Bundy: A High Profile American Serial Killer

Over the years Bundy seemed to have had multiple instances that would affect his future behavior, and not in a positive way. His strange relationship with his mother/sister and him possibly being the result of incest would have had very negative affects on his psyche. That would be especially true if the incest was confirmed, because that could have resulted in actual biological defects. Bundy’s behavior was most likely due to these effects and could caused his need for attention and power over his victims. These are good theories but there are some reasons that were only known to him that the public may never understand.
Another high profile American serial killer is Jeffrey Dahmer. The part of his killings that he is most known for is that

he would dismember the bodies and eat parts of them. Although Dahmer began his killings in 1987 he was the same age that Bundy was when he began his murders, which was twenty-seven. Unlike Bundy, Dahmer’s victims were homosexual young men, most of which were African-American, and the age range for them was between fourteen and thirty-one. His chosen method of murder was drugging and strangulation and it was usually done in his own home. Dahmer focused on the bodies of his victims, he had sex, mutilated, and posed the bodies, as well as eating parts, and taking parts as mementos. He would also dispose of the bodies by dumping the dismembered parts into a barrel of hydrochloric acid. Eventually Dahmer was arrested in late July, 1991 and was then found guilty for fifteen counts of murder and sentenced to 941 years in prison. He may not have been sentenced to death, but he was killed in prison on November 28, 1994 after being sexually assaulted by an African-American prisoner (Casey, etal.).
There has to be something in Dahmer’s past that would constitute this gruesome behavior, however, there does not appear to be any specific or traumatic event that would result in such a killer. His mother gave birth to him on May 21, 1960 after a rough pregnancy. As a young child he was as normal as anyone could be, suffering from various ear and throat infections occasionally, and a double hernia that resulted in surgery. As he got older he began to torture small animals with some of his toys and started collecting pieces of road-kill. When he grew into his adolescent years his behavior became more and more questionable. He began abusing alcohol, and his classmates described him as strange and a loner. He was not the brightest student but he did manage to graduate high school. He was arrested a few times prior to his final arrest, all for something related to alcohol or drugs. Moved in with his grandmother in Wisconsin when he was twenty-one and would continue to live there even after killing a few of his victims in the residence. Once he moved to his own apartment was when the killings began to happen more and more (Casey, etal.).
There really does not seem to be any major events in Dahmer’s past that would result in him doing the things he did. The only thing that seems as though it could have affected his behavior was the physical effects the infections and hernias had on his brain development since they occurred at such a young age. That possible underdevelopment is what also could have lead to his lower intelligence and the sexual pleasure he received from the killings he performed. Most of the reasoning for Dahmer seems to all have been his initial wiring. He was acting in a very primal yet twisted way that cannot be explained with simple cause and effect, and requires a deeper comprehension of what was going on in his mind.