Aspie poisoner?

Post Reply New Topic

I've often wondered if this guy is an Aspie.





http://www.people.com/people/archive/ar ... 50,00.html






High intelligence, deep interests in science and technology, geeky, eccentric and sensitive to loud noises.






Before anyone vehemently swears he wasn't...please do so for the right reasons.

After all....Aspies are human beings first and foremost. And sainthood rarely comes with the territory for humans.

Whether or not he's got AS, I don't know, but I've always been sceptical about whether or not he poisoned those people. I watched a true-crime show about the physical evidence in the case, and it was questionable at best. The poison they found in his shed was a decades old jar of rat poison that wasn't quite the same type that was used in the poisonings (thallium oxide rather than thallium sulfate, or some such difference), and an interview with the jurors left me with the feeling that they convicted the man for being odd, rather than on the evidence.

I don't recall that particular detail of the case. I never heard of any other suspects having either motive or opportunity. The circumstantial evidence was pretty solid and since Trepal was a chemist, I doubt it would be a big problem for him to obtain thallium oxide.

But according to this article, it was thallium nitrate they found in Trepal's garage, not thallium oxide and lab tests proved it was the form of thallium used on the Carr family.

Maybe the author of this article doesn't have their facts straight...idk. All I know it is doesn't seem like anyone else had a motive and Trepal probably had the best opportunity. Nonetheless...I wouldn't be surprised if the jurors were a bit bias against Trepal for not being the all-American idiots they often are.

So either this article or the true crime show you watched doesn't have all the facts straight. I guess i'd have to be a juror at his trial to determine whether he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt or not. From all i've heard about the whole case, it seems very likely he's guilty.

I don't think so. He seems to function much too well to actually be diagnosed. There are plenty of people who are nerdy and are irritated by their neighbors' loud music, and the vast majority of them aren't Asperger's.

The things that make me think he isn't AS:
1. He's intelligent. That doesn't rule out AS by itself, but it's a plausible cause for his social distance from other people that doesn't involve autism.
2. He's got a history of manufacturing meth. To do this, you've got to have connections with people who can buy the raw materials and sell the finished product--which requires at least moderate skill at socializing.
3. He's married. This is less likely for people with AS; once again, it doesn't rule anything out, but does lower the odds.
4. He successfully survived prison--and taught other prisoners chemistry while doing so. One can assume he was able to negotiate this environment well enough to avoid serious problems, since he had the social currency to get away with complaining about others' music.

He may have AS traits; but they are almost certainly not enough for diagnosis. If there had been a history of childhood delays, a tendency to speak in odd ways, or any other strong autistic traits, they would've mentioned it as more evidence of how odd he was (people like to mention those things about murderers because they want to distance themselves from any idea that they themselves might be capable of similar deeds). The only thing you could pin on him is probably garden-variety antisocial personality disorder.

Callista wrote:

I took all that into consideration already....but that didn't entirely rule out AS in my mind. Your other points in this post are spot-on, but I do have some misgivings about 3 and 4.

It seems to me that plenty of people with AS are married. Considering the"geeky" circles he traveled in and his reasonably middle class socioeconomic status, i'd say it wouldn't be too difficult for such an Aspie to find a mate. Also, he wasn't a violent
offender so i'm pretty sure he wasn't in the worst correctional facility in America. Even if the one he was in was pretty "dodgy", i'm almost certain they had him segregated along with the tamer inmates. The ones who are in for similar/non-violent crimes and who probably aren't doing hard time. Inmates like that have something to lose.....murderer/kidnapper/sex offender lifers...well....not so much. The tamer inmates might also have something to gain by receiving some free tutoring even if they only wanted to apply what Trepal taught them to building a better meth lab


I certainly wasn't saying his traits are enough for a diagnosis....I just wouldn't rule him out entirely either. I had no strong autistic traits as a kid and yet I was *diagnosed* with NVLD. You yourself have said NVLD and AS are likely one and the same. I'm not trying to be a
contrarian here just for the sake of doing so. You certainly know way more about AS/ASDs than I do. Still....i'm just not sure he could never meet the Dx criteria for SOMETHING spectrumy even if it was NVLD (if NLD was an official Dx already of course) or PDD-NOS.
As you know...not all NLD-ers have problems with math and science either. I've personally met one very slick diagnosed Aspie before and without going into detail...let's just say this person didn't exactly have a moral leg up on Trepal. But yeah...he very well might meet the Dx criteria for anti-social PD no matter what. I tend to think Jeffery Dahmer was a bit Aspie-ish too....probably quite a bit more than this guy in fact.

(Removed - M.) he was smart and interested in something. Is there anything that's not a symptom of Asperger's?

I know of two individuals with Asperger's who poisoned people, and it went like this:

A student experimenting with his various concoctions and using his peers as mice
A teacher experimenting with his various concoctions and using his students as mice

They concluded the lack of empathy was to blame in both cases.

Where did I say those were the only reasons I MERELY SPECULATED about AS in his case?


He probably doesn't have AS....I just saw a few red flags and I commented accordingly.


I mean for Pete's sake.....I don't anyone in this group being taken to task for believing Bill Gates is an Aspie.


I don't see any real "hard signs" in him other than he's smart and interested in something.

I don't think he's any more geeky and eccentric than this Trepal guy is either.


At any rate....none of us are walking neuropsych evals either. Heck....the *professionals* can't even agree on who is AS and who isn't.

For one thing....some think NLD-ers are and others believe NLD and AS are two distinct disorders

O, I also would like to add:

The individuals above saw that they were doing nothing wrong (people = mice), and they readily admitted to doing what they did. Like scientists, performing experiments.

That's definitely a lack of...basic human connection, and neither were psychopathic.

Link? I'd like to read about it.

That's why I said "or some such difference." I couldn't remember the details of what the defendant's lawyers said in that interview, only that it was a different kind of thallium. Also, having a family member with a background in forensics, I can tell you that at that time the FBI forensics lab had a really bad reputation. They routinely lost evidence, misidentified compounds, mistyped blood, etc. As far as I know, they've cleaned up their act since then, but at the time of Trepal's trial it was really bad, so I wouldn't put too much stock in the Quantico lab reports.

Fair enough.

All I can say is i'm glad i'm never picked for jury duty.


Not so much because I don't trust my own judgement....but because you can never be 100% certain the judgements of investigators, witnesses, forensic scientists, etc.....isn't critically flawed.

In cases like Trepal's...the stakes are too high to make any mistakes but they occur nonetheless and I prefer not to be part of the whole thing.