Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters

by Peter Vronsky

  In the end, what makes a serial killer still remains a mystery to psychologists. In the case of severely abused children, anyone can understand their eventual emergence as psychopathic killers. But what about David Berkowitz and Peter Woodcock? Although adopted, they seemed to have been brought up in stable and loving homes. Thousands of children are adopted and do not grow up to be serial killers. Thousands of children grow up in conditions far more desperate and abusive than Berkowitz’s and Woodcock’s, and they too do not become serial killers. Part of the problem is that we are no longer sure of what defines a “healthy” and “happy” family. The incidence of abuse, physical and psychological, is often hidden from public eye, and only in the last two decades has the true extent of sexual abuse within families come to the forefront.

  Dr. Alice Miller, in her book For Your Own Good, maintains that the origins of adult violent behavior are found in a level of cruelty in the upbringing of children that is ostensibly invisible. Miller described a “poisonous pedagogy” in which children are cruelly punished while being told it is “for their own good.” Such demonstrations of pain and punishment as being “good” send the wrong message to the child. Moreover, the parents’ display of their “heroic” suspension of their love and feeling of tenderness for their child in order to inflict punishment upon him—“this hurts me more than it hurts you”—is another disturbing message a child can receive. While parental discipline is a common and necessary aspect of bringing up children, the fine line between abuse and constructive discipline is very murky and difficult to objectively define.

  The Role of Fantasy

  The agents from the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit who were interviewing convicted serial and sex killers arrived at a different and more complex theory than the one that many psychologists were advancing. The FBI rejected the notion that serial killers murdered as a defensive-reactive response to extremely abusive experiences in their life. What troubled the FBI analysts was the fact that not all serial killers whom they were interviewing suffered severe abuse in childhood. For example, Ted Bundy, although born illegitimate, grew up in an apparently stable, lower-middle-class home with a loving mother and supportive stepfather. Where, why, and how did he develop the rage that led him to kill twenty young women?

  The FBI concluded that serial murderers “programmed” or conditioned themselves in childhood to become murderers in a progressively intensifying loop of fantasies. They discovered that the most common childhood trait of serial killers, which also extended into adolescence and adulthood, was daydreaming and compulsive masturbation. As defined in the study, daydreaming is “any cognitive activity representing a shift of attention away from a task.” Fantasy is defined as an elaborate thought with great preoccupation, sometimes expressed as thought, images, or feelings only, anchored in the daydreaming process.165 In the FBI study, 82 percent of offenders reported daydreaming in their childhood. An equal 82 percent reported compulsive masturbation (probably accompanying the daydreams).166 When the offenders reached adolescence and then adulthood, there was only a 1 percent drop in their daydreaming and compulsive masturbation.

  Fantasies serve to relieve anxiety or fear, and almost everybody has them to one degree or another. A child who is abused may understandably develop aggressive fantasies in which he develops a power and means by which he can destroy his tormentor. But the trigger of these fantasies does not necessarily need to be extraordinarily abusive or violent events—relatively common events such as parental divorce, family illness, or even rejection by a friend can all give a child a sense of loss of control, anxiety, and fear, and may spark aggressive fantasies as a method of coping with the stress.

  Only at this point do the other factors noted in the serial killers’ childhood take effect. The child who lacks bonding and a sense of contact with others will internalize his fantasy and cloud the boundary between fantasy and reality. Living in his own private world, the child begins to repeat and elaborate on the fantasy, finding comfort in it while continually narrowing the perimeters between fantasy and reality. Of the killers interviewed in the FBI study, 71 percent reported a sense of isolation in their childhood. As they grew into adolescence, the sense of isolation apparently increased to 77 percent of subjects.167 Such increased social isolation only encourages a reliance on fantasy as a substitute for human encounter. And as we have seen, so many serial killers were lonely and isolated children.

  The individual’s personality development becomes dependent on the fantasy life and its themes rather than on social interaction. The total escape and control that the child has in his fantasy world becomes addictive, especially if there are continued stresses in the child’s life.

  If the particular fantasy involves violence, revenge, or murder, they become part of that addiction; when they are combined with masturbation, a sexual component to the fantasy is developed. Psychologists identify this process as classical conditioning, in which “the repeated pairing of fantasized cues with orgasm results in their acquiring sexually arousing properties.”168 One serial killer who murdered young boys, John Joseph Joubert, remembers as an adolescent compulsively masturbating to fantasies of strangling and stabbing boys dressed only in their underwear. Joubert said that he could not recall whether these images brought on the masturbation or whether masturbation brought on the fantasies. Violence and sex become merged into a murderous obsession, which often is kept secret. As one unnamed killer in the FBI study said, “Nobody bothered to find out what my problem was, and nobody knew about the fantasy world.”

  As the individual continually refines and “improves on” his repeated fantasy, eventually it becomes a rehearsal for future action. At some point the serial killer, as an adolescent or as an adult (and occasionally even as a child), begins to take his fantasy out into the world on “test runs.” This testing of the fantasy is what Ed Kemper was doing when he went to his schoolteacher’s house at night armed with a knife and a fantasy of making love to her corpse. Thirteen-year-old John Joubert rode by a girl on his bicycle and jabbed a sharp pencil into her back. Monte Ralph Rissell, who raped and murdered five women by age nineteen, shot his cousin with an air gun when he was nine years old. When Ted Bundy was three years old, his fifteen-year-old aunt awoke one morning to find him secretly lifting up her bedcovers and placing three butcher knives beside her. As an adult, Bundy began sabotaging women’s cars without any clear plan of what he would do if he succeeded in trapping a woman by those means.

  The stage at which an individual begins to project his fantasy into the real world and involve other people in it is the fundamental difference between the fantasies that you and I as children spin out in our imaginations, tranquil or violent, and those that originate in the mind of the serial killer.

  The most common testing out of murder fantasies in childhood involves the torture and killing of animals and bullying of fellow children. The FBI study indicated that 36 percent of subjects displayed cruelty to animals in their childhood, and 46 percent did so by the time they were adolescents; bullying of other children increased from 54 percent to 64 percent from childhood to adolescence.

  Accompanying cruelty to animals and bullying, other behavioral traits were reported in the FBI survey as follows: stealing, 56 percent in childhood and 81 percent in adolescence; fire setting, 56 percent and 52 percent; bedwetting, 68 percent and 60 percent; nightmares, 67 percent and 68 percent; and rebelliousness, 67 percent and 84 percent.

  Fire setting, cruelty to animals, and bedwetting form a behavioral triad that is most often identified with the childhood histories of serial killers. Most psychiatrists agree that the appearance of all three behaviors in a child signals a high likelihood of a future violent adult.

  The commission of lesser crimes, such as breaking and entering, arson, voyeurism, and exhibitionism, is also a common trait in the histories of serial killers. Fetish theft—of women’s underwear from clotheslines, or shoes during burglaries—are sometimes seen in the childhood records of serial kille
rs. Jerry Brudos, for example, was obsessed with women’s shoes, and even stole his teacher’s shoes as a schoolboy. Twenty years later as an adult, he hacked off the foot of one of his victims and kept it in his freezer, slipped into one of his favorite high-heeled shoes. The Brudos case illustrates an important lesson: Ostensibly harmless or “comical” offenses, such as stealing women’s shoes or underwear from a laundry, should not be dismissed without additional attention, especially if the offender is young. Such offenses may seem innocuous on the surface, but in murkier depths they can harbor homicidal roots. It is remarkable how many serial killers have records, some going back decades before they first killed, of minor sexual offenses such as window peeping or exhibitionism. While most minor sexual offenders do not go on to kill, most serial killers do begin with minor offenses. These offenses are often testing probes of fantasy into the realm of reality. If the individual escapes detection or avoids sanction for these offenses, especially at a young age, he can develop a sense of invincibility that carries him to the ultimate deadly peak of his fantasy. One murderer in the FBI study (probably Ed Kemper) easily made the connection between fantasy and homicide, explaining that “Murder is very real. It’s not something you see in a movie. You have to do all the practical things of surviving.”169

  Unfortunately fantasy and reality rarely come together, and the serial killer is often frustrated in his attempts to perfectly bring his frequently dwelled-upon fantasy into actuality. When disappointed in the results of his attempt to realize his fantasy exactly as imagined, the killer murders again and again, searching to perfect his desperate attempts to consummate his ideal fantasy. In many ways, serial murder is a learning experience from beginning to end.

  Some serial killers, when they actually succeed in realizing their fantasy, stop killing. Ed Kemper’s deepest fantasy was to kill his mother, and when he finally did that, after killing one more woman, he turned himself in. It appears that Andrew Cunanan’s fantasy was to kill a famous person, with Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone, and Gianni Versace on his list. Having killed Versace, and no doubt found it unsatisfying, Cunanan saw no point in continuing to pursue his fantasy and shot himself.

  Other serial killers, however, once they find the key to acting out their deepest fantasy, continue murdering to repeat the fantasy—they “level out” and begin practicing a perfected ritualistic routine in their homicides, from which they try never to waver and which always leaves them wanting more. Other killers become bored with their fantasy once they have actualized it, and they escalate to more elaborate or violent fantasies in an addictive search of a more intensive “high.”

  The serial killer’s personality is a complex cocktail of biological, environmental, and social circumstances. There is no one clear formula for the making of a serial killer. Some children in traumatic circumstances resort to humorous fantasy and become great comedians; some escape by weaving fantastic stories and grow up to be great writers; others illustrate their fantasies and become painters; others become architects, businessmen, lawyers, politicians, and generals (where in some cases they are given medals and honors for killing in numbers that far exceed any serial killer’s body count, a cynic may respond). It is remarkable how many successful individuals can have as traumatic a childhood as serial killers do. But just to complicate such distinctions, one should not overlook the fact that some serial killers are ostensibly successful. John Wayne Gacy, who murdered thirty-three young males, was a construction contractor respected in his community who earned more than $100,000 a year. Ted Bundy was a university graduate and was admitted into law school. Christopher Wilder of Florida, who raped and murdered twelve women, was the owner of two construction companies, an amateur racecar driver, and a substantial contributor to the Seal Rescue Fund and Save the Whales. Richard Cottingham, the Times Square Torso Ripper, was a valued computer data specialist at Blue Cross in New York. Gary Heidnik, who kept female slaves shackled in a fetid basement pit (and upon whom the character of Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs was partially based), was a financial wizard who parlayed a small investment into a fortune. He owned several expensive cars, including a Rolls-Royce, and founded his own church in order to avoid paying taxes. Despite his wealth, he chose to live in North Philadelphia’s ghetto in a rundown home where he kept, tortured, raped, and killed his slaves.* In each of these cases, the killers’ fantasies were bigger than any achievement in their life.

  The key to the making of serial killers lies in the nature of their fantasy and how they actualize it. FBI agents who interviewed convicted serial killers for their study remarked that the one thing that the murderers had difficulty talking about was their childhood fantasies. Somewhere in that dark territory lurks the killer seed. The FBI reported:

  Interviews with the murderers in our study revealed that their internal world is filled with troublesome, joyless thoughts of dominance over others. These thoughts are expressed through a wide range of actions toward others. In childhood, these include cruelty to animals, abuse of other children, destructive play patterns, disregard for others, fire setting, stealing, and destroying property. In adolescence and adulthood, the murderers’ actions become more violent: assaultive behaviors, burglary, arson, abduction, rape, nonsexual murder, and finally sexual murder, involving rape, torture, mutilation, and necrophilia.170

  Ed Kemper said, “I knew long before I started killing that I was going to be killing, that it was going to end up like that. The fantasies were too strong. They were going on for too long and were too elaborate.”

  Demo version limitation

  EIGHT

  THE KILLING TIMES:

  The Method to the Madness

  Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet 2.2

  Once the serial killer has killed his first victim he enters a complex circular process, akin to addiction, that leads him to kill over and over again. Very distinctive patterns emerge, depending on whether the serial killer is an organized or disorganized personality, and the killer leaves a unique personal imprint called a “signature” on each of his murders.

  Each serial homicide goes through a number of dynamic phases, which at some points differ slightly between organized and disorganized killers.

  Phase 1: Dissociative-Fantasy-Aura State

  The dissociative state is a state of mind “beyond fantasy” in which the killer has crossed the boundaries that separate imagination from reality. This “hyper fantasy stage” is arrived at through a gradual process of withdrawal from reality through years of repeating and elaborating fantasies with specifically violent themes such as murder, rape, revenge, control, mutilation, cannibalism, and possession. During his childhood and adolescence, the future killer takes tentative exploratory journeys into this territory, which manifest themselves in acts of cruelty to animals, bullying of fellow children, setting fires, and petty crimes.

  For most children, such forays into violence beyond mere fantasy result in very discouraging and unpleasant results. These consequences often serve to dissuade the child from ever acting out these fantasies again—and often clear the fantasy away completely for the remainder of the child’s life. But for a small minority of children, these forays result in a certain level of stress and fear alleviation, satisfaction, and pleasure, which leave the child wanting more—especially if the child is under continual environmental stress. These fantasies are often accompanied by compulsive masturbation, which conditions a link between the fantasies and sexual urges.

  These children cling to their violent fantasies into their adolescence and adulthood, and at some indeterminate point they cross the threshold where they no longer know or are aware of the difference between fantasy and reality. They are no longer cognizant that the thoughts they are having originated in fantasy: Reality and fantasy become merged and the person is said to be in the dissociative state.

  The dissociative process can last anywhere from a few hours to a few months before som
e stressor such as those described in the previous chapter, along with facilitators, causes the person to “snap” and triggers an acting out of a violent fantasy. The stressor can be a culmination of accumulated long-term problems, such as a bad marriage, or a sudden and often minor episode, such as rudeness from a store clerk or rejection by a woman approached in a disco or bar.

  Dr. Joel Norris described the dissociative process as the “aura phase,” in which for the killer sounds and colors become more vivid, odors are more intense, and sometimes even his skin can become sensitive to the slightest pressure. The killer is oblivious to any outside stimuli and reacts only to invisible stimuli that he alone can experience and understand. The fantasy is now prolonged, entirely compulsive, and completely dominating the killer’s every thought and action.

  Nothing can inhibit the killer at this late stage, not the threat of punishment, laws, fear of death, morality, religion, mores, or taboos—all of these things become meaningless to the serial killer, as does the life of the person he is about to murder. The serial killer is almost a creature that defies the definition of a human, Dr. Norris says: