All language subtitles for Signs.of.a.Psychopath.S06E10.Deadly.Women.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-BurCyg_track3_[eng]

Women are not as obsessed
with control and power

and domination as men are.

[theme music playing]

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

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

feeling the hunger.

SAHNI: When women kill, it's
shocking, because as a society,

we are all socialized to
expect certain stereotypic

behaviors in women.

They're congenial.
They play nicely.

They know how
to be cooperative,

and they certainly
aren't violent.

MORGAN: People are used to
thinking of men as the part of

the species that is aggressive
and kills people

or does something violent.

When people think of women
who have killed someone,

it's alarming to them.

It sort of violates
the norm of

sugar and spice
and all things nice.

That's what girls
are made of, right?

We would prefer to believe
that women are not violent...

[music playing]

...but it's not true.

From a scientific perspective,

most studies on
psychopathy have

been conducted
in male prisoners.

So the data are skewed --
right now,

we tend to think of women
being a small percentage of

psychopathic killers.

But I do think
there's a greater number

than we imagine.

I think that as a group,
female psychopaths,

they're both overlooked,
and they're underestimated.

Over the years,
popular culture has assigned

labels to particularly
heinous crimes

that have been committed by
females that have been thought

to be psychopaths.

We're going to examine some of
the unique characteristics of

female psychopathy
and explore the horrific crimes

that they've committed.

So normally, if you use
the term vigilante,

people will think of a man,

maybe even a cowboy film
from the West.

People will generally
think of it as

a man who's a vigilante
trying to seek justice --

Zorro -- they don't think
right away a woman.

And that's why
the female psychopath who

is a vigilante flies
under our radar.

SAHNI: A vigilante is both
judge and jury,

and they decide who lives
and who dies.

And while we see
male psychopaths that have

that vigilante justice streak
in their crimes,

we do see that more often with
female psychopathic offenders.

One of the more notorious
or well known

vigilante psychopaths
is Aileen Wuornos.

REPORTER:
By her own admission,

Wuornos was a hitchhiking
highway prostitute

who killed seven motorists
in one year.

RAGHAVAN: It's shocking,
because women who use

extreme violence are rare.

And so, as human beings,
we are always

attracted to or respond
to things which are rarer.

We idealize womanhood
in very stereotypical

and unrealistic ways,

which then leads to the flip,
where we then sensationalize

their violence, so men's
violence is normalized,

and women's violence
is sensationalized.

SAHNI: When Wuornos
is initially caught,

she claims
that she killed these men

because she was
sexually assaulted by them.

She was physically
beaten by them.

But the evidence
just doesn't support that.

What we know is some of
the victims were

actually shot in the back --
to make matters worse,

Wuornos stole their cars,
she stole their wallets,

and robbery was
a secondary game.

Aileen is a woman
who has

an upbringing that is
not trauma-free.

She has a history of abuse
and decides that it would be

fine to rid the world of men
who then solicit sex workers.

So she's able to seduce men
with the promise

of having sex with them
and then killing them.

It's her way of cleaning up

the world -- from
a psychoanalytic perspective,

she's just paying the world

back for whatever abuse
she suffered.

And there's also a sense
of gratification.

They're fulfilling a fantasy
of something that they want.

We see a similar justification
in another female psychopath,

Angela Simpson.

The use of sex or promises
of sexual favors

and sexual interactions
or flirting

is a strategy that female
offenders do use more so than

male psychopathic offenders.

In the case of both
Wuornos and Simpson,

we see that they were able to
use this tool of promises of

sex and sexual favors
to lure their victims in.

Ultimately, in the process,

these women found a way to
access them when their guards

were down,
and they were in,

essentially, their most
vulnerable state.

SAHNI: There's no evidence
that the victim

was ever an informant.

Simpson's outlook is that
she is superior to most

people in that she gets
to decide who's a snitch.

She gets to decide
if they live or die.

MORGAN: Simpson is describing
her act of killing men.

It's so matter of fact,
while she's eating,

just mentioning that she has
stabbed and tortured him,

as if it's the same thing
as asking

for potato chips
or a Diet Coke.

There's nothing shocking
about it.

And this is one of the traits
that we do talk about in

psychopathy,
that people have

low empathy and that
they seem callous

and in different
to other human life.

And this is a feature that

we don't automatically
associate with women.

MORGAN: Men are usually
thought of as being stronger,

bigger, and more dominating
of women.

And in this situation,
she's flipped the power dynamic.

It's the male who is helpless
and who is bound, and she is

fully in control of everything
that will happen to him,

including his death.

We've all heard
the phrase that hell

hath no fury like
a woman that's scorned.

Generally, female psychopaths
tend to be less physically

violent and more
interpersonally

aggressive and manipulative
than male psychopaths.

However, when women
psychopaths are betrayed

or rejected, sometimes
they do become violent,

as we'll see in the case
with Jodi Arias.

REPORTER:
I have to ask you this.

- Did you kill Travis Alexander?
- Absolutely not.

No,
I had no part in it.

REPORTER:
But a police report shows

forensic evidence
tying Arias to the murder.

Alexander was stabbed
27 times, shot once,

and his throat was
cut open.

TUSSEY: Jodi Arias, upon
hearing that her ex-boyfriend

was going to be going
away with another woman,

became triggered,
because it was

the ultimate
rejection for her.

Basically, it said,
he's moved on,

and now she no longer
has control over him.

While rejection is difficult
for people to accept,

the majority of us are able to
process it, move on from it.

But in the case of a female
psychopath who is violent,

their ability to handle
rejection and their ability to

regulate their emotions
of anger and loss

and grief really
are significantly lacking.

PROSECUTOR: Was he alive when
he was stabbed in the heart?

- WITNESS: Yes.
- PROSECUTOR: Was he alive,

in your opinion,
when his throat was slit?

WITNESS: Yes.

Normally when we hear
that term about scorn, uh,

we always think of a romantic
relationship where people have

been attached,
and then

the relationship's
falling apart,

but it can be more broad
than that.

A person doesn't have to be in
a romantic relationship

to feel vengeance is
necessary or needed.

And a nice example of that is
actually in the Cdebaca case.

MORGAN: Cdebaca is
in her early sixties,

and she's had
a history of a stroke.

She's living with her daughter
and her son-in-law.

And when he speaks
in a disparaging way about

an outfit that she's wearing,
her clothing,

and she interprets it
as a put-down

of who she is as a person.

It's sort of an insult
that cuts

right to the core
that is disrespectful.

We might say in psychiatry
that this is

a narcissistic injury,
and with a psychopath,

that's particularly dangerous.

SAHNI: The complete lack of
remorse that she's showing is

somewhat stunning, particularly
given her age as a female.

When you look at Cynthia
Cdebaca, you think of somebody's

grandmother,
you think of a kind,

gentle person who wants to
nurture her family, who has

a softness about her,
and there's

nothing soft or gentle
about Cynthia Cdebaca.

She is a female
psychopathic offender

who just killed
her son-in-law.

SAHNI: In our culture
and society,

oftentimes, elderly women
are invisible.

They're not seen
as authority figures.

They're also not seen
as sexual creatures

or as attractive
individuals any longer.

Female psychopathic
offenders oftentimes are

aware about how society
perceives them, as well as

the stereotypical expectations
of how a female will behave.

And that isn't any more true
than Dorothea Puente.

REPORTER: Police have finally
caught up with Dorothea Puente.

She is the woman who is
suspected of killing

seven people and burying them

in the yard of her boarding
house in Sacramento

for their social
security checks.

I have not killed anyone.

I told you that.

I have not killed anyone.

The checks I cashed.
Yes.

TUSSEY: Puente flew
under the radar

and wasn't detected
for quite some time

because, first of all,
she disguised herself.

Puente was only in her
fifties, but she let herself

look different and older
than she really was.

And she was also somebody
who ran this boarding home.

People looked at her
as a caregiver.

So nobody was suspecting
that what she was

doing, that she was, in fact,
a serial killer.

Another individual who used
her identity and her occupation

as a caregiver
to avoid detection

was Elizabeth Wettlaufer.

MORGAN: We go to the hospital,
we think the people who are

there, or to a nursing home,
they're there to help us.

They don't abuse people.
They certainly don't kill them.

And then her type of
psychopathy is centered around

this notion,
we can think of

the angel of mercy
type of serial killer.

What she'll say to other
people is they shouldn't live

that long,
or I'm helping them along.

Although when we look at
her statements more closely,

we end up finding that there's
more than meets the eye.

TUSSEY: What's different about
the way female psychopaths

engage in violent behavior
versus male psychopaths

is that when
they are violent,

sometimes it's
a little more discrete.

Whereas we might expect a male
to stab someone or shoot

someone, in this case,

it's much more subtle,
and it also makes it

more difficult to detect.

TUSSEY: When you work
in a nursing facility,

you're expecting patients to
have some behavioral

and/or emotional difficulty.

She's accepted
a role as a nurse

as a caregiver
to people who need help,

and she's ultimately
using that to kill people.

She's a great example
of a female psychopath.

She's using her knowledge
and her role as a caregiver

to kill someone in a way
that's very discreet

and could have flown
under the radar for

who knows how many more victims
had she not come forward.

While Wettlaufer was
the caregiver to all of

her victims,

it's important to note that she
didn't kill them on day one.

She facilitated
a relationship with them,

she bonded with them,
and ultimately poisoned them.

TUSSEY: Another distinction
between male

and female psychopaths
is their motive.

Male psychopaths
may have a motive

such as sexual gratification
or pleasure,

for example, like
John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy,

but female psychopaths

tend to have
a motive toward greed

and financial security
and stability.

The label "black widow"
has been assigned to females

who kill significant others

or spouses to gain some
sort of financial means

or security, and a great example
of that is Jill Coit.

REPORTER: This Southern Belle,
once a former model

and beauty queen,
has been married 10 times,

and no less than two of
her husbands have died in

mysterious circumstances.

There was always a different
person, a different man.

REPORTER: Her youngest son,
William, doesn't

remember much
about his father, Clark.

He was just three years old
in 1972 when his dad was

found murdered --
Jill Coit was the cops'

number-one suspect.

I have never murdered anyone,
and I definitely did not

- murder Mr. Coit.
- REPORTER: To this day,

the case remains unsolved.

Jill received almost
$200,000 in stocks

and bonds from
her husband's estate.

Jill Coit is an individual
who married multiple times.

She married men
and lured them out of money,

out of their life savings,
out of their homes.

She got them
to take care of her children

while she moved on
to her next victim.

She made up fantastic stories
to gain their sympathy.

I don't smoke or drink.

I guess my greatest sin
is that I get married.

SAHNI: Ultimately,
Jill Coit ends up

marrying a gentleman named
Gerry Boggs.

When Gerry figured out
that Jill was a liar,

his mission is to make sure
that everybody knew

that Jill Coit was a fraud.

Ultimately, he sued her
for fraud.

Six days before that trial
was set to begin,

Jill convinced her new
boyfriend to dress in

a disguise,
women's clothing,

a wig, and to enter the home
and shoot and kill Gerry Boggs.

TUSSEY: So we know that male
psychopaths tend to target

random victims, people
they don't necessarily know.

But in contrast,
female psychopaths tend to

target individuals they know.

They develop close
relationships sometimes with

the very people that they're
going to take advantage of.

And some female psychopaths
will use behavior

like flirtation and sex

in order to manipulate
and entrap their victims,

and a great example of that
is Dalia Dippolito.

[Dippolito sighs]

What's interesting about
Dippolito's case is that

she actually was
working as an escort

when she met her husband,
and it's a transactional

relationship that's mutually
agreed upon.

Dippolito worked
in commercial sex,

which means she's repeatedly
been in some ways dehumanized,

probably exposed to violence,
and probably does not think

highly of men
nor see them as

anything else but objects that
purchase her and ill treat her.

Dalia Dippolito learned about
her husband's property

and life insurance
before she married him.

And so this is sort of
a long-term plan

where she marries --
she seduces him,

she marries him, and then
she puts a hit on him

to inherit property
and life insurance.

So it wasn't impulsive.

She planned it coldly.

Dippolito tells the undercover
officer, who she thinks is

a hitman,
that she's tougher

than she looks and she knows
that he sees her

as a cute little girl.

What she's actually giving us
is a little bit of insight

and awareness into what
she knows about how to

manipulate others.

While Dippolito
believes she's gonna walk

out of this as
a single rich lady,

she's about to find out that

her reality is absolutely
not coming true.

TUSSEY: So despite
being obviously caught,

you don't see the remorse that
you would expect to see.

She's actually trying to
regain control of the situation

and manipulate
her husband again,

and she's almost
playing the victim.

Oftentimes, society doesn't
find it hard to see women as

fragile and frail,

the damsel in distress,
that victim that needs rescuing.

But when you have a female
psychopath who knows that

about society and uses that
to their advantage,

what you might actually have
is not a damsel in distress,

but a stone-cold killer,

like the case
of Pamela Smart.

We had sex.

- By that you mean intercourse?
- Yeah, we made love.

REPORTER: In court today,
Smart admitted

to having a steamy affair with

a teenage student
but eventually tried

to break it off.

The defendant says
the student,

William Flynn, was so
distraught at the prospect of

not seeing her
that he threatened

to kill himself but ended up
killing her husband.

PROSECUTOR: Do you want
this jury to understand

in that Bill Flynn decided
to kill your husband

because you broke up with him?

I don't know why
Bill Flynn killed Gregg.

I can just come in here
and give my testimony.

PROSECUTOR:
So even as you sit here today,

you still have no idea
why he may have done this.

- Is that it?
- I have not --

I didn't say
I had no idea,

- but I don't know specifically.
- Well, I'm asking you.

What do you think?
Why do you think he did this?

Probably because he thought
we could be together.

There are several
characteristics

of psychopathy
that we can see

in this scenario
with Pamela Smart.

First of all,
she is failing

to accept any responsibility
for this.

Second of all,
there is no remorse.

There's no indication
that she feels bad

that her husband was killed
in the first place.

It's rather cold and callous
in the way she talks about it.

There is no emotion
behind it.

It's really if anything, she
feels indignant and seemingly

upset with the student
for sending her to prison.

[screaming]

The damsel in distress ruse
that female

psychopaths can use
can be very effective.

An example in the case of
Jennifer Pan, who used the ruse

quite effectively initially,
but it didn't work in the end.

MORGAN: She keeps holding
her hand over her heart.

She speaks in a soft --
a soft voice,

is trying to cry at times.

She looks vulnerable.

We do have that instinct
as humans

to try and help
another human in distress.

And it's effective
as a ruse, because it lets

the psychopath
go undetected if

we think we're helping
the victim, and we don't realize

we're actually helping
the murderer.

But it doesn't take long for
the detectives to figure out

that something
doesn't quite add up.

RAGHAVAN: We find out that, for
the last four or five years,

she has been leading a double
life, one which she has

constructed intricately.

Her parents believe that she's
going to pharmacy school.

She is gaining a degree, that
things are going beautifully.

And then in the real life,
she's really not doing anything.

And we discover that her
parents strongly disapproved

of her boyfriend,
who has a criminal record

and is a drug dealer.

I think the parents
are probably going to

cut her off
and not give her any money.

And then we see
the reactive rage to that.

So an additional element of
psychopathy is the parasitic

lifestyle, we call it,

meaning that they will
live off of other people.

And in Pan's case,
she wants her parents' money.

She's been enjoying
living off their money.

She has been a parasite.

She's lying to them to get
all the benefits of living with

them as long as she can get
everything else that she wants.

REPORTER: Hann Pan says he saw
his daughter, Jennifer, untied,

whispering back and forth with

one of the intruders, and he
described that conversation as

soft and friendly.

He says he could hear
his wife begging

for their daughter's safety --
"Don't hurt her,"

she cried, and then
the trigger was pulled.

She worked with her boyfriend
to set up a murder, and he

had hired men to come into
the house and kill her parents.

She could no longer
keep up the lies,

so that her entire world
was going to collapse.

MORGAN: To want to hear
your parents get killed

or to see it rather than
asking someone

to come in and kill
her parents while she's away,

it means she's much more
callous and cold-hearted,

we say that lacking
empathy in psychopathy.

SAHNI: When we think about
parent and child relationships,

in the case of
Jennifer Pan, parents

don't think that their
children would ever harm them.

As they get older,

they put trust in their
children to take care of them,

to care for them,
and to remain watchful.

We also think of parent-child
relationships in the reverse,

that parents are charged with
keeping their children safe,

except in the cases of female
psychopathic killers and what

we think of in popular culture
as mommy dearest.

And that couldn't be
more obvious

than in the case of
Susan Smith.

I would like to -- to say
to whoever has my children...

that they please, I mean,
please, bring them home.

In 1994, Susan Smith
got on national television

and pleaded with the person

who supposedly had carjacked
her with her two young children

sleeping in the back.

But what we now know,
tragically, is that

while she was on
national television,

pleading for the return of
her children,

Susan Smith the whole time
knew that her children were

dead at the bottom of a lake.

She wanted to be in a new
romantic relationship

and the man
she was interested in

was not interested
in dating a woman

with young children.

Susan Smith strapped her
children into their car seats

and let the car essentially

roll into a body of water,
where they slowly drowned.

For a woman to turn around
and kill her kids is --

is not right.

There's no way to explain it.

You can't even understand it.

RAGHAVAN: It's shocking,
because, in fact,

women who use extreme violence
are quite rare.

We are primed as a culture
to be more in

shock when women are violent,
where we normalize

men's violence.

If someone has psychopathic
traits and they become

a mother, it might change
things for a little while.

And the part
that's narcissistic,

she might be excited at
the idea of creation or birth.

But once the reality comes in,
the deep, personal sacrifices,

the loss of time,
where you put your money,

the perhaps absence of
attention from

potential partners,

um, it immediately and quickly
becomes less exciting.

SAHNI: To be a successful,
effective parent,

your children's needs
oftentimes come before

your own, and in the case
of Elaine Campione,

that was something that
smacked her in the face

when she
and her husband separated,

and he filed for full custody
of both of their daughters.

Elaine Campione's sense of
self-worth, her identity,

and her entire sense of self

was based on the idea that
she was this perfect mother.

She was doting
over the children.

She was a loving mother, and
ultimately, her ex-husband's

decision to leave the family

was not just a rejection
of her,

but it was him rejecting
her daughters.

This is Campione's narrative.

So her ex-husband now files
for full custody in court.

So in her mind, Elaine Campione
only has one choice.

DETECTIVE: Mm-hmm.

What she's essentially
describing are the post mortem

effects of her having
drowned them to death.

And after Elaine Campione
drowns each of her daughters

and then dresses them up in
cute little princess dresses,

curls their hair,
and puts them to bed, dead,

and while it may seem like
Elaine Campione is having

a psychotic episode and she's
out of touch with reality,

what we know from the rest of
the case file is

this was just another example
of Campione's attempts to

manipulate investigators.

So her performance
appears theatrical.

It appears as if she's saying
what she thinks will help her

manipulate the situation.

She's acting the way she
thinks might be helpful for

her, pretending as if she has
no idea what's going on.

She actually very clearly
does just a few

minutes later whenever
she asks for a lawyer.

TUSSEY: She created
this video of her girls

just before
she murdered them.

She's presenting herself
as this very loving mother.

It's almost like
she wanted to create this

to further hurt her ex-husband,
to show him,

"Look at your beautiful girls.

Look how much
we loved each other,"

and then she murdered them.

So it's another way
for her to exact callous

vengeance against him
for seeking custody.

She ended up taking
a handful of pills, and by

all accounts, it appears she
did not expect to wake up.

And this was really her last
memorialization of what kind of

mom she was
and what she wanted

to be the narrative,
and consistent with what we see

with many
psychopathic individuals,

her need to remain
in control of

the narrative prevailed
right up until the end.

TUSSEY: Becoming a parent
doesn't stop you

from being a psychopath.

You can still have
psychopathic behaviors

and tendencies

no matter what role you have
in a family.

She manipulated
her ex-husband

and used their children
as pawns.

They were
her tools, unfortunately,

to exact harm against
her ex-husband.

RAGHAVAN: There are
female killers, and yes,

they're very violent,
but they are rare.

I think that's important
to say.

Eighty to 90 percent of
homicides are committed by men,

and the remaining homicides
that are committed by women.

most of it is in self-defense.

That is not true of men.

MORGAN: It's important
to focus on cases of women

who are psychopaths, because
it's a cultural blind spot.

It helps us remember that
there are female psychopaths,

and there's male psychopaths,
and that to be equally

protected against both,

I think we need to be able
to look for those signs

and understand how sometimes
cultural stereotypes will

blind us right away
to seeing those signs.

SAHNI: The female psychopath,
while it is

a seemingly rare population,

what we also do know, which is
somewhat humbling, is that

the female psychopath
may go more undetected.

What makes them more dangerous
is that they blend in.

They are upstanding members
of society on the surface.

They hold
leadership positions.

They are sometimes
the backbone and fiber

of social organizations,
and they

also go undetected, because of
how they're able to navigate

their crimes.

They tend to use their
interpersonal relationships

and willingness
to manipulate others in

a manner that allows them to
identify and prey on their

victims more easily than men.

And as a result,
it may also

be part of why
they avoid detection.

MAN: Are you remorseful?

- Not at all?
- MAN: Why?

Why would I be?
What's the difference?

Everybody has
a reason to kill.