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The Psychological Profile of a Poison Murderer
Would You Recognize a Poisoner If You Knew One?
For hundreds of years, poison has been a convenient way to hurry up an inheritance or get rid an unwanted spouse, In spite of this, we’ve known very little about the personality of the criminal poisoner.
Part of the problem may be the skill with which many poisoners have eluded authority (it wasn’t until the twentieth century that we were any good at catching them). It may partly be due to misguided stereotypes about who uses poison to kill. (Do women really use poison more often than men?). And it may partly be that, because poisoning someone often requires a sophisticated plan (as opposed to picking up a baseball bat or grabbing a gun), we’ve confused the intelligence of the perpetrator with their personality.
But we’re starting to learn, at least about the ones who’ve been caught. Experts believe the number of poisoners who elude justice is twenty to thirty times higher than those behind bars. Still, we can make some educated guesses about the personalities of poisoners by studying the nature of convicted poisoners and the crimes they commit. Better the devil you know.