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Psychology theories about serial killers
Essays on the psychology of serial killers
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A trend of serial killer is a person who murders three or more people, commit murder for some sort of psychological benefit. From 1990 to 2010 in US 52.1% serial killers were white, while 40.3% were black. Serial killers don’t change much internationally either, worldwide, 56.2% were white and 30%black. Serial killers don’t always act alone either. There are three types exist: individual, team (two or more) and organizational, which can include gangs, criminal enterprises, and even terrorist groups. A lot of individual serial killers went trend for there way of killing.
One of the individual serial killers is Gary Ridgway who know as the Green River serial killer. He plead guilty to killing 49 women over two decades. He was arrested in 2001. Gary was tested with an I.Q. of 82. When he was 16 years old he stabbed a
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Some people tend to think of adult people, but there is a lot of young serial killers. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson became England’s youngest convicted murderers in 1993 when they were sentenced for the murder of two years old James Bulger. The boys took James to an area near some railroad tracks, they beat him with bricks and an iron bar, and weighing him down across railroad tracks so that he couldn’t move out of the way of an incoming train. Both went to jail and were released in 2001 when they turned 18. In 2007, eight years old Sade stunned people worldwide when it was discovered that he killed three children including his sister. Amarjeet Sade took each of the babies to a nearby field, hit them with a stone, and killed them. Disorders such as depression and anxiety may seem not a big deal to some parents. However, some children suffering from mental disorders such as these, will end up taking their own life. And some of them will decide to take out others as well. These disorders can turn an innocent child into a
Serial killers are a type person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent motive and typically following a characteristic, predictable behavior pattern. Most of the time something triggers them and then they go on their serial rampage. Some things that can be part of a serial killer's profile is they are normally white males, late 20’s early 30’s, kills with in own race, method of murder is hands on, and their victims are selected because they share specific characteristics. The types of serial killers are disorganized asocial and organized nonsocial. The different types of serial killers are: missionary killers, power seeking, lust killing, visionary killer, thrill killing. The profiling of a serial killer's changes upon the
In order to identify serial killers before they kill repeatedly, a person needs to study the characteristics that makes up this type of criminals. Most serial killers have been abandoned, by one or both parents, they are emotionally, physically, and even sexually abused by a family member, or relatives from unstable families who have criminal, psychiatric and alcoholic histories, or tend to have hate for their parents and people in general which makes them have antisocial personality disorder. They have conflicted pain or tortured animals at a young age and most are highly interested in gaining control over things. Even though not every serial killers posses these characteristics, but most share these characteristics the same way they share the psychological need to have complete control and power over people.
This in turn led the child to hate his father for leaving. Although fatherlessness plays a role in some of the serial killers’ lives, abuse occurs more often than not among the soon to be mass-murderer's childhood. Physical abuse does not present itself as the only form of abuse that a child endures, sexual abused occurs most often among them. Some of the most notorious serial killers possess an abused childhood. John Wayne Gacy, ‘who killed thirty-three people which consisted of mostly of teenage boys, had an alcoholic father who abused his whole family. At the age of nine, Gacy’s neighbor also molested him multiple times (Be a Stoic – 24 Brutal Life Advice Quotes from Ancient Rome). One of the most famous woman serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, suffered sexual abuse from her grandfather after her parents abandoned her (Be a Stoic-24 Brutal Life Advice Quotes from Ancient
A serial killer is traditionally defined as the separate killings of three or more people by an individual over a certain period of time, usually with breaks between the murders. (Angela Pilson, p. 2, 2011) This definition has been accepted by both the police and academics and therefore provides a useful frame of reference (Kevin Haggerty, p.1, 2009). The paper will seek to provide the readers with an explanation of how serial killers came to be and how they are portrayed in the media. Several serial killers have a definitive and common personality profile.
A serial killer is a person who has killed three or more people over a month apart. Their motivation for killing is usually based on psychological issue.(Sanmartín,2001) In the U.S, the most reported serial killers are lower middle class white males, usually in their late twenties to early thirties (Skrapec,2001). Serial killers, often, are liars. They have no sense of remorse or guilt. Most of the time they are not in serious relationship or have any emotional obsession to any one person, besides their victims. Most of the well-known serial killers are: Robert Pickton, Charles Manson, Anthony Sowell, Ted Bundy, The Zodiac Killer, The Green River Killer, and The BTK murderer. (Sanmartín,2001). Often, women were never seen as even a suspect
Gary Leon Ridgway may not be a household name, but the infamous Green River Killer is one of the most accomplished serial murderers in U.S. history. In 2003, Ridgway confessed 48 accounts of aggravated first degree murder (more confirmed murders than any other American serial killer) during a two-and-a-half-year period in the early 1980s near Seattle, although it is believed he slaughtered even more. The majority of his victims were runaway teenage girls and hookers whom he picked up on the interstate and strangled to death. But Ridgway was spared the death penalty as part of a plea bargain three years ago, in exchange for his assistance in leading investigators to his victim's remains and revealing other information to help "bring closure" to the grieving families ("Green River Killer Avoids Death in Plea Deal").
The stereotype that exists for individuals who commit serial murder is one that mainly includes males of a specific race. However, it is now known that white males are not the only individuals who commit serial murder. Men and women from all racial and ethnic backgrounds and socio-economic statuses have been found to be serial murderers. Although this information has been presented to society, the cultural schema of the white male serial killer is still prevalent. The assumptions that involve serial murderers often include two aspects, the serial murderer is male and the serial murder is a type of “lust murder”, often involving sexual crimes committed by a sadist (Keeney and Heide, 1995).
A serial killer is a person who murders three or more people over a period of more than 30 days, with a "cooling off" period between each murder, and whose motivation for killing is largely based on psychological gratification. Most people do not understand what can make a person want to kill multiple people for no reason other than own satisfactional gain. In actuality serial killers have been studied for over hundreds of years, and the information that has been documented continues to grow. The research that I have gathered about serial killers focuses on their childhood development, the differences and similarities between men and female serial kills, and finally general information on how their brains operate and their motives for committing such harmful acts.
I choose this topic because I believe it is important to know why serial killers have been around for hundreds of years. If there were more studies on them then I believe we may be more able to prevent their vicious killings. If there are several things in common between several different serial killers then it would be safe to say that those things can be predictors of what is to come. If for example, I researched all of the serial killers in the last twenty years and they were all beaten as children and had alcoholic parents, then it would seem that beating children and having alcoholic parents is certainly a common factor and may predict their future. So in my paper I will come up with a detailed profile and common themes between the serial killers in the last twenty years.
Mitchell, Heather, and Michael G. Aamodt. "The incidence of child abuse in serial killers." Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 20.1 (2005): 40-47.
A serial killer is defined in Webster's Dictionary as someone who murders more than three victims one at a time in a relatively short period of time. There is no one generic profile to identify a serial killer. They usually are people seeking for a sensation, a lack of guilt or remorse, a need for control, impulsivity, and predatory behavior. These traits make up a psychopathic personality disorder. Psychopathy is a disorder manifested in people who use a mixture of charm, manipulation, manipulation, and occasional violence to control others, in order to satisfy their own wants and needs. There are four main types of serial killers; thrill seekers, mission-oriented, visionary serial killers, and power and control killers. There may be other
There have been many serial killer cases that have attracted the attention of not only the media but of mental health experts as well. Many experts from a variety of different fields have come together to answer one question: Why did they do it? It is believed that most, if not all, serial killers have a mental illness, motives, and/or trauma during their lives that made them start killing. Serial killers are not only the effect of nurture but also nature. The environment of their country, the United States is our focus, can cause the number of serial killers to increase especially if the country itself is unstable.
This paper will analyze the factors that create a serial killer. Beginning with the definition of a serial killer, the reader should expect
Serial killers are usually young, white males who are quite intelligent and often come from broken homes. They may have been abused either physically or sexually during childhood and they have serious personality defects, such as low self-esteem and a lifelong sense of loneliness. Although no two serial killers are alike, they all fit this description somewhat. In the sixth edition of Crime and Criminality by Sue Titus Reid, a serial killer is defined as a person who commits more than one murder but at different times (Reid, p. 134).
The names of those children were; Kip Kinkel, who decapitated cats, dissected live squirrels and blew up cows. Andrew Golden, shot dogs before he turned his guns on his classmates. Luke Woodham, beat and burned his own dog, Sparkle. Describing his dog’s painful and tortured death as a “thing of pure beauty”. Michael Corneal, threw a cat into a bonfire. All of these children were animal abusers and weren’t punished at that point. Only until they started to kill people; then society saw that they needed help. When the truth is they needed help when these children might have been brought up in messed up households. Consisting of domestic violence, but with a start of animal abuse. They were to have empathy towards all living things; including