The Psychopath: A True Story(18)

In researching The Bigamist, I learnt a lot from his victims about other incidents of his own self-harming in order to provide proof. One of his victims didn’t want to have any more children so she suggested that she would get her tubes tied. Will Jordan insisted that was too invasive and offered to have a vasectomy instead. He duly went off to have the procedure done and came back with what looked like two cigarette burns on the outside of his testicles. Strangely enough, she got pregnant again and he said the procedure must have failed.

I wondered how he could do such painful and distressing things to himself simply to perpetuate a lie, so I looked it up.

Research into psychopaths has shown they have no emotional response to other people but also have no empathic emotional response to themselves either. The researchers had done experiments where they’d strapped volunteers into an electric chair and told them they’d receive an electric shock. Their heart rate immediately quickened. They received the shock and the rate jumped up high then slowly came down again. The researchers would then tell the volunteer that they’d receive another shock and the heart rate jumped right back up to high in anticipation of the pain they’d receive. However, when the researchers conducted the same experiment on a psychopath (as identified through the PCL-R), their heart rate remained stable until they received the shock, when it jumped to high and then back to normal again. When told they’d receive another shock it remained normal until the pain actually hit.

As well as having no empathy for other people, psychopaths have no empathy for their future selves either. It is not that they do not feel the pain, just that they don’t care that their future self is going to feel it.

Empathic people empathise with their future selves as if they are another person: we imagine ourselves the next day, week, month or year as though we are thinking of someone we care about.

Knowing that, Will Jordan going to burn himself with a cigarette would not have elicited an emotional response from him. Even a few seconds after feeling the first shock of pain, and knowing he was going to burn himself again, it still would not have elicited any response. He will have felt the pain, but no distress that he was about to feel pain.



My long telephone conversations with the other wife covered an enormous amount of ground and I got to know and understand her much better than I had before. She told me all about the other victims she knew of, including the nannies she had employed to look after their children. I already knew about one of the nannies who had two children by Will Jordan, but the other wife told me about another young girl who had lost her life because of him. This girl, only nineteen years old, I believe, started nannying for the family. In a very short space of time Will Jordan seduced her. When the wife found out, he rejected the girl and she lost her job and her home, having to leave the house in disgrace. The other wife then told me how the girl had turned up again, having taken an overdose of paracetamol. They took her to the hospital but it was too late to save her. Her liver failed and she died slowly and in great pain.

One incident that came to light when we compared notes was extraordinarily revealing. The other wife told me about an incident in October 2002 when Will Jordan had told her his MI6 handler, Michael, was staying in a hotel just near her home. She had been in regular contact with Michael over the years and admitted to being a little in love with him even though they’d never met in person. His being so close by was too tempting for her to resist so she went to the hotel to meet him. When she arrived at the hotel room, Michael answered the door and immediately looked uncomfortable – he refused to speak to her, stating that he was just a businessman who worked with Will Jordan. She left and started to go home, but within five minutes of leaving, got a text from Michael saying that he was being bugged and she needed to understand that he couldn’t talk to her. She immediately turned around and went back. Knocking on his door once again she insisted that he accompany her to the parking lot, where they walked around in circles. The other wife tried to get Michael to talk but he insisted that he was just a businessman and refused to discuss anything with her. Again she left confused and angry. Once again she got a text within five minutes from Michael telling her that his phone was bugged, not the room, and that he genuinely couldn’t talk to her but they would meet and talk in person soon.

I had already heard this story from the other person’s perspective – Malcolm, the businessman Will Jordan had defrauded and whom he had told that his wife was dying from cancer and had lost her mind. Will Jordan had been posing online as his own MI6 handler to his wife, and Malcolm had given him the perfect opportunity to show her that this person was indeed real. However, how did Will Jordan know to text as soon as his wife had left? At the time, Will Jordan was with me on honeymoon at Shieldhill Castle in Scotland, hundreds of miles away. So how was he keeping track of her?

I remembered that I had read about modern bugging devices and asked the wife what kind of phone she had. It was a small blue Nokia phone that Will Jordan had given her. A quick Google search provided the answer. At the time you could buy a bugging device that looked and worked exactly like that Nokia phone – although it had one additional special feature. Will Jordan could dial up the phone he had given his wife and enter an additional number code – her phone would answer without ringing and without showing her it was even on. It was a domestic bugging device. Although we are not 100% sure that this is what he did, it seems to fit the evidence and would explain how he knew what she was doing and who she had been talking to.