Original subtitles

The thing inside of me, it's like...

the appetite, it's like a wolf that's...

feeling... the hunger.

It's not a typical 911 call.

I think there are definitely times when the individual

is experiencing what I would call transitory guilt.

He even describes feeling shock,

but it makes it transitory because it doesn't last very long.

This statement about not feeling anything is preceded with,

"What's wrong with me? Is it wrong?"

And the reality is that he is wholly and completely self aware

that the impulse that he just had

to run this person down

was totally and completely wrong.

The compulsion was such that he needed to do it.

He's sort of downplaying the whole situation.

He's asking police, you know,

"What do you think I can tell my mom?"

Again, sort of like he is friends with them,

and they're gonna help him sort of circumvent

the whole situation here.

He's minimizing because he's out of tune with what's actually going on,

which is the key feature of psychopathy.

They don't register empathy or emotions, and that,

coupled with a lack of moral compass,

allows them to not display remorse for what they did

and kill and engage in violent acts.

It really seems like Pennell experienced a narcissistic wound here.

He lost his job,

so it seems like he experiences anger from this

and he doesn't really know what to do with it.

When a psychopath experiences a narcissistic wound,

it essentially bounces off them,

and they will put it towards someone else.

Whereas more of a neurotypical person,

when we experience a narcissistic wound,

we feel it deep inside,

and it causes sadness, perhaps some anger,

but it's often directed inward.

Whereas a psychopath is going to direct it mostly outward on other people,

and they're going to direct their anger to whoever's around them.

2 He says he feels stressed.

He says that he's potentially experiencing anxiety attack.

It's another element where I think it's important for people

to understand that a psychopath feels emotions.

They just don't feel emotions the way that

other people typically do.

What I think it is is that he's prone to boredom.

What I think it is is that he has a need for stimulation.

And the feelings that he gets about taking someone's life

potentially making him happier.

He enjoys the harm that he is inflicting,

which is certainly an element of sadism,

and I think he didn't recognize how much he was going to enjoy it,

which is why he smiled and laughed,

even though he could recognize that Pratt was dying.

So there's certainly an element where,

even though he is not engaging in a prolonged sense

of torture of Pratt, he would have if he could,

but the pole prevented that prolonging.

He's not entirely sophisticated on

how he's gonna act out his fantasy.

He talked about wanting to dissect people,

his fascination with knives,

but he didn't do that here.

He used his car, sort of like

he's a little detached from the person.

It's not up close and personal,

and that's because I don't think he was ready yet.

I think this was sort of his first go at killing somebody.

2 Is he placing more value on the car

rather than on a human life?

Yes, he is, but he's doing it for a very specific reason--

He's doing it because both things are objects

that can be disposed of.

But the car is his object,

one that he would choose not to dispose of if he didn't have to.

He cares more about what's his

and cares less about what isn't his.

In either scenario, it's still just an object.

We see Pennell talking to officers about how he gets

hungry when he thinks about killing.

He's describing this behavioral concept called conditioning.

So when you're doing two different things at once,

like two stimuli are paired together,

then you get a conditioned response.

So when he tells the officers that he sort of has this hunger

and feels like he wants something to eat,

it's probably because he usually does eat while he's

watching these horrific videos and thinking about killing.

I think here he is being a little bit more theatrical.

He's expanding on his fantasy, really,

that he's had for this long time.

And I think he's doing that because he wants

to get that rise possibly out of officers,

and also it gives him excitement himself.

So you can hear at that point that he does not have

any regard for human life, pretty typical of psychopath,

and he wants to just compare brushing off a human life

just as easily as he brushes off an animal life.

It makes a lot of sense in a way

that he would have a lot easier time talking about the murder,

because that is something that he wanted to do,

that's a choice that he made,

that's something that he laughed and thought was kind of fun,

whereas talking about even the grades he got in school

was making him very angry and upset and dejected,

and it doesn't make sense to a neurotypical person why that would happen,

but to him and the way that he's thinking about it,

I think it made all the sense in the world.

2

Because Pennell doesn't view torture psychologically,

he views it as physical.

He doesn't view the fact that though,

when he's going 50 to 70 miles an hour,

that Pratt sees his impending death.

When he crashes through the windshield

and Pennell can see his face

and Pennell is laughing at him,

he doesn't see that as torture

because he doesn't view torture that way.

For him, all of this stuff was just a quick end to Pratt.

When the reality is, is that Pratt suffered,

suffered a lot,

and Pennell doesn't care.

Pennell's mother really highlights that this hasn't

been just a recent problem.

This wasn't necessarily a impulsive act on this day.

Like, this is a longstanding problem that Pennell's had

since he was 13-years-old or even before.

And they were a problem back then

and probably only got worse over time.

Justyn Pennell was sentenced to life in prison without parole

for intentionally running over a 75-year-old Vietnam war veteran

The victim, Michael Pratt, was walking along Aripeka Road

in January of 2020 when he was hit.