Michael Howard Stone was born on October 27, 1933, in Syracuse, New York. He attended Cornell University and, later, earned his medical degree from Cornell Medical College in 1958. He then completed his psychiatric residency at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he would later join the faculty as a professor of clinical psychiatry.

Over his decades-long academic career, Stone became a leading authority on personality disorders, particularly borderline personality disorder, and later turned his focus to psychopathy and extreme violence. He has authored more than ten books, including The Borderline Syndromes (1980) and Personality-Disordered Patients: Treatable and Untreatable (1996), alongside more than 250 professional articles. His research culminated in a 22-level “Gradations of Evil” scale, ranking violent crimes by motivation and severity.

From 2006 to 2008, Stone hosted Investigation’s Most Evil, interviewing convicted killers across the country using his evil scale framework. He detailed this research in his 2009 book The Anatomy of Evil and its 2019 follow-up, The New Evil, co-written with Dr. Gary Brucato. He continued teaching and practicing psychiatry in Manhattan until his death on December 6, 2023, following complications from a stroke he suffered earlier that year.