Serial Killers, why do they do it?

[Mia]

Have always been interested in serial killers, could never understand why they did what they did. To kill someone that you don't know or even do know is the ultimate horror in a world filled with people. So many of the known serial killers offer no explanations for their killing, for their taking of another person's life. They seem to have little reason behind the murders, perhaps a desire or hatred of others. Why do serial killers kill?

This is a documentary about Richard Kuklinski, a man who worked for the mafia:

 

[Kari Suttle]

Watch Criminal Minds, its on Netflix. Its about a team of FBI profilers who deal specifically with serial killers, oftentimes anyways. I've been watching it for years.

 

[ksheehan88]

That's my evenings viewing sorted! Thanks Mia

 

[toothless]

serial killers and how they work mentally is one of my obsessions, particulary serial killers with disabilities such as intellectual disability as those who have it genuinely [and not just those who feign it in jail to get lighter treatment] tend to struggle to cover up their murders,lack planning and often get found quicker but like autism more people with ID are killed than are killers and theres a huge amount of people in US jails/prisons who are wrongly diagnosed with it thanks to been given basic IQ tests and diagnosed just upon that.

my 'favourite' serial killer was albert fish.
does anyone else have a 'favourite' they like to read or watch documentaries about?

 

[ksheehan88]

serial killers and how they work mentally is one of my obsessions, particulary serial killers with disabilities such as intellectual disability as those who have it genuinely [and not just those who feign it in jail to get lighter treatment] tend to struggle to cover up their murders,lack planning and often get found quicker but like autism more people with ID are killed than are killers and theres a huge amount of people in US jails/prisons who are wrongly diagnosed with it thanks to been given basic IQ tests and diagnosed just upon that.

my 'favourite' serial killer was albert fish.
does anyone else have a 'favourite' they like to read or watch documentaries about?

Jack the Ripper

and the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley

 

[toothless]

Jack the Ripper

and the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley

oh yes!!!!
i havent seen much about jack the ripper apart from a repeated documentary on a crime channel,but i absolutely love reading and watching about brady and hindley,they have such a complex awful background and difficult family history,one piece of information that really hit me was that hindley is seen as such a cold woman against other humans but she was absolutely devastated when her cat died,that goes against the belief of pyschopathy/sociopathy where they are said to start off by harming animals,she loved animals which is weird i think.

 

[Rayner]

I kinda like learning about all serial killers. Especially the fictious one's that Walt longmire goes after.

 

[ksheehan88]

oh yes!!!!
i havent seen much about jack the ripper apart from a repeated documentary on a crime channel,but i absolutely love reading and watching about brady and hindley,they have such a complex awful background and difficult family history,one piece of information that really hit me was that hindley is seen as such a cold woman against other humans but she was absolutely devastated when her cat died,that goes against the belief of pyschopathy/sociopathy where they are said to start off by harming animals,she loved animals which is weird i think.

Its a tough one. I can't help but feel that anyone capable of murder is mentally ill... I don't mean like soldiers who kill on duty and stuff of course, I mean cold blooded killers a la Hindley/Brady...

Surely you can't be wired right to be able to go through with such horrendous crimes?

I've often seen it said, he was mad and she was evil. I think, they were both a bit of both... I also believe had they never met, neither would've committed such atrocities.

Separately, both perhaps odd... But together they were a lethal cocktail. They made eachother what they became.

 

[Rayner]

I guess it could be said that under the right set of conditions anybody could kill, it really just a matter of what those conditions are and that's what I find so fascinating.

Its a tough one. I can't help but feel that anyone capable of murder is mentally ill... I don't mean like soldiers who kill on duty and stuff of course, I mean cold blooded killers a la Hindley/Brady...

Surely you can't be wired right to be able to go through with such horrendous crimes?

I've often seen it said, he was mad and she was evil. I think, they were both a bit of both... I also believe had they never met, neither would've committed such atrocities.

Separately, both perhaps odd... But together they were a lethal cocktail. They made eachother what they became.

 

[ksheehan88]

I guess it could be said that under the right set of conditions anybody could kill, it really just a matter of what those conditions are and that's what I find so fascinating.

Yes I see your point, but you couldn't be sound of mind though surely?

For instance, a victim of domestic violence may kill their abuser - either through self defence or premeditated - but they wouldn't be in their usual state of mind when doing it... they would be in fight or flight mode.

To prey on young children and kidnap, abuse and murder them, you certainly could not be sound of mind!

 

[Rayner]

You're absolutely right, now why is it that some people can under let's say the 1st instance and and not under the 2nd instance? I guess it goes back to each instances having a different set of external and internal condition that influence the situation.




QUOTE="ksheehan88, post: 354522, member: 16182"]Yes I see your point, but you couldn't be sound of mind though surely?

For instance, a victim of domestic violence may kill their abuser - either through self defence or premeditated - but they wouldn't be in their usual state of mind when doing it... they would be in fight or flight mode.

To prey on young children and kidnap, abuse and murder them, you certainly could not be sound of mind![/QUOTE]

 

[Rayner]

And there a some that kill in a perfectly sound mind (let's say in combat where killing was the only method of self preservation) And they deal with the lifetime of trauma that goes along with it.

It's kind of what makes serial killers so scary is how they are
Able to rationalize what they are doing and then live themselfs
Afterwards.

Yes I see your point, but you couldn't be sound of mind though surely?

For instance, a victim of domestic violence may kill their abuser - either through self defence or premeditated - but they wouldn't be in their usual state of mind when doing it... they would be in fight or flight mode.

To prey on young children and kidnap, abuse and murder them, you certainly could not be sound of mind!

 

[Mia]

does anyone else have a 'favourite' they like to read or watch documentaries about?

John Wayne Gacy is one, Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway, Ed Gein. Many of them were the basis for; Silence of the lambs. Hannibal Lecter is a composite of several of them, as is Jamie Gumb the active serial killer in the movie.

The real serial killers, seem to have many things in common, horrible and brutally extreme childhoods and many have been diagnosed as schizophrenic or bipolar. Its extremely rare for people with mood or psychotic disorders to become serial killers. The abuse would have to be so terrible at a critical point in their lives, as to have severely altered the way their brains function.

Many of these people led seemingly regular lives, with a house in the 'burbs,' children, wives. Some were well-regarded in the communities they lived in, did charity work, helped others. Yet they had a secret life in which they did horrible things. Suspect that they used the family life as a sort of cover for the dark side of their lives, or they may have wanted both.

But what could make them like some people, and not kill them? Yet murder others? Often people that they didn't even know.

 

[nowwhat]

Im a serial buzzkiller, does that count?

I have no clue why someone would want to murder random strangers periodically. Kicking that one guy in your department down a long flight of stairs, and he happens to snap his neck? That, I understand the motivation behind.

 

[pax]

Its a tough one. I can't help but feel that anyone capable of murder is mentally ill... I don't mean like soldiers who kill on duty and stuff of course, I mean cold blooded killers a la Hindley/Brady...

Surely you can't be wired right to be able to go through with such horrendous crimes?

I've often seen it said, he was mad and she was evil. I think, they were both a bit of both... I also believe had they never met, neither would've committed such atrocities.

Separately, both perhaps odd... But together they were a lethal cocktail. They made eachother what they became.

I think that people who voluntarily to go to war and kill people have a few screws loose

 

[Mia]

Wonder if psychologically they were attempting to kill aspects of their own selves, each time, or some manifestation of the person who had brutalized them as children?

 

[Caelix3]

I find serial killers interesting as well!

 

[Meg12]

I do too.... but I'm interested in the psychology of anyone who strays from the norm of whatever society they are part of.

 

[Mia]

I do too.... but I'm interested in the psychology of anyone who strays from the norm of whatever society they are part of.

You put it perfectly, its exactly why I'm interested.

 

[Mia]

Why were there so many serial killers in the 1980s?

............

Vronsky has another hypothesis to add to the list: he believes the rise of the North American serial killer in the late 20th century can be traced to the ravages of World War Two, which lasted from 1939 to 1945, and the children of men returning from battlefields in Europe and the Pacific.

It's an idea he put forward in his newly published book Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers.

Searching for reasons behind the glut of serial murders over three decades, Vronsky looked at the killers and their childhoods.

"Serial killers come from among us - they come out of our society," he said.

"These are not aliens that arrive from another planet. They're children who grow up to become these serial offenders."

He realised that many were children during World War Two and the ensuing post-war era - a time when the psychological impact of the global conflict and its savagery was not being discussed.

It was a war that "was far more vicious and primitive than we have been able to acknowledge", Vronsky says.

Many of the killers from that period have not spoken on the record about their fathers, he said, but those that have often referred to them coming back from the war in a traumatised state.

He said there was a less pronounced but noticeable increase in serial killings from 1935 to 1950, following World War One, and hopes sociologists and criminologists look more closely at the war experiences of the fathers of these killers, and their paternal relationships.

Why was there a spike in serial killers?