What makes a serial murderer

Both are murderers, right? However, these two killers fall into two completely different categories of murderers. Jack the Ripper, an unidentified person, infamous for murdering several women in the slums of nineteenth century London, is a serial killer. James Holmes shot and killed twelve people and injured fifty-eight others at a Colorado movie theater, making him a mass murderer. The numbers and timing are important factors.

For a serial killer, the murders must be separate events, which are most often driven by a psychological thrill or pleasure. Serial killers often lack empathy and guilt, and most often become egocentric individuals; these characteristics classify certain serial killers as psychopaths.

The most notable example of a charming serial killer is Ted Bundy , who would fake an injury to appear harmless to his victims. Ted Bundy is classified as an organized serial killer; he methodically planned out his murder and generally stalked his victim for several weeks before committing the crime.

Most serial killer biographies are self-reported, so you are relying on what they tell you. That being said, there do seem to be some examples. Ted Bundy is a classic one. He did, however, grow up believing that his mother was his sister.

We had a killer here in Canada who was the commander of an air force base. He was flying the equivalent of Air Force One — flying around the prime minister, visiting dignitaries — then suddenly in his 40s, a colonel, he commits two sexual homicides.

He is a mystery. There is nothing in his childhood to explain his behavior. There is also the strangeness of the late age at which he started. I am currently studying a serial killer called Richard Cottingham. I talked to him in prison last month. He comes from a nuclear family … the father was there, the mother was there, and there is no clear history of trauma or abuse. But there is nothing in his past that obviously parallels the early lives of, say, Charles Manson or Henry Lee Lucas.

They grew up to be, well, maybe not all well-adjusted citizens, but certainly not serial killers. What is the missing X factor? My sense is responsibility falls on the offender here.

Serial killers choose to act on their compulsions. During the first big wave of celebrity serial killers in the s and s, some defense lawyers tried to argue in court that serial killers are not guilty by reason of insanity, because an irresistible compulsion to kill is a form of temporary insanity.

The legal definition of insanity is an inability to distinguish right from wrong and an inability to understand the consequences of an action. One can make the argument that serial killers suffer from psychopathy, that because they are psychopaths they have no sense of remorse or empathy and their decision-making process is faulty. The number one trait of a psychopath is a lack of empathy. Others are a tendency to lie, a need for thrills — psychopaths become bored very quickly — and narcissism.

But the lack of empathy is the biggest thing. One common explanation is that psychopaths experience some kind of trauma in early childhood — perhaps as early as their infant state — and as a consequence suppress their emotional response. They never learn the appropriate responses to trauma, and never develop other emotions, which is why they find it difficult to empathize with others.

They can compartmentalize. What do you make of Bruce McArthur, the alleged Toronto gay village killer arrested earlier this year? Bruce McArthur is interesting because he was apprehended at such a late age. If McArthur has been committing crimes since the s or s then this is going to be an extremely difficult investigation. Currently law enforcement are looking at his dating apps for evidence and to link him to more possible victims.

There have been dozens of gay serial killers. They tend not to torture their victim and they are less interested in mutilation. But the motivation is similar — the need for control over their victim. The types of predation in which female serial killers engage are often an extension or perversion of gender roles. For example, the expectation that women are in nurturing roles, caring roles.

You have a category of female serial killers with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxey — mothers killing children, nurses killing patients. Thrill seekers are serial killers that see outsmarting the law as some sort of amusement. There have been , unsolved murders in the U. Are serial killers to blame? Here's everything you need to know:. Clicking on the names below will uncover short biographies of each of these infamous serial killers.

David Berkowitz Son of Sam. Jeffrey Dahmer. Gary Ridgway Green River Killer. Charles Manson. Jack the Ripper. Ask a Librarian.