Why We Love Serial Killers

by Scott Bonn

  The 2012 FBI report states that 15–20 percent of the two million+ prisoners in the US, which are 90 percent male, are psychopaths. This is not surprising. Egocentrism and the need for power and control of a psychopath are the perfect character traits for a lifetime of antisocial, deviant, or criminal activity. However, the relative ease with which a psychopath can participate effectively in crime and violence is very significant for the public and the criminal justice system. Psychopaths are unabashed in their actions against others, whether it is defrauding someone of their life savings, manipulating law enforcement personnel during an interrogation, or blaming their victims for their crimes. This is particularly true in cases involving psychopathic killers. When psychopaths commit a homicide, their killings likely will be planned and purposeful—that is, organized, and not committed in the heat of passion. The motive of a psychopathic killer will often involve either power and control or sadistic gratification. When faced with overwhelming evidence of their guilt, a psychopathic killer, such as John Wayne Gacy, will often claim he lost control or was in a fit of rage when committing the act of murder. In reality, however, their killings are stone-cold, calculated, and completely premeditated.

  Sometimes, psychopaths commit serious crimes with the assistance of another person. If a psychopath does commit a serious crime with another individual, the research suggests that the other person will almost always be a non-psychopath. The psychopath will typically seek to avoid prosecution by manipulating the other individual into taking the blame for the crime. The other person is thus used as a scapegoat by the psychopathic offender. When a psychopathic male serial killer takes on a subordinate partner it will generally be a female. This relatively rare partnership combination is discussed further in chapter 5.

  It is important to understand that not all violent offenders are psychopaths and, conversely, not all psychopaths are violent offenders. Violent offenders who are psychopaths are able to assault, rape, or murder without concern for legal, moral, or social consequences. Psychopaths tend to be totally indifferent to the emotions or suffering of others. This allows them to do what they want, whenever they want, without concern, pity, or remorse for their victims. Those psychopaths who do engage in violence and sexual deviance are generally more dangerous than other criminal offenders and their likelihood of reoffending may be significantly higher than non-psychopaths. The FBI reports that psychopathic offenders generally have longer, more diverse, and more serious criminal histories, and are more chronically violent than non-psychopaths, overall. In addition, their use of violence is generally more extreme and more directed toward particular goals than the violence employed by non-psychopaths.

  Psychopathy is often misread, misdiagnosed, minimized, or explained away by professionals whose jobs involve regular interaction with psychopaths, particularly in the mental health, judicial, and law enforcement communities. This is due to the considerable deception skills of psychopaths. Their charm, poise, and cunning frequently enable them to go unrecognized even by trained professionals. Misconceptions about psychopaths and their improper identification by professionals can lead to serious consequences, ranging from the mishandling of strategies for interrogation, intervention, and treatment, to accepting the fabrications and lies of a psychopath as the truth.

  The 2012 FBI report states that the unique ability of psychopathic criminals to manipulate law enforcement authorities poses legitimate challenges for the criminal justice system. During interrogations, psychopaths are not sensitive to altruistic interview themes such as sympathy for their victims or remorse for their criminal acts. As a result of their arrogance and illusions of invulnerability, they are more likely than non-psychopaths to deny charges brought against them by authorities. According to the FBI, there is also evidence that psychopaths are able to influence the system to either receive reduced sentences or appeal their sentences to a higher court. This is likely due to the fact that psychopaths are extremely meticulous, compulsive, and relentless by nature which helps them to coerce criminal justice practitioners. Moreover, psychopaths are very adept at imitating emotions such as remorse or guilt in the courtroom if they believe it will mitigate their punishment.

  Psychopathy and Serial Murder

  The entertainment industry has provided many inaccurate examples of psychopathic killers in film, television, and books. Psychopaths are often incorrectly presented in the media as scary people who look frightening and easily stand out in a crowd. They are frequently presented in the media as ghoulish monsters. In reality, a psychopath, including a psychopathic serial killer like Ted Bundy, can be anyone—a neighbor, co-worker, lover, or homeless person on the street. Any one of these seemingly harmless people may in reality be a violent psychopath who preys on others. Psychopaths rarely stand out in a crowd and that is what can make them particularly dangerous criminals and very difficult to apprehend.34

  Many of the most infamous and prolific serial killers in US history, including John Wayne Gacy, Dennis Rader, Ed Kemper, Joel Rifkin, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Gary Ridgway, have exhibited the key traits of psychopathy and many of them have been diagnosed as psychopaths by forensic psychologists following their capture. A cool and unemotional demeanor combined with keen intellect and charming personality makes the psychopath a very effective predator. A lack of interpersonal empathy and an inability to feel pity or remorse characterize psychopathic serial killers. They do not value human life and they do not care about the consequences of their crimes. They are callous, indifferent, and extremely brutal in their interactions with victims. This is particularly evident in so-called power/control serial killers who will kidnap, torture, rape, and murder their prey without any outward signs of remorse. The different categories of serial killers, including power/control killers, are discussed in detail in chapter 5.

  Increased attention has been given to the connection between psychopathy and serial murder in recent years by both scientists and criminal justice practitioners. The attendees of the 2005 symposium on serial murder conducted by the FBI concluded that psychopathy is manifested in a specific cluster of interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial traits and behaviors that are frequently found among serial killers.35 As reported by the FBI, these traits and behaviors involve deception, manipulation, irresponsibility, impulsivity, stimulation seeking, poor behavioral controls, shallow affect, lack of empathy, guilt, or remorse, sexual promiscuity, callous disregard for the rights of others, and unethical and antisocial behaviors. It is these traits that define adult psychopathy and they begin to manifest themselves in early childhood.

  As previously noted, psychopathic serial killers know right from wrong and they are able to comprehend the criminal law. In particular, they know that murder violates the laws of society. Psychopathic killers understand that they are subject to society’s rules, yet they disregard them in order to pursue their own selfish interests and desires.36 Contrary to popular mythology, psychopathic serial killers are not out of touch with reality and, as such, are not mentally ill in either a clinical or a legal sense.37 They rarely suffer from delusions unless they also have a separate mental illness such as psychosis or use powerful drugs such as amphetamines. In the criminal courts, psychotic delusions are occasionally presented as a defense by the attorney of a psychopathic serial killer. Normally, such defense claims are successfully challenged by prosecutors. As explained in chapter 2, psychopathic serial killers are rarely found not guilty by reason of insanity in court simply because psychopathy does not qualify as insanity in the criminal justice system.

  A lack of interpersonal empathy and disregard for the suffering of their victims are key characteristics of psychopathic serial killers.38 They generally do not feel anger toward their victims. Instead, they are more likely to feel cool indifference toward them. Many serial killers seem to go into a trance when they are stalking and killing their victims. The violence they commit often has a dissociative effect on them emotionally. As explained by Dr. J. Reid Meloy, author of The Ps
ychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment, psychopathic serial killers are emotionally disconnected from their actions and, therefore, are indifferent to the suffering of their victims. Their ability to dissociate themselves emotionally from their actions and their denial of responsibility effectively neutralizes any guilt or remorse that a normal person would feel in similar circumstances.39

  Psychopathic serial killers often view their victims as symbolic objects, according to Dr. Meloy. Ted Bundy described his victims in non-human terms and he referred to himself in the third person. Bundy said, for example:

  Since this girl in front of him [Bundy] represented not a person, but again the image, or something desirable, the last thing we would expect him to want to do would be to personalize this person . . . Chattering and flattering and entertaining, as if seen through a motion picture screen.

  Bundy went on to explain how he viewed women more as a category or group rather than as unique individuals. In essence, he dehumanized them and turned them into a homogeneous commodity in his mind. Bundy further said:

  They wouldn’t be stereotypes necessarily. But they would be reasonable facsimiles to women as a class—a class not of women per se but a class that has almost been created through the mythology of women and how they are used as objects.

  When Bundy got to know something too personal about a particular victim, it ruined his illusion of her as an object. Therefore, he deliberately avoided that possibility. By maintaining an image of their victims as inanimate objects, Bundy and other psychopathic serial killers are able to avoid any emotional bond to them or feelings of pity or remorse for what they do to them.40

  Psychopathic serial killers do not value human life and they are insensitive and brutal while interacting with their victims. This is particularly evident in sexually motivated serial killers who stalk, assault, and kill their victims without any sign of remorse. Some derive great pleasure from spending time with and torturing their victims for lengthy periods before killing them. Such behavior extends and heightens the excitement and gratification for a psychopathic serial killer. Dennis Rader (BTK) is a classic example of a psychopathic power/control serial killer who did this. In truly psychopathic fashion, Rader has compared himself to a venomous snake or scorpion. He rationalizes his killings as the rational acts of a natural born predator. Rader has said that his control over the life and death of his victims made him God.

  Margaret Bowman, age 21, was murdered by Ted Bundy in Florida in 1978. (photo credit: Associated Press)

  Borrowing from Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, a fictional character in Orson Scott Card’s science fiction story Ender’s Game, psychopathic killers such as BTK believe that the power to cause pain, kill, and ultimately destroy is the only thing that matters because if you cannot kill, then you are at the mercy of those who can and nothing and no one will save you from them. In the mind of a psychopath such as BTK, torture and killing become the only means to achieve the feeling of domination and control that he craves above all else in life. In a similar expression of psychopathy, Ed Kemper the “Co-ed Killer” was quoted as saying, “It [killing] was an urge. . . . A strong urge, and the longer I let it go the stronger it got, to where I was taking risks to go out and kill people . . . risks that normally, according to my little rules of operation, I wouldn’t take because they could lead to arrest.”

  Diagnosing and Treating Psychopathy

  While the concept of psychopathy has been known for centuries, there has been considerable research attention paid to it in recent years. In particular, Dr. Robert Hare, a prominent researcher in the field of criminal psychology, has led research efforts to develop a series of assessment tools to evaluate the personality traits and behaviors attributable to psychopaths. Dr. Hare and his associates developed the Psychopathy Check List Revised (PCL-R) and its derivatives which provide a clinical assessment of the degree of psychopathy that an individual possesses.41 Based on forty years of intensive empirical research, the PCL-R has been established as a powerful tool for the assessment of this serious and dangerous personality disorder. Specific scoring criteria rate twenty separate items on a three-point scale (0, 1, 2) to determine the extent to which they apply to a given individual.

  The instruments developed by Dr. Hare and his colleagues attempt to measure a distinct cluster of personality traits and socially deviant behaviors which fall into four factors: interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial.42 The interpersonal traits include glibness, superficial charm, grandiosity, pathological lying, and manipulation of others. The affective traits include a lack of remorse and/or guilt, shallow affect, lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility. The lifestyle behaviors include stimulation-seeking behavior, impulsivity, irresponsibility, parasitic orientation, and a lack of realistic life goals. Antisocial behaviors include poor behavioral controls, early childhood behavior problems, juvenile delinquency, probation violations, and committing a variety of criminal and deviant acts.

  An individual who possesses all of the interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial personality traits measured by PCL-R is considered a psychopath. A clinical designation of psychopathy in the PCL-R test is based on a lifetime pattern of psychopathic behavior. The results to date suggest that psychopathy is a continuum ranging from those who possess all of the traits and score highly on them to those who also have the traits but score lower on them.43 This PCL-R allows for a maximum overall score of forty. A minimum score of thirty is required in order to designate someone as a psychopath. The scores for those who are psychopaths vary greatly, revealing that very high to low levels of the condition exist among those who have it. Non-criminal psychopaths generally score in the lower range (close to thirty) while criminal psychopaths, especially rapists and murderers, tend to score in the highest range (close to forty). No two psychopaths score exactly the same on the test. The average non-psychopath will score around five or six on the PCL-R test.

  Dr. Hare and other experts, including forensic psychologists and FBI profilers, consider psychopathy to be the most important forensic concept of the early twenty-first century. Because of its relevance to law enforcement, corrections, the courts, and related fields, the need to understand psychopathy cannot be overstated. This includes knowing how to identify psychopaths, the damage they can cause, and how to deal with them more effectively. For example, understanding the personality and behavioral traits of psychopaths allows authorities to design interviewing and interrogation strategies that are more likely to be effective when dealing with them. Psychopaths’ manipulative nature and skill in the art of deception can make it difficult for law enforcement officers to obtain accurate information from them unless the interviewer has been trained in special techniques for questioning such individuals.44 Professionals who work in the criminal justice system must understand psychopathy and its implications because they will definitely encounter psychopaths in their work.

  Approximately one-third of all prison inmates who are considered to be “antisocial personality disordered” meet the criteria of severe psychopathy specified in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).45 For the very first time, the APA recognized psychopathy as a “specifier” of clinical antisocial personality disorder in the DSM-5, although psychopathy is still not an officially accepted clinical diagnosis. The recognition of psychopathy as a specifier of clinical ASPD by the APA follows nearly fifty years of research and debate. It is significant because the DSM-5 serves as a universal authority for the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders. The DSM-5 was published on May 18, 2013, superseding the DSM-IV-TR, which was published in 2000.

  One important question remains to be asked: Can psychopathy be cured? According to mental health experts, the short answer to this question is no. Dr. Nigel Blackwood, a leading Forensic Psychiatrist at King’s College London, has stated that adult psychopaths can be treated but not cured.46 Blackwood explains that psychopaths do not fear the pain of punishment and they
are not bothered by social stigmatization. Psychopaths are indifferent to the expectations of society and reject its condemnation of their criminal behavior. According to Blackwood and others, callous and unemotional psychopaths simply do not respond to punishment the way that normal people do. Consequently, adult psychopaths in prison are much harder to reform or rehabilitate than other criminals with milder or no antisocial personality disorders.47 Because they do not respond in a normal fashion to punishment, reward-based treatment seems to work best with psychopaths. Such strategies have been used effectively with psychopaths in institutional settings.

  In reward-based treatment, psychopathic prisoners are given small privileges such as watching television or other perks in exchange for good behavior. For example, reward-based treatment has been utilized effectively with convicted serial killer Dennis Rader at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas. Rader has been a model prisoner since his incarceration in 2005. Although he remains in solitary confinement twenty-three hours per day, he has received increasing privileges, including foods he likes, in exchange for his good behavior. He has told me that he looks forward to his little rewards. I believe that the obsessive personality of many psychopaths such as Rader make a reward-based system particularly effective. Their behavior remains good or even improves as they become increasingly fixated on their rewards. Despite the practical utility of reward-based treatments, however, the fact remains that there is no known cure for psychopathy. In other words, it can be managed quite effectively but not cured.

  Conclusion

  In this chapter, we have examined two antisocial personality disorders—sociopathy and psychopathy—which have been linked by forensic psychologists to violence and serial murder. These two personality disorders are often mistaken for mental illnesses such as psychosis or schizophrenia by the public. Serial killers are rarely diagnosed with mental illness, however, and rarely found not guilty by reason of insanity in the court of law. We have determined that the traits of psychopathy are more highly correlated with the patterns of serial homicide, particularly organized serial murders, than are the traits of sociopathy. We have seen how psychopathic personality traits can be identified and measured by clinicians using the PCL-R test. Although reward-based treatments are used effectively to control psychopathy in institutional settings, there is still no known cure for it. In addition, the relationship between psychopathy and serial homicide is complicated and not absolute. That is, not all psychopaths become serial murderers and all not serial murderers are psychopaths, although there is a strong correlation between them. Serial murderers may possess some or many of the traits characteristic of psychopathy but this single disorder does not account for the full spectrum of serial homicide.