Kiehl likes to talk about the many occasions on which he has sat across from a prisoner and identified them as a psychopath. “They’re so utterly and totally different than the rest of us,” he says, gleefully. “It’s totally shocking … I just love it.”
He boasts about his bravery around those with criminal pasts. Most other psychopathy researchers “are never going to go into a maximum-security prison. They never could, they just wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s because it’s scary.”
Kiehl, 56, speaks in a high nasal pitch and delivers his thoughts in a rapid-fire narrative style.
During three lengthy phone interviews between November 2023 and February 2024, Kiehl described himself as an iconoclastic researcher who hoped that scientists can one day find a cure for criminal violence. He even invited me to his lab to scan my brain and experience his methodology for myself. (A week before I was due to travel to New Mexico, he rescinded the invitation and has since refused my requests for further interviews and the opportunity to comment on this story.)
Fortunately, we generally know what causes criminal violence. Some people may be more sensitive to those stimuli, but they aren't born with something to "cure."
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