A Psychological View of Confessions

By Barbara Kirwin, Ph.D.

Introduction

Is confession good for the soul? In my jaded opinion after examining more than 300 murderers -- most of whom exhibited little remorse as they confessed to their crimes-- it is nothing more than public theatre. I never take a murderer’s confession at face value. I never believe their explanations for their actions. After all, insight and self-disclosure are hallmarks of a well-adjusted personality. If these people had insight into their own motivations, they probably wouldn’t have done what they did in the first place. Confessions, no matter how graphic or compelling, are simply samples of verbal behavior to be analyzed in the context of the defendant’s mental state and motives at the time of the crime.

Studying people who murder and then confess is viewing human beings in extremis — at the outer bounds of human behavior. Confessions are examples of self-reports which psychologists know are the most suspect and unreliable forms of data. Not only are they limited by the person’s lack of introspection and insight, but they can also be consciously manipulated for a self-serving end. In the high stakes world of a death penalty murder rap, even confessed "truth" remains elusive.

Simply put, a confession is the acknowledgement or the admission of committing a crime. The Miranda rights protect an individual from giving incriminating confessions that are coerced, involuntary, inadvertent or ill-advised. Career criminals and repeat offenders rarely waive their Miranda rights and talk to police without legal counsel. They know better. However, in cases of the most bizarre and violent murders where the mental status of the accused is an issue, the prosecution’s case often revolves around the defendants’ own confession given in response to police interrogation without an attorney present. As the trial progresses, the defendant’s confession is shown over and over again to the jury, referred to numerous times in questioning witnesses, and, if it is particularly gory, featured nightly on the news. The confession is generally the most powerful indictment of all, the one act -- aside from the crime itself -- in which the defendant’s own words unveil him or her as a remorseless, cold-blooded killer. If, as so many people believe, entering a psychological defense is trying to get away with murder, why do these defendants confess? The answer can be found in the same remote recesses of the human psyche as the motivation for the crime itself.

The confessed murderers featured here represent a broad spectrum of sex, age and life circumstances: Betty Broderick, the blonde socialite who blew away her ex-husband and his young wife while they slept; William Paul Neeley, the righteously indignant father who took the law into his own hands when he shot his friend execution style for allegedly raping his 12-year-old daughter; Rod Ferrell, the teenage vampire cult killer who hacked and mutilated his girlfriend’s parents to death; and lastly, Karla Faye Tucker, the down-home girl who fatally bludgeoned her ex-boyfriend and his lover, claiming to orgasm with each blow of the pickax.

Beyond the fact that each of these people took one or more lives, the ties that binds them all is their emptiness, their disenfranchisement and isolation from humanity. You can read it in their vacant eyes and hear it in their hollow voices. Why were they compelled to tell their horrifying stories in such stark detail? Were they driven by guilt? Remorse? A desire to be punished for their deeds? Did they have a primal longing to be understood? Or did they just want their fifteen minutes of fame? As you read the circumstances of their terrifying crimes and view their confessions, sit as a juror and judge for yourself. I will assist as a psychological expert, analyzing the personalities and motivations behind these confessions, constructing a psychological profile for each, and addressing the psycho-legal issues they raise.

In the final analysis, the effectiveness of each of these confessions lies in the believability or persuasiveness of the defendant. If they can strike a sympathetic chord with the jurors and convince them that under the same circumstances anyone would have been capable of the same actions, they just might be acquitted of murder or receive a lighter sentence.

Barbara Kirwin, Ph.D., is a New York forensic psychologist, who has testified in more than 100 homicide cases. Kirwin has also analyzed the five confessions from Court TV's archives that appear on this site. To read her analyses and to view the video confession, click on any photo.