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In the 1970 s, a man named Edmund Kemper killed a string of women who looked like his mother. Finally, Kemper snapped and killed his mother. He then tore out her vocal chords and threw them in the garbage disposal to silence her forever (Profilers). The Boston strangler said he got a feeling that made him go out and kill thirteen women and place them in obscene positions to be found (Chitolie). These men are serial killers.
And, like most all serial killers, they follow a certain specific pattern. Sometimes called cookie cutter murderers, serial killers exhibit many of the same traits. Most serial killers are males in their mid thirties (Mind, Kozel). Most all are either psychotic or have had a very disturbing childhood. All of these men have above average Iqs (Kilian). The killings are ritualistic, premeditated, violent and brutal.
Women are not classified as serial killers because most female multitudes do not derive from sexual fantasy. This sexual urge is the base motivator for most serial killers. Most were never brought up to relate with others or have a consensual relationship, and most are cowards when it comes to these relationships (Mind, Kozel). Many killers will collect souvenirs or trophies of their killings, but they have little or no relationship with their victim. They usually enjoy the chase of their investigators. Though they usually do not want to be caught, they will leave clues or notes at a crime scene to lead the police on.
The mind of a serial killer is a very fascinating thing. Obviously, these killers minds do not think the same way the majority of the population does. They are not born this way though. Most killers come from bizarre childhoods that gave them different outlooks on the world. Serial killers never actually mature psychologically. They have no understanding that a human being may suffer.
Many times, these killers cannot be blamed. If a child throws something, and they were never taught not to throw, it is not the childs fault. How should he know? It is the same case with many serial killers. They grew up around violence and they do not know any different. Genetics are also factors that could possibly make a person more likely to be a murderer.
There is no question that the media plays a large role by glamorizing murder and violence. There are four main types of serial killers (Mind, Kozel). Most killers can be classified into these groups. The first is the visionary killer. These people kill in response to voices or visions in their heads. Psychotic killers also fall into this category.
Mission-oriented killers feel that it is their duty in life to rid the world of certain groups of people. These can be religious groups, prostitutes, or even women who resemble the killers mother or wife. The hedonistic killer is one that kills only for pleasure. They love the sight of blood and can really get into the murder itself. Many receive sexual arousal from it. The last of the categories is the control-oriented killer.
Most serial killers fall into this category. These people get pleasure from being able to control their victim. Some scientists say that hedonistic and mission-oriented killers can also fall into this category. Contrary to popular belief, the serial murderer and the mass murderer are two different types of killers. There are actually three main types of multitude: mass murder, serial murder, and spree murder. Spree killing can take place during another crime.
For example, a bank robber kills people at the scene and during the getaway. There are certain specifics to take into consideration when differentiating between serial and mass murder. Serial killers often kill or acquire their victims at different locations and at different times, with a cooling off period between murders (Holmes). They build up a massive amount of stress between each murder, driving them over the edge (AJ). Mass murderers kill their victims usually all in the same place at the same time. Mass murders do not follow the psychological pattern molded by serial killers.
Many mass murderers will suddenly snap and start killing people. Serial killers gradually become killers, starting out at an early age. Ed Gein was possibly the most psychotic killer ever (Mind, Kozel). Born on August 8, 1906 in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, Gein was never given a clue of reality. He lived alone in a remote farmhouse with his mother, father, and brother until they all died. Gein suffered a lifetime of schizophrenia.
After his mother died, he was left alone. He began to rob graves; sometimes taking whole bodies and sometimes just pieces. After graves, he moved on to the living. Of the bodies, Gein made bed knobs out of skulls, cereal bowls out of server skullcaps; mobiles out of noses, lips, and labia and a belt made of nipples. He also used the skin for various things like lampshades, wastebaskets and upholstery for his chairs. For Gein's dancing under the moon ceremony that he created, He wore a human scalp and face over his own.
He also wore a vest constructed of skin, complete with breasts. To complete the ensemble, he strapped female genitalia above his own. Gein was a very disorganized killer. It was not hard for the police to find him once he started to murder.
When investigators searched his house, they immediately found a headless body hanging from the rafters gutted like a deer. Her genitals were cut out and her heart was placed in a saucepan. Her head was used for an ornament with nails tied with twine driven into the ears. A box of organs lay in a nearby corner. Not knowing his wrong doing, Gein immediately confessed and was judged insane.
He was put in a mental institution and his belongings were all auctioned off. Though only convicted of killing three women, Gein is also linked to two men who used him as a hunting guide. One of the mens coats was found near Gein's house, but the police never followed up on the case. In addition, two vaginas were found that could be linked to neither his victims nor the cemetary records (Gein).
Gein was the basis for the movies Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the character Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs (Christy). Ed Gein grew up alone without a taste of reality. His mother never told him anything about sex except that it was wrong. Gein did not know how to satisfy the urges he felt. The result was gruesome, but he did not know that. Being a schizophrenic, Gein would put up curtains of skin with the same ease as anyone else would curtains of velvet.
He was still a child inside, with the sexual fantasies of an adult. One of the oldest and most famous serial killers of all time was Jack the Ripper. Jack committed a series of murders called the White Chapel Murders in 1888 (Mind, Kozel). He terrorized the city of London murdering prostitutes for over ten weeks before he stopped. Jacks first victim was Mary Nichols. Nichols was slit across the throat from ear to ear.
She also suffered from a punctured pelvis and stomach. There were post mortem stab wounds at her genitals. Annie chapman, Jacks second victim, was choked unconscious then disemboweled. Her entrails were hung over her shoulder and her bladder. The vagina, uterus and ovaries were all missing. The third victim, Elizabeth Stride, had her throat slashed, but there was no mutilation done.
However, the fourth victim who was found three hours later, was gutted like a pig. Her entrails were strewn around her neck. The killer wrote, The june are not ones who will be blamed for nothing, on a nearby wall. The victims face and throat were also cut. Jack took a kidney, which he ate half of and sent half back to the police. Jack went out with a bang with Mary Kelley, his fifth victim.
He slit her throat so deep she was nearly decapitated. Her forehead was skinned and her ears and nose were sliced off and set on a nightstand. The left arm was nearly severed and both of her legs were flayed open with her liver draped over one. She was disemboweled and her hand was inserted into her abdomen. Severed breasts sat on the nightstand along with the nose, ears, heart and kidneys. Blood was splattered all over the wall.
The Victim was reportedly three months pregnant. Jack took the uterus and fetus. Jack the Ripper was never found. After his fifth victim he disappeared without a clue for the police to follow. What made Jack so feared was that he wrote Catch me letters to the police leading them on.
He was very enthusiastic about his killings in these letters. It seemed like he was having the time of his life. Jack was a mission-oriented killer. He thought it was his duty to rid the world of these whores. Authorities believed that Jack was a doctor because of all of the precise cuts on his victims bodies, but he laughed at the accusation in one of his letters. Jack was also probably strongly religious because of his hate for prostitutes.
The largest suspect in the White Chapel murders was prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, an heir to the English thrown. Pedro Alonso Lopez was one of the most cold-blooded killers of all time. A native of Columbia, Lopez is nicknamed Monster of the Andes (Serial, Mayhem. net). When Lopez was eight years old, he was kicked out of his house for fondling his younger sister. He was then picked up by a pedophile who repeatedly sodomized him against his will.
By the age of eighteen, Lopez had been in and out of jail where he was constantly gangbanged. He killed three of his assailants. Lopez killed more than one hundred women in Peru. He then moved to Columbia and then Ecuador where he killed about three women a week. The authorities thought these women were disappearing into slavery or prostitution rings and did not think much of them. Lopez said that the women from ecuador were the most fun to kill because they were quiet and did not put up a fight.
In 1980, a flash flood uncovered many of Lopez's earlier victims. He was finally arrested, but authorities would not believe his body count until he led them to the graves of more than fifty bodies. Pedro Alonso Lopez is credited with around three hundred deaths, though most say this is an understatement. Lopez was very hedonistic. He loved what he did. Another hedonistic killer was Richard Ramirez or the Night Stalker.
Ramirez said that he was a disciple of Satan, but investigators think that may just be an excuse. He killed from 1984 to 1985 (Serial, Mayhem. net). Typically, Ramirez would break into random, unlit homes, kill the parents, and rape the younger daughter. After this, he would put on a little AC/DC, smoke marijuana, raid the fridge, and spray satanic symbols all over the walls. On one occasion, Ramirez took his victims eyes out with a spoon and mailed them back to the crime scene the next day.
The night after a warrant was issued for Ramirez's arrest, a group of people made a citizens arrest while Ramirez was trying to steal a car. The police were just in time to keep the crowd from beating him to death. Ramirez acted like a rockstar t in court, sporting sunglasses and a pentagram tattoo on his palm. He loved the camera and from time to time would look at reporters and yell hail Satan! in the middle of court. Random outbursts and antics kept the trial going for three years.
Ramirez was finally convicted of thirteen counts of murder and thirty felonies. He told one cellmate, Ive killed twenty people, man. I love that blood. When Ramirez left the courtroom for the last time, he turned to the jury and said, see you in Disneyland. Ramirez was engaged to Doreen lioy in 1988. Lioy was a free lance editor and a virgin with an IQ of 152.
She was attracted to Ramirez since the first time she had seen him, battered and bruised after his arrest. She wrote 75 letters to him while in prison. After eight years and many difficulties, Ramirez and Lioy were married on October 3, 1996. Jeffrey Dahmer was undoubtedly the most famous serial killer of our time. Killing his victims gave him a sense of control that he never had as a child. At age seven, Dahmer was made to believe that he was adopted (Serial, Webzone.
net). He was very distant from his father, and his mother disapproved of him. He was said to have a learning disability in grades one and two. A neighbor boy sexually molested him at age eight in his little town of Bath, Ohio. Dahmer noticed the control of his mother over his father. This gave him inadequate feelings of masculinity.
Throughout his life, he felt alienated from his family and others. At age ten, Dahmer started experimenting with dead animals. He decapitated rodents and then directed them. He bleached chicken bones with acid. He also nailed a dogs carcass to a tree and placed its severed head on a stake.
Dahmer got pleasure out of this because of the control that he had over the dead animals. Dahmer's first human victim was in 1978 when he picked up a hitchhiker on his way home (Jeffrey). Dahmer took the man to his house for drinks. After a few hours of talking, the man wanted to leave. Dahmer had other plans.
When the man tried to leave, Dahmer crushed his skull in with a barbell and strangled him. He dismembered the victim and buried him in the back yard. Dahmer moved in with his grandmother in 1982 (Mind, Kozel). He lived in her basement where he performed his strange experiments.
In 1986 and 1988 Jeffrey was charged with indecent exposure for masturbating in public. Dahmer's grandmother forced him to move out in 1988 due to his strange hours and the stench of his experiments. Dahmer moved into an apartment in Milwaukee where he worked in a chocolate factory. Now he could resume his activities without interruption.
On September twenty-sixth, 1988, Dahmer was arrested and convicted for fondling a Location boy and offering cash for a strip show. He served ten months in jail. After being released, the killings went on undisturbed until 1991 when the brother of the boy Dahmer had arrested was found wandering the streets naked, dazed, and covered in blood. The people that found the boy called the police. The boy led the police to Dahmer's apartment, but since the boy spoke no english, the cops bought Dahmer's story that the two were having a lovers quarrel. The police returned the boy to Dahmer and to his death.
Finally, in July of 1991, Tracy Edwards escaped from Dahmer's clutches; handcuffs still attached to his wrists. He found the police and led them to Dahmer's apartment where he was arrested. The cops could smell the decaying flesh from outside of the apartment. Inside they found Polaroids of dismembered bodies in the bedroom.
There was a skeleton hanging in the shower and seven skulls plus another skeleton were found in a closet. Dahmer's freezer contained four skulls with flesh still on them and a heart for dinner that night. Oddly enough, there was no food in the refrigerator, only condiments. A drum of acid was found containing the tories of three men.
A penis was found in a lobster pot. Dahmer had tried to make a zombie out of one of his victims by drilling holes in the head and pouring acid inside. Dahmer plead not guilty by reason of insanity. He was proven legally sane and convicted of sixteen counts of murder.
He then confessed and apologized for what he had done. Another inmate killed him in 1994. The killer said he was on orders from god. Dahmer's mother had his brain preserved in formaldehyde for study.
Since Dahmer never was able to be close with his family, he had trouble with his relationships. He found no other way to keep his lovers than to kill them. It gave him control. What made Dahmer different from most psychopaths was the fact that he knew what he was doing was wrong and wanted to stop. He knew better, but could not stop the rage built up throughout his childhood. All of the above men were brutal murderers.
Yet, all of the above men did not just decide it would be fun to cut someones heart out. These men grew up in an environment that brought them to this stage. Granted, some are psychotic in nature, but child life has a large role in the mind of a psychotic person. The media plays a very large part in some of the development of serial killers. If children do not see anything but violence on television, how are they supposed to know it is immoral? The media glamorize violence and serial killers.
The serial killer has some sort of sick charismatic magnetism that appeals to the deranged curiosity in everyone. Wether they love to hate them or they just plain love them, people love serial killers. They are not your average everyday killer, they make for a good story and the media grabs ahold of it. Whether it is the media or the parents, killers have always been and killers will always be.
There is nothing to stop that. Ted Bundy, a famous killer who murdered women who looked like his ex wife said it best. We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your dead tomorrow (Serial Oddities). + AJ, The Serial Killer Info Site, web (23 Nov 1997) + Chitolie, Raymond, The Word Wide Serial Killer Homepage, web (23 Nov 1997) + Christy, Ed Gein, Serial Info and Links, web serialkillr / gein . html, (23 Nov 1997) + Ed Gein, web km/O 0 OO 0 O 00 IllIlIIl / gein bio . html, (28 Nov 1997) + Holmes, Ronald M. &# 038; Stephen T. , Understanding Mass Murder: A Starting Point, Federal Probation, (March 1992), pp. 53 - 61, SIRS 1992 Crime, Volume 4, Article 83, SIRS CD-ROM Researcher, CD-ROM, SIRS, Fall 1997 + Jeffrey Dahmer, Welcome to Serial Killers, web stephen / serial .
htm, (28 Nov 1997) + Kilian, Michael, The Murdering Mind, Chicago Tribune, April 19, 1991, Sec. 5, # 1, SIRS 1991 CRIME, Vol. 4, Article 70, SIRS CD-ROM Researcher, CD-ROM, SIRS, Fall 1997 + The Mind of a Killer, Computer Software, Kozel Multimedia, MS-Windows 3. 1, 95, CD-ROM + Profilers International, The Serial Killer Information Network, web (23 Nov 1997) + Serial Killers, web (23 Nov 1997) + Serial Killers: Into the Mind of a Serial Killer, web (23 Nov 1997) + Serial Killer Oddities, Serial Killers, web jason jam / oddity . htm, (28 Nov 1997)
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