Movies
and Book Reviews
by
Tom Blaise Shepherd
Reviews that follow are of the
following books:
The Cellar of Horror ~- The Stranger Beside Me
~ Serial Killers ~- Guilty by Reason of
Insanity ~
Book: The Cellar of Horror
Year of publication: 1988
Rating: Excellent
Ken Englade is an outstanding crime
reporter-journalist-author. His reportage of the crimes and trial of Gary
Heidnik during the 1980s is a remarkable piece of journalism.
Gary Heidnik, whose IQ was later revealed to
be between 130 and 148, was born November 21, 1943. His parents split up before
he was two years old. He and his younger brother were both victims of aberrant
psychological conditioning by their parents, both of whom remarried following the
divorce. Gary resided with his alcoholic and abusive mother and her new husband
from the time of the divorce until he began school, when he went back to live
with his overbearingly strict disciplinarian father and stepmother.
His Creole
mother and Caucasian stepfather soon after divorced. She then married and
divorced two Negro men before committing suicide.
His Caucasian
Germanic American father was a Cleveland, Ohio tool and die maker, who
repeatedly humiliated Gary for wetting the bed. During his early childhood Gary
fell out of a tree, landing on his head, an accident which thereby flattened
the crown of his head. He resultantly was nicknamed Football Head
by his classmates. The ongoing humiliation no doubt negatively affected Gary,
who apparently developed deep-seated feelings of rejection and inadequacy.
Gary was enrolled at the elite and
prestigious Staunton Military Academy High School when he was 14 years old,
where he was also subjected to aberrant psychological conditioning as a form of
military desensitization that apparently was so disturbing to Heidnik that he
left Staunton at the end of his junior year after a consultation with a school
psychologist.
Staunton, by the way, is also the alma mater
of Senator Barry Goldwater and his two sons, as well as of John Dean (Watergate
figurehead). Although Heidnik’s academic records indicate he was an excellent
student, he nevertheless did not complete high school.
At the age of 17, Gary Heidnik enlisted in
the Army, where he was trained as a medic and successfully completed a high
school equivalency exam. Fifteen months later the Army discharged him for what
was termed a “schizoid personality disorder” and awarded him a 10%
service-connected disability pension, soon after increased to 100%. He reportedly
was treated with antipsychotic medications, including Thorazine and Stelazine,
medications most commonly prescribed for those diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Following his discharge, Gary completed
training as a nurse and became an LPN, going to work in the psychiatric ward of
a VA Hospital. However, he was soon discharged because of indifference.
Although he was in and out of psychiatric hospitals as a patient at least 20
times, he invested his disability pension in the stock market by opening an
account with Merrill Lynch, an account that eventually grew to over
$550,000.00. He also established the United Church of the Ministers of God,
reportedly to serve the needs of the mentally disadvantaged. However, his
church also served as a convenient tax shelter and his Merrill Lynch account
was listed in the name of his church, of which he had, in the charter he
drafted, appointed himself Bishop and sole trustee or fiduciary agent. His
brother and a handful of individuals he recruited from mental institutions,
were charter members. He attracted a band of mentally retarded black and Creole
people, all of whom reportedly were receiving Social Security disability
payments, to his church-home, where he regularly conducted church services and
fornicated with his female members. A black man he met during his Army duty
also became his closest male friend following military duty. At times the two
of them made love to the same woman.
Gary Heidnik was tall and considered
masculine and handsome, although he maintained a somewhat earthy, unkempt
appearance. He had dark brown wavy hair, fair skin and blue eyes. His mother
was characterized as a “not unattractive woman of Creole ancestry.” His father
was of Celtic-German ancestry. He preferred black leather jackets or suede
country-western clothing. He also
purchased and drove a Rolls Royce and a couple of Cadillacs and he rented out
rooms in the two homes he purchased as church property and lived in and
conducted church services in. He kept a collection of porno movies and rock and
roll cassettes for his indulgence and entertainment.
Gary socialized exclusively with females of
Negro, Hispanic or Philippine ancestry, most of whom he recruited from an institution
for the mentally retarded, others from the streets, where they were working as
prostitutes. He repeatedly told them and others that he chose his women for the
sole purpose of bearing him children – of providing him with a family. However,
he did marry a Philippine woman, a mail-order bride, who soon left him after
conceiving a son for him, as she was repulsed by his insistence on having her
participate in orgies with other women he held captive, with the objective of
having them bear children for him.
However, his torture and abuse of all of his
women (surrogate common-law wives) drove them away from him. He was eventually
arrested and found guilty of the murder of two of those women, although their
deaths were attributed to accidental causes as a result of extreme forms abuse
(torture) he inflicted on them by chaining them in a cellar hole, subjecting
them to electro-shock treatment and beating them as forms of discipline.
Psychiatrists testified that Heidnik was
insane within the parameters of the McNaughton rule, although the chief
prosecutor repeatedly suggested that Heidnik was malingering – that he had
feigned mental illness in order to collect disability payments. However, there
would be little doubt in the mind of an intelligent, objective individual that
Gary Heidnik was not mentally sound, and that he treated women the same way he
had been treated by his own mother, his father, his stepmother – abusively, as
that is all he knew.
The aberrant psychological conditioning he
was subjected to at home from the time he was a small child was no doubt
reinforced by the hazing that was a part of Staunton Military Academy’s
so-called “educational” program for teenage males. Staunton was closed down in
1976.
Author-reporter Ken Englade has done a remarkable job in following the trial and reporting the details, including interviews with and descriptions of psychiatrists, judges, prosecutors and defenders, as well as members of Heidnik’s family. Heidnik’s insanity plea was rejected. He was convicted of first-degree murder and executed by the state of Pennsylvania by lethal injection in 1999. Once again, a remarkably well written book, a piece of literature that should be in the library of every judge, every lawyer, every psychiatrist and of every law school.
The Gary Heidnik case is also included in the DVD collection Great Crimes of the 20th Century – a very well-edited, well-presented collection of 26 documentaries to include the Jeffery Dahmer case, the Leopold & Loeb case, the Henry Lee Lucas case, the John Lennon assassination by Mark Chapman and the Robert F. Kennedy assassination by Sirhan-Sirhan.
Date of review:
10-18-07
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Author: Ann Rule
Rating: Excellent
Author
Ann Rule did not know at the time she was working with Ted Bundy on a Seattle
suicide prevention hot line that he was simultaneously stalking and murdering
beautiful young woman. He had also worked with a Washington State crime bureau
and authored a pamphlet on rape prevention.
Author Rule’s background in criminology and
as a crime writer, as well as her long-standing personal relationship with Ted
Bundy, perhaps qualifies her better than any other biographer of Ted Bundy.
Rule points out that Ted Bundy was born in a
home for unwed mothers on November 24, 1946 to a young woman from a Methodist
Pennsylvania family, who left him there for three months before returning to
take him home with her.
Who knows what transpired during the three
months that Ted remained in the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers before
his mother returned to take him home with her. An infant needs instant bonding,
to be held and nurtured by his mother. The fact that Ted was deprived of this
may have been an important factor in his personality development.
His mother was obviously made to feel guilty
and shame by her Church over having sired Ted, which is not Louise Bundy’s
fault, but the fault of society and the pressures society puts on women.
From the onset, Ted was apparently reared in
an unsettling home environment, in which the family was apparently continuously
trying to cover up the actual circumstances of Ted’s out-of-wedlock birth from
other members of the community. This obviously created high a level of
psychological tension in the household Ted grew up in.
Bundy’s maternal Grandfather Cowell, who
reared him for the first four years of his life as his own son, was a hard
working landscaper, who was described as, although loving and protective of
Ted, tyrannical in his relationships with females members of the household. Ted
had two aunts, one a teenager, living in the same household. In addition, Ted’s
maternal Grandmother Cowell, whom Ted was told was his mother, reportedly
suffered from mental problems (possibly bipolar disorder or schizophrenia) and
was in and out of mental hospitals.
It is possible that Grandmother Cowell was
the one who resented Ted early on, and may have been a source of Ted’s anger
towards women. It is also possible that Ted’s witnessing his grandad’s violent
behavior towards female family members and towards animals (he reportedly
tortured a pet cat by swinging it by its tail and banging it against the side
of a wall) was a significant factor in his own personality development.
At the age of four, Ted’s mother moved with
Ted cross country to Washington State, primarily to give Ted a new life in an
environment where he would be less likely, she thought, to be ostracized by the
circumstances of his birth. Her uncle reportedly was a well-educated and
polished music professor at a college in Washington. However, she married a
Navy veteran and VA Hospital cook by the name of John Culpepper Bundy, who
adopted Ted at the age of five.
Ted, according to Ann Rule, was unsettled
over the fact that prior to his mother’s marriage to Mr. Bundy when he was five
he had been told his Grandfather Cowell was his father and Louise Bundy was his
sister, not his mother. He apparently had resentments against his stepfather,
the man his mother married when he was five.
Ted also suspected he was “illegitimate” as a
teenager because a cousin told him so, but he did not learn for sure until he
was about 22 years old, when he obtained his birth records. There was
speculation that his own maternal grandfather may have in fact been his
biological factor, although the actual identity of his real father has remained
a mystery to outsiders.
In junior high school he was humiliated by
other boys in the school locker room merely because he preferred to shower
alone.
Ann Rule mentions that while Ted admired
powerful, successful men, that he had difficulty identifying with such men, and
that because women found him attractive they were easier for him to deal with.
Yet women, in Ann Rule’s opinion, also “HELD THE POWER TO HURT AND
HUMILIATE.” Ted was thus constantly on
guard in his relationships with women, as well as with men, and his behavior
was apparently very superficial, in that he tried to demonstrate feelings for
others that he really did not have, possibly because he was so constantly
overwhelmed by a secret dread of being humiliated and rejected and abandoned.
His first romantic involvement with a girl
was at the age of about 21 with a girl he met a college, who was attractive and
from a prosperous upper-income well-connected family. According to Ann Rule,
“she hurt him badly. She did not MAKE Ted an antisocial personality; she
EXACERBATED what was already smoldering there. When she walked away from him
after their first year together, he was ashamed and humiliated, and the rage he
felt was all out of proportion.”
It was only three days after Ted’s girlfriend
left that Ted allegedly committed his first murder by bludgeoning and raping
(symbolically) another girl. Thereafter, all of Ted’s victims were prototypes
of the girlfriend who jilted him.
However, suspicions later surfaced that Ted
MAY have actually committed his first murder at the age of fifteen, because a
female child who resided in the same neighborhood disappeared overnight and was
never found. Ted Bundy reportedly was the newspaper delivery boy for her family
and the girl reportedly knew and followed Bundy around.
Ann Rule states, “I knew that Ted was insane.
I cannot justify executing a man who is insane. “ Others shared Ann Rule’s
point of view.
Psychologist Al Carlisle reported that “Ted
had a fear of being humiliated in his relationships with women.” A female
analyst, Dorothy Lewis (NYU Medical Center) later claimed she felt Ted suffered
from manic-depressive psychosis (bipolar disorder).
Ann Rule also mentions that Ted regularly
used ALCOHOL and MARIJUANA, which may
have actually triggered the episodic violence that was unleashed on innocent
young girls and young women.
All three diagnoses are probably accurate:
that Ted was insane, that he did suffer from fears (and rage) over being humiliated
by women, and that he probably did indeed suffer from bipolar disorder. Ted
might also have suffered from psychomotor epilepsy that was triggered whenever
he used alcohol and marijuana.
Yet there is a tendency in the mindset of the criminal justice system to reject claims of insanity and deny the existence of mental illness in favor of the need by some members of society to seek revenge in the form of “capital punishment.” This type of barbaric revenge is justified by using the term “psychopathic personality” as an esoteric method of denying the fact that severe psychosis does indeed exist.
Placing Ted Bundy in a mental hospital could
have perhaps done more for psychiatric research than executing him, in the
opinion of author Ann Rule and others. Nevertheless, Ted Bundy was indeed
eventually executed.
It is an interesting exploration of the human
psyche that while Ted Bundy bludgeoned, raped or sodomized (often using foreign
objects) and murdered dozens of beautiful women, that he reportedly received
hundreds of letters from women, expressing their love for him while he was on
death row.
As a reviewer and (not for profit)
psychoanalyst, it is my opinion that Ted Bundy probably suffered some severely
damaging psychological humiliation from hostile females at a very early age,
and not necessarily from his mother, who apparently did everything possible to
try to give Ted Bundy a good life. It could have been from other females in the
Cowell household or outsiders. Nevertheless, there is a common tendency to
protect people we “love” and are taught by Christianity to “honor” from the
condemnation of others, even though they may have periodically abused us.
For an individual to face the stark reality
that he was perhaps never really loved unconditionally by his own family is
unbearable. Ann Rule’s book is a brilliant study of the mind of Ted Bundy.
Reviewer: Tom
Blaise Shepherd
Date of review:
12-12-2002
______________________________________________________________________________________
Book: Serial
Killers
Author: Joel
Norris
Rating: Excellent
The book is well written and very
interesting. Norris does biographical studies of Henry Lee Lucas, Charles Manson,
Bobby Joe Long and Leonard Lake, and he examines the parental neglect and
horrendous violence, some institutional, that they and other “serial killers”
experienced as very young children and as adolescents.
Interestingly, Manson himself was never
accused of or found guilty of having actually committed any of the murderers
that his “family” or gang were charged and found guilty of, although he was
charged with planning and ordering the executions of those innocent people that
were murdered by his followers.
Norris presents evidence of both emotional abuse and physical abuse that these men suffered throughout their childhood, largely by their own parents.
Damage to the hypothalamus region of the
brain can result in startle reactions – hair-trigger reactions to perceived
threats. It appears that numerous serial killers, whose brains were examined,
had indeed suffered some sort of prenatal or early childhood damage to the
hypothalamus. Also, many serial killers suffered head injuries during their childhood.
Many apparently suffer from a form of psychomotor epilepsy that is triggered or
exacerbated by the use of alcoholic beverages and other psychoactive drugs.
Alcoholic beverages and other psychoactive drugs, of course, reduce one’s
capacity for exercising sound judgment.
Tom Blaise
Shepherd: Reviewer
Date of review:
12-16-2003
_____________________________________________________________________________
Book: Guilty by Reason of Insanity
Year of
publication: 1999
Author: Dorothy
Otnow Lewis, Ph.D.
Rating: Excellent
Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis provides
compassionate, three-dimensional glimpses into the shattered minds of
individuals like Ted, Arthur, Johnny, Roger, Marie and others convicted of
murder, exposing the various forms of neglect, abuse and violence they
apparently suffered as children at the hands of their own parents, grandparents
and/or foster parents and siblings.
Dr. Lewis reveals a lot of biographical
information about her own childhood. She demonstrates how psychiatry and the
criminal justice system interlock, and how the system often fails to serve the
needs of those young accused murderers that are without available funds to
retain articulate and competent legal representation.
Her explanation of “dissociative disorder” as a psychiatric defense for defendants
who have experienced child sexual abuse, provides dramatic, yet compelling
reading.
In “dissociative disorder,” as she
convincingly explains, children who have suffered SEVERE emotional and physical
neglect and abuse by their own parents and/or foster parents or others
frequently repress the painful and unbearable memories, for a variety of
reasons, on which she elaborates.
It is alarming that many people, including
judges and prosecutors, are uncomfortable when confronted with evidence that a
heinous murderer was himself or herself repeatedly heinously abused, often by
the very people he or she is accused of having murdered. Hence judges, police
officials and prosecutors have a tendency to suppress such evidence as
testimony for political reasons.
Consequently, many, many young adults who
suffer from various dissociative states of mind (a form of insanity) are
nevertheless executed by the state, which Dr. Lewis believes to be a crime in
itself.
I strongly recommend this well-written book
to parents, lawyers, students of criminal justice and anyone working in
psychiatry or the mental health system.
Dr. Lewis is not only brilliant and
compassionate, she is courageous in trying to educate, civilize and reform a
barbaric criminal justice establishment that is frequently more geared to
punishing and executing than in trying to understand the CAUSE of antisocial
behavior. Only by understanding the cause can we, as a society, take
measures to perhaps prevent such behavior. Aberrant psychological/social
conditioning during early childhood and adolescence indeed would appear to be
the underlying cause of dysfunctional or antisocial behavior.
Reviewer: Tom
Blaise Shepherd