Review of What Makes a Murderer
What Makes a Murderer is a Channel 4 documentary series exploring an age-old myth: Are murders born killers? The series is co-produced by Dragonfly and UnderworldTV, a TV production company made of ex-criminals and crime experts. At the moment of this writing, it has aired the entire 3 episodes.
The show features two main investigators, neuro-criminologist Professor Adrian Raine and forensic psychologist Dr Vicky Thakordas-Desai who study three convicted murders. More than 300 murders were initially considered for the show and 10 men and women were shortlisted. However, due to the public nature of the show and the pain that will inflict on the volunteers’ families, many had to pull out from participation. In the end, three candidates remained, John Masse, Paul Aldridge and Anthony Powell who are all from the London area, served prison sentences and since have been released.
The prime objective of the show is to investigate the biological, psychological and social aspects to the murderers' lives, trying to figure out the risk factors contributing to these individuals’ criminal behaviours and exactly to what extent that they are responsible for their violent deeds. The implications could be far and wide, including review of the criminal and justice system, prison reform and inmates rehabilitation, parenting and childcare, social and youth service and so on.
Professor Adrian Raine is a British psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. He is noted for his research on the neurobiological and biosocial causes of antisocial and violent behaviour in children and adults. He was the first scientist to use neuroimaging to study the brains of murderers and has published hundreds of research works and several award-winning books. Professor Raine’s scientific study methods include blood and saliva tests for DNA and hormone analysis, brain scans for anatomical anomalies, other measurements of physical attributes such as head circumference and lengths of fingers for prenatal alcohol influences.
Dr Vicky Thakordas-Desai is a consultant in Forensic Psychology with Expert Witness training. She has extensive experience in assessing and treating adults and young people with complex mental and behavioural difficulties.
Episode 1 — The Story of John Massey
John Massey, a 71 years old white male who served a 43-year sentence. He is one of Britain’s longest-serving murderers. In 1975, he shot a nightclub bouncer Charlie Higgin to death, walked over his dead body and blasted the pub Cricketers above the nightclub in Hackney. He tried to shoot a policeman dead after being chased in his getaway car. John has multiple escape attempts since his imprisonment. From what I gathered, there’s a lot of audacity and creativity involved in his relentless activities. Hats off, what a legend!
Nature: Enlarged striatum results in reward-seeking behaviour. Reduced amygdala results in fear reduction. Reduction in insular results in lack of empathy, remorse and guilt. A version of the serotonin transporter gene results in low serotonin results in blunted stress response.
Nurture: Childhood abandonment resulting in emotion repression.
Conclusion: Psychopath.
Critique: It is unclear as to which serotonin transporter gene Professor Raine is talking about and the conclusion seems illogical. I have to assume the genetic variation professor is talking about is the SLC6A4 gene. If that is the case, then either allele would result in John being more prone to depression and neuroticism than psychopathy. Together with enlarged striatum and reduced insular, they could all point to general anxiety disorder. Then again, I think the investigators need to be aware of the labelling effect, misdiagnosis and overdiagnosis of this condition.
Episode 2 — The Story of Paul Aldridge
Paul Aldridge is a 43 years old white male who served 22 years. In 1996, he and his partner in crime beat 60 years hitchhiking mental patient Tommy McLauglin to death trying to rob him. They were noted laughing and boasting after leaving the man for dead in an underground car park.
Nature: Loss of tissue in the temporal cortex results in reduced function in moral decision making. Reduction in posterior cingulate results in poor behaviour control. High ring finger to index finger ratio resulted from alcohol consumption and high testosterone exposure during pregnancy which is known linked to violent tendencies. Low response to stress while watching violent materials indicates a high level of tolerance to violence.
Nurture: Prenatal substance abuse, volatile family life, physical abuse and emotional neglect from carers, all resulted in high tolerance to violence and approval-seeking behaviour.
Conclusion: Tragic. He could have turned out to be a different person if his mother wasn’t a violent alcoholic.
Critique: The testosterone level is off the chart, it is unprofessional to present scientific material in this manner.
Episode 3 — The Story of Anthony Powell
Anthony Powell is a 49 years old West Indie male who served 20 years. In 1993, he killed David Edwards for a 5K debt he was collecting. He denied his offence for a long time after his conviction.
Nature: Reduction in hippocampus results in learning and memory difficulties. ADHD from cognitive tests. A normal reaction to stimuli but lacking anticipatory fear in the stress test. High testosterone level results in aggressive behaviour. Small posterior cingulate results in poor attention retention. Abnormal cerebrospinal fluid resulted from head injuries. Abnormal development in ‘cave of septum pellucidum’ resulted from underdevelopment of the fetal brain.
Nurture: Steady family home but encountered racism and violence which leads to anger issues and violent behaviours. Sexual abuse resulted in risk-seeking behaviours. His low academic performance and violent behaviour resulted in expulsion from school which leads to low self-worth and approval seeking in the streets.
Conclusion: Biological factors loaded the gun and environmental factors pulled the trigger.
Critique: Again, the testosterone chart is unacceptable.
My Conclusion:
All in all, a fascinating series, definitely worth a watch. The filming production and narration are of high quality. Both scientists and contributors seem decent enough. I have my reservations in psychiatry as a science in general and the interpretations and presentation on certain data collected, nevertheless, it is good to see hard measurable data from the biological science at work.
On the scientific front:
I am disappointed in the inconsistency of the diagnostical items, DNA and hormone tests were performed on the contributors ununiformly. The theory of low resting heart rate’s correlation to antisocial behaviour and violent crime was not tested. Was it of no significance, the results contradicted the theories and got cut in the editing room or forgetfulness of the investigators?
I’m not sure either of the investigators is qualified to diagnose patients and the diagnosis process seemed overly simplistic. They seem to have left out some key factors as while as making criminality too central to the concept. The tests were certainly contributing factors but they alone do not meet the criteria for formal psychiatric diagnosis. Had the contributors gone through the same tests for comparison, they probably would all end up wearing Psychopath T-shirts to go home with.
Although significant progress has been made, there’s still much to be explored in both genetics and neuroscience. At the moment, when much of the data are still subject to interpretation, cherry-picking certain genes and brain regions seem a little self-serving and disconnected. Genes are themselves regulated by epigenetics so the genotype may not fully penetrate the phenotype. The brain is a very adaptive and plastic organ, many neuropathways have known to have the ability to rewire themselves so a little damage here and there may not be as significant as we imagined. It would be exciting to see the systems working in realtime in a correlated fashion to truly understand the mechanism comprehensively. I hope it’s soon.
On the psychology front:
I have some major concerns about the methodology practised, namely the self-reports without fact-checking, bringing the contributors back to the sites of childhood traumas without following up on their psychological, social and legal issues.
If you prompt people, everyone seems to have a sob story to tell. Investigators should reframe from leading people on in order to produce desired results. Also, self-reports raise the problem of reliability and fact-checking before making conclusions seems logical and essential. However, to the investigators’ negligence, this vital step is omitted so there’s no way of knowing to what extent the information presented are to be considered as facts. One nasty consequence I can foresee is the age-old problem of parents blaming, many parents are wrongly blamed for abuses that never occurred and their voices are never heard so there’s an imbalance in facts presenting.
Maybe these men are like what the investigators assumed to be hardened and resilient. Maybe it’s all true what made them and what happened to them all contributed to making them into murderers. But the traits that made a criminal in one setting could also make a very effective soldier in another. Many battle-hardened special forces soldiers with very similar childhood backgrounds that killed for a living and had been fully debriefed by the MoD still suffered PTSD and dropped like flies without revisiting sites of trauma. I would advise proceeding with caution and do the regression sessions in a controlled environment with full psychological counselling and continued support. To take them back to sites that elicit emotional trauma without giving sufficient support and just leave them like that assuming everything will be fine is very unwise and unethical.
From the legal angle, in the case of Anthony Powell, if he was sexually abused then where is his justice? Criminals are human beings too. There should be some follow-up procedures offering legal aid or consultation at least which was absent. On the other hand, the women who sexually abused Anthony is still at large, her behaviour could have escalated considerably since then and there could be more victims during the years of her active years. There could be young victims being molested, raped or worse done to them right now. It would be good to see the facts verified and if confirmed then may justice be done.
