Psychopath Suzy

I'm waiting for my copy of the new book The Psychopath Inside by James Fallon to arrive. Fallon is a neuroscientist who realized the fMRIs of his brain looked like the ones of the psychopaths he studies.

He says that 1 in 100 men is a psychopath, and 1 in 200 women. Psychopaths, however, are not the way they are portrayed in popular culture. That would be a psychopath with narcissism and sadism, a combination that represents only a small percentage of the larger number of psychopaths (thank goodness!). Garden-variety psychopaths do lack empathy, however, and are often slick manipulators of other people.

If you've ever wondered what a female psychopath might be like, I think I found one in Friday's Star Tribune. A 62-year-old woman named Carolyn Cassar has been convicted of bilking an elderly couple out of their near-million-dollar life savings. She did this by lying to them about her daughter dying and her ex-husband being falsely accused of killing her sister.

Over six years Cassar fooled them into giving her money, which she spent building an Italian-style villa. She even flew her contractor and architect over to Italy for an "idea tour."

And now she, through her defense attorney, is arguing she shouldn't get prison time because, given her age, she won't offend again.

Prosecutors argued for an 84-month prison term, pointing out that Cassar “offers no real remorse,” despite admitting to all of it.

Along with leaving the couple’s life savings in shambles, Cassar’s actions have weighed heavily on the couple’s health, the prosecution argued.

“Their health has dramatically declined, and they have only a small fraction of their life savings left to see them through their final years. Today, they suffer from sleepless nights, headaches and other stress-related medical conditions, which they attribute to the defendant’s fraud.”

The couple, who have been married more than 70 years, saved so diligently “so we wouldn’t be a burden to our children,” the husband told the Star Tribune in a July interview.

Since Cassar’s guilty plea, prosecutors continued, she has been “attempting to manipulate this court” in pursuit of leniency with “outlandish claims” that her ex-husband abused her and her now-grown children.

“This master manipulator must now face the appropriate consequences that will address both her long-lived and unrelenting deceit as well as the substantial likelihood she will reoffend,” the prosecution filing declared.

No real remorse. Still trying to manipulate her way out of it. Yep, sounds like a psychopath.