Infamous serial killer, John Wayne Gacy, was born on March 17, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. Gacy,

Johnathan Wayne Nobles was 25 when he was convicted in September 1986 for the death of Mitzi Johnson-Nally, age 21 and Kelly Farquhar, age 24. According to Murderpedia, Nobles had been under the influence of drugs and alcohol when he broke into the house of Mitzi Johnson and stabbed her and Kelly Farquhar with a knife(Blanco). Mitzi date 30 year old Ronald Ross was also injured in the attack. Nobles was on parole at the time of the murders for theft of property, which he served a three year sentence. Nobles was sentenced to death by lethal injection on October 7, 1998. Before Nobles was executed he claimed that he was a different man then he was the night he took two young women 's life 's.

Gacy was a well respected man who wouldn’t be suspected of committing multiple murders. “His first known killing was in 1972, taking the life of Timothy McCoy after luring the teen to his home” (Biography 1). Gacy’s strategy into luring kids (mostly boys) into his home was to roam the streets in search for these young kids and force them to go with him. In 1978 Robert Piest who was 15 years old went missing. His mother said Robert had went to Gacy’s home in search of a job but Robert never came back. “This time the Des Plaines police got involved and searched Gacy’s home” (Crime museum 1). When the police got involved they found things that weren’t his and items that were suspicious. Later on, “On December 22, 1978, facing mounting physical evidence against him from subsequent searches of his home, Gacy confessed that he had killed thirty-three young men and boys and buried most on his property” (Luongo 1). Gacy would torture, strangle, and rape these young men. Gacy was found guilty on all of the murders he committed and he was sentenced to the lethal injection.

This essay aims to examine weather serial killers are born a certain way and their genetics define their psychotic tendencies or whether they're a product of a bad environment that they grew up. This essay looks at recent killings in the late 20th century as there is more information on the killers from this period and it's easier to gain details about their childhoods. Whilst I will look at various different killers to reach more rounded conclusions (see appendix for comparison table), this essay will focus on four in detail to examine the debate; Ted Bundy (1946-89), Jeffery Dahmer (1960-1994), John Wayne Gacy (1942-1994) and Gary Ridgway (1949-present).

Looking at Gacy’s childhood, he lacked these elements. His attachment to his parents were one-sided. Gacy had still loved his father even when he was often severely beat for having congenital heart disease, His attachment to his peers were skewed as well. His peers teased him for having the disease. The only relatively good attachment he had were with his teachers. His teachers said he was smart and a good student.

When you first think of a serial killer or you think of a psychopath you realize that they both have something in common even though they have different words to describe similar characteristics of a “monster”. John Wayne Gacy had an abusive childhood and struggled with his sexuality at a very young age, which these factors helped him become the person he did.

Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, cause, and control of criminal behavior (Siegel 4). Criminology is not just understanding criminal actions but also studying how to correct and prevent crime, overall. There are five major Criminological theories, (1) Classical Theory, (2) Positivist Theory, (3) Marxist / Conflict Theory, (4) Sociological Theory, and (5) Multifactor / Integrated Theory.

was stabbed five or six times, and then hanged on a hook in the Grand Jury room.” This shows

Before he would kill in Illinois he would go back to the Palm Springs area and kill again. In spring of 1995 he met Denise Maney a prostitute from the area. He did his usual thing he drove her out to the desert where they had sex, but then he did something he had only done with Jennifer Asbenson, he began to rape her. This time his victim wasn’t able to get away he made her walk into the desert after he restrained her. When they got a good distance into the desert he put the gun into her mouth and shot killing Maney instantly. Urdiales would go back to Illinois and kill someone who was a little closer to him than the previous victims. In April of 1996 Laura Uylaki who had gone on a couple of dates with Urdiales was with Urdiales near Wolf Lake. An argument had broken out between the two and when Urdiales showed his gun to Uylaki, she made an attempt to get out of the truck and get away but Urdiales ran after her fired his weapon and killed Uylaki. Too dispose of the body Urdiales, dumped her into the lake. His next victim would be dumped a little closer to Pontiac. On July 13, 1996, Urdiales met Cassandra Corum, a prostitute from the Hammond Indiana area. They were in Urdiales truck when an argument occurred, he then handcuffed her, taped her feet, taped her mouth shut, and took her clothes off. He began driving south on Interstate 55, after driving for a

Jeffrey Dahmer killed and committed acts of necrophilia on 17 males between 1978 and 1991. In the article “Jeffrey Dahmer Biography”, it states that “Dahmer initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, despite having confessed to the killings during police interrogation, but he eventually changed his plea to guilty by virtue of insanity” (Biography.com). His defense then described all the gorey details of his behavior and murders, trying to prove that only someone who had psychopathic tendencies could commit such horrendous acts, but the jury decided to believe the prosecution's statement that Dahmer was fully aware that his acts were evil and chose to commit them anyway. The trial was so complicated that “on February 15, 1992, they returned after approximately 10 hours' deliberation to find him guilty, but sane, on all counts” (Biography.com). He was then sentenced to 15 life sentences in prison, which were going to be run consecutively, with a 16th term added on in May. Another well known serial killer was John Wayne Gacy. Gacy would dress up as “Pogo the Clown” and perform for children’s birthday parties, but no one knew that he would eventually murder and rape 33 boys. He would then hide the bodies in a crawl space in his house and kept them there for years until he was caught. The article states that “the discovery of his murders and subsequent arrest shook the community as he

On Friday, December 22, 1978, Gacy finally confessed to police that he killed at least thirty people and buried most of the remains of the victims beneath the crawl space of his house. According to the book Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders by Sullivan and Maiken, Gacy said that, "his first killing took place in January, 1972, and the second in January, 1974, about a year and a half after his marriage." He further confessed that he would lure his victims into being handcuffed and then he would sexually assault them. To muffle the screams of his victims, he would stuff a sock or underwear into their mouths and kill them by pulling a rope or board against their throats, as he raped them. Gacy admitted to sometimes keeping the dead bodies under his bed or in the attic for several hours before eventually burying them in the crawl space.

Gary Ridgway grew up like any other ordinary suburban kid. He had a problem of wetting the bed which his mother would make fun of him and embarrass him in front of family and friends. As a young teen, he was always getting into trouble such as stabbing a six year-old boy in the ribs when he was a young teen. In high school Gary continued to go down hill and get bad grades. Gary graduated high school and joined the Navy. While he was in Vietnam, he discovered prostitutes and ended up getting sexually transmitted diseases. Soon after being home from Vietnam, Gary was killing and raping prostitutes on the streets of Seattle, Washington. Gary would go on to murder about 71 young women who he targeted because they were either prostitutes or runaways.

Serial killers have fascinated the imaginations of people for a long time. One of the most notorious serial killers is Jeffrey Dahmer whose gruesome murders shocked the nation. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer also known as Milwaukee monster was a notorious American serial killer and sexual offender in the 1980s and early 1990s. Between 1978 and 1991 Dahmer had murdered 17 men. His victims were usually raped, tortured, dismembered, and cannibalism was also involved. Jeffrey was a troubled child psychologically and his social skills had a lot to be desired. All the way through his childhood he was ignored and had queer fantasies of cadavers. In his adulthood this psychosocial status quo didn 't change and was in fact aggravated.

The Zodiac killer was responsible for murdering at least five people in 1968 and 1969 in the San Francisco area, and writing cryptic letters to police boasting of the crimes. The unknown masked murderer remains the "the most infamous uncaught killer in American crime lore," The San Francisco Chronicle reported. More than

Gary Leon Ridgway was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and after a string of killings that extended roughly 20 years he was dubbed, by local police, as the Green River Killer. He had admitted to killing over 90 prostitutes and had “lost count because it was so many”. Despite his IQ of 82, he had this serial killing down to a science and evaded police for quite sometime before a DNA test eventually convicted him of a murder and tied him to the whole string of murders that he had committed over the past decade. One has to ask themselves, “What makes a person such a monster?”, in this paper I will attempt to explain what may or may not have contributed to these horrific murders. However it is important to keep in mind that these are theories and

John Gacy was a serial killer and rapist who sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered thirty-three teenage and young men, John’s method of his murders would be by strangling them. These crimes were done between the years of 1972 and 1978, he was convicted of his crime in 1968 and found guilty in 1980. Gacy was born on March 17.,1942 in Chicago, Illinois. Growing up John had a very abusive childhood and also had a hard time with his sexuality. His alcoholic father would beat him for no reason at all, sometimes so he would beat John so brutally that he would get knocked unconscious. Gacy was also sexually molested by one of his family’s friends. He wasn't the most flattering boy in school and was