SERIAL
MURDER: MODERN SCIENTIFIC
PERSPECTIVES
ELLIOTT
LEYTON (ed.)
THE
HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM*
Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate
2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Series Preface
Elliott Leyton - Introduction: The Study of Serial Murder
PROLEGOMENA
1 Jean-Paul Sartre (1941),
'Herostratus', Decision Nov-Dec 1941, pp.
60-73
2 Brian Meehan (1994), 'Son of
Cain or Son of Sam? The Monster as
Serial Killer in Beowulf',
Connecticut Review Fall 1994, pp. 1-7
PART 1
ORIGINS OF THE IMPULSE
3 Constance McKenzie (1995), 'A
Study of Serial Murder',
International Journal of Offender Therapy
and Comparative
Criminology, 39(1), pp. 3-10
4 Nancy L. Ansevics and Harold
E. Doweiko (1991), 'Serial Murderers:
Early Proposed Developmental
Model and Typology', Psychotherapy in
Private Practice 9(2), pp. 107-122
5 Park Elliott Dietz, Bruce
Harry, and Robert R. Hazelwood (1986),
'Detective Magazines: Pornography
for the Sexual Sadist?'
Journal of Forensic Sciences 31(1), pp. 197-211
6 Deirdre D. Johnston (1995),
'Adolescents' Motivations for Viewing
Graphic
Horror', Human
Communication Research 21(4), pp. 522-552
7 R.S. Ratner (1996),
'Ideological Homicide', in Thomas
O'Reilly-Fleming (ed), Serial and Mass
Murder: Theory, Research and
Policy, Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, pp.23-132
PART 2 CRIMINOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
8 Philip Jenkins (1992), 'A
Murder "Wave"? Trends in
American
Serial Homicide 1940-1990',
Criminal Justice Review 17(1), pp.
1-19
9 Philip Jenkins (1988), 'Serial
Murder in England 1940-1985',
Journal of Criminal Justice 16(1),
pp. 1-15
10 David Canter, Christopher Missen and
Samantha Hodge (1996) 'Are
Serial Killers Special?' Policing
Today April 1996, pp. 22-28
11 David M. Gresswell and Clive R.
Hollin (1994), 'Multiple Murder: A
Review', British Journal of
Criminology 34(1), pp. 1-14
12 Michael J. Herkov and Monica Biernat
(1997), 'Assessment of PTSD
Symptoms
in a Community
Exposed to Serial Murder', Journal of Clinical
Psychology 53(8), pp. 809-815
PART 3
PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSIS AND THE LAW
13 Seymour Halleck (1965), 'American
Psychiatry and the Criminal: A
Historical Review', American
Journal of Psychiatry 121 (9, supp.), pp.
i-xxi
14 Anne Gresham (1993), 'The Insanity
Plea: A Futile Defense for
Serial Killers', Law and Psychology
Review 17, pp. 193-208
15 John A. Liebert (1985),
'Contributions of Psychiatric Consultation
in the Investigation of Serial Murder', International Journal of
Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 29(3),
pp. 187-200
16 Park Elliott Dietz, Robert R.
Hazelwood, and Janet Warren (1990),
'The Sexually Sadistic Criminal and
his Offences', Bulletin of the
American Academy of Psychiatry and Law 18, No.
2, pp. 163-178
PART 4 PSYCHIATRIC PERSPECTIVES
17 Foster Kennedy, Harry R. Hoffman,
and William H. Haines (1947), 'A
Study of William Heirens',
American Journal of Psychiatry 104,
pp.113-121
18 John G. Watkins (1984), 'The Bianchi
(L.A. Hillside Strangler)
Case:
Sociopath or Multiple
Personality?' International
Journal of
Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 32(2), pp.
67-101
19 Ralph B. Allison (1984),
'Difficulties Diagnosing the Multiple
Personality Syndrome in a Death
Penalty Case', International Journal
of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 32(2), pp.
102-117
20 Martin T. Orne, David F. Dinges, and
Emily Carota Orne (1984), 'On
the Differential Diagnosis of
Multiple Personality in the Forensic
Context', International Journal of Clinical
and Experimental
Hypnosis, 32(2), pp. 118-169
PART 5 GENDER ISSUES
21 Judith R. Walkowitz (1982), 'Jack
the Ripper and the Myth of Male
Violence',
Feminist Studies
8, No. 3, pp. 543-573
22 Stephen T. Holmes, Eric Hickey, and
Ronald M. Holmes (1991),
'Female Serial Murderesses: Constructing Differentiating
Typologies', Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice
7, No. 4, pp.
245-256
23 Belea T. Keeney and Kathleen M.
Heide (1994), 'Gender Differences
in Serial Murderers: A
Preliminary Analysis', Journal of Interpersonal
Violence 9, No. 3, pp. 383-398
24 Candice Skrapec (1996), 'The Sexual
Component of Serial Murder',
in Thomas O'Reilly-Fleming
(ed), Serial and Mass Murder:
Theory, Research and Policy, Toronto: Canadian
Scholars' Press, pp.
155-179
25 Julie Cluff, Allison Hunter, and
Ronald Hinch (1997), 'Feminist
Perspectives on Serial Murder: A Critical Analysis', Homicide Studies
1,
No. 3, pp. 291-308
PART 6
POLICING CONCERNS
26 Robert R. Hazelwood and John E
Douglas (1980), 'The Lust
Murderer', FBI Law Enforcement
Bulletin 49(4), pp. 18-22
27 Robert K. Ressler, Ann Wolbert
Burgess, and John E. Douglas
(1983), 'Rape and Rape-Murder: One Offender and Twelve Victims',
American Journal of Psychiatry 140(1),
pp. 36-40
28 Robert K. Ressler, Ann W. Burgess,
John E. Douglas, Carol R.
Hartman, and Ralph B. D'Agostino
(1986), 'Serial Killers and Their
Victims: Identifying Patterns Through Crime Scene
Analysis', Journal
of Interpersonal Violence 1(3), pp. 288-308
29 Robert Alan Prentky, Ann Wolbert
Burgess, Francis Rokous, Austin
Lee, Carol
Hartman, Robert
Ressler, and John Douglas (1989), 'The
Presumptive Role of Fantasy in Serial Sexual
Homicide', American
Journal of Psychiatry 146:7, pp. 887-891
EPILOGUE
30 George Orwell (1946), 'Decline of the
English Murder', in Decline
of the English Murder and
Other Essays, London: Penguin
Books
Introduction:
Current Issues in the Study of Serial Murder
_____________________________________________________________
Jean-Paul Sarte cut to the bone in
"Herostratus", his prescient
description of the inner life of a serial killer
first translated
intoEnglish in 1941, four and one-half decades
before the study of serial
murder became a legitimate academic
sub-discipline. Here he outlined
many
of the killers' traits that would later come to
be widely understood by
modern scholarship - the self-absorption, the
anger and desire for revenge
for real or imagined slights, the pleasure in
the suffering of others, the
need to demonstrate their 'superiority' by
taunting the authorities, the
urge for lasting celebrity, and the peculiar
mixture of reality and
fantasy in their lives. Yet Sartre's work was foreshadowed by
even
earlier commentators including the prodigal
William Bolitho, who
challenged orthodox psychiatry as long ago as
1926 when he noted that such
multiple killers were no 'deranged
automata': indeed, he wrote,
they
were 'the worst men, not madmen' (Bolitho
1926: 7-8).
These were but the
distinguished predecessors of a field of
enquiry that between the Second World War and the
mid-1980s would come to
be dominated almost entirely by psychiatry (as
expressed most
magisterially in Lunde's classic 1979 volume,
Murder and Madness).
Suddenly then there was a creative explosion in
criminal justice studies,
and seemingly out of nowhere (yet echoing the
public fear that was
widespread at the time) came a series of books
in one decade: Levin and
Fox's Mass Murder in 1985, Leyton's Compulsive
Killers in 1986 (entitled
Hunting Humans in its various British and
Canadian editions), Cameron and
Frazer's The Lust To Kill in 1987, Holmes and De
Burger's Serial Murder in
1988, Egger's Serial Murder in 1990, Hickey's
Serial Murderers and Their
Victims in 1991, Jenkins' Using Murder and
Canter's Criminal Shadows in
1994.
Since then, the field has continued to expand, with many
significant articles from varous social and
psychological perspectives
that are reprinted in this volume, as well as
books such as Giannangelo's
The Psychopathology of Serial Murder in 1996,
Egger's The Killers Among Us
in 1998, and Skrapec's dissertation, Serial
Murder: Motive and Meaning in
1997.
This work has on the
whole been relatively free of the smothering
ideological rigidity, factionalization and
discourtesy that characterize
so much of modern criminology. Merton
(1972: 9 ff) described this
unfortunate and anti-scientific process as one
in which feuding factions
coalesce around a single perspective, each
faction 'develops highly
selective perceptions of what is going on in the
other', grows 'less and
less motivated to examine the ideas of the
other', and devotes its time to
scanning the other's 'writings just enough to
find ammunition for new
fusillades'. In such an antagonistic milieu, character assassination
often takes priority over collegial and
scientific debate: this prompted
Downes and Rock (1988: 1-2) to note that such writing tends to be
'factious, partisan, and combative'; and to
conclude that the defenceless
reader, 'bombarded by magisterial claims and
criticisms', inevitably
becoming 'giddy, defeated, or prematurely
committed'.
The study of serial
murder has for the most part avoided this
empty and self-destructive behaviour, and senior
scholars with profound
differences tend merely to ignore one another's
writings as if willing
them not to have happened. Yet at its worst, the field shares some
of the
extravagant flaws of criminology, making absurd
claims and shoplifting
ideas more or less at will. Among the premier claims-makers, for
example,
are those - both police and academics - who
insist that they and they
alone were the 'first' to recognize the
phenomenon, or even the first to
use the term 'serial murder'. Yet there is nothing new in the use of
the
term:
writing sixty years ago, H. Russell Wakefield (1936: 17-19) spoke
of the French multiple murderer, Landru, 'as the
arch-type of serial
butchers', and described his motivation with
impressive prescience.
Landru's consistent failure to succeed in his
chosen career, the
realisation that that failure was invariably due
to the venom of his
dupes, the knowledge that the horrors of
life-long exile would be the
consequence of one more failure, turned Landru
into a serial-murderer.
Also rampant in the field is the unscholarly and
discourteous practice of
'borrowing' ideas and re-deploying them as one's
own without pausing to
acknowledge their source. This defect is especially (but by no
means
exclusively) to be found in the less widely-read
journals, where the
professional need for publication and the personal
need for status
sometimes result in claims that an old and
well-published idea is the
author's unique invention. Such dispiriting matters aside,
the field is
otherwise alive and vigorous and has made real
advances since the
mid-1980s.
Definitions
In
their initial classificatory scheme, Levin and Fox (1985)
preferred the use of the general term, mass
murder, to refer to all forms
of interpersonal multiple killing - including
serial, mass and familicidal
homicides.
A few years later, however, at an international conference on
serial murder at the University of Windsor, they
publicly capitulated to
what had by then become common usage -
formalizing the distinctions
between serial, mass and familicidal
murders. In 1986, Leyton
unnecessarily restricted his own definition by
motive, confining himself
to those who killed only for personal
satisfaction, to the kind of 'joy
murders' the Germans called lustmord.
In 1991, Hickey expanded
this narrow definition of serial murder
into what is now most widely accepted: it includes anyone who kills in
sequence over time, regardless of motive, i.e.,
simply 'all offenders who
through premeditation killed three or more
victims over a period of days,
weeks, months, or years' (1991: 7). Hickey's definition has many
advantages, not the least of which is its
flexibility, and its ability to
incorporate many female serial killers (who are
more likely to kill for
financial gain rather than for obvious sexual
gratification). However,
opinions still differ on the minimum number of
victims: some accept as
little as two (understanding, like Canter, that
the number of many serial
killers' victims are lowered by their speedy
arrest), others insisting
upon at least five, with the majority of scholars
settling on a minimum of
two victims. Egger's recent definition is perhaps the most comprehensive:
for him, the defining qualities of serial murder
are simply when 'one or
more individuals (in many cases, males)
commit(s) a second murder.' He
adds that 'there is generally no prior
relationship between victim and
attacker'; that the following murders may have no relation in time or
place to the initial murder; that 'the motive is
not for material gain and
is for the murderer's desire to have power or dominance
over his victims';
and that 'victims may have symbolic value for
the murderer and/or are
perceived to be prestigeless and in most
instances are unable to defend
themselves or alert others to their
plight'. Typically, Egger adds,
such
victims are 'vagrants, the homeless,
prostitutes, migrant workers,
homosexuals, missing children, single women (out
by themselves), elderly
women, college students, and hospital patients'
(1998: 5-6).
A.
THE GREAT DEBATES
1.
Socio-Historical Analysis
Perhaps the central
problem in a longitudinal analysis of serial
murder's origins is the quality and depth of
pre-Twentieth Century data.
Although certain nations, primarily England,
France and Japan, have had
well-developed bureaucracies collecting social
data for many centuries,
they are relatively unusual: even there, we cannot speak with
certainty
of their data's reliability - although Capp insists that 'mass
murder was
unlikely to escape detection' in Britain (Capp
1996: 22).
What we do know is while
there may have been a large number of
multiple murders perpetrated primarily for
economic gain (such as the
infamous Sawney Bean family which preyed on
travellers in 15th Century
Scotland - cf., Leyton 1986: 269), there have been very few
substantiated
cases of what the Germans call lustmord (joy
murder) before the end of the
18th Century. In his commentary on 17th Century England, for example,
Capp emphasizes that the multiple murder cases
'do not correspond exactly
to modern equivalents', and 'none appears to
have been motivated by
perverted sexual drives' (Capp 1996: 26). Indeed, the two best known
archaic cases are both European paedophilic
aristocrats from the 15th
Century:
the French Baron Gilles de Rais, one of the wealthiest men in
the world and a companion-at-arms with Joan of
Arc, is believed to have
tortured, raped and murdered hundreds of peasant
boys; while the Hungarian
Countess Elizabeth Bathory is believed to have
tortured, murdered and
drunk the blood of several hundred girls and
young women (Hickey 1991:
23).
Nevertheless, some doubt has recently been cast on the authenticity
of these cases and it is not clear, for example,
if de Rais' confession -
which was extorted under torture - is valid.
In any case, only one
commentator has so far constructed a
socio-historical theory of the development of
lustmord-style serial
murder.
Leyton's Hunting Humans (1986:
269) argued that 'the
pre-industrial multiple killer was an aristocrat
who preyed on "his"
peasants; that the industrial era produced a new
kind of killer, most
commonly a new bourgeois (doctors, clerks,
teachers, functionaries of the
emerging industrial order) who preyed upon
prostitutes, homeless boys, and
housemaids; and that in the mature industrial
era, he is most often a
failed bourgeois' who stalks both prostitutes
and middle class victims
such as university women. Jenkins, writing in the journal
Crime, Law and
Social Change, acknowledges Leyton's attempt to
explain the rise of the
modern multiple murderer 'in terms of the
dehumanization and alienation
attendant upon modern mass society', but
described the project as 'perhaps
excessively' ambitious. Certainly the very paucity of available
data on
this period mitigates against any reliable
confirmation or rejection of
this approach.
2.
Gender-based Criticism
The essential argument
of radical feminist thought has been an
extravagant one, that serial murder is little
more than a male-approved
'systematic execution of women', all part of a
misogynistic 'worldwide
conspiracy for the mass extermination of women'
(pers comm). The central
case was made by Cameron and Frazer in their
influential volume The Lust
To Kill:
A Feminist Investigation of Sexual Murder. Here they argued
that male-dominated science has consciously and
inaccurately portrayed the
sex murderer as somehow defective, as 'deviant
from male sexuality' (i.e.,
as biologically or psychologically deficient,
say, or warped by a violent
culture) when in fact such killers were male
heroes 'at the centre of
literary and philosophical celebration'. Arguing from an ideological
rather than empirical base, it seemed apparent
to Cameron and Frazer that
male violence was the mere acting out of the
iron 'law of misogyny', in
which women were seen as mere objects to be
consumed by men. Thus not
only did they argue that sex murderers were
always male and that 'there
has never been a female Peter Sutcliffe' (the
'Yorkshire Ripper'); but
they also claimed that sexual murder was the
essence of maleness and
masculinity, and that the murder of women for
sexual pleasure was the
natural expression of male identity (1987: 1, 166-168).
These provocative claims
were severely tested by Hickey's (1991)
data which demonstrated that far from being
non-existent, females
constituted some 17% of serial killers. Moreover, Hickey noted that the
idea of serial murder as a 'war on women' did
not repay close scrutiny
since a very substantial minority of the victims
were men: while more
than one third of male serial killers preyed
exclusively on women, just
under one half killed both males and females,
and a fifth killed only
males (Hickey 1991: 143). He did
find that the motives of female serial
killers seemed much more likely to involve
material or social gain (women
murdering family members, for e.g., to collect
life insurance) than the
crude sexuality of male killers: still, the nature of female sexuality
makes it more difficult to confirm even this
assertion (1991: 107ff).
This theme of the nature of female sexuality was
taken up by Candice
Skrapec in the 1996 article reprinted in this
volume: she asked us to
consider the possibility that since a
significant minority of serial
killers was female, a deformed sexuality might
not be entirely a masculine
preserve.
She emphasized that if male perversions "tend to be more
overtly sexual," female sexual perversions
'are manifestly more subtle'
than those of the male, and involve 'symbolic
acts centred on emotional
dramas of abandonment, separation and
loss'. Moreover, she adds, 'these
differences serve to mask the more substantive
underlying similarities
between male and female multiple murderers'
(1996: 176).
In Using Murder, Jenkins
explicated the fundamentally political
nature of radical feminist theory, noting that
it 'places the blame for
the offense firmly on masculine characteristics'
and 'the structure of a
male-dominated society', thereby transforming
the fear of serial murder
into an 'ideological weapon' against patriarchal
society (1994: 143-144).
Jenkins observed that far from patriarchal
society constituting a kind of
unilateral war on women, white women were only
one-third as likely as men
to fall victim to a homicide. Nevetheless, Jenkins concluded that if
the
feminist case on serial murder was lacking in
'scholarly merit', the
theories have still played an important social
role in sensitizing the
public to the very real oppression of women in
patriarchal societies
(1994:
156-157). Julie Cluff and
her colleagues (1997) expanded on this
case in their essay reprinted in this volume,
and noted that any
'improvement' in the quality of radical feminist
analysis must begin with
the serious examination of the female serial
killer (1997: 305-306).
3.
Statistical Frequency
One of the great debates
in serial murder studies regards the
actual frequency of occurrence of such killers,
and the number of victims
they might claim worldwide. Scholarly opinion has been sharply divided
on
the questions of whether such killers are in
fact statistically rare; and
whether or not some countries - such as the US
or the UK - produce
disproportionately large numbers of these
offenders. It is true that the
greatest number of reported cases come from the
US, but it is by no means
clear if this is a function of their much higher
overall homicide rate,
their very large population, or the existence of
a journalism industry
devoted to publicizing such murders. Indeed, Egger's earlier comments
still apply: the actual extent and prevalence of serial murder 'is as yet
unknown' (1990: 29). Moreover,
in the continuing absence of truly
reliable international data, precisely how
countries' rates compare with
each other remains unresolved, and our ability
to construct meaningful
explanations correspondingly impaired.
The earliest
commentators in the mid-1980s speculated that the
number of serial killers was very high. Levin and Fox (1985: 186)
initially hypothesized that the US figures had
been 'grossly
underestimated', and they suggested that 'many
of the more than five
thousand unsolved homicides' in the US each year
might be the work of 'a
few very effective killers'. In a similar vein, Leyton (1986)
claimed
there had been a 'remarkable increase' in US
multiple murder since the
mid-1960s; and Holmes and De Burger (1988)
guessed that between 3,500 and
5,000 people might be murdered each year in the
US alone by serial
killers. Hickey (1991), whose data proved to be
the most reliable to date,
showed that between 1795 and 1988, 34 women and
169 men in the US were
responsible for approximately two thousand
homicides. Hickey also noted a
'ten-fold increase in the number of cases during
the past 20 years in
comparison to the previous 174 years' and
suggested that '35-100 [killers]
may be active in a given year' (1991: 75,
18-19). In 1996, Canter et al
published their preliminary analysis of the
'Missen Corpus', certainly the
most ambitious international survey to
date: their data from more than
thirty countries elicited 3,532 serial killers
between 1860 and the
present, and showed an increase in the
production of serial killers in the
fourth quarter of the Twentieth Century that
paralleled the overall
increase in homicide rates that took place in
that same period. The
majority (2,617) of these killers came from the
US, but Canter and his
colleagues identified 164 in the UK, 144 in
France, and 165 in Germany -
and they estimated that as many as five serial
killers were 'active' each
year in the three European nations (1996: 22-25).
This conflicts
fundamentally with Greswell and Hollin's review
(reprinted in this volume), which found 'little
empirical support' for the
idea of such a dramatic post-war increase, at
least in Britain (1994: 6).
It also conflicts with Jenkins' more complex
argument: Jenkins found
serial murder to occur occasionally in England
and Wales between 1880 and
1990, and to be 'common' between 1919 and the
1940s in many industrial
nations such as France and Germany. In the US, the history of serial
murder fell into three periods: a rather high rate until 1940, when
there
were at least twenty-four 'extreme' serial
killers who murdered a minimum
of ten; 'a time of relative tranquility in the
mid-century'; and a renewed
'murder wave' that has continued from the
mid-1960s to the present. Thus
the increase of serial killing since 1965 in the
US was not 'a wholly new
phenomenon', but rather 'a return to earlier
historical patterns' (Jenkins
1994:
40, 49, 33). Moreover,
Jenkins argues, even the idea of American
'uniqueness' may be exaggerated: the gross number of serial killers may
be higher in the US simply because the overall
homicide rate is so much
higher, and in both the US and England, the
proportion of all murders that
are serial murders hovers around one
percent. Jenkins even goes so far
as
to speculate that tighter libel laws in the UK
make it more difficult for
the media to attribute additional murders to
killers who have been
convicted 'only' of one or two, and that
official British statistics might
therefore arbitrarily record fewer serial
killers than actually exist.
Egger was clearly
right: scholarship has so far
provided 'no
decisive answers', and the issue remains quite
unresolved (Egger 1998:
59-60).
This in turn raises the profound ethical challenge that Kiger
noted in 1990: without truly reliable international statistics we not
only 'will be unable to develop informed
typologies, theories and policy
decisions,' but we also 'run the risk of
creating a social problem, the
magnitude of which may be greatly exaggerated'
(Kiger 1990: 36).
4.
Psychological Origins of the Impulse
Another central debate
in the field concerns the
psychiatric/psychological sciences' claim that
these killers were
victimsof a (usually vaguely defined) mental
illness. In response to
this, the
social sciences tended to argue that the
killers' motives were 'neither
insane nor random but buried deeply in the
social order, part of a
continuously evolving social process' (Leyton
1989: 329-330). Levin and
Fox also severely criticized what they called
'the psychiatric mistake':
they argued that psychiatric analyses were
bedeviled by unwarranted
generalizations, and their validity was
restricted to an unrepresentative
handful of cases. Moreover, the psychiatric focus on the indicators of
troubled childhoods tended to produce mere lists
of symptoms - such as
bed-wetting, fire-setting, and cruelty to
animals - rather than generate
explanatory discussions of cause (Levin and Fox
1985: 24, 26-27, 31). Yet
much of this argument verges on the semantic,
and most psychiatrists and
psychologists have recently shifted their
attention away from mental
illness and the essentially legal category of
'insanity', aware as they
often are of the criticism (amply illustrated by
the three essays
reprinted in this volume on the 'Hillside
Strangler' case) by
distinguished psychiatrist Willard Gaylin that psychiatric
diagnoses can
be 'trivial, ephemeral, descriptive, and
meaningless' (Gaylin 1983: 249).
The landmark in
psychiatric studies of serial murder remains
Lunde's 1975 classic, Murder and Madness, which
concludes that such
killers 'are almost always insane'. Lunde hypothesized that many of these
killers are the victims of a hostile paranoid
schizophrenia; characterized
by hallucinations, 'delusions of grandiosity or
persecution, [and] bizarre
religious ideas'; and caused by a combination of
'genetic, metabolic,
andpsychological' factors. Lunde thought many of the others
were sexual
sadists who early in life fused their 'sexual
and violent aggressive
impulses', and who therefore could only achieve
sexual fulfilment through
'torture and/or killing and mutilation.' (Lunde
1979: 48-56).
Orthodox psychiatry
continues to produce provocative but
inconclusive case studies. Abrahamsen, for
example, suggests that the
'Son of Sam' was the victim of a 'death wish' which he turned 'directly
against others' by killing, and 'indirectly
against himself' by allegedly
ensuring that he would be captured and
punished. Abrahamsen thought the
'Son of Sam's' rage had developed after
discovering that he had been
rejected by his natural parents and put out for
adoption: his vengeful
killing spree, according to the psychiatrist's
psychoanalytic analysis,
was 'rooted in his fantasies about killing his
mother and half sister'
(Abrahamsen 1985: 201, 205).
Perhaps the most widely
promulgated concept today is that of
psychopathy (sometimes called sociopathy, or
antisocial personality
disorder), which describes a remorseless and unfeeling personality
that
cannot respond to the humanity in other
people. Hare and his colleagues,
among others, have written extensively of the
"common core of attributes"
of psychopathy. These include 'pathological lying', 'impulsivity', 'a
lack of remorse, guilt and shame; [and an]
inability to experience empathy
or concern for others' (Hare n.d.: 95-96).
The ancient nature/nurture
controversy continually re-surfaces around this
notion of psychopathy,
some scholars arguing that such personalities
are 'born that way', while
others insist the disorder is created, most
commonly by severe abuse in
childhood.
Giannangelo's 1996
volume, The Psychopathology of Serial Murder,
tries to take a balanced approach, and suggests
that a history of
'physical, sexual, or mental abuse' may be the
most important trait shared
by serial killers. As a result of their alleged abuse in childhood
(despite its plausibility to the modern mind, no
firm data have yet
established this hypothesis), serial killers
have developed 'a pervasive
lost sense of self and intimacy, an inadequacy
of identity, [and] a
feeling of no control.' These deficits manifest themselves in
what may be
'the ultimate act of control', the termination
of the lives of many
people.
Attempting to straddle the the various psychological and
sociological perspectives, he describes serial
killers as entering
childhood with physiological anomalies that may
be congenital or
trauma-induced, experiencing a childhood filled
with severe abuse, and
driven to display quite early on varieties of
antisocial and/or criminal
behavior.
Moreover, while offering evidence of pervasive sexual deviance,
their internal life appears to be rooted in a
state of fantasy (1996: 19,
48,
53).
Nevertheless, the
problem remains that if the concept of
psychopathy accurately lists many of the
personality characteristics
associated with serial murderers, it does not
explain why so many who have
these qualities do not kill. Indeed, psychiatrist J. Reid Meloy
(1988: 6)
posits that such a diagnosis is 'too
descriptive, inclusive, criminally
based, and socioeconomically skewed to be of
much clinical or research
use'.
Psychologist David Canter (1994:
263) also considers 'psychopath
and sociopath' to be 'curious terms that imply a
medical, pathogenic
origin yet in fact describe someone for whom no
obvious organic or
psychotic diagnosis can be made'. Egger concludes that the impossibility
of predicting whether a psychopath will become a
remorseless killer or a
corporate executive merely reminds us 'that we
in fact don't know why
these people act as they do' (Egger 1998: 28).
5. Social
Perspectives
Social scientists have
argued that the origins of the impulse to
kill comes not from a mental illness, but from a
socially constructed
identity.
Levin and Fox wrote that those who come to serial murder feel
rejected, abused and marginalized by their
familial and social
experiences, and their murder sprees are
designed somehow to cure their
sense of impotence through 'controlling,
manipulating, or eliminating'
others. In addition, such personalities 'have
failed to internalize a
moral code for the treatment of others': thus they are not victims of
some hypothetical mental illness, but
remorseless men 'incapable of
experiencing normal amounts of love and empathy'
(1985: 60-61, 63-64).
Leyton (1986) reasoned
in political terms, that multiple murders
aimed at more than just the gratification of
sexual and psycho-symbolic
appetites.
Rather, their sprees are a kind of deformed social protest -
'deformed', since they punish the innocent, not
the guilty; and since
their protest is on behalf of themselves, not
others. A parallel argument
here is a cultural one: like African witches, whose social
function is to
underline the realms of perceived Good and Evil,
the serial killer
reverses all social values to make 'a
demonstration to the authorities'
(as one killer put it) in a manner that he
thinks will force them somehow
to authenticate his legitimacy. Moreover, the essence of modern
industrial civilization is that it dehumanizes
people-as-objects and
legitimizes violence as an acceptable response
to frustration, allowing
the killer to 'grasp the "manly"
identity of pirate and avenger' (1986:
261, 28).
Hickey's (1991)
trauma-control model was among the
first to mount
a sustained argument that serial killers are the
product of severe
childhood trauma, which include 'unstable home
life, death of parents,
divorce, corporal punishments, sexual abuse' and
other disfiguring events.
Thus the abused child 'feels a deep sense of
anxiety, mistrust and
confusion'. Many victims of child abuse search for and find healthy ways
of treating their wounds; but those who might
become serial killers never
learn to cope with these trauma. They begin to act out their rage in an
antisocial manner, assaulting animals, objects
and people as a way of
regaining the internal equilibrium that has been
taken from them by those
in authority (1991: 65-67).
Curiously, the obviously
sexual motivation underlying serial
murder remains largely unanalyzed, and it was
not until Skrapec's 1996
essay that we were reminded that serial killing
is about sex as much as it
is about murder. Initially, perhaps, a killer attacks symbols 'of
something that arouses tremendous hatred (or
conflict) within him.' Yet
during the murder 'he did, nonetheless, experience the arousal', and this
flush of sexual pleasure (rather than killing
symbols of what is hated)
may become a primary factor in any repetition of
such acts (Scrapec 1996:
175).
6.
Typologies
While some scholars may
share the opinion of the late Professor
Sir Edmund Leach that the construction of
typologies is but a glorified
version of butterfly collecting, the majority of
those working in the area
of serial murder feel it is a necessary and
important first step. Holmes
and De Burger are among the most widely accepted
commentators on the types
of serial murder: for them, poverty, poor neighbourhoods, unstable
families and a subculture of violence cannot be
the cause of serial murder
since few who are exposed to such social
stresses become serial killers.
Thus they reject purely 'social' explanations in
favour of psychological
variables.
Their classificatory schema includes the Visionary Type, who
responds to '"voices" or
"visions" that demand that a person or category
of persons be destroyed'; the Mission-Oriented
Type who typically sees
himself as 'on a "mission" to rid the
world of a category of people" he
despises (such as, for e.g., prostitutes); the
Hedonistic Type who murders
for thrills, seeking only 'pleasure or a sense
of well-being'; and the
Power/Control-Oriented Type, whose primary
satisfaction comes from his
complete domination over the life and death of
the victim (1988: 56-59).
Gresswell and Hollin
(among others) have been critical of Holmes
and De Burger's categories. The types' lack of mutual exclusivity
makes
it difficult to distinguish clearly one type
from another (for example,
visionary can be distinguished from the
missionary type only on the basis
of the former's alleged insanity). Secondly, the
categories are neither
exhaustive nor consistent: for example, they exclude contract
killers
because their motivation is deemed financial and
therefore 'extrinsic';
while they include such practical (and therefore
'extrinsic') motives as
killing for insurance, or to eliminate the
witness to a sexual assault.
Finally, the typology does not account for
killers whose motivations may
change over time (perhaps changing from a
primarily murderous urge to an
urge to mutilate, for example, or to ensuring
celebrity through extensive
coverage in the media). Gresswell and Hollin conclude with a
call for
more a flexible typological system that would
clearly 'recognize that
there is a process to multiple murder'
(1994: 5).
B.
CONSENSUS
While there are many
debates within the field, and fundamental
issues remain unresolved, there are a number of
significant ideas
(especially that these killers are damaged and
limited persons who see
their victims as somehow representing the
category of person who has
ruined their lives and their killing spree is a
form of vengeance; and
that for whatever the reason may be -
rationalization or incapacity -
these killers remain 'morally immune' from their
killings, i.e., at best,
indifferent to the human suffering they wreak
upon their victims) that are
widely accepted. The latest work explores several fundamental dimensions
of their aetiology, motivation and thought.
David Canter's Criminal
Shadows explored the "secret" inner life
of serial killers in order to elucidate how they
can deal with their own
remorseless, psychopathological, use and abuse
of other people. Focusing
on the "discernible structure" of the
killer's inner life, Canter examines
the use of internal narratives, or
autobiographies these killers tell
themselves in the construction of their
identities. If everyone develops
a story-line to describe his or her own life,
and this autobiography is
'drawn from the culture and society' in which
the teller lives, the
narrative of the average person is usually a
'public story of successes
and failures', of family, friends and
career. A serial killer has also
developed a story of his life, but in his
narrative all other characters
are considered as consumable objects, not
persons. Moreover, the personal
narratives of violent offenders distort the
'themes of intimacy and
appropriate use of power', deny empathy and
self-respect, and consistently
portray others as less than human. Thus their
victims can become mere
'objects of anger or desire, vehicles to satisfy
the perpetrator,
possessions that are jealously guarded, targets
for him to act upon'. Such
a life story inhibits the ability of any
socially healthy personality to
feel compassion for others while maintaining a
personal sense of
self-respect (1994: 205, 232, 240-241, 285).
Skrapec's work
(1997: iv) focused intensively on
the subjective
experiences of five incarcerated serial
murderers, examining their
'personal construction of meaning regarding
himself and his experiences'
to reveal three 'dominant themes'. Each of these
themes has been commented
on by other writers, but are here brought
together in one sustained
analysis:
first, a remrkable sense of 'entitlement,' so strong that the
killers perceive themselves as victims, not
victimizers (cf., for e.g.,
Hickey, Canter, Leyton); second, a sense of 'empowerment' that
is derived
from the 'total control and possession of
victims' (cf., for e.g., Ratner,
Canter); and third, a 'perverse quest for
vitality' in their lives (cf.,
for e.g., Cameron and Frazer) .
Skrapec notes that while
most people wish for entitlement,
empowerment and vitality in their own lives,
'these same forces are
exaggerated and distorted' in serial killers. She notes that all five of
'these men experienced themselves as unloved
(yet believed they were
lovable) and felt rage at being powerless to get
what they needed'.
Moreover, 'the anger each felt at having been
denied love or recognition
motivated him to punish, to kill - those who had
diminished him'. The
killer - feeling powerless - is empowered by his
total control over his
victim and experiences it 'as a kind of
transcendance - from helpless
victim to omnipotent killer'. Finally, the subjects' obsesson with
death
drives them to engage in high-risk behaviour, to
'feel they were alive by
virtue of "being somebody"', therefore
defeating death in their own
experience of vitality. From the killer's point of view,
then, he alters
himself from 'reactive object to proactive agent
- victim becoming
victimizer', and what appears to be an offensive
behaviour is to them a
defensive one, as the killing becoming 'a matter
of controlling the
threat, controlling the source of power that
threatens' him (Skrapec 1997:
193-196).
Thus, Skrapec concludes with a statement that is a concise
expression of the modern view, that serial
killing is more than the mere
product of a particular psychopathology in which
the individual is so
lacking in moral faculty that, like the psychopath,
he can without
hesitation satisfy personal desires at the
expense of the well-being of
others.
The narratives from all five subjects suggest instead that serial
murder is more fundamentally a pathology of self
process...[and that] pathology relates to how he
develops boundaries for
himself in his struggle to experience himself as
someone of
consequence...The important fact that the
majority of serial murders in
the United States are perpetrated by white males
may be explained by an
entitlement to social esteem and personal
gratification that they may feel
is their due - solely by virtue of being white
and male in this society -
so that when an individual (white male) is
denied he feels justified in
punishing those who would withhold that which he
feels is his basic
entitlement (Skrapec 1997: 196-197)
Yet what is perhaps the
most incisive statement of all comes from
R.S. Ratner, a sociologist whose brief excursion
into this field is
reprinted in this collection. In 'Ideological Homicide', Ratner
offers an
interpretation of serial murder that also brings
us closest to an
understanding of the social origins of
psychopathy. Ratner notes that
historical periods of economic instability -
either rising or declining
affluence - are also usually times when cultural
controls begin to
crumble; and he observes that the two waves of
multiple murder in the U.S.
(1910-1930, and 1970-1996) were also periods of
'massive economic
destabilization'. During such periods of social upheaval, of
sudden
hardship or affluence, 'cultural codes
harmonizing class goals and
individual aspirations are no longer efficiently
transmitted
throughweakened family units'. Vulnerable individuals then become more
likely to seek solutions to their predicaments
through a fantasy of
vengeance that is 'bereft of scruples'. Thus Ratner's hypothesized
socio-economic
trajectory for the lives of serial killers is as
follows: economic
destabilization and cultural collapse increase
the tension that results
from social inequality; this in turn tends to
destabilize all
interpersonal relations, especially for the
children of 'dysfunctioning
families, who suffer flagrant abuse and
neglect'. This abuse 'is
partially eroticized by the child as the only
available means of
rationalizing maltreatment and maintaining some
form of necessary
emotional contact'. Moreover, because the abuse and pain cannot be
comprehended by the victim, they must be
'anaesthetized' if the pain is to
be reduced: but the resulting 'deadening of
emotion' is precisely what
produces sociopathy in the child. Even when the pain is thus deadened and
compartmentalized, it does not disappear, and
inevitably it will later be
expressed:
'Scripted eroticized violence' becomes the fantasy in the
course of which the powerlessness of the child
is 'symbolically
neutralized and avenged'. In the ultimate orgy of serial murder,
Ratner
concludes, victims are ritually captured,
possessed, defiled, and disposed
of, affording the killer 'brief vengeance
against the rejecting
family/society' (Ratner 1996: 125-127).
7.
Future Research
The field has been
severely constrained, almost strangled, by the
absence of reliable data (whether historical,
national or international),
but this a problem that is shared in all
dimensions of violence.
Complicating matters still further is that every
developed nation defines
homicide rather differently (some include
attempted murder, some include
negligent homicide in vehicle accidents) so that
even crude rates are not
invariably comparable. Moreover, developing
nations hardly keep accurate
records at all, and the chance of a such a
country linking what may be
assumed to be isolated killings is very
low. To achieve a truly reliable
international data base is vital if the field is
to mature, but this will
require an enormous multinational cooperative
effort: nevertheless, until
that is accomplished, we will have no idea of
the scale of the phenomenon
that so engages our attention.
A second and fundamental
unresolved question remains whether in
fact serial killers were themselves the victims
of savage child abuse. The
earliest commentators, especially Leyton (1986)
and Levin and Fox (1985),
did not find substantive evidence that serial
killers were more abused
than other criminals or, for that matter, other
non-criminals. Yet later
research (raised especially by Hickey, Ressler et al, and Ratner) has,
without much in the way of solid statistical
verification, insisted that
child abuse is a fundamental quality in the
history of these killers.
Whether such claims are mere attempts by their
imprisoned informants to
somehow exonerate themselves from responsibility
will require sustained
and long-term study, with new techniques for the
verification of claims.
However, if they do indeed come from savagely
abusive families, then it
still begs the longstanding sociological dilemma
question of why some
victims of abuse react by committing their own
atrocities while others
resolve their rage in alternative ways - such as
alcoholism, drug
addiction, or the excesses of religious or
political fundamentalism.
A third and equally
significant question remains the unknown role
of biological/chemical/hormonal imbalances in
the construction of the
murderous personality. Despite many provocative claims, and despite the
promising preliminary results of some serotonin
studies (cf. M. Leyton et
al 1997), no conclusive evidence has yet been
assembled.
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