Heavy Rain: Scott Shelby Psychoanalysis
Scott Shelby Criminal Analysis
Childhood
Scott Shelby, formerly Scott Sheppard, grew up in a small trailer near a construction site, living with his father, mother, and twin brother named John. After interviewing Ann Sheppard, she says that their lives were hard, but they got by. She admits that her husband was a drinker and made the boys' lives very hard while she was away at work. While she doesn't go into any details regarding if she saw either of them be beaten, or if she was beaten in front of them, we'll exclude that as a factor to not jump to conclusions.
His father is an alcoholic (perhaps even genetically?) and emotionally abusive. He has no qualms with humiliating his sons and inflicting simple cruelties on them, like making them spend the day outside in the rain where they'll possibly get sick.
His mother is absent, either at work or possibly fairly absent in their lives as a whole. We see no interactions between her and her sons, or with her husband, but she says she loved them very much. She taught them how to make origami figures, and John at least had a fondness for orchids, which was a flower Ann loved too.
John and Scott used to play together all of the time. We don't see anything more than them simply fooling around in a construction site, so there's no way to write down their usual play methods. When children are young and grow into serial killers, one pattern we look for is called the Macdonald Triad: bed-wetting, fire setting, and animal cruelty past the age of 5. There's no evidence of any of these, so we'll assume that none of these took place.
John
One day, while playing in the construction site, John's foot catches in a deep trench of water after he falls in. He sends Scott to get help, and he runs to his father. His father shoves him to the ground and refuses to help; "Well, that'll just be one less mouth to feed, no won't it?" Scott runs back to John and holds his hand as he dies. Scott and John are twins; Scott even says later that when John died, a piece of him died with his brother. Scott saw both himself and John die that day, leading to severe depression.
His father and mother lose custody of Scott rather quickly, probably because his father is charged with neglect...or because his father drinks himself silly and authorities can't let Scott be around him. His mother works too frequently to be allowed to care for Scott, and so he's taken to a foster home. Whether Mr. Sheppard dies from drinking or is sent to prison, he disappears from the picture. Ann Sheppard visits the Shelby's rather often for a while, but then she develops Alzheimer's and is hospitalized. She eventually begins to lose her memory and forgets easily, but now that she's confined to the hospital, she can no longer visit Scott.
Ann even says it herself, "He must have thought I didn't love him anymore." He was young, so it's possible he just felt that when John died, they both died, and his family wanted nothing to do with a dead boy.
Adulthood
By the time he reaches the age of eighteen, legal enough to be on his own, out of foster care, and able to legally visit his mother...she's probably forgotten his face and who he is. This was probably a crushing blow to Scott, but he continues to visit her, either in secret or just keep an eye on her up until ten years before the game takes place.
The certificates on Scott's wall indicate he was in the marines, probably to pay for college. Eventually, Scott gets a job in the police force and eventually gets promoted to lieutenant. He witnesses crime and death all the time, but even helping others and bringing people to justice isn't enough for him. There's still people like his father loitering around that he can't stop. He says he retired, but it's possible he quit. Either way, he's well known in the police force - and he DID become a Private Investigator - and...strangely...was allowed to keep his badge and gun instead of turning it in.
There's a scene where he speaks with Blake, who offers to wipe any evidence clean of Scott's involvement at Manfred's place, and even asks if there's any clues he's found that he's willing to share. They don't seem to have a very open and friendly relationship, but if Blake is willing to cover evidence up for a former cop, how far is he willing to go under other circumstances? Did he allow Shelby to keep his gun and badge? Did he take it out of lockdown, which is what Norman Jayden wonders? It's entirely possible.
Either way, Scott retires and becomes a Private Investigator. The game doesn't say when, but it's possible he did this around the time he began to start the murders.
Scott has gone through his life probably hating fathers, becoming obsessed with finding just one father who will do anything to save his son. He probably suffers from several forms of guilt, post-traumatic stress disorder, and night terrors. When the murders start up again, Scott says he has trouble sleeping. Like a man possessed, he probably spent most of his time in the force looking for that father...and giving up when he doesn't find him.
The one day, he sees Ethan Mars jump out in front of a car to save his son. He watches them get hit, watches as the ambulance comes, as the mother cries over their still bodies... The news probably spoke about how the boy died and Ethan was left in a coma. Not long after, the murders start. Why this isn't touched on, or why he chose then to start is still a mystery.
The Origami Killer
Scott sets up a series of five trials all testing eligible fathers to see if they can save their sons. Disguised as a police officer, he lures the boys to his car and takes them to an abandoned site and lets them sit in a well covered in a grate, and lets it fill up with rain water. Slowly, between 3 and 5 days, the boy will drown. He then takes the bodies, smears their faces in blood to distance himself from the victims, puts an orchid on their chest, and an origami dog in their hand. He dumps them on a patch of deserted wasteland and is sure to leave little to no clues behind, like a trained police officer.
The trials consist of five meticulously calculated and complex tests, all leading up to a game of Hangman. Upon completion of a trial, the father will receive more letters to finish the Hangman and save his son. The trials are delivered in a box full of origami figures and left in an anonymous locker. All of these are very carefully implimented so no one can trace the clues back to him. And when some clues get left behind, Scott masquerades as a PI for the parents of the families to try and get his things back. He doesn't seem to care about monetary value for the cars, or the phones, he leaves behind for the fathers...but only to watch them suffer and strive to save their sons.
None of the others survive, or succeed, and so he's left to try again. There's eight victims in the span of two years during the Fall months, where rain can stretch for several days at a time. And once he's through with the eighth victim...he moves on to the next child. He moves extremely fast, less than a day going by before he stakes out his next victim and delivers a letter to the house which starts everything off.
His actions are always the same:
1) Delivery of the letter, with the locker location.
2) Kidnapping the child.
3) The Trials and clues.
4) Dumping of the body and scouting of the next victim.
During this time, he keeps an eye on the father probably through the devices he leaves, like the GPS, the video feed, and the phone given that has the Hangman letters. He watches his every movement, and knows when the father has failed and will not be coming for his son. He then cleans up and starts again.
The trials in the game are generally thought to be similar to all of the others the other fathers were going to go through, but that evidence isn't entirely certain.
The Bear - The father takes a car provided by the Origami Killer and drives through oncoming traffic for five miles.
The Butterfly - The father goes to an abandoned electric plant and makes his way crawling through broken glass and through live wires to get his clue.
The Lizard - The father goes to an abandoned apartment complex and must cut off one of his fingers in front of the camera.
The Shark - The father must go and kill another man. The one in Heavy Rain is a drug dealer and a father of two little girls.
The Rat - The father goes to an empty room and is ordered to drink poison. He will only have one hour to live, to find his son and say goodbye.
All of these are incredibly meticulous and time-consuming to set up and monitor to be sure the father makes it through alive. Scott went through a lot of effort to get all of this done, but he doesn't seem to care, so long as he finds a man worthy enough to be a true father.
In his conversation with Madison at the end, if she confronts him in the warehouse, he tells her that every time a boy died, he was watching his brother die again; he tells Ethan that he's suffered just as much as his victims. Scott clearly has remorse, but his crimes are great against him.
At least eight counts of murder.
Kidnapping.
Torture.
Sabotage.
Murder aforethought.
On the Gradations of Evil Scale by Michael Stone, Scott Shelby fits into several categories:
Category 5. Traumatized, desperate persons who kill relatives or others, yet have remorse.
Category 10. Killers of people "in the way" (including witnesses); extreme egocentricity.
Category 11. Fully psychopathic killers of people "in the way".
Category 16. Psychopathic persons committing multiple vicious acts (including murder).
Category 20. Torture-murderers but in persons with distinct psychosis.
Category 22. Psychopathic torture-murderers with torture as their primary motive.
On Hare's Psychopathy Checklist, Scott fits in with other categories:
Factor1: Personality "Aggressive narcissism"
# Glibness/superficial charm
# Grandiose sense of self-worth
# Pathological lying
# Cunning/manipulative
# Callous/lack of empathy
# Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
He only fits in Factor 1, though, which is interesting. He doesn't show a socially deviant lifestyle, meaning he can be just fine in socities and can interact with others with little to no problems.
So what does that make Scott Shelby?
Scott Shelby places himself on the very bottom of the Gradations of Evil scale, and counting enough crimes in people's minds to have at least eight life sentences in prison. He shows remorse for the children, but not for the fathers he's killed. He refuses to accept responsibility, distancing himself from his victims with the mud on their faces and acting as though they are simply unfortunate victims of their father's neglect. Instead of taking the blame, he's forced it from his mind enough during normal interactions to not show his true colors. He's manipulative, meticulous, and takes advantage of any opportunity he has. He's a pathological liar to both co-workers and to people he finds endearing. He has a hero-complex, wanting to save the mothers from others and from themselves, always showing up just in time. He takes pleasure in other people's pain, bringing up the murders again and again to let them relive that anguish. He has an affair with one of the mothers of his victims, and kills in the next room while she's right nearby.
Scott Shelby is also a masochist; he watches the boys die and relives his own pain to such an extremity that he needs to punish more and moer people for crimes they haven't committed, framing others and making sure the police have the wrong leads. He wants others to suffer for him, wants to see them crumble into pieces because he has suffered so much. And yet, at the end of the day, he's willing to wipe away all evidence and kill the one father who succeeds and tries to save his son. His judgement is clouded, and all he can see is the mental torment of his own soul and conscience, and will stop at nothing until that guilt is erased...even as he steeps himself in more blood and destruction than anyone else has ever done.
With a 22 on the Gradations of Evil scale, and several marks on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, Scott is clinically a psychotic sociopath, and had he been caught, he would have been put through a lot of serious punishments, several years in prison (up to the end of his life), or the death sentence.