Original subtitles

[theme music playing]

MAN: There's this thing inside of me, it's like...

the appetite.

It's like a wolf that's...

filling...the hunger.

Tell us about this ammo that's no longer manufactured.

This box, this logo, we want to know all about that.

WOMAN: Lead Detective David Quinn let only

Channel 2 Action News into the homicide unit

to reveal the somewhat uncommon bullet that likely

killed two homeless men just before Thanksgiving.

We have a particularly evil individual that has shot two of

our homeless community in Atlanta

with -- and less than three miles away from each other.

WOMAN: Detectives are hoping these bullets

will be the clue that connects them with the killer.

RAGHAVAN: He was, in fact, a failed Hollywood actor,

and the killings start after his final failure.

So his grandiose narcissistic dreams are shattered.

Murdering, for him, was to overcome the rage and upset

that he had as a failed actor.

SAHNI: When Hollywood didn't work out for him,

the need to have his 15 seconds of fame,

I think, does play out in his decision to kill

multiple people.

Really, what he craved wasn't necessarily to be an actor

and to develop that craft,

but it was really to be notorious.

When he kills, he realizes that this gives him

so much pleasure,

he's not interested in acting anymore.

This gives him the thrill to replace

the feeling of disappointment and rage at this other dream.

But this is exciting. This is what he wants to do.

The context in which he is a star is irrelevant,

and so he reenacts the murder with glee.

He's enjoying the fantasy of replaying the death,

and it's absurd, because he's enacting a brutal murder.

This isn't stage, and it isn't entertainment.

But for him, it is.

He said he's outside himself, feeling that

something else is pushing him to action.

There's not an ownership of his feeling and his volition.

So there's a split, there is a world inside

his head that's running the show that doesn't comport

to reality -- that's what I think makes him dangerous.

MORGAN: I wouldn't call it remorse, because

that realization doesn't change his future behavior.

He doesn't go turn himself in.

The feeling may be genuine,

but it's not psychologically integrated

into his sense of self.

RAGHAVAN: There's a moment of remorse and guilt.

It doesn't mean that psychopaths never

feel remorse or never feel guilt.

The issue is how brief it is,

how shallow it is, and how quickly it's gone.

Mm-hmm.

SAHNI: Presley is very much in his own gangster movie.

He clearly wants to portray himself as a gangster,

but he killed a defenseless person -- that doesn't make

him powerful, that makes him weak.

But in his narcissistic psychopathic narrative,

it makes him all powerful.

MORGAN: Presley represents one of the most

alarming kinds of cases of psychopathy.

There's no recognition of the value

of someone else's life.

It's patients like this where you don't usually

have a warning when they might be violent.

He's scary.

SAHNI: I think Presley's giving us a compilation of

movies and scenes that he is glorified over his years.

I don't think he gave a whole

lot of thought to reloading the weapon.

I think he enjoyed the power.

I think he enjoyed the adrenaline rush.

We know with psychopaths that they don't experience

the same normal range of emotions,

highs or lows, that most of us do.

And as a result, they sometimes crave

a greater level of intensity to feel anything.

Most of the science data about it tells us that children who

are exposed to violence in pop culture,

seeing violence in films or in cartoons, don't turn into

violent members of society.

What we're seeing in his murders is the playing out

of the fantasy life that he's adopted for himself.

His inability to stay grounded and rooted in normal society

well predates his observation of these shows and movies.

Presley is somebody who was violent at a young age.

His mother was scared of him.

He had had run-ins with the law.

There was a foundation that was broken already.

[makes moaning noise]

RAGHAVAN: He's aware that his compulsion

to kill is just overwhelming.

He's also recognizing that, you know,

brutally wounding the guy wasn't enough.

If he didn't die, he wouldn't be satisfied.

He's really losing control.

It's just been three days after his last kill.

He's not able to contain his desires anymore.

In a really grotesque way,

it's about extinguishing and annihilating somebody's life.

SAHNI: He's getting more bold in his need for a killing high.

I think he was testing out the limits of

what other aspects of murder could give him a high.

Would seeing blood give him a high?

Would seeing brain matter give him a high?

For individuals who experience more sadistic interests,

the idea of force or fear creating pain

in their victims -- suffering, essentially,

is something that is part of their arousal pattern.

RAGHAVAN: This is the third time that he's enacting

the moment of death, which means that he gets to

explore his fantasies of being an actor in the most grotesque

way imaginable, where he relives details of the death,

including the really vivid and lurid details

of how his victims die.

[makes moaning noise]

MORGAN: Describing him gasping and then shooting him

again is very dispassionate and matter-of-fact

and very callous.

There isn't really an acknowledgment

that it's another person, another human being.

Anyone could be his victim in the way he thinks about people,

which I think makes it even more horrifying.

SAHNI: Presley's reality

is a little different than his narrative.

While he may have grown up in impoverished circumstances,

he had a mother that was very involved.

His mother moved him to a much more affluent school system

so that he would be away from

those influences, and by all accounts,

he started to get his life in order, so much so that he was

actually interviewed as a teenager

about his former life in a gang.

But Presley is wired differently than many of us

and unfortunately, he enjoyed that high, that thrill,

and that power and that's where we have

these series of people that he's killed.

MORGAN: Externalizing all blame

is something that psychopaths do.

They'll acknowledge their role in the actions,

but they really will feel that society is to blame.

He views whatever he does as being caused by something

outside of his control and beyond him,

which means a very good place for him is in prison.

SAHNI: The robbery was an incidental

part of his narrative.

His goal was to kill again.

He broke his own rules and boundaries by killing a woman

when he swore that he would never kill a woman or children.

Presley became addicted to the power, the control,

the ability to decide when and how somebody would die.

MORGAN: In the big picture of his perspective,

we see that non sequitur between, "I'd never

hurt women and children to murdering a woman,

but I don't think he sees any contradiction in that, because

she represents, I think, just now

the new class of targets, which just have to be white.

RAGHAVAN: His pleasure comes from annihilating alive.

So the question is why does he get so thrilled when he kills?

The contrast between his

humdrum, low-feeling life and the moment of killing

is very dramatic, and that's what creates addiction.

SAHNI: This really captures

the fantasy world that Presley lives in,

where he is acknowledging that

he's playing a part.

He's acting as if it is a film, and the camera can just be

turned off, the set dismantled, and everybody will just go back

about their business,

not really recognizing these are real human beings

he killed.

He's literally in a movie set or on a movie set in his head.

RAGHAVAN: He's starting to feel like he's a superstar.

There's the catharsis,

and then this cooling off period where you're

fantasizing about it, and then the compulsion starts again.

There is no doubt in my mind, he would have kept killing.

WOMAN: DeKalb D.A. Robert James planned to

seek the ultimate punishment for the murders.

But Presley avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty.

I am not a serial killer.

I am a brother

that has some real serious issues

and problems who did some things

that I am not proud of.