If Cody Legebokoff was tested for psychopathy in the three-and-a-half years it took to bring his case to trial for the first-degree murder of three women and one teenaged girl, the results have not been made public.
The Hare Psychopathy Checklist, widely recognized as the best tool to identity psychopaths, bears the name of one of the world's leading researchers into psychopaths, UBC psychology professor Robert Hare. In his writing, Hare is careful to point out that very few psychopaths become serial killers but only certain kinds of psychopaths have the capacity to become serial killers.
As he and other researchers have discovered and brain scans have illustrated, psychopaths see little to no activity in the part of the brain where compassion lives. Hare's book, Without Conscience, stresses that this missing component in the human nature of psychopaths gives them a predatory advantage in a civilized society.
Hare believes that between one and two per cent of the population could be clinically diagnosed as psychopaths, meaning that psychopaths live throughout our community and the chances are high that everyone knows one or two on a first-name basis. He also believes that psychopaths make up as much as seven per cent of the population in management and corporate leadership. The Corporation, a popular documentary that featured Hare, makes a strong case that the modern corporation often behaves in ways that could be considered psychopathic.
While serial killers like Legebokoff literally destroy lives, the psychopaths in our community destroy reputations, relationships and trust with their manipulative behavior as they pursue wealth and power, with little regard for the human wreckage left in their wake.
Hare calls these psychopaths "social predators" because their incredible egos, inflated self-confidence and certainty in their beliefs attracts vulnerable people to them. But social predators are flashy hunters, who make little effort to mask their ambition or hide their transgressions. They truly believe their superiority allows them to prey on the weak for their personal gain.
Patrick Bateman, the protagonist in American Psycho, the controversial novel by Bret Easton Ellis, is both a social predator and a serial killer, a New York businessman who is the ultimate consumer of retail goods, money, pain and lives. Bateman is a fantasy character that served the goal of the author to stress the dehumanizing nature of modern capitalism and consumer culture.
In the real world, many of the psychopaths who evolve into serial killers are a different breed. They work to blend in and be seen as normal. They are the quiet ones who emulate the behaviour of others, particularly when sensitivity, compassion and empathy are needed in a social setting, because these feelings are utterly foreign to them. They rarely seek attention but they do appreciate praise for being normal and decent individuals because they know they are not but others believe they are.
In the realm of serial killers, Legebokoff is an unusual case because of his youth. While he is not Canada's youngest killer, he is one of this country's youngest serial killers, who murdered his first victim at 19 and then killed three others during a three-month-binge at 20. He lacked the maturity, the patience and the self-control more commonly seen in serial killers, attributes that come with age. Yet his testimony on the witness stand revealed him to be so typical. His inability to see his victims as human beings, his indignation when the Crown lawyer had the audacity to challenge the truth behind his ridiculous X, Y, Z story and his blatant disregard for the pain and suffering of the families of the victims sitting in the same room revealed his utter lack of conscience.
For that and for the horrible murders, he deserves neither pity nor compassion.
His actions, however, are a reminder that we are surrounded by psychopaths but fortunately only a rare few are of the killing kind.
