(MAN SOBBING)
(CHILLING MUSIC)
(HAUNTING MUSIC)
(STATIC CRACKLING)
MAN: The thing inside of me, it's like...
The appetite, it's like a wolf that's...
..feeling...the hunger.
REPORTER: Around 2.30 Monday morning
first responders are called to a car fire
near the 22 mile marker of I-96.
The body of a 37-year-old woman, identified as Lori Marie Vargas,
trapped and badly burned inside.
(SOMBRE MUSIC)
At first, it seemed like a deadly, fiery crash.
But evidence at the scene,
along with the man officers found walking near the crash,
quickly led detectives to believe this case was something else.
REPORTER 2: Police online records show
45-year-old Donald Spice is being held.
(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC)
(CHILLING MUSIC)
(SPICE EXHALES HEAVILY)
Mm... Um...
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(MOBILE BUZZING)
So, from a psychological defences perspective,
we would say that is projection.
Because he's attributing to her attitudes he, in fact, holds himself.
I don't think he really was totally happy in the relationship at all.
He's very calm.
He refers to it in the past tense, that 'I WAS her fiance.'
And he's beginning to set the stage that,
'Things were kind of fine with me, but something was wrong with her.'
I didn't believe it, not because he said he cried.
I didn't believe it because he, he presents Lori Vargas as this
crazy woman who was out of control with her emotions.
He says she's irrational, which many abusive men do.
DR MORGAN: The technique of blaming somebody else for what's going on
is very common in people who have psychopathy.
This behaviour is definitely related to power and control,
and it's related to obtaining their objective.
(DOOR OPENS) MALE OFFICER: OK.
(CHILLING MUSIC)
(OMINOUS MUSIC)
(GASPING SOB)
He just says, 'I didn't want to hurt her.'
I believe that part, but I think he wanted to kill her.
His own thinking was, 'I want to get rid of her.'
'But maybe I didn't want to make her suffer.'
That's what we would call a Freudian slip.
That, I believe, indicates
he knew she's already dead, he's already killed her.
Little phrases and lines make it sound like,
in the eye of the investigator, that this was hurtful to him.
(SPICE SOBS)
(CHILLING MUSIC)
DR RAGHAVAN: I'm a bit speechless at the pointlessness of this detail.
The story as is told, makes no sense.
A woman with no history of violence, no history of volatility,
would not pick up a knife and threaten a dog.
Sometimes people say things that they actually thought,
and they attribute it to the other person.
So, I wonder if he picked up Chico to kill the dog...
..to show her that he meant business.
Psychopaths often do. They torture animals.
They, they keep pets, and they torture them.
It's, it's horrific.
And perhaps he threatened to kill the dog,
which abusive men often do, to show that they mean business.
DR MORGAN: This is an appeal to pity.
There is a cultural norm in our society that,
you're a good person if you're good to a dog.
Dogs are our friends. Dogs are, are wonderful, and it's only...
It's a bad person who would threaten to kill a dog or mistreat a dog.
(SINISTER MUSIC)
Donald's Spice's presentation of the story,
it adds to the element that she's evil, he's good.
She's an evil person.
He's essentially saying she picks up the dog and says,
'I'm gonna kill this thing' and, and then the murder happens.
I think it's all setting the stage for what's about to come.
I think it is manipulative.
You usually say it's love that sweeps you off your feet.
But in this case, it's a hammer. There is an element of the dramatic.
But I, I do think that that's part of what happens
when people are telling a story that's just not true.
In reality, it's very likely she was asleep in the bed
or in a position of helplessness at the time.
But it's implied, he's saving the dog from her.
Blood makes a lot of people with core psychopathic features, feel alive.
While he's not visibly showing a lot of emotion,
the kind of details he provides
really makes you feel like he's enjoying describing it.
(SOBBING HYSTERICALLY)
(MUMBLING)
(SNIFFS)
(CHILLING MUSIC)
SPICE: Uh...
(SPICE SNIFFS LOUDLY)
Why on earth he would put her in the passenger seat and drive around?
A polite way to put it, is it's downright peculiar.
Perhaps he wanted to have a corpse next to him
and get the thrill of driving around with a dead body,
that would have been no thrill if he put her in the trunk.
He enjoyed deceiving everybody along the way.
He was able to do that.
He didn't seem terribly emotionally distressed over that.
He's describing it with relative calm,
which is all not normal.
Psychopaths don't have the same connectivity to other people.
Other people are objects, they're things,
and they can depersonalize them rather quickly.
And so, now that she's dead...
Um, she's gone.
Uh, I think in his mind, at that particular point,
this was on the way to achieving his ultimate goal.
REPORTER: Donald Spice is so comfortable in a courtroom
he actually stopped for a chat about his case,
the third of his criminal career.
Actually, it's...the...
..third time of being really stupid.
It was desperation.
Apparently, Spice is a pretty desperate person.
He's been here before.
Though he was a bit shyer six years ago.
This video is from his 1991 case.
Spice was actually on a tether for a previous B&E
when he burglarized the Profile Salon on Alpine.
That same night, Spice hit the Alpine Super Wash,
ended up back behind bars, and yes, the cycle began again.
Spice served five years before getting out last July,
and immediately tried to break in to another business.
Having problems getting money, uh, borrowing money.
But police say it's not about money.
Spice is just addicted to breaking and entering.
No, I am not that.
The police are trying to make me out to be an, uh, obsessive person.
DR MORGAN: I think he is obsessive.
I think he plans and plots and schemes.
It's a pattern that he will engage in over and over and over again. He's not going to stop.
What Donald Spice is obsessed with, is the excitement and the winning.
It's, it's setting out a plan,
and beating other people at something.
There's a progression of the intensity of the crime,
so that he could have more of a thrill and a bigger gain.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)
(SOBBING)
(CHILLING MUSIC)
DR RAGHAVAN: Spice was not interested in Lori Vargas
as a beautiful, sensual woman.
I believe he was setting up the murder from the start.
Psychopaths are frequently predators.
And so, he likely looked for someone he thought he could fool,
he thought he could con,
he thought he could seduce, importantly.
And then later on, murder in a way he thought he could get away with.
DR MORGAN: Lori Vargas was a mother of two.
She would fall potentially into a category of people who'd be more vulnerable,
especially she's working as a single mother.
That pattern fits a targeting pattern
that many psychopaths and sociopaths have.
The irony is that although they don't attach
as profoundly to other people as healthy people do,
they know who needs to feel an attachment.
DR MORGAN: I don't think he's sorry at all.
Donald Spice is framing his actions as something that are kind.
'I'm really not a monster. I do kind things.'
I see that as the selfish manipulation of his,
of the image he's trying to convey to the police officer
to try and get maybe a little empathy.
The problem is, is that he sucks at it.
DR RAGHAVAN: So he's progressing to the end goal.
But along that progress, are all of these little things
that are horrific for us, but that gives him pleasure.
So, the seduction, the killing, then the staging of the killing.
And then he explodes the car
and he gets a pleasure from probably the sheer violence of it.
But also, that's part of the storyline that he's created for himself.
REPORTER: Today, prosecutors lay down evidence suggesting the murder was pre-planned.
They say months before the murder,
someone used Spice's credit card and his computer
to purchase a life insurance policy on Lori Vargas.
They say Spice was listed as the sole beneficiary.
Spice refuted the evidence presented today.
They don't have proof of that. They have to allege it!
That's it. That's good enough. I'm guilty until proven innocent!
I'm standing here in cuffs and shackles!
DR MORGAN: He sounds annoyed, he sounds angry,
which is probably the most genuine emotion that we have seen from him.
He's even lower on empathy than I imagined.
What we see now is the ruthless planning.
Lori Vargas's murder is part of a long continuum
of criminal behaviour and using other people
and taking other people's things.
DR RAGHAVAN: And then it escalated to a predatory crime
where he planned a murder, and he wanted a big pay-out
where he could idly and parasitically live off,
um, you know, this insurance.
The thrill of planning the murder,
and the thrill of disposing of the body
and the thrill of fooling the police,
all of that is part of the fantasy.
Mr Spice has all the characteristics of a classic psychopath.
REPORTER: Donald Spice was sentenced to life in prison
for killing his girlfriend and mother of two, Lori Vargas.
Today, in court, her two children spoke.
CHILD: I call him monster because he took my mum away from me.
This will affect my life because I'm not going to grow up with a mum.
(MAN EXCLAIMS IN DISGUST)
(SOMBRE MUSIC)
subtitles by Deluxe