Grandiosity also goes hand-in-hand with their inflated self-perception — or narcissism. In a strange case back in , cannibal Armin Meiwes killed and ate a man he met online. Afterward, he boasted about the crime in various chat rooms, even going as far as posting pictures of his handiwork as a way to show other self-proclaimed cannibals of his achievements. Armin Meiwes showing narcissism during interview.
Serial killers often confess once caught to ensure that their names are attached to the atrocities that they have committed. Not all killers may exhibit antisocial behavior.
In fact, many serial killers have been described as charming and charismatic. Charisma and charm go hand-in-hand with manipulation, and serial killers know this. They know that charming someone will naturally make the other person feel more at ease in their presence and thus become more vulnerable.
Ted Bundy was a notorious charmer in person. Image: Youtube. Charm and charisma can come in all many varieties. While Charles Manson might not have been physically appealing, he had enough charisma to convince a whole group of people to kill for him. This same charm is just another manipulation tactic for the serial killer. For example, Dean Corll murdered at least 28 young boys in the early s after luring them to his home where he tortured, raped and killed them.
Dean Corll literally lured children with candy. Image: Wikimedia Commons. Addiction is defined as the repetition of a behavior despite its harmful consequences. Richard Speck was an alcoholic. Photo: Dallas Police Dept. Many serial killers exhibit addictive tendencies outside of murder. Dennis Nilsen, Jeffrey Dahmer , Ted Bundy, Dean Corll and Richard Speck were all heavy drinkers, and some killers have even claimed themselves that they were addicted to serial murder.
Experts believe that The Macdonald Triad posits three specific behaviors in children which suggest a person may become violent as an adult: bed-wetting, fire starting and childhood abuse towards animals. The belief is that these three traits display a lack of self-control and a lack of empathy, two things which contribute to the makeup of a homicidal adult.
Arson and bed-wetting is a little harder to clarify since many instances of this may have gone unrecorded. In recent years, the Macdonald Triad has become less associated with potential serial killers and more associated with parental abuse and psychological defects.
However, this kind of upbringing can greatly attribute to the making of a serial killer. Many serial killers desire power and dominance, either because it provides a sexual thrill or because they lack these attributes in other areas of life. While individual motivations for murder will vary, a desire for power is one of the most common, at least amongst sexually-motivated serial killers. These offenders enjoy the act of murder because it gives them control over life and death, which to them is the ultimate satisfaction.
Moors murderers mugshot. Photo: Wikipedia. Power play can also be a factor after a killer is caught. Imagine going through life without ever feeling any kind of emotion. Manson never knew his father. During his youth, he spent time with relatives in boys schools where he claimed to be raped by another student. Aileen Wuornos murdered at least seven middle-aged men in the short period of and while working as a sex worker along the national highways of Georgia and Florida.
Wuornos was born to a teenage mother and a schizophrenic father who committed suicide in prison after a child molestation conviction. Her grandparents raised her. Wuornos claims she was the victim of extensive sexual abuse by her grandfather and possibly others. At the age of just 14, Aileen gave birth to a child who she claims was fathered by her brother in a home for unwed teens.
Her grandma died of complications from long-term alcoholism and Wuornos was thrown out of her home. She shared a one-room house with her mother as a young girl and would witness her mother a prostitute , engage in acts with her clients often in the same room as Mary slept.
Her mother made attempts to Mary at a young age but instead realised that there was extra money to be made if she prostituted her daughter. Edmund Kemper was an American serial killer born in Burbank California.
He murdered several members of his own family and six young women in Santa Cruz, California throughout the s. His parents divorced when he was 9 years old and his alcoholic mother blamed him for the divorce. From a young age Edmund fanitised killing his mother as he hated women and turned to torturing cats to release his frustration. At 15 years old he was sent to live with his grandparents on their farm and they had his rifle confiscated as he would not stop killing animals.
With the frustration of having his rifle confiscated he turned his rage onto his grandparents, shooting them to death. As a child he suffered abuse and neglect. His mother would have many boyfriends during his childhood and they would beat him. He also suffered from night terrors and became a bedwetter. Pedro Lopez was a Colombian serial killer who claimed to have murdered over victims between Peru and Ecuador but was only sentenced to prison for killing 80 girls. His mother caught him at just 8 years old, assaulting his sister and he was removed from the family home.
Alone and vulnerable at a young age, Lopez was picked up by a man, taken to an abandoned house and repeatedly assaulted. At age 12 he was enrolled into a school of orphans where his teacher sexually assaulted him too.
A strong correlation between childhood trauma and the development of a serial killer can be made. Not all abused children turn into serial killers, many get help and use the horrible situation to grow and learn from their parents mistakes. There is no theory to explain the psychology nor the actions of serial killers.
He called his conviction a tragedy, but later, in prison, he got into an argument with mass murderer Colin Ferguson over whose killing spree was more important, and when Ferguson taunted him for only killing women, Rifkin said, "Yeah, but I had more victims. Andrei Chikatilo, who feasted on bits of genitalia both male and female after his kills, thought nothing of taking a life, no matter how torturous it was for his victims. John Wayne Gacy refused to take responsibility for the 28 boys buried beneath his house, even though he also once said that clowns can get away with murder.
German serial killer Rudolph Pliel, convicted of killing 10 people and later took his own life in prison, com pared his "hobby" of murder to playing cards, and later told police, "What I did is not such a great harm, with all these surplus women nowadays. Anyway, I had a good time. Tommy Lynn Sells, who claimed responsibility for dozens of murders throughout the Midwest and South, saw a woman at a convenience store and followed her home, an impulse he was unable to control.
I go to the first bedroom I see I had no other thrill or happiness ," said UK killer Dennis Nilsen, who killed at least 12 young men via strangulation, then bathed and dressed their bodies before disposing of them, often by burning them.
For Albert Fish - a masochistic killer with a side of sadism that included sending a letter to the mother of one of his victims, describing in detail how he cut, cooked and ate her daughter - even the idea of his own death was one he found particularly thrilling.
I should never have been convicted of anything more serious than running a cemetery without a license. They were just a bunch of wo rthless little queers and punks. Gary Ridgeway pleaded guilty to killing 48 women, mostly prostitutes, who were easy prey and were rarely reported missing — at least not immediately. Previous studies of large samples of antisocial individuals have revealed that their offspring are significantly more likely to become antisocial, even when raised apart from the biological parents.
The parents of these nine murderers were violent and, although police records were not available, we suspect that many had come in conflict with the law. So, indeed, had their children. Were one to limit one's investigation to issues of violence, it would be easy to hypothesize an inherited predisposition to violence on the basis of the family violence of these murderous youngsters.
Our greater knowledge regarding the neuropsychiatric characteristics of our subjects and their families suggests an alternative hypothesis. These vulnerabilities in the context of violent households manifested themselves in uncontrolled violence. Indeed, in the case of our one adopted subject, his adoptive parents were not psychotic. His biological mother, however, was psychotic and was hospitalized and undergoing ECT at the time of his birth. The constellation of neuropsychiatric impairment, parental psychosis, a history of physical abuse, and prior acts of violence in delinquents who later murder raises the question of prediction.
Does the finding of this constellation of factors in a given child justify a prediction of future violence and therefore a need for intervention? As Monahan 46 has shown in his extensive review of the literature, clinicians are notoriously poor at accurately predicting violence. The major drawback to the use of clinical predictors is the tendency to overpredict and therefore to stigmatize needlessly. This danger is especially true of studies purporting to predict violence early in life before it manifests itself in dangerous ways 47 — Our research, in contrast to earlier clinical studies, identifies clinical and family characteristics of youngsters who have already demonstrated extreme aggression.
One boy kidnapped while threatening his victims with a pitchfork, two had raped and physically assaulted their victims, one had menaced his victims with guns and knives, one had committed armed robbery, one was so violent in childhood he could not attend school, and one threw caustic liquid in the face of another child.
Surely, when the constellation of psychotic symptoms, severe neuropathology, and the existence of psychotic, abusive family members is identified in an already violent youngster, responsible intervention is justified. Although it is impossible to predict that a youngster with these attributes will commit murder in the future, it seems safe to conclude that in the absence of appropriate intervention he will commit further acts of violence.
Moreover, were the question of future violence not an issue, the serious psychopathology, neurological impairment, and family violence identified would justify intervention.
This kind of youngster has an immediate need for help regardless of considerations of prediction. The appropriate interventions to meet the current needs of these youngsters and adolescents are also those most likely to diminish future violence. Thus, they have value for prevention.
To date, the most frequently cited studies of the youthful characteristics of seriously antisocial adults 50 , 51 focus primarily on the number and nature of previous antisocial acts as predictors of future maladaptive behaviors and, in essence, point only toward a policy of preventive detention.
Our findings suggest that violence alone is not as good a predictor of future aggression as is violence coupled with neuropsychiatric vulnerabilities, parental brutality, and parental psychosis. Each of the clinical factors identified in this study has implications for potentially therapeutic interventions. A recognizable constellation of biopsychosocial factors such as that described signals a need for specific medical, psychiatric, and social assistance.
In this way, these findings differ from those of Wolfgang et al. Murder is the most serious of crimes. It is, therefore, the one we most need to learn to prevent. The finding of a constellation of identifiable factors characteristic of violent youngsters before their commission of homicidal acts and the ability to differentiate them from ordinary delinquents challenges us to develop programs to recognize and treat these multiply handicapped children.
National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Am J Psychiatry. Author manuscript; available in PMC Nov 9. Dorothy Otnow Lewis , M. Jackson , M. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Address reprint requests to Dr. Copyright notice. The publisher's final edited version of this article is available at Am J Psychiatry.
See other articles in PMC that cite the published article. Abstract The authors document the childhood neuropsychiatric and family characteristics of nine male subjects who were clinically evaluated as adolescents and were later arrested for murder.
Method Samples Our subjects consisted of two groups. Sources of Clinical Data Our clinical data for the nine subjects who murdered consisted of all available neuropsychiatric records that predated each subject's act of murder. Follow-Up Data For the nine murderers follow-up data were obtained as follows: in six cases data came from police arrest records, in two cases it came from newspaper reports, and in one case it came from a telephoned report by a corrections officer to the correctional school from which the subject had absconded.
Results The nature of the homicidal acts of the nine murderers and the quality of their juvenile violent behaviors are summarized in table 1. Open in a separate window. Comparison of Murderers With Ordinary Delinquents The results of the comparison of the nine murderers and the 24 incarcerated delinquents who did not go on to commit violent crimes can be seen in table 3. Psychiatric hospitalization or psychosis among first-degree relatives 9 9 24 14 58 3.
Discussion Individually, each of the factors associated with the extreme violence of the nine homicidal subjects often exists to a greater or lesser extent in the backgrounds of other aggressive individuals.
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Murderous aggression by children and adolescents. Arch Gen Psychiatry.
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