Anatomy of a Serial Killer
Who They Are and Why They Kill
This page is the third and final part to my little web site, the two previous parts being The Ted Killings and The World's Most Notorious Serial Killers. On this page, I will examine and explain every aspect of the serial killer as far as my knowledge will let me. I will look at the characteristics of a serial killer, possible theories as to why they kill, and use specific examples of some of the worst serial killers to date to illustrate some of my points. So read carefully and learn something.
What Is a Serial Killer?
This is the best place to start in exploring the mind and world of a serial killer since most people tend to confuse the defintion with that of mass murderers and spree killers. A mass murderer is literally a human time bomb, one who explodes in a sudden act of violence that leads to a bloody rampage. Their rampage lasts only a few minutes or a few hours. Charles Whitman, Howard Unruh, and Colin Ferguson were mass murderers, not serial killers. Their motives for committing murder were not the same as those associated with the serial killer. They killed to relieve stress or because they felt betrayed by society. They killed with a vengeance. There was no pleasure involved (at least as far as anyone knows). They the maniacs who drive their truck into a McDonald's parking lot and open fire on everyone before turning the gun on themselves.
The spree killer is also a type of murderer often confused with the serial killer. Once again, the motives for killing are different. They are not sex crimes as is the case with serial murder. A spree killer only kills because he or she has to to survive, such as killing a motorist for his car in order to continue avoiding capture. Archetypal (the best examples)spree killers are such people as Andrew Cuhnanan (sic), Charles Starkweather, and William Cook. Crime historians often lable Starkweather as a serial killer. He was not a serial killer, but a spree killer. He did not kill for sexual gratification. He killed to his own advantage.
And now we finally come to the serial killer. The first thing to note is the fact that serial killers are generally considered what are called sexual sociopaths. They are not psychopaths as people like to think they are. Ed Gein is the one exception to the rule. Evidently, Gein did not know right from wrong when committing his crimes, thus making him a genuine psychopath. Then again, we could simply point out that Gein was not a serial killer to begin with since he only murdered 2 people (both women). He does not fit the official FBI definition. According to the FBI (and to most if not all criminal profilers of violent crimes), a serial killer is a person (usually male) who murders at least 3 unrelated victims with a cooling off period in between each murder. Rape or sexual assault usually accompanies the murder, sometimes before and sometimes after. The cooling off period is essential in these types of crimes. It can last only a few hours or it can last years. Serial killers are in a sense violent sex offenders, only lethal.
Serial killers also tend to be white males between the ages of 25 and 35 (with some exceptions of course). There have been black serial killers as well as a few Asian ones as well. But most are white and heterosexual and live and work in the United States.
Why Do They Kill?
This question is vital to understanding the motives of the serial killer, particularly since the average person sees his crimes as being absent of any motive. Robbery and burglary are not the issue as in the case of a spree killer. The only type of gain the serial killer attempts to acquire from taking a human life is a sexual satisfaction, one that he (or she) cannot derive from a normal sexual relationship with another human being. For the serial killer, murder is the subsitute for sex. They kill for sexual pleasure. The best examples of course are Andrei Chikatilo, Peter Kurten, and Dayton Leroy Rogers. These two monsters killed for pure sexual gratification. The sight of their victim's blood literally caused them to become aroused, in Chikatilo's and Kurten's case to the point where they would actually ejaculate.
In the case of other serial killers such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, they killed the thing they loved but could not have. For Bundy, it was a woman whom he had once loved but had been rejected by. The breakup left a deep emotional scar in Bundy, one that unfortunately would never heal and thus drove him to murder young attractive women who resembled his ex-girlfriend. The woman's name was Stephanie Brooks. Every girl that Bundy killed was Stephanie in his own twisted mind. He murdered the same woman over and over again. In the case of Dahmer, the one thing he could not have was a gay lover. Dahmer, a homosexual, feared rejection and murdered his young male pickups so they could not leave him. He could not ever fathom having a normal relationship with another male partner and so killed them. He was not trying to achieve sexual satisfaction by the killing, just companionship.
What Does a Serial Killer Look Like?
Probably the most frightening aspect about the serial killer is the fact of how average they appear to the human eye. Contrary to popular myth, their appearance is that of your every-day next-door neighbor, someone you feel comfortable knowing and being around. They are not supposed to "look" like anything.
Prior to the advent of criminal profiling, serial killers or violent criminals were thought to take on certain physical traits. They were thought to look primitive or deformed in some manner that constituted their violent behavior. There have in fact a few serial killers who have fit the old-fashioned bill. Joseph Vacher, the notorious "French Ripper," was about as grotesque in appearance as they come having such deformities as a hairlip, and eye that leaked puss, and scars and boils on his face and body. Jesse Pomeroy, a child slayer in 19th century Massachusetts, also had less than appealing physical traits. However, his case as well as Vacher's is unique in all respects. True they were what one could call ugly, but that was not the root of their homicidal behavior.
By the 1970's and early 80's, criminal profiling and the term "serial killer" were slowly becoming household norms. In other words, the Behavioral Sciences Unit at the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the country were making some simple, but startling discoveries. Terming repeating killers as serial predators was finally creating a better picture of who these types of violent criminals really were. What was also more apparent than ever, was how normal most of these men appeared to be. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did for crime fighters to realize that serial killers were not supposed to take on a certain appearance. Studying the case files should have been enough evidence to make them come to this conclusion. For example, look at Ted Bundy, who was charming, handsome, personable, well-educated, intelligent, and overall very likable. Yet he was one of the most depraved serial killers in the annals of American crime. And the list goes on and on. John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Christopher Wilder, Ed Kemper, H.H. Holmes, Earle Leonard Nelson, Dayton Leroy Rogers, etc., while not were exactly pillars of their community, they were at least able to maintain the status as normal law-abiding citizens. But then again what exactly is "normal"?
Heterosexual vs. Homosexual Serial Killers
It is actually fairly easy to differentiate the serial killer who is a heterosexual and the serial killer who is homosexual. The answer is found in the gender of their victims. Based on clear observation, homosexual serial killers tend to kill other men and homosexuals.
Jeffrey Dahmer of course is the classic case of the homosexual serial killer. Dahmer, the murderer of 17 young men, was also a frustrated homosexual, one who had tried in the past to suppress his sexual tendencies and urges. At one point in his life he may have even felt ashamed of his sexuality since he was raised on old-fashioned morals. Plus, he was a child of the 60's and 70's, an age when homosexuality was not yet an acceptable social norm or way of life. in any event, once his killing spree began, it was not one spawned from a natural compulsion to murder and mutilate. Dahmer's intention was never to make any of his victims. He was only seeking companionship since he was never one to have a normally balanced relationship with another homosexual. His victims were tended to be helpless love slaves; they were supposed to be like zombies and able to do his bidding. He only wanted these men for company, to avoid a life of loneliness and despair. This of course didn't make it right and Dahmer is still by all counts one of the most fiendish cannibal serial killers of the 20th century.
Another homosexual serial killer who killed for the same reasons was Dennis Nielsen, often dubbed as "The British Jeffrey Dahmer." Like Dahmer, Nielsen was frustrated with his sexuality and had an incredible fear of ending up lonely and without companionship. By the time of his apprehension, Nielsen was responsible for no less than 15 grisly murders of young men. Had maybe men like himself and Jeffrey Dahmer seeked some form of help in their darkest and most frustrating hours than perhaps they both would have taken different approaches for developing companionship.
As stated earlier, homosexual serial killers tend to kill members of the same sex. For this reason, all arguments that Jack the Ripper was a homosexual can easily be ruled out since the Whitechapel Butcher appears to have murdered women only. This is the one of the defining traits of the heterosexual serial killer. Once a string of female bodies start turning up murdered, the police are certain that they are looking for a male. There have never been any cases in fact where a homosexual has decided to satisfy his blood lust by killing women. Dayton Leroy Rogers was bisexual at most as was perhaps Andrei Chikatilo. Yet based on their victims, it is obvious that they both preferred women.
The Evolution of the Serial Killer
What causes a person to develop into a serial killer? Why would a human being want to commit such an apparently senseless and brutal act on another human being? The answers to these questions are many and at best theoretical. There is no one concrete cause for a person becoming a serial killer. There are some very intriguing theories though that have been put forth by behavioral scientists and criminal psychologists over the years.
One theory focuses entirely on an individual's upbringing or childhood. Many psychologists argue and agree that the evolution of a potential serial killer begins as early between the ages of 3 and 5, when the human brain is rapidly developing and forming mental states that will characterize and control an individual's decision-making process for the rest of his (or her) life.
Let us look at the childhood's of such serial killers as Henry Lee Lucas, Charles Manson, Danny Rolling, and John Wayne Gacy. All four of these monsters endured horrific upbringinds brought on by abusive and domineering parents. In the case of Lucas and Manson, both were severally abused by their tyrannical mothers. Both received mental, emotional, and physical abuse on an almost daily basis. There mothers were literally monsters and it is fair to say that both Lucas and Manson despised their mothers (Lucas even went as far as to stab his hated mother to death in 1960 when he was 24 yrs.old). This mother-hating complex may explain why Henry Lee Lucas killed as well as why Manson sent his followers on a murderous rampage.
Lucas, as far as I'm concerned, murdered only three people in his lowly years of existence. The three of course included his own mother. Her murder set off the ability for him to kill again. As a result he murdered his lover Becky Powell during a heated argument (sounds familiar). He clearly saw Powell as his mother or else he would not have killed her. Once Powell worked up the nerve to verbally attack Lucas he may have suddenly been struck with memories of the abuse brought on by his late mother. In a sense, he murdered his mother again. The exact same can be said for the murder of Kate Rich, the woman whom Lucas and Powell had lived with off and on in Texas. Rich was a kind and elderly woman, the complete opposite of Lucas's mother. However, because she was in fact kind and acted how a real mother should have to her son, Lucas saw this as threatening, not loving. He could not cope with the fact that a woman could be so compassionate and personable so he killed her.
At this point, I am going to have to skip over the Rolling and Gacy childhoods to talk about something else (I only have limited space on this page to write on). Let us continue with the serial killer's development into a real-life monster.
Once the child has reached his adolescent years he begins to indulge in practices that are uncommon to the average growing boy. Rather than find pleasure in wondering about what it would be like to have sex with a girl, the boy wonders what it would be like to dissect one. Rather than masturbate about the girl who lives next door, he masturbates about images of death that involve at this point both animals and human beings. This of course is the next step after years of experimenting with animals and roadkill. A potential serial killer takes an uncanny joy in wondering about death as well as exploring it. Their fascination lies in torturing and butchering small animals. A parent who happens to notice his or her son's strange behavior may think it is only a phase that will pass. Sometimes it is, but in the case of a true budding serial killer it is only the beginning. Pyromania (lighting of fires) is also a perverted addiction of some developing serial killers (almost forgot to mention this). It revolves around the principal of how they enjoy causing and watching destruction. Peter Kurten was a notorious pyromaniac claiming that he sometimes ejaculated when witnessing a burning building, especially one that he himself had set fire to.
Sooner or later, murdering animals is no longer enough for the boy to achieve any sort of sexual gratification. By the time he is in his late teens or early twenties he is ready to kill. Or so he believes. Many serial killers have a tendency to involve themselves in petty crimes before moving on to murder. Some crimes are sexual, others are as non-sexual as burglary and breaking and entering. In any event, this is the path that most take although there have been several who live fairly clean lives before becoming a serial killer (Ted Bundy, Andrei Chikatilo, Albert Fish showed no signs of developing into the monsters they were to become at younger ages).
Like a drug addict who moves from smoking marijuana to shooting heroin, the serial killer goes from a rape or sexual assault to rape plus murder. Murder is the knew drug, the latest thrill. And like any serious addict who can't seem to stop indulging in drug abuse, the serial killer cannot stop himself from killing. There is no 12-step program in this situation. The only way to ensure that a serial killer will cease his murderous activities is by capturing and incarcerating him or by killing him. The other way would be simply for the serial killer to die by some way or another.
Another possibility to the causes of serial murder lies in the DNA. Some scientists and doctors believe that perhaps an extra X or Y chromosome causes an individual to possess a more animalistic nature, a nature that is primitive and less civilized. This type of person would be easily provoked into using violence as a solution to every problem. They are more prone to violence to put it bluntly. However, this has yet to be proven.
Another theory that has been put forth, very recently in fact, is that a person who has the potential to be a violent serial predator is someone with a chemical imbalance in the frontal lobe of the brain. Neurologists (doctors who study the brain) have found some consistencies in this area when experimenting with repeated offenders (serial killer Joel Rifkin is the best example of this experiment; Rifkin murdered 17 prostitutes in New York before being caught and convicted in 1993. It appeared he had abnormalities in the frontal lobe of his brain that may have caused him to kill.). Unfortunately at this time this approach is only a theory and nothing more.
The Female Serial Killer
This is perhaps the greatest irregularity in the world of serial murder. It happens, but not at the alarming rate that is a factor among males (white males in particular). The most common female serial killer is the "Black Widow," the greedy wife who marries and then murders her spouse for financial and social gain. Belle Guiness was probably the most famous of thus type of fiend who murdered a number of male victims until her alleged death in a fire in 1908.
The other type of female serial killer is the nurse who poisons her sick patients for the pure pleasure of watching them die. She is depraved and as dangerous as any male serial murderer. The most famous of this group is Jane Toppan, the nurse who murdered at least a dozen patients for nothing more than her natural compulsion to murder the people she was supposed to help.
And then there is the female serial killer who actually stalks her prey and murders them in cold blood for no other purpose than to achieve a thrill or "high." The best example of this type would be Aileen Wuornos, who shot to death 7 Florida male motorists in 1989 and 1990. She is currently serving several death sentences for her crimes and faces the electric chair. Whether or not she actually stalked any of these men as prey is a subject in constant debate. She claims to this day that is was self-defense despite having confessed to the murders before her first murder murder trial.
Catching the Serial Killer
How does one go about apprehending a serial murderer? What is the most efficient method to understanding the mind of such a criminal before trying to bring the perpetrator to justice? These are questions that the Behavioral Sciences Unit over in Quantico, Virginia has studied and answered in the past two decades. In fact, their progress has been so great in helping to apprehend serial offenders that they are considered "the" place of understanding the mind and character of a serial killer. You want to everything to date about a serial killer, try to make a trip to the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit.
The most effective weapon in capturing a serial killer is the art of criminal profiling. The most respected criminal profilers in the world are such men as John Douglas (no doubt the best of the lot), Roy Hazlewood, Greg McCrary, Bill Haigmaier, Dr. Robert Ressler, and Dr. Robert Keppel. They are those who best understanding the mind and motives of the serial killer. It is almost uncanny how these men are able to construct a portrait of the serial killer that is incredibly accurate despite never even meeting the offender face to face. In other words, a profiler knows the perpetrator without really knowing the person (in the traditional sense).
What all criminal profilers agree on is that before you can begin to build a profile of a serial killer you must be able to recreate his crimes. Examining the crime scene is the best way to understand what type of criminal the police are dealing with. For example, if the killer left behind clues such as the murder weapon and made little or no effort to conceal the body (thus concealing the crime) this usually means that the murderer is what's known as a "disorganized offender." The killer is probably more of a borderline psychopath. By not covering up the crime they exhibit the fact that they probably have no feelings of having committed a crime. They fail to acknowledge they know right from wrong. The victim is nothing but trash that they dispose of like a bag of waste.
Then there is the more careful, calculated serial killer, the individual who leaves very little evidence behind. They bury the body and make the effort to cover up their crime. This circumstance conveys that the killer is well aware that they have done something that is very wrong. The bottom line though is that every serial killer knows right from wrong because they tend to be sociopaths, not psychopaths (important to always remember!).
Once the profiler has a chance to closely analyze the crime scene and any evidence collected from the scene (including the victim of course), the next step is try to draw a portrait of the type of person who committed the murder. Was there rape or sexual assault? Where was the body found? What type of person was the victim? How old was she and what kind of occupation did she have? Where was she abducted? These are all necessary in understanding the killer. It helps to know what kind of individual the victim was before she met her death. Was she a prostitute or derelict? Was she a school girl or college student? It's not an easy job from any way one tends to look at it.
Once the profile is complete it makes the job a whole lot easier for the police in trying to catch their man (or some rare cases their woman).
(For now, this page is finished. I apologize for the removal of the poll due to an error in my account. Perhaps I'll set up another one in the near future.)
What Is a Serial Killer?
This is the best place to start in exploring the mind and world of a serial killer since most people tend to confuse the defintion with that of mass murderers and spree killers. A mass murderer is literally a human time bomb, one who explodes in a sudden act of violence that leads to a bloody rampage. Their rampage lasts only a few minutes or a few hours. Charles Whitman, Howard Unruh, and Colin Ferguson were mass murderers, not serial killers. Their motives for committing murder were not the same as those associated with the serial killer. They killed to relieve stress or because they felt betrayed by society. They killed with a vengeance. There was no pleasure involved (at least as far as anyone knows). They the maniacs who drive their truck into a McDonald's parking lot and open fire on everyone before turning the gun on themselves.
The spree killer is also a type of murderer often confused with the serial killer. Once again, the motives for killing are different. They are not sex crimes as is the case with serial murder. A spree killer only kills because he or she has to to survive, such as killing a motorist for his car in order to continue avoiding capture. Archetypal (the best examples)spree killers are such people as Andrew Cuhnanan (sic), Charles Starkweather, and William Cook. Crime historians often lable Starkweather as a serial killer. He was not a serial killer, but a spree killer. He did not kill for sexual gratification. He killed to his own advantage.
And now we finally come to the serial killer. The first thing to note is the fact that serial killers are generally considered what are called sexual sociopaths. They are not psychopaths as people like to think they are. Ed Gein is the one exception to the rule. Evidently, Gein did not know right from wrong when committing his crimes, thus making him a genuine psychopath. Then again, we could simply point out that Gein was not a serial killer to begin with since he only murdered 2 people (both women). He does not fit the official FBI definition. According to the FBI (and to most if not all criminal profilers of violent crimes), a serial killer is a person (usually male) who murders at least 3 unrelated victims with a cooling off period in between each murder. Rape or sexual assault usually accompanies the murder, sometimes before and sometimes after. The cooling off period is essential in these types of crimes. It can last only a few hours or it can last years. Serial killers are in a sense violent sex offenders, only lethal.
Serial killers also tend to be white males between the ages of 25 and 35 (with some exceptions of course). There have been black serial killers as well as a few Asian ones as well. But most are white and heterosexual and live and work in the United States.
Why Do They Kill?
This question is vital to understanding the motives of the serial killer, particularly since the average person sees his crimes as being absent of any motive. Robbery and burglary are not the issue as in the case of a spree killer. The only type of gain the serial killer attempts to acquire from taking a human life is a sexual satisfaction, one that he (or she) cannot derive from a normal sexual relationship with another human being. For the serial killer, murder is the subsitute for sex. They kill for sexual pleasure. The best examples of course are Andrei Chikatilo, Peter Kurten, and Dayton Leroy Rogers. These two monsters killed for pure sexual gratification. The sight of their victim's blood literally caused them to become aroused, in Chikatilo's and Kurten's case to the point where they would actually ejaculate.
In the case of other serial killers such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, they killed the thing they loved but could not have. For Bundy, it was a woman whom he had once loved but had been rejected by. The breakup left a deep emotional scar in Bundy, one that unfortunately would never heal and thus drove him to murder young attractive women who resembled his ex-girlfriend. The woman's name was Stephanie Brooks. Every girl that Bundy killed was Stephanie in his own twisted mind. He murdered the same woman over and over again. In the case of Dahmer, the one thing he could not have was a gay lover. Dahmer, a homosexual, feared rejection and murdered his young male pickups so they could not leave him. He could not ever fathom having a normal relationship with another male partner and so killed them. He was not trying to achieve sexual satisfaction by the killing, just companionship.
What Does a Serial Killer Look Like?
Probably the most frightening aspect about the serial killer is the fact of how average they appear to the human eye. Contrary to popular myth, their appearance is that of your every-day next-door neighbor, someone you feel comfortable knowing and being around. They are not supposed to "look" like anything.
Prior to the advent of criminal profiling, serial killers or violent criminals were thought to take on certain physical traits. They were thought to look primitive or deformed in some manner that constituted their violent behavior. There have in fact a few serial killers who have fit the old-fashioned bill. Joseph Vacher, the notorious "French Ripper," was about as grotesque in appearance as they come having such deformities as a hairlip, and eye that leaked puss, and scars and boils on his face and body. Jesse Pomeroy, a child slayer in 19th century Massachusetts, also had less than appealing physical traits. However, his case as well as Vacher's is unique in all respects. True they were what one could call ugly, but that was not the root of their homicidal behavior.
By the 1970's and early 80's, criminal profiling and the term "serial killer" were slowly becoming household norms. In other words, the Behavioral Sciences Unit at the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the country were making some simple, but startling discoveries. Terming repeating killers as serial predators was finally creating a better picture of who these types of violent criminals really were. What was also more apparent than ever, was how normal most of these men appeared to be. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did for crime fighters to realize that serial killers were not supposed to take on a certain appearance. Studying the case files should have been enough evidence to make them come to this conclusion. For example, look at Ted Bundy, who was charming, handsome, personable, well-educated, intelligent, and overall very likable. Yet he was one of the most depraved serial killers in the annals of American crime. And the list goes on and on. John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Christopher Wilder, Ed Kemper, H.H. Holmes, Earle Leonard Nelson, Dayton Leroy Rogers, etc., while not were exactly pillars of their community, they were at least able to maintain the status as normal law-abiding citizens. But then again what exactly is "normal"?
Heterosexual vs. Homosexual Serial Killers
It is actually fairly easy to differentiate the serial killer who is a heterosexual and the serial killer who is homosexual. The answer is found in the gender of their victims. Based on clear observation, homosexual serial killers tend to kill other men and homosexuals.
Jeffrey Dahmer of course is the classic case of the homosexual serial killer. Dahmer, the murderer of 17 young men, was also a frustrated homosexual, one who had tried in the past to suppress his sexual tendencies and urges. At one point in his life he may have even felt ashamed of his sexuality since he was raised on old-fashioned morals. Plus, he was a child of the 60's and 70's, an age when homosexuality was not yet an acceptable social norm or way of life. in any event, once his killing spree began, it was not one spawned from a natural compulsion to murder and mutilate. Dahmer's intention was never to make any of his victims. He was only seeking companionship since he was never one to have a normally balanced relationship with another homosexual. His victims were tended to be helpless love slaves; they were supposed to be like zombies and able to do his bidding. He only wanted these men for company, to avoid a life of loneliness and despair. This of course didn't make it right and Dahmer is still by all counts one of the most fiendish cannibal serial killers of the 20th century.
Another homosexual serial killer who killed for the same reasons was Dennis Nielsen, often dubbed as "The British Jeffrey Dahmer." Like Dahmer, Nielsen was frustrated with his sexuality and had an incredible fear of ending up lonely and without companionship. By the time of his apprehension, Nielsen was responsible for no less than 15 grisly murders of young men. Had maybe men like himself and Jeffrey Dahmer seeked some form of help in their darkest and most frustrating hours than perhaps they both would have taken different approaches for developing companionship.
As stated earlier, homosexual serial killers tend to kill members of the same sex. For this reason, all arguments that Jack the Ripper was a homosexual can easily be ruled out since the Whitechapel Butcher appears to have murdered women only. This is the one of the defining traits of the heterosexual serial killer. Once a string of female bodies start turning up murdered, the police are certain that they are looking for a male. There have never been any cases in fact where a homosexual has decided to satisfy his blood lust by killing women. Dayton Leroy Rogers was bisexual at most as was perhaps Andrei Chikatilo. Yet based on their victims, it is obvious that they both preferred women.
The Evolution of the Serial Killer
What causes a person to develop into a serial killer? Why would a human being want to commit such an apparently senseless and brutal act on another human being? The answers to these questions are many and at best theoretical. There is no one concrete cause for a person becoming a serial killer. There are some very intriguing theories though that have been put forth by behavioral scientists and criminal psychologists over the years.
One theory focuses entirely on an individual's upbringing or childhood. Many psychologists argue and agree that the evolution of a potential serial killer begins as early between the ages of 3 and 5, when the human brain is rapidly developing and forming mental states that will characterize and control an individual's decision-making process for the rest of his (or her) life.
Let us look at the childhood's of such serial killers as Henry Lee Lucas, Charles Manson, Danny Rolling, and John Wayne Gacy. All four of these monsters endured horrific upbringinds brought on by abusive and domineering parents. In the case of Lucas and Manson, both were severally abused by their tyrannical mothers. Both received mental, emotional, and physical abuse on an almost daily basis. There mothers were literally monsters and it is fair to say that both Lucas and Manson despised their mothers (Lucas even went as far as to stab his hated mother to death in 1960 when he was 24 yrs.old). This mother-hating complex may explain why Henry Lee Lucas killed as well as why Manson sent his followers on a murderous rampage.
Lucas, as far as I'm concerned, murdered only three people in his lowly years of existence. The three of course included his own mother. Her murder set off the ability for him to kill again. As a result he murdered his lover Becky Powell during a heated argument (sounds familiar). He clearly saw Powell as his mother or else he would not have killed her. Once Powell worked up the nerve to verbally attack Lucas he may have suddenly been struck with memories of the abuse brought on by his late mother. In a sense, he murdered his mother again. The exact same can be said for the murder of Kate Rich, the woman whom Lucas and Powell had lived with off and on in Texas. Rich was a kind and elderly woman, the complete opposite of Lucas's mother. However, because she was in fact kind and acted how a real mother should have to her son, Lucas saw this as threatening, not loving. He could not cope with the fact that a woman could be so compassionate and personable so he killed her.
At this point, I am going to have to skip over the Rolling and Gacy childhoods to talk about something else (I only have limited space on this page to write on). Let us continue with the serial killer's development into a real-life monster.
Once the child has reached his adolescent years he begins to indulge in practices that are uncommon to the average growing boy. Rather than find pleasure in wondering about what it would be like to have sex with a girl, the boy wonders what it would be like to dissect one. Rather than masturbate about the girl who lives next door, he masturbates about images of death that involve at this point both animals and human beings. This of course is the next step after years of experimenting with animals and roadkill. A potential serial killer takes an uncanny joy in wondering about death as well as exploring it. Their fascination lies in torturing and butchering small animals. A parent who happens to notice his or her son's strange behavior may think it is only a phase that will pass. Sometimes it is, but in the case of a true budding serial killer it is only the beginning. Pyromania (lighting of fires) is also a perverted addiction of some developing serial killers (almost forgot to mention this). It revolves around the principal of how they enjoy causing and watching destruction. Peter Kurten was a notorious pyromaniac claiming that he sometimes ejaculated when witnessing a burning building, especially one that he himself had set fire to.
Sooner or later, murdering animals is no longer enough for the boy to achieve any sort of sexual gratification. By the time he is in his late teens or early twenties he is ready to kill. Or so he believes. Many serial killers have a tendency to involve themselves in petty crimes before moving on to murder. Some crimes are sexual, others are as non-sexual as burglary and breaking and entering. In any event, this is the path that most take although there have been several who live fairly clean lives before becoming a serial killer (Ted Bundy, Andrei Chikatilo, Albert Fish showed no signs of developing into the monsters they were to become at younger ages).
Like a drug addict who moves from smoking marijuana to shooting heroin, the serial killer goes from a rape or sexual assault to rape plus murder. Murder is the knew drug, the latest thrill. And like any serious addict who can't seem to stop indulging in drug abuse, the serial killer cannot stop himself from killing. There is no 12-step program in this situation. The only way to ensure that a serial killer will cease his murderous activities is by capturing and incarcerating him or by killing him. The other way would be simply for the serial killer to die by some way or another.
Another possibility to the causes of serial murder lies in the DNA. Some scientists and doctors believe that perhaps an extra X or Y chromosome causes an individual to possess a more animalistic nature, a nature that is primitive and less civilized. This type of person would be easily provoked into using violence as a solution to every problem. They are more prone to violence to put it bluntly. However, this has yet to be proven.
Another theory that has been put forth, very recently in fact, is that a person who has the potential to be a violent serial predator is someone with a chemical imbalance in the frontal lobe of the brain. Neurologists (doctors who study the brain) have found some consistencies in this area when experimenting with repeated offenders (serial killer Joel Rifkin is the best example of this experiment; Rifkin murdered 17 prostitutes in New York before being caught and convicted in 1993. It appeared he had abnormalities in the frontal lobe of his brain that may have caused him to kill.). Unfortunately at this time this approach is only a theory and nothing more.
The Female Serial Killer
This is perhaps the greatest irregularity in the world of serial murder. It happens, but not at the alarming rate that is a factor among males (white males in particular). The most common female serial killer is the "Black Widow," the greedy wife who marries and then murders her spouse for financial and social gain. Belle Guiness was probably the most famous of thus type of fiend who murdered a number of male victims until her alleged death in a fire in 1908.
The other type of female serial killer is the nurse who poisons her sick patients for the pure pleasure of watching them die. She is depraved and as dangerous as any male serial murderer. The most famous of this group is Jane Toppan, the nurse who murdered at least a dozen patients for nothing more than her natural compulsion to murder the people she was supposed to help.
And then there is the female serial killer who actually stalks her prey and murders them in cold blood for no other purpose than to achieve a thrill or "high." The best example of this type would be Aileen Wuornos, who shot to death 7 Florida male motorists in 1989 and 1990. She is currently serving several death sentences for her crimes and faces the electric chair. Whether or not she actually stalked any of these men as prey is a subject in constant debate. She claims to this day that is was self-defense despite having confessed to the murders before her first murder murder trial.
Catching the Serial Killer
How does one go about apprehending a serial murderer? What is the most efficient method to understanding the mind of such a criminal before trying to bring the perpetrator to justice? These are questions that the Behavioral Sciences Unit over in Quantico, Virginia has studied and answered in the past two decades. In fact, their progress has been so great in helping to apprehend serial offenders that they are considered "the" place of understanding the mind and character of a serial killer. You want to everything to date about a serial killer, try to make a trip to the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit.
The most effective weapon in capturing a serial killer is the art of criminal profiling. The most respected criminal profilers in the world are such men as John Douglas (no doubt the best of the lot), Roy Hazlewood, Greg McCrary, Bill Haigmaier, Dr. Robert Ressler, and Dr. Robert Keppel. They are those who best understanding the mind and motives of the serial killer. It is almost uncanny how these men are able to construct a portrait of the serial killer that is incredibly accurate despite never even meeting the offender face to face. In other words, a profiler knows the perpetrator without really knowing the person (in the traditional sense).
What all criminal profilers agree on is that before you can begin to build a profile of a serial killer you must be able to recreate his crimes. Examining the crime scene is the best way to understand what type of criminal the police are dealing with. For example, if the killer left behind clues such as the murder weapon and made little or no effort to conceal the body (thus concealing the crime) this usually means that the murderer is what's known as a "disorganized offender." The killer is probably more of a borderline psychopath. By not covering up the crime they exhibit the fact that they probably have no feelings of having committed a crime. They fail to acknowledge they know right from wrong. The victim is nothing but trash that they dispose of like a bag of waste.
Then there is the more careful, calculated serial killer, the individual who leaves very little evidence behind. They bury the body and make the effort to cover up their crime. This circumstance conveys that the killer is well aware that they have done something that is very wrong. The bottom line though is that every serial killer knows right from wrong because they tend to be sociopaths, not psychopaths (important to always remember!).
Once the profiler has a chance to closely analyze the crime scene and any evidence collected from the scene (including the victim of course), the next step is try to draw a portrait of the type of person who committed the murder. Was there rape or sexual assault? Where was the body found? What type of person was the victim? How old was she and what kind of occupation did she have? Where was she abducted? These are all necessary in understanding the killer. It helps to know what kind of individual the victim was before she met her death. Was she a prostitute or derelict? Was she a school girl or college student? It's not an easy job from any way one tends to look at it.
Once the profile is complete it makes the job a whole lot easier for the police in trying to catch their man (or some rare cases their woman).
(For now, this page is finished. I apologize for the removal of the poll due to an error in my account. Perhaps I'll set up another one in the near future.)
