MASS MURDER
Although some people use the terms “mass murder” and “serial killing” synonymously, there are major differences between the two types of homicide. These differences have to do with matters of time, place, and manner of killing.
Serial killers typically commit their atrocities over a considerable span of time—sometimes years. Between each killing there is an emotional Cooling-off Period, similar to the sated lull that follows sex. Having satisfied his blood lust, the serial killer subsides into a more or less ordinary existence—at least for a while. Eventually, his monstrous cravings begin to grow again until they build into an unbearable need. At that point, he sets out in search of a fresh victim.
Though some serial killers limit themselves to a favorite hunting ground (like the prostitute killer who haunts a particular red-light district), others range freely over a wide territory. Earle Leonard Nelson, Ted Bundy, and Henry Lee Lucas, for example, all murdered women from coast to coast. Once he manages to capture his prey, the serial killer often subjects the victim to unspeakable acts of Sadism.
By contrast, the mass murderer is a man or woman who suddenly goes completely berserk, slaughtering a large number of random victims (at least four, according to an FBI criterion) in a single eruption of violence that takes place in one location (like a post office or fast-food restaurant). In short, if the most apt image for a serial killer is the “hunter of humans,” the appropriate analogy for a mass murderer is the “human time bomb.” He detonates without warning, destroying everyone in the vicinity (including himself, since most mass murderers either kill themselves to avoid capture or are gunned down by police in climactic shoot-outs).
The “classic” case of mass murder is that of Charles Whitman, the twenty-five-year-old architecture student who barricaded himself in a bell tower at the University of Texas in August 1966 and began firing at everyone within rifle range, slaying twenty-one people and wounding another twenty-eight.
As Whitmans case shows, mass murderers often claim more victims than serial killers (Jeffrey Dahmer, for example, slew seventeen people as compared to Whitman’s twenty-one). And yet, the serial killer is an infinitely more terrifying figure. This is largely because we tend to perceive the mass murderer in human terms—as a deeply disturbed individual who snaps because of a crisis at home or on the job and goes on a wildly destructive rampage.
By contrast, the serial killer—the Jekyll/Hyde monster who coolly stalks his prey and derives his deepest pleasure from torture, mutilation, and butchery—seems like something straight out of a nightmare. Something hardly human.
MEDIA
See X-Rated.
MODELS
At least one notorious serial killer—Harvey Murray Glatman, who enjoyed taking pictures of his terrified victims before killing them—specialized in preying on photographic models (see Photographs). But that’s not the kind of models we mean. We mean the plastic, assemble-it-yourself kind. Yes, for those hobbyists who wish to add handsome serial-killer figurines to their collection of hand-painted polystyrene airplanes, automobiles, and battleships, a company called Von Then Productions (497 Westside Avenue, Suite 140, Jersey City, NJ 07304) offers both Charles Manson and Ed Gein model kits.
Anyone inclined to condemn these products as a symptom of the total breakdown of moral values in this country might keep in mind that back in the 1960s the Aurora company—America’s premier manufacturer of model kits—put out a line of monster figures (Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Mummy) that proved enormously popular. In fact, these kits were so successful that Aurora followed up with a line of do-it-yourself torture and execution devices (starvation cages, gallows, guillotines, etc.), provoking so much parental outrage that the company was forced to withdraw them from the marketplace—much to the distress of horror-happy boomer boys everywhere.
Advertisement for Charles Manson model kit
(Courtesy of Damon Fox)
The Moors Murderers
Myra Hindley and Ian Brady; from 52 Famous Murderers trading cards
(Courtesy of Roger Worsham)
The most shocking crimes in modern British history were committed by a pair of perverted lovebirds named Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, aka the “Moors Murderers.” Not since Saucy Jack prowled the backstreets of Whitechapel had a series of killings provoked such outrage and horror in England.
A child of the tough Glasgow slums, Brady (whose young, unwed mother had little time for him) was in trouble with the law by the age of thirteen. His sadistic tendencies also showed themselves early on. One boyhood acquaintance recalled the time that little Ian dug a deep pit in a graveyard, tossed in a live cat, then sealed up the opening with a stone. Brady wanted to see how long it would take the animal to die of starvation.
In his early twenties, Brady developed an obsessive fascination with Hitler and the Marquis de Sade. Before long, he was collecting Nazi paraphernalia and indulging in fascistic fantasies and sadistic daydreams. Only one thing was needed to make those daydreams come true—a slavish, masochistic follower.
He found her in Myra Hindley, an attractive twenty-four-year-old working girl who—until she fell under Brady’s sway—had showed no signs of deviancy. Soon after they started dating, however, her puppy dog devotion turned into complete emotional submission. In obedience to Brady’s needs, the quiet, seemingly well-adjusted young woman transformed herself into a Nazi fetishist’s wet dream, a jack-booted dominatrix/sex slave who loved to wield—and submit to—the whip and to strike pornographic poses for the delectation of her führer. Brady’s pet name for her was “Myra Hess” (an homage to Hitler’s henchman Rudolph Hess), and he fondly compared her to Irma Grese, the notorious female guard at Belsen concentration camp who took keen delight in torturing inmates.
But acting out Nazi-inspired sex fantasies wasn’t enough for Brady. He had other—and far worse—things in mind.
For several years from the early to mid-1960s, the depraved couple abducted and killed at least four children, ranging in age from ten to sixteen. Generally, it was Hindley who lured the victim into her car. Exactly how much she participated in the actual killing remains a matter of debate, though Brady clearly took the more active role. Their final murder was, in many ways, the most appalling. After snatching a ten-year-old girl named Lesley Ann Downey, they brought her back to Hindley’s house, bound and stripped her, compelled her to pose for pornographic pictures, and then—before killing her—tape-recorded her heart-wrenching screams, cries, and pleas for mercy. Like their other victims, Downey’s corpse was buried on the moors.
The “Moors Murderers” were finally caught when Brady attempted to recruit a second follower, his teenage brother-in-law, David Smith. In the fall of 1965, Brady picked up a young homosexual, brought him home, and bludgeoned him to death in front of Smith. In effect, this was an act of ritual slaughter—a blood initiation intended to bring Smith into Brady’s murderous fold. But the plan backfired. Smith was so horrified that he notified the police.
At their 1966 trial, Brady and Hindley had to sit behind bulletproof shields to protect them from an outraged public. When the tape recording of Lesley Ann Downey’s final moments was played in court, not only the jury and spectators but hardened police officers as well wept openly.
The “Moors Murderers” were sentenced to life in prison, where Hindley died of respiratory failure in November, 2002, at the age of sixty.
MOTIVES
In Shakespeare’s tragic masterpiece Othello, the villainous Iago sets out to destroy the noble hero for no apparent reason. After all, Iago has nothing to gain from wrecking Othello’s life. And he isn’t really acting out of either envy or revenge. In attempting to explain this character’s vicious behavior, one famous scholar coined the memorable phrase “motiveless malignity.” Iago does terrible things for one reason only—because he’s the embodiment of absolute evil.
Some people tend to see serial murder in the same way—as pure, unprovoked malignity. And indeed—
in terms of such traditional, easily identifiable causes as jealousy and greed—serial killing does appear to be a “motiveless” crime.
In actuality, however, there is no such thing as a motiveless murder. Everyone has his reasons—even if those reasons are not immediately obvious. What drives the serial killer are dark psychological impulses—perverted passions and monstrous lusts. The twisted needs that dominate his psyche are every bit as real and compelling as more “objective” motives, such as the coveting of wealth or the desire to punish an unfaithful lover.
Insofar as serial killing is synonymous with lust murder, the primary motive, according to some experts in the field, is rage against women and the desire to inflict pain and suffering on them—in short, sexual sadism. Other specialists, however, insist that the dominant motive behind serial murder is not sex but power—even when the murder involves extreme sexual cruelty. As one sadistic serial killer explained to Special Agent Roy Hazelwood of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit: “The wish to inflict pain on others is not the essence of sadism. One essential impulse: to have complete mastery over another person, to make him/her a helpless object of our will, to become the absolute ruler over her, to become her God. The most important radical aim is to make her suffer, since there is no greater power over another person than that of inflicting pain on her.”
For this reason, some criminologists have begun to regard Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, not as the antitechnological terrorist he claims to be but as a genuine serial killer. According to John Douglas, former head of the BSU, the Unabomber’s demands—as expressed in the lengthy manifesto he sent to the media—suggest a “desire for manipulation, domination, and control typical of serial killers.”
“The most important radical aim is to make her suffer, since there is no greater power over another person than that of inflicting pain on her.”
A serial killer, explaining his motives
MOVIES
People have always been intrigued by the kind of homicidal maniacs we now call serial killers, and every time a new mass medium has been invented, it’s been used to gratify this primal fascination. In pre-electronic days, the “penny press” dished up wildly lurid accounts of grisly crimes, complete with graphic engravings of the murder victims. One of the earliest recordings produced for the Edison phonograph featured an actor reading the shocking confessions of H. H. Holmes, the notorious nineteenth-century “Torture Doctor.” When radio became popular, listeners thrilled to such programs as Arch Obler’s Lights Out (which also paid tribute to Holmes in a famous episode called “Murder Castle”). And ghoulish killers began stalking the screen virtually from the moment that motion pictures were invented.
Ever since the enormous commercial and critical success of Jonathan Demme’s cinematic version of The Silence of the Lambs, Hollywood has churned out a slew of slick and, for the most part, instantly forgettable serial-killer movies—so many that a whole book could be written on the subject. As a matter of fact, a whole book has been written on the subject: Robert Cettl’s Serial Killer Cinema (McFarland Publishers, 2003), an indispensable reference volume for any hardcore slasher fan.
With almost a century’s worth of maniac movies to choose from, narrowing the list down to a mere handful is a thankless task. But if we were organizing our annual Serial Killer Film Festival, here—in alphabetical order—is the baker’s dozen we’d select:
Deep Red (1976). A truly unsettling gore film from Italian horror maestro Dario Argento. David Hemmings (looking highly dissolute) stars as a British pianist on the trail of a deranged killer in Rome. The soundtrack alone is scary enough to give you nightmares for a week.
Fear City (1984). A shamefully underrated thriller by director Abel Ferrara, about a serial killer stalking topless dancers in the sleazy heart of Manhattan. The first-rate cast includes Tom Berenger, Billy Dee Williams, Melanie Griffith, Rae Dawn Chong, Michael Grasso, and Maria Conchita Alonso.
Frenzy (1972). After a severe falling off with such turkeys as Torn Curtain and Topaz, Alfred Hitchcock returned to form in his penultimate film, a witty, stylish, and genuinely shocking thriller about a British serial killer loosely modeled after the real-life psycho known as “Jack the Stripper.”
Halloween (1978). John Carpenter draws on every teen horror legend ever told in this brilliant low-budget chiller that was followed by various lesser sequels and countless rip-offs.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990). Very possibly the most deeply disturbing—not to say harrowing—serial-killer movie ever made. A cinematic tour de force, but definitely not for everyone. Based on the ostensible exploits of Henry Lee Lucas.
M (1931). Fritz Lang’s riveting masterpiece about a serial child killer terrorizing Weimar Berlin. Loosely based on the career of Peter Kürten, the movie made an international star of Peter Lorre as the pudgy personification of psychopathic evil who is hunted down and tried by the criminal underworld.
Maniac (1980). A truly repulsive movie but—for that very reason—worth seeing, since it does such an effective job of capturing the sickening, sordid reality of serial murder. Starring the late lamented Joe Spinnell as a Norman Bates-like character who decks out his private collection of mannequins with the bloody scalps of his murder victims. Tom Savini served up the stomach-churning effects.
Peeping Tom (1960). The movie that effectively ended the career of British director Michael Powell (best known for his ballet fantasy, The Red Shoes). A young, psychopathic voyeur films his victims while impaling them with a blade concealed in his camera tripod. Vilified upon release, the movie is now considered a classic of psychocinema.
Psycho (1960). Not only a certified cinematic masterpiece but the seminal work from which the entire genre of so-called slasher movies springs. The crème de la crème of psychofilms.
Se7en (1995). From the opening credits to the climactic scene, director David Fincher creates an atmosphere of unsurpassed creepiness in this grim, grueling thriller about the kind of high-concept psycho-killer only a Hollywood screenwriter could dream up: a madman whose murders are based on the Seven Deadly Sins.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Jonathan Demme’s deluxe, Oscar-winning version of Thomas Harris’s brilliant bestseller. Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter became such a crowd pleaser that the actor reprised the role in a 2001 sequel, Hannibal, and a 2002 prequel, Red Dragon (a remake of Michael Mann’s 1986 Manhunter, in which Lecter was played by Brian Cox). Like Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Silence owes a large debt to the true-life atrocities of Wisconsin ghoul Ed Gein.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). The Citizen Kane of dismemberment movies. Tobe Hooper—who, sadly, has never been able to duplicate (or even approximate) his greatest achievement—creates the scariest interpretation of the Ed Gein story ever put on film. The movie achieves its shocks through a potent combination of relentless brutality, sickening atmosphere, rampaging sadism, and even a dash of black humor (which first-time viewers tend to miss, since they are generally covering up their eyes with their hands). The 2003 remake has much slicker production values but only a fraction of the scares.
The Vanishing (1988). A gripping, low-key chiller from (of all places) Holland. Don’t look for splashy Hollywood-style effects, hyperkinetic action, or graphic gore—just one of the most creepily effective serial-killer stories ever filmed, with an absolutely shattering climax. Viewer Warning: Do not confuse with the lame 1993 American remake, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges.
“Watching him act like a psychopathic killer with a mommy complex is like watching someone else throw up.”
New York Times film critic Vincent Canby on Joe Spinnell’s performance in Maniac
MULTIPLE PERSONALITY
Ever since a mild-mannered motel keeper named Norman Bates became possessed by the evil spirit of his dear, departed mother, people have associated serial killers with split personalities. In reality, however, multiple personality disorder (or MPD, a
s it’s known in the psychology biz) is an extremely rare condition. Still, that hasn’t kept a whole string of serial killers from trying to blame their crimes on their ostensible alter egos.
William Heirens—the “Lipstick Killer,” who is best known for the desperate message he scrawled on the bedroom wall of one murder scene (“For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more”)—claimed that an alternate personality named George Murman was responsible for the three vicious sex murders he committed in 1945 and 1946. Likewise, John Wayne Gacy insisted that his thirty-three torture killings were actually the work of an evil personality he called “Jack.”
Kenneth Bianchi—one of the “Hillside Stranglers”—was so convincing in inventing a second homicidal personality (named “Steve”) that he managed to bamboozle several psychiatrists before being exposed as a fraud.
Indeed, despite all claims to the contrary, there hasn’t been a single authenticated case of a split-personality serial killer (see Insanity). Crime maven Colin Wilson, however, does describe the apparently genuine case of a serial rapist named Billy Milligan who suffered from MPD. Sexually brutalized in childhood by his stepfather, Milligan’s traumatized psyche responded by splitting itself into no fewer than twenty-two separate personalities—including a sixteen-year-old painter named Tommy; a fourteen-year-old boy named David (who claimed that he had once been buried alive); a twenty-two-year-old Englishman named Arthur who spoke fluent Arabic; a Serbo-Croatian thief called Regan; and a nineteen-year-old lesbian named Adalana, who took responsibility for the rapes.
“MURDERABILIA”
See Cards, Comics, and Collectibles.
MURDER RINGS
For the most part, serial killing is a solitary business, though simpatico psychos will occasionally bond in lethal pairs (see Killer Couples and Partners). Much rarer, though not entirely unheard of, are cases where three or more killers join together to commit murder for fun and profit.
The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers Page 18
