Robert Hare's research describes a recurring pattern in violent crime pairs: one dominant, persuasive partner does the planning and talking, while a more impressionable co-offender is talked into committing the actual violence. The dominant partner typically manipulates the other's insecurities or desire for approval rather than using force, which means the relationship looks, from the outside, more like an ordinary friendship or partnership than an exploitative one.
This dynamic matters beyond true-crime cases — it's a general template for how a manipulative person can get harmful actions carried out by someone else entirely, while remaining personally at a distance from the consequences. The "doer" often experiences the relationship as validating (finally being trusted, needed, or admired by someone) right up until the costs of the arrangement become impossible to ignore.
Hare describes the well-documented dynamic between Hickock and Smith, the two killers behind the 1959 Kansas murders that became the basis for Capote's book: Hickock was the dominant, persuasive planner who conceived the crime and talked his more impressionable partner into carrying out the actual violence, while positioning himself to avoid directly doing so. Hare uses the case as a template for a broader pattern he documented across many other pairs — the dominant partner's manipulation targets the co-offender's insecurities or need for approval, not physical intimidation, which is what makes the relationship look ordinary from the outside until the harm is already done.