Bad to the Bone

How to explain evildoers like Harris and Klebold? Some psychologists say there's a diagnosis at hand

To their victims they seemed pretty normal at first, even admirable. Reinaldo Silvestre, a charming Miami con man with no medical training, is alleged to have operated on his plastic-surgery patients by shoving implants into their chests with a spatula; several were permanently mutilated. A drifter named Luis Garavito confessed in October to kidnapping, torturing and killing 140 children over five years in Colombia. Dylan Klebold went to the prom (and Eric Harris wanted to) before shooting up Columbine High in April. Predators with such little regard for morality and human life defy rational explanation, right?

Wrong, say an increasingly vocal...

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