Generalized Characteristics of Serial Murderers
Mass murderers, spree killers and serial murderers
Murderers have become a favorite subject of lurid true-crime books such as The Only Living Witness (Ted Bundy), The Co-Ed Killer (Edmund Kemper), and Killer Clown (John Gacy), as well as of more scholarly comparative studies of multiple homicides (Levin & Fox, 1985; Leyton, 1986; Ressler, Burgess, & Douglas, 1988). On the basis of such studies, multiple killers have been classified into one of three categories, based on the pattern of their murders.
The mass murderer kills four or more victims in one location during on e period of time that lasts anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. Most mass murderers are mentally disturbed people (although not necessarily psychotic) whose problems build to the point that they erupt agains whomever happens to be in the vicinity. Charles Whitman, who shot more than 30 others from a tower on the University of Texas campus, and James Huberty, who murdered 21 people, most of whom were children, at a San Diego McDonald's restaurant, are examples of mass murderers. Mass murderers are sometimes divided into those who kill only members of their family and those who kill victims to whom they are not related.
Spree killers murder victims at two or more locations with no cooling-off interval between the murders. The killing constitutes a single event, altough it can last either a short or a long time.
Finally, serial murderers kill three or more victims, each on separate occasions. Unlike mss and spree types, serial killers usually select a certain type of victim who fulfills a role in the killer's fantasies. There are cooling-off periods between serial murders, which are usually better planned than mass or spree killings. Some serial killers (e.g., Ted Bundy) travel continually and murder in several locations; others (e.g., Wayne Williams, the man convicted of killing children in Atlanta, FL) are geographically stable and kill within the same area. The "Unabomber&" (Theodore Kaczynski), who apparently remained in one place but chose victims from different parts of the country for his carefully constructed mail bombs, reflected an unusual combination of serial killer characteristics.
Because they plan their murders, often travel long distances between their crimes, kill for idiosyncratic reasons, and frequently wait months between killings, serial murderers are difficult to apprehend. However, social scientists have gained some knowledge about these criminals, who may number as many as 100 in the United States alone. In general they are white males, aged 25 - 34, of at least average intelligence, and often with charming personalities. Many were illegitimate and experienced abuse as children. They tend to select vulneralbe victims of some specific type who gratify their need to control people. They prefer to kill with hands-on methods such as strangulation and stabbing. They are often preoccupied with sadistic fantasies involving domination and control of their victims; these fantasies often are sexualized, as was the case with Jeffrey Dahmer. Many serial killers are impressed with police work and like to associate with the police. Although the incidence of murder has been disproportionately higher in the South, serial killers are not likely to hail from Southern states. Over the course of their criminal careers, their murders may become less organized and more poorly planned. However, the contrary has also been observed.
Ronald Holmes, a criminologist at the University of Louisville (USA) who specializes in the study of serial murder, has identified four subtypes of serial killers (Homes & DeBurger, 1988, see also Wrightsman/Nietzel/Fortune, Psychology and the Law, 4th Ed., Brooks/Cole, 1997). The visionary type feels compelled to murder because he hears voices or sees visions ordering him to kill certain kinds of people. This type is often psychotic. The mission-oriented type seeks to kill a specific group of people who he believes are unworthy to live and without whom the world would be a better place. He is not psychotic, in fact, his everyday acquaintances frequently will describe him as a fine citizen. The hedonistic type kills for the thrill of it. Such killers simply enjoy the act of killing. Sexual arousal is common with this type of murder. Finally the power-oriented type kills because he enjoys exerting ultimate control over his victims. These murderers are not psychotic, but they are obsessed with capturing and controlling their victims and forcing them to obey their every command.
Childhoods of Violence?
First of all, there is no such thing as the person who at age 35 suddenly changes from being perfectly normal and erupts into totally disruptive, murderous behavior. The behaviors that are precursors to murder have been present and developing in that person's life for a very long time, since childhood.
Not all murderers come from broken, impoverished homes. Many of the criminals started life in a family that this wasn't really true. Many of them started life in a family where family income was stable and sufficient. More than half lived initially in a family that appeared to be intact, where the mother and father lived together with their son. Almost all serial killers are white and hetween 20 and 35 years of age.
They were mostly intelligent children. Seven of the 36 subjects had IQ scores below 90, most were in the normal range, and 11 had scores in the superior range, above 120.
More than half of those surveyed in the Criminal Personality Research Project (partially funded by the Justice Department, USA) had mental illness in theier immediate family. Half had parents who had been involved in criminal activities. Nearly 70 percent had a familial history of alcohol or drug abuse. Every single one of the murderers were subjected to serious emotional abuse during their childhoods. All of them developed into what psychiatrists label as sexually dysfunctional adults, unable to sustain a mature, consensual relationship with another adult.
From birth to age 6/7, studies have shown, the most important adult figure in a child's life under traditional circumstances is the mother, and it is this period that the child learns what love is. Relationships between the researched subjects and their mothers were uniformly cool, distant, unloving, neglectfu, with very little touching, emotional warmth - the children were deprived of love. Sometimes the mother, even when nurturing, cannot balance out or offset the destructive behavior of the father. More than 70 percent said they had witnessed or been part of sexually stressful events when young. This percentage is many times greater than in the general population. The abuse that the children endured was both physical and mental. These children grew up in an environment in which their own actions were ignored, where there were no limits set on their behavior. Tha task of the first half-dozen years of life is socialization. Those who grow up to murder never truly comprehended the world in other than egocentric terms. It is true that most children who come from dysfunctional early childhoods don't go on to murder or to commit other violent antisocial acts - the reason might be that the majority are rescued by strong hands in the next phase of childhood, that of preadolescence.
From ages of 8 to 12, all the negative tendencies present in their early childhoods were exacerbated and reinforced. In this period, a male child really needs a father, and it was in just this time period that the fathers of half the subjects disappeared in one way or another, which can also be embarrassing for the child in front of his peers. Potential murderes became solidified in their loneliness first during the age period of 8 to 12; such isolation is considered the single most important aspect of their psychological makeup. His preadolescent sexual activity, rather than being connected to other human beings, starts as autoerotic (more than 3/4; more than half reported rape fantasies between the ages 12 to 14;, more than 80 percent admitted to using pornography, and to tendencies toward fetishism and voyeurism.
As the psychologically harmed boys get closer to adolescence, they find that they are unable to develop the social skills that are precursors to sexual skills and that are the coin of positive emotional relationships. Loneliness and isolation don't always mean that the potential killers are introverted and shy, some are but others are gregarious with other men, and good talkers. The outward orientation of the latter masks their inner isolation. By the time a normal youngster is participating in an active social life, the loner is turning in on himself and developing fantasies that are deviant. The fantasies are substitutes for more positive human encounters, and as the adolescent becomes more dependent on them, he loses touch with acceptable social values. All the murderers knew that they had not had normal relationships, and they resented not having them; it was this resentment that fueled their aggressive, murderous behavior.
Adolescence was dominated by increasing isolation and "acting out" behavior, with lots of daydreaming, compulsive masturbation, lying, bed-wetting, and nightmares as concomitants of the isolation.l The youngsters were now in school, on the streets, away from home, with more opportunities for antisocial behavior. Cruelty to animals and to other children, running away, truancy, assaults on teachers, setting fires, destroying the property of others and their own property - these acts began in adolescence, though the mind-set was present earlier but had been below the surface because the child had been controlled to a certain extent in his home environment. Many were intelligent, but underachievers in school; most were incapable of holding jobs, fired often or uable to live up to their intellectual abilities.
Many people survive such enormous difficulties in childhood and don't grow up to be murderers. However, when the problems of childhood are reinforced by added neglect in the school, the social services system, and the neighorhood, they steadily worsen. As Robert K. Ressler in Whoever Fights Monsters, p. 93, puts it: "In a situation where you find a distant mother, an absent or abusive father and siblings, a nonintervening school system, an ineffective social services system, and an inability of the person to relate sexually in a normal way to others, you have almost a formula for producing a deviant [not necessarily murderous] personality."
Fantasies
All the murderes that were interviewed in the above-mentioned study had compelling fantasies where they could, in effect, control their world. They overcompensated for the aggression in their early lives by repeating the abuse in fantasy, but this time, with themselves as the aggressors. Fantasy is defined as a happenstance unattainable in normal life. "Normal" people learn to accept social control and moderation as limits on their behavior. The deviant person, having had very few true restraints on his behavior since childhood, believes he can act out his fantasy and that nobody will be able to stop him. The offender's commitment to the fantasies deepens as he becomes a loner in adolescence, subject to the onset of puberty and sexual arousal. Aggressive, and with a feeling of having been cheated by society, he may channel his hostility into fantasies, which are characterized by strong visual components, and by themes of dominance, revenge, molestation, manipulation, and control. The other person is depersonalized, made into an "object". Deviants feel the sexual urge without having learned that it hast anything to do with affection. The cognitive mapping process is almost complete by now, It is the development of thinking patterns that affect how the person relates to himself and to his environment, it determines how the individual gives meaning to the events that happen in his world. He views the world as a hostile place. He becomes almost incapable of interacting properly with the outside world, because his thinking patterns are all turned inward, designed only to stimulate himself in an attempt to reduce tensions, which only reinforces his isolation: a loop has developed. The effects of his antisocial acts (i.e. cruelty to animals and other children, arson) become incorporated into his fantasies, which are pushed to a more intensively violent level. More retreat from society follows, and, eventually, so do more experiments with actualizing the fantasies
Acting out
Many of the precrime stressors that seem to precipitate murderous actions are the same as those that happen to lots of people every day - the loss of a job,, the breakup of a relationship, money problems. Normal people cope with the help of a normal pattern of development. The potential murderer, however, turns inward and focuses on his own problems to the exclusion of all else, and on fantasies as the solution to the problem, because his mental coping mechanisms are faulty. He may get fired, and therefore encounters other problems, matters that earlier he might have handled in spite of pressures but that now seem overwhelming. He is impelled to cross the line by everything that has previously occurred in his life. Only later, after many violent acts, will he come to believe that he is invincible and will never be caught. Things have been buidling up to a point where the potential murderer is ready to commit his violent act, and then a possible victim (usually especially vulnerable) appears and the potential murderer becomes an acutal one. Then, the threshold has been crossed, the point of no return is passed. He is probably frightened and thrilled, has experienced a state of heightened arousal and liked it. After a few days, still on the loose, he might feel bad and try to control his impulses. More usually, the man starts to feel more egocentric than ever and becomes convinced that he can do it again without getting arrested. He incorporates details of the first murder into his fantasies and begins to construct future crimes. Now, in subsequent crimes, the life stresses that preceded the first murder may not need to be present. The next victim will probably be more carefully sought out, the murder more expertly done, the place further away and displaying more violence to the victim than was evident in the first crime. Then, the murderer will become a serial killer.
For more information, see Whoever Fights Monsters by Robert K. Ressler and Tom Shachtman.
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