Psychopaths: An Infamous Serial Killer

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Psychopaths A psychopath is, "A person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests as a moral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, and failure to learn from experience" (Psychopath). Psychopaths can be found anywhere, for example, in the United States psychopaths makeup about one percent of the population. Most psychopaths are able to control themselves, and not act out in an immoral manner, however, the psychopaths who do go over the edge usually become serial killers. Two serial killers, Holmes and Dahmer, are classifiable psychopaths because of their personalities and immoral behavior. H.H. Holmes is an infamous serial killer, where the majority of the …show more content…

Holmes, was an intelligent fraud, serial killer, and eventual psychopath. He began to develop psychopathic personality traits early in his childhood. As a young boy, he was found to be greatly bright and had a kink for any type of medical involvement. One day as a child, he met a photographer with a fake leg, "Without preamble, the photographer removed one of his legs. Mudgett was stunned" (Larson 40). This was his first time experiencing pleasure and he thought about this day for many years after. The photographer even saw an odd expression from the boy after the appearance of the fake leg. This event inspired Holmes to begin to having weird fantasies involving the human body. Due to his great interest in the medical field, he became a medical student, which led to the stealing of corpses and using them to make fake insurance claims (Biography.com Editors). This did not frighten Holmes at all, "He did not mind handling bodies. They were ‘material,' no different from firewood" (Larson 44). Holmes had no attachment to anything and was unable to establish meaningful relationships. As he got older, these traits worsen, and his pleasurable desires turned him into a serial killer and a classifiable …show more content…

The dismemberment of the bodies was mostly based on experimental reasons, though sometimes it was for financial or trophy purposes. What Holmes did was, "He would then experiment on them, Strip them of flesh and then make them into skeleton models that he would sell to medical schools" (Serial Killer H.H. Holmes). Since Holmes was a doctor, he wanted to test out different ways he could cut and dismember the bodies. This brought pleasure to Holmes. Jeffrey Dahmer completely took apart every one of his victims. What Dahmer did was, "He would then engage in sex acts with the corpses before dismembering them and disposing of them, often keeping their skulls or genitals as souvenirs" (The Biography.com website). Dahmer had a great interest in men so cutting up the people he killed also brought satisfactory upon him. While their methods differed, both Holmes and Dahmer dismembered the bodies of their

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