Serial Killers: Dennis Radar And Ted Bundy

In psychology, everyone is different. While some things can be similar in people, there will always be differences. These psychological differences can differ in many aspects including social psychology: how an individual acts in social situations, personality psychology: where an individual’s personality determines how they act and perceive things, and developmental psychology: where and how a person develops psychologically. These differences are what makes us unique and special in our own ways, but it also can have a dark effect on us and in our society. These individuals who suffer from darker psychological differences can affect our society in horrific ways. Serial killers are a group of people among this type of dark psychology that makes

psychologists ask “what exactly molded or caused someone to become a serial killer?” While the question cannot be answered by any random person, psychologists must first understand everything that the killer has experienced, and how these experiences played a role in the molding of the killer they eventually became.
Some might believe that serial killers are just mentally ill, and that’s just the reason they do the evil things they do. The term “mentally ill” is described as someone who can no longer function in society due to their thinking, feeling, or mood. However, the problem that we struggle with is determining whether someone is mentally ill and incapable of living in society when they have technically done nothing wrong. On the other hand, there is major differences between serial killers and mass murderers. A serial killer is an individual who kills at least three people at different occurrences. They experience what experts call a “cooling off” period where the individual might take a short or even long break from killing. “In fact, these “cooling off” periods used to be part of the definition of a serial killers to distinguish them from mass murderers” (Smith). Mass murderers are individuals who kill a large number of people all at once in the same time period or in a single location with no “cooling off” period. These individuals are usually mentally ill from the start, but they either are not closely watched or possibly given their psychological needs to help them get better.
Most serial killers stay close to places they know best instead of killing across the country. Also, the killer might have been made from the horrible childhood they had. Gary Ridgeway is one of the most notorious serial killers known as the “Green River Killer” who targeted vulnerable young women who were prostitutes. Ridgeway was convicted to 49 counts of murder, while he confessed to killing about 70, and is even believed by some that Ridgeway has killed over 90 women during his 16 year killing stint. He was given the name the “Green River Killer” for dumping a good number of his victims’ bodies into the “Duwamish River” that was the actual name for the green river. Vanessa Richardson is one of the host to a podcast series known as “Serial Killers” who was examining the psychology behind Gary Ridgeway. Richardson’s analysis determined that he was a very weak and timid person. He was also an obsessive control freak who had a below average IQ of 82, yet he still managed to outsmart many of his victims and the police for almost 20 years. Psychologists have determined from the killer inside Ridgeway’s mind could have all started from his relationship with his mother, Mary Ridgeway. Mary was known to yell and abuse Ridgeway, his brothers, and his father as well who would never retaliate from the abuse. This abuse caused Gary to “hate his father’s powerlessness and weaknesses that he subconsciously gravitated to the opposite extreme, violently abusing women himself” (Richardson). This assertion states that Ridgeway disliked the fact that he had no control whatsoever against his mother which explains why he was an obsessive control freak. In addition to the control freak he became, this was also the possible reason why he targeted women.
Ridgeway was also not only known for the women he killed, but also raping and sometimes engaging in necrophilia with his victims. Richardson has also tied Ridgeway’s possible sex addiction to being created from Sigmund Freud’s theory of the development of a healthy boy. The theory involves when a boy begins to associate feelings with his penis, he develops a sexual desire with his mother. This sexual desire makes the father be perceived as a rival. The only way for the attraction to end is for the boy to view the father as a respectable and unbeatable superior, and the boy will accept that his mother will only have sex with his father and is sexually unattainable. Unfortunately, Freud’s theory did not apply to Ridgeway due to the fact that he never viewed his father as a respectable and intimidating superior. This theory helps us understand that Ridgeway in fact did not have a normal childhood in which he had sexual desires for his mother that ended up spiraling out of control into a desire for sex that he later could not control. Dr. Zelda Knight is a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Johannesburg who had researched in the concepts that sexually motivated killers are evil. In Knight’s paper, she states that “one aspect of this type of serial killer worth noting is that they have exceptionally sexually sadistic fantasy lives, which are later acted out on victims” (23). Ridgeway’s first wife could defend this claim by Dr. Knight by explaining how she was aware of Ridgeway’s weird fantasies where he would like to constantly have sex in the woods near the Green River. She also said that her husband would like to hide from her in the woods, and jump out right at her and catch her. After Ridgeway was caught, psychologists believe that Ridgeway actually practiced with his wife in the woods while she was completely oblivious to his intentions on his future victims.
Exploring the different motives of serial killers can be very broad in scope, the reason being that everyone experiences most things differently in life. Serial killers most likely experienced darker things than average people throughout our lives. Ted Bundy was another notorious serial killer who raped and murdered women from approximately 1974 to 1978. Unlike Ridgeway who had a very disturbed childhood, Bundy did not have a direct abusive childhood. He was born on November 24, 1946 from his biological mother, Louise Cowell. Louise felt that she couldn’t raise her son as a single mother, so instead she lived with her parents with Ted thinking his grandparents were his parents and Louise was his sister. Ted’s grandfather, Sam Cowell was known as an abusive person, but not specifically towards Ted himself. Sam was a tyrant who was a racist, homophobic, and is believed to once throwing his Bundy’s aunt down the stairs for oversleeping. On the other hand, Bundy’s grandmother was no better herself due to how she received shock therapy for her depression. The therapy would make her extremely reclusive and unpredictable during Bundy’s childhood. Vanessa Richardson believes that even though Bundy was not directly abused, he watched his grandfather’s abusive tendencies toward women and his horrid views which caused Ted to perceive the definition of manhood in that environment. While his childhood wasn’t the absolute main reason why he became a serial killer, it definitely played a starting role.
Bundy did in fact suffer from some psychological issues, such as he was known as a “lust killer” who would kill with a sexual intent with cooling off periods.Therefore, all of his victims consisted of women of whom he would assault, rape, and eventually kill.

A fact that psychologists have to remember is how serial killers think very highly of themselves. The reason is that not just anyone can commit a murder and have the ego to think they can get away with it. Serial killers like Dennis Radar and Ted Bundy have a huge ego to where they have a mindset that tells them they won’t get caught. Bundy was also known to be a compulsive liar to where he would be lying even days before he was going to be executed. The question is, why do they lie even if they have nothing to lose? Richardson’s explanation is that “lying makes them feel superior, powerful. Serial killers have an amazing grasp of human’s emotions, they ravel in manipulation” (16:35). Another way of stating why compulsive liars lie constantly is that its what makes them feel in control of the situation. Most serial killers are absolute control freaks who feel threatened by someone if they feel that they don’t have control of a person or a

situation.
Before Bundy began killing his confirmed victims, he attended the University of Washington and had started dating a girl named Diana.

Bundy would call her “the love of his life” until she eventually ended the relationship a year later due to his immaturity. This break up left Bundy with his heart broken and caused him to drop out of school. Psychologists speculated that this might have been the first incident that pushed Bundy towards his serial murder tendencies although not the official incident. Bundy returned home shortly afterwards to find answers. While receiving his birth certificate, he noticed something odd, he saw that his mother on the certificate was Louise Cowell. This yet another incident is what could have sparked Bundy from it being another betrayal from a woman. Afterwards, Bundy began his killing spree that included women who has something in common. An interesting thing that investigators found was that all of Bundy’s victims fit the description as a brunette with their hair parted down the middle. Also, this description matched Lundy’s ex-girlfriend Diana who had left him feeling

betrayed.
We have established that serial killers are very good at masking their true identities, but it leaves us with the question how do they do it? In the article “The Monster Within: How Male Serial Killers Discursively Manage Their Stigmatized Identities,” authors Jayne Henson and Loreen Olsen examine how serial killers can blend into society without people noticing their dark side. Henson and Olsen’s method for finding how these individuals hide their identities included discussions and relative interviews. These interviews named a fair amount of serial killers including Gary Ridgeway and Ted Bundy. One result the authors concluded was the “representations of a normal self” (353). Some serial killers have the ability to mask their identity and get away with murder. “Thus, the first major theme is the communicative presentation of normalcy to others, labeled as the representation of a normal self, and a concealment of a deviant self when relating to others” (353). The authors used Ted Bundy as an example with him stating “I was a normal person. I had good friends. I led a normal life, except for thus one, small but very potent and destructive segment that I kept very secret and close to myself”(353). This example helps us understand that such serial killers are extremely good at masking their true selves, and being able to hide their secrets for a very long period of time. In most cases in our lives, we usually feel that we have to tell at least one person our secrets or have someone to confide in. While on the other hand, these individuals don’t feel that need to confide in anyone. It could be very possible that the only people they felt they could confide in was their own victims, but there is no true way of knowing.