Original subtitles

[ominous tones play]

[reporter] The body recovered from the Palm Beach County landfill

has been identified as Gerald "Gerry" Jensen.

He was reported missing by his wife.

Police say the body had multiple stab wounds

and his throat was slit.

[theme music playing]

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

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

feeling... the hunger.

[ominous music plays]

What we see here is an accurate depiction

of how she really does see Tomlinson.

You know, he is no one spectacular, and he's shallow.

She describes him as, like, manipulative,

somebody that is living this sort of parasitic lifestyle.

He doesn't have any care, concern, or empathy for others.

What she's describing are psychopathic traits

that outsiders would notice in someone that has psychopathy.

[ominous music plays]

♪♪

[Nicole crying and sobbing]

[Dr. Sahni] Thornhill isn't crying and sobbing because

her stepfather's dead.

She's crying and sobbing because she knows

that her significant other is gonna be upset with her

that she's confessing to a crime.

That intense reaction and concern for Chris Tomlinson

speaks to some power differential

in their relationship.

So what we start to see is that superficially charming,

glib individual who was able to influence her

in a very powerful way.

And those markers of psychopathy

can't be underestimated.

[Dr. Sahni] She did absolutely nothing to stop Tomlinson.

What she did was not only make way for it,

but she did lend fodder.

She added her mother to the recipe

as a potential victim.

She doesn't even make an attempt to tell

law enforcement she didn't know what was gonna happen.

And we should all take a moment to take pause.

She didn't stop it.

♪♪

[Dr. Morgan III] He's got a story, right? He's got a narrative.

In my head, it's anticipating.

He's offering some things up right away to just get

the narrative out there so that maybe they won't

have to ask any more questions.

So it's a way of controlling the interview and setting up

the narrative that's gonna happen.

It's important to remember the psychopath is trying

to control the interview and control the narrative.

In my experience with people who describe themselves

as Wiccan, is that people do believe in a benevolent form

of witchcraft, casting spells, mystical beliefs,

but the Wiccan community isn't organized like

a regular church.

His description of it, I suspect,

is kind of unique to him.

"I'm a good person. I have a moral sensitivity."

So, if you read between the lines, that image

management has a message. There's nothing to see here.

I'm trying to be as helpful as I can.

You can move on and suspect somebody else.

[Dr. Vienna] Do we see Tomlinson show his true colors?

He comes out and just says, "I don't care."

You know, it's a lack of concern and care for others.

He really has no empathy. It's just complete shallowness.

He's putting on this performance,

making these statements of what he thinks

a concerned person might say.

The comment about, "Oh, that really sucks."

That's not what we would expect even from a roommate of someone

that wasn't close to that person.

[Dr. Vienna] At this point, in the interview, Tomlinson is

providing very short responses to police,

so we see a shift in his demeanor,

and I think that's indicating that he's deciding

to change his strategy with police.

I think he knows that they're onto him,

and he's being confronted with evidence

that he wasn't prepared to speak about.

So now the strategy is not to give information,

and that's still a way for him to control the situation.

When psychopaths engage in pathological lying

and deception, it really is a vehicle for control for them.

The detectives, in many regards, are giving Tomlinson

just enough rope to hang himself with.

They tell him that they don't know

why he committed the crime.

They give him alternatives, from self-defense

to being a cold, predatory killer.

And what does he do?

Because he's invested in this impression of him

as a good person, not an evil person,

he takes the self-defense argument.

His narcissism still has him convinced

that he's gonna get out of this room somehow.

He wants them to believe he's this good guy.

He's an important person.

He sees himself clearly

very differently than the rest of the world does.

♪♪

So now we're getting to the real motive

behind Tomlinson and Thornhill's actions.

It wasn't about Gerry.

It wasn't about him being an aggressor.

It wasn't about him being this evil person.

It was about the two of them thinking that they could just

take out the two people who were inconveniencing them.

Thornhill's family is not OK with the two of them living

in the house in a kinda parasitic way.

And what we see is a far more calculated set of decisions.

We see a premeditation to their decision-making.

And what we see is that Nicole Thornhill

isn't so innocent in this.

The two of them worked in tandem, planning this crime.

♪♪

[Dr. Morgan III] So I think what's really important in this,

here you have a young mother who has confessed to planning

the murder of her mother and her mother's husband.

And when she realizes she's going to jail,

her question is, "What's gonna happen to me?"

This is another example of

an extraordinary lack of empathy.

Most people with psychopathy do not experience remorse.

They -- they don't believe what they've done is wrong.

They may believe it's illegal to do and they know

they're gonna get punished, but they don't believe that

there's something inherently wrong with what they've done.

And neither -- neither showed any remorse.

Neither -- neither looked highly distraught

over the loss at all.

[reporter] The woman who pled no contest to second-degree murder

last November for killing her stepfather, Gerry Jensen,

in 2008, has finally learned her fate.

Nicole Thornhill will serve 50 years in prison for her role,

including time for two counts of attempted murder

and two counts of adulteration of food or drink.

She will not be eligible for parole until 2060.

Her husband, Christopher Tomlinson,

was convicted by a Stuart jury last month

of first-degree murder, attempted murder and poisoning

and immediately sentenced to life in prison without parole.