Signs of a Psychopath

The thing inside of me is like...

The appetite, it's like a wolf that's...

feeling...

the hunger.

Hubers has called 911

to report her deceased boyfriend

and that she has killed him,

but what she's also offering the dispatcher is

a level of detail about how she killed him

and a distancing from any aspect of him that's human.

She's referring to him as a dead body,

she's automatically telling the dispatcher she did this in self-defense

and that's a little unusual.

The majority of people would make the decision to get help

if somebody... was shot accidentally.

Your first thought is not to finish the job.

It's very unusual that she whimpers,

seems distraught for the first couple of seconds,

but then almost, like, she switches off

and it's a completely different person.

She changes her demeanor

as soon as the detective leaves the room.

That would not be typical of someone who is...

who just killed her boyfriend

and who's completely overwhelmed

at... at having done such a horrific thing.

Psychopaths, because of their lack of empathy,

essentially they're at the center of their universe,

everyone else around is for their pleasure

or should be eliminated

because they're some kind of roadblock

to what they want to get.

And what we see here is already evidence of that.

I think she's fully aware that she's killed somebody.

She thinks she's smarter,

she thinks she should get away with it,

she should not be held accountable,

"I should be able to walk out tonight

and be done, isn't that right?"

And when it turns out not to be true,

that's when things start to unravel.

So--

I know.

It's important to realize

that she's already asked for a lawyer,

and yet Hubers can't seem to stop talking.

Her need to manage impressions

and to push forward her narrative

is really what's taken over.

Hubers felt relief

because she had enough

and that's very consistent with a psychopath.

Good psychopaths learn how to mimic genuine human emotion.

Attraction, compassion, love, anger, resentment.

And what we're seeing here is her attempt to do that.

And that the psychopathic lane is getting into that,

the use of other people as objects, being manipulative,

Machiavellian, not having empathy for other people.

She, um, is showing some of those features

of narcissism with psychopathy,

when they tell her, "Well, you have the right to an attorney."

And she's like, "Yeah, do I have a right to an attorney?"

But then she proceeds and talks anyway about what happened,

even though she should just shut up, wait for the attorney.

But I don't think her narcissism can let her do that.

It's very important to her to get her story out.

And I think that in her mind, she believes,

"I'm gonna get this story out early and keep reinforcing it,

so that will be my evidence.

I'm not gonna wait for an attorney.

I need to just sprinkle this out there and get my story out."

Because I think she believes this will help her.

And...and that's where she's mistaken.

But I think it's her narcissism,

it's her self-focus that has blinded her

to the fact she should've just been quiet and not said anything.

She's setting up the story now in even more details,

saying, "I'm remembering things."

Whether it's her arm shut in the door,

whether she's thrown against some bookshelf,

whether she's smashed her head into the TV set.

But at the scene, the bookshelf is undisturbed,

the things are still in immaculate order on the shelf,

there's no crack in the screen, um,

she doesn't have any bruises,

doesn't have any marks on her, um...

So what she's saying doesn't match the physical reality.

And what's interesting in this segment of the interrogation is,

she really moves away from any physical abuse

and essentially describes a motive for killing him.

He was insulting her and her family,

how dare he?

Odd to say,

but psychopaths are usually very sensitive people too.

In many cases,

their behavior, their demeanor is born

out of a self-esteem which is very fragile,

which is very sensitive to a perceived insult,

and what happens once the psychopath feels insulted in any way

is a catastrophic reaction of rage.

She wasn't gonna give him up to anybody else.

I mean, she shot him right in the face,

that's a very personalized way of killing someone.

She could have shot him in the chest,

or the heart that might be sentimental,

but she shot him in the face.

And I...

She was angry

and she was gonna pay him back,

and I think shooting him in the face was...

was deliberate, yeah.

I don't think it was an accident.

That line, "I wonder if anyone will want to marry me,"

it's not the usual line people have

when they're being detained after having shot someone.

So from a psychological standpoint,

we have to take it as a significant indicator

of what's seriously important to her.

I really wanna know

how long this has been an obsession.

If Ryan was saying, "No. I'm not marrying you.

I'm moving on to other people,"

he's thwarting that fantasy,

and now that he's gone, she's wondering,

"Well, I wonder if there'll be another prospect,"

which means that the idea of being married is much more important

than who she's gonna marry.

Yeah.

The narcissism that Hubers struggles with is really seen here

because she doesn't have an audience.

It's difficult to engage in impression management

if nobody's paying attention to you,

and essentially this officer is not paying attention to Hubers.

And what she does is she doesn't tolerate it.

She pretty rapidly asks to have Amber brought back in,

and Amber is this female officer

who somehow Hubers has fused with

and believes might be her best shot

at convincing them that this was self-defense.

She's really trying to...to sell something here.

And what's interesting

is how she responds differently to men and women.

And I think that's very much her attempt

to try to garner sympathy

from what she would think of is a kindred spirit.

A woman would understand what it's like to be the victim of abuse,

so of course you will sympathize with me.

So it's a very conscious, deliberate use of her resources,

for a very tactical reason.

Successful psychopaths are inherently manipulative.

When you listen to what she says, though,

especially in contrast to what she initially said,

and how she says it, to me it seems like she's just trying

to lay the jam thicker and thicker on the toast.

She feels so bad for what's happened,

but what comes out of her mouth, and her physical expression

is just...they don't jive.

Who sings to themselves after they've killed somebody?

This is like she's finally grabbed the brass ring.

She's almost surprised at herself

that she was able to succeed.

She refers to herself in the third person.

We all have parts in ourselves, right?

The part that is wife or husband

or father or daughter or...

It's all a little bit different.

Sometimes psychopaths don't integrate these parts so well.

So, in order to get through their daily life,

they have to split apart, parts of themselves

and sort of put them in a box

and only let them out

when the opportune time arises,

and I think that's what we're seeing here.

It's her saying to herself, "I'm a killer."

As time has gone on and Hubers is sitting in this room

waiting to be released,

what's likely happening is she's playing back things

that she has said to the dispatcher and to the case agent

about how things happened,

and she's starting to realize,

"The crime scene might not look like that.

My body doesn't look like that, like there was a struggle."

She starts to play back things she said

and tries to plug in holes and gaps.

And when Hubers says, "He isn't alive to remember,"

what she might be telling us is,

"He's not alive to testify against me."

A woman is behind bars tonight.

Shayna Hubers is charged with the murder of her boyfriend.

Highland Heights police responded to the report of a person shot

at 12 Meadow Lane last night around 09:00 p.m.

That's when they found the victim, Ryan Poston.

The 29-year-old had been shot and killed.

Still, no word on a possible motive.

We can see her start to play every card she can

with this female law enforcement agent.