Although Jesperson’s drawing did look like Nicole Kidman, Moody added, as he got serious about creating a computer digital rendering using the (Kidman) picture Jesperson painted for me and a second portrait Jesperson painted for Moody (another Kidman likeness), along with Jane’s skull, all of it would be helpful.
Throughout the spring and summer (2015), Moody and Jesperson exchanged notes back and forth, while I watched over the situation as a quiet third party. Finally, Moody rendered a computer mock-up of Jane he mailed to Jesperson. By then, I had sent Moody the picture Jesperson had painted for me. When Moody superimposed that (Kidman) portrait over the new computer rending identikit he’d completed, correlating the sizes to match, as he focused in and out of the portrait Jesperson painted for me and the identikit he’d created, a near identical match emerged: Jesperson’s portrait and the latest computerized identikit Moody created from the drawings and paintings and Jane’s skull were one in the same. All of it done, mind you, without Jesperson seeing anything Moody had been working on. And what’s more, when we matched those early mock-ups to Ylenia Carrisi, wow, the similarity was undeniable. We all believed—save for Jesperson, who still did not know anything about Carrisi—we were staring at Tyrone Power’s granddaughter.
I stood inside Moody’s office and gazed at these pictures as Moody focused on the computer model and then back out to the overlaying portrait Jesperson had made for me. I was amazed at how accurate Jesperson’s drawing was and how it harmonized with Jane’s skull. This, I concluded, was the best portrait of Jane we were going to see. The only thing we needed to do next was send the new images to Jesperson and see what he thought.
46
BRAIN SCAM
“Through others, we become ourselves.”
—Lev S. Vygotsky
I EXPLAINED TO JESPERSON WHEN I VISITED HIM IN 2016 THAT THERE was a criminologist in England, now working out of the United States, who was doing some incredible work with the psychopath’s brain and a quest to find a “cure for crime.” This scientist had conducted brain scans on psychopaths and murderers in American prisons, and had been “among the first researchers to apply the evolving science of brain imaging to violent criminality,” the Guardian reported. “He conducted PET (positron emission tomography) scans of 41 convicted killers and paired them with a ‘normal’ control group of 41 people of similar age and profile,” the newspaper chronicled. The images “showed metabolic activity in different parts of the brain . . . striking in comparison.” Murderers’ brains, in particular, displayed “a significant reduction in the development of the . . . ‘executive function’ of the brain . . .” as “compared with the control group.”
Interested in this research, I have always believed that psychopaths are born—or, rather, certain human beings, whatever genetic malfunction takes place, are brought into this world without the empathy or sympathy gene, per se. There’s no doubt psychopathy is a developmental disorder. And this imperfection at birth sets up within the framework of that developing and evolving human mind the foundation for him or her to commit, later on, savage acts of repeated, brutal, deadly violence without feeling guilt, shame, or remorse.
The brain scan research and associated theories do not come without a fair share of controversy, and this particular researcher has had naysayers trying to spin his work into junk science. I was not at all concerned with any of that as I began to consider all the evil Jesperson had projected into the world. Thinking about all of the pain he’d caused families, not to mention objectifying, disparaging, and exploiting his victims (even after he murdered them), I cultivated the idea that if I could convince him to donate his brain to science upon his death, the least we could get out of him would be a bit of scientific data. It was not an olive branch, or a way for me to say “do some good for once in your life.” Rather, it was a request he could agree to in order to help us further understand the mind of the serial killer.
“Don’t say yes or no right now,” I told him. “Think about it.”
“I’ll write you a letter,” he said. “Explain how I feel.”
“I’m sure you will.”
*
I DROVE TO MY PO box one day after the back-and-forth correspondence between Jesperson and Moody, and the creation of the computerized identikit Moody had sent to Happy Face. Moody had been awaiting Jesperson’s approval or any changes he might want to make. And that, along with the latest Ylenia Carrisi developments, gave us a feeling of closure.
There was a yellow card tucked inside my PO box.
What is he sending now?
After collecting the package from the postal clerk, I went to my car and opened it.
There she was: Jane Doe. The last (and final) image Moody had rendered and sent off to Jesperson for his approval. She no longer looked like Nicole Kidman, or a Native American; Jane was now her own person. She had a soul. That necklace—the triangle, circle, and square—wasn’t around her neck anymore; it was attached to her waist as a sash, per one of Jesperson’s earlier comments. Her hair was frizzy and blond, her features Caucasian. She could easily pass for Ylenia Carrisi—along with a host of other girls.
Her final look wasn’t what made me feel we had come together and developed a photographic image (or as close as we would ever get) of Jane. It was what Jesperson said to me later that week, when he asked during a phone call if I received the package. He was out of breath. One of those moments when he couldn’t get the words out fast enough.
“You get the package?”
“Yeah, man, I got it.”
“It’s her,” he said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, Phelps. I sent all that shit Moody sent me to you because she haunted me. I couldn’t keep it in my cell. Man. I had to get it the hell out of here. Looking at her—that’s the woman I killed. It’s her, Phelps.”
This was interesting. He’d told me his victims did not spook him. Yet here he was, face-to-face with a woman he’d killed twenty years before, sweating.
In a letter to Moody, explaining his feelings about the image, Jesperson said as soon as he opened the package: “A cold rush fell over” him. “That’s her,” he told Moody. “No changes needed!” Further along, “I cannot keep her in my cell. I am disturbed by the images. I mailed the prints off to Phelps.”
Jesperson looked at a lineup of photographs Moody had since sent depicting Ylenia Carrisi at different ages, wearing different clothes, her hair styled differently in every photo. Moody never told Jesperson her name, anything about her background, or why he’d chosen to send the photographs. With a black Sharpie, on the top of the page, all Moody wrote was: “Is this her?”
Jesperson sent back his explanation. He’d lettered each photo, pointing out “the hair of ‘H’ and ‘L’ is correct. Her face in ‘K’ is so very close. ‘B’ is also close. As long as her name”—referring to Susan, Suzanne, Sue-Ellen, etc.—“is correct, we have a very good match.”
He seemed certain we had found Jane Doe.
“Now to confirm DNA will be one hundred percent,” Jesperson concluded. “I hope it is. Put an end to this story.”