Interestingly, however, not all serial killers are psychopaths, according to the Hare test, a psychiatric diagnostic – or at least don’t test as such. One can make the argument that serial killers suffer from psychopathy, that because they are psychopaths they have no sense of remorse or empathy and their decision-making process is faulty. That’s why they disguise themselves, hide evidence, leave the scene of the crime. But serial killers are very aware of what they’re doing. The legal definition of insanity is an inability to distinguish right from wrong and an inability to understand the consequences of an action. Serial killers choose to act on their compulsions.ĭuring the first big wave of celebrity serial killers in the 1960s and 1970s, some defense lawyers tried to argue in court that serial killers are not guilty by reason of insanity, because an irresistible compulsion to kill is a form of temporary insanity.
My sense is responsibility falls on the offender here. But here’s the problem: if 100 kids grow up in an abusive foster home, and one turns out to be a serial killer – what about the other 99? They grew up to be, well, maybe not all well-adjusted citizens, but certainly not serial killers. It’s true that almost all serial killers suffered childhood trauma. If killers are the products of childhood trauma, or underdeveloped brains, are they still “responsible” for their actions? When you read these killers’ biographies it is no surprise they turned into what they did. I really don’t know.īut there is nothing in his past that obviously parallels the early lives of, say, Charles Manson or Henry Lee Lucas. It could be that there is something but he doesn’t want to admit it. He comes from a nuclear family … the father was there, the mother was there, and there is no clear history of trauma or abuse. I am currently studying a serial killer called Richard Cottingham. There is also the strangeness of the late age at which he started. There is nothing in his childhood to explain his behavior. He was flying the equivalent of Air Force One – flying around the prime minister, visiting dignitaries – then suddenly in his 40s, a colonel, he commits two sexual homicides. We had a killer here in Canada who was the commander of an air force base. Mugshot of murder suspect Ted Bundy, 1980. He did, however, grow up believing that his mother was his sister. No one has really found any evidence of “trauma” in his childhood, in the dramatic, traditional sense. That being said, there do seem to be some examples. Most serial killer biographies are self-reported, so you are relying on what they tell you. Trauma is the single recurring theme in the biographies of most killers.Īre there any cases of serial killers who had well-adjusted childhoods? Many serial killers are survivors of early childhood trauma of some kind – physical or sexual abuse, family dysfunction, emotionally distant or absent parents. And often that capacity is grafted onto a sexual impulse – aggression sexualized at puberty. What remains behind is these un-fully-socialized beings with this capacity to attack and kill. Perhaps it’s not that serial killers are made, but that the majority of us are unmade, by good parenting and socialization. Killers are anachronisms whose primal instincts are not being moderated by the more intellectual parts of our brain. My basic argument is that it is intrinsic to the human survival mechanism that we have this capacity to repeatedly kill. Are serial killers a product of nature (genetics) or nurture (environmental factors)? One of the oldest questions in criminology – and, for that matter, philosophy, law, theology – is whether criminals are born or made. Explore > Related: Possible serial killer on loose Florida police link 3 separate murdersĪ mass murder is defined as the killing of a large number of people, usually in one place, like the attack in Las Vegas earlier this month when 58 people were shot to death from a window of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.John Wayne Gacy, who was responsible for 33 murders.
sniper case from 2002 is a good example of a spree killing when 10 people were killed over 23 days by two shooters. "This is very different than serial killers who are much more likely to stalk and target complete strangers who somehow fulfill deranged and secret fantasies that only they understand," Psychology Today reported. The lack of a cooling-off period is the difference between a spree killer and a serial killer, the FBI said. Serial killers, on the other hand, may cool off for weeks, months and, in rare instances, even years between murders,” the magazine reported. “The maximum duration between murders in spree killing is generally considered to be seven days.