I wrote the article for Crime Library on the notorious Handcuff Man, a shadowy figure who brutally burned gay male prostitutes and men he mistook for homosexual hustlers. The Handcuff Man turned out to be Robert Lee Bennett, Jr., a wealthy attorney from an upper-class family.
The pathology of Bennett was even more puzzling than that of most psychopaths as the usual reasons for that deformation of character were either absent from his background or hidden. He had suffered no economic deprivation. There was no known history of sexual, physical, or even the harder to define but real and often warping emotional abuse that characterizes the histories of so many violent offenders. Neither his mother nor his father was an alcoholic and neither was known to be mentally ill.
Many people believe having a stay-at-home-mom (or stay-at-home parent of either sex) is a major advantage for a child. Robert Lee Bennett, Jr. enjoyed that advantage. His father was an attorney and his mother a homemaker. He was not often left with babysitters or nannies nor was he put in day care centers. His mother and father never divorced so he had the advantage of an intact family.
What could explain the horrors perpetrated by Robert Lee Bennett, Jr.? It is possible that there are traumas in his formative years that never became public information. While neither parent is known to have abused young Robert, it cannot be said with certainty that they did not do so. Nor can it be said with certainty that he was not mistreated by people outside of his immediate family.
It is also at least possible that his being adopted was a significant factor in his crimes. He was 22 months old, just shy of two years old, when he was taken into the home of Robert Bennett and Annabelle Maxwell Bennett. The early period of a human being’s life is crucial. Could a lack of affection prior to his adoption have left Robert Lee Bennett, Jr. without the basis upon which to develop normal feelings? Could his early infancy have been marred by abuses which, while not consciously remembered, imprinted scars upon his subconscious mind?
Perhaps the fact of being adopted itself contributed to his abnormal personality development. As David Kirschner points out in “Adoption Forensics: The Connection Between Adoption and Murder” at
http://www.crimemagazine.com/07/adoptionforensics,0919-7.htm, adoptees make up only 2-3% of the general population but 16% of the serial murderers. Adoptees are 15 times more likely to kill one or both parents than biological children are.
There are many things that might explain these tragic statistics. Until very recently, almost all adoptions were closed so children growing up in adoptive homes had only a big question mark around their origins. Adoptees are sometimes troubled by the issue of how they were conceived and the fear that they may have been conceived under circumstances often considered sordid and perhaps were even conceived in rapes. They may have extreme and conflicting fantasies about their biological parents and especially their biological mothers. Kirschner indicates that adoptees who turned violent often tended to think of the bio-mom as a benevolent and pure goddess – who would naturally contrast with the adoptive mom that they see day-to-day and know as a regular, flawed human being – and/or fantasize that the biological mother must have been a prostitute who conceived the adoptee in a transaction with a client.
It is also possible that the lack of a biological link between adoptive parents and their children means that there is a lack of “fit” between those personality aspects that are inherited. Yet another possibility is that adoptive parents often do not treat their children exactly as they would their biological young. They may not be able to give exactly the same affection to an adopted child and might act more harshly with him or her. Then again, adoptive parents might attempt to over-compensate and be unduly lenient with their children.
Another possibility is that involuntary childlessness might have put a marriage under strain so that the adoptive parents expect the baby they bring into their home to repair their marital problems. Disappointment because the baby is a baby, with all of a baby’s demands, rather than a cure-all for a troubled or failing relationship might transmit itself in dangerous ways to the child’s psyche.
I would like input from my readers. My article about Robert Lee Bennett, Jr. and his crimes as the Handcuff Man is at http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/handcuff/1.html. What do you think of my article? What do you think of Bennett himself? What do you see as the source of his pathology?
Thanks to anyone who comments.
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Squiggy said,
Finding similarities between killers doesn’t really do anything, as I can show you millions of normal people with the same characteristics. Wonderful people who were abused, or even worse. Like me for example.
I, myself am an awesome father, with wonderful children, from grown up down to toddlers. And, yes, adopted. They will grow up well. I expect it, and they love me for it. As a great man once said - Children will rise to the level of expectations for them. (And just for your info, I think I’ve spanked three or four times over the years.)
April 28, 2008 at 4:49 am
amfortas said,
There does seem to be some (largely speculative) persuasive ‘conventional wisdom’ linking early (pre-cognitive age) abandonment to an inability to love later on. Or at least, to love as we approve. It is part of that now convention that the brain has ‘plastic’ periods where events can alter or predispose its architecture. I say speculative because it has not actually been seen. No one has ‘examined’ the brains of three-month old babies and compared them with themselves later as thirty year olds who fail to love - let alone kill.
But it does not need a ‘plastic’ period to alter key architectural modes of the brain. Intense training can do it in adulrhood. ( I would hazard that a pilot’s brain after ten years of flying has altered significantly. Or an orchestral musician for that matter).
While the 15% serial killer figure startles, there are the other 85% not explained by adoption. Abandonment and rejection in later life may also have a devastating effect. Maybe even produce such rage as to produce one-off killers from otherwise mild and warm people.
We live in a modern world where men, the majority of convicted criminals, are routinely rejected and abandoned, often with extreme cruelty and with the connivance of ‘Authorities’. Most men are ordinarily good. They work hard, they love, they sacrifice their dreams for the reality of their wives and children. Their souls generally exhibit its inner dignity and wholesomeness. But with easy abandon, so many of these ordinary, rounded men get speared in the back by the ones they love.
You have told us a little about yourself from time to time. The events in your life. The interactions, deeply affecting interactions, with people in close loving realtionships with you. You let it dribble out. Some have been very painful. I wonder, sometimes what affect those mattters had on the Denise you let us see. I haven’t read of you running amok with a knife. Yet.
Let me tell you of a man I know quite well.
Consider a man who loves deeply, who has devoted 20 years to his wife and to raising his children with care. He loves them all. They are the centre of his life. All that he does has them at the ‘motive’. His brain has ‘altered’ in response to their continued presence and centrality in his ‘being’.
Then after half a life, an entire adult life to that point, he is ‘dismissed’. Dispossessed. Slandered and calumnied. By those he loves.
It is likely to result in a rage that can barely be contained. But he manages to. he is ‘disciplined’ enough to manage.
Then after ‘healing’ somewhat, after a long time, he tries again and loves again. He adores his new wife. He takes in her children. And loves them. He works twice as hard to ensure he appreciates her much better than the last time - for that’s what he was told as he was thrown on the street the last time.
And again it happens. Rejected, abandoned.
Let us throw in a sprinkling of PAS and the daughter he loves refuses to speak to him. For years.
He is the common denominator, he tells himself. Used to taking responsibilty he blames himself. He sees himself as bad. The rage now is overwhelming. Directed inward as much as outward. But the discipline enables him to become a recluse from the world. It prevents him from taking up a gun and slaughtering.
There but for the Grace……
April 28, 2008 at 7:13 am
panic said,
April 28, 2008 at 10:05 am
Denise Noe said,
There are many stages of life, Denise, that are ‘crucial’. It is only in the last hundred years or so that we have latched onto the effects of ‘externals’ on the internals of the soul. We have fixated on early childhhood and largely ignore what happens to mature, intact and balanced minds and souls with later damages.
There does seem to be some (largely speculative) persuasive ‘conventional wisdom’ linking early (pre-cognitive age) abandonment to an inability to love later on. Or at least, to love as we approve. It is part of that now convention that the brain has ‘plastic’ periods where events can alter or predispose its architecture. I say speculative because it has not actually been seen. No one has ‘examined’ the brains of three-month old babies and compared them with themselves later as thirty year olds who fail to love - let alone kill.>>
(Denise) What comes earliest is important because what is learned later on is built upon it. Did you read my article on the notorious Handcuff Man? I think it’s quite possible that in the earliest part of his life, the infancy before he was adopted, he was not regularly cuddled or cooed to and that this early deprivation may have meant that the connections forming normal empathy were not put in place in his brain.
amfortas: But it does not need a ‘plastic’ period to alter key architectural modes of the brain. Intense training can do it in adulrhood. ( I would hazard that a pilot’s brain after ten years of flying has altered significantly. Or an orchestral musician for that matter).>>
(Denise) We agree.
While the 15% serial killer figure startles, there are the other 85% not explained by adoption. Abandonment and rejection in later life may also have a devastating effect. Maybe even produce such rage as to produce one-off killers from otherwise mild and warm people.>>
(Denise) Indeed, serial murder can’t be entirely explained by adoption — even when the murderers are adoptees. However, when a population is so over-represented in serial murder, it is likely there is a special problem there.
amfortas: We live in a modern world where men, the majority of convicted criminals, are routinely rejected and abandoned, often with extreme cruelty and with the connivance of ‘Authorities’. Most men are ordinarily good. They work hard, they love, they sacrifice their dreams for the reality of their wives and children. Their souls generally exhibit its inner dignity and wholesomeness. But with easy abandon, so many of these ordinary, rounded men get speared in the back by the ones they love.
You have told us a little about yourself from time to time. The events in your life. The interactions, deeply affecting interactions, with people in close loving realtionships with you. You let it dribble out. Some have been very painful. I wonder, sometimes what affect those mattters had on the Denise you let us see. I haven’t read of you running amok with a knife. Yet.
(Denise) No, I haven’t run amok with a knife and am probably less likely to than the average person. However, I am severely disabled by the traumas I suffered growing up and continue to be disabled.
April 28, 2008 at 10:40 am
DrDamage said,
It is more than possible, IMO, that if this had happened, he would never have said anything about it. Shame and misplaced guilt (regarding the hypothetical rape that is, not his own acts) could easily have led him to conceal it even when on trial.
April 29, 2008 at 5:30 am
amfortas said,
It seems to me that marriage dissolution, particularly afer a long marriage (I mean that as more than say, 10 years) would be a suitable field to study.
It is now more common than war or childhood abuse.
It has Unique elements:
the Deliberate and Known betrayal by loved ones;
Rejection from a life fully experienced, introspectively, cognitively and emotionally;
Abandonment from the same;
Assistance and Encouragemet to cruelty from society;
Enforcement with cruelty by Authorities;
Continuation;
Punitive Financial Damage despite Innocence.
It is a life and mind affecting HORROR.
April 29, 2008 at 7:09 am