Original subtitles

[intense music playing]

[man 1 speaking]

[man 2 speaking]

[man 3 speaking]

[man 4] The thing inside of me is like...

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

feeling... the hunger.

[news reporter] Westminster police hoping you can help

find this missing 19-year-old.

She's Lea Chali Porter.

She lives in Pueblo, but she was in Westminster last Thursday,

when she went missing.

Now, take a look. Porter's hair is dyed blond, but she has brown hair.

She also has a tattoo on her wrist,

and her lower lip is pierced.

You can call Crime Stoppers or Westminster

if you have any information to help find her.

[eerie music playing]

[Nameeta] Knowing that Christopher Waide had some very dark

and particularly sadistic urges and fantasies

as young as teenage life in high school,

would be a reason for any parent to be concerned.

And Max Porter, because he went to school with Waide,

and was aware of these rumors,

he's understandably really worried about his sister.

Waide presents here, as somebody who's really nervous.

His answers almost seemed like they were written for him.

Like, he's thought about what he was going to say, and he's going by his script.

Very stilted, very uncomfortable.

And he drops comments here and there.

Almost comments, like, he thinks he should say.

Like, he was concerned about her drug addiction.

He found drugs.

She seemed depressed.

But there's really not a lot of emotion behind what he's saying.

It's almost, to me, like he's more concerned

about saying the right thing during this interview,

than he is about not knowing where his friend is.

[Charles] First, you having already lost a friend.

This has been also seen in other cases where people make us slip.

It does raise their suspicions.

Some people would say that's due to what we call

the guilty knowledge in our head.

And that influences the way we think and the way we speak.

And he probably didn't intend to say it that way.

But you can probably believe it's true.

He's already lost that friend.

He's expressing a concern

that the reason he's cooperating with police

is because they're telling him he's not a suspect

and he wants to make sure he continues to control that narrative.

And ensure that he stays off their radar.

But what Waide's engaging in is constant impression management.

The problem is, he doesn't think quickly on his feet.

And when it's not rehearsed,

you see these awkward behaviors and these cognitive leaks

come out in the media interview.

[ominous music playing]

What we now understand about pornography addiction

and the influence of pornography exposure

on young children as their brains are developing

and their sexual identity is developing,

is that it sets up an expectation around sexuality, intimacy

and interacting with sexual partners, that's highly unrealistic.

And what also seems quite clear is that

there were early warning signs

and his the family chose to minimize the seriousness of those.

[Chriscelyn] Here we have Waide's own mother

confirming the rumors and the other perceptions

that Lea's family has about him.

When you think about these red flags,

of not only express sexual fantasies,

violent deviant fantasies, but also actual behavior,

where he enacted some of those fantasies.

When you take that with what we have in this current situation,

where he's being investigated for a missing woman...

It certainly is very concerning

when you think about all the history that we have thus far.

[Nameeta] The psychological evaluation from the United States Army

that was done in preparation for Waide's discharge

paints a very different picture than what his mother wants to believe,

or what he maybe told her.

Waide was quite forthcoming with the doctor

that he has ongoing urges and fantasies of raping a specific classmate.

And what the doctor ultimately says, which is both

alarming and quite astute,

is that while there's no evidence

that Waide has harmed anybody, he's dangerous.

He has the potential for dangerousness.

This particular scene where he's being interviewed by the police,

and he's going like, "Oh, I do, you know, criminal justice."

It's a way of saying, "I'm kind of like you."

Like, "We have something in common."

It's his effort to control the image of him

in the police's eyes, to make him look like

he's cooperative, he's on board,

he's a good person.

It's part of his image of being the helpful friend.

Here, Waide is almost presenting himself

like he's an expert in behavioral analysis

and almost teaching the investigators

about what a real smile looks like

and how he's able to discern

when she's telling him the truth, or not.

He wants them to believe

that he knows more than he really does

and that he's a different person than he really is.

He's lying and manipulating.

We see this parent, child judgmental quality

in Waide's attitude, time and time again.

What we also need to pay attention to

is that consistent with what we see

with psychopathic offenders oftentimes,

is this shallow affect.

There's this shallowness to his emotions.

They're superficial.

He's using all these flowery words,

as if he's re-reading a script that he's worked out in his head,

that is gentle and soft and almost romantic in nature.

And yet the words and content he's describing

is an ugly confrontation about drug paraphernalia.

And the two just don't add up.

So, the part that makes no sense is, he's just said to the police,

"Maybe she took the intent of my reading too far."

But when he's explaining the reading,

it's supposed to be a joyous, celebratory thing.

There's nothing malevolent in the reading that says,

like, die, hurt yourself, bad things coming up...

She's off celebrating or she's in a... she's in a good space.

Which is really incongruous.

Why would you be worried?

So, the police have a right to be suspicious of it.

We see Waide stumble here.

He didn't expect law enforcement to kind of confront him

about some of the blood evidence.

To confront him and push him, and because he hadn't thought about that,

he didn't have a rehearsed answer.

He didn't have an explanation.

But it is also important to note the ease with which he just makes something up.

And that kind of pathological compulsive ability to lie

and just fill in the blanks

is something we consistently see time and time again in psychopathic offenders.

[Waide sighs]

[Charles] They're throwing out information that they don't yet really have.

Like, her cell phone was found...

Right? With her clothing.

And you hear Waide sigh.

He's got to come up with a new story.

And he goes, "No, no, no. I saw her leave with her cell phone."

But then you'd hear him sigh again.

He's working really hard at trying to figure out.

So, when he then finally says,

"I'm searching for the right words",

I believe him.

He's trying to figure out,

"What is the best way I can frame this."

[Rene Jackson screaming, sobbing]

[Charles] A great moment where you get a...

you get a peek, sort of, into the thinking of a psychopath

who is self-absorbed.

And he keeps saying, "I know this is going to be hard for you to hear."

It's not really empathetic.

His expectation is that they should accept it on his terms.

But that's the manifestation of control

that you do see with psychopaths.

They want to be in charge of the information,

and in control of other people's feelings about it.

He's now, tossed in the word, "rape."

And he's now woven it into the story to make him the victim.

That he was going to be accused of rape, and that he was defending himself.

But he, in the story, is the victim.

It's consistent with how he's tried to represent himself all the way along.

Even at this point in the investigation,

when he is clearly at the end of his rope,

he's still not able to say, "I murdered her. I am responsible for her death."

He just says I played a major role in it.

And that lack of responsibility-taking

is something that we see time and time again in psychopathic individuals.

It's everybody else's fault but theirs.

Or it's a misunderstanding.

[Nameeta] What we know from the investigation is that,

we have a person who engaged in quite a bit

of deviant sexual fantasies, urges,

and, to some degree, behaviors.

No less than 21,000 images

found on his computers and various hard drives

that would be identified as possible child pornography.

When you start to look at all these things that are found in Wade's history,

we realize this is somebody who has

escalating deviant urges that are sadistic in nature,

and when you couple that with the impulse control issues,

this is a very dangerous individual.

[Chriscelyn] Again, we see the "I know better.

Let me discuss the semantics of her death versus murder."

There is such a heightened level of grandiosity that's on display here,

and also a failure to accept responsibility.

So, we know that individuals with psychopathy

often will find other reasons to justify their behavior.

So, maybe, in his mind,

murder is just coldly killing someone without any provocation.

And he's still somehow trying to hang on to this idea

that he was just defending himself against her.

It's interesting and really speaks to a lack of self-awareness

that he talks about the thing he values most,

and the emotion he values most is loyalty.

He talks about "to friends", and we know from the investigation

he really doesn't have any.

So, what I think he's really talking about is loyalty to himself.

He's betrayed himself. He's told on himself.

He didn't handle this the way he thought he would,

and any suggestions of regret really seem to be more

about the fact that he's gotten caught.

[reporter] Developing right now, the search tonight for the body of Lee Porter.

Her high school friend is sitting behind bars, linked to her murder.

Christopher Waide turned himself in to Westminster police last night.

Now, the suspect is in jail on charges of sexual assault and murder.

Police searched his apartment twice,

and today, sectioned off part of a public landfill in connection with the case.

So, in 2022, almost eight years,

sort of after being in prison,

Christopher Waide decides to write a letter describing the events

of what took place on that day when he killed Lea.

And it's not sent to anyone in specific. It's just sent to the court.

In the letter, he goes into quite a bit of detail

about the events that occurred that day,

um, that I think are in many ways

illustrative of what goes on in the mind of a psychopath,

in terms of the use of other people.

What Waide writes in the letter is that, um,

when Lea was there, she went into the bathroom.

There was never any episode of doing a tarot reading for her.

There was never an episode of her wanting drugs,

and trying to hold him hostage with a knife.

She went into the bathroom. And then, he describes this moment

when she came out of the bathroom where something just snapped,

and he was filled with aggression, rage, and sexual desire for her,

and he immediately attacked her,

restrained her and choked her.

I think there's more truth in here about what he did to her,

and the reason I believe that is it's more consistent

with what we know about his fantasy life and what he was interested in.

But I don't believe that he's told us the entire story.