Women As Serial Killers: Bonnie And Clyde Syndrome

Why are women psychologically drawn to serial killers?

Attraction is an element that every single human seeks. Whether it is being attracted to others or having others be attracted to you, without attraction there would be no human relationships. Romantic, friendly and even just work relationships all involve a level of attraction. There are 6 different types of attraction and most of them happen on a daily basis without us even noticing. Attraction like Emotional Attraction may cause people do and want unacceptable and bizarre things. The love and life Bonnie and Clyde had might be a dream of many people around the world and some had made it come true. Serial killers are considered to be one of the most criminally active people. So the question asked is why are women psychologically drawn to serial killers?

Every human relationship is somehow connected to attraction. We start speaking to people due to attraction. We choose our friends, lovers and even during simple tasks like working in a group on a math project we still choose our partners due to attraction. The attraction doesn’t have to be on a love level but just an intellectual level. The usual thought that comes to our head when the word attraction is mentioned is the typical story of a girl and a boy. The girl is attracted to the boy and the boy is attracted to the girl. The question that is asked here is why that boy or girl, why not another? (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/valley-girl-brain/201504/the-four-types-attraction). The definition for attraction is “the action or power of evoking interest in or liking for someone or something” (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/attraction). Attraction dates all the way back to our ancestors and can simply be described by evolution.

Evolution has shaped our everyday lives in many different ways. The only idea it didn’t change in us is how attraction works. Thinking back to our prehistoric ancestors and how their lifestyle worked, where the women stayed at home and took care of the children and cleaned and cooked. And the male was expected to feed and protect the family by going hunting and being able to provide safe shelter. That explains why the biggest and strongest man would always be the most attractive one and then one that holds the most power. The other reason could be genetic. Since a male is the strongest, smartest and most attractive women are drawn to him not only for their own benefits and pleasure but also for their future generations. For some women, the way it works is that the stronger the father is of their child, the higher its chances of survival. Some women still think that way nowadays and we can see it through actions like, where the man has to be taller than the women or when women would usually go for the more fit individual rather than the more obist.

A very precise way to explain this concept can be a pyramid. The bottom of the pyramid has two parts health and status. “Without status or health, there is no attraction” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/valley-girl-brain/201504/the-four-types-attraction). Both of these helped prehistorians with reproduction, shelter and feeding and also allowed them to have the fight or flight response. The flight or fight response is a physiological response to a threatening situation to either face it or to run away.(http://www.dictionary.com/browse/attraction). Status means the position in society an individual has. During our ancestor times the higher the position you had the more wealthy, powerful and liked you were, which links back to attraction. Status can also be later on divided into two different types, internal status and external status (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/valley-girl-brain/201504/the-four-types-attraction). In internal status that things that are considered valuable or attractive are for example confidence of the individual or their thinking and belief system. External status is a bit different, it deals with how wealthy an individual is. It takes in account their material possessions, wealth and also job. Both of these statuses are important, just depends on the person which one they value more. For some people what is on the inside, someone’s personality might be more important and for others, wealth and material objects might be what attracts them to a certain someone. The health section is very basic. It concludes everything from movement to looks and intelligence. It is obvious that the more hygienic the person is the more attracted we are to them, nobody likes a person that doesn’t have regular bathing schedules. This is a very controversial layer of the pyramid because features like looks and hygiene can always change. Layers like emotion which is the second is somewhat more difficult to change. The next layer which deals with emotion is where love comes in, it doesn’t have to be love for a partner but it can be love for a friend or even a pet. There are four different types of emotional connections that a person can feel. The first is trust and comfort. How we trust them and how comfortable we feel around them. The second is how we are capable of making other feel around us, if they are comfortable. Being our self and what makes us is the third one and the last is the level of mystery we bring with us, so we aren’t just an open book on the first date. The tip of the pyramid is logic, this is how a human survives. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/valley-girl-brain/201504/the-four-types-attraction)

When we hear about criminals or serial killers, the only gender we hear about most is men. Whether it is murder, rape, war, robbery or any other form of violence it is very rare for us to hear that a woman was the one committing the crime. The question is why is that? Criminal records and other data between 1980 to 2008 in the United States show hat men committed 90% of the murders and crimes done between those years (http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/violence-against-women-1959171-Feb2015/). On the other hand men are also the most common victims of murders. The same data as previously shows that 77% of the murdered victims were men. In the same time period. Another statistic shows that women aged between 15 to 44 all around the world are more likely to die of male violence than other factors. Other factors may be cancer, traffic accidents, malaria or war, all combined.

Attraction can sometimes get out of control, especially when it comes to love, obsession and attachment, but that happens when we fall in love with the wrong person? Most people like to date and marry people that are somewhat similar to them. Either on a social or intellectual level. Others on the other hand like different people someone that can challenge them and bring something new into their lives. There’s the famous sentence that says or asks “why do girls always fall in love with the bad boys and not the good ones?” Well, this can very easily be explained by evolution as well. Referring back to how women admired and felt the most attracted to the strongest and most powerful men in their group, the same applies here. Boys or men that do things against the law or even minor misbehaves are considered to be stronger than the ones that follow the rules. This applies to men that do horrific crimes. The first thought that would come into a normal person’s head when the word serial killer is mentioned, is to get as far away as possible from that person. A serial killer is a “person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent motive” and that is usually followed by predictable behaviour patterns. The truth is that these men get the most admiration from women all around the world. When a serial killer is in prison, he or she, usually a he receives an enormous amount of fan mail and even women proposing to them.

One famous example of a serial killer is Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy was an idol to many, many women all around the world regardless of what he has done. He was an American rapist and serial killer, meaning he has killed several people. In the 20th century, he was the most widely known criminal across the world. Bundy was executed in Florida in 1989. He was executed in an electric chair. The reason he was executed is because he admitted to killing and raping 36 women across America in the 1970s. What experts believe is that the number may be reaching 100 but the exact number will never be known. (https://www.biography.com/people/ted-bundy-9231165) But not only that he was one of the biggest criminals, he was also one of the most admired people, and the most idolized in the US during that time. Ted Bundy was also married to a woman called Carole Ann Boone. They got married during Bundy’s trial, where he was because he killed 33 to 100 people. How this happened is that Bundy propose to Boone in the courtroom when she was being questioned on the stand. After a while, they had a daughter, but after some time Boom asked for a divorce then disappeared and changed her name (https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/psyhparaphilia).

In jail, he would get letters and marriage proposals from women that admired him. The only question that can be asked here is “why”? Why would someone, especially a woman, want to be around a serial killer and rapist. This of course pulls us back into the concept of attraction. As mentioned before it is evolutionary that women want to have the strongest male in their life, due to protection. Even Bundy didn’t have to be the strongest male or the most attractive, by killing so many people and getting away with it for so long he made people attracted to him. By killing so many people he showed strength and that he could take care of himself and potentially women that he would have. This concept goes to, when people say “why girls always go for the bad guy instead of the good one” and this is because the bad one is a stronger individual that can take care of himself. This idea can also be called the bonnie and Clyde syndrome.

We all know those Hollywood movies where a woman runs off with a young, strong and charming man, off to somewhere unknown to save the world. This whole plot or idea can be called the bonnie and Clyde syndrome. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were two young American criminals that travelled across the United States during the Great Depression with a gang. They would kill and robb people that they would meet along their way. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_and_Clyde) This to some people may sound as a very romantic couple doing some crazy adventurous stuff. But there is a serious illness called after these two, called the bonnie and Clyde syndrome. Hybristophilia and the bonnie and clyde syndrome are the two exact things. This concept was discovered and then defined by a sexologist professor John Money. It was defined “as a sexual paraphilia in which an individual derives sexual arousal and pleasure from having a sexual partner who is known to have committed an outrage or crime” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-excess/201310/passion-victim). These crimes can vary all the way from robbery to armed robbery, rape and even murder. Most commonly the individual that is wanting the sexual desire is someone who has been imprisoned in the past. If a person is really a hybristophile they may force their partner to commit crime so they can feel more attracted to them. In the other case a person ill and diagnosed with this diagnosis may contact someone who is currently a part of a prison. The individual doesn’t exactly know this person personally but they have heard of them from from social media, heard of them on the radio or just know them from their reputation. This applies, as mentioned before, mostly to serial killers because they have done the most crimes and have received the most publicity in the media. How this addition of a criminal starts is that he starts receiving fan mail first. If we compare hybristophilia aka. the bonnie and Clyde syndrome to other paraphilic behaviours, it can be deduced that hybristophilia is more common in women than in men.

To make it even more specific, there are two types of hybristophilia. There is passive hybristophilia and aggressive hybristophilia. The main idea, which is falling in love or being sexually attracted to a criminal, is the same. What is different is if the diagnosed or undiagnosed, basically an individual that is affected by the bonnie and Clyde syndrome wants to participate in the criminal actions or not. Both passive and aggressive hybristophilia result in unhealthy and abusive relationships.

Individuals that are attracted to criminals or those that commit crime fall under the passive hybristophilia group. They like and find criminal activity attractive but wish to not be a part of it. Some of the symptoms that passive hybristophilia individuals have are for example that “the women are usually delusional and will try to find excuses for what the criminal did” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-excess/201310/passion-victim). The feeling that women are attracted to criminals like the most is that they will feel special. This means that even though the one they love is a criminal and a killer, they have a feeling that he/she would never harm them. They can also have rescue fantasies where the criminal saved their life by killing others. The largest problem is that they think and feel as if they would be able to change the criminal and make them a better or good person again. This can lead to false expectations and may put the lover into danger. How they may be harmed is that it puts them into a position where they can be manipulated, lied to and seduced (http://lovearthistory.hubpages.com/hub/psyhparaphilia).

The other type of hybristophilia an individual may suffer from is aggressive hybristophilia. This is a more serious type of hybristophilia than the passive one. In aggressive hybristophilia, the diagnosed individual wants to become a part or help out in the criminal activity that the one they fell in love is participating in. The way that they like to help with the criminal activity is by either covering crimes, hiding killed bodies, luring victims its traps or even committing the crimes themselves. The reason why these admiradores fall in love with criminals is that they of course want love, but also because they are attracted to violent actions. The main issue is that aggressive hybristophilia do not understand that their lover is sick and is a psychopath, who is trying to take control of them and manipulate them to help them with their criminal actions (http://lovearthistory.hubpages.com/hub/psyhparaphilia).

As with every sickness hybristophilia, whether passive or aggressive, has to be treated. There aren’t many ways how this psychological illness can be treated, but it is very important that it does get treated because it can be life-threatening to both the sick individual and their surrounding. There are four main ways that hybristophilia can be treated. The first is by psychotherapy. There can be many different kinds of therapy that can be applied on this type of patient. Some examples of therapies that can be used are “cognitive behaviour therapy, orgasmic reconditioning, individual expressive/supportive psychotherapy”, although these are all very effective ways to help the patient; the problem is that the patient has to be willing to undergo therapy. The second way is group therapy. Group therapy is when people with the same problem get together to talk about it and try to fix it. There are both advantages and disadvantages to group therapy, especially about a rather private topic. Advantages may be that people will be comfortable speaking about their problems since they know other people around them are struggling with the same problem. The disadvantage may be that this therapy is not anonymous anymore as it would be in for example cognitive behaviour therapy, where it is just the individual with the therapist. The third way is hypnosis where the diagnosed individual is brought to sleep with hypnosis, to figure out what is wrong in their brain that they have hybristophilia. The last way are medications. Medications, as every other way of therapy, are very individual on the person, they either work or they don’t and in the worst cases, they can make it even worse. Some examples of the medications that are given to these diagnosed individuals can be “antidepressants, medical castration, ant androgens, phenothiazine and mood stabilizers”. (https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/psyhparaphilia).

The way that hybristophilia is most visible is that admirers send fan mail to their lovers. What fan mail means is “letter that are sent to a famous person by people who admire that person” (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fan-mail). The famous person doesn’t only have to be a celebrity but it can also be, in this case, a serial killer or a criminal. As mentioned in this text above Ted Bundy would receive thousands of fan mails and marriage proposals. These are some cases of extreme fan mail and admiration that some lead to marriage. The first example is Richard Ramirez who has killed 13 people, which makes him a serial killer. Doreen Lioy fell in love with him which caused him to send fan mail. This got as far as a marriage. They got married in the San Quentin prison of California. Scott Peterson can be another example. Even though he isn’t a serial killer he still did a terrible crime. He was convicted of killing his pregnant wife and just within hours of being accepted to the prison he got his first fan mail which was a proposal letter, and then many many more followed. Groupies can also be created with people that admire that certain individual. They get together to talk about him, to admire him and just support him. Some famous groupies that have been created in the past are for example for the Columbine High shooters. The Highschool massacre happened April 20, 1999, and killed 13 people (http://www.history.com/topics/columbine-high-school-shootings). The last very famous example of a groupie that formed for a serial killer is for Charles Manson. Charles Manson was a serial killer that killed 35 people, either directly he did it or ordered other people to. He was also involved in many conspiracies (https://www.biography.com/people/charles-manson-9397912).

Attraction and love are two very strong and powerful concepts. People might connect them together, but one can exist without the other. When thinking about the attraction we mainly think of love, but attraction can be just toward a colleague or a friend. Without attraction, no communication would exist. The attraction has been very important ever since the ancient ages, even though people might not realize it. Being drawn to the strongest and most successful hunter in a group had its reason. It was protection for the women and then later also for her children’s survival. The pyramid of attraction is a great way to explain how attraction really works in the brain. The main question that was asked here, was why are women psychologically drawn to serial killers? Many women find sexepeel in criminals. This syndrome is called hybristophilia or aka the bonnie and Clyde syndrome. This syndrome affects both women and men, but mostly women. I causes them to fall in love with people that commit crimes. There are two types of bonnie and Clyde syndrome. Passive and aggressive; passive hybristophilia is when the person in love doesn’t want to get involved in the crime and aggressive hybristophilia is when they do. One of the most famous examples of a serial killer getting fan mail from hybristophilia diagnosed patients is Ted Bundy. Studies have shown that males are more common to commit any sort of criminal activity from a robbery through rape to murder. Females on the other hand are most common to be the victims of male crimes. When a hybristophilia is attracted to someone, they usually send fan mail, but also groups called groupies can get together to talk about the person they admire. Some famous groupies that were formed in the past were for example for serial killer Charles Manson or for the Columbine high shooters. Attraction is the number one element in out life that connects us to people. Many studies and researches have been done in the past on human attraction; all its forms and shapes. The attraction between different genders, to animals, to ourselves. As with every study whether its scientific or psychological, there can always be more research done to investigate the topic of attraction more in-depth and thorough.