UK - Alesha MacPhail, 6, raped & murdered, Ardbeg, Isle of Bute, Scotland, 2 Jul 2018 -*arrest* #6

[TaylorCallum]

Okay, I think I need to stop. I'm reading science journals now and one's titled "The Hidden Suffering of the Psychopath" and it's making me feel sorry for psychopaths, because it's talking about their inability to fit in and live a normal life and how they find it hard to deal with certain things. What is happening? lol.

 

[tmar]

He'll come up against hardened criminals during his long imprisonment, who will not be impressed by his smirking and persona , and will hopefully deal with him their way . Prisioners know each other so I very much doubt he will ever go to top of the pile . Child sex offenders are the dirt on the sole of other lifers shoes . He will have to sleep with one eye open

This Creep will continually get his rewards during his pathetic life in Prison for his crime.
Prisoners also have standards, and he is at the bottom of the pile.
MOO.

 

[Sleuthdolf]

Okay, I think I need to stop. I'm reading science journals now and one's titled "The Hidden Suffering of the Psychopath" and it's making me feel sorry for psychopaths, because it's talking about their inability to fit in and live a normal life and how they find it hard to deal with certain things. What is happening? lol.

Sounds like your mind is in overdrive, pal. I'm gonna get some sleep and reevaluate my sanity in the morning. I suggest you join me.

 

[TaylorCallum]

Sounds like your mind is in overdrive, pal. I'm gonna get some sleep and reevaluate my sanity in the morning. I suggest you join me.

I think you are very correct. I am tired and it's been a long day. Thanks! Goodnight.

 

[Kikixxxx]

Alesha MacPhail's mum says she 'looks forward to death' of daughter's murderer

 

[Gardenista]

Alesha MacPhail's mum says she 'looks forward to death' of daughter's murderer

I love this woman.

 

[Bluedaisy100]

I actually posted here guessing that he told Alesha he was a friend of her dads and she had to go with him. Horrified that I’m right. I’m surprised she wasn’t scared and willingly went despite all parents telling their children to never talk to strangers. Was it because he was so young? But then again doesn’t everyone older look like an adult to a child? How did he still leave no trace in Alisha’s house and no trace of Alesha in his own house? Just so many questions I still have. I’m horrified at the smirking at Georgina. He loved every second of brutalising that child. I think more will come out at a later date of the more horrific details but I think we all need a deep breath first.

I remembered that guess but couldn't remember who said it. Thanks for chiming in. You have amazing intuition!

 

[gitana1]

Whomever solves it will win the Nobel Peace Prize. IMO it will never happen. Sadly. How do we ever differentiate between those who kill and those who don't. Nature/Nurture etc. etc...….

There is some indication that the brain can be changed if caught young. It's more malleable. But how to tell is the question? I mean lots of kids have behavioral issues. I;m not sure they'd want the stigma of having a budding psychopath on their hands by getting a brain scan. And then there's the issue that I think some of the parents of these kids contribute to the issue with denial and enabling.

Regardless, here's a very informative and interesting article on child psychoopaths and laughter:

Kids who don’t do this might grow up to be psychopaths, researchers find

Here is one on treating psychopathic children. I've gone back to this article many times. It's very, very interesting:

The first abnormality appears in the limbic system, the set of brain structures involved in, among other things, processing emotions. In a psychopath’s brain, this area contains less gray matter. “It’s like a weaker muscle,” Kiehl says. A psychopath may understand, intellectually, that what he is doing is wrong, but he doesn’t feel it. “Psychopaths know the words but not the music” is how Kiehl describes it. “They just don’t have the same circuitry.”

In particular, experts point to the amygdala—a part of the limbic system—as a physiological culprit for coldhearted or violent behavior. Someone with an undersize or underactive amygdala may not be able to feel empathy or refrain from violence. For example, many psychopathic adults and callous children do not recognize fear or distress in other people’s faces. Essi Viding, a professor of developmental psychopathology at University College London recalls showing one psychopathic prisoner a series of faces with different expressions. When the prisoner came to a fearful face, he said, “I don’t know what you call this emotion, but it’s what people look like just before you stab them.”

Psychopaths not only fail to recognize distress in others, they may not feel it themselves. The best physiological indicator of which young people will become violent criminals as adults is a low resting heart rate, says Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania. Longitudinal studies that followed thousands of men in Sweden, the U.K., and Brazil all point to this biological anomaly. “We think that low heart rate reflects a lack of fear, and a lack of fear could predispose someone to committing fearless criminal-violence acts,” Raine says. Or perhaps there is an “optimal level of physiological arousal,” and psychopathic people seek out stimulation to increase their heart rate to normal. “For some kids, one way of getting this arousal jag in life is by shoplifting, or joining a gang, or robbing a store, or getting into a fight.” Indeed, when Daniel Waschbusch, a clinical psychologist at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, gave the most severely callous and unemotional children he worked with a stimulative medication, their behavior improved.

(This is why his casual attitude on the CCTV footage was so chilling. Some dismissed it, IMO ignorantly, as being evidence that he didn't do anything wrong. To me it was a massive red flag).

The second hallmark of a psychopathic brain is an overactive reward system especially primed for drugs, sex, or anything else that delivers a ping of excitement. In one study, children played a computer gambling game programmed to allow them to win early on and then slowly begin to lose. Most people will cut their losses at some point, Kent Kiehl notes, “whereas the psychopathic, callous unemotional kids keep going until they lose everything.” Their brakes don’t work, he says.

Faulty brakes may help explain why psychopaths commit brutal crimes: Their brains ignore cues about danger or punishment. “There are all these decisions we make based on threat, or the fear that something bad can happen,” says Dustin Pardini, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of criminology at Arizona State University. “If you have less concern about the negative consequences of your actions, then you’ll be more likely to continue engaging in these behaviors. And when you get caught, you’ll be less likely to learn from your mistakes.”

This insight is driving a new wave of treatment. What’s a clinician to do if the emotional, empathetic part of a child’s brain is broken but the reward part of the brain is humming along? “You co-opt the system,” Kiehl says. “You work with what’s left.”

The articles cycles back to treatment at the Mendota juvenile detention center I cited to earlier. Fascinating.

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

 

[Kikixxxx]

There is some indication that the brain can be changed if caught young. It's more malleable. But how to tell is the question? I mean lots of kids have behavioral issues. I;m not sure they'd want the stigma of having a budding psychopath on their hands by getting a brain scan. And then there's the issue that I think some of the parents of these kids contribute to the issue with denial and enabling.

Regardless, here's a very informative and interesting article on child psychoopaths and laughter:

Kids who don’t do this might grow up to be psychopaths, researchers find

Here is one on treating psychopathic children. I've gone back to this article many times. It's very, very interesting:

The first abnormality appears in the limbic system, the set of brain structures involved in, among other things, processing emotions. In a psychopath’s brain, this area contains less gray matter. “It’s like a weaker muscle,” Kiehl says. A psychopath may understand, intellectually, that what he is doing is wrong, but he doesn’t feel it. “Psychopaths know the words but not the music” is how Kiehl describes it. “They just don’t have the same circuitry.”

In particular, experts point to the amygdala—a part of the limbic system—as a physiological culprit for coldhearted or violent behavior. Someone with an undersize or underactive amygdala may not be able to feel empathy or refrain from violence. For example, many psychopathic adults and callous children do not recognize fear or distress in other people’s faces. Essi Viding, a professor of developmental psychopathology at University College London recalls showing one psychopathic prisoner a series of faces with different expressions. When the prisoner came to a fearful face, he said, “I don’t know what you call this emotion, but it’s what people look like just before you stab them.”

Psychopaths not only fail to recognize distress in others, they may not feel it themselves. The best physiological indicator of which young people will become violent criminals as adults is a low resting heart rate, says Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania. Longitudinal studies that followed thousands of men in Sweden, the U.K., and Brazil all point to this biological anomaly. “We think that low heart rate reflects a lack of fear, and a lack of fear could predispose someone to committing fearless criminal-violence acts,” Raine says. Or perhaps there is an “optimal level of physiological arousal,” and psychopathic people seek out stimulation to increase their heart rate to normal. “For some kids, one way of getting this arousal jag in life is by shoplifting, or joining a gang, or robbing a store, or getting into a fight.” Indeed, when Daniel Waschbusch, a clinical psychologist at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, gave the most severely callous and unemotional children he worked with a stimulative medication, their behavior improved.

(This is why his casual attitude on the CCTV footage was so chilling. Some dismissed it, IMO ignorantly, as being evidence that he didn't do anything wrong. To me it was a massive red flag).

The second hallmark of a psychopathic brain is an overactive reward system especially primed for drugs, sex, or anything else that delivers a ping of excitement. In one study, children played a computer gambling game programmed to allow them to win early on and then slowly begin to lose. Most people will cut their losses at some point, Kent Kiehl notes, “whereas the psychopathic, callous unemotional kids keep going until they lose everything.” Their brakes don’t work, he says.

Faulty brakes may help explain why psychopaths commit brutal crimes: Their brains ignore cues about danger or punishment. “There are all these decisions we make based on threat, or the fear that something bad can happen,” says Dustin Pardini, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of criminology at Arizona State University. “If you have less concern about the negative consequences of your actions, then you’ll be more likely to continue engaging in these behaviors. And when you get caught, you’ll be less likely to learn from your mistakes.”

This insight is driving a new wave of treatment. What’s a clinician to do if the emotional, empathetic part of a child’s brain is broken but the reward part of the brain is humming along? “You co-opt the system,” Kiehl says. “You work with what’s left.”

The articles cycles back to treatment at the Mendota juvenile detention center I cited to earlier. Fascinating.

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

That was so Interesting but chilling at the same time

 

[gitana1]

Which is why in cases like these we must embrace the good in the world. Embrace a small moment. Take in nature. When it get's too much for me I pay it forward or grab one of my grand dogs and head out to the lake. It creates a balance for me. That there is still something right in this world. It's all we can do. IMO

You know, I am certain that most of the world is good and that most people are good. It's hard to believe when we research and follow horrors like this. But it's true.

I have a very intense dreaming life. Since I was a toddler, vivid dreams, full color, intricate, they became lucid dreams around age 12, and I have a lot of recurring themes, places and events. One is tornadoes. They haunt my nightmares.

So naturally, I became obsessed with tornadoes. I watch a lot of tornado videos. People in the middle of them, storm chasers, etc.

Sorry for what may seem like an off topic narrative, (I've been sick so a bit rambly possibly) but I learned something about instinctual human nature watching those videos. Their first instincts aren't to help themselves. They are to help one another. Of course their loved ones first, but even total strangers.

I've watched these videos of storm chasers rolling through a just devastated neighborhood and you see shell shocked people emerge from the rubble and immediately go almost zombie like to their neighbors and start removing debris to find their neighbors! Amazing.

Same things with earthquakes. People just rush to rescue each other. Watching how humans instinctually react to natural disaster says everything I need to know about true human nature.

Here is a "video" I go back to a lot. It's horrifying. The devastating E5 Joplin tornado that killed so many. Two friends were driving in a truck when the radio told them to get into shelter. They got to a convenience store and started recording. You can't see much because it's dark. But you can immediately hear these two young men start planning with others in the store and the female manager to try to figure out where to put everyone to keep them safe. Where they ended up was the only thing left standing on the property and barely. The video is scary as hell. You can hear the beginnings of it approach and it escalates to an inferno of terror. It really gives you the full intensity of a tornado. But listen to how the people react to one another, how they try to keep each other calm, safe, and protected. They reassure one another, worry about how they're doing, and express love to total strangers:

I hope this is not considered off topic. I think in the face of a horrible case like this, these reminders of who we really are as humans are so important.

 

[LucyRocket]

Not sure if it went into the decision, but her mom wanted him named.

Oh I didn't know that. The only thing I had read on this was that her Nan DIDN'T want him named, which I had found unusual. The reason being she didn't want him to have the notoriety and recognition. I TOTALLY get that now, after yesterday

Alesha MacPhail's gran says naming her killer was the 'last thing she wanted'

 

[Kiranerys]

Imagine being that driver:
-"What you doing today?"
-"Oh just getting sentenced for raping and murdering a 6 year old, you?"

That's probably scarily accurate Taylor!!

 

[Kiranerys]

Okay, I think I need to stop. I'm reading science journals now and one's titled "The Hidden Suffering of the Psychopath" and it's making me feel sorry for psychopaths, because it's talking about their inability to fit in and live a normal life and how they find it hard to deal with certain things. What is happening? lol.

The thing to remember is not all psychopaths are sadistic murderers,or even criminals at all.There are some that realise they are different but try very hard to live as decent a life as they can,which is incredibly hard to do I'm sure.
The mendota clinic that someone referenced upthread is a very interesting project,and maybe if psychopaths can be recognised from an early age there is hope and you have to have hope x

 

[Eve71]

I didn't think he went there for drugs until his confession today. A niggling part of me doesn't believe what he is saying 100%, I just don't know really. Obviously there is truth in there but it's all a game to him. I also thought he was a nighttime prowler and believe it more so now, I agree there is strong probability he had been there before.

If that is what happened then why would he bother to take the knife in the first place.?

I always believed he went for drugs and never wavered from that , although I’d not thought he meant to rob them with a knife. I also knew he’d taken a sleeping Alesha and she awoke outside . She’d had a very busy Sunday and was late to bed, so it made sense she’d be very sleepy , that’s the only way he could have gotten her out the flat. I do believe he’d been there before though but not as a guest of rab.

I still have questions about the knife too. If his story is to be believed the knife was to pick the lock and then threaten those inside if he was caught but surely he really didn’t expect to get away with that , going up against four adults . I do believe him when he said he went back twice , because I can’t think of any reason why he’d lie about that.

 

[bronzepurple]

Alesha MacPhail mum can’t wait until DEATH of sick rapist killer – 'I hope he suffers'

 

[Ruben71]

I'm done with this case now. It's the first time I've used this website and I appreciate the good atmosphere that is kept up on here with people respecting other's views and a good level of intelligence unlike some other sites. I don't normally get too affected by all these cases of murder that seem to happen so often but this one has simply stunned me. At the end of the day it's all just really sad but I think the best way to move on from a case like this is to forget about AC and let him rot. It's the attention that feeds these psychopaths so until they find a cure then I think they're best ignored. I hope the media don't give him too much attention from now on. He will very soon come down from the high of his dirty act and the whole court case and just feel empty and alone. It's the least he deserves. Thanks TaylorCallum for your court appearance and keeping us so well informed and to everyone for the interesting discussions.

 

[Eve71]

I'm done with this case now. It's the first time I've used this website and I appreciate the good atmosphere that is kept up on here with people respecting other's views and a good level of intelligence unlike some other sites. I don't normally get too affected by all these cases of murder that seem to happen so often but this one has simply stunned me. At the end of the day it's all just really sad but I think the best way to move on from a case like this is to forget about AC and let him rot. It's the attention that feeds these psychopaths so until they find a cure then I think they're best ignored. I hope the media don't give him too much attention from now on. He will very soon come down from the high of his dirty act and the whole court case and just feel empty and alone. It's the least he deserves. Thanks TaylorCallum for your court appearance and keeping us so well informed and to everyone for the interesting discussions.

Agree with everything you’ve said. My first time here too and like so many others this case has upset me greatly. I think that’s why I’ve contributed so much, because everyone feels the same on here and for me that’s helped.

A.C. needs to be forgotten about now, though I doubt anyone will forget his name or his awful crime . I’m not interested in getting inside his head. I do hope the media don’t turn him into another Brady and give him a voice from behind bars.

It’s also time to let Alesha rest in peace.

 

[Edinlass]

Here here

 

[TaylorCallum]

I think for a quite a few of us here this was the first thread on Websleuths that we participated in and like @Ruben71 said it's been a good atmosphere and people have been nice and I've thoroughly enjoyed the discussions. So thank you very much for welcoming me and allowing me to get involved. It's been such a hard case for all of us and it's one we won't forget. I think for a lot of us it's also quite close to home.

What Alesha had to go through is something no one should have ever to go through and now that the case is over hopefully her family can get some small amount of closure and she can finally rest in peace. I believe the reality is that life is just cruel sometimes and you can't take it for granted. I hope everyone will be able to unwind and start to move on from this harrowing case in the next few days.

 

[Sleuthdolf]

I think for a quite a few of us here this was the first thread on Websleuths that we participated in and like @Ruben71 said it's been a good atmosphere and people have been nice and I've thoroughly enjoyed the discussions. So thank you very much for welcoming me and allowing me to get involved. It's been such a hard case for all of us and it's one we won't forget. I think for a lot of us it's also quite close to home.

What Alesha had to go through is something no one should have ever to go through and now that the case is over hopefully her family can get some small amount of closure and she can finally rest in peace. I believe the reality is that life is just cruel sometimes and you can't take it for granted. I hope everyone will be able to unwind and start to move on from this harrowing case in the next few days.

Agreed. First time i've been this invested in a crime and hopefully the last. It's been mentally draining. Last night I dreamt I was on here sending messages.

I hope the media don't give him any attention. I think he will toy with the family more, probably change some of his story. Throw him into the abyss. If anybody has watched the Black Mirror episode "White Christmas" that is a kind of hell I would wish on him plus added physical torture, an endless one.