Most "Fascinating" Sociopaths of 2008

by Michelle Says So | December 18, 2008 at 04:34 pm

1743 views | 37 Recommendations | 11 comments

It's the end of the year, and just like Barbara Walters picks her "Most Fascinating People" of the year, I think we should point out the top sociopaths of 2008.

Some have evaded justice. Some are being charged for their crimes. Some are finally paying their price. Some have been ignored.

Top Five Sociopaths of 2008 (In no particular order)

Joran van der Sloot
Drew Peterson
OJ Simpson
Casey Anthony
Gary Michael Hilton

Joran van der Sloot

Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch 21-year old has evaded Aruban and Dutch authorities for crimes involving sex trafficking in Thailand, and secretly confessing to killing 18-year-old Alabama honor student, Natalee Holloway in May 2005, while Holloway was vacationing in Aruba with her high school graduation class.

For over three years, Joran van der Sloot has sent the family of Natalee and the media on a wild goose chase trying to obtain the truth as to what happened to Natalee. During his initial incarceration in Aruba, he had nearly 20 different stories as to what happened. After being released on "lack of evidence" by the Aruban/Dutch Judges, Joran fled to the Netherlands to attend college.

However, Joran didn't do much studying. He started hanging out with an undercover "drug friend" named Patrick van der Eem who was hired by Dutch crime reporter, Peter De Vries. Joran was secretly video taped confessing as to how Natalee died and what he did with her body. He stated that he believed she was overdosing, foaming at the mouth, and even mimicked her shaking. He revealed to Van der Eem that he had a "friend" with a boat that took her approximately 2 miles out to sea and dump her body in the ocean.

When Peter de Vries reported the case and showed the hidden videos, Joran claimed he lied in order to impress Van der Eem and was "high on pot". He then fled to Thailand where he set up a sex trafficking operation in Bangkok, and again was trailed by crime fighter Peter de Vries. Most recently he was caught on hidden video setting up girls to move and "work" in the Netherlands in the sex trade business. This case is still pending and Joran is on the loose.

Immediately aft the sex trafficking scandal, he went on Fox TV and reported to Greta van Susteren that he didn't kill Natalee, but arranged for the sale of Natalee in the amount of $10,000 to a man he claims not to know, but met in the casino in Aruba several times. He revealed that his father, Paulus van der Sloot paid the police $50,000 to keep their mouths shut after Natalee went missing.

Eight hours later Joran emailed Greta and told her he made the entire story up.

Click HERE for everything on the Natalee Holloway case.

Drew Peterson

Drew Peterson, a former Bolingbrook, Illinois police officer has a problem with relationships. Not only does he like them young, but he gets bored easily. Some ex-wives escaped with their lives. Two did not. It was just released that Peterson has replaced his current missing wife, Stacy. Tanning salon worker, Kim Matuska, 23, is headed down the same path by agreeing to marry Peterson even though he is still named the "person of interest" in Stacy's disappearance.

His third wife, Kathleen Savio did find her way out the marriage. However, being married or divorced from Drew Peterson doesn't guarantee your life. He's been known to say that he could kill someone and make it look like an accident, which is what he did with Kathleen.

Savio, the mother of Peterson's oldest children, was found dead in an empty bathtub while Peterson was dating Stacy. At the time it was concluded that she "drowned". This year her body was exhumed and world renowned forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Baden, did a second autopsy, finding massive bruising and blunt force trauma concluding it was a homicide. Even with this evidence, Peterson has not been charged or arrested in connection with Kathleen's death.

Yet he seems to keep collecting wives. You'd think he'd "lay low" for awhile. But sociopaths cannot do that. Especially narcissistic sociopaths.

Click HERE for more information on Drew Peterson

OJ Simpson

13 years to the day, OJ Simpson was sentenced by a Nevada judge to 7-15 years for armed robbery and burglary in an attempt to retain some personal belongings that were supposed to go towards the unpaid judgment in the civil murder case of OJ and Ron Goldman's family.

Now that he is in prison, it is poetic justice for what he did to Ronald Goldman and his ex-wife and mother of his children, Nicole Brown Simpson in 1994. It may not represent the appropriate punishment, but it is punishment. I won't complain about that. Not only is he one of the most well known narcissistic sociopaths in our era, but he was seen playing 18 holes the day before he was thrown off to prison.

Gotta get in that final golf round, right?

Casey Anthony

Right now, who doesn't know who Casey Anthony is? She's the infamous mother who has been "alleged" to have killed her two year old daughter, Caylee. Casey didn't report her missing for a month, and during that month she was seen and photographed at bars, drinking, dancing on the bars and having the time of her live.

Caylee was finally reported missing, not by her mother Casey, but the grandmother, Cindy Anthony. Casey stated that she was told not to involve authorities and that a fictitious nanny "Zani" Gonzales took Caylee. Every recorded moment of Casey Anthony has proven to be complete lies. In addition, searches on Casey's computer consisted of "neck breaking" and "how to make chloroform".

Just days ago,within walking distance of the Anthony home, a skull and bones of a female child were found with duct tape wrapped around the skull with no clothes in a black plastic bag. Evidence found at the scene directed them to close off the Anthony home as a potential crime scene in which they brought out such things as pillows and pesticides.

Although Casey Anthony has not been convicted and is "innocent until proven guilty", there is no venue where she's going to be able to go without finding a decent and impartial jury. She hung herself on her own when she kept talking to the cops before obtaining an attorney.

Gary Michael Hilton

Early on New Year's Day 2008, Meredith Emerson, 24, and her dog went for a hike on the trails of the Appalachians in Georgia.

Gary Michael Hilton casually followed her, and then attacked her demanding her ATM card. He held her captive and she fiercely fought him for four days deep inside the trails of the mountain.

To keep her from running away, he usually kept a chain or nylon rope around her neck and she was often tethered to a tree or padlocked inside the van. When they slept, Emerson was tied to him so he would know if she tried to escape.

After four days he sent several blows to her head which proved lethal and then proceeded to decapitate her. He let her dog free because he stated that "he couldn't kill a dog." When he was caught, he led police to Meredith's body telling authorities he wanted to kill a woman because they were easy prey; however, he stated that she was really strong and put up a fight.

On February 29, he was charged with the murder of Cheryl Dunlap in Florida. Hilton is also being investigated for the murder of John and Irene Bryant, who disappeared while hiking in North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest on October 21, 2007.

Click HERE for more information on Hilton.

http://michellesaysso.blogspot.com

0 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend This comment thread is now closed

Amy Judd

at 16:46 on December 18th, 2008

An interesting list - definitely a little depressing - good job though!

JPZingher (not verified)

at 20:54 on December 18th, 2008

Actually, Hilton's only one of several sociopaths who follow the same pattern. For about a decade, Hilton was killing people in national parks and forests and living on their ATM cards. Bruce Mendenhall, a cross country trucker now in jail in Nashville, was caught with the blood of ten different victims in the cab of his semi-tractor, and the latest victim's ATM card. After that, you have the Town Mall Killer in Boca Raton. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24920708/ No one knows for sure how many of these kinds of "specialists" are out there because the crime pattern is not tracked, though it would be easy to do so. Since the pattern isn't tracked, the police and the public have no idea that they're even there. It's clearly an economic motive. In fact, the "express kidnapping" is the only violent crime that pays the criminal more money for committing a greater harm to his victim. He gets one withdrawal and if there is enough money in the account, he then either holds the victim hostage for a time while he makes more withdrawals or he kills the victim and cleans out the account.

lefty_liberated

at 21:25 on December 18th, 2008

Is it worthwhile making any distinction between socio and psychopaths? This is a neat article.

Here are my contributions to the list:

How about the guy being investigated for the disappearance of a girl at a night club in nyc. He has a sordid history of leaping out at women and grouping them while masturbating etc. The girl had only been here a few months from Texas and was very young.
Link

There are some political sociopaths you could probably list, too (Palin? - The clothes, killing endangered species, using her office to affect personal family agendas upon public officials)

Cheny for authorizing torture: Link

Bush for defiing the constitution.
Link

Governor of Illinois.

Now there's also a guy who pulled off a 50 Billion dollar ponzi scheme in NYC. Link

There's the guy who kept his daughter in the basement her whole adult life: Link

chanaka

at 22:23 on December 18th, 2008

This is an interesting stuff. Very Cool Michelle.

panzerlawyer

at 22:53 on December 18th, 2008

I pick Nancy Pelosi

lefty_liberated

at 19:45 on December 19th, 2008

Only because her lack of resistance to Bush. Sociopath by association.

Paschen

at 23:13 on December 18th, 2008

Well, it does give them there 15 minutes of fame.

Art_By_Alida

at 08:21 on December 19th, 2008

Excellent post....I love it.

Tina Kells

at 16:45 on December 29th, 2008

This is a great post! While at UBC I had the great fortune to have studied under Dr. Robert Hare, one of the formost authorities on psychopathy and sociopathy in the world. I think it is important to point out that while most serial killers do exceed the minimum standard for a diagnosis of psychopathy as set out in the PCL-R not all socio/psychopaths are violent killers and the non-violent brand can be just as harmful, if not more so...

The most startling finding to emerge from Hare's work is that the popular image of the psychopath as a remorseless, smiling killer -- Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olson, John Wayne Gacy -- while not wrong, is incomplete. Yes, almost all serial killers, and most of Canada's dangerous offenders, are psychopaths, but violent criminals are just a tiny fraction of the psychopaths around us. Hare estimates that 1 percent of the population -- 300,000 people in Canada -- are psychopaths.

He calls them "subclinical" psychopaths. They're the charming predators who, unable to form real emotional bonds, find and use vulnerable women for sex and money (and inevitably abandon them). They're the con men like Christophe Rocancourt, and they're the stockbrokers and promoters who caused Forbes magazine to call the Vancouver Stock Exchange (now part of the Canadian Venture Exchange) the scam capital of the world. (Hare has said that if he couldn't study psychopaths in prisons, the Vancouver Stock Exchange would have been his second choice.) A significant proportion of persistent wife beaters, and people who have unprotected sex despite carrying the AIDS virus, are psychopaths. Psychopaths can be found in legislatures, hospitals, and used-car lots. They're your neighbour, your boss, and your blind date. Because they have no conscience, they're natural predators. If you didn't have a conscience, you'd be one too.

pat innes (not verified)

at 02:04 on February 15th, 2009

Good point!

The fact that the media only presents the murdering and serial killing Sociopaths/Psychopaths/Narcissists does an incredible injustice to society. Until I'd met my own shape-shifting, altruistic, narcissist - my own private hell, I thought they were all killers too.

I daresay the majority of S/P/N's spend their lives doing everything short of killing people, and making their victims wish they were dead in the process. Trying to process their words and actions in a normal way, in a normal mind, will make a normal person doubt everything (welcome to "crazy"). It's not possible to think or feel like most of us do and comprehend how they work - expecting to put "crazy" in at one end and getting "sane and caring" out the other is not gonna happen.

Once they have you in their craziness, then the real fun begins. Normal people stop and say, "Hey, wait a minute, what's going on here?", and guess what? Suddenly you are the crazy one. The smear campaign begins amongst friends, family, and co-workers - if they're good they'll be very subtle about it. The more confused you become, the more they abuse you for being easy to confuse - it's sick. By the time it all blows up, or you get assaulted, they've managed to convince everyone that you are the psycho.

Don't expect many folks to be there for you. "He's such a great guy", or "She does so much for her family", They'll often be described as pillars of the community, volunteers, good church going people..."He'd give you the shirt off his back". It's all a facade.

You can't fix something that isn't there - you can't make someone have a soul or conscience.

There needs to be more education in the media about the everyday garden variety S/P/N - the ones that kill everything but your body...And if you just happen to commit suicide as a result, BONUS! It's the ultimate compliment to their technique. They get to use it to prove just how psycho you were...more fodder to feed the next victim about how their partners took advantage of them, were crazy, "and oh, poor me, this one commited suicide".