Expert rules out identity disorder

A psychologist with 20 years’ experience working with sex offenders testified Monday that William Bergen Greene has an anti-social mental disorder, but the defendant knew what he was doing when he sexually assaulted and kidnapped his therapist in 1994.

Richard Packard ruled out Greene, 49, as having multiple personality disorder, a mental condition that could allow him to avoid legal responsibility for the attack.

"He meets the criteria to be described as a prototypical psychopath," Packard told Snohomish County Superior Court jurors in answer to a question posed by deputy prosecutor Paul Stern.

Packard is the second expert hired by Stern to rebut two experts who testified for the defense. Both defense experts told jurors that Greene has multiple personality disorder, and it was one of his bad-boy personas, Tyrone, who attacked the therapist.

They said the "host," William Greene, was not mentally present during the attack.

Stern had Packard review hundreds of pages of reports and videos, and then interview Greene himself before he came to his conclusion. Stern asked the psychologist to answer a series of questions.

In response, Packard testified that Greene had two mental disorders, anti-social personality disorder and paraphilia — a desire to have sexual contact with people who don’t consent.

In arriving at the conclusion, Packard testified he reviewed records of two similar previous attacks on women. There were common themes in each of the three attacks, including Greene holding power over the women and humiliating them.

He also told jurors that Greene had sufficient time, knowledge and motivation to feign having multiple personalities.

One incentive is to avoid legal responsibility for the attack, for which he was sentenced to life in prison in 1995 under the state’s persistent offender law, or civil commitment as a dangerous sex offender for an indefinite period, he told jurors.

Packard also told jurors that Greene could tell right from wrong in April 1994 during the attack, and he was able to appreciate the nature and quality of his acts.

Packard was on the witness stand most of Monday, and defense lawyer Marybeth Dingledy had only a few minutes to question him.

In those few minutes, she asked questions suggesting that Packard is skeptical about multiple personality disorder, also called dissociative identity disorder, and that he even doubts that it exists.

"It’s an open-ended question," Packard said of the disorder. But does it exist? "I don’t know," he said.

He told the jurors he has never diagnosed anyone with multiple personality disorder, and previously had "ruled out" three or four other patients thought to have it.

This is the second time Greene has come to trial for these crimes. He was convicted in 1995 and won an appeal last year in federal court while acting has his own attorney.

The state maintains that Greene is faking the disorder to avoid criminal responsibility.

Stern said his therapist at the Sex Offender Treatment Program in the Monroe prison complex gave him the idea when she started investigating whether he had multiple personality disorder.

Greene has been portrayed as being intelligent and manipulative.

The defense insists that Greene has multiple personality disorder, and will ask the jury to find him innocent because he was unable to form intent to commit the crime.

The trial, in its fifth week, is expected to conclude Wednesday or Thursday.

In other testimony Monday, a former cellmate of Greene, Eric Fleischmann, testified that he tried to fake having multiple personality disorder for a short time, but quickly gave up.

Greene, on the other hand, "said he could get away with it," Fleischmann testified.

Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.