January 17, 2010
This Man Killed His Family And He Doesn't Know Why
I guess I didn't want any witnesses
Christian Longo was a "successful businessman" who fell on bad times/spent too much money. Too ashamed to admit to his wife he was failing, he tried credit and then theft/forgery/counterfeiting to maintain the image. When he knew the cops were on to him, he did the obvious thing: he strangled his wife while she was on top of him during sex; then strangled his 2 year old daughter who was sleeping on the floor beside their bed; stuffed their bodies in suitcases; then put his other two sleeping kids into their car seats and drove them to a bridge, tied rocks to their feet, and threw them in the river. Then he went to Cancun.
He had the kind of time in Cancun you'd expect: drinking beer, smoking pot, and pretending to be a New York Times reporter (he had always wanted to be one), and having sex with a girl who wanted to be a photojournalist who thought he needed one for his story. Within a month he was caught.
Coincidentally, (or not, depending on your belief in synchronicity;) (or not, depending on whether you believe anything Christian Longo says;) the reporter he was impersonating was simultaneously being outed as having faked an article in the NYT.
Longo was convicted and sentenced to sitting on death row for the rest of his life. But he never confessed. Longo decided he would only tell his story-- the real story, of course-- to Michael Finkel, the reporter he had impersonated.
II.
It's not spoiling much to tell you that Longo is a classic narcissist, but it's worthwhile to go through the examples:
Longo was not a violent or mean person:
Probably, you don't understand how killing people you love so much protects your identity: aren't you now going to be exposed as a murderer? But if you kill your family, then no matter what else happens to you it doesn't matter, because they will never know. You did them a favor: they don't have to live with the pain of knowing you are a fraud.
III.
Even a narcissist is going to feel some remorse when he kills his family, right? It's not like he didn't love them:
IV.
Guilt implies an internal sense of right and wrong. Whether it originates from your religion or your parents or the penal code or Star Wars isn't relevant, only that external rules are then internalized, and you then build an identity around them. So that when you violate them and there is no way anyone noticed, it still gnaws at you because it conflicts with your ego, who you are. Id exists from birth, so superego has to precede ego.
Shame comes not from the action but from the exposure. You wouldn't say you were ashamed unless you have been observed, caught. Shame is a conflict with reality: I think I'm this kind of a person, but now this other guy has external evidence that I'm not.
A narcissist can't feel guilt because, while he admits to external rules (religion, ethics, etc) those rules are always secondary to his identity. As long as the identity is intact, you didn't do anything really wrong. There's no internal conflict with your sense of self because your identity has one superseding rule: self preservation. You will sacrifice anything, including your life, to preserve that identity. That's why your boyfriend killed himself to get (back at) you.
If Christian Longo had been arrested in Cancun for forging checks, he would have felt worse about that than about killing his family. And he will always feel worse about anything that exposes him than about killing his family.
He had the kind of time in Cancun you'd expect: drinking beer, smoking pot, and pretending to be a New York Times reporter (he had always wanted to be one), and having sex with a girl who wanted to be a photojournalist who thought he needed one for his story. Within a month he was caught.
Coincidentally, (or not, depending on your belief in synchronicity;) (or not, depending on whether you believe anything Christian Longo says;) the reporter he was impersonating was simultaneously being outed as having faked an article in the NYT.
Longo was convicted and sentenced to sitting on death row for the rest of his life. But he never confessed. Longo decided he would only tell his story-- the real story, of course-- to Michael Finkel, the reporter he had impersonated.
II.
It's not spoiling much to tell you that Longo is a classic narcissist, but it's worthwhile to go through the examples:
Longo was not a violent or mean person:
In fact, I could not unearth a single violent incident in Longo's life before the murders, apart from a minor scuffle his freshman year of high school. I looked everywhere; I spoke with everyone I could. I didn't even find an occasion when he lost his temper, when he so much as raised his voice. He hardly swore; he never fought with his brother. A woman who attended his church said she used to tell her friends, "I wish my husband could be more like Chris Longo."But past performance is not indicative of future results because he's never been tested: he's never had a narcissistic injury, wherein you are discovered to be not what you said you were. He thought of himself as-- he wanted people to believe that-- he was a successful, rich, businessman. But the business ran out of money, the debts piled up; so he counterfeited and forged, not to cover expenses but to keep up appearances.
And you can't admit that you've been deceiving your wife for years, that in reality she's married a loser and a liar and a thief... You're trapped.Trapped? If he cared about money he would have stolen more of it; maybe even killed a couple of people to get their money. No. If he cared about his freedom he could have abandoned his family and fled the country. No. If he felt guilty about what he had done he could have found Jesus or simply killed himself. No. The thing he cared about more than anything else was his identity, and the ones who reflected that identity back to him were his family. They had to go.
Probably, you don't understand how killing people you love so much protects your identity: aren't you now going to be exposed as a murderer? But if you kill your family, then no matter what else happens to you it doesn't matter, because they will never know. You did them a favor: they don't have to live with the pain of knowing you are a fraud.
III.
Even a narcissist is going to feel some remorse when he kills his family, right? It's not like he didn't love them:
When thinking back about times in life where my heart was squeezed in my throat, nothing hurt more than when Sadie fell off the swing that I was pushing her on. To see tears fall from your child's face that you are the direct cause of was more painful than anything that I could remember. It's still painful. How could I be so horrible & still have that sort of pain?Nope. Those are reflex emotions, the kind you feel watching a romantic comedy or a porn or Beaches.
Also, he noted, as further refutation of his psychopathy, "I got choked up during E.T. & Titanic."That's right, he said choked.
But his reaction to the photo [of his smiling kids] disturbed him. "I'm not really feeling what everyone else feel's," he wrote, tossing in, as he often does, an extra apostrophe. "What should be most difficult to stomach is what I've done [the murders], yet somehow that part is still palatable."Narcissists don't feel guilt. Only shame.
IV.
Guilt implies an internal sense of right and wrong. Whether it originates from your religion or your parents or the penal code or Star Wars isn't relevant, only that external rules are then internalized, and you then build an identity around them. So that when you violate them and there is no way anyone noticed, it still gnaws at you because it conflicts with your ego, who you are. Id exists from birth, so superego has to precede ego.
Shame comes not from the action but from the exposure. You wouldn't say you were ashamed unless you have been observed, caught. Shame is a conflict with reality: I think I'm this kind of a person, but now this other guy has external evidence that I'm not.
A narcissist can't feel guilt because, while he admits to external rules (religion, ethics, etc) those rules are always secondary to his identity. As long as the identity is intact, you didn't do anything really wrong. There's no internal conflict with your sense of self because your identity has one superseding rule: self preservation. You will sacrifice anything, including your life, to preserve that identity. That's why your boyfriend killed himself to get (back at) you.
If Christian Longo had been arrested in Cancun for forging checks, he would have felt worse about that than about killing his family. And he will always feel worse about anything that exposes him than about killing his family.
Longo's facade in prison is the same as it was in the outside world: a successful businessman. On death row, people think he's a stock-market whiz. And on the surface he seems to be. He subscribes to The Wall Street Journal and Barron's and often keeps his TV tuned all day to CNBC. He supposedly calls his broker with picks and earns big profits. It's actually an elaborate ruse. "All of that pretend stock market playing is believed to be real," Longo writes. "I've never told anyone that it's not. And I use the phone for sufficient amount's of time to all for that thought to seem legit."
Maintaining the stock-market lie, Longo writes, is getting "exhausting." But he can't be honest, he explains, because of "extreme embarrassment."
This will never stop.
V.
There's a passage in Finkel's article that's meant to be poignant: for the first time, Longo tells in graphic detail how he killed his kids. He describes putting them into their respective car seats and strapping them in, driving to the river, putting a rock in a pillowcase and tying it to one ankle, throwing the kid in the river and then going around to the other side of the van and repeating the process with the other child...
In fact, nearly everything Christian Longo says is bullshit. Words, words, words, bullshit and more words:
VI.
What I'm about to write isn't to further condemn him but to show you the psychology, the moves, so you can recognize them elsewhere.
Rotting away on death row is not a narcissist's idea of a good ending for his movie. Where's the drama, the self-actualization, the people talking about you? No one cares about you, no one wants to hear your nonsense about who you think you are (hell, he's spending time trying to convince convicts that he's a daytrader).
Longo found a way to make it worthwhile. Narcissists imagine themselves the main character in their own movie, and Christian Longo decided that movie was Seven Pounds.
The movie stars Will Smith, who, after accidentally killing his family in a car wreck, seeks out worthy people who are in need of organ transplants. And then kills himself, with instructions to donate the organs to those people.
I'll let you imagine how Longo envisions this playing out. Of course, it doesn't matter how it ends, only that in the interim
Will Smith's character felt guilt despite no one else blaming him for the deaths. Longo is the opposite: everyone blames him, except himself.
VII.
The Esquire article is full of these examples and is worth reading. But I can hear you: ok, he's a narcissist, I get it, but if there were no warning signs, how would anyone know?
I don't have an answer. I can say confidently that Zyprexa and Seroquel aren't going to help.
But there's this: Longo killed before he was exposed. LA Fitness shooter Sodini killed because he felt the game was soon to be up. Etc. It seems that the truly dangerous time is right before, when the terror of the possibility of exposure grips them, and so all options are on the table. After exposure there is only defense and running and crying and anger, and rage and violence, too, but not the kill-anyone-who-knows kind you see the week before the pictures are to be released or the month before the girl goes off to spring break.
I can't tell you what to do about the guy you suspect is going down the wrong road, but I can tell the guy himself what to do: turn back. You know it's complicated and exhausting to keep up the appearances, to keep pretending, even if it's working, because eventually you will get fat, eventually you will get the bill, eventually she will leave you, eventually you will fail. It is inevitable.
VIII.
You want a simple answer: why did he do this?
At no point in the Christian Longo timeline from birth to now was murder even a remote possibility. We look for reasons he did this: were there signs, a homicidal triad, bipolar, drugs, genetic history? We want reasons why it happened. There aren't any.
The important question is the one no one asks anymore: what was there that would have held him back?
----
More on Longo in the NYT.
V.
There's a passage in Finkel's article that's meant to be poignant: for the first time, Longo tells in graphic detail how he killed his kids. He describes putting them into their respective car seats and strapping them in, driving to the river, putting a rock in a pillowcase and tying it to one ankle, throwing the kid in the river and then going around to the other side of the van and repeating the process with the other child...
This is an vicious, absolute lie. He killed the child on the driver's side first, and every parent knows which kid is on what side. This is a show, a pretense, designed to invoke sympathy for his suffering (note the single tear) and appear as though it wasn't really him who was doing it-- I'm not really the kind of person who would kill his kids. The problem is that he is exactly the kind of person who would kill his kids in this way for these reasons."I can see the kids so clearly in my mind now," he said. "You know when you catch a whiff of somebody's scent and how vividly it brings back so many images? That's how I feel about my kids now, I can feel them, smell them, touch them in my mind. I can hear their voices. See their faces. But I can't remember who I killed first."
A tear escaped from his left eye. Just one. He wiped it away quickly.
"I can't remember who I killed first."
In fact, nearly everything Christian Longo says is bullshit. Words, words, words, bullshit and more words:
At first, Longo had blamed a drug-addled intruder for killing his family. Then he accused MaryJane of initiating the murders. Then he said he wasn't really sure of the details. He testified for four days but never convincingly explained what happened that night...This isn't a coherent defense, it's pass interference, it's reasonable doubt. It's not important what did happen, it's only important that it wasn't him.
...using charm and guile and a steady stoking of my journalist's natural curiosity (he was innocent, he was framed, he had proof, he would show me), he soon became deeply enmeshed in my own life. In the first year, we exchanged more than a thousand pages of handwritten letters.And these endless words and the "enmeshing" into your life are a way of wearing you down into giving him the benefit of the doubt. Look, you know me, you know the kind of person I am, right? I can go on and on about this all day; just trust me.
VI.
What I'm about to write isn't to further condemn him but to show you the psychology, the moves, so you can recognize them elsewhere.
Rotting away on death row is not a narcissist's idea of a good ending for his movie. Where's the drama, the self-actualization, the people talking about you? No one cares about you, no one wants to hear your nonsense about who you think you are (hell, he's spending time trying to convince convicts that he's a daytrader).
Longo found a way to make it worthwhile. Narcissists imagine themselves the main character in their own movie, and Christian Longo decided that movie was Seven Pounds.
The movie stars Will Smith, who, after accidentally killing his family in a car wreck, seeks out worthy people who are in need of organ transplants. And then kills himself, with instructions to donate the organs to those people.
I'll let you imagine how Longo envisions this playing out. Of course, it doesn't matter how it ends, only that in the interim
And yes: so happy. He has a mission, a focus, a purpose. In a way, the project has transported him beyond the prison walls. He decided not to drop his appeals after all; rather he's aggressively pursuing them full force, likely putting off his execution date by at least a decade. He needs the time, he says, to work on GAVE [changing the laws so that the executed are allowed to donate their organs.] He wants to live.Of course he does. This is a trick, you think the movie fits because of the organ donation angle, but the real association isn't with organ donation but with Will Smith, the sleight of hand that it was an accidental killing of his family, yes, he did it but no, it wasn't exactly him, he doesn't even remember it. The organ donation is secondary. He wants that every time you think of Christian Longo you think of a man who ultimately performs a selfless act to make up for a tragic mistake.
Will Smith's character felt guilt despite no one else blaming him for the deaths. Longo is the opposite: everyone blames him, except himself.
VII.
The Esquire article is full of these examples and is worth reading. But I can hear you: ok, he's a narcissist, I get it, but if there were no warning signs, how would anyone know?
I don't have an answer. I can say confidently that Zyprexa and Seroquel aren't going to help.
But there's this: Longo killed before he was exposed. LA Fitness shooter Sodini killed because he felt the game was soon to be up. Etc. It seems that the truly dangerous time is right before, when the terror of the possibility of exposure grips them, and so all options are on the table. After exposure there is only defense and running and crying and anger, and rage and violence, too, but not the kill-anyone-who-knows kind you see the week before the pictures are to be released or the month before the girl goes off to spring break.
I can't tell you what to do about the guy you suspect is going down the wrong road, but I can tell the guy himself what to do: turn back. You know it's complicated and exhausting to keep up the appearances, to keep pretending, even if it's working, because eventually you will get fat, eventually you will get the bill, eventually she will leave you, eventually you will fail. It is inevitable.
VIII.
You want a simple answer: why did he do this?
At no point in the Christian Longo timeline from birth to now was murder even a remote possibility. We look for reasons he did this: were there signs, a homicidal triad, bipolar, drugs, genetic history? We want reasons why it happened. There aren't any.
The important question is the one no one asks anymore: what was there that would have held him back?
----
More on Longo in the NYT.
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