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... his by killing his mom. (Egger 138) Even the Shakespearian multiple murderer Hamlet had an unnatural obsession with his mother's sexuality. "Serial murderers are frequently found to have unusual or unnatural relationships with their mothers, " notes Steven Egger in his book The Killers among Us. (Egger 140) In our culture, the imposing image of "Mother" looms large in our collective psyches, and some writers easily accept that these killers are lashing out at maternal tyranny. If these murderers are still dominated by Mother (Hitchcock's Norman Bates is the archetype), then it is easy to dismiss them as "mama's boys" who never fully matured. Perhaps we find comfort in this cliche -- the mother is a readymade excuse, particularly in our contemporary era of obsessive parenting. Yet, as we look at some of the techniques of the serial killers' mothers, we are inclined to see a deadly link between the womb and the tomb.
In an effort to keep their children chaste, some mothers have linked sexuality with death. Ed Gein's religiously fanatical, notorious mother convinced her son that women were vessels of sin and caused disease. In some sort of twisted misinterpretation, Gein made literal vessels out of women, using their skulls for bowls, and other domestic objects. (Furio 171) Ed's body may have escaped from sexual disease, but his mind was clearly contaminated. Joseph Kallinger was adopted by sadistic, Catholic parents, and after a hernia operation at age 6, his mother told him that the surgery was to keep his penis from growing. Kallinger never questioned her, and as an adult believed it had been stunted. A strict disciplinarian, Kallinger's mother forced him to hold his open hand over a flame, beating him if he cried.
Kallinger later grew up taking extreme pleasure in torturing others, and became a sadistic parent himself. After taking an insurance policy out on his 13 -year-old son Joey, he slowly drowned him, deaf to his own son's pleas for mercy. (Egger 162) "I certainly wanted for my mother a nice, quiet easy death like everyone else wants, " said Ed Kemper. (Lassieur 161) His idea of an easy death is markedly unusual -- after beheading his mom, he shoved her vocal cords down the garbage disposal, raped her headless body, and, by some accounts, placed her head on the living room mantel and used it as a dartboard. Admittedly, Kemper's mom was a shrill, tyrannical nag who locked her young son in the basement when he grew too large and frightened his sisters. As an adult, Kemper and his mother fought constantly, yet he chose to live with her. Why not just move away and don't take her calls? "Hillside Strangler" Kenneth Bianchi's adoptive mother was pathologically over-protective. When Ken wet his pants, she took him to the doctor to have his genitals examined.
One protective agency wrote that Bianchi's mother was "deeply disturbed, socially ambitious, dissatisfied, unsure, opinionated and overly protective... had smothered this adopted son in medical attention and maternal concern from the moment of adoption. " (Furio 192) As a child Bianchi was very dependent on his mother, yet harbored a deadly hostility beneath the surface. Some serial killers had their sexually uninhibited mothers to blame. These mothers overstepped the boundaries, exposing their children to inappropriate sexual behavior. Bobby Jo Long killed women he characterized as whores and sluts, who he said reminded him of his own mom. She had frequent sex (according to him) with men in the same room where Bobby slept.
According to Long, he shared his bed with his mother until he was 13 years old. (Furio 196) Charles Manson's prostitute mother Kathy Maddox, indifferently declared his name as "No Name Maddox" for his birth certificate. She hoisted him off on relatives, and in one story, famous but probably untrue, she traded the infant Charlie for a pitcher of beer. When he was sent to live with his aunt, his uncle told him he was a sissy, and punished him by sending him to school dressed as a girl. (Reinhart 143) Henry Lee Lucas also suffered gender confusion as a child, courtesy of his mother's sadism. She was a heavy drinker and bootlegger. For unknown reasons she dressed him as a girl until he was 7. "I lived as a girl. I was dressed as a girl.
I had long hair as a girl. I wore girl's clothes. " (Egger 116) She senselessly beat him after he had his hair cut because his teacher complained. At one point, his mom struck him on back of head with a wooden beam, fracturing his skull. Lucas was also apparently exposed to his mother's sexual activities. He killed his mother in 1951. (Egger 119) It is usually the sadistically disciplinarian father that pops up in the serial killer's family tree. John Gacy's dad berated his son, calling him a sissy, queer, and a failure.
A violent alcoholic, Gacy's father beat his mother, and shot his son's beloved dog to punish young John. When Gacy later strangled his young victims, he encouraged them to stay brave while facing death. "Through this ritual, Gacy sought to reassert his own vision of a masculine identity that had been squashed down by his father, " wrote Joel Norris. (Reinhart 169) John Wayne Gacy was one of the worst serial killers to ever get caught. Gacy too was a lust killer. John Gacy was arrested in 1968 for sexual assault on a boy. He did not kill the boy, but he did try to pay him off to keep him quiet. The boy did not keep quiet, rather he testified against Gacy.
Gacy paid another boy to beat the victim up. He was sentenced for ten years for this crime. But, was released in 1971 after three years in prison. (Furio 210) John Gacy was married before this whole ordeal. His wife shortly after divorced him.
He then moved from Iowa to Des Plaines, Illinois. He got remarried, and started a construction business, which he ran from his home. To most people John seemed like an all around good guy. He was portrayed as a caring and giving man. If you had talked to his wife or co-workers on the other hand, you would have gotten a totally different story. They said that he was mean and fought with them constantly.
In 1976 his second wife also left him. Gacy, from then on was quite regularly seen in what was known as the homosexual prostitute area of town. Gacy's neighbors reported seeing young men and boys enter his home at all hours of the day. Although many of the men and boys that were hired were not killed. Many of them were beaten, or hurt in some manner. In 1978 a 27 -year-old abuse man checked into a Chicago hospital.
This man gave the police a description of the assailant. The man did not want to let this crime go unpunished. Finally, the victim saw the vehicle that he had been transported in and reported the license plate number to the authorities. The vehicle was traced to John Wayne Gacy whom was later arrested.
He was later released due to insufficient evidence. (Schechter 130) Gacy's crimes finally caught up with him on December 11, 1978. A 15 -year-old boy who had came over to inquire about a job, disappeared. The boys name was Robert Post. When Robert did not return home, his mother notified the police. This was enough to finally get a search warrant for Gacy's home and property. When the police entered his home the smell was putrid.
The investigators followed the smell to a crawlspace beneath the house. When they looked in the space they found three decomposing bodies. The floors were then removed from within the house and the authorities found more bodies. Finally, the house was lifted from its foundation; beneath the house the investigators found bodies in long trenches and in shallow graves.
He had used quick lime speed up the decomposition process. In all they found 33 victims including five that he reportedly threw into a river. Gacy was convicted and sentenced to die in 1980. Over ten years later he was finally put to death by lethal injection. Albert De Salvo's father would bring home prostitutes and brutally beat his mother, breaking her fingers one by one as young Albert helplessly watched. The elder De Salvo sold his children off as slaves to a farmer in Maine, while his mother went frantically searching for them for six months, as story that has been confirmed by family friends and social workers. "Pa was a plumber, " said De Salvo. "He smashed me once across the back with a pipe.
I didn't move fast enough. " (Lassieur 180) To conclude this report, it would be interesting to assess the following statistics. The USA, with around 6 % of the worlds population, creates more than three-quarters of all serial killers, and records confirm an increase. (Schechter 202) The FBI has estimated that, by the millennium, serial killers could be claiming an average of 11 lives a day. 84 % of American killers are Caucasian. Men make up at least 90 % of Serial Killers. Yet, 65 % of victims are female. (Schechter 204) It turns out that the United States is not a really safe country when it comes to serial killers.
Words Count: 3, 199. Bibliography Egger, Steven A. (1998). The Killers among Us: An Examination of Serial Murder and Its Investigation. New York: Harper Collins. Furio, Jennifer. (1998). The Serial Killer Letters: A Penetrating Look inside the Minds of Murderers.
London: Pluto Press. Lassieur, Allison. (2000). Serial Killers. New York: Random House. Norris, Joel. (1998). Serial Killers.
New York: Random House. Reinhart, Christopher. (2000). The Death Penalty and Serial Killers. Michigan: Zondervan Publishers. Schechter, Harold, and David Everitt. (1997).
The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York: Random House. Wilson, Colin, and Damon Wilson. (1996). The Killers among Us: Serial Murderers of the 20 th Century. Houston: Basic Books.
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