September 21, 2005

• The Mind of a Serial Killer

  I became interested in serial killers in the early 1980s, when the
  phenomenon burst into the media.  There wasn’t much literature
  available on the subject at that time.  I read what I could find and
  asked the local librarian to order more through Inter-Library Loan.  I
  still occasionally read a new book when one of my favorite authors has
  one published, but the topic hasn’t the fascination for me that it had
  before I understood what makes a serial killer tick.  A desire to
  understand their psychology was the reason that drove me to read about
  them in the first place.  The same curiosity and urge to understand has
  driven me to study nutrition, the plants, animals and mushrooms in the forest
  surrounding me, and cannibalism and war among the Anasazi, among other
  things.

  I’m writing this for two people, so don’t bother reading it if you have
  no interest in psychopathology or serial murder.  First, I’m
  writing for me, so I can get it off my mind and clear my thoughts for
  other things.  The other person I’m writing it for will know who
  she is, and may already have realized that her statement that some kill
  “just because,” for no reason at all, was facile, flip, ill-conceived
  and not thoroughly thought out.  If so, or if not, no
  matter.  It’s a subject I have researched for almost a quarter of
  a century, and it’s about time I wrote something on it.

  Since most of what I have read on this subject has been written by the
  detectives and criminal profilers who hunt them, and the psychologists
  who study them, I have learned as much about these writers as I have
  about the killers.  For example, each of them who has expressed an
  opinion one way or the other regarding capital punishment, the death
  penalty, is against it. 

  As a group, those who study serial killers would rather have them kept
  around to study, and those who hunt them generally hope to be able to
  learn from them, too.  The cops and FBI profilers have gotten a
  lot of information from convicted serial murderers that has helped them
  apprehend others.  Thomas Harris’s fictional scenario, having the
  FBI consult Hannibal Lecter in order to catch Buffalo Bill, was based
  on fact.

  It would also seem that as a group these cops, profilers and shrinks
  are fans of Friedrich Nietzsche.  In any event, I have found one
  particular Nietzsche quote in an inordinate number of their works: 
  “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze
  back into you.”  Those who spend much of their time with serial
  killers find themselves affected by that contact in ways that can be
  chilling.  Just reading what those others have written about
  their experiences has had a profound effect on me.

  Writing this to refute a statement with which I disagree, I thought it
  would be appropriate to include plenty of references to back up my
  contention.  Since my contention is a negative, that nobody
  kills over and over again for no reason at all, it cannot be
  proven.  That’s an axiom of logic:  you can’t prove a
  negative proposition.  I will simply state what I  have
  learned about the various reasons that people do kill multiple times, provide links to authoritative sources, and challenge
  anyone to find credible support for the contention that such motiveless
  multiple killing does take place.

  Every knowledgable person in the field agrees that many (some say most) serial killers
  have abnormalities or lesions in the frontal and temporal lobes of
  their brains and the anterior cingulate gyrus (part of the limbic
  system).  Autopsies of executed killers have shown this. 
  Some of the lesions have been caused by physical abuse, and some of the
  abnormalities are thought to have resulted from early emotional abuse,
  neglect and sensory deprivation.  The most extensive,
  authoritative and interesting web reference I found on this aspect of what
  makes a serial killer was written by Rhawn Joseph, PhD.

  While those lesions and abnormalities of the brain can explain a
  killer’s lack of impulse control, they don’t explain the impulse, the
  motive.  In many instances, though, the abuse and neglect which
  led to the brain damage can explain the rage and hatred that lead to a
  particular killer’s choice of victims.  In contrast to spree
  killers, whose victims are linked only by the fact of their having
  crossed the killer’s path at a certain time, during the killing spree, serial killers
  usually select victims of a certain type or class.

  The Green River Killer chose prostitutes.  All of Ted Bundy’s
  victims matched a certain physical type:  long-haired brunettes
  who looked like his mother and his girlfriend.  Aileen Wournos
  killed mostly traveling salesmen who picked her up when she was
  hitchhiking and made sexual advances to her.  Jeffrey Dahmer’s
  victims were all young men he picked up in a gay bar, and it has been suggested by Richard Tithecott, in his book Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey
  Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer, that he was trying to “expel” or destroy his own femininity.

  Many killers of prostitutes, including the Alaskan baker Robert Hansen,
  claim that they are cleaning up society by ridding it of whores. 
  My feeling is that more killers say this than really have it as their
  underlying motive.  Sexual predators, who kill for the sexual
  thrill and often cannot enjoy sex or achieve orgasm any other way,
  often choose prostitutes, runaways, or hitchhikers, because they are
  there, available on the streets and their absence might not be noticed
  for some time, if ever.  Hansen was an avid hunter and his M.O.
  involved capturing young women, flying them to remote areas and setting
  them free then hunting them down.  I think that for him hunting
  the ultimate prey was more important than cleaning up the streets, but
  he was smart enough not to say so.

  What I have gleaned from these decades of reading the works of those
  who hunt and study murderers is that there is a typical scenario for
  the creation of a sexual predator.  No one has ever mentioned
  having encountered one who set out to be a serial killer.  Most
  never set out to kill at all.  Many began as voyeurs, peeping
  toms.  That then escalated into burglary or petty theft, often
  stealing women’s underwear from clotheslines or dresser drawers. 
  Sometimes the voyeurism and/or burglary escalates to rape.  Many
  of the known or convicted serial murderers of the sexual predator type
  were serial rapists first.  In one of their rapes, the victim
  fought back, but not hard enough to get away, and she died.  After
  that, simple rape doesn’t have the level of satisfaction, the thrill,
  it once did, and so he begins killing all his victims.

  Regardless of the motive for or circumstances of a first killing, some
  people, once they have killed, find it to be addictive.  In a
  typical case, it takes time after a murder for the craving, the need,
  to assert itself, and then there is a period of victim selection and/or
  stalking.  Following each successive victim, the interval between
  killings usually decreases.  Sometimes the killer is caught before
  his victims have become very close together in time.  If not, just
  as in substance addictions, gambling, and other addictions, the
  killings come closer and closer together until the killer eventually
  decompensates.  Then he becomes less disciminating in his victim
  selection and less organized in his methods.

  Far from being “without reason” or motiveless, those killings after the
  initial one are driven by the same biochemical cascades that motivate
  drinking binges, sexual excesses, and wild manic flings of all
  sorts.  It’s a cocktail of neurotransmitters that may include
  endorphins and other brain chemicals, but always involves dopamine, the
  pleasure chemical.  Each individual serial murderer may have
  emotional and psychological reasons for selecting the type of victims
  he does and for his choice of method, body disposal, etc.  He may
  rationalize his acts just as drunks rationalize their drinking and
  nymphomaniacs rationalize their promiscuity, but essentially he goes on
  killing because he is addicted to it.

  Among the informative web pages I found today are Lustmord, a broadly inclusive article in Court TV’s Crime Library and Natural Born Killers on the same site.  Termpapergenie.com has an excellent article on Identifying Serial Killers by Profiling.  Edward W. Mitchell’s master’s thesis, The Aetiology of Serial Murder: 
  Towards an Integrated Model
  does a great job of synthesizing a number of different theories. 
  After 9/11, Alice Miller wrote a sensitive article that touches on the
  roots of serial murder, The Wellsprings of Horror in the Cradle. 
  On the website of the Death Penalty Information Center, Laura Mansnerus
  wrote, “You don’t have to be a psychiatrist, Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis
  says, to
  know that something was terribly wrong with Ricky Ray Rector, who
  before
  his execution in Arkansas ordered his last meal and asked that the
  pecan
  pie be set aside so he could have it later,” in her article titled, Damaged Brains and the Death Penalty.  Also, I found two student papers from the Bryn Mawr College website that include even more links:  Predestined Serial Killers and Making a Monster:  The Biological, Social, and Artistic Construction of a Serial Killer From Psychosis to Sondheim.  And don’t forget my aforementioned best find, Rhawn Joseph’s EARLY
  ENVIRONMENTAL & MATERNAL INFLUENCES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF SERIAL
  SEX KILLERS:  Deprivation, Abuse, & Serial Sex Killers.

  Below are some of the books I’ve read in the last few decades, and a
  couple that I wish I’d read.  The book now shown as “Currently
  Reading” is one I haven’t read yet.  It is supposed to be released
  next month.  Anyone want to buy it for me?
  
  Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives
  By John E. Douglas, Ann W. Burgess, Robert K. Ressler
  OBSESSION
  by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker
  Mindhunter : Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit
  by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker
  JOURNEY
  INTO DARKNESS : Follow the FBI’s Premier Investigative Profiler as He
  Penetrates the Minds and Motives of the Most Terrifying Serial Criminals
  by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker
  UNABOMBER: ON THE TRAIL OF AMERICA’S MOST-WANTED SERIAL KILLER
  by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker
  The Cases That Haunt Us
  by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker
  The Anatomy of Motive : The FBI’s Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals
  by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker
  Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer
  by Elliott Layton
  Demon Doctors: Physicians as Serial Killers
  by Kenneth Iserson
  Whoever Fights Monsters : My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI (St. Martin’s True Crime Library)
  By Robert K. Ressler, Thomas Schachtman
  The Psychology of Serial Killer Investigations: The Grisly Business Unit
  By Robert D. Keppel, William J. Birnes
  The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers
  By Brian Lane, Wilfred Gregg
  Serial Killers
  By Joel Norris
  The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators Among Us
  By Gregg O. McCrary, Katherine, Ph.D. Ramsland
  My Life Among the Serial Killers : Inside the Minds of the World’s Most Notorious Murderers
  By Helen Morrison, Harold Goldberg
  Compulsive Killers: The Story of Modern Multiple Murder
  By Elliott Leyton
  Portrait of a Killer : Jack the Ripper – Case Closed
  By Patricia Cornwell
  The DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER
  By Shirley Harrison
  Criminal shadows: Inside the mind of the serial killer
  By David V Canter
  Signature Killers
  By Robert Keppel
  
  

  • 12:28 am
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