How to spot a psychopath

Charm, lies and threats
Without conscience is one way corporate communications consultant Louise Gallagher now describes Peter*, a dashing 44-year-old replica car builder who used charm, lies and threats to ensnare her for nearly five years. In August 1998, Louise was an insecure, 45-year-old single mother of two girls. Seeing him at a conference, she asked if they’d met before. He looked deep into her eyes. "Impossible," he responded. "I’d never have forgotten you if we had." Within weeks, he proposed. "It got intense, fast. That was a red flag I missed," she says. "I was just divorced so I said we had to go slowly."

Then he revealed the sad "truth." He couldn’t wait because he had a rare heart condition. His sympathy-seeking lies (his only heart problem was a lack of one, she later discovered) should have been another red flag, indicating he was a psychopath ready "to prey on people in a vulnerable state," says Hare.

'He drew her back in'
Feeling overwhelmed, Louise considered ending it. Yet, he drew her back in, saying he was in an organized crime family, a grandiose claim typical of a psychopath’s "often theatrical, yet convincing stories," says Hare. Appalled, Louise distanced herself, but he had her followed and called to say the "family" would harm her children unless she kept quiet about his background. "I couldn’t believe I put my daughters in that situation," she says. She reported the incident to police, but nothing came of it. When the Canada Revenue Agency coincidentally investigated him, Peter convinced her she’d triggered it, in a technique Stout calls "gaslighting," or making the victim doubt her own perceptions. It worked. "I felt guilty for ruining his life."

Even after he was assessed as a psychopath during a brief stint in jail for assault and criminal harassment, she let him coerce her into leaving the province, breaking the conditions of his release. "He said there was no cure for psychopathy, but he could beat it and he could be a better man, but he needed me," and her money, she recalls.

After three months on the run, she escaped his clutches when police arrested him in Maple Ridge, B.C. She is now back on her feet in Calgary with her daughters. "Yes, it was stupid," she says of the experience. "But for people who are the victims, the feeling of being crazy and ashamed is rampant. I want other women to know they’re not alone."

*Names have been changed.

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