Claudia Moscovici 
Hare and Babiak call the psychopath “the perfect invisible predator. Like chameleons, psychopaths can hide who they really are and mask their true intentions from their victims for extended periods” (Snakes in Suits, 39). If you have any doubts about that, all you have to do is glance at the news. As I was writing this book on psychopathy, I could barely keep up with the frequent headlines about individuals who have committed unthinkable crimes, for no apparent reason other than to cause harm. For awhile, the story about Phillip Garrido, a sexual predator who is accused of kidnapping 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard, turning her into his sex slave and forcing her to have children with him, dominated the national headlines. While humiliating Jaycee and locking her and their children in shacks at the back of his house, he also regarded her as his beautiful trophy. Neighbors report that Garrido handed out a card featuring the kidnapped young woman listed as a model. His second wife seems to have been complicit with his evil deeds. By way of contrast, Christine Murphy, Garrido’s first wife, ran away from him. She told the show Inside Edition that her ex-husband is a monster, who is “capable of doing anything.” Murphy also reported that he once tried to gouge out her eyes with a safety pin when another man flirted with her. Some of his neighbors described Garrido as “strange.” But many social predators appear to be normal and fit right in.
To offer another example, several months ago Philip Markoff was arrested on the charge of being the alleged Craigslist killer. Markoff was a 22-year old medical student at Boston University. He’s accused of murdering Julissa Brisman, whom he met on Craigslist, and of kidnapping several other women. The evidence found on Markoff’s computer, the “trophies” or “souvenirs” he kept from his victims to relive his crimes, as well as the testimony offered by some of the surviving victims, lead police to feel quite confident that they caught the right guy. But you wouldn’t know it from talking to his fiancée and friends. Markoff appeared to be a very likable, clean-cut, charming and well-adjusted person. His fiancée, Megan McAllister, who’s obviously deeply in love with him, described him in an email to ABC news as “a beautiful person inside and out.” Strangely, and no doubt unwittingly, she also echoed the famous last words of Hitchcock’s Psycho in stating that Markoff “wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
My research on psychopathy and related personality disorders suggests that whatever appears good in a psychopath is an act intended to attract potential targets and win their trust in order to use and harm them. Building a romantic relationship with a psychopath is like building a house on a foundation of quicksand. Everything shifts and sinks in a relatively short period of time. Seemingly caring, and often flattering, attention turns into jealousy, domination and control. Enjoying time together becomes isolation from others. Romantic gifts are replaced with requests, then with demands. Apparent selflessness and other-regarding gestures turn into the most brutal selfishness one can possibly imagine. Confidential exchanges and mutual honesty turn out to be filled with lies about everything: the past, the present as well as the hollow promises for the future. The niceness that initially seemed to be a part of the seducer’s character is exposed as strategic and manipulative, conditional upon acts of submission to his will. Tenderness diminishes and is eventually displaced by a perversion that hints at an underlying, and menacing, sadism. Mutuality, equality and respect—everything you thought the relationship was founded upon—becomes replaced with hierarchies and double standards in his favor. You can bet that if you’re involved with a psychopath, particularly if he’s also a sex addict, the fidelity he expects of you is not what he’s willing to offer you or any other person. Fidelity becomes nothing more than a one-way street, as he secretly prowls around for innumerable other sexual conquests. As the relationship with the psychopath unfolds, Dr. Jekyll morphs into Mr. Hyde.
Dangerous Liaisons/Legături Periculoase, Editura Vremea, http://www.edituravremea.ro/leg–turi-periculoase–cum-s–recuno–ti-un-psihopat–i-s–scapi-din-mrejele-lui
