within the week, the public was in for a shock. Security-video footage showed a good-looking guy strolling away from two of the crime scenes while casually checking his cell phone. Investigators tracked him through e-mail forensics and other evidence and, on April 20, arrested the man identified as the alleged Craigslist Killer as he drove on the interstate with his fiancée. He was later charged with murder and multiple other crimes.
In all other ways, though, the alleged killer defied most people’s assumptions of what evil looks like. Philip Markoff, 23, was a medical student at Boston University. Tall, handsome, from a solid family, and with no criminal record, he was living with his fiancée, 25-year-old Megan McAllister, a fellow med student he had met in college while both were volunteering at a local hospital. They were reportedly planning a beach wedding in August.
Friends of Markoff spoke out immediately, backing McAllister’s statements to the press that “he wouldn’t hurt a fly” and describing him as personable and highly intelligent. News articles mentioned his good looks, as though his physical appearance was an indicator of good behavior. The mainstream media repeatedly used expressions like clean-cut and all-American in describing him.
But as Boston police continued to amass critical evidence, the picture darkened. Investigators found a stash of women’s underwear—which they characterized as souvenirs from victims—in the springs of the bed Markoff shared with McAllister. Detectives also found zip ties (the kind used to bind the two robbery victims) and a semiautomatic gun in a hollowed-out copy of every med student’s bible, Gray’s Anatomy .
You can’t help but wonder: Is it possible that Megan McAllister had no clue that there was something not quite right about the man she planned to marry? All my investigative experience causes me to doubt that. But that is just one of many mysteries that surround the psychopathic personality and the people he deceives.
A Psychopath’s Mask
Many of the details that have emerged about Markoff’s personality fit the criteria for a psychopath: someone (usually male) who almost entirely lacks empathy but can appear normal, even charming and brilliant. Psychopaths apply their intelligence to mimicking conventional behavior; they are both great actors and heartless predators. There are about 1 million in the United States, or about 1 percent of the adult male population (but as much as 25 percent of the prison population). In other words, they can be anywhere. And since their danger flies under the radar, it’s important to understand how they operate.
In my 26 years supervising the sex-crimes unit in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, my colleagues and I prosecuted many people who fit the psychopath criteria: dentists and doctors, teachers and lawyers, accountants and professors, college students and the wealthy heirs of prominent parents.
I got my first exposure to the type when, as the newly designated chief of the bureau, I was assigned to the trial of Marvin Teicher, a distinguished-looking and highly respected dentist. A brilliant police investigation, in which a female detective went undercover as a patient, revealed his true character: Teicher was captured on film molesting the sedated woman.
I was as astonished as the rest of the public to discover that a prominent health-care professional—a man whose hobby was starring in musical comedies in an amateur theatrical group—was also a repeat sexual predator. Teicher was my introduction to the elaborate double lives led by psychopaths and to the disguising power of their outward appearance of respectability: their college degrees, their breeding, and often their good looks.
Many psychologists call this power the mask of sanity, a phrase most famously applied to the charming, handsome serial killer Ted Bundy, who was executed in Florida in 1989. Bundy was a law student during part of his
In all other ways, though, the alleged killer defied most people’s assumptions of what evil looks like. Philip Markoff, 23, was a medical student at Boston University. Tall, handsome, from a solid family, and with no criminal record, he was living with his fiancée, 25-year-old Megan McAllister, a fellow med student he had met in college while both were volunteering at a local hospital. They were reportedly planning a beach wedding in August.
Friends of Markoff spoke out immediately, backing McAllister’s statements to the press that “he wouldn’t hurt a fly” and describing him as personable and highly intelligent. News articles mentioned his good looks, as though his physical appearance was an indicator of good behavior. The mainstream media repeatedly used expressions like clean-cut and all-American in describing him.
But as Boston police continued to amass critical evidence, the picture darkened. Investigators found a stash of women’s underwear—which they characterized as souvenirs from victims—in the springs of the bed Markoff shared with McAllister. Detectives also found zip ties (the kind used to bind the two robbery victims) and a semiautomatic gun in a hollowed-out copy of every med student’s bible, Gray’s Anatomy .
You can’t help but wonder: Is it possible that Megan McAllister had no clue that there was something not quite right about the man she planned to marry? All my investigative experience causes me to doubt that. But that is just one of many mysteries that surround the psychopathic personality and the people he deceives.
A Psychopath’s Mask
Many of the details that have emerged about Markoff’s personality fit the criteria for a psychopath: someone (usually male) who almost entirely lacks empathy but can appear normal, even charming and brilliant. Psychopaths apply their intelligence to mimicking conventional behavior; they are both great actors and heartless predators. There are about 1 million in the United States, or about 1 percent of the adult male population (but as much as 25 percent of the prison population). In other words, they can be anywhere. And since their danger flies under the radar, it’s important to understand how they operate.
In my 26 years supervising the sex-crimes unit in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, my colleagues and I prosecuted many people who fit the psychopath criteria: dentists and doctors, teachers and lawyers, accountants and professors, college students and the wealthy heirs of prominent parents.
I got my first exposure to the type when, as the newly designated chief of the bureau, I was assigned to the trial of Marvin Teicher, a distinguished-looking and highly respected dentist. A brilliant police investigation, in which a female detective went undercover as a patient, revealed his true character: Teicher was captured on film molesting the sedated woman.
I was as astonished as the rest of the public to discover that a prominent health-care professional—a man whose hobby was starring in musical comedies in an amateur theatrical group—was also a repeat sexual predator. Teicher was my introduction to the elaborate double lives led by psychopaths and to the disguising power of their outward appearance of respectability: their college degrees, their breeding, and often their good looks.
Many psychologists call this power the mask of sanity, a phrase most famously applied to the charming, handsome serial killer Ted Bundy, who was executed in Florida in 1989. Bundy was a law student during part of his
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