Serial killers what makes them kill

This global system of mass media — again, a characteristic attribute of modernity — has made many citizens intimately familiar with the dynamics of serial killing and the lives of particularly notorious offenders. The relationship between media and serial killing is, however, not straightforward. One upshot is that, whereas in antiquity killing sequentially may have been something that someone did, today a serial killer is something someone can be.

The media has also fostered a culture of celebrity. In our predominantly secular modernity the prospect of achieving celebrity has become desirable to the extent that it promises to liberate individuals from a powerless anonymity, making them known beyond the limitations of ascribed statuses such as class and family relations. For some this promise of celebrity is merely appealing, while for others it is an all-consuming passion, to the point that not securing some degree of fame can be experienced as a profound failure.

Serial killers are not immune to the appeals of celebrity. Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of serial murder is that such killings appear random.

This, however, is a misleading characterisation, for while serial killers do target strangers, their victims are not haphazard Wilson, Rather, the victims of serial killers tend to mimic the wider cultural categories of denigration characteristic of contemporary society. Such individuals, often singled out by modern institutions for reprobation, censure and marginalisation, are also disproportionately the targets of serial killers, who tend to prey upon vagrants, the homeless, prostitutes, migrant workers, homosexuals, children, the elderly and hospital patients ibid.

Such a statement keenly demonstrates the extent to which serial killers embrace and reproduce the wider cultural codings that have devalued, stigmatised and marginalised specific groups. Through a distorted mirror, serial killers reflect back, and act upon, modernity's distinctive valuations. Recognising the dynamics of victim marginalisation is particularly germane to the study of serial killers, for the denigration of particular social groups is connected to specific opportunity structures for murder.

Perhaps the biggest potential pool of overlooked victims is the "misidentified dead," including hospital patients and nursing home residents who are thought to have died from natural causes. In their book The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder, Quinet and co-authors James Alan Fox and Jack Levin point out that "medical murderers" have, in a few cases, killed dozens of people and estimate their victims to total to 1, a year.

Quinet said gaining a better understanding of the numbers and identities of victims of serial killing is of more than academic interest. It could help in designing surveillance systems and targeting police resources to do a better job of preventing murders -- possibly by devoting more resources to protecting forgotten groups such as prostitutes, runaways and homeless people.

Quinet plans to continue her research by developing a database of information about the victims of serial killers, seeking to understand what properties and traits are most likely to be shared by the victims.

At the same time, many can be superficially charming, allowing them to lure potential victims into their web of destruction. One explanation for such cognitive dissonance is that serial killers are individuals in whom two minds co-exist—one a rational self, able to successfully navigate the intricacies of acceptable social behaviour and even charm and seduce, the other a far more sinister self, capable of the most unspeakable and violent acts against others.

Yet there is little evidence that real-life serial killers suffer from dissociative identity disorder DID , in which an individual has two or more personalities cohabiting in their mind, apparently unaware of each other. Instead, DID is a condition more associated with victims, rather than perpetrators, of abuse, who adopt multiple personalities as a way of coming to terms with the horrors they have encountered.

Of course a perpetrator of abuse may also be a victim, and many serial killers were abused as children, but in general they appear not to be split personalities, but rather people conscious of their acts. A possible explanation of this deficit was identified in a recent brain imaging study. This showed that criminal psychopaths had decreased connectivity between the amygdala—a brain region that processes negative stimuli and those that give rise to fearful reactions—and the prefrontal cortex, which interprets responses from the amygdala.

When connectivity between these two regions is low, processing of negative stimuli in the amygdala does not translate into any strongly felt negative emotions. This may explain why criminal psychopaths do not feel guilty about their actions, or sad when their victims suffer. Yet serial killers also seem to possess an enhanced emotional drive that leads to an urge to hurt and kill other human beings.

This apparent contradiction in emotional responses still needs to be explained at a neurological level. Roughly one in every five to six serial killers are female. There are significant differences in their psychopathology from male killers. Research on female serial killers is difficult because they are fewer and harder to catch. Female serial killers have less tendency to leave bodies behind.

They are quiet killers; they have longer killing careers. They are much better at it. There is a less sadistic tendency. They tend not to torture their victim and they are less interested in mutilation. But the motivation is similar — the need for control over their victim. Aileen Wuornos is the classic example — a female serial killer in Florida.

She worked as a prostitute and would kill her clients. A couple of documentaries have been made about her, and a feature film Monster, with Charlize Theron. Here was a serial killer motivated by pure rage.

The types of predation in which female serial killers engage are often an extension or perversion of gender roles. For example, the expectation that women are in nurturing roles, caring roles. You have a category of female serial killers with Munchausen syndrome by proxy — mothers killing children, nurses killing patients. Is it true, as some have suggested, that serial killing is now on the decline? Or is it just less reported in the media?

So yes, there seems to be a decline in American serial killing. Either there are less serial killers or we have gotten better at catching them earlier.

We have had huge breakthroughs in forensic technology, especially DNA science. Many of the serial killers who were arrested in the s and s were arrested for crimes committed earlier. Do you know of any examples of serial killers who have expressed remorse?