Evil: Nature or Nurture?

July 10, 2007 — -- Are evil people born or made?

Ulysses Handy was 24 when he walked into a friend's home in Tacoma, Wash., looking to steal money he knew was there.

He shot Darren Christian and Daniel Varo at point-blank range, and then turned his gun on a total stranger, unarmed and defenseless 21-year-old Lindy Cochran. When questioned about her reaction and asked whether she had begged for her life, Handy said, "She didn't say a damn word. She was shellshocked."

He explained that her terror didn't set him back at all.

He continued, "I feel there are two kinds of people in the world — us and them. Predator and prey. Well, I'm damn sure not no prey."

Handy was arrested and pleaded guilty. At his sentencing, he spoke to the victims' families. "I know there's people here hurt. Yeah, well, pain is a part of life. Deal with it. Get over it."

According to Handy, he felt no compassion for the family members of his victims. "Man, there ain't nothing I could say could take away their pain or make it a little easier to deal with. They gone and they ain't coming back, " he said.

Cochran's great-uncle Richard Frost expressed his feelings toward Handy in the courtroom at the sentencing. "The part that can keep me going the rest of my life is the hope that somebody on the inside will get their hands on him and choke the life out of him while he's whimpering like the coward he is."

For Frost, knowing that Handy would spend his life in prison was not enough — it did not offer him any satisfaction.

By pleading guilty, Handy avoided death row. He is almost a year into three consecutive life sentences, and he has spent some of that time covering himself in jailhouse tattoos — a pentagram, the word "sadistic" and the number 666 on his chest, with devil horns above his eyes.

"I wonder what is it that drives him to feel that he needs to advertise that he's a sadist to everyone around him," said forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, the developer of the Depravity Scale.

The defiance of the hardened persona could be one of three things. "You're dealing with illness, brute contempt for others or bravado," Welner said. "I would have every reason to believe that he's terrified, because when you take his gun away, how scary is he?"