May have had a longing to have been a policeman or in the armed forces
They are likely to dismember the body
Will likely commit these acts in the daytime rather than at night
Will possibly seduce the victim in order to restrain them
May kill in one location and then they are likely move the body to another place
May first engage in conversations with the victims
Will leave a controlled scene of crime
Upon questioning, they will respond better at a direct interview
The disorganised and asocial are almost the opposite in characteristics and behavioural patterns. These patterns of behaviour and common acts may include:
Possibly having a low IQ of around 80-95
They may be socially inadequate possibly a loner
They may live alone and not date or be dating.
They may have had an absent or abusive father
May have experienced emotional abuse within the family
They have little or no interest in the news and current affairs
They may have failed at school and left early or been expelled
They may have poor hygiene and poor housekeeping skills
Will most likely commit these acts at night
Will possibly have a hiding place at their home
Will most likely drive a clunky car or pick-up truck
May revisit the scene of the crime to relive the act of murder
May contact the victim’s family in order to taunt them
Never have had any wish to be in the police force
Will seek out self help programs
Kills and then leaves the victim at the same scene
Will usually not dismember the body
Will generally leave a chaotic crime scene
May leave physical evidence behind
Will respond best to having counselled interviews
Often in childhood, serials killers will exhibit three behaviours which are known as the ‘MacDonald triad’. These three behaviours will consist of: bed wetting, arson and cruelty to animals. They are more likely to have come from broken homes, and may have been abused or neglected. Some theorise that the troubled childhoods may actually be a reason behind them committing these acts in the first place.
Around eighty percent of serial killers are white, aged 20 to 30, are normally intelligent and predominantly kill white women. There are always exceptions to the rule though.
Why do serial killers kill?
There is no simple answer as to why serial killers have the urge to kill. There have been numerous studies conducted all over the world, but the answers may never fully be known. There are ample theories as to why these people are driven to commit the acts of murder, these include: Childhood abuse or neglect, mental illness, and brain injuries.
The FBI conducted a study that involved interviewing dozens or murderers and serial killers. They found that there were similar patterns of childhood neglect within those they studied. During childhood, the child should be learning about love, trust and interaction on basic levels with other human beings. If these things are not learned during childhood, they may never be learned later in life. Not all neglected children will grow up to become serial killers, so this detracts somewhat from this theory.
Some claim that all serial killers are insane, and that this could be the only real explanation for these barbaric killings. To be classed as guilty by insanity, the murderer must prove that at the time of the acts, they did not fully understand that the actions would lead to the death of the victims. Only two serial killers to date have ever successfully pled insanity.
Some serial killers have been classed by professionals as psychopaths. The official diagnostic term is known as antisocial personality disorder of APD for short. A person diagnosed with APD will have been behaving in a pattern of disregard and of violating others rights from around the age of fifteen years old.
This pattern will include seven different factors, of which three must have been met for the diagnosis. These include:
Failure to conform to social normality
Irritability and aggressiveness
A lack of remorse for what they have committed
Persistent lying or stealing
Disregard for safety
Promiscuity
The inability to tolerate boredom
Psychopaths are not insane, they do know right from wrong and they know that they are committing the act of murder.
Another theory is that serial killers could have some form of brain deformity or injury. Damage to areas such as the frontal lobe, the hypothalamus and the limbic system, can cause loss of control, loss of judgement and violence, and can sometimes lead to extreme aggression.
It may just be that the killer actually enjoys the thrill of taking the life of another person, and enjoys having the power to end another life. Some may actually believe that they are on a mission from God, or that they are actually fulfilling a destiny by ridding the world of undesirables. The truth however, may never ever truly be fully revealed.
So now the only thing we can really do is to try and take a closer look and to try to understand the reasons why these events occur. Most of those killers are not well known amongst the general public, but they are some of the worst killers in history. We should start where we can find a first logical starting point a man named Dr Henry Howard Holmes. The first ever officially recorded case of a serial killer.
Dr Henry Howard Holmes
Herman Webster Mudgett was born on the 16th of May 1861in Gilmanton Hew Hampshire. Herman later took on the alias of Dr Henry Howard Holmes. He is the first officially recorded case of a serial killer in America. He confessed to killing twenty seven people, nine of which were confirmed as true, but his actual victim count may have numbered even higher.
The Mudgett family were descended from one of the first original settler families in the Gilmanton area. His father was known to be a strict disciplinarian, and it was well known that Herman was bullied at school. At a local doctor’s office, he first encountered a human skeleton, in invoked a great deal of fear in him. His schoolmates discovered his fear and would then force him to touch the skeleton. He then claimed to have become fascinated with the bones.
Herman attended the University of Michigan medical school. He graduated in 1884. It was during his time at the University, that he began to steal bodies and he would then disfigure the corpses. He would then claim money from insurance policies that he had taken out on the dead bodies.
After his graduation, he decided to pursue a career in pharmaceuticals and then he moved to Chicago. It was here that he began trading in real estate and in promotional deals, both of which were often shady. It was at this time that he first began to use Dr Holmes as his alias.
In July of 1878, he met and married a woman named Clara Lovering of Alton in New Hampshire. Then in January of 1887, he committed bigamy and he also married Myrta Z Belknap, she was to later bare him a daughter named Lucy Theodate Holmes. Together as a family they then resided in Wilmette Chicago.
He eventually filed a petition for divorce from his first wife, but this was in fact never finalized. He then committed bigamy again and went on to marry a third woman named Georgiana Yoke in 1894. I was around this time that he employed a man named Ned Connor and Homes would later have an affair with Connors wife who was named Julia Smythe, she would later become one of Holme’s victims.
Holmes then came across a drugstore that was owned by a Dr E Holton. Holton was suffering from cancer, and it was his wife that actually minded the store. Holmes charmed his way into a job working in the store, and eventually persuaded the Holton’s that they should sell the store to him, on the provision that Holton’s wife could continue to live upstairs. After the death of E Holton, his wife then mysteriously vanished.
Holmes bought a plot of land across the way from the drugstore, and it was here that he built a block long building, locals in the area
nicknamed it ‘the castle’. It was here that he opened a hotel just in time for the 1893 world trades fair. Suspicion arose as to the whereabouts of Mrs Holton, but he claimed that she had simply moved to California and the matter was then closed.
Part of the hotel he had built was used for commercial purposes. The drugstore was also moved to a shop unit within the building, there were also other shop units built inside on the ground floor as well. The two upper floors had been constructed to seemingly bizarre designs, but they were designed this way for a horrific reason, that was to reduce the risk that he would ever be caught in what he was doing.
The two upper floors of the building contained over one hundred rooms which were bizarrely all built without windows. Some of the doors would open up to face brick walls, some stairways would lead to nowhere, and the hallways were oddly angled. Some of the doors could only be opened from the outside, there were also other strange constructions commissioned inside. Holmes regularly changed the construction workers on the site to avoid and awkward questions, and so that only he would ever understand the full layout of the building.
After the construction of the hotel was complete, Holmes then began to select victims mostly from his female employees at the hotel (some of whom he would insist that they took out life policies of which he would pay the premium and then claim from the policy later on), but he also chose victims from his lovers and sometimes they were guests staying at the hotel. His victims were often tortured before eventually being killed.
Some of the bedrooms in the hotel had been made soundproof. In these bedrooms there were gas lines installed and these were used to asphyxiate the victims. He also installed a sound proof bank vault near to his office. This is where he would suffocate some of his other victims. A secret chute had also been installed where he could drop the dead bodies into his basement.
In the basement, there were two giant furnaces. There were also lime pits, pits of acid, various bottles of poison and even a stretching rack. It was here that he would dissect his victims, strip them of all flesh, and create skeleton models. Through his medical connections, he then sold on the skeletons and also human organs. He also used one of the rooms in the hotel to perform illegal abortions. Often the patients would die during the abortion procedures. He would carry out the same ritual of stripping the flesh from these corpses too.
After the World’s Fair, the economy took a turn for the worse, and Holmes soon found that he was being pursued by creditors. He left Chicago, and then he appeared in Fort Worth in Texas. It was here that he had inherited property from two railroad heiress sisters. He has previously promised that he would marry them both, but had then gone on to murder them both instead.
He hatched plans and then began to construct another castle in Texas, but he soon found that the local authorities were somewhat more inhospitable, and he soon abandoned his building plans. Instead he continued to move around the United States where he is thought to have continued his killing spree. He killed one of his close business associates and his three children around this time.
In 1894, Holmes was arrested for a horse swindle in St Louis. While he was in gaol, he struck up a conversation with a fellow inmate named Marion Hedgepeth. Following this conversation, he hatched a plan to fake his own death. He would first insure himself for the sum of $20,000. After swiftly being bailed from prison, he then set about putting his plan into action. Hedgepeth had given him the name of a lawyer who he said that he could trust, in exchange for a $500 commission.
The lawyer was named Colonel Jeptha Howe, and he was the brother of a public defender. He thought that Holmes’s plan he had devised was brilliant. The plan however was doomed to failure. The insurance company became suspicious and so they refused to pay out on the claim, so he then concocted another plan with an associate named Benjamin Pitezel.
Pitezel agreed that he would fake his own death, and in doing so his wife would then be the beneficiary of his $10,000 will. She would then split this with Holmes and Howe. The plan was a simple one. It was to fake Pitezel’s death in a laboratory explosion. Holmes was tasked with finding a body that could be substituted for Pitezel, instead he actually went ahead and killed Pitezel. Holmes then collected on the insurance policy.
Holmes then had to manipulate Pitezel’s wife, which he did successfully. He convinced her that three of the couple’s five children should remain in his custody. He lied to Pitezel’s wife about her husband’s claiming that he was hiding out in South America. He then took the three children on a route across the country. He led the wife with him across a similar route, but always keeping a safe distance between them.
Eventually he killed two of the young girls in Toronto. After killing the children he was then tracked by a detective to Indianapolis. In Indianapolis, Holmes had rented a cottage, and it was here that he had killed the third child who was in his care. He then chopped up the body and burnt it in the fire. Traces of the boy’s teeth and bones were later found in the fireplace.
Holmes reneged on his deal with Hedgepeth, and did not pay him for the information he had given him. In turn Hedgepeth then tipped off the police about his former cell mate. In November of 1894, Holmes’s killing spree was finally brought to an end when he was arrested in Boston. He was held on a warrant for horse theft. It was only when a custodian of the castle told police that he was never allowed to clean the upper floors, the police began to grow suspicious of what had happened in the castle.
During the next month, the authorities set about conducting a full investigation of the building. They discovered Holmes’s secret methods of killing and of body disposal. They estimated that he may have killed up to 200 people, but the only number verified by Holmes was 27. In 1895, a mysterious fire burnt the castle to the ground, taking the last of the castles ghastly secrets with it. It is now the site of a United States Post office building.
While Holmes was in prison, the authorities attempted to piece together the course of his travels, and of his operations in Chicago. The discovery of the Pitezel children’s bodies eventually sealed Holmes’s fate. After initially claiming his innocence, he later claimed that he had been possessed by Satan. At trial he confessed to the murders of 27 people, and six attempted murders. For his confession, he was paid by a newspaper the sum of $7500.
Holmes was then sentenced to death, and remained calm until the moment of his execution. His death was justifiably slow and painful, as during the execution, his neck did not snap immediately, instead his body twitched for fifteen long minutes, and it took another five minutes before it was pronounced that he was dead. He had requested that his corpse would be buried in concrete so that in death no one could dissect his body as he had done to so many others. His request was granted.
After receiving a pardon for his information on Holmes, Marion Hedgepeth was later shot and killed in a saloon bar by a police officer. The former caretaker of the castle took any last hope of revealing any further secrets about what took place at the hotel, when after being haunted by what had been revealed to have happened in the castle for several months, he decided to take his own life.
Lizzie Borden
Lizzie Borden was born on the 19th of July 1860. She would become one of the first women to face a trial by media after the death of her father and step mother. Although the case can neither be classed as either that of a serial killer or mass murder case, it still deserves review. Both of the victims were killed with a hatchet, and the case is still known and referred to in American folklore to this day. Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders, but doubts remain as to the identity of killer or killers and arguments about who was responsible for the murders still continues to the present day.
In August of 1892, Andrew Borden travelled to Fall River to do his usual banking and to visit the post office, he returned home around 10.45 am. His body was then discovered by his daughter Lizzie Borden around half an hour later. During the trial, one of the key witnesses was the housemaid, a 26 year old named Bridget Sulliva
n. Sullivan testified that she was in her room on the third floor of the house when the first body was discovered.
At just after 11.am said that she heard Lizzie Borden call out to her. She told her that someone had killed her father. His body of Andrew Borden was slumped on a couch in the living room. He had been killed by a hatchet blow to the head, which had sliced though his left eye, cutting it cleanly in two. While Lizzie was tended to by neighbours, Sullivan said that she then discovered the body of Abby Borden in the guest bedroom. She had also been killed by a hatchet blow to the head.
During the trial it emerged that the family led a split existence. The two sisters lived in the front of the house, while Andrew and Abby lived in the rear of the house. They were said to have seldom even ate together. Andrew was well known for his penny pinching ways. He generally refused to succumb to modern conveniences, and the family still used buckets for a toilet which they would empty into the back yard of the house.
The Killers Trilogy Page 12