Right Under Their Noses...

In my last post I described situations and incidences where criminals used psychology against us. Today I tell a story where psychology was used on both sides of the law.

On the evening of September 6, 2011, three-year-old Kienan Hebert’s parents put him down for the night, unaware in the morning he would be gone. Initially authorities believed that he may have wandered off in his sleep and began searching the woods nearby their British Columbia home.

His disappearance followed a failed abduction within the community the same night. After discovering the theory of him wandering proved false, investigators deemed it a kidnapping and began looking for suspects. The first and only suspect’s name was Randall Hopley, a 46-year-old known criminal (including a charge of sexual assault and attempted child molestation) in the same community. The search continued in the nearby woods and an Amber Alert was put out, as was a manhunt for Hopley, now considered a fugitive. After discovering the seriousness of their son’s situation, Kienan’s parents made a statement to the press, pleading for the return of their son:

Please, bring Kienan to a safe place right now, okay, like a gas station or a store parking lot where he's visibly seen and you can drop him off… We just want him safe. Kienan’s only 3 years old right now and as you know and we know Kienan can’t speak, so he can’t tell us who you are, right? This is your chance, right now, to get away. All we want is Kienan to come back with us and to be safe in our arms again.

Link to the press conference video/article:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110909/amber-alert-bc-boy-110909/

The community-wide search continued and on September 11, Kienan was found on his living room recliner at 3:00 am with no injuries or suspected sexual abuse. It was at this point that criminal psychology came into play and speculation and questions began:

• “How could his audacious abductor get access to a sealed crime scene undetected?” (www.calgaryherald.com);
• “It’s higher risk to bring the child back than it was to take the child in the first place” (www.thestar.com); and
• Kienan’s return followed his parent’s requests very closely. Although denying them the return in a “neutral place,” like said gas station, he was returned to his home.

Immediately, Ernie Allen, a child abduction expert, claimed that Kienan’s reappearing “makes his case almost unique” and that he was “not aware of that happening before.” According to local abduction experts and psychologists, there were three reasons as to why Kienan would have been returned in that fashion. First, they believed that the Amber Alerts and constant media attention the case was receiving were intimidating, causing the abductor to return the boy out of fright. Second, Allen considered the possibility that the parents’ emotional plea may have had an effect on the abductor’s conscience. Finally, according to Stephen Porter, Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Psychological Science and Law at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, the abductor may have acted so boldly in order to show his power and control over the situation, as well as his “superiority over the police and parents”- a theory considered “darker” and “sadistic.” Porter told The Star that in order to take such a risk, the motivation behind it would have to be very powerful. Also, if he was simply going to escape, he would have left Kienan at one of the mentioned “neutral places.” Of course, as excited the community was that Kienan was home safe, the feeling slowly turned to nervousness and fright, knowing that the abductor was still a threat out wandering the streets. People also began to question whether or not the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had knowingly and secretly facilitated the window of opportunity for the abductor to return the boy unharmed and unnoticed, with the intent on capturing him at a later time. This has been described as a good and bad thing: on one side, they purposely put the community at risk, but on the other hand they were guaranteeing the safe return of Kienan. It has been concluded that the RCMP most likely weighed the risks and decided that the return of Kienan unharmed and alive was more important.

As I write this, the original person of interest, Randall Hopley, has been arrested and charged with breaking and entering, abduction of a child, and kidnapping, and will be psychologically evaluated before his next court appearance on November 9, 2011.

So what do I think of it all? Do I believe that Hopley returned Kienan on his own accord, proving his power and confidence, or succumbing to his conscience, or were the RCMP playing a part as well? I believe there are possibilities with every option. I think each theory has good reasoning, but I do also think that The Calgary Herald made the best case, siding with “basic criminal psychology.” The author (unknown) stated that it was a matter of the abductor’s ego that would probably be the main driving force. If he were to leave Kienan in a remote area, the action would do nothing to boost his ego, while taking the huge risk of re-entering the Hebert home to return the child would give him that boost, and enhance his sense of pride. In my experience, humans love being reassured of themselves, love being confident, so this theory wouldn’t come as a surprise. Hopley has yet to say much to anyone, only a few words and nods to his lawyer, so we may never know his true intentions that morning. As this case continues in court, I will definitely follow it, eager to see the outcome, starting with the results of his psych evaluation. Will he even be fit to stand trial? With new information and theories arising every few days, it is assured to be an interesting trial, but one thing is for sure: September 11, 2011 wasn’t just a day of remembrance in the United States, it was also a day of rejoice for one small Canadian community.

References:

http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/theeditorialpage/story.html?id=68347d29-a1ae-4b9c-a92d-3a8671a13305

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110910/bc_amber_alert_update_abduction_attempt_110910?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1052250--kienan-s-return-unusual-and-unprecedented-expert-says

A PSYCHOLOGICAL GAME

We are ALL human. With that said, it should be obvious that the “good guys” are just as susceptible to psychological deception as the “bad guys.” These mind games, or coercive persuasion as it has been referred to in academia, can be found on both sides of the law. According the American Heritage Dictionary, “coercion” is defined as:

1. To force to act or think in a certain manner;
2. To dominate, restrain, or control by force; and
3. To bring about by force.

Those three definitions are a majority of the attributes that explain those that are "coercive" and "manipulative." In addition, Dr. Margaret Singer of UC Berkeley believes that there are seven main tactics that one would use to get the upper psychological hand, including tactics four and five- making the person “re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self” and “creat[ing] a sense of powerlessness.” It may just be that I’m a crime buff, but when I hear these two tactics in particular, I think of movies such as Saw and novels such as And Then There Were None, by none other than Agatha Christie. I am aware that these are fiction, but they are also prime examples of criminals using psychology against everyday people: both involve a subject attempting to turn unaware individuals against each other in a high-stress situation, seeing how they will react upon discovering the identities (and crimes) of the others. It has become a game of every mind versus the other, as well as their own… and if you’ve seen the movie and/or read the book, you know how it all turns out. Dr. Singer explains the reason for the behavior in situations such as these fictional examples, as well as behavior displayed in situations such as the well-known Stanford Prison Experiment:

These tactics of psychological force are applied to such a severe degree that the individual's capacity to make informed or free choices becomes inhibited. The victims become unable to make the normal, wise or balanced decisions which they most likely or normally would have made, had they not been unknowingly manipulated by these coordinated technical processes. The cumulative effect of these processes can be an even more effective form of undue influence than pain, torture, drugs or the use of physical force and physical and legal threats.

In the works of fiction, the characters usually meet their wit’s end and usually end up killing another or being killed. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, the “inmates” and “prison guards” were forced into new positions of being either authoritative or submissive. For many, it was too much to handle and violence ensued. Stanford was just an experiment and the aforementioned situations were just fiction. What would happen if a criminal used psychological tactics against us in real life? We know of instances when they have been used against victims, but how would law enforcement handle being psychologically attacked?

A good group of detectives you could ask would be those who worked the unsolved case of the Zodiac Killer in the late 1960s. The unknown killer isn’t remembered for his high number of kills (only 5 have been confirmed), but rather the way he taunted police, threatened children, and continuously contacted the media and authorities regarding his crime spree. To keep it modern, I guess you could compare him to the Joker in the Dark Knight. According to Michael Taylor of SFGate.com, in order to keep San Francisco law enforcement on their toes, the Zodiac would write to the newspapers “bragging about how clever he was” and threatened to “blow up school buses or shoot children as they got off the bus.”

To this day, Zodiac “experts” are still trying to uncover the identity of the killer, as well as use criminal psychology and profiling to discover what kind of man he was and what caused his actions. Many believe he had a bad upbringing, while others chalk it up to a mental disorder such as Multiple Personality Disorder (Taylor, 2007). This is a perfect example to showcase the fact that the police and authorities aren’t the only ones capable of psychological games. The faceless killer managed to outsmart the police, frighten an entire city, and vanish forever. It will forever haunt those involved, knowing that the Zodiac Killer could still be out there, but what about the present and future? Will there be another case such as this, with criminals getting smarter, and taking notes of past criminals? We can only hope that if it should happen, modern technology and advanced psychological knowledge will be on our side.



References:

Taylor, M. (2007, March 01). Undying legend of a killer. Retrieved from http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-03-01/news/17234971_1_zodiac-case-arthur-leigh-allen-serial

http://www.factnet.org/coercivemindcontrol.html