Psychopathic children: 5 sad cases of underage murderers
Many psychologists and psychiatrists have questioned whether it is possible for children to be psychopaths. These can be mischievous and, in some cases, very cruel to other children. But how can it be that they commit murders and show no repentance?
Since their brains are still developing and their personalities are still being forged, It is very complicated to detect the line between mischief and evil . For this reason, and in the case of murders of underage children, health professionals have tried to develop screening tools for children. psychopathic children.
The problem arises because the tests that are on the market are questionnaires that predict a possible psychopathy in adult life, but not during childhood. An example is the scale of detection in children, between 6 and 11 years, of the features prone to psychopathy in adulthood, created by Paul Frick and Robert Hare, which is called "Scale for the screening of antisocial development".
Causes of psychopathy
As with the questionnaires, a large part of the studies conducted to find out more about psychopaths have focused on the adult population. But to understand this psychopathology, it is necessary to focus on children, because that age is key in the evolution of the disorder . No one doubts that the origin of psychopathy is found in childhood and adolescence.
From psychology it is understood that the feature of emotional insensitivity is closely related to the presence of antisocial behavior and behavior disorders; so it can be a predictor of the development of psychopathy.
Neuroscience has also provided information to answer questions that help to better understand the disorder, and from this field it is stated that there is a reduced response of the amygdala in young people with presence of emotional insensitivity trait and high scores in psychopathy. An unusual response has also been found in the area of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
Problems in socialization
The forensic psychologist Alex Grandío, in an article of Psychology and Mind called "Psychopathy: what happens in the mind of the psychopath?", explains: "The psychopaths have not developed an awareness or habits of respect for the laws and regulations that prevent other people from perpetuating antisocial acts". This is important to understand, since the dysfunctions presented by children and adults with psychopathic characteristics they make their socialization very complicated .
The idea that a child is not inherently empathic and that, by contrast, is manipulative and dangerous to society can be difficult for many individuals to understand. But until the real story of the lives of these murderers has been heard, in which there are often abuses, ill-treatment, broken families, etc., it seems impossible to visualize the brutality of the crimes of many of them. Therefore, the behavior of these small murderers is, at least in part, a product of their environment, which must be taken into account to understand the behavior of many of these murderous children.
Five chilling cases of psychopathic children
Next we reveal a list that contains some of the most terrible murders committed by minors .
1. Amarjeet Sada (8 years old)
It is hard to assimilate that a child is capable of killing a person, but when he commits multiple crimes, it is almost impossible to digest. This is what happened in the case of the small Amarjeet Silk . But the serious thing was not only the murder, but the parents of this little murderer, even knowing that his son had killed two people, covered him up.
Amarjeet was only eight years old when he was arrested in India in June 2007. He was accused of killing three babies, two of them from his family . The first of his victims was a cousin of hers who was six months old. His second victim, also his cousin, with less than a year received a beating that cost him his life. Both crimes were covered up by his parents, and he probably would not have been arrested if he had not committed the murder of a six-month-old neighbor.
2. Eric Smith (13 years old)
Eric Smith He used to ride his bicycle through his town every day. When four-year-old Derrick Robie was found dead, no one suspected him. The brutality of his murder makes it one of the most chilling cases.
Derrick's body was found in a forest not far from his home and the park where he used to play.He was taken from there, where he was hanged and beaten on the head with several rocks.
When Smith was interrogated, the boy not only did not care about the case, but also enjoyed the attention of being questioned . He was charged with second-degree murder and is still serving time in prison.
3. Jordan Brown (11 years old)
Even though the motive behind his murder is not yet known, jealousy seems to have been the cause of the crime he committed Jordan Brown , who killed her father's partner in 2009, when she was pregnant.
The victim was shot in the back while lying on the bed . When her four-year-old daughter saw the body, Jordan was at school acting as if nothing had happened. Kenzie Houk, the victim, did not get along with Jordan, who warned him that he would kill him before the event occurred.
4. Carl Newton Mahan (6 years old)
It seems impossible to imagine that a six-year-old child is capable of killing. In May of 1929 Carl Newton and his friend Cecil Van Hoose (8 years old) were looking for scrap metal to collect. Cecil stole from Carl the one he had gotten by hitting her in the head with her. After what happened, Carl decided to take revenge. Instead of fighting, he went to his house to get his father's gun. So, He went back for Cecil and shot him point-blank after telling him : "I'm going to shoot you." Cecil died right there.
Carl is considered one of the youngest assassins in history. He was sentenced to 15 years of reformatory, but another judge considered it inappropriate to judge a boy that age and was acquitted.
5. Cayetano Santos "Petiso Orejudo" (9 years old)
Cayetano Santos (better known as Petiso Orejudo), an Argentine boy, committed his first murder in 1906 when He killed a three-year-old girl named Maria Rosa Face . He abducted her at the door of a warehouse and, after a failed strangulation, buried her alive in a vacant lot.
In September 1908, with only 8 days of difference, he tried to kill two children of 2 years. The first, Severino González Caló, was saved from being drowned in the pool of a winery. The second, Julio Botte, was rescued by his mother after the small serial killer burned his eyelids with a cigarette. After these events, he was sent to the Colonia de Menores Marcos Paz to be reformed, but over the years he left there with a psychological picture that was even less rosy.
At the time of being released, in 1912 c began to carry out assassinations without ceasing . On January 25, he asphyxiated Arturo Laurora, 13 years old. On March 7 he burned alive Reyna Bonita Vanicoff, three years old, after burning his clothes. During the month of November, he tried in less than 2 weeks to hang Roberto Russo and to kill Carmen Ghittone and Catalina Naulener, but he was not successful. Two weeks later, he tied up, beat up, hanged and nailed a 4-inch nail to Gesualdo Giordano's temple.
In November of 1914 a judge ordered his internment in the Hospicio de las Mercedes. There he attacked two patients. One of them was invalid and the other one ended up in a wheelchair. After these crimes, he was imprisoned until he died in the same prison.
