The Old Lady Killer Research Paper

A serial killer is defined to be somebody who has murder three or more people in the time span of one month, typically due to psychological abnormalities. After capturing a serial killer, the first question is usually, “Why?” There are many different reasons that a person may do this, that may be logical to them but not to everyone else. Most serial killers have one thing in common: they have mental disorders or psychological issues derived from a bad past. This may not be the case for all of them, but most serial killers have been proven to have at least one of these.
One specific serial killer is Juana Barraza. Barraza was a Mexican wrestler who went by the name La Dama del Silencio, or the Silent Lady. However, she eventually earned a new name; The Old Lady Killer. Juana Barraza’s story starts off in her not-so-great childhood. Her mother was an alcoholic who traded Juana to a man for three beers. This man repeatedly abused and raped the future Old Lady Killer, who ended up having four children, at least being fathered by her rapist. Juana Barraza was believed to have murdered any from 24-49 women. As her name suggests, Juana only murdered older woman, at least 60 years of age. Typically, these women lived alone. The killer would pose as a social worker and gain the old lady’s

trust by offering free check-ups. She would carry around a stethoscope, pension forms, and even a social worker’s ID. After being invited inside, Juana would abuse some of the women and strangle them all. To strangle them, she would usually use tights, a phone cord, or the stethoscope that she would carry with her. She was caught by a lodger unexpectedly arriving to his landlady’s house as Barraza was leaving, right after strangling the 82 year old woman. Juana Barraza was found guilty on sixteen murder and burglary charger and eleven separate murder charges. She was sentenced to 756 years in jail on March 31, 2008. She is not known to have any mental disorders, however the motive for her murders was her lingering resentment towards her alcoholic and uncaring mother, which would be why she only targeted older women. Juana Barraza is an example of a serial killer who was not motivated by mental disorders, but by a past that negatively affected her psychologically.
Edmund Kemper is another serial killer and also a necrophiliac and cannibal who went by the name The CoEd Killer. Kemper displayed sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies from childhood. He would torture and kill animals and also perform sexual rituals with his sister’s dolls. At one point he was quoted to have said that, in order to kiss a teacher that he had a crush on. he would first have to kill her. His mother also mental issues of her own; she had borderline personality disorder. She has been accused of humiliating her son and being abusive towards him. She would make him sleep in a locked basement, for fear that he would molest his sisters in the night. At age 14, Kemper ran away from his mother’s home to go live with his father. After finding his father, it was clear that he did not want Edmund either, so Edmund was sent to live with his grandparents. He believed that his grandmother was also abusive, just like his mother. One day, while he was 15, the CoEd Killer began his murdering career by shooting and killing his grandmother in the head while his grandfather was at the grocery store. After his grandpa returned home, he was also shot because Kemper feared that he would angry with him for killing his grandpa. Not knowing what to do, he called his mother, who immediately asked him why. His response was, “I wanted to know what it would feel like to kill grandma.” After that, he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital, where he was charming and manipulative enough to gain his psychiatrists trust and eventually became his assistant. After a while, he was smart enough to gain enough trust to see other prisoners tests, which gained him enough knowledge to convince everybody at the hospital that he was well and got let out. He was then released back to his mother. Since 1970, Kemper had thoughts of killing his mother, but could not handle the thought of doing it prior to perfecting his murder skills, so he first killed and dismembered six female hitchhikers. Edmund would stab, smother, or shoot these victims and then take their bodies back to his apartment where he would have sex with and dissect them. He had a collection of severed heads from his victims, which he would have sex with whenever he pleased. He sought recognition for his crimes, so he began hanging out at a bar with the law enforcement members who worked on his case. They started to call him “Big Eddie.” Eventually, Edmund gained enough confidence to murder his mother. He hit her to death with a pick hammer, raped her lifeless body, tried to shove her vocal cords down the garbage disposal, and used her head as a dart board. He decided that this was not enough, so he invited her best friend over and then murdered her as well. He drove away, but after a while did not hear anything about himself on the radio, so he called his law enforcement friends to turn himself in. At first they did not believe that their friend, Big Eddie, would be capable of these crimes, but he proved it, and was then taken to prison. Edmund Kemper plead insanity, but was guilty on eight accounts of murder and served a life sentence. His reasoning for his crimes was psychological issues from his abusive guardians, insanity, psychopathy, and necrophilia.
The BTK Killer, Dennis Rader, was a sadist and a fetishist. Much like Edmund Kemper, he also showed serial killer tendencies as a child. He would torture and murder animals, so that he could watch them suffer. On January 15, 1974, Rader committed his first murders: The Otero family. The family included Joseph (38), Julie (34), and their children, Josephine (11), and Joseph II Otero (9). He strangled all of them and left semen at the crime scene, later claiming that killing gave him sexual pleasure. After strangling the victims, Rader would always take souvenirs from them. Those two things, strangulation and taking souvenirs, became BTK's signature after a murder. Dennis Rader also had a fetish for women’s underwear, which he would typically take from a crime scene and then proceed to wear himself. A ew months after the Otero’s, he struck again, this time killing 21 year old Kathryn Bright and shooting her brother twice, who lived to tell the story and described his shooter as “an average-sized guy with a bushy mustache and psychotic eyes.” Dennis Rader successfully killed five other people, but was livid when a victim that he was obsessed with evaded death by returning home late. Rader was obsessed with attention for his crimes. He would write the police letters, letting them know where he was and also describing the murders. On some occasions he would send pictures of the dead victims or include dolls that were reenacting the murders. In one communication with the police, Rader asked if it were possible to trace information from a floppy disk, to which the police said that there was not, even though there was. That disk is what led to the capturing of the BTK Killer. The police checked the metadata of the Microsoft word rom the floppy disk, where they found that the document was made by a man called “Dennis.” In addition, they found a link to the Lutheran Church and used that information to search the internet or “Lutheran Church Wichita Dennis.” Immediately, they came up with the last name Rader. rom security videos of the murderer dropping off packages for the police, they knew that he drove a black Jeep Cherokee. After finding his last name, the police drove by Dennis Rader’s house, where they saw the same Jeep Cherokee parked outside the house. However, this was not evidence to make an arrest, so they police controversially obtained a warrant to test the DNA of his daughter’s pap smear. The DNA was almost a match to the DNA taken from under one of the victim's fingernails, insisting that the killer is closely related to her. This was enough to make the arrest. On february 25, 2005, he was detained. He plead guilty to all each murder and is to serve ten consecutive life sentences, with no chance of parole for 175 years. While describing each murder, Rader seemed completely emotionless and did not make any effort to apologize at all. Dennis Rader’s murders were caused by his fetishes and rom being a sadist. No information of any other mental disorders or a troubled past could be found about him.
Out of these three serial killer examples, almost all have some things in common: they either have mental disorders (such as psychopathy or sociopathy) or their devastating past has led them to seek vengeance or their imperfect lives.

Whether their reasoning is lingering resentment and aggression towards a family member, being a psychopath, or having any other issues, almost all serial killers have deeper psychological issues, leading them to the monsters that they ended up becoming. Of course, there are many other reasons other than these, however these reasons are some that occur most frequently when researching the motives and thoughts of serial killers, or any murderer in

general.