Providentia

The Mad Bomber

On November 16, 1940, a crude pipe bomb was found by police in Consolidated Edison's office building in Manhattan.  Although the bomb hadn't exploded, a note attached to the bomb threatened further attacks against the company.  The second pipe bomb was found nearly a year later.   Police received a note signed "F.P" (meaning "Fair Play") announcing that the bomber was planning to suspend the bombing campaign due to "patriotic feelings" for the "duration of the war."   Sure enough, the next bomb wasn't found until March 29, 1950, at Grand Central Station.  Between 1940 and 1956, a total of 33 bombs were planted in different sites across New York City, although no actual injuries would occur until 1953. 

The most devastating explosion was on December 2, 1956, when a bomb went off in a movie theatre in Brooklyn, injuring six people.  The bomb had apparently been planted inside one of the seats after the bomber cut open the upholstery.  With the escalating violence of the blasts and the taunting letters sent by "the Mad  Bomber" (the name that the media had for him), police were desperate to solve the case.  Inspector Howard Finney of the New York crime then decided to follow the advice of a fellow police officer and consulted Dr. James Brussel.

As New York state's assistant commissioner of mental hygiene and a prominent forensic psychiatrist, Brussel had modest success in solving previous cases but had never been consulted in a major case before.  Forensic profiling was still a largely experimental approach to solving crimes, and police were reluctant to consider it.  Brussel examined photographs of the various crime scenes and the bomber's notes.  In one of the first uses of offender profiling,  he concluded that they were seeking a "rather ordinary-looking man, quiet, polite, proper, and well-dressed." He added that the bomber would be "between 40 and 50 years old, foreign born—probably central European (possibly Slavic)—a Roman Catholic, and fairly well educated, sexually abnormal, probably single, living with his mother or maiden sister in Westchester County or Connecticut and, when police found him, he would be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned".   Brussel persuaded the police to release the profile to the media in the hope that it would draw the bomber's attention.

The rationale behind the profile that Dr. Brussel developed on the Mad Bomber was straightforward enough.  He diagnosed the unknown offender based on his own clinical experience with similar offenders and also on prevailing theories relating to mental illness and physical build.  Since the bomber was likely suffering from paranoia, Brussel estimated that he would be around age 50 based on the year of the first bombing and the lifetime incidence of paranoid symptoms.  Brussel also stressed the "phallic" nature of the bombs and the likelihood that the bomber was suffering from an Oedipal Complex (the police were not too impressed with this conclusion).  His idea of publicizing the profile came from the bomber's eagerness for publicity, but police knew that most of the leads that the profile turned up would be false (still a common problem with profiling).

In an unanticipated development, the bomber phoned Dr. Brussel directly and warned him to "keep out of this, or you'll be sorry."  He then hung up before the call could be traced.  After numerous false confessions and poor leads, Consolidated Edison searched its own records and turned up a name that appeared to fit the profile.   George Metesky was a 52-year-old bachelor who had worked for Consolidated Edison for several years before developing tuberculosis.  Metesky had apparently blamed his health problems on the company and had written several threatening letters after being denied a disability pension.  Those letters were still on file, and they were quickly matched to the notes by "F.P."  When the police came to his Waterbury, Connecticut home, he confessed immediately (while he was wearing a bathrobe at the time, he did change into a double-breasted jacket before going to the police station)  

After Metesky's arrest, neighbors reported that he was a quiet man who lived with his sisters and had no visible means of support.  They noticed that he became friendlier and more animated after the Brussels profile came out, but nobody suspected him of being The Mad Bomber.  Police found a complete workshop in his garage where he had built his bombs, and he talked about his plans for an even bigger bomb that he would detonate in the New York Coliseum.   He would later claim that he had deliberately planned the blasts to avoid any fatalities.

Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, Metesky was declared legally insane and committed to Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Beacon, New York.  He would never respond to treatment but was a model patient otherwise.  After being released in 1973, he lived quietly in his family home until his death in 1994. 

James Brussel's role in capturing the "Mad Bomber" propelled him to national fame and gave offender profiling new respect that it never had before.  Brussel was frequently consulted in later cases but was best known for his role in the Boston Strangler investigation.  While he is still viewed as the "father of psychological profiling," his inferential approach to offender profiling has not held up over time.  Later critics have pointed out that only one of his profiles was ever validated and largely relied on his clinical experience and assumptions that were frequently incorrect.  His success in the Metesky case (and his presumed success with the Boston Strangler case) represents his most notable achievements despite being consulted in numerous other cases. 

Modern offender profiling, as practiced by most law enforcement agencies, has a multi-disciplinary focus combining medico-legal death investigation, criminalistics, and psychology.  While commonly accepted standards have been adopted, changing demographics and increased publicity surrounding police procedures (including popular television shows) have made the profiler's task more difficult.  To this day, it remains an open question whether profiling is more of an art than a science.

Michael Scott and authentic leadership: What we learn about leadership from The Office.

A new study published in the Journal of Leadership Studies examines the actions of Michael Scott, self‐proclaimed “World's Best Boss”, to determine how he communicates leadership on The Office. Using Northouse's (2020) definition of leadership, Scott's behavior is content analyzed to establish his particular message transmission tendencies. Further, given Scott's unique management style, George's (2003) dimensions of authentic leadership are used to code Scott's behavior as Scranton's regional manager. Based on a quantitative coding of shows, two main findings are advanced. First, Scott's leadership prioritizes verbal over nonverbal messages. Second, Scott's approach to leadership emphasizes the authentic dimensions of close relationships, clear purpose, and a caring heart most often with his employees. Scenes from The Office are identified that validate these findings and feature authentic leadership theory in action. Pragmatically, the current research offers trainers, managers, and teachers a resource for educating trainees and students on the role of verbal and nonverbal messages in leadership as well as a tool for developing authentic leadership in others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Massacre at Sea

Another story from my recent book, True Crime Stories You Won't Believe: Book Two.

 It must have seemed like a scene out of a horror novel.

When the trading schooner Mary Russell left port out of  Cobh Harbor in Cork, Ireland, on February 8, 1828, it was a routine voyage to Barbados.  Though the harbor master and his crew were surprised to see the ship return on June 25 escorted by another ship, the Mary Stubbs, the pilot still went out to guide the two boats into the Harbor as usual.  After being instructed to board the Mary Stubbs first, the captain of that vessel, Robert Callendar, warned that the Mary Russell had been brought into port by his crew members. There was no immediate sign of the Mary Russell's captain, William Stewart, or his experienced crew, and when the harbor master and his team boarded the ship, they quickly learned why.

In the Mary Russell’s main saloon (another name for ship's lounge) lay the bodies of seven crew members, all of whom had been tied up hand and foot and pinned to the floor.  The men had been killed by vicious blows to the head, and the saloon floor was still sticky from their blood.   Given that the murders had occurred days before, the decomposition of the bodies added to the horror of what the harbor crew saw.   As for Captain Stewart, secured onboard the Mary Stubbs, he freely confessed to killing the seven men he accused of plotting against him.   

The only surviving crew members were four apprentices, an eleven-year-old passenger, and two seriously wounded crew members who had survived the massacre by remaining in hiding until the Mary Stubbs arrived.   Though Captain Callendar had initially believed Stewart's claim that the murders were justified due to mutiny, the testimony of the surviving crew made him reconsider.  Captain Stewart's bizarre speech and behavior quickly demonstrated how deranged he was.   He had even thrown himself overboard at one point though seamen from the Mary Stubbs managed to save him from drowning. 

 News of what had happened on the Mary Russell spread quickly, and families of the dead crew members, most of whom still lived in Cobh Harbor, were devastated at what had happened.  But the hardest hit of all was Captain Stewart's wife, Betsy.  She had been waiting patiently for his return along with their four children (she was also pregnant at the time), only to learn that her husband was now a murderer, not to mention completely insane.  But what could lead a formerly respected sea captain to murder his entire crew?   

Despite the fantastic rumors spreading about the "ship of seven murders" (as the Mary Russell had become known),  the bare facts of the case seemed straightforward enough.  The Mary Russell had set sail from Cobh Harbor in early 1828 to bring a cargo of mules to Barbados.   Along with Captain Stewart was an entire crew, including first and second mate, the ship's carpenter, able-bodied seamen, and three apprentices.  There were also two stable hands to look after the mules and an unaccompanied eleven-year-old passenger named Thomas Hammond.   Given the experienced crew and lack of foreseeable problems, nobody expected anything to go wrong.

As for the boat captain, William Stewart was a God-fearing Protestant and a respected Cobh Harbor nautical community member.  Still, for reasons never made clear, his mental state deteriorated rapidly after the ship left Barbados on May 9 to return to Ireland.  As survivors would later report, Steward had become convinced that his crew was planning to kill him and take over the ship.   Though it was hardly unheard of for crew members to mutiny to steal a ship and turn pirate, a schooner like the Mary Russell seemed like an unlikely choice for that.  Still, Stewart's paranoia became so strong that he decided to protect himself from this non-existent threat.

Knowing he was outnumbered, Stewart hatched a devious plan to eliminate the crew members he assumed were plotting against him.   And so, under the pretext of discussing the voyage, he called each suspected crewmember up to the main saloon. One by one, Stewart would tie and gag them before beating them to death with a crowbar or an ax.  He even shot some of them to death with a harpoon.   As for the apprentices, Stewart simply tied them up as he was not entirely sure of their guilt.   Two other crew members, who had managed to escape the massacre, had been in hiding and likely only survived because of the timely arrival of the Mary Stubbs.  Captain Callendar had spotted the Mary Russell flying the distress signal and had brought in his ship to see if they needed assistance.  

During the coroner's inquest held in Cork on the day after the Mary Russell's return, the jury heard testimony from all the survivors and the witnesses who had first boarded the ship after she returned to Cobh Harbor.   One of the most important of these witnesses was former explorer William Scoresby who later wrote an account of the case.   Scoresby's description of what he had seen on board the ship remains the best-known account of the Mary Russell murders, the coroner's inquest, and the trial that followed.

As for the coroner, Dr. Thomas Sharpe, his testimony regarding what he had seen onboard the ship seemed graphic enough:

There were seven human beings with their sculls so battered that scarcely a vestige of them was left for recognition, with a frightful mess of coagulated blood – all strewed about the cabin, and nearly a hundredweight of cords binding their bodies to strong iron bolts. … Some of the bodies were bound round about six places, and with several coils of rope round their necks.

Based on the evidence and the fact that their primary suspect was too deranged to testify on his behalf, the coroner's jury quickly ruled that Stewart had killed seven men while in a fit of madness. All that would remain was the criminal trial itself.

On August 11, 1828, Captain William Stewart stood trial by an Admiralty Court convened in Cork.   While murder on the high seas was ordinarily a capital crime, the prosecution and Stewart's defense counsel's consensus argued that he was insane.   Based on the judge's recommendation, Stewart was declared "not guilty having committed the act while laboring under mental derangement.”  Under the Criminal Lunatics Act, which was in force at the time, he would be kept "in close confinement during life, or during his Majesty's pleasure."   

After a brief period of imprisonment in the Cork City Gaol, William Stewart was transferred to the Cork Lunatic Asylum.   He was a violent prisoner who often tore his blankets to shreds and incoherently spent much of his time muttering to himself.   During his more lucid periods, he would continue to justify his actions in killing his mutinous crew.  When the Dundrum Asylum for the Criminally Insane opened in 1850,  Stewart became one of the first inmates to be held there.   He died in 1873 after more than four decades as an asylum inmate.  

 As for Cobh Harbor,  there seems virtually no trace of those long-ago murders.   Still, visitors to the Kilmurry Graveyard in Cork can find the tomb of one of Stewart's victims, Timothy Connell, with the haunting inscription:  

You gentle reader that do pass this way/attend a while adhere to what I say/By murder vile was I bereft of life/and parted from two lovely babes and wife/by CAPTAIN STEWART I met an early doom/on board the MARY RUSSELL the 22nd of June/Forced from this world to meet my GOD on high/with whom I hope to reign eternally. Amen/Aged 28 years

5GSS: A framework for 5G-secure-smart healthcare monitoring

Currently, the main challenges of the frameworks for healthcare monitoring are as follows: minimising latency, especially for delay-sensitive diseases such as sudden heart disease; identifying health situation in a timely and accurate manner when correlating physiological indicators and context information; reducing the risk of exposure because health data are highly private. In response to the above, a new paper published in the journal Connection Science proposes a framework for 5G-secure-smart healthcare monitoring (5GSS) to achieve the following goals: fast and accurate identification of context-aware health situation, blockchain-based secure data sharing, and low-latency services for emergent patients. The framework consists of a data acquisition layer, a diagnosis and security layer (edge cloud), and a health service layer. The proposed framework adopts the following key technologies: a 5G-IPv6 communication network, context-aware health situation identification-based similarity measure, and blockchain-based secure data sharing mechanism. Finally, a prototype system has been implemented to monitor hypertensive heart disease, confirming its effectiveness with respect to a real scenario. Combined with the data of 45 patients, the prototype system can identify health situations with an accuracy of 96.34% at a sensitivity of 92.46% and a specificity of 93.62%, while significantly reducing the latency and improving the data sharing security. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

The Boston Sleepwalker

Just thought I'd include this story from my newly released book, True Crime Stories You Won't Believe: Book Two.   Enjoy,

Even for Boston in the 19th century, it was a ruthless murder.

On  October 27, 1845, police were initially called in to investigate several suspicious fires at an upscale "boarding house" (i.e., brothel) in Boston.  After dousing the fires, police, soon discovered the body of a 21-year-old prostitute named Maria Ann Bickford in the room where she lived and worked.  Bickford’s body was nearly decapitated, and her throat cut from ear to ear. From what police could determine, the fires were likely set to conceal the crime, but they still found a man's vest and cane, covered with blood, at the scene. 

Since the landlord insisted that the house was securely locked to prevent intruders from getting in, the police only had one real suspect in the killing.  Albert Tirrell was a twenty-two-year-old paramour of Maria Bickford.    The son of a successful manufacturer and a member of a well-established family, Tirrell had lived with his wife and two children in Weymouth, Massachusetts, when he apparently grew tired of the domestic life.   Whether he had abandoned his family before or after meeting Maria Bickford in a Boston brothel isn't clear, but they certainly became inseparable afterward.

Maria Bickford's history was a  little different from Tirrell's.   Born and raised in Bangor, Maine, she married a shoemaker at sixteen and had one child who died in infancy.  Her friends took her to Boston to help her overcome her grief, but she quickly became fascinated by Boston life.  After only three years of marriage, Maria soon abandoned her husband and took up with a paramour who left her.   With no other options, Bickford turned to prostitution to support herself.   Her youthful beauty made her extremely popular, and she quickly became established in brothels catering to the wealthy Boston elite.   That she soon became Albert Tirrell's constant companion did nothing to change that. 

Whether Tirrell was just her lover or Maria's pimp was never clear though they often traveled together from one new address to another.   Despite never marrying (they were both legally married to other spouses),  Albert and Maria often posed as husband and wife, staying in some of the most fashionable hotels along the East Coast.   

They also scandalized Boston society, and Albert even stood trial for adultery at one point (it took an impassioned plea from family members, including his young wife, to save him from prosecution).   He and Maria frequently quarreled, but she would claim that she didn't mind because they had "such a good time making up."   Under the name "Maria Welch," she and Tirrell maintained a house on London Street for a little while.   It was hardly a secret that the house was a front for Maria to entertain clients (Maria's name was on the front door), but prostitution was still technically illegal.  For this reason, she and Tirrell rarely stayed at any address for long despite Maria's exclusive clientele.

At the time of Maria's murder, she and Tirrell lived at a thinly disguised brothel in Boston.   An elderly couple ran the place and advertised it as a boarding house, but it seemed clear enough that people rented the rooms for only one purpose.  Though Albert supposedly lived elsewhere, he stayed with Maria frequently and was known to have slept there the night of her death.    Other residents reported hearing loud noises coming from Maria's room early in the morning, but nobody investigated until after the body was found.  

When police questioned Tirrell about the murder, they found that he had disappeared.  Still, he was their only suspect since he had been with the victim earlier that night and was likely the last person to see her alive.  The bloody clothes in Bickford's room were identified as belonging to Tirrell.  Also, one witness had reported seeing Tirrell afterward arguing with a livery stable keeper about getting a horse.   He reportedly said he was "in a scrape" and needed a horse and carriage as fast as possible.

Albert Tirrell disappeared for months until Louisiana police, acting on a tip, arrested him on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico on December 5.   As Boston police later learned,  Tirrell had driven to the home of some relatives in Weymouth, MA, on the day of the murder.   These relatives supplied him with money which he then used to flee to Canada.   He formed a convoluted plan to sail to Liverpool from Montreal, but lousy weather eventually led to his sailing to New Orleans instead.  There, he was arrested and returned to Boston to stand trial for the murder of Maria Bickford.

While nobody could be sure who was responsible, a book titled The Life and Death of Mrs. Maria Bickford was released shortly before the trial began.   The book, a largely fictionalized account of Maria Bickford's life up to the time of her murder, portrayed her as a beautiful and tragic figure victimized by the men in her life.    Though portraying Maria as a victim, the book also highlighted all the stereotypes associated with prostitutes.   Despite claims of being "true to life," the book was primarily fabricated and meant to capitalize on Tirrell's upcoming trial.   There is no evidence that any jurors in the trial read the book, but it likely added to the media circus surrounding what promised to be a high-profile case.

Despite the scandal, Tirrell brought to his family, they were well-to-do enough to hire Rufus Choate to defend Albert in the lurid trial.   Choate, a prominent lawyer and politician, had already served in Congress as a Senator and was legendary for his skill as an orator.  Since virtually everybody in Boston knew about the overwhelming evidence against his client, Choate was obliged to try a different strategy to save his client, thanks to the "scandal sheets" that described every detail of the case.  

First, he attacked Maria Bickford's character to make her less sympathetic to the jurors.  Through evidence carefully orchestrated by Choate, Tirrell's cousins portrayed Maria Bickford as a shameless siren who had seduced poor Albert away from his wife and children.   They also claimed that she had a fatal hold on Albert and forced him to spend nearly all his inherited wealth on buying her jewelry and dresses while she continued throwing herself at other men.   Despite this apparent abuse, Choate also insisted that his client would have been entirely irrational to kill Maria due to his love for her.   As Choate pointed out, she " had held him spellbound by her depraved and lascivious arts for a long time."  

There was also a touch of racism added as Choate also brought in witnesses who testified that they had seen Maria with non-white clients (likely meant as proof of her "moral turpitude").  As a "fallen woman," anything Choate could say about Bickford must have seemed plausible enough to jury members, all of whom had seen the rise of urban prostitution in their lifetimes. 

To explain the evidence against his client,  Choate and his defense team would do everything in their power to further blacken Maria Bickford's reputation, even suggesting that the wound to her throat had been self-inflicted.  He also broadly hinted that prostitutes were prone to committing suicide due to their immoral lifestyles.  But Rufus Choate didn't push this argument very far.   Considering that Maria was nearly decapitated, arguing that she had done it to herself would have been too much for even a sympathetic jury to swallow.  Not to mention the trifling problem of who had set the fire that nearly consumed her body.

All of which led to his second great defense strategy:  sleepwalking. Since somnambulism was regarded as a mysterious phenomenon without a rational explanation, arguing that Tirrell must have murdered Maria in a trance state was a bold move on Choate's part.  As he stated in the courtroom, "Evidence will be produced to show that it had pleased Almighty God to afflict the prisoner with this species of mental derangement.”   That evidence included anecdotes from history, including famous people such as Alexander the Great acting strangely while sleepwalking. The defendant's family and friends also described episodes from Tirrell's life, showing that he had been sleepwalking from a young age.  To cap off the testimony on Tirrell's behalf, Walter Channing, dean of Harvard Medical School, testified that it was theoretically possible for a man to commit murder while sleepwalking.

Whether it was the character assassination of the victim or the novel sleepwalking defense, Choate's ploy worked.   But it was his fantastic skill at rhetoric that truly swayed the jury on his client's behalf.  Even the court stenographer recording Choate's arguments complained that she had difficulty keeping up with him during the trial.  "Who can report chain lightning?"  she reportedly said.

It took only two hours for the jurors to hand down a not-guilty verdict.   Spectators applauded, and Albert Tirrell burst into tears.   Of course, his legal problems were hardly over.  He still had to stand trial for arson (which was also a capital crime at the time), but Choate also got him off that charge.  According to historical records, Tirrell failed to get Choate to refund half his legal fees because "his innocence was so obvious." 

Not that Tirrell escaped justice completely.   The judge refused to acquit him on the charge of adultery, and he eventually spent three years in state prison.   He soon vanished into well-deserved obscurity after his release from what I could find.   Whether Tirrell ever went back to his long-suffering family isn’t mentioned.

Afterward, Choate left private practice to return to public office (after being reportedly besieged by defendants hoping he could help them as well).   Despite his reputation as a statesman, Rufus Choate never quite lived down being the one to introduce the sleepwalking defense.   Following his death in 1859,  one lawyer eulogized him by saying that Choate was "the lawyer who made it safe to murder." 

Which is one hell of a legacy when you think of it.

The nature of posttraumatic stress disorder in treatment-seeking first responders.

Approximately 10% of first responders report posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although reports within first responders suggest that they have distinct symptom presentations, there is a need to understand how the clinical profiles of first responders may differ from others seeking treatment for PTSD. A new study in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology compared the PTSD symptom profiles of first responder and civilians seeking treatment for PTSD. Method: Participants self-referred to the Traumatic Stress Clinic (University of New South Wales, Sydney) for enrolment in out-patient treatment trials for PTSD. Participants comprised people of mean age 41.72 years (SD = 10.71) who met DSM-IV criteria for PTSD. The sample was composed of 128 first responders and 182 civilians. Clinician-administered interviews of PTSD (Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale) and depression were conducted, as well as measures of self-report measures of depression, alcohol use, posttraumatic appraisals, and anger. Results: First responders reported greater rates of dysphoric cluster of symptoms, including diminished interest, emotional numbing, and social detachment, and less psychological reactivity and avoidance of situations, than civilians with PTSD. Beyond PTSD symptoms, first responders also reported more severe levels of depression and suppressed anger. Conclusions: These findings indicate that treatment-seeking first responders present with a distinct clinical profile that is characterized by dysphoric symptoms. These symptoms can predict poor treatment response and require specific attention in treating PTSD in first responders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Massed cognitive processing therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder in women survivors of intimate partner violence.

Survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) report significant trauma histories, high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), head injuries and comorbid disorders, and multiple barriers to treatment that often preclude the regular attendance and engagement required in typical therapy protocols. The significant challenges faced by IPV survivors needing treatment may be ameliorated by condensing effective treatments for PTSD, such as cognitive processing therapy (CPT), in an accelerated delivery timeline. A new research study published in the journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy used a multiple subject, single case design of six matched pairs of 12 female IPV survivor.  Researchers preliminarily tested the relative effectiveness of individual massed CPT delivered over 5 days (mCPT) as compared with standard CPT (sCPT) delivery in women IPV survivors. Assessments included full psychiatric diagnostic interviews, clinical interviews assessing trauma history and head injury prior to treatment, symptom monitoring during treatment, and full repeat assessments at 1 month and 3 months following treatment. Results showed that no treatment group effect was found for PTSD severity between mCPT and sCPT among intention-to-treat, F(1, 10) = .01, p = .93. Both mCPT and sCPT were associated with significant improvement in PTSD, F(2, 20) = 45.05, p< .001, ds = 1.32–2.38). COverall, findings indicate mCPT appears effective in reducing psychological symptoms for women IPV survivors and suggest that condensed treatment is both palatable and feasible. Accelerated treatment delivery in this population may provide a necessary lifeline for women with IPV-related PTSD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Identifying individuals with subtle cognitive decline

Dementia is a devastating neurological disease that may be better managed if diagnosed earlier when subclinical neurodegenerative changes are already present, including subtle cognitive decline and mild cognitive impairment. In a new study published in the journal Neuropsychology, researchers used item-level performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) to identify individuals with subtle cognitive decline. Method: Individual MoCA item data from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative was grouped using k-modes cluster analysis. These clusters were validated and examined for association with convergent neuropsychological tests. The clusters were then compared and characterized using multinomial logistic regression. Results: A three-cluster solution had 77.3% precision, with Cluster 1 (high performing) displaying no deficits in performance, Cluster 2 (memory deficits) displaying lower memory performance, and Cluster 3 (compound deficits) displaying lower performance on memory and executive function. Age at MoCA (older in compound deficits), gender (more females in memory deficits), and marital status (fewer married in compound deficits) were significantly different among clusters. Age was not associated with increased odds of membership in the high-performing cluster compared to the others. Conclusions: We identified three clusters of individuals classified as cognitively unimpaired using cluster analysis. Individuals in the compound deficits cluster performed lower on the MoCA and were older and less often married than individuals in other clusters. Demographic analyses suggest that cluster identity was due to a combination of both cognitive and clinical factors. Identifying individuals at risk for future cognitive decline using the MoCA could help them receive earlier evidence-based interventions to slow further cognitive decline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

The Carolina Kissing Case

It all began on November 1, 1958, in Monroe, North Carolina, when two boys, aged eight and nine, walked seven-year-old Sissy Marcus home from school. Though what happened next seemed innocent enough, it was only after Sissy got home and told her mother that she had kissed the two boys on their cheeks that all hell broke loose. Sissy's father and some of his friends picked up shotguns and searched for the two boys and their parents.

The fact that the two boys in question, nine-year-old James "Hannover" Thompson and seven-year-old David "Fuzzy" Simpson were African American and that the kiss took place in racially segregated North Carolina was enough to embroil both children in one of the most bizarre miscarriages of justice in U.S. history. During the late 1950s, the growing controversy over desegregation and fears surrounding "racial miscegenation" had already fueled racist tensions to an all-time high. Only three years earlier, 14-year-old Emmett Till had been lynched by a Mississippi mob for the "crime" of allegedly whistling at a white woman.

As for James Thompson and David Simpson, both boys were arrested immediately after the kissing incident. They were held in the local jail and not allowed to see their parents or legal counsel for over a week. They were also subjected to beatings to try to force a confession out of them. Though they were finally granted access to legal counsel, they were still held in jail for months and subjected to repeated harassment. On Halloween night, for example, a contingent of Klansmen visited their jail cell to intimidate them. This so terrified the two boys that they tried climbing the cell walls to escape. Finally, after three months in jail, they were finally charged and convicted of molestation following a brief trial during which their defense counsel was not allowed to be present.

Juvenile Judge Hampton Price sentenced both boys to indeterminate terms at the Morrison training school for Negro Boys. In defending his decision, Price reportedly commented that "since they just stood silent and didn't say nothin', I knew that was a confession of guilt." Monroe's mayor, Fred Wilson, also defended the decision stating that "such acts are not tolerated here whether involving white or colored at any age."

The case became a rallying point for white supremacist groups and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.). Almost immediately after their conviction, Robert F. Williams, local head of the NAACP, sent an impassioned telegram to President Eisenhower pleading for him to intervene. As Williams pointed out in the telegram, both boys had been denied proper legal counsel or the chance to face their accuser in court. "Please tell me, Mr. President," he telegram read, "when Negroes may expect your Justice Department to introduce the 14th Amendment to the U.S. constitution to this social jungle called Dixie." Though then-Press Secretary acknowledged that the telegram had been received, nothing further came of it. Once the boys began serving their sentence, public interest in the case quickly died down.

When newspapers covered the story, it was often to defend the sentence (one memorable editorial suggested that the boys were better off in reform school where they could count on better treatment than they received at home.) The newspapers also accused both boys of being incorrigible troublemakers who thoroughly deserved their sentence. All of which heightened the local animosity against the families of both accused. Not only were their parents and siblings subjected to verbal taunting, but both of their mothers were fired from their jobs as domestics. Even more alarmingly, members of the Ku Klux Flan riddled their houses with bullets numerous times and burned crosses on their lawns, something the local police did little to prevent.

It was only when famed civil rights lawyer Conrad Lynn was asked by the NAACP to take on the case that things began to change. Lynn had already made a name for himself by defending numerous unpopular cases and his unswerving support for African American civil rights. This included participating in the first Journey of Reconciliation in 1948, a historic attempt to overturn Jim Crow laws that would see him arrested for being caught sitting in a "whites only" section of an interstate bus. Once released on bail, he quickly resumed his bus journey.

But acting as an attorney for James Thompson and David Simpson was a frustrating experience for Lynn. As he would later relate in a 1994 newspaper interview, many black churches flatly refused to help finance the appeal he was trying to launch, and he was even branded an outsider by some of his opponents. "They had no guts," Lynn said in the interview. "They accepted the children as rapists. The blacks were more than willing to accept the stereotype of black men as rapists. And they also considered me a communist. That, and the fact that the kids were charged with rape, was enough for them."

He had more success visiting synagogues and liberal churches and finally securing a new hearing in Wadesboro, North Carolina. Meanwhile, former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt took a personal interest in the case and petitioned North Carolina's governor, Lester Hodges, to intervene. Instead, Hodges and his hand-picked attorney general Malcolm Seawall came to Wadesboro to ensure the conviction was not overturned. Despite Lynn's defense, Seawall managed to sway the judge in the case with an impassioned tirade about the need to uphold "traditional values."

Not only did the two boys stay in jail, but their mothers were kept from seeing them for weeks. It took the efforts of a U.K. reporter, Joyce Egginton, to turn the case into an international scandal for North Carolina. Covering the trial for the London Observer, she secured permission to visit the boys in jail and managed to bring their mothers in as well. By smuggling in a camera, she could take a picture of the mothers embracing their children and visual proof that James and David had been beaten while in custody.

Egginton's story and the incriminating photograph were reprinted across Europe and Asia. The London Observer ran the photograph under the one-word headline, "WHY?" and the resulting international outrage put even more pressure on North Carolina's governor to overturn the conviction. This included demonstrations in numerous European cities, including a riot in Rotterdam that led to rocks being thrown at the U.S. embassy there.

While North Carolina officials offered a deal to the mothers of the two boys, which would have required them to admit to being guilty, the mothers refused, and their incarceration dragged on into 1959. Finally, after receiving a petition with over 15,000 names, Eleanor Roosevelt personally phoned President Dwight Eisenhower and asked him to intervene. The president, in turn, phoned Governor Hodges and immediately pressured him into releasing the two boys.

After three months of detention, James Thompson and David Simpson were finally released, and their criminal records were expunged. Unfortunately, that was all the consideration they would ever receive. Not only were they never compensated for their ordeal, but no official apology was ever given. As for Governor Hodges, he was openly embarrassed about the negative publicity over the case, but he also refused to make any apologies for what had happened.

As for James Thompson and David Simpson, they never really recovered from their ordeal. While David Simpson largely disappeared from the public record, James Thompson went on to have numerous scrapes with the law (which local newspapers declared to be "proof" that the original sentence had been deserved). In a 2011 interview, he speculated on how his life might have been if that long-ago ordeal had never happened. "Could I have been a doctor? Could I have went off to some college, or some great school? It just destroyed our life."

In that same interview, other family members shared their bitterness about James' experience. According to his sister, Brenda, having him home again after his time in jail "was like seeing somebody different, that you didn't even know. He never talked about what he went through there. But ever since then, his mind just hadn't been the same." She also shared her bitterness over his treatment by police and the courts. "My brother and his friend had to suffer on account of that," she said. "And I mean, they suffered. From one kiss. I've thought about that. It all started with a kiss."

Is Life Getting Better?

National-level differences in individuals’ ratings of their recollected past, current, and anticipated future life satisfaction (LS) were examined in a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology using results from two pioneering projects comprising national-level results for 14 countries (Cantril, 1965) and 15 regions of the world (Gallup International Research Institutes & Charles F. Kettering Foundation, 1976; Study 1), as well as sequential results from the Gallup World Poll based on 137 countries representing a broad range of nations from around the world surveyed from 2005 to 2018 (Study 2). Results from both studies revealed a robust belief that “life gets better” over time (i.e., recollected past < current < anticipated future LS) in nations around the world. Such beliefs were examined in relation to objective and subjective indicators of societal-level functioning. Results replicated across studies in showing that nations with less positive societal functioning and prosperity were characterized by less recollected past improvements in LS, and yet greater anticipated future improvements in LS. Results from Study 2 also revealed that such expectations were positively biased compared to changes over time in national levels of LS; further, greater bias was related to less positive societal-level functioning. In conclusion, examining national-level differences in LS from a subjective temporal perspective provides valuable new insights concerning human development and prosperity across countries, over time, and around the world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

To Hide in Plain Sight

The Doctors' Trial, which ended on August 20, 1947, led to the conviction of sixteen medical doctors involved in Nazi medical experiments and mass murder. While seven defendants were sentenced to death and nine others received prison sentences, not all the medical doctors who had been part of the Nazi war machine had gone on trial. It is to one of these doctors and how he eventually came to justice to which we now turn.

By all accounts, Werner Heyde's early life did not indicate what would come later. Born in 1902, he enlisted at sixteen to fight in World War One. After the war ended, Heyde completed medical training and became a psychiatrist. Despite serving in different hospitals and clinics, his career was utterly ordinary until joining the Nazi party in 1933. He found his new political affiliation very helpful in his career and used these connections to become a full professor at Wurzburg.

Heyde's chief mentor among the Nazis was Theodor Eicke, a former patient who had convinced him to join the party. Heyde rose quickly in party ranks and joined the SS in 1936. Being a trained psychiatrist, Heyde was the natural choice to form a neuropsychiatric unit in the SS and to become consulting psychiatrist for the Gestapo. His greatest contribution to the Nazi cause was his role in Aktion T4.

As head of the SS medical department, Heyde played a leading role in the planning and implementing of a  national register of mental patients and "defective" children and adults. Throughout World War 2, more than 275,000 "defectives" were killed across occupied Europe, and until 1941, Heyde acted as the chief "expert" who made the final decision concerning executions. Despite later being replaced by Paul Nitsche, Heyde continued administrating killing programs in concentration camps.

Under the later Aktion 14F13, the criteria for death were expanded to include all inmates deemed unfit due to disease. Heyde helped draft the criteria and trained the medical doctors to recognize these "signs" (usually based on an inability to work or being an "enemy of National Socialism"). His enthusiasm for his duties made him extremely popular with the Nazi hierarchy, and he quickly rose in the ranks. By 1945, he had become a full colonel.

And then the war ended...

In May of 1945, Werner Heyde was arrested by British troops and transferred to a prison in Frankfurt to be held for trial in Nuremberg. He somehow managed to escape custody on July 24, 1947. Purchasing new identity papers for himself under the name of Fritz Sawade, Heyde eventually gained a position as a sports physician in a school near Kiel, Germany.

Although family members and colleagues later admitted to knowing his true identity, "Fritz Sawade" had a highly successful practice for years. He even gave testimony as an expert witness in numerous forensic cases (including psychiatric testimony), which provided him with a very comfortable income. By 1959, Sawade's true identity had become an open secret to many local psychiatrists, government officials, and judges. But his flamboyant lifestyle and involvement in high-profile trials eventually led to Heyde's undoing.

During the war, Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt had been an active opponent of the Nazi regime. As an eminent neurologist, he saved many of his patients from Aktion T4. His wife spent four years in prison for making "spiteful and malicious remarks" about Hitler, and Creutzfeldt's home and clinic were destroyed by Allied bombings. After the war, he served as chancellor at the university in Kiel until he was dismissed by British authorities (they considered him too liberal), and he relocated to Munich.

While acting as an expert witness, he was outraged by one of Fritz Sawade's forensic opinions and decided to investigate. It must have shocked him when he recognized Sawade as the fugitive Werner Heyde. Realizing that Heyde had the quiet support of many local doctors and judicial authorities was likely an even bigger shock.  Despite opposition, Creutzfeldt and his two sons managed to be heard.

Werner Heyde was arrested in 1959 and held in custody for two years. In 1961, just days before his trial began, Heyde was found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide. There was widespread suspicion that Heyde's death had been "encouraged" by medical doctors and authorities, fearing what would have come out during the trial. The case was officially closed with Heyde's death, and the matter was considered settled. The question of how a fugitive Nazi could live for years as a successful medical doctor and expert witness was never answered.

Hans Creutzfeldt died in 1964. Despite his eminence in neurology, his humanitarian efforts during the war, and his role in exposing Werner Heyde, Creutzfeldt was largely forgotten for decades after his death. Until that is, in 1995 when researchers reported on the existence of a new variant of a disease that Creutzfeldt had co-discovered with his colleague Alfons Jakob back in 1921. Through its link with "Mad Cow disease" and dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease became one of the most talked-about medical conditions in the world, and Hans Creutzfeldt finally achieved an odd sort of immortality.

Such is life.