Serial Killers

Child abuse is learned and passed from generation to generation. Families that live in a violent community are more than likely to become violent members of society

Further exploration discovered that the choice of sexual expression correlates more to the child’s age then the offenders (Sanford, 87). Offenders do not form intimate relationships with other adults (Henderson, 39). Eight-five percent of sexual activity was nonorgasmic with one-fourth of activity ending before any stimulation occurred by the offender (Sanford, 83). Now that we know some offenders characteristics, it is paramount that we learn to identify traits that may be common to youthful victims.

The same psychiatrist, Johnathan H. Pincus examined 14 other death row inmates who had murdered when they were under the age of 18 and realized that they all had the same factors of neurologic damage, abuse, and paranoid thinking (Pincus, 29). A study done by Lisa Marshall and David Cooke shows the differences between the childhoods of psychopath criminals and non-psychopath criminals. They used the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse to show how much the environment your surrounded with as a child can affect your adult life. Not only did they study the results of familial childhood factors such as neglect, physical abuse, and psychological abuse but they also looked into societal factors such as negative school experience and negative school performance. Results showed that “Inadequate or incompetent parenting leads to insecure attachment bonding that forecasts low levels of empathy, compliance, cooperation and self control.” (Lykken,199). The most obvious differences in the childhoods of psychopath criminals and non-psychopath criminals were in parental discipline, parental neglect, and negative school performance. (Marshall and Cooke, The Childhood experiences of psychopaths). Another environmental factor that should

Larson in “Serial murderers: The Construction” states that socialization is said to begin after birth. The social learning theory is a theory that uses the childhood of serial offenders to identify the main reasons for causation. The social learning theory examines the offender’s past for clues in explaining aggressive behavior. The central idea of this theory is the relation of childhood victimization or observation of violent acts to future activities in criminal behavior. According to Hickey, stress caused by childhood traumatization may be a trigger to criminal behavior in adulthood. It

There are many examples of individuals who commit crimes or murders who were raised in harsh environments, which caused their mindset to change in a way that made them think that hurting others is a viable option to fulfill your desires. John Wayne Gacy was a serial murderer who was raised by abusive parents both physically and mentally ( Rebecca Taylor LaBrode, 2007). On the contrary, the killer Ted Bundy had a completely normal childhood, but started showing interest in weapons and looking through windows at a young age, so was he born to kill? Many psychologists have tried to answer the question on nurture vs. nature for years, but it’s still an ongoing debate on whether people kill because of how they were raise or simply because they were born with it.

People have always been curious on what makes a serial killer; after all, it is difficult to imagine murdering multiple people and not feeling an ounce of guilt or emotion afterwards. In severe cases, this is what a person having antisocial personality disorder is capable of. Infamous serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson were believed to have this disorder. Personality disorders in general can range from mild to severe in the afflicter’s actions, but antisocial PD is arguably one of the most dangerous seen in human behavior history.

The brain can be affected by damage and cause behavior to be expressed differently in every person. Events such as a car crash or childhood abuse can affect brain development and function. Damage to certain areas of the brain can have a variety of effects. The hippocampus controls emotions and is associated with memory, and the frontal lobe is a brain cortex that controls motor functions, problem solving, memory, language, judgments, social and sexual behavior and impulse. When the frontal lobe or hippocampus is affected, a person’s emotion can be out of their control. In criminal cases, brain damage can affect the sentencing of a violent criminal, but to what extent should these abnormalities play a role in their conviction? Much research has been conducted in order to determine the effect that brain abnormalities should have on the conviction of violent criminals. A psychiatrist at New York University, Dr. Lewis, has conducted a study on death-row inmates, how their brains work and what affect the damage had on their conviction. By doing so Dr. Lewis paved the way for other researchers, such as Kent Kiehl and Jonathan H. Pincus to study the brains of violent criminals looking for a answer as to whether or not these criminals should be incarcerated. Over time research has been conducted focusing on mental illnesses and brain damage as the cause of violent acts instead of it being just premeditated murder. Many believe brain damage or mental illness should have no affect on

Killing, Blood, Organs coming out, Fear, People dying, and Clues to be find in rooms. Murder is now happening all over the world and tons of people dying from day and night but why do these murders’ want to kill people is it for revenge, mental illness, equal rights, gay marriage? Whatever it is, I feel like it is not right to be killing people who are still so young and that you only have one chance to live in life. Is there any way to change that just from people lives or how they act in life? If there is a solution to that. People should respect all different kinds of human in the world.

I was reading about that in Dear Abby. Where are those children today? Are they serial killers? Or are they police chiefs and mayors and aldermen and assemblymen? I'm saying that there are periods when kids go through very violent development and into, I mean potentially violent, they break things, they steal things, they lie, they go through these changes. I've had these people, one or two doctors in particular that I won't go into, who very casually just slapped all these assignations on here and said, ‘well of course, if you run into a kid that's doing this kind of thing, you got a developing serial killer. You better put him in treatment real quick and save his life.’ Right? To a point, I agree with them,” (“Ed Kemper - Extended Interview 1991”).

Many serial killers and mass murderers have been interviewed and tested to reveal why they killed and raped large groups of people. There are several factors as to why they perform such acts. My findings in this paper show that there is a logically explanation as to why they do what they do. In no way is killing or violence justified, but people have been through things we couldn’t imagine being put through. Many of these killers were put through harsh abuse physically, mentally, and emotionally which haunted them in their futures. This caused them to resolve their issues through inhumane ways. One who was put through sexual abuse became lust serial killers by wanting to rape the victims or sexually punish them. They want their

Every time we turn on the television or the radio we hear about something tragic happening. Some news we ignore then we hear about things such as the Sandy hook shooting or a man on a killing spree. The first thing that comes to our mind is “How can anyone do this to those innocent people?” A lot of factors come into play when understanding how someone can kill innocent people such as their childhood, their psychological state, and their traits. It all starts with your childhood: what you learn, how you’re treated, and what you feel.

In most circumstances, humans are born to make their own decisions, although sometimes their unruly actions might be triggered by other conditions. Alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness, or any form of abuse, are factors into why some people snap. Nobody is born evil. Notorious serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, suffered from mental issues and severe alcohol abuse; throughout his life, he went on to murder 17 people. Dahmer wasn’t born sadistic and he knew he did wrong, “It's hard for me to believe a human being could do what I have done, but I know I did it." Not making any of his actions right, in any form, he understood that he had damaged himself, and undoubtedly the lives of others. Whereas the counterpart is that we have encountered remarkable

Murder is a damaging act to one’s mind. After committing/assisting in a murder, the mind is changed, and changes the overall person as well. These changes are different in all situations. They depend on the level of involvement, what the person is like before, and how violent the actual murder is. The most impactful element, however, is the violence of the murder.

“The serial killer ‘is an entirely different criminal,’ ”The term serial killer is misleading on the ground that each murder is intended to be the last.” We see them as a figure of “the dark side of human potential,” but they believe they’re “on a heroic quest for the biggest score possible” They believe they are “the archetypal figure of impurity, the representative of a world which needs cleansing.” However, society knows that serial killers are not heroes, and they’re not cleansing the world. “The figure of the serial killer is violent impurity personified, and it is a construction that necessitates figures of violent purity to confront it.” While it can be argued whether having mental disorders should prevent a serial killer from being capitally punished, it is proven that many serial killers suffer from “paranoid schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, or psychopathology.” It’s even said that “this crime is actually a form of disease. Its carriers are serial killers who suffer from a variety of crippling and eventually fatal symptoms, and its immediate victims are the people struck down seemingly at random by the disease carriers.” Serial killers usually have a stressor in their life that makes them start killing, and when they do “homicidal mania becomes ‘a necessity… linked to the very existence of a psychiatry which had made itself autonomous but needed thereafter to secure a basis for its intervention by gaining recognition as a component of public

Children learn very early about right and wrong. The exposure to violence at a young age can have an effect on a person’s development and behavior as an adult. Children who witness violence often are more aggressive. Those rejected by their parents are more likely to experience PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and problems with social information processing, which can lead to violence toward their intimate partners. A violent upbringing and a lack of early positive experiences, increases a child’s tendency to become violent in the future.