What Makes A Serial Killer: Psychology And Criminology Theories

Serial Killers have captured the interest of researchers since before the times of Jack the Killer in 1888. Historical criminologists have been studying serial killers throughout history. Sourcing medieval legends of werewolves and vampires and African stories of killings by lion and leopard men. Some of the oldest documented serial killers include Liu Pengli around 144 BC in China, who was the nephew of the Han Emperor Jing. Liu was discovered to have killed at least a hundred people after Twenty Nine years. Another serial killer from centuries ago is Gilles de Rais located in Europe in the 15th century. Gilles de Rais sexually assaulted and killed an estimated one hundred and forty to eight hundred peasant children. Up through the early 1800’s when H. H. Holmes killed at least nine people as one of the first documented serial killers in the United States, serial killers have been an active part of society.

Through the same time that serial killers have been active, scientists have been studying the behaviors, lives, and actions of serial killers to try and explain why serial killers kill. Not only are these criminologists and psychologists interested in the minds of serial killers, there is an obsession associated with serial killers that the general public holds. This obsession of serial killers from the public stems from the fact that people want to know what would lead someone to kill multiple people over time, or how they could enjoy doing so. Most like to think that serial killers are so different from the everyday person and many would argue that they have nothing in common with a serial killer, but what is the likelihood that that is true? Have you ever wondered why you don’t kill?

There are many definitions of a serial killer, but the most widely accepted one would be the definition Robert Ressler has been credited to coining, which Peter Vronsky explains in his book. Robert Ressler stated that serial killers are “people that kill two or more people over a period of more than 30 days with cooling off periods between each kill.” While this is a broad definition that encompases the actions of serial killers, defining a serial killer is one of the most difficult challenges to the field of expertise. To define a serial killer and explain how they become serial killers are as vast and distinct as the serial killers themselves.

While serial killers can be confused with other killers who murder many people, like mass murderers and spree killers, there are distinct differences. Mass murder is defined by the killing of a large number of people in a single incident by an offender who typically does not seek concealment or escape (Fox and Levin, 1998), which is different from a serial killer as a serial killer kills fewer people over a longer amount of time. Spree killers will frenzy and kill people over a period of days or weeks, and while similar to that of a serial killer, spree killers do not have the same “cooling off” period that serial killers have. So while serial killers, mass murderers, and spree killers seem similar, they are different in terms of time span and the number of kills.

Gender Difference In Serial Killers

There are also differences to be named when considering gender and serial killers. While there isn’t much information in regards to non-binary people being serial killer, there is information when it comes to the binary genders, male and female. Historically, women were thought to not be capable of committing serial kills, however, approximately 17% of all serial kills are carried out by women. Women usually kill for some sort of financial gain, through poisoning or smothering (Farrell, Keppel, et al.). Women also tend to target people who are already helpless or are less likely to have the ability to fight back against them like children or elderly people (Harrison, Murphy, et al.) Women serial killers are usually older, educated, and white people who have been married and have been in a caregiving role like a mother or healthcare worker. Men tend to commit their murders differently than this.

Male serial killers are more likely to be extremely violent and men will torture their victims, which would be unusual to find in a kill that was done by a woman. One drastic difference between men and women serial killers is the fact that while a woman will choose someone already helpless, men will choose someone they can make helpless. With the complicated differences between genders, there are also diverse types of serial killers.

Types of Serial Killers

One reason experts are challenged at the topic of what makes a serial killer or how to truly define what a serial killer is the different motivations each serial killer holds. There are several different types of serial killers depending on what they get from killing people or how they go about killing people. Serial killers who wander, killing random people with little to no plan as to who they are going to kill, are often called disorganized offenders. These disorganized offenders attack based off of opportunity and will rather than a plan. While other serial killers stay in a single location or area and will allure their victims to their deaths, these serial killers are often organized offenders. Organized offenders plan the attacks sometimes months or years in advance and will methodically act out the kill. These differences in the choice of location depend on the comfort zone of the serial killer.

The type of serial killer can vary drastically from person to person, and some people exhibit overlap between the types. Visionary killers often suffer from psychosis or a psychotic break. These visionary killers often kill because they feel as though they are another person or are compelled by internal manifestations of entities like deities who tell them they must kill. Mission oriented killers want to improve the world around them according to their biased and self-serving standards, these killers target specific groups of people. Mission killers justify murdering people as necessary to rid the world of their definition of undesirable people. These groups can be race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or other groups like prostitutes or homeless people. These killers meticulously plan their crimes with precision and tend to kill their victims quickly and with high efficiency. Mission oriented killers are generally not psychotic, showing that not every serial killer is.

Serial killers who kill for thrill and gain satisfaction from killing are a part of hedonistic killers, which has been subtyped by three types. The first sub type of hedonistic serial killers is the comfort killer (Bonn, 2015) which is also called an expedience killer. A comfort serial killer kills for material possessions like money or business. The victims of comfort killers are usually family members or friends who they can get insurance or inheritance from. Women fall into this category often, but not always. The second subtype of hedonistic killers is the Lust killer. Lust serial killers have the main motivation of sex, wether the victims are dead or alive, these killers need to have absolute control and dominance over their victims. This subtype can overlap with thrill killers as lust killers may also want to terrorize their victims. The third type of hedonistic serial killers are the thrill killers. Thrill killers want to torture or terrorize their vivtims and seek the excitement they get when hunting and killing those victims. There is less of a sexual aspect associated with this type as they are more focused on the kill itself. These types tend to hold one of the same motivations of power and control.

Another type of serial killer is the psychopathic killer, this type is characterized by an antisocial personality disorder that inhibits the ability to experience normal human emotions with impaired capacities for remorse, empathy, with a tendency to develop strong feelings of hatred and contempt. Psychopathic killers are motivated by their own needs and passions rather than others feelings or well being, and due to their lack of emotional capacity needed to avoid taking extreme risks or consider the outcome they are more likely to act on high risk behaviors that others would not.

The diverse nature of the types of serial killers also leads to many theories that try to explain why people become serial killers in the first place. Criminologists have tried to find the root of a serial killer, but due to the diverse nature of the human psyche there are many explanations. One of the common findings is abnormal psychological processes and how that affects people to a point where they may become serial killers in combination with other factors.

Psychological Trait Theories

Psychological trait theories is a branch of trait theories which focuses on the psychological effect of including intelligence, learning, personality on criminal behavior. Psychological trait theories becan in the late 1800s with Charles Goring who studied the minds of three thousand english criminals. While he uncovered no significant difference in the physical characteristics of criminals and non criminals, which went against the thought that certain physicalities like a different sized and shaped head made a person more likely to be a criminal, he did find a significant association between crime and traits of the mind. Within psychological trait theories are sub theories which describe the psychodynamic, behavioral and cognitive aspects of crimes.

The psychodynamic theory explains that the human personality is controlled by unconscious mental processes developed in early childhood. This theory originated by Sigmund Freud who believed that we all carry with us experiences of the most significant emotion attachments from our childhood which guides interpersonal relationships in the future. Psychologists linked criminality to abnormal mental states produced by early childhood trauma. These traumatic childhood experiences may leave someone with a wide variety of mental disorders and suppression of those memories. That suppression manifests feelings of oppression and the inability to develop proper coping mechanisms to process emotions. Crimanity helps people who have felt out of control in their lives feel independent and in control of their lives.

An example of this theory is David Berkowitz who is also known as “Son of Sam. David Berkowtiz went on a killing spree from 1976 to 1977 in New York and is typed as a visionary killer. Berkowitz claimed that his neighbor’s dog named Harvey was a manifestation of a demon who ordered him to kill. Berkowitz had a troubled childhood in which he became fascinated by petty larceny and arson. He was labelled a difficult, spoiled bully by people around him and his adoptive parents. His adoptive mother died of cancer when Berkowitz was fourteen and his primary life crisis happened when he discovered his adoption and birth details that shattered his sense of identity. Soon after he began his crimes that led to the killings of six people and the wounding of seven. Berkowitz seemed to suffer from a severe form of psychosis which caused a drastic impairment of his ability to think clearly, communicate effectively, understand reality and contributed to his violence.

The behavioral theory states that human actions are developed through learning experiences rather than extinguished by negative reactions or punishments. Social learning theory is the branch of behavioral theory that is most used in criminology. Albert Bandura, well known for his experiment with children’s actions against a bobo doll as a learned behavior, was one of the main people who advocated for this theory. Bandura argued that people are not born violent, rather they learn to be aggressive through experiences in their lives. Essentially, violents acts do not necessarily represent abnormal psychology, rather that these actions are learned and incorporated into the behavior of a person.

The cognitive theory focuses on mental processes and how people perceive the world around them. This theory was primarily brought about from Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchener, and William James. This theory encompases personality, where antisocial personality disorder and sadistic personality disorder comes into the picture. Antisocial personality disorder is the official diagnostic definition where most people use psychopath and sociopath to describe people who exhibit the failure to conform to social norms in regards to lawful behaviors, deceitfulness with repeated lying, fake names, or conning, impulsivity, recklessness, consistent responsibility, and lack of remorse. Having this condition and being a serial killer leads to the type of psychopathic serial killer.

Biosocial Theories

Biosocial theories view criminal behavior as a result of physical, environmental, and social conditions. An important look into the brains of psychopaths in comparison to non psychopathic brains shows in interesting association with brain activity, psychopaths, and social conditions that can lead to explaining why and how criminals kill. The study done by Jim Fallon, a neuroscientist, had been studying the scans of psychopathic criminals for 20 years. For a comparison, Fallon scanned his brain to see the difference between his and the scans he had studied. The result was discovering he had the same low orbital cortex activity as was shown on the psychopathic criminals scans. This research has led to deeper investigation of nature versus nurture, and it is thought that while brain activity may be one reason for violent behavior another could be socially learned behaviors.

Arousal theory describes people’s brain function in response to environmental stimulus. Arousal has been a long suspected reason for crime, as obtaining thrills and adrenaline may be the reason someone commits a crime. This theory has been supported by evidence that some have lower levels of arousal through studies of resting heart rate. A study done by Olivia Choy, Adrian Raine, and others found that a lower resting heart rate may produce a need for aggressive behavior patterns that are associated with stimulation.

An Example of a mix between biosocial and psychological trait theories is Theodore Robert Bundy also known as Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy was a serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered around thirty young women in 1974 to 1978 in seven states. According to relatives, during the first three years of his life, Bundy and his mother had lived with his grandparents where his grandfather was violent and abused Bundy’s family including his grandmother, mother, aunt, and more than likely himself. Childhood trauma has been shown to increase the likelihood of the development of mental illness in people.

Dorothy Lewis, a psychiatrist who worked with Bundy after he was incarcerated for his actions, noticed in letters that Bundy sent to his wife during his time in prison in Florida that he used different signatures, names, and ways of writing. She suspected that something past the psychopathy that he had shown during his life was in play in the murders he committed. In interviews, people who were associated with him had noticed that he dissociated and that he spoke with a being in his head called the entity. The childhood trauma he endured during a time in his life where the personality is developing possibly caused him to develop dissociative identity disorder and psychopathic tendencies.

During his terror reign, Bundy would approach his victims in public, feigning injury or disability or impersonating an authority then overpowering them and assaulting them. He would revisit victims and perform sexaul acts with the decomposing corpses until decomposition and destruction from nature made contact impossible. Control is an important factor in the necrophilia that Bundy engaged with, if someone is dead they couldn’t deny him which is the ultimate domination of someone in a serial killer’s eyes.

Ted Bundy lacked the ability to feel empathy, pity, or remorse. He killed for the control and domination of his victims, and enjoyed torturing his victims before killing them. Bundy is classified as a power and control serial killer as well as a psychopathic serial killer. Throughout his life, Ted Bundy exemplified certain criminological theories in how people become serial killers.

Serial killers will be a long studied subject, with theories as diverse as the serial killers themselves in an attempt to explain their behavior. Historically serial killers have been prevalent in society and they will continue to be in the future. While the general public and criminologists alike may want one answer to the question of what makes a serial killer, there will probably never be one due to the extreme nature of the differences of the human mind and what can cause people to become violent killers.

Bibliography

1. Bonn, S. “How Mass Murder and Serial Murder Differ.” Psychology Today, 2015, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wisked-deeds/201502/how-mass-murder-and-serial-murder-differ.
2. Fox, James Alan, and Jack Levin. “Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial and Mass Murder.” Crime and Justice, vol. 23, The University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 407–455.
3. Harrison, Marissa, et al. “Female Serial Killers in the United States: Means, Motives, and Makings.” Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology, 26 (3), Taylor and Francis (Routledge), 2015, pp. 383–406.
4. Siegel, Larry J. Criminology Theories, Patterns, and Typologies. 13th ed., Cengage Learning, 2016.
5. Vronsky, Peter. Serial Killers the Method and Madness of Monsters. Berkley Books, 2004.