Child Development
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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.
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. For example, John Wayne Gacy was often beaten by his father and derided as a “sissy” and accused of being homosexual; in adulthood, Gacy would rape and torture boys and denounce them as being “faggots” and “sissies”. Gacy was married to a woman and identified himself as a heterosexual. Carroll Cole, on the other hand, was abused by his mother, who would engage in extramarital affairs and force Cole to watch, beating him in order to ensure he did not tell his father. In adulthood, Cole murdered any “loose” woman who reminded him of his mother, in particular married women who were looking for sex behind their husbands backs. Some serial killers are seemingly not subjected to any abuse in childhood, although they may have been illegitimate or put up for adoption, or just passed around from relative to relative, creating feelings of being unwanted and rootless. It is often impossible to know exactly what happened in any individuals 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 killers 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 dominating and killing people, usually with very specific elements to the murderous fantasy that will eventually be apparent in their real crimes. Some killers are influenced by reading about the Holocaust and fantasize about being in charge of concentration camps. In such cases, however, it is generally not the political ideology of Nazism that they enjoy or are inspired by, but simply an attraction to the brutality and sadism of its application. Others enjoy reading the works of Marquis de Sade, who lends his name to the word “sadism” due to his stories, which were packed with rape, torture and murder. Many use pornography, frequently the violent type involving bondage, although they may also read “detective magazines” that feature stories of real-life homicide cases. Others may even be fascinated and aroused by less obviously disagreeable material. Dahmer, for example, was fascinated by the character of Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, and even bought yellow contact lenses to make himself resemble the evil character, while several killers say their fantasies have been influenced by the Bible, in particular the Book of Revelation.
Some serial killers display one or more of what are known as the “MacDonald Triad” of warning signs in childhood. These are:
Fire starting, invariably just for the thrill of destroying things.
Cruelty to animals (related to “zoosadism”). Most children can be cruel to animals, such as pulling the legs off of spiders, but future serial killers often kill larger animals, like dogs and cats, and frequently for their solitary enjoyment rather than to impress peers.
Bedwetting beyond the age when children normally grow out of such behavior.
However, this triad which was developed in 1963 has recently been called into question by researchers. They note that many children and teenagers set fires or harm animals for many reasons (boredom, imitation of adult punishment of household pets, exploration of a “tough guy” identity, or even feelings of frustration). It is thus difficult to know whether these variables are in fact relevant to serial murder etiology and, if so, how precisely they matter.
Most serial killers claim their first victim when they are in their early to mid-twenties, although this can vary, with one killer claiming the first of his victims when he was 38, and another who was just 15 when he admitted to murdering four people during the previous two years.
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.
The rate at which they claim victims can also vary a great deal. Juan Corona murdered 25 people in just six weeks, whilst Fred West and his wife Rosemary claimed 12 victims over a period of twenty years.
Motive types
The organized and disorganized model relates to the killers methods. With regards to motives, they can be placed into five different categories:
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Visionary
Contrary to popular opinion, serial killers are rarely insane or motivated by hallucinations and/or voices in their heads. Many claim to 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 thirteen 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 honestly believed that by eating the corpses of women who looked like his mother, he could preserve his mothers 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 womans body for consumption. He also used the flesh of exhumed corpses to fashion a “woman suit” for himself so that he