The pathology of Bennett was even more puzzling than that of most psychopaths as the usual reasons for that deformation of character were either absent from his background or hidden. He had suffered no economic deprivation. There was no known history of sexual, physical, or even the harder to define but real and often warping emotional abuse that characterizes the histories of so many violent offenders. Neither his mother nor his father was an alcoholic and neither was known to be mentally ill.
Many people believe having a stay-at-home-mom (or stay-at-home parent of either sex) is a major advantage for a child. Robert Lee Bennett, Jr. enjoyed that advantage. His father was an attorney and his mother a homemaker. He was not often left with babysitters or nannies nor was he put in day care centers. His mother and father never divorced so he had the advantage of an intact family.
What could explain the horrors perpetrated by Robert Lee Bennett, Jr.? It is possible that there are traumas in his formative years that never became public information. While neither parent is known to have abused young Robert, it cannot be said with certainty that they did not do so. Nor can it be said with certainty that he was not mistreated by people outside of his immediate family.
It is also at least possible that his being adopted was a significant factor in his crimes. He was 22 months old, just shy of two years old, when he was taken into the home of Robert Bennett and Annabelle Maxwell Bennett. The early period of a human being’s life is crucial. Could a lack of affection prior to his adoption have left Robert Lee Bennett, Jr. without the basis upon which to develop normal feelings? Could his early infancy have been marred by abuses which, while not consciously remembered, imprinted scars upon his subconscious mind?
Perhaps the fact of being adopted itself contributed to his abnormal personality development. As David Kirschner points out in “Adoption Forensics: The Connection Between Adoption and Murder” at
http://www.crimemagazine.com/07/adoptionforensics,0919-7.htm, adoptees make up only 2-3% of the general population but 16% of the serial murderers. Adoptees are 15 times more likely to kill one or both parents than biological children are.
There are many things that might explain these tragic statistics. Until very recently, almost all adoptions were closed so children growing up in adoptive homes had only a big question mark around their origins. Adoptees are sometimes troubled by the issue of how they were conceived and the fear that they may have been conceived under circumstances often considered sordid and perhaps were even conceived in rapes. They may have extreme and conflicting fantasies about their biological parents and especially their biological mothers. Kirschner indicates that adoptees who turned violent often tended to think of the bio-mom as a benevolent and pure goddess – who would naturally contrast with the adoptive mom that they see day-to-day and know as a regular, flawed human being – and/or fantasize that the biological mother must have been a prostitute who conceived the adoptee in a transaction with a client.
It is also possible that the lack of a biological link between adoptive parents and their children means that there is a lack of “fit” between those personality aspects that are inherited. Yet another possibility is that adoptive parents often do not treat their children exactly as they would their biological young. They may not be able to give exactly the same affection to an adopted child and might act more harshly with him or her. Then again, adoptive parents might attempt to over-compensate and be unduly lenient with their children.
Another possibility is that involuntary childlessness might have put a marriage under strain so that the adoptive parents expect the baby they bring into their home to repair their marital problems. Disappointment because the baby is a baby, with all of a baby’s demands, rather than a cure-all for a troubled or failing relationship might transmit itself in dangerous ways to the child’s psyche.
I would like input from my readers. My article about Robert Lee Bennett, Jr. and his crimes as the Handcuff Man is at http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/handcuff/1.html. What do you think of my article? What do you think of Bennett himself? What do you see as the source of his pathology?