All language subtitles for Signs.of.a.Psychopath.S05E02.I.Was.in.a.Zone.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-BurCyg_track3_[eng]

[police siren wailing]

[man 1 speaking]

[man 2 speaking]

[man 3 speaking]

[man 4] The thing
inside of me, it's like...

The appetite.

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

feeling hunger.

[news anchor]
A North Dakota Highway Patrol investigation continues

into a fatal crash on I-94.

Officials say 38-year-old
John Bridges was driving this van

when it collided
with the overpass support column.

First responders arrived.

The passenger,
40-year-old Lee Clay, dead at the scene.

Bridges was transported
to a local hospital

and the investigation
is ongoing.

John Bridges is talking about

this accident that's happened,
and the victim

essentially succumbing
to injuries due to an accident

and it's just not believable.

I think what Bridges
is showing us is that

he has sort of a disconnect
from reality

and what the rest of us
would naturally assume or conclusions we might draw.

This is pretty consistent
with what we see in psychopathic individuals

where they're not really
concerned about fact

or integrity
to what they're saying,

or the plausibility
of the story.

They tend to come across
at times as glib,

and not super concerned
about a chronic need to lie,

or pathological lying,
that we sometimes see in them.

I think Bridges is starting
to make attempts at trying to control the interview.

He is trying to figure out
what detectives want from him.

And that chameleon-like
tendency that we see in psychopathic individuals

is something that allows them
to navigate their environment.

They try to figure out
what the people they're interacting with want.

How they want them to react,
how they want them to emote,

or show emotions,
and how they want them to behave.

So, I think
that's really what we're seeing with Bridges,

is he's trying to get a read
on the detectives.

Typically, whenever people
have been involved

in a fatal accident
such as this,

where someone
has passed away,

you would expect the person
to be emotional,

perhaps crying,
screaming, upset,

or almost frozen
and unable to speak

because of the shock
or the trauma.

Mr. Bridges is discussing
this death as if it's just

another day
driving on the highway.

He is actually demonstrating
the shallow affect that's seen in psychopathy.

He knows he should
say he's upset.

But he's not really
appearing upset at all.

In fact, he's appearing
a bit angry.

He's getting
increasingly frustrated,

obviously, by the tone
in his voice, his posture,

he's getting increasingly
frustrated at the questioning

and, I think, recognizing
that he's caught.

And so, he tries
to gain control over the interview

by asking them questions,
expecting them to tell him. "Well, what did you see?

What exactly are you
accusing me of?"

[Dr. Sahni]
John Bridges is giving detectives an explanation

of what he believes happened,
and it doesn't add up.

A reasonable human being
would draw different conclusions.

And what we see is
Bridges isn't really concerned about the inconsistencies.

He is talking about demands
and says, "That's my only demand."

But really, he is not
in any position to make demands at all.

But that's part of what we see
in psychopaths as well,

is this, again,
this grandiosity.

An inflated sense
of what he has the authority to do.

So this grandiosity
leads him to believe

that he actually does
have the right to be making demands.

When, in fact,
he absolutely does not.

John Bridges talks about
how he has paranoia,

and he starts
to set the groundwork

for being mentally ill
or legally incompetent,

and wanting
to strategize his legal case by claiming insanity.

And we see this in individuals
who are seasoned criminals,

who know the judicial system,
know how to navigate it.

The problem we have
is that Bridges' description

of how he's experiencing
these visions isn't consistent with visual hallucinations.

It's not consistent
with auditory hallucinations.

And he goes on to give
a fairly accurate accounting that is linear and in order

of what he remembers
about this scenario and this out-of-body experience,

which is highly inconsistent
with psychosis and paranoia.

When Bridges is describing
to police what his steps were

in terms of shopping
for these items,

the ties, the knife,
the duct tape,

he's describing this all
very matter-of-factly.

His affect is
somewhat limited,

there's a little bit of glib
in what he's saying,

and he's describing this
as if it was our grocery list

and shopping list,
and he just went to the store to pick up milk and eggs.

[Dr. Tussey] He seems to be
enjoying the thrill,

the excitement of having
complete domination over the victim

and mentally manipulating him.

"You do what I tell you,
and you'll survive.

But if not, then it's gonna
be a bad outcome."

And he seems to thrive
off of that power.

Blaming the victim
is part and parcel of a psychopath's M.O.

It's often
someone else's fault.

And in this case, Mr. Bridges
is blaming the victim.

"Well, he tried to get
out of the zip ties."

And, you know,
"He was going to attack me, so I had to attack him back."

Almost as if
it's self-defense.

Mr. Bridges uses the words
that he was "in the zone"

while he was stabbing
the victim. It's typically a term we use for sports,

or something more positive
than murdering someone.

For him, "in the zone" perhaps
means he was only focused on completing his goal.

[Dr. Sahni] Individuals that
are psychopathic

often times do not experience
emotions in the same range that the rest of us do.

So often times their highs
take more to stimulate,

and their lows take more
to pull them out of.

And this may be
what we're seeing with Bridges in this moment,

is that as he's recalling
the details of what he did to the victim

in those moments
when he was physically stabbing him,

he's getting a bit
of a secondary high off of that.

It's unclear if
there really was overkill, or if it was a response

to the amount of adrenaline
he may have been experiencing.

But certainly the amount
of violence that he committed against the victim

was far more
than was necessary to render him helpless.

[Dr. Tussey] Speaking of
Mr. Bridges' long history of deviant behavior,

it's noteworthy that,
according to the records,

he had gotten
into multiple fights while he was in school.

He threatened
his mother with a knife.

Uh, reportedly,
at age 15, he disclosed that he wanted to kill someone

just to see
what it was like to kill someone.

He ultimately did
murder someone by age 16.

There's a lot of red flags
for psychopathic behavior starting from early childhood.

Mr. Bridges makes comments
such as, "I don't wanna make a big stink of this,"

as if he's talking
about throwing out days-old leftovers.

But he's actually talking
about murdering someone.

It's yet another attempt
of him to control the players in the situation

as if he's a puppeteer
and he's directing them to do what he wants.

The psychologist has never
seen anyone, to date,

that is as psychopathic
or as dangerous as you are.

You, in essence, have viewed
people like animals, and you hunt them.

Is that
what I'm to take from this?

[judge] It is very clear
to this court that...

the only way the public
is safe, is for you to not have an opportunity

to prey upon
an unsuspecting public again.