Serial killers are people who, on multiple occasions spread over time, murder victims who are generally unknown to them beforehand.
Their crimes are committed as a result of a compulsion that, in many but not all cases, has roots in the killer's (often dysfunctional) youth, as opposed to those who are motivated by financial gain (e.g., contract killers) or ideological/political motivations (e.g., terrorism, democide). Many times this compulsion is linked to the individual's sexual drive.
Some research suggests that damage to certain regions of the brain (hypothalamus, the temporal lobe, and/or the limbic brain) or genetic traits passed down from abusive mothers can also play a part in the behavior of serial killers.
Defining serial murder
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 credit for the term is still disputed). Serial killer entered the popular vernacular in large part due to the well-publicized crimes of Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam") in the middle years of that decade.
The term allows criminologists to distinguish those who kill several people over a long period of time from those who kill several people during a single event (mass murderers). A third type of multiple killer is a spree killer.
The following are brief definitions of these three types:
All of the above types of crimes are usually carried out by solitary individuals. There have been examples in all three categories in which two or more perpetrators have acted together. Author Michael Newton states that this happens in about a third of the cases. Lee Boyd Malvo and John Muhammad are prime examples. Both are known for the Beltway sniper attacks.
Serial killers are specifically motivated by a variety of psychological urges, primarily power and sexual compulsion. They often have feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness, sometimes owing to humiliation and abuse in childhood 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 social revenge, by giving them a feeling of power, both at the time of the actual killing and also afterwards for power-control killers. 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 economic. Of course, people do things for multiple motivations.
In some cases, a serial killer will plead not guilty by reason of insanity in a court of law. This defense is almost uniformly unsuccessful. In most US jurisidictions (i.e., the states), 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's generally known in the legal profession, hinges upon whether the defendant knows the difference between morality (right and wrong) at the time of the offense. With 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.
The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a serial killing as: "involving the killing of several victims in three or more separate events." This definition is especially close to that of a spree killer, and perhaps the primary difference between the two is that a serial killer has a cooling-off period. They will commit a murder and temporarily feel sated until they feel their homicidal urges resurface. The time period between murders can vary between a few days to several years and will often decrease the longer the offender goes uncaught. For example, Jeffrey Dahmer murdered his second victim nine years after his first, but his last eight victims were murdered in a span of just seven months. Spree killers, on the other hand, do not have a cooling-off period and are in a state of constant hunting until they are caught or killed, even though their murder spree may sometimes extend to a period of several months.
Serial killers frequently have extreme sadistic urges. Ones who lack the ability to empathize with the suffering of others are frequently called psychopathic or sociopathic, terms which have been renamed among professional psychologists as antisocial personality disorder. Some serial killers engage in lust and torture murder, loosely defined terms involving, respectively, mutilation for sexual pleasure and killing victims slowly over a prolonged period of time.
Psychology and development
Most serial killers have dysfunctional backgrounds. Frequently they are physically, sexually or psychologically abused as children. There can be a close correlation between their childhood abuse and their crimes. It is often impossible to know exactly what happened in any individual's childhood, so some killers may deny having been abused, while others may falsely claim they were abused in an attempt to gain sympathy or tell psychologists what they want to hear.
The element of fantasy in serial killer's development cannot be overemphasized. 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 of sadism, packed with rape, torture and murder.
Some serial killers display one or more of what are known as the "MacDonald Triad" of warning signs in childhood. These are:
Many experts have claimed that once serial killers start they cannot (or only rarely) stop. Recently this view has been called into question as new serial killers are caught through methods that were previously unavailable, such as DNA testing. Some argue that those who are unable to control their homicidal impulses are more easily caught and thus overrepresented in the statistics.
There have been conflicting reports as to the extent of serial murder. The FBI claimed in the 1980s that at any particular time there were roughly 35 active serial killers in the United States, meaning that the serial killers in question have committed their first murders but have not yet been apprehended or stopped by other means (e.g., suicide or a natural death).
This figure has often been exaggerated. In his 1990 book Serial Killers: The Growing Menace, Joel Norris claimed that there were five hundred serial killers active at any one time in the United States, claiming five thousand victims a year, which would be approximately a quarter of known homicides in the country. Some have argued that those who study or write about serial killers, be they employed in the judicial profession orjournalists, have a vested interest in exaggerating the threat of such offenders.
In terms of reported cases, there appear to be far more serial killers active in developed Western nations than elsewhere. Template:Citation neededThere are several reasons that may contribute to this:
Serial murder before 1900
Although the phenomenon of serial murder is generally regarded as a modern one, it can be traced back in history, albeit with a limited degree of accuracy.
In the 15th century, one of the wealthiest men in France, Gilles de Rais, is said to have abducted, raped and murdered at least a hundred young boys. The |Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory was arrested in 1610 and subsequently charged with torturing and butchering as many as 600 young girls. Although both De Rais and Báthory were reportedly sadistic and addicted to murder, they differ from typical modern-day serial killers in that they were both rich and powerful. Based upon the lack of established police forces and active news media during those centuries, it may very well be that there were plenty of other serial killers at that time who were either not identified or not publicized as well.
Some historical criminologists have suggested that there may have been serial murders throughout history, but specific cases were not adequately recorded. Some sources suggest that legends such as werewolves and vampires were inspired by medieval serial killers.Template:Citation needed
In his famous 1886 book Psychopathica Sexualis, Richard von Krafft-Ebing notes a case of serial murder in the 1870s, that of an Italian man named Eusebius Pieydagnelle who had a sexual obsession with blood and confessed to murdering six people. The unidentified Jack the Ripper killer slaughtered prostitutes in London in 1888. Those crimes gained enormous press attention because London was the center of the world's greatest superpower at the time, so having such dramatic murders of financially destitute women in the midst of such wealth focused the news media's attention on the plight of the urban poor and gained coverage worldwide. Joseph Vacher was executed in France in 1898 after confessing to killing and mutilating 11 women and children, while American serial killer H. H. Holmes was hanged in Philadelphia in 1896 after confessing to 27 murders.
Types of serial killer
Organized and disorganized types
The FBI has roughly categorized serial killers into two different types: organized and disorganized.
A significant number of serial killers 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 as their compulsion grows out of control and utterly dominates their lives, they will become careless and impulsive.
The organized and disorganized model relates to the killer's methods. With regards to motives, they can be placed into five different categories:
Contrary to popular opinion, serial killers are rarely insane or motivated by hallucinations and/or voices in their heads. Many claim to be, usually as a way of trying to get acquitted by reason of insanity. There are, however, a few genuine cases of serial killers who were compelled by such delusions.
Herbert Mullin slaughtered 13 people after voices told him that murder was necessary to prevent California from suffering an earthquake. (Mullin went to great pains to point out that California did indeed avoid an earthquake during his murder spree.)
Ed Gein claimed that by eating the corpses of women who looked like his deceased mother, he could preserve his mother's soul inside his body. He killed two women who bore passing resemblances to his mother, eating one and being apprehended while in the process of preparing the second woman's body for consumption. He also used the flesh of exhumed corpses to fashion a "woman suit" for himself so that he could "become" his mother, and carried on conversations with himself in a falsetto voice. After his arrest he was placed in a mental facility for the remainder of his life.
These serial killers believe that their acts are justified on the basis that they are getting rid of a certain type of people (often prostitutes or members of a certain ethnic group). They believe that they are doing society a big favor. Robert Pickton of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, is accused of being this type of killer. He is currently charged with the murders of 27 prostitutes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and is suspected in the deaths of up to 30 more.
This type kills for the sheer pleasure of it, although what aspect they enjoy varies. Some may enjoy the actual "chase" of hunting down a victim more than anything, while others may be primarily motivated by the act of torturing and abusing the victim while they are alive. Yet others may kill the victim quickly, almost as if it were a chore, and then indulge in necrophilia or cannibalism with the body. Usually there is a strong sexual aspect to the crimes, even if it may not be immediately obvious, but some killers obtain a surge of excitement that is not necessarily sexual, such as David Berkowitz, who got a thrill out of shooting young couples in cars at random and then running away without ever physically touching the victims.
Most criminals who commit multiple murders for material ends (such as mob hit men) are not classed as serial killers, because they are motivated by greed or economic gain rather than psychopathological compulsion. There is a fine line separating such killers, however. For example, Marcel Petiot, who operated in Nazi-occupied France, would classify as a serial killer. He posed as a member of the [rench Resistance and lured wealthy Jewish people to his home, claiming he could smuggle them out of the country. Instead he murdered them and stole their belongings, killing 63 people before he was finally caught. Although Petiot's primary motivation was materialistic, few would deny that a man willing to slaughter so many people simply to acquire a few dozen suitcases of clothes and jewelry was a compulsive killer and psychopath.
This is the most common serial killer. Their main objective for killing is to gain and exert power over their victim. Such killers are sometimes abused as children, which means they feel incredibly powerless and inadequate, and often they indulge in rituals that are linked, often very specifically, to forms of abuse they suffered themselves. One killer, for example, forced young girls to perform oral sex on him, after which he would spank the girl before finally strangling her. After capture, the killer claimed that when he was a child his older sister would force him to perform oral sex on her, then she would spank him in order to terrify him into not telling their parents.Template:Citation needed The ritual he performed with his victims would negate the humiliation he felt from his abuse as a child, although such relief would only be temporary, and like other such killers, he would soon feel compelled to repeat his actions until eventual capture. (The vast majority of child abuse victims do not become serial killers, of course, meaning that such abuse is not regarded as the sole trigger of such crimes in these cases.) Many power/control-motivated killers sexually abuse their victims, but they differ from hedonistic killers in that rape is not motivated by lust but as simply another form of dominating the victim.
Some serial killers may seem to have characteristics of more than one type. For example, British killer Peter Sutcliffe appeared to be both a visionary and a mission-oriented killer in that he claimed voices told him to clean up the streets of prostitutes.
Alternatively, another school of thought classifies motive as being either: need, greed or power. That said, all crime can be divided into one of these three categories.
Why are serial killers not caught more quickly?
It is possible that many would-be serial killers are apprehended before they kill the three or more victims required to qualify them as such in the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Similarly, it is certain that some are detained under mental health regulations and do not directly answer for their crimes. Others go on to kill many more people over years without being apprehended.
Serial killers, despite the media attention, commit only a tiny fraction of all murders in any time period. Murder is usually either a crime of personal relationships and short intense emotion, or an unintended consequence of other crimes. Because of this, most murders are comparatively simple to solve; in most familial deaths, the murderer makes little effective effort to conceal the crime and confesses easily; in other cases, the murderer is usually a local or is known to the police. These assumptions, with which any law enforcement officer naturally approaches a single murder, are barriers to catching a serial killer.
Another barrier to serial killers' early capture is their diverse backgrounds, choices of victim, and methods of killing. They almost never have any links to their victims—they pick by whim or impulse, seeking types or opportunity rather than any easily detectable link. As noted above, organized offenders can take steps to minimize the evidence they leave behind, and commit crimes away from their locale. It can take a number of murders before a serial killer is even suspected.
Even if a serial killer is known to be operating, it is difficult to catch the culprit. Potential victims can be identified only by broad type, and generic area warnings produce little more than fear and misdirected violence.
In addition, police departments are often reluctant to admit they have a serial killer on their hands due to the immediate public pressure on them to catch them that immediately ensues. Law enforcement departments are known to try and "wait it out" hoping the killer will move to another jurisdiction, rather than publicly admit they have a killer on their hands.
The commonality of habitual traits of serial killers allows the construction of a psychological profile. This allows targeted interviewing of suspects, although there are often a large number of entirely innocent individuals who have some match to the profile. Also, some serial killers are skilled at concealing their true selves behind a charming facade.
Unfortunately, profiles are built upon historical precedents of known serial killers that sometimes do not accurately model actual culprits. Such problems plagued the hunt for the D.C. sniper John Muhammad and [ [John Lee Malvo]], whose initial profile indicated a Caucasian male. A different problem plagued the hunt for Aileen Wuornos in Florida's "Highway Killer" case; police initially believed the killer to be male.
Serial killer investigations sometimes reveal an unsatisfactory side to law enforcement; inertia, incompetence, bureaucracy, mismanagement, agency "turf wars", missed opportunities, racial or gender bias, and other failures can slow down the investigation and, indirectly, allow further murders.
While there is a public misconception that serial killers generally want to be discovered, in most instances this is not the case, as serial killers will often go to great lengths to prevent capture or to push police and investigators towards the wrong subjects.
Serial killers in popular culture
Because of the horrific nature of their crimes, their highly varied personalities and profiles, and their ability to evade detection and kill many victims before finally being captured and imprisoned, serial killers have quickly become something of a cult favorite, and have been featured in many novels, movies, songs, comic books, true crime works, video games and other media.
The public's fascination with serial killers has led to many successful crime novels and films about fictional serial killers, including Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho; and especially Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs and Academy Award-winning movie adaptation, whose main antagonist, the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, is a cultural icon. The character John Doe, from the movie Se7en, is another well-known fictional serial killer.