The Psychopath: A True Story(36)
Mischele and I talked and talked and kept in daily contact over those first traumatic days. I felt really connected to her as I knew exactly what she was going through.
Mischele let Will Jordan think that she was still in a relationship with him and was giving him an opening to build up the trust between them again. She let him think that he had a chance with her! Meanwhile, she considered what to do: an act of supreme control on her part.
I put Mischele in touch with six other victims, including his ex-wife from the UK and the recent victims from the USA. We created a private Facebook page so that we could all communicate and share stories. Mischele was stunned at the number of victims and keen to talk to each of them.
‘It’s like my story has a piece of everybody else’s story in it,’ she said.
‘What do you want to do now?’ I asked.
‘He needs to be brought down!’ she said. ‘This needs to end with me!’
Mischele kept pretending to Will Jordan that she was willing to try again, but only if he worked to regain her trust.
Every time she spoke to him, she would talk to me immediately afterwards to ensure she kept grounded and also to share the information. In discussing what he said with me, it was easier to ascertain for her what was true, what was a lie and what was in between.
I had been working with a film company on making a documentary called Evil Up Close and we had just finished filming when Mischele got in touch. At the same time Mischele was talking to the police and finding out what they needed from her to make an arrest. Hard evidence was difficult to get because Will Jordan was an old hand at this and was good at not leaving a trail.
We talked to the film company and Mischele got hold of hidden cameras which they helped fit her with, a button camera on her shirt and another camera in her handbag. Armed with these, she told Will Jordan that they needed to talk and he needed to finally come clean about everything. She told him that she had now spoken to both me and his ex-wife from the UK and that she wanted to hear the whole story from his angle, including what was and wasn’t true about the money she had paid for her ‘security clearance’. He agreed.
Mischele drove to a Dunkin’ Donuts café and after ordering a drink and a bagel, sat down to talk, all filmed on hidden cameras.
Mischele sent me the videos to watch and seeing Will Jordan again on camera was chilling and disturbing. Not least because, although a few years older and sporting a light beard and more scruffy clothes, he was exactly the same man I remembered. Mischele did an incredible job of appearing relaxed and open to his manipulations, talking casually with him initially as if absolutely nothing was wrong.
Looking at the footage, a lot of the conversation is difficult to hear because of the background noise, music and scraping of chairs in the café. However, some of it is crystal clear and quite unnerving. He uses so many different techniques when he talks. There’s the engaging eye contact and open body language, and at first there is straightforward conversation. But whenever Mischele asks a difficult question there is also word salad, and nonsensical answers which distract Mischele from what she has asked. He says ‘you know’ and ‘like’ a lot throughout, and fills blank spaces with body language. This is a technique in itself, because if words are not used the victim will fill in the ‘blank’ body gestures with an answer that would fit. Usually, in being empathic and in trying to understand, we fall into the trap that prompts us to fill in the gaps and finish incomplete sentences for the person we love. Mischele mostly managed to avoid that but it is easy to see how it’s done when you watch the video.
I transcribed the tape and it makes little sense when written down so I will paraphrase most of it here.
Mischele did an excellent undercover job of feigning vulnerability and interest in finding out his ‘truth’. She turned the recording device on before she met him, psyching herself up to get him to talk.
Mischele: ‘Turn it on before I get there, just in case he is early.
Hopefully by some grace of God he will confess everything.
OK, almost there, almost there, almost there.’
She sang along to ‘Let it Go’, which was playing on the car music system. She sang about never going back, letting go of the past and rising like the break of dawn. It was amazing how poignant the words were to this song – Mischele had previously told me that it had become her anthem during that time. She seemed to be singing it to steady her nerves, then she continued, talking to herself.
‘One red light, one red light. Cheerio. Just breathe, just breathe. Be natural.
Just breathe, just breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe in.
Normal. Normal. Normal. Be normal, be normal. Just “everyone want coffee?”
Oh, look at that, he’s actually early . . . Bastard.’
She stopped the car and got out.
They walked into the Dunkin’ Donuts café and ordered coffee and cinnamon raisin bagels, which Mischele paid for, then took their drinks and sat down. Will Jordan seemed particularly calm and not at all concerned or nervous about the conversation he was about to have. Mischele asked after his parents and Will responded that they were OK, and hopefully the change in the weather would make things better. They moved through talking about various things until they started to discuss meeting up again the next day.
The conversation was evenly balanced, open, warm and relaxed. It flowed naturally. No one would have suspected that Will Jordan was about to spin a web of lies, nor that Mischele was secretly ensnaring him in a legal videotaped trap. About twenty minutes in, Mischele brought the conversation round to the subject at hand. She said: ‘I don’t know, I still have mixed feelings about everything.’