Original subtitles

[reporter] A Bradenton mother and her infant son

were found dead at a house fire,

but, according to investigators,

the two did not die in that fire --

they were killed.

[reporter #2] A firefighter heading into work spotted the fire

and found 18-year-old Diamond Shelman

as well as the baby inside.

[ominous music playing]

[voice breaking] She was so sweet.

I don't see how... [sobs]

...God could let something like this happen to her.

[ominous music builds and stops abruptly]

[unsettling piano strokes]

[typewriter clicking]

[theme music playing]

I would kill again.

They're dead, I'm alive.

I don't think it was wrong.

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

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

feeling... the hunger.

[suspenseful music playing]

[suspenseful music continues]

[Dr. Johnston] I think Larry Williams is somebody

who thinks he's the smartest person in the room.

I think he thinks of himself as being pretty smooth.

He's got two, um, women

who have children close to the same age by him.

He's living with one girlfriend.

We know that Larry Williams has had a criminal record.

He was accused of initiating sexual contact with individuals

who were under the age of 12.

So it really is remarkable how calm he is

and how there's such a lack of anxiety when he's in the room

with these two seasoned detectives.

His lack of anxiety, I think, is partly his confidence

that he can handle whatever is coming up.

[unsettling tones playing]

[unsettling music continues]

[Dr. Sahni] At this point, the detectives

are giving William some indication

that they know he's not being truthful.

Like many psychopathic individuals,

there's an active sort of exchange

that goes on with law enforcement

where they're always engaging in this impression management,

trying to advance their own narrative

for detectives.

Williams is already out of the gate trying to control

the narrative of what's happened.

He's trying to preemptively direct detectives to look here

and not look there.

Look at this other person she was just starting to date.

Maybe that's the person who hurt her.

That's the last person who was with her.

[eerie music playing]

[Dr. Vienna] He says, "I did love her."

He sort of slips up and puts that in the past tense.

And then, when he catches himself,

he brings it back to the current tense.

And that all there just highlights

his unsophisticated approach to this interview.

He's not really thinking ten steps ahead.

He's just trying to get by and be cool,

calm, and collected.

But he's really just this unsophisticated individual.

[eerie music builds]

[tense music playing]

[suspenseful tones playing]

[suspenseful music builds]

[Dr. Sahni] The thing that's interesting

about Williams is that he never shows

any outward signs of stress.

Many people in this situation would suddenly become aware

that they're under suspicion for some serious crime.

They've brought a dog in who picks up on accelerants,

and the dog hits on Williams, not once, but twice.

But Williams doesn't miss a beat.

He doesn't seem surprised.

He just quickly explains it away.

He stays in control of the situation.

He just gives them an explanation and moves on.

Williams is someone who's pretty comfortable lying.

He's comfortable not telling the truth,

and he's not concerned about being found out.

He just has what seem to him to be reasonable explanations

for everything that's about to unfold.

Now he's ratcheted up his story,

and he's wanting the detectives to believe

that there's a demon that's inside of him.

"I see things, I hear things other people don't.

It doesn't normally cause me stress, I just ignore it."

And yet, on that day,

it was someone that was trying to hold him down

and scare him, and control him.

It was trying to get inside him,

and it may have been responsible

for whatever bloody, awful, violent stuff happened

in that apartment. It just doesn't add up.

Williams is a seasoned criminal,

but he's not a seasoned mental health patient.

He doesn't yet understand the inconsistencies

in the story he's offering and why it's implausible.

And the detectives capitalize on that.

They join him in his delusional statements,

and they join him in this explanations,

and they want him to now tell them,

what is it that the demon did?

[spooky, tense music playing]

Williams is losing control of the situation.

He's losing control of the narrative

and of the interview.

And while, at this point, most psychopathic individuals

want to maintain control, what we see is Williams

is just -- this fishtail is growing.

Now we have not one demon, but we have two demons,

and they're battling it out for what the role is

that they're each gonna have in this crime,

and it's becoming more and more implausible.

His narcissism is starting to get the best of him.

Because the detectives are joining him in this story,

and they're showing him what he believes is empathy

and kindness and understanding

that he has these mental health issues,

he just gets overconfident and starts spinning this story

that now spins out of control.

[ominous music playing]

No, I'm not buying his emotions here.

I mean, this is somebody who knows

what has happened to his son.

And I think the fact that he puts his head in his hand

and kind of looks down is something I see so often

when people -- they don't have the genuine emotions,

but they -- they know that they're expected.

When we look at psychopathy --

I think that most psychopaths do have emotions,

but they're always related to themselves --

they feel pleasure,

they feel anger, they feel frustration,

It's all about them.

Where, when you're talking about emotions

toward other people,

like empathy, like guilt, like remorse...

they're absent.

And so he's got to figure out how he should be acting,

and then try to do that.

[suspenseful rumble]

[Dr. Vienna] Williams goes into now yet another variable

of his story in that he was going to die.

Him and Diamond were going to, you know, kill themselves

and he was supposed to die, but for some reason he lived.

It's just getting ridiculous.

I think he might even be telling these wild stories

to see if he can confuse police.

[Dr. Sahni] "Malingering" is oftentimes a term

that we as forensic experts talk about

when somebody is lying

or fabricating information or feigning symptoms

to try and present their reality

as something different than it is.

While malingering is not an actual diagnosis,

you're always assessing

for whether there is a motive to fabricate.

And in the case of Williams, the motivation is very obvious.

He doesn't want to go to prison for killing two people.

He doesn't want to be seen as somebody who left his son

in a home that was on fire to basically burn in the fire

and suffocate from smoke inhalation.

[dissonant music playing]

[ominous music playing]

[music continues to build]

She's providing some more of the backstory here,

the true backstory -- he was jealous,

he wanted control over her.

For psychopaths like Williams,

for their significant other or former significant other,

moving on to someone else

is sort of like a wound to their ego,

and it also is a sense of a loss of control

and power over that person.

They can't use them and get what they want out of them

because somebody else has them.

That provides a realistic picture of why Williams

might have murdered Diamond.

[ominous music playing]

When we talk about psychopaths and their children,

you know, there's a lot of research to suggest

that the attachment,

if there is one, and sometimes there's not,

is very shallow.

This is a person or a child who's expendable

if it comes to protecting myself.

So it's this lack of genuine attachment.

But when push comes to shove,

Williams will do anything to protect himself,

including murdering his son.

[unsettling tones playing]

[Dr. Vienna] The pattern that you see with Larry Williams

is one of self-preservation. It's all about him.

He's very, very selfish.

We know that he has several psychopathic tendencies

and traits, such as being manipulative,

deceitful, pathological lying,

callousness, even superficial charm.

These traits combined with his narcissistic tendencies

is what drives his violence.

All of that speaks to

someone that has this deeply ingrained dysfunctional pattern

of behavioral and cognitive and personality traits,

which is essentially a psychopath.

[eerie music fades]