Portrait of a Poisoner

"Murder most foul," wrote Shakespeare of the poisoning of Hamlet's father, the King of Denmark, "most foul, strange, and unnatural." Even William Shakespeare might have trouble imagining a crime fouler, stranger and more unnatural than the Tylenol poisonings in Illinois. "This killer is so unusual," says Clinical Psychologist Samuel Roll of the University of New Mexico, "that our guidelines just don't work."

Who could be capable of such an act? What does the murderer hope to gain? What are the causes of such deranged behavior? These are the questions occupying police, psychologists and psychiatrists as they try, mostly without success, to form a psychological portrait of the poisoner.

Psychologists and psychiatrists agree on only a few points, and even these are highly speculative. First, the murderer is likely to be a loner, isolated and unnoticed, with few if any friends. He is probably low in selfesteem, paranoid and hypersensitive, taking offense at real or imagined slights from those around him.

Unlike the textbook-case mass murderer, who is often a paranoid schizophrenic, the Tylenol killer is apparently not disabled by delusions or incapacitated by hallucinations. Indeed, the killer's ability to handle cyanide and put it into small capsules indicates that he is meticulous, well organized and scientifically acute. Says Dr. Shervert Frazier, chief psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.: "He knows how to carry out actions in a goal-oriented, purposeful way."

Psychologists suggest that the killer is a "borderline" personality, someone who can function nearly normally in the day-to-day world. Like John Hinckley, who was also described as "borderline," the Tylenol killer can appear outwardly conventional. He may undergo transient psychosis intermixed with healthy intervals. Herbert Quay, professor of psychology at the University of Miami, notes chillingly: "My guess is that there are people around the killer right now who think he or she is odd, but not a threat to their lives."

According to Chris Hatcher, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, the personality of the arsonist or bomber, rather than the mass murderer, may be the most appropriate model for understanding the Tylenol murderer. "Other killers," he says, "have a certain satisfaction in stalking their victims. But this is a much more technically oriented crime; the killer does not perceive as clearly the actual death of his victims." Who gets killed appears to be a matter of indifference. Even gunmen like Charles Whitman, who killed 16 people from his perch in a Texas tower in 1966, have more direct contact with their victims. Rarely have the time and distance between murderous act and deadly result been greater. Anonymous poisoning is a remote-control crime, allowing the killer to feel omnipotent by rendering the public terrifyingly powerless.

Although the individual may be expressing "global" or unfocused rage, he is far more likely to be obsessed by redressing a grievance. The grievance may be against the drug company, doctors, Tylenol users or even some specific individual. Unlike the Son of Sam, who terrorized New York women in 1976 and 1977, he is not striking out against a particular type of victim, but an impersonal object or institution. According to Dr. Daniel Blazer, associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, he may be a "disgruntled employee" with a "deep sense of being wronged." Like Mad Bomber George Metesky, who nursed a grievance against his former employer, Consolidated Edison, for more than 20 years, the Tylenol killer may be attempting to right matters according to his own perverted sense of justice and morality. He may even be trying to demonstrate the danger of buying pills over the counter. Says Blazer: "He may feel he is doing us a favor .. . thinking a few people can get hurt so that more people will be helped."

Psychiatrists argue persuasively that criminals actually hope to be caught, and it has been suggested that the Tylenol plot could unravel in a way that leads to the killer's front door. Says Dr. Donald Greaves, chairman of the psychiatry department at Evanston Hospital: "A significant number of killers secretly seek destruction. They want the recognition and sense of fame they receive from their acts." Yet thus far the killer has left no clues, no letters, no hints, no demands, no hidden pleas for help. "The fact that the crime is both grandiose and anonymous is not a contradiction in terms," says Dr. William James, director of the Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts. Only someone suffering guilt wants to be caught, yet if the killer is a sociopath, he feels no guilt. In that event, authorities know, finding him will be that much more difficult.

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