by Ian Brady
He has a vivid sense of seeing farther and deeper than most. Other people seem to be somnambulistic. He resolves not to be dragged down by numbers. Endurance of others must cease. Slough off the last vestiges of servility. Vigorous with resentful intent, as though an inner generator, hidden deep within since birth, has been switched on, his spirit expands to encompass the vaster gestalt.
Most people have vague intimations of this recondite power. Standing on a vacant shore, staring over oceanic plains, the soothing surge of the void fills them with renewed life. Unknown presences whisper. Arcane meanings beyond language are experienced. Silent music.
Some may interpret the metaphysical revitalisation as a religious experience. Others as a pagan power source, causing them to laugh and dance with savage delight at the cosmic insignificance of humanity. The nature of unconditional freedom is instinctively seized and wielded.
And there you have an amorphous soul/psyche portrait of the unknown serial killer — designer chaos and idiosyncratic subversion. To him, morality reduces life more than it enhances. It could be impartially argued that he inhabits an almost poetic fourth dimension, where dreams and reality naturally meld, a world of esoteric certitude and applied will. A psychic state in which common reality is seen merely as a lace curtain, visually recognized and noted but too insignificant to interfere with the more fascinating visions he sees beyond. He intuits that those around him can only see the lace curtain, and he keenly appreciates his advantage. While they blankly daydream behind the lace, he acts . . . the natural prize due psychic penetration and a superior altered state.
It amuses him that conformists, whom he regards as sanctimonious timid bores, preach morality, remaining unaware of his own.
Once the victim has been chosen and action commences, the serial killer enters into an abnormal dimension: one in which he is viewing the world as a dynamic scenario, a theatrical event or happening, in which he is the prime mover. Both artistic creator and sole spectator of a production yet to be viewed by the general public.
At another level the play is an independent production, taking on a life of its own. A hazardous, cathartic drama in which the script is impromptu — neither the killer nor the victim knows for certain how it will end, nor whether a member of the unseen audience (the public) will decide to participate or not. The passing world has become much like television with the sound turned off, only half intrusive. As already stated, he believes no act in itself has inherent qualities of good or evil that is not made so by an audience. Does a falling tree make a sound if there is no one there to listen?
The audience is the value and quality of the act. During the process of artistic creation, in the killer’s psychic dimension beyond good and evil, the audience is merely a possible offstage threat. If his ‘play’ is a success, he will read the critical reviews with interest, not least as a technician in search of dangerous, structural flaws.
Some people may interpret these expressed, multidimensional qualities of the serial killer as denoting the supernatural, others the inhuman.
Public fear of the species is ambivalent. On one hand, the atavistic dread of the abnormal is deliberately magnified in the public mind by the mass media. On the other, the astounding popularity of news, books and films on the subject indicates that the public must thoroughly enjoy being ‘shocked,’ ‘terrified’ and ‘sickened.’ In fact, the popular current demand for extravaganzas of innocent blood is obviously outstripping supply.
It is human nature to derive comfort in the misery of others, and the nature of those in the media to derive maximum profit from it. Some serial killers are obviously intent upon a more equal distribution of misery. Therefore, if the concept of even-handed justice were paramount in the killer’s mind, it is surprising that so few victims have been selected from the media milieu who exploit and profit from gore. This curious neglect appears to indicate that the serial killer regards the media as his confederate in crime — his Boswell, as it were.
Logic confirms there is not such a gulf between the instincts of the serial killer and those of the media and public. A common bond of interest and satisfaction exists, the critical variant being, as in the theatre, between those who watch and those who act. Yet thoughts of murder are obviously psychologically and atavistically satisfying to the individual. If only they had the inclination and time to spare, they too would be capable of murder, and certainly would have no shortage of suitable candidates in mind. Indeed, they would feel silently insulted if anyone suggested the contrary.
Unlike the serial killer, few feel compelled to prove the point. But murder nevertheless remains probably the most popular, primal form of public entertainment there is or ever shall be.
Which perhaps helps one to understand why official statistics in practically every civilised country show that you are 99% more likely to be murdered by the person sitting next to you at home this very moment than by a serial killer — a revealing fact I will expand upon shortly.
One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.
— Nietzsche
On this further advanced plateau of mutual understanding, let us now examine some of the basic psychological guidelines for trying to outwit and track down the serial killer in his chosen field of recreation or retribution.
I have no compunctions, no sense of betrayed fellowship or breach of loyalty, in assisting the opposition, so to speak. After all, the killer knows the risks and is prepared to take them. He has the initiative and should keep abreast or ahead of current forensic developments and other scientific advances. If he makes a miscalculation he must accept the penalty, but not necessarily the judgment of others — a Christian ethic, of course, put to pagan use.
First, there now follows an initial reference table of characteristics and traits which help to identify the psychopathic serial killer. When we get down to individual case histories, this and subsequent tabulations will facilitate speedier understanding of significant factors. A surer grasp of these multiple associations will also assist in understanding the means by which a psychological/psychiatric profile of the killer being hunted is constructed. (Bear in mind that the more you tell someone, the more dangerous they become to you and, therefore, the far more dangerous you become to them.)
PSYCHOPATH PERSONALITY PRINT
1.Organised, emotionally controlled and methodical.
2.Of average or above-average intelligence.
3.On the surface, socially competent, persuasive and manipulative.
4.Usually a skilled worker or self-employed.
5.Sexually adequate heterosexual/homosexual/bisexual.
6.Often an only child.
7.The father or mother usually erratic/irrational/unstable at work and at home.
8.Subject to inconstant/capricious discipline as a child and used to getting his/her own way. The same selfish and amoral attitude extends into adult life.
9.Emotionless, controlled mood when committing a crime.
10.Moderate use of alcohol before/after a crime if stress builds up.
11.Usually married, divorced or living with a partner.
12.Owns/uses a reliable, functional vehicle.
13.Liable to change jobs quite often and move from one area/town/city to another. No sense of social awareness or community.
14.Takes an interest in media reports about his crime, especially news of police tactics being adopted.
15.By creating a fantasy, sexual or otherwise, and putting it into action, he believes he creates his own highly controlled, existential reality, his personal microcosm.
16.He is likely to return to the scene of the crime either to recreate the crime in imagination, or to check whether the crime scene has been discovered/disturbed or holds some originally overlooked clue/danger.
17.He will usually personalise the victim, talk to them, to give added significance, emotional and intellectual depth to the crime. Unlike the psychotic, he has little to fear from hi
s conscience by personalisation of the victim.
PSYCHOPATHIC FACTORS AT SCENE OF CRIME
(a) Indications that the crime was carefully planned and organised.
(b) Initial victim probably chosen in a district in or near where the killer lives/lived, works/worked, or is/was otherwise highly familiar with. He will probably correct this mistake when he sees the police in his home ground, and strike next in a more distant area. The initial victim may ostensibly be a stranger, but is more likely to be someone he knows, even if only by sight. He may initially kill the victim — not as part of his fantasy but simply to avoid leaving a witness who could give a description of him to the police. When he has killed once, it will be easier the second time, and killing will probably gradually become either (i) an habitual self-protective measure, a compulsive part of his modus operandi, or (ii) a metaphysical or psychological experience he has grown to appreciate.
(c) He deliberately personalises and terrorises the victim either to gain easier control, experience a further dimension of power, add emotional depth, or obtain sadistic satisfaction from their fear. The more insecure he is, the more likely a weapon will be brandished. Talks to them in an abstract, controlled manner, issuing threats or describing their probable fate if they don’t comply with everything he says. Conversely, he may falsely reassure them by promising they will come to no harm so long as they keep quiet and do as he tells them. This may be done for expediency or as a sophisticated form of sadism in the knowledge he is going to kill the victim anyway. Sadomasochistically he is deriving pleasure from what he knows the victim is experiencing — fear, shame, hope, despair, wishing an end to the experience, hoping to live, a surrendering to deliberate sexual stimulation against their will and experiencing pleasure without guilt.
(d) Above all, he wants total submission from the victim.
(e) If insecure he is likely to use restraints — handcuffs, rope, gag, etc.
(f) Obtains his satisfaction by rape or other violence prior to death of victim. Despite appearances, the central motivation is power, not sex. Sex and violence are both expressions of his will to power. He may wish to dominate and control his victim totally as part of his fantasy. This compulsion also indicates deep feelings of insecurity.
(g) Takes methodical pains to leave no forensic clues at the crime scene. Will hide or bury the body to minimise risk. No body, no crime.
(h) Rarely leaves a weapon behind. Will normally destroy or dispose of it in a river, etc., usually some distance from the crime scene. If he keeps the weapon, it is likely to be for some obsessive, ritualistic reason.
(i) He will probably take a trophy from the victim — a ring, garment, lock of hair, etc. — for use as a catalyst, to re-enact and savour the memory of the crime. This re-enactment also serves to satisfy him psychologically, extending his cooling-off period between murders.
(j) A vehicle will be used to convey the live victim or the body to the disposal area.
(k) Contrary to popular detective fiction, if the killer is of average or above-average intelligence, it is highly improbable that he will risk keeping any press cuttings about his crimes. Trophies are likely to be hidden in an obscure, secure place, such as a safe-deposit box, second address, a lockup garage, etc.
There are psychological/psychiatric subdivisions and secondary symptoms in every broad category profile. These shall be considered further on. Let us first tabulate the traits and characteristics of the second broad category.
PSYCHOTIC PERSONALITY PRINT
1.Volatile, spontaneous and disorganised. Usually seriously maladjusted, emotionally and intellectually. May experience hallucinations, reacting chiefly to inner experiences rather than external, perceiving a delusionary concept of reality. Often suffers from cycles of manic depression or profound melancholia.
2.Can be below or above average intelligence, depending upon the affective degree and subdivisions of psychosis involved, but in certain cases can soar to well above average.
3.Normally prefers unskilled work.
4.Sometimes sexually inadequate by normal standards but, stimulated by abnormal fantasy, can be sexually rapacious and violent.
5.Father socially erratic or incompetent. Son tends to emulate the father.
6.Probably experienced harsh parental discipline or psychological/sexual abuse.
7.Suffers from stress or emotional anxiety during crime.
8.Rarely uses alcohol during crime.
9.Usually lives alone.
10.Dramatic fluctuations in behaviour.
11.Normally lives or works in the area in which his initial crimes were committed.
12.Takes no real interest in media reports of his crimes or police tactics.
13.Usually neither owns nor uses a vehicle. Commits his crimes opportunistically/spontaneously in whatever spot or area he happens to be.
14.Being unable to square his personal perceptions and conceptions with surrounding reality, he consciously and subconsciously erects protective mental blocks and creates his own distorted version of reality, one which fits the ideal image he has of himself and the personal microcosm he inhabits.
15.Usually depersonalises the victim, by deliberately perceiving her/him as an object, attempting to eradicate any twinge of conscience, which he almost certainly regards as a sign of weakness.
16.Extreme character polarisations. May hold religious beliefs but reconciles them with criminal acts he commits.
PSYCHOTIC FACTORS AT THE SCENE OF A CRIME
(a)As the disorganised psychotic usually kills erratically within a window of opportunity, hastily innovating as events dictate, the scene of the crime reflects general disorder and should furnish important clues to the profiler.
(b)He will usually not even bother to conceal the victim or, at best, do so in a cursory, sloppy manner, either (i) because he simply does not care about the victim, or (ii) does not fully appreciate the consequences of his act and the increased risks involved, or (iii) wishes to further degrade the victim by discarding them naked to public view, or to shock those who discover the body.
(c)Despite the fact that he normally knows one or more of his initial victims and lives/works in the same vicinity, he is usually not aware of the obvious dangers inherent in killing a victim in his home territory; this will depend upon the degree of mental maladjustment involved and the strength of affective influence exerted by the subdivisions of his psychosis. Therefore, unlike the psychopath, he will be tardier in strategically selecting other districts in which to strike. This is an important point to note, as it leads to faster psychological classification of the killer, denoting whether he is predominantly psychopathic or psychotic, and often strongly suggests the probable direction in which to concentrate to search for his base of operations, and the detection of a probable pattern revealing where and when he is likely to kill next.
(d)Rarely uses restraints on victim.
(e)There will usually be pathological, ritualistic or some esoteric factors at the crime scene which will reflect aspects of the killer’s fantasy fulfilment, his psychosis and perhaps some of its subdivisions and secondary symptoms
(f)Where the organised psychopath nearly always chooses isolated or secure areas in which to kill or take his victim to, the psychotic will often kill in places fraught with obvious dangers — streets, busy parks, subways and other public venues. The nature of his psychosis often generates a total or partly affective delusion that he is being protected or aided by supernatural forces of some description.
That completes the initial basic tabulations which help to identify into which of the two broad categories — psychopathic or psychotic — the hunted serial killer fits, and some of the further significant indications which have to be looked for at the crime scene.
The next required step in building a comprehensive psychological/psychiatric profile of the particular killer being sought is a precise evaluation of his modus operandi from start to finish.
This is naturally achieved by an e
xhaustive survey of each crime scene, compiling a highly individualistic personality print/crime signature from the conscious/subconscious methodology he employs throughout.
Evidence of symbolism, ritualistic or sadistic fantasy is of special relevance. We are, as previously evidenced, searching for and creating, from explicit and implicit evidence, a physical and psychological afterimage of the killer.
Modifications may be required as investigations progress or further murders are committed, providing additional data to test against the original hypothesis.
In the process of constructing a psychological/psychiatric profile under one or other of the two main categories, Psychopathic and Psychotic, evidence of secondary symptoms and additional sub-classifications of abnormality assist in determining the nature of the fantasy the killer is acting out.
In the case of psychotics, some category of schizophrenia is usually present — simple, acute, hebephrenic, paranoid, etc.
Every variety of psychoses should be considered — organic; functional; hallucinatory; delusional; melancholic; general paresis; alcoholic reactions; pathological intoxication; acute alcoholic hallucinosis; Korsakoff’s Syndrome; senile dementia; psychotic depression; involutional melancholia; the male climacteric; manic-depressive psychosis; psychotic mania; hypomania; etc. Some of these symptoms may also be found in the psychopath to a non-affective degree.
Thus we axiomatically enter the field of compulsions, obsessions, phobias, dissociated personalities, fugues, traumatic neuroses, multiple personality, psychosexual behaviour, sexual symbolism, sexual aberrations, and resort to all the main schools of psychology — structuralist (psychophysical); functionalist; psychoanalytic; gestalt; behaviourist/behavioural (in the context of psychological profiling, the most important).
Some individuals erroneously believe that if they master logic they will master life.
Logic is merely a tool. The science of argument. In that context it can be used to deduce what argument the serial killer is trying to put across by his actions, what he is trying to prove or disprove.