. . . early experiences will necessarily have a far greater impact than later ones. The brain tries to make sense of the world by looking for patterns. When it links coherent, consistently connected patterns together, it tags them as "normal" or "expected" and stops paying attention. So for example, the very first time you were placed in a sitting position as an infant, you did pay attention to the novel sensations emanating from your buttocks. Your brain learned to sense the pressure associated with sitting normally, you began to sense how to balance your weight to sit upright via your motor vestibular system and, eventually you learned to sit.
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Dr. Perry instructs that, to the neurons and neural systems of the brain, patterns of experience matter.
On a cell by cell basis, no other tissue (other than the brain) is more suited to change in response to patterned, repetitive signals.
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Dr. Perry concurs with the work of Seymour Levine, who postulates that children are more vulnerable to trauma than adults. The developing brain is most malleable (impressionable) and most sensitive to experiences—good and bad—that occur early in life. Because of this, we are also rapidly and easily transformed by trauma when we are young.
Learning patterns came early for Sam with the loss of both parents. Being bounced between family and friends for the next eight or so years exaggerated the pattern already established, and over and over again it was fortified with each subsequent move from one family to another. Adding to the pattern was the abuse. Wouldn't you think that the pattern he learned might in time impact the family of his own that he might endeavor to establish later in life? We'll look at that as his story continues.
We know for sure that children who are abused are either dumbed down by the abuse or become so depressed and feel so worthless that their schoolwork suffers. Sam is referenced as having a brilliant mind, but often those with the brilliant minds are behavior problems in school. Why? They have a hard time sitting still and focusing on the project at hand because their minds are occupied with an overabundance of ideas running constantly through their heads. Their bodies attempt to keep up with the busyness of their minds by moving about and being disruptive rather than sitting quietly at their desks. The methods of learning used in the school systems do not make sense to many of these bright ones, and they become frustrated as they endeavor to learn by the left-brain methods of their teachers. Often they give up, just as Sam and Ron did.
As if Sam hadn't endured enough tragedy and loss, another loss occurred when he was 15, after nearly three years of living with his seriously ill birth father. Even though, at the time he moved into his father's house, he had already been three years into crime, there had to have been moments when he felt his father's love and concern. When Sam would stay out late and into the wee hours of the morning, his father would get out of bed and walk the streets hoping to catch a glimpse of his son. That must have felt good to Sam—to know that someone actually cared. When Sam was 15, his father died, and once again he was out on the streets, alone and unloved and adrift.
During the few years after he quit school in grade six, Sam stole six cars, and he was caught twice. Deciding that stealing cars wasn't such a great idea, he began forging checks, but he kept being caught. The police were also putting pressure on him for not being in school.
Jumping from job to job quickly became tiring, so Sam enlisted in the Army. After a very brief stint in the Army, Sam decided that military life wasn't for him. He continued to steal and forge checks while in the Army, which got him relocated from his original base five times before the Army finally discharged him.
Once out of military service, he met a girl and got married; but in two months he tired of her and left her. A few months later, he met another girl. "She was a good girl," he said, "and she couldn't understand why they had to keep moving around so much." Finally he got a job driving a dump truck, but one night he decided to "clean out a grocery store." Things became intense then with "the law," but still he kept on with his robberies.
His wife wanted to move back to her hometown, as she was about to have a baby. On the way there, Sam was stopped for speeding. The law then caught up with him for previous infractions, and he was sentenced to seven years in jail.
Somehow his wife managed to get him parole in 17 months. He soon became tired of his parole officer, and he took off again, leaving his newly pregnant wife and child with her grandparents. He was divorced after his second child was born. Quite a pattern of instability, wouldn't you say? And what you have read so far is minus many of the details of his criminal life.
After getting out of prison in Missouri, he went to see his mother. This is the first time we have heard of her since his parents' divorce! He stayed with her for one week and then headed for Indianapolis. There he worked days and cashed checks at night, and he also pulled two robberies. After a couple of weeks, he headed back home and decided to pull off one more job and then head out of town with his new girlfriend. Do you notice how Sam kept moving around from one woman to another? Was he looking for a wife to mother him, since his years of "mothering" had been abruptly ended when his parents divorced? Would any woman be good enough, do it right, or condone his unlawfulness?
This "one more" job was a robbery of a restaurant where only one waitress worked the night shift. He pointed his gun at her and emptied the cash register, but he was afraid to just leave because she could identify him. So he forced her into his car, planning to drive her several miles away so she would have to walk back to the restaurant, which would take her several hours. Sam thought that this would give him enough time to pick up his girlfriend and be way out of town by the time the authorities were called.
Things don't always go as planned, however, and that night Sam's plans went awry. The waitress recognized him because she was a friend of Sam's sister. In the car she kept talking and threatening him, so Sam pulled over, dragged her out, took her down to a nearby creek, and bludgeoned her to death with a tire iron that had been on the floor in the back of his car. Her mutilated body was left there and found the next day. Talk about an explosion of rage! Sam must have felt a surge of rejection from her words of condemnation, and all that had happened since his birth added to what this waitress was saying. His anger blew over the top.
There had been a cab driver at the restaurant before the robbery. Sam had gone to the restaurant and waited for quite some time for the man to leave, but he lingered there, so Sam finally left. The cab driver was suspicious of Sam's intentions and wrote down his license plate number as Sam was leaving. When the cabbie heard of the murder the next day, he called the police with the information.
Sam was pretty good at covering his tracks, and it was several weeks later, after Sam and his girlfriend had fled from his hometown and committed several armed robberies, that Sam was caught and connected to the waitress's murder.
In 1997, Joan McCord analyzed the effects of corporal punishment based on biweekly observation of 224 parents and their sons over an average period of five and one-half years. In addition to measuring the use of corporal punishment in the home, each parent was rated in terms of warmth expressed toward the child. At the time of these ratings, the sons were between the ages of ten and sixteen. Thirty years later, the criminal records of the subjects were traced. Regardless of whether or not a father was affectionate toward his son, his use of corporal punishment predicted an increased likelihood that the son would subsequently be convicted for a serious crime. Regardless of whether or not a mother was affectionate toward her son, the mother's use of corporal punishment predicted an increased likelihood that the son would subsequently be convicted for a serious violent crime.
Taken from the Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice, "Family Relationships and Crime." Joan McCord, 2002.
We know of Sam because his story was written in a little book entitled By God's Grace, Sam, which was written by a pastor who visited with Sam while he was in prison. The remainder of Sam's story, that of a rejected child who was abandoned, abused, and bounced around from place to place for years during his childhood and adolescence, is phenomenal, and will be told later. His story certainly verifies the fact that rejected individuals can easily become criminals as a reaction to their emotional pain. Remember, we are