Portrait of a Poisoner

• Share

"Murder most foul," wrote Shakespeare of the poisoning of Hamlet's father, the King of Denmark, "most foul, strange, and unnatural." Even William Shakespeare might have trouble imagining a crime fouler, stranger and more unnatural than the Tylenol poisonings in Illinois. "This killer is so unusual," says Clinical Psychologist Samuel Roll of the University of New Mexico, "that our guidelines just don't work."

Who could be capable of such an act? What does the murderer hope to gain? What are the causes of such deranged behavior? These are the questions occupying police, psychologists and psychiatrists as they try, mostly without success, to form a psychological portrait of the poisoner.

Psychologists and psychiatrists agree on only a few points, and even these are highly speculative. First, the murderer is likely to be a loner, isolated and unnoticed, with few if any friends. He is probably low in selfesteem, paranoid and hypersensitive, taking offense at real or imagined slights from those around him.

Unlike the textbook-case mass murderer, who is often a paranoid schizophrenic, the Tylenol killer is apparently not disabled by delusions or incapacitated by hallucinations. Indeed, the killer's ability to handle cyanide and put it into small capsules indicates that he is meticulous, well organized and scientifically acute. Says Dr. Shervert Frazier, chief psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.: "He knows how to carry out actions in a goal-oriented, purposeful way."

Psychologists suggest that the killer is a "borderline" personality, someone who can function nearly normally in the day-to-day world. Like John Hinckley, who was also described as "borderline," the Tylenol killer can appear outwardly conventional. He may undergo transient psychosis intermixed with healthy intervals. Herbert Quay, professor of psychology at the University of Miami, notes chillingly: "My guess is that there are people around the killer right now who think he or she is odd, but not a threat to their lives."

According to Chris Hatcher, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, the personality of the arsonist or bomber, rather than the mass murderer, may be the most appropriate model for understanding the Tylenol murderer. "Other killers," he says, "have a certain satisfaction in stalking their victims. But this is a much more technically oriented crime; the killer does not perceive as clearly the actual death of his victims." Who gets killed appears to be a matter of indifference. Even gunmen like Charles Whitman, who killed 16 people from his perch in a Texas tower in 1966, have more direct contact with their victims. Rarely have the time and distance between murderous act and deadly result been greater. Anonymous poisoning is a remote-control crime, allowing the killer to feel omnipotent by rendering the public terrifyingly powerless.