Most Evil
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Most Evil is an American forensics television program on Investigation Discovery presented by forensic psychiatrist Michael Stone of Columbia University. On the show, Stone rates murderers on a scale of evil that Stone himself has developed. The show features profiles on various murderers, serial killers, mass murderers and psychopaths.
Season 1
Scale and criminals
Stone researched hundreds of killers and their methods and motives to develop his hierarchy of "evil". The scale ranges from Category 1, those who kill in self-defense, to the Category 22, serial torturer-murderers. Neurologists, psychologists, and other forensic psychiatrists are interviewed on the show in an attempt to examine and profile the minds of notorious killers. Partial re-enactments are shown along with news footage, evidence, and reports from locals. Neurological, environmental, and genetic factors are examined to help determine what drives a person to kill. Background history and pre-meditation are considered when placing an individual on the scale of evil. The show indirectly deals with the concepts of morality and ethics.
| Category | Criteria | People |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Those who have killed in self-defense, and who do not show traces of psychopathy. | |
| 02 | Jealous lovers who committed murder; although egocentric or immature, they are not psychopaths. | Marybeth Tinning |
| 03 | Willing companions of killers: aberrant personality, impulse-ridden, with some antisocial traits. | Leslie Van Houten |
| 04 | Those who have killed in self-defense, but had been extremely provocative toward the victim for that to happen. | |
| 05 | Traumatized, desperate persons who killed abusive relatives or other people, but who show remorse for their crime and are not psychopaths. | Martha Ann Johnson |
| 06 | Impetuous, hotheaded murderers, yet without marked psychopathic traits. | Robert John Bardo, Billy Wayne Sinclair |
| 07 | Highly narcissistic, but not distinctly psychopathic persons—some with a psychotic core—who kill persons next to them, with jealousy as an underlying motive. | Marybeth Tinning, Mark David Chapman, Armin Meiwes, Diana Dial |
| 08 | Non-psychopathic persons with smoldering rage, and who kill when the rage is ignited. | Charles Whitman, Keith Jesperson |
| 09 | Jealous lovers with marked psychopathic features. | Betty Broderick |
| 10 | Killers of people "in the way", such as witnesses. Extremely egocentric, but not distinctly psychopathic. | Rod Ferrell, Susan Smith |
| 11 | Psychopathic killers of people "in the way", such as close friends or even family members. | |
| 12 | Power-hungry psychopaths who kill when they are "cornered". | Ervil LeBaron |
| 13 | Psychopathic murderers with inadequate, rageful personalities, rage being the reason of their killings. | Ed Gein, Herbert Mullin, Martin Bryant, Karla Faye Tucker Peter Lundin, Latasha Pulliam |
| 14 | Ruthlessly self-centered psychopathic schemers who kill to benefit themselves. | Richard Farley, Diane Downs, John List, Sante Kimes |
| 15 | Psychopathic cold-blooded spree killers or multiple murderers. | Andal Ampatuan, Jr., Andrew Cunanan, Charles Manson, Charles Starkweather, Susan Atkins, Charles "Tex" Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Colin Ferguson, Michael McDermott, Dorothea Puente, Seung-Hui Cho |
| 16 | Psychopaths committing multiple vicious acts, with repeated acts of extreme violence. | Gwendolyn Graham, Cathy Wood, Karla Homolka, Myra Hindley, Terry Driver, Theodore Kaczynski, Shoko Asahara, Michael Swango |
| 17 | Sexually perverse serial murderers: Rape is the primary motive and the victim is killed to hide evidence. | Ted Bundy, Arthur Shawcross, David Berkowitz, Richard Chase, Aileen Wuornos, Dennis Nilsen |
| 18 | Psychopathic torture-murderers, where murder is the primary motive, and the victim is killed after a torture that was not prolonged. | Nathan Bar-Jonah, Gary Ridgway, Jerry Brudos, William Heirens, Keith Jesperson |
| 19 | Psychopaths driven to terrorism, subjugation, intimidation, and rape, short of murder or murder is not the primary motive. | Gary Steven Krist |
| 20 | Psychopathic torture-murderers, where torture is the primary motive, but in persons with distinct psychoses (such as schizophrenia). | Joseph Kallinger |
| 21 | Psychopaths who do not kill their victims, but do subject them to extreme torture. | Cameron Hooker |
| 22 | Psychopathic torture-murderers, where torture is the primary motive. In most cases, the crime has a sexual motivating factor. | Tommy Lynn Sells, John Wayne Gacy, Dennis Rader, Theresa Knorr, Charles Ng, Leonard Lake, Paul Bernardo, Ian Brady, Gary Heidnik, David Parker Ray, Westley Allan Dodd, George Hodel, Jeffrey Lundgren, Edmund Kemper, H. H. Holmes, Adolfo Constanzo, John Edward Robinson, Andrei Chikatilo, Jeffrey Dahmer, Daniel Barbosa, Jim Jones, Pedro Alonso Lopez. |
