I was watching an old “48 Hours” episode last night about Todd Kohlhepp, a serial killer convicted of murdering seven people in South Carolina between 2003 and 2016. He also kidnapped and raped at least two women and claims to have killed many more. The interesting part of the show was the interview with his 70-year-old mother.

Even though she had been told about her son confessing to committing seven murders, including a mass shooting in a bicycle shop where he wiped out the entire staff, she insisted that her son was misunderstood. “He’s not a monster,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “He’s a good person.”

How does anyone, even a mother, maintain that an individual who has murdered seven people is a “good person”? What definition of “good” is that? We speak a lot about Yoo’s Rationalization (#64) or “It isn’t what it is,” but how can one deny that murder is decisive evidence that someone isn’t good?

Regina Ann Tague explained that her son was provoked into shooting the people in the bicycle shop: after all, they were making fun of him. She excused another shooting on the grounds that the victim was “mouthing off” and “being smart.” And the dead man’s girlfriend, whom Todd locked in a storage unit in chains and raped every night for two months until she was found and rescued? “He just didn’t know what to do with her,” Mom said.

Oh. Well, he eventually came up with something to do with her.

“48 Hours” showed enough of the interrogation videos that it was obvious what Kohlhepp is: a pure sociopath, who made jokes about the murders and displayed no remorse or feelings for his victims at all. But how do you categorize the mother? Her son was jailed after he kidnapped and raped 14-year-old girl when he was 15, and he escalated from there. She insisted, nonetheless, that her son was always, deep down, “a good boy.”

How many people like her are out there? How do they get that way? What can we do about them?