade-long spree of serial killings in a small American town, which - like so many others - fell victim to the meth invasion at one point. It was a backdrop to the story of the murders, and one of the reasons why the serial killer was able to operate in his rural environment for so long. As such, I decided that it was a tale worth being told in full on its own, and I chose to devote a chapter to the phenomenon, from its earliest roots to its grimmest effects. I n the America of the 1970s and the 19