by Suruthi Bala
This kind of brain damage can, in some cases, induce psychopathy, and we have seen from the numerous studies we discussed in chapter 1 that the brain of a person with psychopathy is fundamentally different. Remember, it tends to show low levels of arousal in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for executive functions like planning, decision-making, and analyses of stimuli and self-control.
Studies have also found that those who go on to become psychopaths and repeat offenders often tend to struggle with processing verbal material; this is so vital because processing verbal material is absolutely crucial in our ability to understand social rules. Essentially, the brain of a psychopathic killer is out of balance because the logical, rational part of the brain isn’t functioning; the brakes of the brain aren’t working. The person knows the difference between right and wrong, but they struggle to stop and think before they act. The second reason abuse may forge one’s path to murder is that the abuse may lead to the development of massive unresolved trauma. For some individuals, this trauma could drive them to engage in traumatic reenactment later in life.
What Is Traumatic Reenactment?
Traumatic reenactment is defined as “lingering behavioral enactment and automatic repetition of the past.” Still not sure what that means? Don’t worry, you’re about to; trust us, by the end of this book everyone you know will be totally exhausted by how clever you are. (You’ll lose friends, but who needs those when you have serial killer brain pattern knowledge?)
In his book Serial Killers, psychologist Joel Norris describes the psychological phases that serial killers experience, from the “aura phase” to the “depression phase.” Norris’s theory links closely to the concept of traumatic reenactment, because as he points out, the “murder phase” becomes a ritual reenactment of past trauma and abuse from the killer’s childhood.
Essentially what’s happening is that the killer is recreating their own childhood trauma, but this time instead of them being the victim, they have reversed the roles. In a (horrendously destructive) way, this is a killer with a huge unresolved trauma from their childhood trying to deal with their issues. By victimizing someone else, they are attempting to take back control and power and gain mastery over the trauma they suffered.
Particularly with serial killers, when you combine structural brain issues and abuse, and top it off with a genetic predisposition to psychopathy—boom; you could have on your hands a person broken by their childhood trauma, filled with rage, shame, and a need to dominate. Now couple this with lower impulse control. When asked during an interview with blogger Eric Barker what makes a serial killer, former New York State prosecutor, former FBI profiler, and now fellow true crime podcaster Jim Clemente said, “It’s a mix of bio, psycho, and social. The biology is your genetics, what you’re born with. Your psychology and your personality; you have a certain amount of it when you’re born, but you actually participate in the development of that throughout your entire life. And then there are the events that happen in your life, your socialization. So the way I like to say it is: your genetics load the gun, your personality aims it, and the events in your life pull the trigger.”
And while this does offer a well-rounded answer to a question that has plagued humanity for decades, there is a deeper dive we can take on why there are so many different types of serial killer. Not only is a horrific childhood more likely to set someone on the path to becoming a killer, but also the specific type of abuse endured may actually explain the type of killer that they go on to become.
Killers can be broken down into four types: thrill killers, mission-oriented killers, power killers, and visionary killers.
Going in for the Kill: Thrill Killers
These killers derive their satisfaction from the process of a murder rather than the act of the kill itself; they are driven by sheer excitement and adrenaline. This type of killer may taunt the police with phone calls and notes because it adds an extra layer of excitement for them. Thrill killers are possibly the hardest to catch because they don’t really have a typical profile like some other types; generally speaking, they tend to be male and younger in age, but that’s about it. The main factor that unites thrill killers is a feeling of inadequacy or being marginalized in ordinary life. (Though as we’ll discover, when it comes to killers, that doesn’t narrow it down a whole hell of a lot.)
If you’re trying to wrap your head around a thrill killer, think of the 2002 Sandra Bullock film Murder by Numbers. If you haven’t seen that little gem (what’s wrong with you?), then let’s consider the classic example of a couple of thrill killers: Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Leopold and Loeb were a pair of wealthy, highly intelligent students who seemed to have it all, but they also seem to have been relentlessly bored with life, and so they decided to kidnap and murder a 14-year-old boy named Robert “Bobby” Franks. The pair’s only motivation behind this killing was to see if they could get away with the “perfect crime.” For them, the planning, the buildup, and the chance to see if they could outsmart authorities offered the biggest payoff, rather than the actual murder itself.
Above the Law: Mission-Oriented Killers
These killers believe, or claim to believe, that they have a greater purpose on earth—a higher calling—and that through their murderous actions, they are actually making the world a better place. Most killers tend to develop their own code of ethics; after all, no one is a monster in their own story (that’s why your ex-boyfriend still has friends). But mission-oriented killers take it to the next level. They want to bring the rest of the world in line with their own personal morals and standards, and so they usually target groups or individuals that they deem undesirable. These killers are rarely very original though, and most tend to victimize sex workers or members of the LGBTQ community, then justify their actions by stating that it is their duty to purge the world of [insert group]. These killers will rationalize that their victims deserved to die because they were a scourge on this earth, morally inferior, and blasphemous. And so, the notion that they are killing for a greater good allows them an escape, a moral get out of jail free card.
The important thing to remember here, though, is that we aren’t talking about killers who are being pushed by voices or visions to kill (that’s another type of killer); mission-oriented killers have taken it upon themselves to act. We also know that most are not solely motivated by their “mission”; some just use it as an excuse.
Take, for example, Gary Ridgway (a.k.a. the Green River Killer). For a long time Ridgway was America’s most deadly convicted serial killer. He confessed to having murdered up to 80 women, mainly sex workers, in and around Washington state in the 1980s and 1990s. He claimed, “I wanted to kill as many women as I thought were prostitutes as I possibly could, because I hated them.”
Ridgway said that these sex workers were “unclean” and had to die. However, he raped these women before killing them, a fact which hardly supports the warped mission he claimed he wanted to fulfill, and shows him for what most killers like him truly are. They conflate their actions with a perceived higher moral cause when, really, they tend to just be driven by animalistic, sexual depravity and a need to dominate. But of course admitting their true reasons, even to themselves, would undermine their whole holier than thou spiel.
Deliberate Dominance: Power Killers
These killers, as the name suggests, seek above all else power, control, and domination of their victims. They enjoy humiliating and torturing their “prey” and tend to gain sexual pleasure from the pain and suffering of their captives. Ted Bundy is the perfect example of a power killer—he would rape his victims as he killed them, but also hide their bodies and return to the corpses later to “interfere” with them. This is because necrophilia—although the victim is already dead—still allows the killer to gain absolute control and dominance. Power killers are probably the most common type of serial killer, and even if at first it seems that another category is a better fit, almost all male serial
killers will show traits consistent with being a power killer.
The Voice of God: Visionary Killers
And last but certainly not least, let’s talk about visionary killers. These killers suffer from some sort of psychosis that makes them prone to delusions and hallucinations. These visions often lead the killer to feel compelled, or even ordered, to kill. The most common apparitions that visit such killers are religious in nature, featuring God or the devil. This is an interesting type of killer because it is exceedingly rare in reality, but so hyped by Hollywood that it has become an archetypal killer we expect to constantly come across. It is also fascinating, because it can be very difficult to prove whether someone is truly hearing voices and having hallucinations driving them to kill, or whether they are just malingering.
David Berkowitz (a.k.a. Son of Sam) is a perfect example of the latter. He terrorized New York during the summer of 1976, killing six people and wounding seven others in a series of shootings across the city. When he was eventually caught, he claimed to have been ordered to kill by his neighbor “Sam” who passed messages to him through his dog. Berkowitz claimed that the dog was possessed by the devil and that it spoke to him in demonic voices, telling him to kill. But despite this story, Berkowitz was found mentally competent to stand trial, found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison. Much to absolutely no one’s surprise, Berkowitz later admitted that the whispering devil dog story was totally made up. Now this isn’t to say that no killer is driven by these kinds of voices—they certainly can be. But we’re going to leave aside visionary killers for now and come back to them in the next chapter.
For the rest of the killers, just to simplify things, we’re going to group them another way, into three specific categories based on their motivations and behavior: power, lust, and anger.
Power killers are those who derive pleasure from having complete control over their victims.
Lust killers (sexually motivated thrill killers) are motivated to kill for their own sexual gratification.
Anger killers are those who kill because of feelings of anger or betrayal.
So while we know that childhood abuse definitely influences a killer, an interesting question to consider is, what actually forms their varying motivations?
The February study “A Behavior Sequence Analysis of Serial Killers’ Lives: From Childhood Abuse to Methods of Murder” starts to unravel this link between types of childhood abuse and the resulting types of killer and behaviors. The authors examined the histories of 233 male serial killers, and found that whether the killer had experienced sexual, physical, or psychological abuse as a child—or some combination of the three—actually determined their different motivations to kill, and presented in distinct behaviors and MOs (modus operandi, i.e., the particular way in which a killer carries out their acts). Like most of us would, the researchers predicted that killers who had experienced childhood sexual abuse would predominantly be lust killers. But interestingly, while the study did find a clear link between the type of abuse and the later typology of the serial killer, it discovered that killers who were abused sexually were most likely to become power killers, not lust killers. The researchers also found that lust killers were most frequently formed when a killer had suffered psychological abuse, or a combination of all three types of abuse (psychological, physical, and sexual) as a child, rather than sexual abuse alone.
The results also showed that aspects of the way killers carried out their murders could be linked to their childhood abuse experiences. It appears from this study that killers who were physically abused as children were more likely to demonstrate “overkill” of their victims, using unnecessarily excessive force to complete the kill. But the study found that the most sadistic and brutal killings (those involving torture and mutilation) were carried out by those who had been sexually and/or psychologically abused in early childhood.
The overkill we see with killers, particularly male ones, who were physically abused calls to mind the findings of the classic Bobo doll experiment. In 1961, psychologist Albert Bandura conducted an experiment that determined that children can learn aggressive social behaviors through observation and imitation. During the experiment, a team of researchers physically and verbally abused an inflatable doll in front of some small children. The children, mainly the boys, later imitated the aggressive behavior and attacked the doll in the same way they had seen.
Going back to the serial killers study—why is it that the ones who were sexually abused went on to most often become power killers, who kill quickly, rather than lust killers as one might expect? One theory is that those killers who experienced sexual abuse suffer from shame and deep levels of anger and self-blame, leading them to lash out and kill their victims quickly. They may also be more likely to feel guilt or remorse afterward, and therefore their murders may be less likely to show evidence of overkill or mutilation.
While these studies are fascinating, every killer’s story is different and the information we are working with is imperfect. To start with, usually the main way a killer’s pre-capture life, especially their childhood, is documented is through interviews with the murderer themselves. So we have to consider how much we can rely on self-reported tales.
Serial killers don’t make for the most reliable of narrators, for obvious reasons. Some will hide their early abuse because they fear the shame. Those who are deeply insecure, particularly about, say, their masculinity, could never allow themselves to share something that would make them so vulnerable; it would be a sign of weakness. On the flip side, we also have the killers who use their abusive childhoods as an excuse to absolve themselves of their horrific actions, thereby refusing to take accountability or responsibility for what they have done.
As we discussed in chapter 1, when a baby is born, they come into the world a bundle of joy and with bundles of genetic predisposition; the genetic dice have already been rolled. What happens next—the lottery of the parenting they receive, the experiences they have, and the environment they grow up in—is, just like with genetics, totally out of baby’s control, but just as vital.
Let’s now put these theories into context. We’ll explore a lesser-known killer who had a pretty shocking childhood, and discuss the likely impact that neglect, abuse, family dysfunction, damaging parents, and trauma had on his descent into depravity.
Jurgen Bartsch (the Murderous Child “Prodigy”)
On November 6, 1946, in Essen, West Germany, a young unwed mother named Anna Sadrozinski had a baby boy she named Karl. Tragically, however, Anna died soon after little Karl was born. He was left in the hospital to be looked after by the busy nurses until he was later moved to an orphanage.
For the first 11 months of his life, Karl was given perfectly adequate shelter and protection, but no personal love or affection. Almost immediately, therefore, we see with baby Karl a storm on the horizon. So before we delve into his story, let’s look at how this early experience may have contributed to his later behavior.
The first year of a baby’s life is absolutely vital in terms of emotional, psychological, and linguistic development, and the impact of early neglect, or even indifference, on a child can be monumental. Let’s think of a baby’s brain and the seeds of neural pathways that exist. If the baby is shown love and attention, their brain will blossom and the pathways will grow. But in the brain of a neglected baby, fewer connections are built. Once the window of opportunity closes for some of these pathways to be formed, the psychological and linguistic deficits created can be extremely difficult, and in some cases impossible, to rectify later in life.
As shown by a 2020 study in Current Psychology, a child’s ability to express emotions may also be shaped during this time. As we saw in chapter 1, many people who are diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, or who show psychopathic traits, tend to have a shallow or blunted affect. They have trouble communicating their emotions and appear to have less animated facial or vocal expressions. One common psychopathic trait is an inabili
ty to recognize emotion in others; this and the shallow affect may, in some cases, stem from indifference that the baby experienced from its parents. This is because when a caregiver doesn’t respond to a baby with positive and expressive reactions, it can cause a baby’s emotions (and expression of their emotions) to flatline.
Which comes first? Is it the child (“chicken”) with psychopathic traits—such as being callous and unemotional, perhaps crying constantly and never smiling—making it harder for parents to show warm parenting? Or the neglectful parents (“egg”) who shape a troubled child through their disdain and abuse?
There isn’t a really clear-cut answer to this, but something that is strongly backed up by the research is the theory of attachment and the role it plays in the development of one’s personality. Because aside from emotional and psychological milestones that need to be met, there are also key stages of bonding between baby and caregivers that need to occur during this time. And again, if the opportunity is missed, the effects can be lifelong and devastating. That first year in particular is crucial to the proper development of the adult personality, because it’s during this time that children start to develop a sense of self and feelings of remorse, empathy, and affection. If a baby doesn’t get enough emotional attention or physical touch in those early days, it can lead to the development of substantial personality issues in the future.
We don’t need to delve into the world of serial killers—or even humans—to understand the importance of warmth, affection, and love. In the 1950s, American psychologist Harry Harlow conducted his now-famous monkey experiment. Basically, he gave baby monkeys the option of a mother monkey figure made from a wire frame, holding a milk bottle, or a soft and furry monkey mother without a milk bottle. Every single baby monkey in the experiment chose the soft fake monkey mommy to cuddle with at the expense of food. They were willing to go hungry to get the closest thing they could to affection. However, the monkeys that went through this experiment as babies never managed to integrate with other monkeys and form social bonds in later life, because although instinctively they made the choice to pick “affection” from the furry monkey mommy, they didn’t actually get the nurturing and love they needed from these fake mommies. These monkeys spent the rest of their lives confused, afraid, and isolated.
