Source: Mai Read
Who among us really knows his brother?
Who has explored his father's heart?
Who hasn't been locked up in prison for the rest of their lives?
Who isn't always a foreigner, always lonely?
— Thomas Wolff, "Angel, Homecoming"
Legal people always pursue justice, but they are always facing the vortex of injustice. Although different legal persons play different roles and perform different functions in the same case, we always have a common professional belief that we can punish evil and promote good, so that justice can be done.
Homicide is the oldest crime in human history, and in the Bible Genesis, the crime of killing Abel by the distant ancestor of mankind, Cain, is recorded. Killing is also the most intolerable injustice of mankind, and "the death of the murderer" is the strongest and most direct expression of this. But with the development of civilization to this day, killing people has not only not disappeared, but because of the development of violent tools, the degree of tragedy has become even more appalling.
In those darkest moments, young wives were cooked after being cut into 36 pieces by their husbands, men snatched babies from supermarket carts and fell to their deaths, flesh-and-blood relatives killed the whole family of six including two biological sons in one night, and the tragic massacre at the campus gate, and the crazy strafing of "lone wolves" in the face of the holiday crowd...
One after another frightening social news, accompanied by a large number of real pictures and videos, jointly challenge people's psychological bottom line. Evil is present, suffocating.
What is even more frightening is that the murderers of these cases have also been described by the neighbors around him as "steady and steady, easy-going", "a very kind and honest person", "I didn't think he would do such a thing". That is to say, before committing the crime, they looked no different from the ordinary people around us.
Every time I see these cases of violence, I can't help but think:
Why do they kill people?
What was going on in their minds when they did it?
What inspires the inner ferocity of an ordinary person to turn him into a cruel murderer?
Are there any common causes at work in a homicide?
And also
As ordinary people, what can we do to reduce violence?
At the very least, how do you survive these violence?
When a person is sick, the responsible doctor will not only make a correct diagnosis, but also try to find the cause of the disease, so that there is hope to cure it from the source. In the same way, in the face of violent homicide cases, there must be many legal people, like me, who want to understand people more deeply, understand the interaction between people and society, understand the crime itself, and want to know the answers to all these questions.
That's why, in book 7 of the Mai Reading Series, we chose to introduce Why They Kill: Why People Become Violent and What We Can Do About It.
In the book, Lonnie Athens, a criminologist who grew up in domestic violence, succinctly and forcefully points out the key to the violent movement of an ordinary person after in-depth interviews with hundreds of violent criminals. It allows us to understand how an extremely murderous murderer is born in society and what each of us can do about it.
A criminologist who grew up in domestic violence
Lonnie Athens was born into a family of quarrels and violence. His mother was a blonde, petite, soft white woman, and his father was a "Greek" with strong arms and looked like a wrestler. In childhood and adolescence, Lonnie and her mother were the main targets of violence by their fathers.
He also remembered that when he was four or five years old, once his mother asked him to wash his hair, and he was not happy. The father on the side lifted his feet directly, turned him upside down, dipped his head into the toilet, and then flushed, flushed, again and again.
"I thought I was going to drown him in the toilet." He later recalled.
Growing up, Lonnie chose criminology as his research direction. Once, he returned to his hometown to attend his sister's wedding. At the wedding, he couldn't help but argue with his scolding father. The father and son quarreled more and more fiercely, and eventually, he jumped up, smashed a fist into his father's face, and then sat on top of him, constantly swinging his fists and hammers until the people next to him pulled him down.
Fortunately, my father was not seriously injured. But this experience made him wonder more and more, what drives one person to use violence to hurt another person? He also wanted to know, what did his violent behavior mean? Why do you behave like this? Will such behavior happen again?
Criminal Monologue: Approaching the depths of a fierce soul
After entering the field of criminology, Lonnie was surprised to find that the theoretical criminologists at that time, who were recognized by society as experts in criminal violence, had never had any experience related to violence, nor had they really come into contact with violent criminals.
"Their theories are hard to believe." Lonnie thinks.
In order to understand the true psychology of the criminals and obtain first-hand information, he entered the prison alone without weapons, interviewed hundreds of violent criminals face-to-face, listened to their inner monologues, and truly entered the depths of the most tyrannical and vicious souls in the world.
"I want to interview violent perpetrators, listen to them honestly, tell their stories of violence, and get real information from them."
Case 2: Criminal homicide
X and I have been traveling together for more than a month, and the contradictions are getting more and more. I began to tire of his loud voice, he liked to talk and always put on a strong posture. I think sooner or later I'll have enough of him. We stopped at a railway shunting yard and started taking drugs. He started blowing again as usual, talking about how many women he had slept with, how much he could drive, how many men he had taught. He wanted me to listen to him, but I could tell he wasn't that good: he was just lying. He was still holding the strong shelf, and in the tone of a wanderer, he said this girl and that girl. I began to hate his voice, and he spoke so loudly that it made my back tingle. He began to look like he could knock me down at any moment, mistaking my silence for cowardice, and then he grabbed me.
I said, "When you talk to people, can you not arrest people with your hands?" But he continued to do so, and I don't know what he said after that. Because I'm no longer listening. Thinking I'd better prove to him that he's not that good and I hate him. He always treated me like a coward, which annoyed me, and I wanted to discourage him, so I said, "If you move my finger again, I'll shoot you!" He said, "You're not going to shoot me." I didn't like it when he questioned me, I knew he was going to touch me again, and when he touched me again, I shot him quickly.
Case 9:
One night, I was woken up by a loud noise coming from my parents' bedroom. I wanted to go to the bathroom and have a glass of water before figuring out what was going on. I was walking to the bathroom and I heard my mother say, "No, I told you not to do this, I don't like it."
I thought to myself, what could he do to her? I started trying to hear clearly, and my mother said, "Please don't do this to me again!" It hurts! But he said, "Lao Tzu doesn't care if you hurt or not!" Then my mother screamed, "Stop, it hurts, it hurts!" Stop now! Stop, stop, stop! She cried for a moment, screamed out in pain, and then began to cry again.
I went back to my room, knowing that he must have made her hurt so much that I let her call it like this. I was furious and almost wanted to kill him, and I thought about going in, dragging him off her and beating him up, but he was too tall for me to beat him. I knew I couldn't do anything and could only hope he stopped, but he didn't. I lay in bed and listened to her cry and felt bad. Because I couldn't help her with anything, I wanted to get him down and beat him up, but I was too timid. I kept telling myself that I was just a little twin, and then I tried to keep sleeping, pretending it was all just a nightmare.
In this way, in one living case after another, in the fog of lies and memories, Lonnie analyzed and verified the sample data one by one, constantly exploring the truth of the heart. Eventually, he discovered that an ordinary person going through four iconic stages of becoming violent. This process, interlocking, often takes place in the hearts of the perpetrators and is not detected. However, anyone who, step by step, passes through these four stages will be transformed into a ruthless abuser. At this point, an extremely violent murderer has taken shape.
It's a disturbing book
The New York Times:
Irresistible... You'll be blown away by some of the conclusions and fascinating narratives of this book.
The Seattle Times:
Disturbing, extremely challenging, but very engaging.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Rhodes would recommend... Not only because he wrote a wonderful book, but also because he gave us an insight into the lone scholarly discoveries of Lonnie Asenstri.
The Kansas City Star:
It is bound to provoke discussion as to why they killed is a fascinating book on an important subject.
In this book, the author writes:
When one looks at a dangerous violent criminal, if one looks at the early stages of development, one may unexpectedly find that this dangerous violent criminal, at first, may be a relatively kind person, more able to make them sympathize than hate. More importantly, one would conclude that the development of dangerous and violent criminals is preventable and, like many human massacres, is created from scratch.
Albert Einstein said: What will eventually destroy human civilization is the evil forces in our hearts.
Neither law nor morality can eliminate evil, and if we cannot confront the full truth of violent crime, if we cannot stop the process of individual "violentization", then each of us, and this society, will become an accomplice to silently cultivating them. A helping hand reaching out to that happy, sunny, sharp, and lovely child might protect us from the terrifying sword of Lee Harvey Oswald.
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