The $405 Lie: How a Fallen TV Writer Exposed His Own Psychopathy

When Hollywood writer Christopher Ambrose returned home to Connecticut after being caught plagiarizing on Bones in 2018, he was unemployable but sitting on $2 million in marital assets.

He then weaponized a controversial legal theory—“parental alienation”—to flip the script. He documented ordinary family conflict, enlisted paid professionals, and built a case that his wife was turning the children against him.

Ambrose retained Attorney Nancy Aldrich, a political insider whose son sat on the state’s judicial reappointment committee. She and court-appointed Guardian ad Litem Jocelyn Hurwitz steered the case to Judge Jane Grossman — then seeking reappointment and known for separating mothers from children under the alienation doctrine.

The Custody Reversal

On a Friday night, the court ordered the three children—then 13, 13, and 9—removed from the home where they had lived with their mother their entire lives and sent to live with the father they feared.
Hurwitz billed over $200,000; Aldrich, more than $500,000. The mother was silenced—barred from testifying, denied access to the custody report, and cut off from her own children.

Riordan, a stay-at-home mother of thirteen years with no record of abuse or neglect, lost everything: her children, her home, and her life savings. Ambrose kept the marital assets and even seized her $150,000 inheritance. He now lives in a $2.4 million beachfront home, while the mother he branded an alienator, lives without her children and is homeless.

In time, the children’s distress became public—videos, hospital visits, police calls—all ignored by a court system that had already chosen its narrative. Ambrose had won.

Despite the court’s order, the children repeatedly tried to escape to their mother. Ambrose pursued them, using restraining orders and police intervention to forcibly return them to his home, eventually outfitting the home with locks, bars, cameras, and alarms to keep them from escaping.
Finally, Mia escaped at 17, and is now 18 and beyond his legal control.

The Psychiatrist’s Warning

In a May 3, 2023, letter addressed to Ambrose’s ex-wife, Karen Riordan, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div. — a nationally recognized violence expert and former Yale Law and Psychiatry faculty member — reported her preliminary findings after nine hours of review and interviews.

Dr. Lee wrote that, based on Ambrose’s written communications, review of case materials, interviews, and collateral evidence, she found “critical evidence of potential danger to the children, pointing to the need for a diagnostic evaluation.”

“I believe I have enough information to make a preliminary assessment of your ex-husband’s personality configuration—with an emphasis on the extent to which he may manifest characteristics of psychopathic personality.”

Using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R) — the standard diagnostic tool for psychopathy — Dr. Lee concluded:

“Mr. Ambrose’s score adds up to 32. This is strongly suggestive that a diagnosis of psychopathy is present and justified—or, at the very least, that disturbing levels of psychopathic features are present.”

A score of 30 or higher constitutes “full-blown psychopathy.”

Dr. Lee noted hallmark features, including pathological lying, a lack of empathy, a failure to accept responsibility, and poor behavioral controls. She wrote that such individuals often exhibit a “manipulative and predatory relational style” and can “mislead, cheat, or otherwise violate the rights of other people.”

“They, through a superficially charming presentation, are often capable of eliciting exceptional levels of sympathy from others as an effective means of escaping accountability for their violence… They may recruit others as ‘patrons’ or ‘pawns’ to help them turn the narrative around to incriminating their victims instead.”

Dr. Lee also warned that

“Separating growing children from their mother and primary caregiver is one of the worst forms of abuse… and can be a sign of this dangerous personality disorder.”

Dr. Lee recommended that a forensic court-ordered evaluation be conducted to confirm her findings:

“This potential for Mr. Ambrose’s dangerousness, especially where children are involved, should not be overlooked.”

Ambrose’s response was to sue Dr. Lee for defamation.

The $405 Lie: The Affidavit That Gave Him Away

When he filed his lawsuit, Ambrose filed in forma pauperis, allowing him to sue without paying the $405 fee if he could show financial hardship.

He submitted an affidavit describing his financial circumstances.

In his March 2025 affidavit, Ambrose claimed:

“I am not employed… My gross pay or wages are $0.00… I support the kids and myself by invading my modest 401(k).”

Ambrose also claimed he had “no income” — yet acknowledged he was “invading [his] modest 401(k)” to support himself and his children. That statement alone acknowledges taxable income.

Ambrose described the account as “modest,” but family members, including his daughter, say it holds roughly $1 million. Family members describe him discussing tax-loss harvesting, Roth conversions, and outside accounts—hardly the language of financial distress.

Ambrose is in an active lawsuit against his brothers, Neil and Colin, over their parents’ $2.5 million estate, with his share estimated at $800,000. Even though the inheritance had not yet been paid out, federal disclosure rules (28 U.S.C. §1915) required him to report it as an expected asset. He did not.

The $405 Lie: The Pattern of Deceit

In his sworn affidavit, Ambrose wrote:

“I have been unemployed for three years and unable to find work, mainly because my ex-wife has waged a vicious, very public online smear campaign against me.”

Ambrose has been unemployed for seven years, since 2018, when his career as a television writer ended following a plagiarism scandal that preceded the online accusations he now cites.
By stating he had been unemployed for “three years,” Ambrose shifted the timeline to imply that his job loss was caused by the alleged defamation rather than by his professional misconduct.
It conceals the true cause of his unemployment — a reputational scandal unrelated to Dr. Lee — which is directly relevant to whether she caused any harm.

In his in forma pauperis affidavit, Ambrose wrote:

“I have sole legal and physical custody of our three children: our younger son, SA, is 14; our older son, Matthew, and daughter, Mia, are 18 but full-time high school students. I provide all their financial support.”

This statement was false:

Mia Ambrose, age 18, no longer lived with him at the time of the affidavit (March 2025). She left his home in July 2024, lives in another state, and has no financial support from him.

Matthew Ambrose, also 18, had withdrawn from high school on March 12, 2025 — four days before Ambrose signed the affidavit.

Ambrose rents and resides at 153 Middle Beach Road, Madison, Connecticut — a four-bedroom, waterfront property overlooking the Fence Creek Estuary, directly across from East Wharf Beach Park.
The home’s estimated market value is approximately $2.4 million, and his lease lists rent at $3,750 per month.

In his affidavit, however, Ambrose told the court he paid $2,450 in rent — $1,300 less than the actual figure.

In his sworn affidavit, Christopher Ambrose claimed: “Groceries approximately $750 per month.”

He did not disclose that he was already receiving federal SNAP benefits, which he falsely described as something he “just learned [he was] eligible for.”

State records show he had been collecting SNAP since December 2024—four months before he filed the affidavit.

Failing to list it — while presenting grocery costs as though he paid them out of pocket — misleads the court about his true financial condition.

Had Ambrose accurately reported his benefits, the $750 “expense” would be offset or eliminated.

For a four-person household with no income, Connecticut’s SNAP allotment is about $740 to $770 per month, almost identical to the figure he listed as a personal expense. By omitting that he was on SNAP, Ambrose effectively billed the government twice — once for groceries, and once to the court.

The $405 Lie: The Clinical Match

Ambrose’s affidavit reveals pathological lying and deception, beginning with misstating his rent by more than a thousand dollars, concealing months of SNAP benefits, and claiming a dependent who no longer lived with him. He understated his assets, downplayed his retirement funds, and misrepresented the reason for his unemployment.

Ambrose did not deny the truth outright—he phrased it artfully, telling the court he had “just learned” he was eligible for food stamps, a half-truth designed to evoke sympathy while obscuring that he had already been receiving them for months.

It was a calculated deceit — manipulative by design.

Threaded through the document is the tone of egocentricity and grandiosity—the man as misunderstood martyr, the sole provider heroically supporting his children, even as he falsifies their circumstances to preserve his narrative.  Nowhere does he acknowledge having deprived his ex-wife of marital assets or misled the court; instead, he recasts himself as the casualty of a “vicious smear campaign,” claiming that others’ cruelty—not his own conduct—left him destitute.

His callousness and lack of empathy show in his willingness to use those children as props in litigation, invoking their names and alleged dependence while knowing at least one had fled his home and disavowed his support.

Finally, there is the irresponsibility of a man who claims poverty while living in a multimillion-dollar beach house, failing to disclose income sources, benefits, and control of family assets.

The four bedroom waterfront property on Middle Beach Road overlooks the Fence Creek Estuary and East Wharf Beach Park Ambrose told the court he paid $2450 in rent but the lease lists $3750.

Usually a man who lives in a home like this is not living in actual poverty. Ambrose says he is.

Despite claiming poverty Ambrose rents a multimillion dollar home with ocean and estuary views.

The $405 Lie: The Proof in Writing

If Ambrose lied on his in forma pauperis affidavit, he faces serious legal consequences: the court must dismiss his case under §1915(e)(2)(A) and may refer the matter for perjury.

The affidavit reads less like a plea for relief than an exhibit of the disorder Dr. Lee diagnosed — a document of manipulation, deceit, and self-justification that seems to prove her point more clearly than any test score could. By lying, omitting, and manipulating in a sworn federal filing, he demonstrates the pathological deceit, self-justification, and absence of conscience that define the psychopathic personality Dr. Lee described.

A psychologically healthy person would not risk felony perjury to save $405. A psychopathic personality might — because the impulse to deceive, to control the narrative, and to elicit sympathy overrides rational self-interest.

The man who sued to prove he wasn’t a psychopath proved it himself, in writing, for $405.