Ronson describes a visit he took to Shubuta, Mississippi, a declining town where businesses stand boarded up and abandoned. Brad, a local resident, showed him around the decaying streets and the rusted jail. Brad and his friend Libby recalled when Shubuta thrived because everyone worked at the local Sunbeam toaster plant. Brad showed Ronson the town’s movie theater, which opened, showed one film—Night of the Living Dead—and immediately closed. Brad blamed former Sunbeam CEO Al Dunlap for destroying the town by shutting down the plant.

At the vast, mostly empty Sunbeam facility, Stewart now ran a tiny lampshade business with just five employees in a space that once held 600 workers. Stewart, Bill, and Libby described a succession of troubled CEOs. Robert Buckley was fired in 1986 after maintaining a fleet of jets and spending lavishly while the company floundered. Paul Kazarian, though brilliant and committed to worker protections, was abusive; Bill told Ronson how Kazarian once screamed a sexually degrading demand at him in front of colleagues. When Ronson mentioned he’d be meeting Dunlap the next day, Stewart reacted with anger, shocked Dunlap was not imprisoned.

Ronson provides background on Dunlap, who built his reputation gleefully firing people at Scott Paper Company and wrote an autobiography celebrating his dismissals. When Sunbeam hired him in 1996, the stock price jumped from $12.50 to $18.63—the largest single-day increase in New York Stock Exchange history. When he announced eliminating half the company’s 12,000 jobs, the price soared again. Ronson compares shareholders’ devotion to Dunlap despite warning signs to Holly’s attachment to the killer Kit in the film Badlands. Dunlap’s tenure ended when the SEC investigated allegations of massive accounting fraud. In 2002, he settled lawsuits by paying $18.5 million and agreeing never again to serve as a public company officer.

Continuing his investigation into Dunlap, Ronson spoke with Dunlap’s biographer, BusinessWeek journalist John A. Byrne, who never met Dunlap but learned he enjoyed boxing, beat people up as a child, and once threw darts at his sister’s dolls.

Ronson details his visit to Dunlap’s opulent Florida mansion. He discovers the space filled with sculptures of predatory animals—stone lions, panthers, eagles, hawks, and alligators—along with gold decorations and life-sized oil paintings of Dunlap, his wife Judy, and their German shepherds. There were no pictures of his son, Troy. To Ronson, Dunlap proclaimed his respect for predators, stating everything he achieved required aggressive action. Ronson made mental notes of where Dunlap satisfied Hare’s checklist.

During their discussion of Sunbeam, Dunlap defended his view that long-term employees become mere caretakers, arguing life should be a roller coaster, not a merry-go-round. Dunlap then repeated a practiced line about having two dogs to hedge his bets against being friendless—a phrase Ronson recognized from Dunlap’s autobiography and interviews, marking it as superficial charm. Ronson would later discover the saying has been attributed to various powerful figures, including Harry Truman and Carl Icahn.

Nervously, Ronson told Dunlap that amygdala dysfunction could make someone like him a psychopath. Dunlap, Judy, and bodyguard Sean initially reacted with anger. Ronson went on to describe Hare’s work and checklist, but Dunlap dismissed Hare as unknown and went on to point out photographs of himself with famous figures like Henry Kissinger and Donald Trump. Despite this, Dunlap finally agreed to review the checklist, readily admitting to superficial charm and grandiose self-worth.

When Ronson presented him with the checklist, Dunlap reframed most of Hare’s psychopathic traits as leadership positives: Manipulative behavior is inspiring leadership, impulsivity is quick analysis, a shallow emotional range prevents nonsense feelings from interfering, and a lack of remorse allows forward progress. He then admired a painting of his dog Brit and told Ronson he cried for days when the dog died, offering this as proof he could not be a psychopath. When Ronson asked about his first wife, whom he allegedly threatened with a knife, Dunlap explained the difficulty of transitioning from military life to marriage, noting his nuclear missile duties during the Cuban Missile Crisis conflicted with family obligations—a reference to when he left his pregnant wife alone without food or money.

Per Hare’s test, Ronson then showed Dunlap a hypothetical gruesome crime-scene photograph and asked about his emotional response. Dunlap asserted he would intellectualize the scene rather than feel horror, approaching it as a puzzle about what happened and how to prevent recurrence. Over lunch, Dunlap returned to the topic of his leadership experience, telling anecdotes about firing people. Ronson realized a person who enjoys terminating employees would be invaluable to corporations. When Ronson asked about Sunbeam, Dunlap dismissed it as an inconsequential footnote in his career. He also showed no empathy for his estranged sister, Denise, whom he said resented his success, or his son, Troy, claiming Troy made negative statements to the press. Ronson notes that feeling no remorse must be liberating when only memories remain. Dunlap also told Ronson they were alike—both successful people targeted by jealous detractors—which Ronson should understand.

Ronson concludes that corporate boards in the 1990s appreciated the short-term benefits of employing a CEO who scored high on the Psychopath Checklist.

After his Dunlap interview, Ronson met Hare at Heathrow Airport and reported back. Hare discussed his new study showing 3.9% of corporate professionals score extremely high on psychopathy measures—four to five times the rate in the general population. Hare correctly guessed Dunlap’s home contained predator sculptures, claiming clinical insight. When Ronson mentioned Dunlap cried over his dog’s death, Hare dismissed this as typical psychopathic behavior: Psychopaths view dogs as possessions like cars. Hare contrasted this with his own devastating experience watching his daughter die from multiple sclerosis, saying a psychopath would simply note it as bad luck and move on. Hare also explained psychopathy through evolutionary theory as a reproductive strategy involving deception and manipulation, but Ronson noted that, counter to Hare’s checklist, Dunlap had been faithfully married for 41 years. Hare was skeptical, suggesting Dunlap could have had affairs.

Still curious to know more, Ronson widened his investigation by interviewing a wealthy, anonymous financier he calls Jack. Jack witnessed the Dunlap era at Sunbeam, opposing the job cuts but watching Wall Street celebrate the destruction of communities like Shubuta. He describes the callous enthusiasm in research reports that praised Dunlap’s actions. Jack promised to retrieve one of these reports and later sent Ronson a 1996 Goldman Sachs analysis recommending Sunbeam stock based on Dunlap’s restructuring plans. The report’s impenetrable financial jargon confused Ronson, so he consulted experts Paul J. Zak and John A. Byrne, who explained that the analysis predicted mass layoffs would drive up earnings and stock prices for years. Zak noted that investors who followed this advice were likely furious with the investment house a year later when the stock tanked.

Examining the report’s dull, technical language once more, Ronson concludes that those seeking to wield destructive power should cultivate an impenetrable image. Journalists avoid writing about dull people because it makes their prose equally tedious. He realizes that malevolence can hide behind opacity.