What Is A Serial Killer?
May 2nd, 2011 | by Peter Saint-Clair
I’ve done the “What Is A Cult, exactly?” post, now it’s time to focus on serial killers. There are some people who have some misconceptions about serial killers that I’d like to put to rest now.
The term “serial killer” goes back to at least the 1930s when German police chief Ernst Gennat is said to have coined the term, but was reintroduced into the main stream in 1970s by former FBI Special Agent Robert Ressler. A serial killer is typically defined as someone who has killed 3 or more people, usually in a similar fashion, over a period of more than a month with a “cooling off” period. This type of killer differs from a mass murderer in that a mass murderer kills a group of people all at once, and differs from spree killers in that spree killers kill without any type of break in between killings. The FBI states that in addition to sexual gratification, serial killers kill because of anger, for thrills, financial gain or a sick form of attention seeking.
The typical serial killer is usually an Anglo male that posses a higher than normal IQ. They tend to work in menial jobs, probably as an attempt to seem “normal”. They were most likely abused emotionally, sexually or physically by a family member and as a result begin interests in voyeurism, fetishism and sadomasochistic pornography at an early age. They tend to be bullied at school and are involved in some sort of sadistic activity including the torture animals. More often than not, serial killers tend to develop a fantasy world to cope with all the bad things going on around them until the line between fantasy and reality is blurred to the point that they begin to act out whatever fantasy they have created for themselves.
Of course, those things aren’t always the case. Take Ted Bundy (the Campus Killer) and Jeffery Dahmer (The Milwaukee Monster) who described their childhoods as more or less normal, with no history of abuse. Even though it’s not often talked about much, around 22% of all serial killers are of African descent – like LA’s most prolific serial killer, Chester Turner, who killed 10 women and an unborn baby. You then have the extremely rare female serial killer – like serial killer Aileen Wuornos, the prostitute who killed 7 of her “johns”.
There are several theories that try to explain why people engage in serial killing. In one camp you have the “born, not made” theory which basically states that serial killers are born with the predisposition to kill, i.e., they are born sociopathic and can’t learn to operate within societal norms.
Another theory is Fractured Identity Syndrome which suggests that a social event, or series of events, during one’s childhood is the reason serial killers do what they do.
You then have the “military theory” which suggests that being in the military is the catalyst for serial killing. Jeffery Dahmer was actually in the Army for a short time where he served as a combat medic. It should be noted here that only 6% of all serial killers have a military background.
And even still, the Social process theory suggests that serial killers may turn to crime because of an inability to deal with peer pressure from family and friends.
So where do you stand on all of this? Why do you think serial killers kill? Throw me a comment down there and let me know what you think!
The name's Chris writing under the nom de plume 
Nigel Blackwell May 2nd, 2011 at 11:16 pm
I’m sure there are as many reasons for people being or becoming serial killers as there are serial killers. I don know that they were my default choice for an antagonist for far too long!
One of the problems in trying to understand serial killers is that they don’t conform to the group of mainstream behaviors, so those of us in that group trying to classify them is likely to be flawed from the start. Where we see no reason, they see obvious reasons. Where we don’t even think there is a link, they are driven by it.
Now if I could just stop that twitch when I see big knives . . .
Cheers!