by Ian Brady
— Dylan Thomas
Even the wildest spirit is, in action, unavoidably crippled by what moralists term ‘conscience.’ And also by one of the most debilitating, insidious cankers of all — timidity.
The Napoleons are exceptions, as Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov belatedly discovered to his cost. At the point of death, I suggest that most of you will not regret what you have done in life but what you have left undone through defective anxiety and trepidation.
You, too, shall ‘rage against the dying of the light,’ cursing a lifetime of missed opportunities and the dourness of sanity. Many cultures believe, rightly or wrongly, that the ‘mad’ have a touch of divinity about them — that they perhaps reach upwards, and downwards, just that little bit farther than most of their ‘sane’ brethren. That they enjoy a richer experience of life. The ‘Fool on the Hill’ syndrome.
Putting to one side the caution of legal definition, intuition suggests that a great many members of the public equate serial killing with insanity, but atavistically desire to execute the perpetrators anyway. I have no quarrel with this. Official murder is the triumphant exoneration of relativism.
However, let us examine a few misconceptions.
I believe the term ‘serial killer’ is highly misleading, in that it implicitly suggests to the general public that murder is the paramount object or motivating urge in the mind of the killer.
The vast majority of the public never having experienced what it means to kill another human being in cold blood — or hot, for that matter — nevertheless readily assumes or accepts that the serial killer’s main object must be murder. They naturally attribute this motivation partly because they value human life above all else, and partly because, as their endless fascination with the subject suggests, they have a vague conception of murder as being a somehow mystical, highly dramatic or even nebulously romantic experience, with sophisticated or unimaginable connotations of eroticism. And guilt must be paid for in full.
People mostly dream of killing a hated enemy, not realising that it would be far more satisfying to inflict significant injury, leaving the enemy alive to endure it, or commit suicide. This concisely illustrates the predatory compulsion to view the taking of life as the be-all and end-all. But it also exemplifies there are crimes far worse than dealing out blessed oblivion.
Of course there are many serial killers to whom murder is the prime motivation. Perhaps they lack the capacity to ponder the matter in abstract philosophical terms, probably because the metaphysical aspect — the sense of making their mark in the universe, metaphorically challenging God — is the most powerful. This significant metaphysical factor is, to a greater or lesser degree, innate not only to all serial killers but also the majority of thinking individuals. Which accounts for the popular captivation or enchantment of murder.
But personally, I have met only a few such death-fixated serial killers, despite having rubbed shoulders with a considerable variety over the years. And contrary to current notions in popular fiction, I believe most serial killers seldom ‘develop a taste’ for killing per se.
Ironically, however, it is within the ranks of the domestic murderers, non-serial killers, that you will find many whose main purpose was murder, perhaps to rid themselves of a nagging or unfaithful partner, or collect life insurance, or marry a lover, etc. Obviously the motivating factor in such cases is personal gain of some sort, but by deliberate homicide.
What the average (if one can use the term in this context) serial killer seeks above all is power and the will to power. In this psychic ambience, power and sex are often synonymous or complementary.
Commitment to a personal system which relegates external legality, morality and ethics to mere serendipity — random leaves blowing from a moribund tree — can be arrived at via disparate emotional routes or roots.
Some may find a philosophy of cosmic uncertainty joyful and stimulating, and dance happily and harmlessly through life, their innocence a positive inspiration and boon to their fellow voyagers. Yet a lack of moral and ethical certitude is automatically assumed by most to be on the whole undesirable, something either akin or equivalent to evil. The colour of a guide dog may be black or white, but what matters is that it takes us in the direction we wish to go.
I think it can be stated with certainty that the serial killer’s consciously or subconsciously chosen path is towards perdition and desirable oblivion. However, he may travel that road just as exuberantly and light of heart as the innocent travels his.
Having determined and resigned himself to the fact that life is meaningless, and that synthetic systems of probity only tend to make the journey more tedious, what could be more natural than that he consciously decides to sample every variety of spiritual and physical excitement that attracts his interest, perfectly aware of and willing to accept the secular consequences of his actions? The rewards of good or evil are just as satisfying to the adherent of either.
Essentially, I posit, there is no such thing as an unselfish act, though theologians and moralists might argue otherwise. We do whatever we enjoy doing. Whether it happens to be judged good or evil is a matter for others to decide.
Returning to the psychological and physical logistics: once the serial killer’s power/sex urge is satisfied, he is left with the unfortunate living witness to it, the victim. He is therefore logically or emotionally compelled to kill the victim simply as a secondary expedient, to escape the legal and psychological consequences of what he perceives to be his major crime.
The first killing experience will not only hold the strongest element of existential novelty and curiosity, but also the greatest element of danger and trepidation conjured by the unknown. Usually the incipient serial killer is too immersed in the psychological and legal challenges of the initial homicide, not to mention immediate logistics — the physical labour that the killing and disposal involve. He is therefore not in a condition to form a detached appreciation of the traumatic complexities bombarding his senses.
You could, in many instances, describe the experience as an affective state of shock. He is, after all, storming pell-mell the defensive social conditioning of a lifetime, as well as declaring war upon all the organised, regulatory forces of society. In extinguishing someone’s life he is also committing his own, and has no time to stop and stare in the hazardous, psychological battlefield.
In another very significant sense, he is killing his long-accepted self as well as the victim, and simultaneously giving birth to a new persona, decisively cutting the umbilical connection between himself and ordinary mankind.
Having fought his former self and won, the fledgling serial killer flexes newfound powers with more confidence. The second killing will hold all the same disadvantageous, distracting elements of the first, but to a lesser degree. This allows a more objective assimilation of the experience. It also fosters an expanding sense of omnipotence, a wide-angle view of the metaphysical chessboard.
In many cases, the element of elevated aestheticism in the second murder will exert a more formative impression than the first, and probably of any in the future. It not only represents the rite of confirmation, a revelational leap of lack of faith in humanity, but also the onset of addiction to hedonistic nihilism.
The psychic abolition of redemption.
CHAPTER SIX
For here the lover and killer are mingled.
Who had one body and one heart.
Keith Douglas (1920–1944)
From a specific point in spiritual and intellectual commitment, the serial killer is subconsciously evolving towards becoming his own god and executioner.
With each subsequent killing, the homicidal drug, blunted by habitual use, creates a diminishing and disappointing impression. The extraordinary becomes increasingly ordinary.
This confirms my view that most killers do not find the act of murder itself pleasurable. Increasingly, it is viewed more as a necessary conclusion to an exercise of power and will. Ironically, having striven for a
bsolute freedom, he has found its antithesis. A categorical imperative. A wearisome cleaning up after the feast. Or, more fatal to his welfare and continued freedom, he may view the necessary task as an irritable imposition exacted by those he increasingly regards as the inferior enemy ranged against him.
An additional minority of serial killers may kill not only as a measure of self-survival but also to provoke greater public storm, having also become addicted to their own publicity and undergone a complete personality change in the process.
Just as society believes itself justified in punishing the criminal for the hurt he has inflicted, so also does the serial killer in relation to society.
He is out to exact post-traumatic vengeance, compensation for the real or imaginary injuries he has experienced at the hands of society, and is essentially exulting in the cathartic joy of finally declaring open war. He rationalises and excuses his barbaric behaviour in the same terminology as the state: ‘This is war.’ Except that, by virtue of acting alone against great odds, pitting his wits and his life against all the organised power of the state, he feels morally superior to the state.
It is this quality of extreme individualism that fascinates the public and excites their secret envy, fear and hatred. But who is the hero, who is the antihero?
We cannot avoid the quandary:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
Incongruously, as mentioned, the sadistic type of serial killer, if he allowed his instincts for self-survival to be overwhelmed by pathological desire, would much rather inflict life than death upon the victim, so that he might savour the knowledge that the victim has been forced to suffer the memory of the ordeal for the rest of his/her days.
The living victim would serve as a psychic, sentient trophy of the crime, thus prolonging the intimate relationship, or psychosexual link, between victim and perpetrator.
The sadistic perpetrator would be perfectly aware that it would further torture the victims to know that the person who inflicted such traumatic indignities upon them is still alive to remember or, perhaps more important, publicly divulge. This mutual fear of public testimony and sensational dissemination of the intimate facts of the crime also intensifies the relationship between victim and perpetrator. Thus the latter’s clemency would be ostensibly humane, but for inhumane motives. Mercy has its cruel side.
Similarly, the captured sadistic killer may ask, is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole really more compassionate than a quick, honest execution?
Sadistic purists among members of the public would prefer a lengthy revenge. In fact, they would probably like to enjoy both if it were possible: execution and life imprisonment, or to take pleasure from the vision of him rotting in Hell. Therefore, the logical extension of their desires would be execution by lengthy torture, their savagery possibly surpassing that of the killer to whom they believe themselves morally superior. Again, philosophically and psychologically, this would play into the hands of the killer.
The concept of hell and endless torment is popular with those who believe they aren’t headed there.
Unlike Dostoevsky’s character, I would rather be dead — Thelma and Louise style — than stand for eternity on a ledge staring into the abyss.
Which would you choose?
Many serial killers believe in hell on earth, consequently administering it to those who appear never to have tasted its gall — those who seem to have cornered all the luck. The killer might believe democratically in the equal, abstract, random distribution of misery, as it were. The reverse side of feeling yourself unfortunate for having no shoes until you met a man with no feet.
I intend to weave the factor of mental illness throughout the broadcloth of this factual and philosophical discourse, without unduly distracting or taxing the reader by use of overmuch psychological/psychiatric terminology; I wish to communicate, not obfuscate.
This I partly hope to achieve by foraging through the criminal psyche in individual instances, particularly in the realm of psychological/psychiatric profiling, both as a past criminal participant and a present objective observer.
Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species.
— Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
Whether or not some forensic facts, conclusions and interpretations disturb the mental equilibrium of the reader in the process, is an abstract factor which cannot be allowed to intrude if we are to have a clinical examination of reality, or a perception of reality. A dissection of what murder is really all about, from the point of view of a serial killer, for a change.
Many of you, sitting out there in cosy easy chairs, with a drink at your elbow and the prospect of vicarious excitement ahead as you settle down to read, have probably assured yourself in advance that there is no danger of you identifying with, or even empathising with, anyone you are about to encounter in these pages.
Indeed, you already feel intellectually and morally superior because this is a book written by a criminal about other criminals, creatures of the underworld, a distant subculture, whereas you have nothing to hide or be ashamed of, have you?
That inner glow of sanctity feels almost as good as a large glass of double-malt whisky, but not quite as genuine or fully matured. The plain fact is, heavens above, the criminals feel exactly the same way about you. In spades.
I reiterate: common sense should caution that if you indifferently isolate criminals and pretend you cannot identify with them even in human terms — when freed they will isolate you, with extreme prejudice.
Even as you read this, one may be travelling through the night toward you, maybe trying your doors and windows at this very moment. If so, too late to repent or recant. You have created the enemy within, and within he will come. Ready to stare you out of countenance. Mark his eyes. The indifference reflecting your own of some minutes ago. You belatedly understand. That sinking feeling. He has no more mercy for you than you had for him. You are staring at your alter ego for the first, and perhaps final, time. You are thinking of all the things you will probably never see again, just as he did in prison. You begin to feel sorry. Mainly for yourself, but also perhaps just a bit for him. He may recognise it. See you as a human being rather than an object of abstract revenge in solitary prison dreams.
Did you ever share the same innocent obsession that I have? Forever being drawn back compulsively to places of childhood. Localities of spiritual renewal. Touchstones to recharge the flagging batteries. Places where the feet itched to make contact with the soil of your roots, hands ached to caress the texture of old buildings and trees you once knew well but had almost forgotten? They look much older and smaller than you remembered them, of course, more vulnerable, in need of tactile comfort. It is mutual. A touch of sympathetic energy spans the lapsed years. For that moment you forget your quarrels with the world.
You are innocent again.
And so is mankind.
In childhood years I was not the stereotypical ‘loner’ so beloved by the popular media. Friends formed round me eagerly in the school playground, listening to me talk, and I took it as natural. Apparently I had a descriptive talent and contagious enthusiasm. All harmless, adventurous stuff, no devious intent. No sense of superiority.
Later, in my early teens at senior school, matters changed imperceptibly. Gangs formed round me. Similarly I had no conscious sense as to why, only that again I took it as a natural process. I was not consciously aware of being out to gain followers but follow they did, obviously predisposed to go where I led.
That our activities became criminal was also accepted as natural. The more money we stole the more fun we had. Only when we were caught by the police did a minority drift away, mainly at the behest of their restrictive parents. I hardly noticed, nor did the remaining others; replacements joined us, and we continu
ed to enjoy the fruits of our activities.
Gradually I began to adopt a more studious, professional attitude towards crime. My instinctive form of relativism developed into a pragmatic philosophy. I began to choose my followers. This book is not an autobiography, but these passages form a brief personal introduction before tackling the main subject.
The purpose was to explain why, on those occasions when I returned to childhood haunts as an adult, I couldn’t get enough of people, roaming the old bars and cafés, soaking up the atmosphere and delighting in overheard conversations.
Each face I then observed seemed to radiate unique character. I felt truly alive, all criminal inclinations and ambitions forgotten, erased by temporarily regaining the vitality of seeing the world through the eyes of a child. That microscopic form of vision where nothing is unimportant and almost everything is fascinating.
Does this seem rather foolish to you? Somehow, I don’t think so. Too much of life is wasted in pretending we are something we are not — that we know everything instead of relatively nothing. Are invulnerable and in total control of all we survey, and capital at caring for nothing. Are beyond good and evil and proud of it.
We are what we believe we are at given times.
But we are always reluctant to admit that the child is still there deep in each of us, occasionally peeping out to laugh at what we have become. And we take no offence at it, but joy from being reminded. It helps us recognise that, without knowing it at the time, we created a barren role as we travelled the years, have inexorably become that role, and are stuck with it. The past our future. Vainly play-acting our lives away for the benefit of other people, even total strangers.
As one cannot afford to show weakness in the prehistoric ambience of prison, at least I now have pragmatic reasons for persevering in my beliefs. Kindness of any description is invariably interpreted as weakness. This tendency is also prevalent in the outside world, as is fear of the truth.