INTRODUCTION
The term Serial Killer is widely believed to have been coined either by FBI agent Robert Ressler or by Dr. Robert D. Keppel in the 1970s. The popular phrase emerged largely in part due to the well-publicized crimes of Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz in the middle years of that decade. Many noted serial killers come from dysfunctional backgrounds. Frequently they were physically, sexually, or psychologically abused as children and there is often a correlation between their childhood abuse and their crimes. Serial killers are specifically motivated by a variety of psychological urges, primarily power and sexual compulsion.
Medical and FBI Expert Profilers define a serial killer as a person who kills three or more people in three or more separate events. There is an emotional cooling-off period in between the homicides that can stretch over a period of time. This cooling-off period may last days, weeks, months, or even years. It is believed that many serial killers suffer from antisocial personality disorders and not psychosis, and they appear to be quite normal and often charming. According to Doctor Hervey Cleckley, this is a state of adaptation called the "mask of sanity." There is sometimes a sexual element to the murders. The murders may have been completed/attempted in a similar fashion and the victims may have had something in common, for example occupation, race, sex, etc.
They often have feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness, sometimes owing to humiliation and abuse in childhood and/or the pressures of poverty and low socioeconomic status in adulthood, and their crimes compensate for this and provide a sense of potency and often revenge, by giving them a feeling of power, both at the time of the actual killing and afterwards. The knowledge that their actions terrify entire communities and often baffle police adds to this sense of power. This motivational aspect separates them from contract killers and other multiple murderers who are motivated by profit. For example, in Scotland during the 1820s, William Burke and William Hare murdered people in what became known as the "Case of the Body Snatchers." They would not count as serial killers by most criminologists' definitions, however, because their motive was primarily economic.
Another recent theory about the compulsion of serial killer propounded by Helen Morrison state that serial killers are not a result of sexual abuse, inadequacy or socioeconomic status but are rather the result of retarded emotional development. Serial Killers can be gauged at having the emotional development of an infant of less than 100 days, of course, this varies between individuals. The low level of emotional development, arguably, causes serial killers to have fractured or disparate personalities - that is they are not a whole person. Low emotional development also explains some common traits among serial killers such as enjoying holding soft materials against their mouths (being the primary sensory organ of infants) which was observed in Robert Macek, John Wayne Gacy and others - the material often being womens panties because of the materials softness.
The Helen Morrison theory also suggests that a serial killer has not developed basic levels of emotional control and that, as a result, a serial killer does not have "feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness, sometimes owing to humiliation and abuse" which draw them to killing, rather, the act of killing is actually a kind of experimentation which is uninhibited due to the subjects low or non-existent level of sympathy/empathy with the victims. It is arguable that serial killers are in fact trying to understand their own existence by inflicting pain, killing and experimenting with victims dead bodies. This also explains some of the macabre practices of serial killers such as Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and others.
The element of fantasy in a serial killer's development is extremely important. They often begin fantasizing about murder during or even before adolescence. Their fantasy lives are very rich and they daydream compulsively about domination, submission, and murder, usually with very specific elements to the fantasy that will eventually be apparent in their real crimes. Others enjoy reading stories or seeing photographs in magazines featuring rape, torture and murder. In some cases, however, these traits are not present. Some serial killers display one or more of what are known as the "MacDonald triad" of warning signs in childhood. These are:
· Fire starting, or arson invariably for the thrill of destroying things, for gaining attention, or for making the perpetrator feel more powerful.
· Cruelty to animals, Many children may be cruel to animals, such as pulling the legs off spiders, but future serial killers often kill larger animals, like dogs and cats, and frequently for their solitary enjoyment rather than to impress peers.
· Bed wetting beyond the age when children normally grow out of such behavior.
When caught and tried in a court of law in the United States, some serial killers will plead not guilty by reason of insanity. In most U.S. jurisdictions, the legal definition of insanity is still generally based upon the classic common law "right or wrong" test delineated by an English court in the 1843 M'Naghten case. The M'Naghten rule, as it is generally known in the legal profession, hinges upon whether the defendant knows the difference between right and wrong at the time of the offense. With some serial killers, extensive premeditation, combined with lack of any obvious delusions or hallucinations that would hinder the defendant's ability to elude detection after committing multiple murders, make this defense extremely difficult and almost uniformly unsuccessful in achieving a not guilty verdict. However, it does allow the defense to introduce evidence about the killer's background that would normally be deemed inadmissible (for example, a history of having been abused as a child), in hopes that some sympathy from the jury will spare the client a death sentence.
Serial killers have been featured in many novels, movies, songs, comic books, true crime, video games, and other media. Films such as The Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, and the Halloween series, have featured serial killers as villains, antiheroes, and even protagonists. Fictional serial killers such as Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates, Michael Myers, and Dexter Morgan have become some of the most famous, popular characters in modern popular culture. Serial killer memorabilia and serial killer lore is a subculture revolving around the legacies of various infamous and notorious serial killers. While memorabilia is generally confined to the paintings, writings, and poems of infamous killers, a market has expanded in recent years with serial killer encyclopedias, trading cards, and action figures. Some of the best known articles of serial killer memorabilia include the clown paintings of John Wayne Gacy and the poetry of Jack Unterweger.
TYPES OF SERIAL KILLERS
A significant number of serial killers will show certain aspects of both organized and disorganized types, although usually the characteristics of one type will dominate. Some killers descend from being organized into disorganized behavior as their killings continue. They will carry out careful and methodical murders at the start, but become careless and impulsive as their compulsion takes over their lives. Regardless, the FBI generally categorizes serial killers into the two different types.
Organized types are usually of high intelligence, have an above average IQ (105-120 range), and plan their crimes quite methodically, usually abducting victims, killing them in one place and disposing of them in another. They will often lure the victims with ploys appealing to their sense of sympathy. For example, Ted Bundy would put his arm in a fake plaster cast and ask women to help him carry something to his car, where he would beat them unconscious with a metal bar (ie. a crowbar), and spirit them away. Others specifically target prostitutes, who are likely to voluntarily go with a serial killer posing as a customer. They maintain a high degree of control over the crime scene, and usually have a solid knowledge of forensic science that enables them to cover their tracks, such as by burying the body or weighting it down and sinking it in a river. They follow their crimes in the media carefully and often take pride in their actions, as if it were a grand project.
The organized killer is usually socially adequate and has friends and lovers, often even a spouse and children. They are the type who, when captured, are most likely to be described by acquaintances as kind and unlikely to hurt anyone. Some serial killers go to lengths to make their crimes difficult to discover, such as falsifying suicide notes, setting up others to take the blame for their crimes, and faking gang warfare. The case of Harold Shipman, an English family doctor, is slightly unusual in that his social position and occupation was such that he was able to portray victims as having died of natural causes; between 1971 and 1998 he killed at least 250, and possibly well over 400, of his own mostly elderly patients and until very near the end of his killings it was not even suspected that any crimes had been committed.
Disorganized types are often of low intelligence, have a below average IQ (80-95), and commit their crimes impulsively. Whereas the organized killer will specifically set out to hunt a victim, the disorganized will murder someone when the opportunity arises, rarely bothering to dispose of the body but instead just leaving it at the same place in which they found the victim. They usually carry out "blitz" attacks, leaping out and attacking their victims without warning, and will typically perform whatever rituals they feel compelled to carry out (e.g., necrophilia, mutilation, cannibalism, etc.) once the victim is dead. They rarely bother to cover their tracks but may still evade capture for some time because of a level of cunning that compels them to keep on the move.
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Resurrecting Murder
we're doomed wtf does social security need hollow points?
