All language subtitles for Signs.of.a.Psychopath.S03E07.She.Isnt.Acting.Dead.Enough.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-BTN_track3_[eng]

AUTOMATED VOICE:
Thursday 2:19 a.m.

MAN: Minutes before
she was kidnapped,

Morton used a cell phone
to report

someone had just rear-ended
her -- police found her car

running, her purse inside,

but they did not find Morton.

[theme music playing]

MAN: There's this thing inside
of me, it's like...

the appetite.

It's like a wolf that's...

filling...the hunger.

♪♪

MAN: Amanda's family contacted
news media Thursday morning

and gave them Amanda's picture.

Investigators got their break
when a motel owner in

Camden County saw her picture on

the five o'clock news
and called police.

He said Amanda and a man in
a pickup checked into his motel.

That led police
to St. Clair County,

to the home of David Zink.

BERRILL: He can play
the easygoing nice guy.

He uses that kind of calm,
cool persona to move

his plans along and seems to
do so with pretty good success.

SAHNI: Amanda
just happened to be in

the wrong place
at the wrong time.

I have no doubt
that he lulled her

into going with him,
because he was charming.

We, as humans, are socialized
to believe that people who

are humorous are likeable,
and people who are likable

are trustworthy.

So it's a really unfortunate
reality that

he was able to exploit
as a psychopath

that assumption
we make as humans.

DERIGHT: He is not perceiving
people as other human beings.

He's seeing them
as objects, in this case,

that are in his way --
to me,

the Zink case is all
about self-preservation.

He's gonna do
whatever it takes

to preserve himself being out
of prison.

Assuming this did
actually happen,

it gives you the sense that
he was not in any way afraid.

He was not in any way unsure
about what he was doing.

He was making jokes
with the cashier.

He's self-assured,
he keeps his cool,

he's got the persona down pat
of being, you know, like a good

old boy,
and everything is under control,

and that's --
that is spooky.

She's in the office with him,
which I find more incredible.

Like, here's this girl,
and she doesn't flip out

and say, "Call the police."

So she obviously,
on some level, must have

trusted him or didn't see him
as a threat.

This just really illustrates
how he manipulated her

or, you know, lied to her.

WOMAN: Little did she know,
he was a killer.

Zink kidnapped her,

took her to a motel near
Camdenton, where he raped her.

He's a psychopath who is
lying his way through

this portion of
the interrogation.

Zink's DNA was found
on Amanda's body.

There is no doubt that there

was some sort of
sexual interaction.

BERRILL: It's a little odd --
killing someone's okay,

but don't think about me
as a rapist.

There are a lot of crimes you
can commit to wind you up

in jail, but sex crimes are seen
as sort of the low man on

the totem pole,
because sex crimes make you

a target in jail.

If you're a rapist,
everyone will say,

"Well, I have a sister
or a wife or a mother,

so you're a piece of garbage,"
and if it's a kid, forget it.

They emerge in prison, at least,
as likely targets for sexual

abuse themselves, and he doesn't
want to be seen that way.

Zink has a strange disconnect
in his thought process

right now,
because on the one hand,

he's saying he has
no intention of going back

to an incarcerated life.

But on the other hand,
he's sort of giving into

the simplest,
most obvious solution,

which is
also the most ridiculous,

the most anti-social,
and the most violent.

But for Zink,
it isn't as much of a leap.

He has a problem to solve,
and this is a logical solution.

Zink underwent psychological
evaluations as part of

his court cases,
and they really

give you a sense of how his
psychopathy manifested

from an early age.

The report reads, "Zink was
afraid of his mother,

"who suffered from depression
and was impatient,

"nervous, and irritable.

"She was very harsh with him
and often yelled at him,

"grabbed him,
and talked down to him.

"She provided little guidance
or discipline.

"She would get drunk a lot
and would get angry.

Zink hid from her."

And here's what Zink says
about his father.

The same report reads,
"When Zink was four, his father

"was involuntarily committed
to a mental hospital for

"several months --
his father often talked of

"suicide or engaged
in suicidal behaviors,

"even in front of Zink
and his two sisters.

Zink saw his father take a gun
and threaten to shoot himself."

I don't think
they're necessarily modeling

psychopathy here,

but they are modeling
violent behavior.

So he has whatever genetics
are there.

He has this upbringing
where he's neglected.

This is the recipe
for psychopathy here.

BERRILL: If you're talking
nature versus nurture,

I really do think that,

you know, there is
some temperament

that you're born with.

For example, if you're a high
risk taker, and you're fearless,

maybe you become
a firefighter,

or, depending
on the environment

you grow up in,
you become a bully,

or you become someone that
engages in criminal behavior,

but the environment
will lead you down a path to

acting that temperament out
in some fashion.

We know he's a risk taker.

So if you grow up in a house
where there is violence,

it does set the tone, perhaps,
for becoming

the kind of person he became.

BERRILL: There's some
amusement he takes

in the fact that
she's not getting it.

She's essentially being
escorted to her death.

He's not telling her the truth
about what's gonna happen.

It's all sadistic, uh,

but he doesn't want her
to panic,

so he's staying cool.

DERIGHT: To him,
it's extremely logical that she

should be using common sense
at this point,

when nothing about
this invokes

the idea of common sense --
to Zink,

all of these pieces do connect
in a very cohesive way,

but they don't.

It's part of the narcissistic
tendency to feel like you have

everything under control
and figured out.

WOMAN:
About six hours later,

at 4 in the morning,
investigators recovered Amanda's

body from a shallow grave
in this cemetery.

MAN: She'd been strangled
and stabbed.

BERRILL: His description of
the murder is highly sanitized.

The fact that they found dirt
in her mouth or seminal fluid

in her anus would suggest
that, uh, there was

a deeper level of
psychopathology taking place

that he cared to discuss.

In looking
at the court records

and psychological evaluations
that were available on Zink,

here's an excerpt that gives
us some of that information.

"By the time he was 10,
Zink was placed in foster care.

"Within a few weeks,
Zink ran away.

"Around that time,
his foster mother found

him making a noose out of
a rope."

He had an emerging obsession
and fixation or focus on

strangulation from
a very, very young age.

Clearly, there was
a willingness to

start to skirt the idea
of death,

the idea of violence,

the idea of strangulation.

BERRILL: The fact that he had
rope in his car,

I don't know if that's just
a coincidence.

You don't have to tie
a dead body to a tree,

but you do have to tie
a live body to a tree

so that they can't struggle.

It raises, I guess,
deeper concerns

about how savage he really is.

DERIGHT: We'll never know if
those were actually

her last words,
but in one way or another,

he wanted you to know that
there is some connection with

his mom in why he's doing
this, too.

The connections between Zink
and his mom were

really apparent in the court
records, as well.

The court records say,
"Although the foster family

"wanted to adopt him,
he always

"fantasized about going back
home -- at age 14,

"Zink asked to move home,
but his mother refused,

devastating him."

The thing that really pops out
to me here is this

element of maternal rejection,
which in the psychopathy

literature,
is very prominent.

And this is not an everyday
maternal rejection.

This is mom gave him up,

but it is not inevitable that
anyone who is rejected

by their mother is going to be
a psychopath.

It is one piece of the very,

very complicated puzzle that
goes into creating a psychopath,

and it is not an excuse for

what he turned into
and what he did.

DERIGHT: This is the kind of
statement that

gives you this icky feeling
that you're --

you just shouldn't be hearing
something like this.

We see that he was torturing
her, he was beating her.

He was playing with her
as an object,

and it takes it to a whole
other level.

SAHNI: And unlike
some other psychopaths,

he doesn't really even make
an attempt to pretend

that he feels bad.

He doesn't try to pretend
that he has emotions

or that he's even really
bothered or disturbed by it.

SAHNI: He's not panicked.
This is just a normal day,

like it's no big deal.

And that really I think sums
up a lot of how Zink,

as a psychopath,
sees his crimes.

He's just really not
broken up by them.

One thing that's really
notable from Zink's childhood is

that he seemed to have a pretty
severe case of meningitis,

and the results of his PET
scan were consistent with some

of the brain abnormalities that

we know about psychopaths in
the literature.

For example, he had less
activation in the amygdala

and the cingulate,
both of which

are very important
areas in the brain involved in

fear and emotional response.

So the fact that
these areas are under-activated

in psychopaths and in Zink
is not surprising.

He is not afraid at all of
the consequences.

After his arrest,
Zink exchanged letters

with a local TV
news journalist.

Uh, here are some excerpts
from it.

"I've secretly always wanted to
be a serial killer.

"Your preconceived idea

"that this is a crime motivated
by some type of

"sexual perversion --
you don't even come close.

"There's no sex in the world
that can

"give you a pleasure
of taking a life,

"watching their eyes,
and knowing that I have

"the power to give
or take that life.

"I hope that you would just put
this letter in the trash.

"Nothing good can come
from selling death.

Have a good day,
David Zink."

It's almost his manifesto in
a way -- he wants to control

the narrative and say, "Hey,

put me on TV, and this is
the story I want you to tell."

BERRILL: But you heard none of
that kind of talk during

his interview, nothing
even remotely like that.

He's kind of a liar, and he's
playing games to sidestep

the whole notion that
he's driven

by perverse violent
sexual fantasies.

There seemed to be a multitude
of risk factors here,

where he has
these biological variants

and his tumultuous upbringing
that all come together here

and really create
a recipe for a psychopath.

Mr. Zink,
would you please rise?

We, the jury,
having found the defendant,

David Stanley Zink guilty of
murder in the first degree of

Amanda L. Morton,

now assess and declare
the punishment at death.

MAN: The Morton family says
they will now move on

and try to come to grips with
what's happened.

What will you tell Amanda
in your prayers tonight?

We got it for you, baby.

As well as we can do,
we got justice for you.