After joining the N.Y.U. faculty, she was able to secure a small grant to study the prisoners on Bellevue Hospital's forensic ward. Her findings were published in a leading psychiatric journal and, as a result, she was invited to be interviewed on CBS Morning News. Her ninety-second interview was viewed by an attorney in Florida and she was asked to evaluate his death row clients. Her career had begun. The author believes that there may be genetic predipositions to some of the more severe mental illnesses, but none have been proven to exist.
Stress produces cortisol which has shown to damage the hippocamus.
Most of the death row inmates she interviewed with both severely physically and psychologically damaged. A large portion of the book deals with material unearthed during the death-row inmate interviews. She believes, as do others, that the type of crime as well as its modus operandi leads an astute investigator to determine the type of pathology involved. Perhaps, even the trauma suffered by the perpetrator decades earler can be learned. Many murderers are psychotic.