Wow.
How do you empathize, or trust that it's not just a ploy to try to get out?
I think you'll find that you're making assumptions that it would benefit you to avoid making.
These people have also already shown their character, at least at one point in their life. They're capable of heinous acts and being deceptive is pretty in line with that
It's a much higher bar for them to clear than everyone around me needs to
1. Most people are generally good and while some have made catastrophic mistakes, those tend to be outliers over generally decent behavior.
2. Some people are consistent predators who have no compunction about harming others for their own benefit.
The people in set #2 really want to appear to be in set #1. It's good to be mindful of that fact. At the same time, set #1 is an actually much larger set of people.
Navigating this is probably one of those things where there's no perfect solution, just very difficult compromises.