I was recently made aware of an exceptionally gruesome murder of a young woman in New Zealand. The victim, twenty-two-year-old Sophie Elliott, was brutally and repeatedly stabbed to death 216 times in her own bedroom, allegedly by her on-again-off-again boyfriend, who is said to have also severely mutilated her lips, breasts and genitals. The victim's mother reportedly was in the home at the time of the attack.
The accused killer is one of Sophie's former tutors-turned-lover from university, ten years her senior. Stunned New Zealanders are struggling to comprehend how such a bright, attractive, successful young man with no known prior criminal history could conceivably commit such a horrific crime. Some psychologically-inclined kiwis speculate that the presumed perpetrator exhibits many of the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder.
Much has been posted here already about narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder, and how it plays out in interpersonal relations, both by myself and other PT bloggers. Of course, ethically, as a forensic psychologist, I cannot formally diagnose a defendant I've never even observed or interviewed. I can, however, share with readers what I do know about such violent offenders in general and address some of the psychological, forensic and philosophical questions raised by shocking evil deeds such as this.
From what I have read about it, this vicious assault appears to have been precipitated by the victim's attempt to terminate her relationship with the alleged killer. In reviewing the information available to me on the internet, I couldn't help being reminded of the sensational O.J. Simpson saga some years ago here in the United States. Simpson was finally found civilly liable in 1997 for the deaths of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, after being declared not guilty in the 1994 criminal murder trial. (He is currently back in jail after being recently convicted of other unrelated crimes in Nevada.) It seems Simpson's wife was at that time also attempting to extricate herself from their volatile, on again-off again relationship, which included both verbal and physical abuse. It has been reported that Nicole Brown Simpson's body was so badly butchered by multiple slashing and stabbing that she was nearly decapitated. And both cases appear to have been premeditated acts as opposed to spontaneous and impulsive crimes of passion.
In this nasty New Zealand case, there was reportedly a previous history of the alleged offender tending, as a student, to fly into rages when not receiving the grades he believed he deserved, and a later pattern of verbally and sexually abusive aggression in his stormy, relatively brief romantic relationship with the victim. And there were reportedly other possible indications in his behavior of both arrogant, haughty, narcissistic grandiosity as well as potential paranoid and antisocial traits. And then there was the ethical impropriety of the teacher-student romance to begin with. So why were these red flags seemingly ignored? Hindsight in such tragic cases is always 20-20. Who could have ever predicted this calamity? But pseudoinnocence--the naïve inability or unwillingness to perceive the potentiality for evil in others or ourselves--is one possible explanation. Such blind optimism about human nature and denial of the human capacity for destructiveness makes us all the more vulnerable to evil.
It seems likely that in both of these cases, one primary motivation may have been the classic "If I can't have you then nobody can." The victim in the New Zealand case had supposedly ended the relationship a week prior to being killed, and a few days later had communicated about her new friendship with another man on the internet for all to see, including the accused perpetrator. If one takes the accused at his supposed word about why he killed the victim, this appears to be a crime of retaliation and revenge. And I would surmise he was indeed furious with the victim for causing him psychological pain. This kind of commonly well-camouflaged yet intense and over-reactive anger could be construed as "narcissistic rage." Pathological or malignant narcissism is inextricably rooted in anger, rage and the compulsive craving for retribution.
From whence stems narcissistic rage? It is typically a response to so-called narcissistic wounding resulting from traumatic or inadequate parenting, particularly prior to five years of age. It should be noted that in such cases, inadequate parenting includes failure to provide appropriate loving limits and boundaries to children, resulting in what are colloquially called "spoiled brats." In these cases, we see an unchecked infantile egoism never sufficiently socialized, and therefore, never moderated. Deprivation, neglect or emotional trauma during this delicate developmental milestone results in a distorted perception of both themselves and the world. A great deal of what neurotic narcissism disguises--and few are fully free from it--is our unresolved infantile injuries, frustrations, anger, resentment and rage. To paraphrase Freud, the innocence of children is mainly due to weakness of limb.
Cutting off or mutilating the victim's erogenous zones (lips, breasts and genitals) could be a killer's way of trying to annihilate the erotic power of what was once the object of his greatest pleasure-turned-greatest pain. When as adults, such deeply damaged individuals have their self-inflated, grandiose persona pierced or punctured by others in their academic, love or work life, they lash out angrily, even viciously--and sometimes violently. So despite the presumed perpetrator's reportedly calm demeanor prior to and immediately following the stabbing, I suspect there was powerful daimonic passion underlying and driving his evil deed. He was conceivably a veritable Mr. Hyde that day, acting out his usually more outwardly well-controlled and hidden narcissistic rage concealed behind his polished, respectable public persona.
For the public and especially for jurors, such defendants pose a perplexing puzzle. On the one hand, they see Dr. Jekyll : the kind, intelligent, attractive, charming, talented, civilized individual. When confronted with the horrendously evil deeds with which these individuals are charged, people tend to find it exceedingly difficult to reconcile the two. The incongruence of good and evil in the same person is just too great a dichotomy for some to psychologically overcome. It engenders a powerful form of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when two contradictory realities are confronted, causing a rejection of one over the other in order to reduce discomfort, tension, stress and anxiety evoked by these seemingly irreconcilable polarities. This is, in my opinion, part of what happened in the original O. J. Simpson murder trial. Though in the upcoming trial of Sophie Elliott‘s accused killer, the legal question will likely not be whether the defendant committed the diabolical deed or not, but rather, what his evidently dangerous state of mind was when doing so.
