Original subtitles

REPORTER: Jackson County Sheriffs tell us when they

arrived to investigate an identity theft Friday,

they instead discovered evidence of two murders.

They say they found mutilated corpses.

[theme music playing]

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

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

feeling the hunger.

Uh...

[mimics startled exclamation]

SAHNI: Monica makes a joke.

So what we see, and we see this oftentimes in

psychopathic individuals, is this glib, superficial

attempts to be charming.

She's using humor, and she's laughing about killing animals.

She's laughing about butchering animals.

She's laughing about the fact that she's not a good shot,

and there's no real indication at

this point that she is connected to or in touch with

why she's actually in that interrogation room.

There is a missing person who she had employed

at some point.

This missing person was living on her property as a tenant.

Susan Monica's demeanor shows that she's not taking any

responsibility for the fact that she was a landlord.

She was the employer for this person.

And yet she says, "It wasn't

myresponsibility to call the police."

It essentially is raising red flags.

The idea that somebody could be missing who you have regular

contact with, and she refuses to

do anything and says it wasn't even my responsibility to

is extremely callous.

Susan Monica's outward emotional

expression is really completely flat.

They just told her, "We found a leg

on your property," to which she responds, "A leg?"

And she states, "Well, no, I'm not freaking out."

Then it's almost like she's searching for the right word.

It's like, what is it they want to hear from her,

and she lands on, you know, fairly surprised.

DETECTIVE: Mm-hmm.

One common misperception is that psychopaths have

no emotion -- that's not the case.

Psychopaths sometimes will show slight emotion, but

only the things that matter to them.

If you don't matter to them, they show no emotion to you.

In this case, Susan Monica cared a lot about her pigs,

and that's what she showed emotion to.

Even when she saw the pigs eating him alive,

she cared about the pigs, not him.

SAHNI: What we know about Susan Monica

is she was born Steven Buchanan.

She served in the Navy for a brief period

of time, was actually deployed to the Vietnam War.

And after serving in the military and being in combat,

when she discharged from the military as a man,

as Steven Buchanan, she began to live her life as a woman.

I find myself wondering if that's part of what led Susan

to live this very isolated existence on a farm and why

maybe she did not relate to humans

but was better able to relate to her pigs,

because the pigs wouldn't have judged her.

The pigs wouldn't have rejected her.

Susan Monica may actually have found more peace

and acceptance with this family of pigs

that she raised than with human beings.

Susan Monica seems to care much more about animals,

pigs in particular, that she can control.

They don't talk back to her.

It's a very one-sided relationship really.

They do what she wants.

And so individuals with psychopathy prefer

relationships where they can dominate and exert control,

whether it's with the human beings

or, in this case, with animals.

DETECTIVE: Yeah.

Susan thinks she can tell that story to police,

and they'd be like, "Oh, okay, that's what happened,"

that someone could shoot themselves

in the head five times -- it strains credulity.

The story kept changing, which shows she

did not plan this out in advance.

She didn't have an answer for why

she killed him prepared, which shows her grandiosity,

she never thought she was gonna get caught.

There's something really interesting going on

right now with Monica,

and it's what I think of as a cognitive leak.

She says, "I did the same thing,"

which suggests she's taking responsibility

for both of these murders,

but then she cleans it up.

Sometimes when people are being interrogated,

they start to fatigue, and they experience increasing stress,

and things are not as organized in how it comes out -- lies are

not as organized, stories don't hold together as well.

This is a classic psychopathic trait,

the fact that she's not taking any responsibility, even after

saying essentially, "Yes, I did kill them,

"but I don't want to go to jail for it, and I don't have to

serve any punishment or have any comeuppance for this."

Well, of course not, because psychopaths never think

they should be held responsible.

Of all the requests that she could make,

she's concerned about holes being filled up on her property,

and 99 percent of the world does not

ever have a dead body on their property.

And Susan Monica has two,

and she's shown no concern for that.

She's shown more concern for her pigs,

but she's shown the most concern

for holes being plugged up.

[mimics evil laughter]

Individuals with psychopathic traits sometimes also have

sadistic tendencies, which really aligns with

the callous lack of empathy and lack of remorse.

As he's telling this story,

you think back to also some of the details about

the crimes, where she also watched the pigs have breakfast,

as she described it.

And all of those behaviors are certainly sadistic in nature

and make you wonder well, what else has she done?

REPORTER: The accused serial killer had pushed

Judge Timothy Barnack to allow her to cross-examine witnesses.