Author: Kemali Lawrence

Kemali Lawrence

Prof.Andrew Stone

November 10, 2022

English 1101

 

Question: What defines a serial killer? Are people born serial killers? What role do environmental factors play in the psychological development of a serial killer? When did serial killers first appear, and what might this tell us about their nature? 

The reason this question intrigues me is because when you hear stories about serial killers it is hard to imagine another person doing something so evil and it makes me wonder what has to happen to a person for them to think that killing people is something good. What I expect to find in this research is the correlation between different serial killers past and the catalyst that made them killers. Its important first to know what a serial killers is, a serial killer is defined as a person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent motive and typically following a characteristic, predictable behavior pattern. For a serial killer, the murders must be separate events, which are most often driven by a psychological thrill or pleasure. Such famous examples that people may imagine are characters from movies such as Michael Myers from Halloween or Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, but in reality serial killers are not large hulking men in masks wielding machetes or chainsaws but regular looking people. The reason most serial killers are able to get away with so much and for so long is because they look and usually act normal and unsuspecting. They can even have normal lives and a family like Dennis Rader, aka the BTK killer who was a serial killer in Kansas who murdered 10 people over the span of three decades, dubbing himself BTK because he bound, tortured, and killed his victims, on the outside he was a normal man with a wife children and was even the president of a church congregation. Other examples are individuals like Ted Bundy who used his good looks to lure in unsuspecting women then he would sexually assault and murder them, he was able to rape and murder 36 women across Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Florida between 1974 and 1978 before he was caught. The egregious acts performed by these seemingly normal people would be unthinkable to most but for some reason these killers don’t seem to have a shred of remorse for their actions or sympathy for their victims or the families of the victims. One of the most debated questions when it comes to serial killers is what is the catalyst that creates them, is it learned behavior from their environment or are some people born to be serial killers.

 

Source #1

“Serial Killer: Nature vs. Nurture How Serial Killers Are Born.” American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, 2020, https://www.aaets.org/traumatic-stress-library/serial-killer-nature-vs-nurture-how-serial-killers-are-born

In this article the author explores the question of whether serial killers are made by nature or by nurture, while giving background on what defines a serial killer and different commonalities between serial killers. The author first dissects what makes a serial killer by going over the differences between serial killers and other killers, such as motivation, and their victims. Then the author writes about different studies about serial killers brains and how by looking at the brains of people who had been convicted of a murder with aggressive or antisocial disorders and people who are considered normal there is a difference in brain activity. The study shows the relationship between the orbital frontal cortex, the anterior cingulated cortex, and the amygdale, which plays a large part in the control of negative and violent emotions. In the article it’s states “When Davidson and his colleagues reviewed the brain images they found that brain activity in the orbital frontal cortex and the anterior cingulated cortex had diminished or was non existent compared to the amygdale which controls reactions to fear which stayed at the same activity level or went higher” because the orbital frontal cortex has been found to control and restrain the impulse of emotional outbursts, the anterior cingulated cortex was found to deal with responses to conflict and both are diminished the person would not have a normal response to strong emotional outbursts or conflicts. The author then suggests that if it were possible to diagnose and treat these disorders then it may be possible to help people control themselves and it will protect those around them. 

Upon reading this article I am immediately hopeful to the fact that curing people of a disorder that could lead them to becoming serial killers is possible as it would not only save the future victims but also the killer who was born with a condition that caused them to hurt others because it is completely out of their control and if it is true that all serial killers are actually born with the predisposition to becoming a killer it would raise the question of if they can really be blamed for their actions. This document helps my research by giving me a more scientific lens to look at and also a new way to look at serial killers because I had not believed before my research that serial killers are just born different and if it is true it would change the way I see them as a whole.

 

Source #2

Health Magazine. (2021). Are Serial Killers Born or Made? Psychological Signs of a Serial Killer | Deep Dives | Health. YouTube. Retrieved November 13, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdP-e5HppWA. 

This video discusses the question of if serial killers are born or made and focuses more on the psychological signs that someone is a serial killer. The video starts by introducing Melissa Moore who is the daughter of Keith Hunter Jesperson aka the “Happy Face Killer” (who was convicted of murdering eight women in the early 1990’s) and the host of the podcast “Life After Happy Face”. Melissa speaks on her experience of living and being raised by a serial killer and how it affected her growing and how it affected her family, she goes into detail about how at one point she herself was afraid that she was a psychopath and describes being raised by a killer as a “life sentence” because even if people lose interest in the story it is still something she and her family have to carry with them. Melissa also states that living with Jesperson was like being raised by two different people, one day a dad she knew and adored and the next he would murder and torture animals in front of her, she claims the people around her knew of these things but where not aware of how serious it was. Then the video switches to Dr. Casey Jordan a criminologist that has studied serial killers for 30 years, Dr. Jordan states “These criminals exhibit behaviors and give you clues to when they’ll strike next” She then goes on to state that there are three things that are highly consistent with serial killers as shildren, animal torture, enuresis (or bed wetting), and fire setting. These three things are important because they show first that the child does not have empathy so they cannot tell what it feels like to be in another’s shoes, second that the child could be being abused and the parents do not know about it and often wet the bed a night because of constant nightmares, and third is proof that the child has issues with power and control. 

After watching this video I have learned that there are in fact early signs that you can use to determine if someone is likely to become a serial killer, with this knowledge I wonder if with the information from this video about detecting killers from a young age and the claim from the author of my first source that it may be possible to treat people who are exhibiting brain activity that closely resembles the brain activity of convicted killers if it really would be possible to stop killers before they start.

 

Source #3

Guy, F. (2022, October 18). Serial killers and childhood abuse: Is there a link? Crime Traveller. Retrieved November 13, 2022, from https://www.crimetraveller.org/2015/07/serial-killers-childhood-abuse/#:~:text=A%20number%20of%20studies%20have,as%20children%20by%20a%20parent. 

This article explores the connection between child abuse and serial killers and how physical, emotional, and sexual abuse leads people to become killers. The author Fiona Guy starts the article with a quote from Robert K. Ressler’s (a former FBI agent who played a significant role in the psychological profiling of violent offenders in the 1970s and is often credited with coining the term “serial killer”) book “Whoever Fights Monsters”, the quote is “Let me state unequivocally that there is no such thing as the person who at age thirty-five suddenly changes from being perfectly normal and erupts into totally evil, disruptive, murderous behaviour. The behaviours that are precursors to murder have been present and developing in that person’s life for a long, long time – since childhood.” The reason for this quote is to state the fact that a serial killer’s childhood is the most important thing that makes them who they are and is in most cases the catalyst that causes them to become serial killers. After this Guy goes on to describe one of Robert K. Ressler’s studies, in the study of 36 convicted murderers Ressler reports that 40% of the killers interviewed reported to being physically beaten and abused in their childhoods and 70% reporting that they had witnessed or been part of sexually stressful events as children.

Guy then moves on to another study in 2005 done by Mitchell and Aamodt from the University of Virginia where they selected 50 serial killers from the united states who fell into the ‘lust killer’ category where some form of sexual gratification was involved in their killing and they found that 36% suffered from physical abuse, 26% suffered from sexual abuse, 50% suffered from psychological abuse, 18% suffered from neglect, and 32% reported no abuse at all. Guy then adds a graph to demonstrate the abuse suffered by the serial killers compared to the general population.

After reading this article I find a clear correlation between childhood abuse and serial killers because from the studies shown a majority of the serial killers interviewed reported to have suffered from some sort of abuse as children. This information helps provide a link between child abuse and becoming a serial killer but one part that intrests me is in the second study from Micthell and Aamodt 32% of the serial killers reported no abuse so it makes me wonder what happened to those people that caused them to become serial killers if it wasnt something from their childhood.

 

In conclusion I have found that in most cases for a person to become a serial killer they would need to have suffered from one or more things during their development, those things are abuse of some sort during childhood and a disorder in their brain that causes them to not properly react to strong emotional impulses. Knowing this it does seem possible that one day there can be a way to eliminate serial killers from our society if we can reliably filter out the people who are most likely to become serial killers whether from a mental disorder or from identifying abuse and getting those who need it treatment to hopefully lead them onto the right path. What i find the most surprising is that a lot of serial killers start out with torturing and abusing animals, I wasnt aware of how common it was and from Melissa Moore’s story of her father others knew of this behavior but had not known how much of a red flag it was so it was never reported. The reason that this information is important and should be out there is it would help more people spot future serial killers if they know what to look for such as animal abuse, the more people that know the more likely it is that people will notice certain behavior and hopefully be able to stop it. The people who need this information the most are definitely parents because abuse is not always obvious and knowing the signs of abuse can not only save their child’s life but also the lives of would be victims if the worst case scenario played out.