Whoever fights monsters...

Background characteristics of a psychopathic child include:

• A mother exposed to deprivation or abuse as a child
• A transient father
• A mother who cannot maintain stable emotional connection with her child
• Low birth weight or birth complications
• Unusual reactions to emotional pain
• Lack of attachment to adults
• Failure to make eye contact when touched
• Low frustration tolerance
• Sense of self-importance
• Transient relationships throughout childhood, or close association with another like him or her
• Cruelty toward others
• Animal abuse
• Lack of remorse for hurting someone
• Lack of empathy in friendships

Children who grow up in a violent environment are also at risk for pathological development. During schools years, children develop social skills that will be put to use as an adult, and violence stunts the mental and emotional growth process:

• Lack of safety harms cognitive functioning
• Children who live in fear often repress their feelings, which hinders their ability to empathize
• Children exposed to violence have a difficult time concentrating
• Feelings of helplessness pervade the lives of those who are abused
• Constant stress in the environment produces symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

There is also a correlation between certain factors and the risk of violence among adolescents:

• Past violent behavior
• Substance abuse
• Aggressive peers
• Family aggression
• Social stress
• Character or mental disorders
• Access to weapons
• Focused anger
• Low degree of resilience

Self-worth, resilience, hope, intelligence, and empathy are key to building the ability to control impulses, manage anger, and solve conflicts, Without these skills, one cannot function properly in.

Violence need not occur in the home to have a detrimental effect on a child’s mental and emotional outlook, either. Violence at school may also cause a borderline psychopathic child to cross the line.

Diane Downs

In 1983, Diane Downs shot her three children, killing one of them. Diane’s children had been in the way of her relationship with a new man. 

Diane shot her children and then drove them to the hospital - claiming a man had carjacked her. She had been shot in the arm. One of the children were dead upon arrival at the hospital. It did not take long for the police to figure out that her story was a lie. She is in prison, but has been eligible for parole twice, and was denied both times - most recently in 2010. 

(A decade later, Susan Smith would use this same story when she killed her children. )

Autopsy Findings

FINAL DIAGNOSIS:

I. Ligature strangulation

A. Circumferential ligature withassociated ligature furrow of neck

B. Abrasions and petechial hemorrhages,neck

C. Petechial hemorrhages, conjunctivalsurfaces of eyes and skin of face

II. Craniocerebral injuries

A. Scalp contusion

B. Linear, comminuted fracture ofright side of skull

C. Linear pattern of contusionsof right cerebral hemisphere

D. Subarachnoid and subdural hemorrhage

E. Small contusions, tips of temporallobes

III. Abrasion of right cheek

IV. Abrasion/contusion, posteriorright shoulder

V. Abrasions of left lower backand posterior left lower leg

VI. Abrasion and vascular congestionof vaginal mucosa

VII. Ligature of right wrist

TOXICOLOGIC STUDIES

blood ethanol - none detected

blood drug screen - no drugs detected

CLINICOPATHOLOGIC CORRELATION: Causeof death of this six year old female is asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma.

John E. Meyer, M.D.

Pathologist

jn/12/27/96

JonBenet Ramsey, photo of the back of her neck after the garrote was removed.

Autopsy report states the official cause of death was “asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma.”

JonBenet Ramsey - Time of Death

Determination of the time of death was not made.

The doctor who performed the autopsy released the following statement:

Note from Dr. John Meyer August13, 1997

Contrary to several media reports over the past few days, the autopsy report on JonBenet Ramsey does not and has never contained information on the estimated time of death. I have not been able to determine the original source of the statement that the report contained the estimated time of death, but it certainly did not come from this office.

The time of an “unwitnessed” death is very difficult to determine with any precision, and at best is an estimate based not only on autopsy findings but also on investigative information.

I consider estimation of time of death to be an interpretive finding rather than a factual statement, and it is not this Office’s practice to include this estimate as part of any autopsy report. As has been stated in the past, it would also be inappropriate for me, as a potential expert and material witness, to make interpretive statements prior to testifying in court.

John E. Meyer, M.D.

Boulder County Coroner

An artist’s drawing of what Jon Benet Ramsey’s body looked like when she was found.

Krystal Surles was 10-years old when Tommy Lynn Sells slit her throat with a 12” boning knife.

Krystal was spending the night the Harris home, friends of the family. Sells first attacked 13-year Katy Harris. When he cut off her clothes and started touching her, she called for Krystal to tell her mother. Sells had not realized Katy wasn’t alone in her room. Krystal watched as Sells slit Katy’s throat, twice. Katy was stabbed a total of 16 times.

Then he went after 10-year old Krystal.

“He reached over and cut my throat,” she said. “I just lay there and pretended I was dead. If he knew I was alive, he would come back and kill me for sure.”

When Sells left, Krystal ran to a neighbour’s home, 1/4 mile away. She could not speak, as Sells had cut her windpipe. She wrote three notes for Herb Betz, the neighbour:

• “The Harrises are hurt.”
• “Tell them to hurry.”
• “Will I live?”

Betz thought Krystal would die before help arrived. But the little girl survived. When she awoke from a lengthy surgery, she was very anxious to give the police what information she had, and even though she could not yet speak, she began writing down Sells’ description. Her description and the subsequent police sketch led to Sells’ capture.

Johnny Gosch

On Sept. 5, 1982, Johnny Gosch vanished while delivering the Sunday issue of the Des Moines Register. His parents called the police, but their response was delayed due to a customary three-day waiting period for missing persons. Johnny was never seen again, but his disappearance drew national attention and resulted in a new law in Iowa and other states that allowed for immediate attention from law enforcement when children are reported missing.

The case received publicity in 2006 when photographs possibly showing Gosch in captivity were supposedly left at his mother’s doorstep.

Johnny Gosch is still missing.