Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters

by Peter Vronsky

  The victim is often “depersonalized” by having his or her face covered or, more subtly, by being rolled over on the stomach. Sometimes severe facial mutilation is also a sign of depersonalization, as is mutilation of the genitals and breasts.

  Rape or mutilation most often takes place after the victim has been rendered unconscious, is dying, or is dead. The disorganized serial killer is uncomfortable with any kind of interaction with the victim and prefers a passive and doll-like subject. As Kemper said of his victims, he needed to “possess them in the way I wanted to; I had to evict them from their human bodies.”

  Sexual acts committed on the victim often involve the insertion of foreign objects into the body’s orifices (insertional necrophilia). Parts of the body, especially the buttocks and breasts, are sometimes bitten or slashed and stabbed, as are often the thighs, abdomen, and neck. Very often the killer does not complete the sexual act and semen is found on the victim’s clothing or nearby. Sometimes the killer has sex with the victim’s wounds. Parts of the victim’s body might be cut away and missing.

  Death is usually caused by strangulation, blunt force, or stabbing, and the weapon is often found at the crime scene.

  The organized sexual killer is more complex in his crime. The act of killing is sexualized and death is often caused slowly. Asphyxiation is often used with the killer deliberately loosening and tightening his grip around the victim’s throat, keeping him or her suspended between life and death. The killer rapes his victim before killing, and sometimes repeats the rape after death. Some killers focus on murdering their victims in the middle or at the climax of the sex act. The sex act is often complete or near complete, with semen discovered inside body orifices or in the pubic region. The sex organs might be bitten, bruised, or cut, and such injuries usually occur while the victim is alive. The victim often shows evidence of restraints. Severe mutilation, other than to disguise the victim’s identity, is not a usual feature of the organized serial killer.

  A subtype of the organized sexual killer is the sadistic sexual killer, for whom the torture of the victim is a more primary motivator than the actual sexual act. The sadistic killer derives his pleasure from seeing his victim in pain, and for that he needs his victim alive and conscious. Such killers have been known to keep their victims alive for as long as six weeks, and some carefully revive near-dead victims in order to prolong the torture. Torture inflicted on the victim is often very elaborate, and the killer brings with him various implements such as pliers, electrical devices, and probes. Some killers bring their victims to elaborately fitted and soundproofed “torture chambers.”

  The most prevalent forms of sexual acts inflicted on the victim, in order of case frequency, are anal rape, forced fellatio, vaginal rape, and foreign-object penetration.191 Very often victims are forced to engage in all of these acts, and they almost always occur before death.

  Victims often show injuries in various stages of healing because they have been inflicted over an extended period of time. Bruising is often evident in genital areas and on the breasts, thighs, buttocks, neck, and abdomen. These areas may be slashed or mutilated, but rarely enough to cause death. Victims may be urinated on, and their stomach contents may contain evidence indicating that they were forced to ingest urine or feces.

  Most commonly, death is caused by ligature strangulation, manual strangulation, hanging, or suffocation. Less frequently, because death occurs faster, the cause is gunshot wounds, cutting, stabbing wounds, or blunt force.

  The sadistic sexual killer is usually the most organized of all. His vehicle is often specially outfitted for capturing victims and, as already noted, he may maintain a secluded torture facility outfitted with elaborate devices.

  The organized killer often works with gloves and disguises and takes care not to leave any evidence behind. The body is frequently taken to another location and carefully hidden. Often he has special “burial grounds” prepared in advance and arrives equipped with a shovel.

  The preceding descriptions are not fixed formulas—they are what usually occurs. Some killers are a mix of organized and disorganized personalities, and sometimes circumstances such as an unexpected interruption can cause an organized killer to leave behind a disorganized scene, while teams of killers, if composed of two different personalities, can also leave a mixed crime scene.

  The FBI study determined that in 56 percent of cases, the victims were raped before death and 33 percent were tortured.192 It appears that disorganized, organized, and sadistic-organized personalities represent roughly a third each of serial killers.

  It should also be noted that several categories of serial killers do not easily fit any of these descriptions. These are solo female serial killers, such as mothers or babysitters who kill children in their care, nurses who kill patients, wives who kill multiple husbands, and at least one case of a prostitute who compulsively killed clients. Male nurses and doctors who kill multiple patients also do not easily fall into the previously described categories and are believed to function under the rules of a different dynamic. Finally, serial cult murders, of which there are several cases, also operate under a different set of circumstances.

  Phase 6: The Totem-Trophy-Memory Stage

  Many serial killers, during or after the murder, perform a ritual that most often consists of taking souvenirs or trophies of the crime. This is an essential feature, because the roots of the crime lie in the foggy dissociative process where the perimeters of reality and fantasy become blurry. The taking and keeping of souvenirs is essential for the serial killer to somehow create, and maintain the bridge between his dreamed desires and the reality of acting out his fantasy. Without the souvenir, some serial killers may not even be sure that they had acted upon their fantasy. Others use the souvenir to perpetuate the pleasure and excitement they sparked during the murder.

  In addition to taking souvenirs, the disorganized killer may also pose the corpse, sometimes in an obscene position. Occasionally the posing is more ritualistic; in Los Angeles the killer of derelicts in the street poured a circle of salt around the body and took their shoes off, neatly leaving them at the feet of the victim, pointing toward the body. The body may be dumped in a place of significance to taunt authorities, such as in front of a No Dumping sign or, as Henry Lee Lucas did, near the gates of a prison. Lester Suff left murdered drug-addict prostitutes near Dumpsters, their arms turned outward to display their needle track marks. Parts of the corpse, such as genitals, the head, or limbs, may be cut away and kept by the killer. These may be later eaten by the killer or kept preserved in jars and even shown to subsequent victims. Bloodied clothing may be kept by the disorganized personality because usually no attempt is made to destroy evidence.

  The organized killer is more likely to take photographs or videos of the victim both before and after killing. He may also take minor personal belongings, such as an item of clothing, jewelry, or a driver’s license, as a trophy of his crime. Because the organized personality attempts to cover his tracks, he may carefully hide such items. Others may give the souvenirs as gifts to their girlfriends, wives, or daughters. Some keep elaborate scrapbooks of newspaper clippings or write detailed diaries. The FBI study reports that in 27 percent of the homicides it studied, souvenirs were kept.193

  Some serial killers make videotapes of their victims. Although for decades there have been rumors of so-called snuff films that purport to show actual murders, so far all the videotapes recovered by police from serial killers stop short of showing the actual killing. They do, however, show horrendous scenes of torture and rape. Such tapes were recently shown at a trial of serial killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka in Toronto, Canada, and of Charles Ng in California, and were rare glimpses into the chamber of horrors of a sadistic sexual murderer.

  In crime fiction there is a popular notion that the criminal returns to the scene of his crime. It is absolutely true. The FBI study determined that in 27 percent of the homicides it surveyed, the killer returned to the cr
ime scene. When the murderers were asked why, 26 percent replied that they returned to relive the fantasy; 19 percent to check into the progress of the crime; 9 percent to kill another victim; and 6 percent to have sex with the corpse. One returned fourteen hours after the murder and cut off the victim’s breasts; another returned several weeks later to involve the corpse in sexual activities.194 Arthur Shawcross was identified and captured when a police helicopter spotted him eating a bag lunch near the decaying body of one of his victims. The return to the crime scene is a vital aspect of the totem phase.

  The FBI also discovered another remarkable aspect of the totem phase: In 20 percent of the homicides it studied, the killer participated to some degree in the police investigation of the crime.195 In cases of children going missing, the killer is often among the volunteers looking for the missing child. Sometimes the killer presents himself as a witness or, as in the cases of Ed Kemper and Peter Woodcock, he goes to the police station or bars and coffee shops frequented by police officers and engages them in conversation about the case. It is a rule of thumb for police to usually investigate first the person who reports finding the body.

  There are several reasons for the killer’s involvement in the investigation, beyond the desire to know how far the investigation has progressed. First, it gives the killer an opportunity to prolong the excitement and pleasure that the murder sparked; second, it gives him a sense of superiority and control over the authorities around him who are attempting to solve the mystery—he knows something they do not.

  Phase 7: Post-Homicidal Depression

  When questioned, serial killers give different accounts of their satisfaction after the crime. Some go into a long and deep sleep; some speak of a sense of “renewal,” whereas others speak of guilt, remorse, and fear. This state may last for hours or for weeks and months, but at some point the serial killer once again begins slipping back into the dissociative state. Obviously, the problem is that all of the factors that originally contributed to the killer’s homicidal fantasies have not been alleviated by the homicide. Even worse, the commission of the killings can in some cases contribute additional stressors in the killer’s psychopathology—making him kill more frequently and more brutally.

  Ted Bundy, speaking in the third person as always, described the post-crime state of mind:

  He did everything he should have done. He didn’t go out at night and when he was drinking he stayed around friends. For a period of months, the enormity of what he did stuck with him. He watched his behavior, and reinforced the desire to overcome what he had begun to perceive were some problems that were probably more severe than he would have liked to believe they were.

  It was the deceptive fashion, you might say, in which that psychopathology withdrew into this dormant stage that led the individual to the erroneous belief that he “got it out of himself,” and this wasn’t going to happen again . . .

  But slowly, the pressures, tensions, dissatisfaction which, in the very early stages, fueled this thing had an effect. Yet it was more self-sustaining and didn’t need as much tension or as much disharmony externally as it did before . . .

  It took six months or so until he was back thinking of alternative means of engaging in similar activity, but not something that would likely result in apprehension or failure of one sort or another . . .

  [After committing another crime] he was seized with the same kind of disgust and repulsion and fear and wonder at why he was allowing himself to attempt such extraordinary violence. But the significance of this particular occasion was that while he stayed off the streets and vowed he’d never do it again and recognized the horror of what he had done and certainly was frightened by what he saw happening, it took him only three months to get over it. In the next incident, he was over it in a month.196

  Ted Bundy was an intelligent, thinking serial killer with a college degree in psychology and a precise awareness of what he was doing, yet he continued to murder repeatedly despite his inhibitions and struggle to confront the compulsion to kill. On the other hand, Kenneth Bianchi was more typically representative of the serial killer’s mentality in his explanation:

  We got on the freeway. I fucked her and killed her. We dumped her body off and that was it. Nothin’ to it.197

  PART THREE

  FIGHTING MONSTERS

  NINE

  THE ART AND SCIENCE OF CRIMINAL PROFILING:

  How They Get It Right and When They Don’t

  If you want to understand the artist, look at his work.

  —JOHN DOUGLAS, former head of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Investigative Support Unit

  In a macabre way, looking at the changing face of a serial killer is like looking at the changing face of America . . .

  —ROBERT D. KEPPEL, criminal investigator

  Profiling and the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit

  In 1991, the Jodie Foster movie The Silence of the Lambs, based on the Thomas Harris bestseller, claimed that the FBI had a center nestled deep in a forested region near Washington D.C., where specially trained FBI agents ensconced in underground chambers did nothing but think about and analyze hundreds of unsolved murder files and gruesome crime scene photographs from every part of the United States. The movie proposed that they attempt to enter the minds of unidentified killers to produce a profile—a hypothetical description of a suspect based on his psychology. That is precisely what the FBI does in real life—at Quantico, Virginia, about thirty miles outside the capital.

  Quantico is a fortified U.S. Marine Corps base where the FBI training academy is located. The Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU)* is based at the training facility and was originally established to train agents how to negotiate with and predict the behavior of hostage takers. It was in the BSU that the FBI’s system of analysis of serial killers and rapists was first developed in the late 1970s, primarily by FBI agents Robert K. Ressler, John Douglas, and Roy Hazelwood.

  At Quantico, buried beneath the ground in a bomb shelter once built for postnuclear intelligence operations, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) is housed. FBI agents specialized in profiling offenders, known as criminal investigative analysts, study crime data from suspected serial homicides, kidnappings, terrorist acts, and other serious and violent offenses.

  In most serial homicides, FBI agents do not actively participate in the investigation, secure evidence, or pursue the suspect—that is the responsibility of the local police agency. Nor is the FBI called in if serial homicides occur in different jurisdictions—that is a myth. The FBI analysts act in an advisory capacity, only at the request of a local police department that submits a standard, thirteen-page Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP) analysis report to the FBI. The data from the VICAP report is fed into a computer known as Profiler, and the output of the computer is then elaborated on by the analysts in the form of a profile before being sent back to the local police department. Although generically called profiling, the technical term is criminal investigative analysis (CIA).

  FBI analysts sometimes travel to the scene of a crime or assign one of a team of specially trained local FBI agents, known as field profile coordinators, to work at the scene. The average FBI agent is fairly well educated—a university degree is required of recruits. The agents at NCAVC often hold postgraduate degrees in various social sciences—they are highly trained, highly experienced, and highly educated. They claim to be formidable “mind hunters” and “monster fighters.”

  A Brief History of Profiling

  The NCAVC is a relatively new program, formally established by order of President Reagan in June 1984. In the wake of the serial killer “epidemic” described earlier, it took twenty-seven years to develop and implement the NCAVC from the time that an LAPD homicide detective named Pierce Brooks first thought of it.

  Aside from fictional investigative profilers such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes or C. Auguste Dupin in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the use of psycholog
ical profiling of unidentified criminals is a relatively new technique. It was probably first used to profile one of history’s most notorious criminals, Adolf Hitler. During World War II, the OSS—the precursor of the CIA—commissioned psychiatrist W. C. Langer to construct a psychodynamic personality profile of Hitler with the purpose of anticipating decisions that Hitler might make under certain circumstances. Langer’s profile turned out to be relatively accurate, down to his prediction of Hitler’s suicide at the end of the war.198

  PROFILING THE MAD BOMBER OF NEW YORK: 1956

  Starting from 1940, for sixteen years, New York City was plagued by a series of bomb explosions in public places. Some thirty bombs had been planted, although not all had exploded. In 1956, the bombings began to escalate—the police were worried that it was only a matter of time before somebody would be killed. The individual was now leaving bombs inside movie theater seats, which he slashed open with a knife from underneath and stuffed the device inside.

  From letters that the “Mad Bomber” left behind and sent to newspapers, it was obvious that he was a disgruntled former employee of Con Edison, New York’s electric power company—but there were records for thousands of such former employees and the police did not know where to begin their search. It was at this point that the New York City police turned for help to psychiatrist and New York State Assistant Commissioner for Mental Hygiene Dr. James A. Brussel.

  After reviewing the police files, Brussel told the astonished police officers, “He’s symmetrically built. Perpendicular and girth development in good ratio. Neither fat nor skinny.” From the notes and the behavior, Brussels had concluded that the Mad Bomber was suffering from paranoia—an obvious deduction. From there, however, Brussels turned to his knowledge of Ernst Kretschmer’s study of some 10,000 patients in mental hospitals. Kretschmer found that 85 percent of the paranoiacs had what he described as an “athletic” body type. Thus Brussel concluded that if the Mad Bomber was a paranoiac, then indeed the chances were 17 in 20 that his build was symmetrical. (A recent study of serial killers, who are not all paranoiacs, concluded that 68 percent had height and weight in good proportion to one another.)199