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Drilling into the skull of a young man he began
to funnel a stream of sulfuric acid into the
head of his unconscious victim to create a zombie
to fulfill all of his fantasies. Dead within
a day, he mummified the head of his victim placing
it in the freezer beside the skulls of those
who came before. Dismembering the remnants of
the body he placed skin, blood, and bone into
a fifty-gallon vat of acid dissolving what was
left of the young man. This is the mind of Jeffrey
Dahmer, he murdered not in anger, revenge, or
financial enrichment but on impulse and desire.
Like many serial killers before him like Albert
DeSalvo, Theodore Bundy, and David Berkowitz,
psychologists, criminologists, and scientists
searched to answer the question of why serial
killers commit these mass killings and how they
became such violent humans. What is left are
two schools of thought, are serial killers born
with predetermined genes that play an integral
part in creating their homicidal tendencies
or do psychokillers become murderous through
their surroundings as children? Though it is
important to understand how killers become such
vicious individuals it is critical to understand
what defines a serial killer and what makes
them so incredibly different from other homicidal
murderers.
A large distinction that separates
serial killers from other murderers are their
motives to kill. Normally homicides are committed
due to disputes that range from family affairs,
gang violence, financial difficulties, and disputes
between lovers and between friends. "A
psychokiller, I should make clear, is not a
regular murderer. A murderer has a vendetta,
a nice specific personal thing against his victim"
(Corin 188). Unlike that of a normal homicide,
serial killers are only driven by instinct and
a desire to kill. Due to these sexual desires
and the need to fulfill their arousing fantasies
it often drives these individual to murder those
who are complete strangers. Though serial killers
only make up for one percent murderers nearly
a dozen account for one hundred to two hundred
murders annually (Fox 102).
Grover Godwin who profiles
serial killers collected data from one hundred
and seven serial killers and their seven hundred
and twenty eight victims from sources that came
from the FBI, local police departments, newspaper
reports, and from the Homicide Investigations
and Tracking System (HITS) database in Washington
State. From Godwins investigation he found that
nearly ninety percent of victims were complete
strangers to the killer and that only three
percent were friends and one percent were that
of family members (Fox 105). This explains why
serial killers are able to get away with the
massacres for so incredibly long. When detectives
go to investigate the disappearances of those
missing there is no link between the killer
and the victim making it practically impossible
solve these mysteries. In an identical study
by criminologist Eric Hickey, he assembled a
database of nearly four hundred serial killers
in which he found that eighty four percent of
killers were male, twenty percent were of African
American descent, and that the first murder
committed by a serial killer was at the average
age of twenty seven and a half years old (Fox
106). Even in movies these statistics can be
found such as Psycho, Silence of the Lambs,
and the Saw series in which Hollywood has repeatedly
created characters that fit the description
of a white male in their mid twenties to thirties
creating this stereotypical image of serial
killers.
Publicized in movies, magazines,
and on TV serial killers have "Clearly
become a fixture in our popular culture"
(Fox 102). Unlike in the movie Silence of the
Lambs where Dr. Hannibal Lector is a man of
intelligence and riddles with an above average
IQ, most serial killers do not have an education
past that of high school. Grover Godwin found
that only sixteen percent of the nearly one
hundred and seven serial killers he had studied
went to college and of those, only four percent
actually graduated (Fox 105). Though most have
very little education, successful serial killers
must still possess the cleverness and wit to
be able to dispose of multiple bodies and outsmart
the police by leaving little to no traces of
evidence.
"Many of them are exceptionally
skillful in their presentation of self, so much
so that they are beyond suspicions and thus
are difficult to apprehend" (Fox 105).
Incorrect is the assumption that serial killers
wear hockey masks or walk around in pull ups
carrying a chain saw. Movies and TV have put
an image into our minds that these are the characteristics
of a murderer when in reality they are masters
at disguising their emotions and thoughts letting
them blend into society. Magicians of death,
they reel their victims into a false sense of
security by many times tricking them with an
offer of sex and drugs. Once they have control
of their victims they remove their fake personality
killing their victim with any weapon that they
can find, fulfilling there wants, desires, and
impulses.
Not to say that the aftermath
of serial killers is trivial but the real controversy
among theorists lies on how and why serial killers
take the step from fantasy to reality. We are
all made up of tiny individual genes that make
up our personality traits defining who and what
we are. Many believe that murderers do not grow
into the shell of a killer but have predetermined
genes that make up the chemical balance of our
brain, body, thoughts, ideas, and most importantly
actions. "Generally speaking biological
factors vis-à-vis the causes of behavior
can be defined as those 'processes and conditions
that typically are considered as belonging to
or characteristic of the organism'" (Jeffrey
78). As Lucy Corin in Everyday Psycho Killers
presents, violence and death is apart of whom
we are as humans and shows that violence is
most prevalent when we are in our youth. Corin
relates to the nature of violence in children
and desires that we have whether good or bad
in our everyday lives. "One girl had grabbed
another girl by the front of the shirt through
to her bra and flung her against the beam. The
girl lay crumpled on the locker room floor,
her head bleeding, her eyes saying more and
the girl who had flung her stood over the body,
hands on hips, with enormous thighs" (Corin
16).
Back in 2000 a report that
was published in Science by Dr. Richard Davidson
at the University of Wisconsin at Madison compared
brain scans of more then five hundred people
between those who were prone to violence and
those who were considered to be normal. The
study found that the brain images of those who
had been convicted of a murder with aggressive
or antisocial disorders showed distinct brain
activity compared to those who were considered
normal. If this study is correct then these
murderers must have been born with an entirely
different genetic makeup then that of those
in the majority of the population who are not
violent. These brain scans showed a relationship
between the orbital frontal cortex, the anterior
cingulated cortex, and the amygdale, which plays
a large part in the control of negative and
violent emotions. The orbital frontal cortex
has been found to control and restrain the impulse
of emotional outbursts, the anterior cingulated
cortex was found to deal with responses to conflict,
and the amygdale is known to control reactions
to fear. When Davidson and his colleagues reviewed
the brain images they found that brain activity
in the orbital frontal cortex and the anterior
cingulated cortex had diminished or was non
existent compared to the amygdale which controls
reactions to fear which stayed at the same activity
level or went higher (Ramsland 35). Serial killers
may be influenced by the culture that they are
surrounded by, but those who can affect their
thoughts do not have control over the reactions
to ideas that are apart of our DNA. If it is
possible to diagnose these genetic defects early,
children can be treated and watched to make
sure that the increase in emotional tendencies
does not become uncontrollable causing them
to hurt those around them. "We have accepted
as proper for sociological study the environment
external to the human person; perhaps we now
should consider appropriate the environment
internal to the person, not just the social
psychological environment" (Jeffrey 88).
In the publication of Beyond
the Pleasure Principle in 1920, Freud came up
with two theories about the aggression in which
humans express. Creating two different and opposing
instincts, Freud came up with the death instinct
and the life instinct. The death instinct is
that of destructive behavior towards the society
around them. What Freud had found that led him
to the theory of the death instinct was that
those he had studied who had experienced unpleasing
experiences kept repeating those experiences
even though they were still unpleasing. Opposite
of that is the life instinct in which Freud
believes that people try to maintain a better
life and try to achieve bigger goals for themselves.
Born with these aggressive and destructive stimuli
serial killers go onto commit these horrific
crimes even though they know most of the time
that it is wrong. (Abel 41) Jeffrey Dahmer for
example had always been intoxicated before committing
a murder because his conscious knew that what
he was doing was wrong. Though Freud hits the
nail on the head that those with destructive
behavior tend to repeat the same actions over
and over again, I believe that serial killers
qualify for only a fraction of this theory.
Though serial killers repeatedly commit the
same acts of destruction and violence it is
not a totally unpleasing experience. When Dahmer
committed his first murder at the age of eighteen
he began drinking heavily because in his conscious
he knew that what he did was unacceptable. Though
he knew what he did was wrong he still felt
pleasure from committing such a horrible act
of violence.
Though we are all classified
the same as human, we each are unequally different
in our genetic makeup. "This concept states
that we as humans (as well as other organism),
though similar in our biological and biochemical
composition, are absolutely unique; and, especially,
that each biochemical composition has a pattern
and distribution all its own" (Jeffery
90). Compare the fingerprints, moles, or skin
tone of any two individual and you will find
that each persons genes are pieced together.
Genetics does not just go skin deep but affects
the whole system including our minds and our
thoughts. In 1915 Freud claimed that active
stimuli in humans push them into action and
that these active stimuli are "emanating
within the organism and penetrating to the mind"
(Weiner 12). If this is true then man does not
have control over their actions and are instinctively
born with these internal stimuli that decide
when we take action and when we run from a situation
in a fight or flight situation. Genes, many
argue is the answer to understanding the mind
of a serial killer and the only was to stop
these murders is to detect these genetic defects
early in their childhood.
Naturally we are all born
with a different genetic make up but many argue
that differences in DNA do not create a psychokiller.
The main focus of many criminologists and psychologists
are the origins and the surroundings of these
killers childhood.
"Modern geneticists have
pointed out that a nature-nurture dichotomy
is clearly untenable, incorrect, and meaningless.
The subject has to be discussed in terms of
the continuous and complex interactions between
an organism and its environment, and the relevant
contributions of both sets of variables in determining
the behavior of the organism" (Athens 12).
Taking a look at Jeffrey Dahmers
childhood you will find that at an early age
he was a fun and active child who his father
described as, "Very exuberant, he liked
to wrestle, liked to run around, ham it up for
the camera and he liked to play with kids and
get together with them" (The Monster Within).
These are not characteristics of a serial killer
who scientists say are born with this gene of
aggressiveness. Dahmer had been a normal child
until his father received his Ph. D in chemistry
the family moved to Ohio relocating three times
before settling down in Bath Ohio. When Dahmer
had moved his father and mother noticed that
he had become shy and anti-social. Jeffrey then
began collecting road kill and dissecting it
in experiments.
Criminologists and social
behavioral psychologists have come to argue
that "childhood experiences" and "repeated
psychological trauma," during the early
stages of growing up can cause a child to seek
relief through activities of violence such as
killing small animals.” Christine Falling
was probably about as retarded as this friend
of mine. And violent. At fourteen, she'd already
been dropping cats from windows for years. Sometimes
she'd squeeze them to death" (Corin 149).
Much like Dahmer, when his parents began to
fight he felt alone and would escape by himself
out into the woods to find comfort in the pile
of dead carcasses he had collected. Feeling
abandoned by not only his parents but classmates
he tried to seek attention by those around him
by doing what his classmates called a "Dahmer,"
which was to act up and do things that were
out of the norm and socially unacceptable. Unlike
his family and classmates the dead carcasses
gave him a feeling of comfort, fulfillment,
pleasure and emotional release.
Sociologist Arnold Arluke
compared the criminal records of one hundred
and fifty three animal abusers with one hundred
and fifty three non animal abusers and what
he found in his study is that those who were
animal abusers were five times more likely to
commit acts of violence such as assault, rape,
and murder against others. What was understood
from this study is that serial killers in their
childhood would resort to killing animals because
they felt powerless against their parents who
had control over them. Since these children
did not have control in the household, they
resorted to killing small animals in which they
could exert their dominance and power over to
do anything that pleased them (Fox 113).
In a study of sixty two male
serial killers, Eric Hicky a criminologist found
that, forty eight percent of them had been rejected
as children by a parent or some other important
person in their lives (Fox 113). Though this
happens to many children, it certainly represents
a turning point for those who become serial
killers. Once rejected many of these killers
begin to dive into their self indulgences and
are unable to understand how and who they are
when going through puberty. "The social
experiences which make people dangerous violent
criminals are the significant experiences rather
than the trivial ones in their lives" (Athens
19).
Victims of abuse and rejection,
serial killers find comfort in their fantasies
and dreams that take them into a realm that
only they can control. Psychokillers take their
fantasies and make them a reality living their
dreams. Growing up Jeffrey Dahmer had felt rejected
by his parents and in turn kept the violent
homosexual thoughts inside of him. Dahmer fantasized
of having a male sexual partner but in his thoughts
he received pleasure not only by having intercourse
but also killing his partner. "Most sex
murders demonstrate both the need for, and the
terror or, engulfment by a figure onto whom
ones primary attachment needs have been projected"
(Stein 9). The need to kill fulfils this sexual
desire of many killers turning their fantasies
into a controllable reality. Without a proper
relationship to model after in the household
many of these killers do not understand to truly
must interact with each other and coexist peacefully.
Serial killers are violent humans and the only
way to stop their killing sprees many argue
is to put a stop to domestic violence in the
household.
Understanding how and why
serial killers commit such horrific crimes is
an important step to stopping the homicidal
rampages these psychokillers go on. Scientists
searched and found what is believed to be hard
evidence, that genetics is the key role in determining
who becomes a serial killer unlike criminologists
and psychologists who argue that large events
such as abuse and abandonment create the setting
and foundation in which serial killers grow
into sadistic mass murders. Though both arguments
are strongly proved and explained through research
and statistics neither are individually the
answer to why serial killers exist. In reviewing
the evidence of both explanations I have found
that it is a mix of both genetics and cultural
upbringings. Though many humans must deal with
violent situations as children and experience
horrific events many do not become mass murderers.
It is true that many children who are victims
of abuse become violent in their adult lives
but to cross into the category of a serial killer
one must be born with a different biochemical
makeup. In my conclusion nature does choose
what traits we are born with but at the same
time these traits cannot be exposed without
a mechanism that triggers these individuals
to commit these horrific crimes. Without the
alignment of both natural genetic defects and
the cultural nurturing in which humans are brought
up in, serial killers cannot become vicious
killers. If we can curb domestic violence then
the chances for a serial killer to become violent
will decrease significantly making our world
a safer place.
Bibliography
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Analysis of Crime and Punishment. New York:
Macmillan, 1965. Print.
Corin, Lucy. Everyday Psycho
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The University of Alabama Press, 2004. Print.
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster
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Fox, James Alan and Jack Levin.
The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless
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Abel, Donald C. Freud on Instinct
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Ramsland, Katherin M. Inside
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