The Criminal Mind
Ahnimus
Posts: 10,560
Excellent page on what makes Criminals tick...
1. Monsters or Victims?
"It 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."
— Edmund Kemper
2. Who they kill
3. Family Tree
4. Early Killers: How did they explain their evil?
Although Lombroso and his measuring tape have long since been discredited, the concept of a lingering animalistic brutality is still popular today. As we move forward, becoming more technologically advanced, there is something that refuses to budge, some primitive holdout of the darkest recesses or our psyche. Is it the caveman within, as some contemporary paleopsychologists say, the vestigial beast that got us through the "survival of the fittest" when we needed it, but now that we live in a civilized society, it is no longer needed.
5. Childhood Abuse
"I have several children who I'm turning into killers. Wait til they grow up" - message scrawled on David Berkowitz's apartment wall, with an arrow pointing to a hole in the wall. Are some children just born "bad"? Some serial killers are precociously demented, fascinated by sadistic violence at a very early age. As a child, Ed Kemper was already beheading his sister's dolls, playing "execution" games, and once told his sister that he wanted to kiss his second grade teacher, but "if I kiss her I would have to kill her first."
6. Monstrous Mothers
"We're still blaming mothers." - Joyce Flint, Dahmer's mother
7. The Dahmer Case
8. Childhood Events
For different reasons, many multiple murderers are isolated as children. Lucas, who was already a shy child, was ridiculed because of his artificial eye. He later said that this mass rejection caused him to hate everyone.
9. The Triad
Animal Cruelty, Pyromania and Bed Wetting.
10. Psychopaths?
"I'm the most cold-blooded sonofabitch you'll ever meet," said Ted Bundy. "I just liked to kill, I wanted to kill." The hallmark of the psychopath is the inability to recognize others as worthy of compassion. Victims are dehumanized, flattened into worthless objects in the murderer's mind. John Gacy, never showing an ounce of remorse, called his victims "worthless little queers and punks," while the "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe brashly
declared that he was "cleaning up the streets" of the human trash.
11. Inside the Psychopahtic Mind
12. Lustmord
13. Sex & Death
Other killers who had abnormal sex drives include the "Boston Strangler," Albert DeSalvo, who reportedly needed sexual release at least five times a day. He even went on to blame the murders on his wife's coldness. "It really was Woman that I wanted, not any special one, just Woman with what a woman has," he said. David Berkowitz compulsively masturbated, and "his preoccupation with oral sexuality," wrote Dr. David Abrahamsen, "suggests his immature sexual development."
14. Are they insane?
Are serial killers insane? Not by legal standards. "The incidence of psychosis among murderers is no greater than the incidence of psychosis in the total population," said psychiatrist Donald Lunde.
15. Natural Born Killers I
Serial killer Carl Panzram himself wrote: "All of my family are as the average human beings are. They are honest and hard working people. All except myself. I have been a human-animile ever since I was born. When I was very young at 5 or 6 years of age I was a thief and a lier and a mean despisable one at that. The older I got the meaner I got."
16. Natural Born Killers II
"After I'm dead, they're going to open up my head and find that just like we've been saying a part of my brain is black and dry and dead," said Bobby Joe Long, who suffered a severe head injury after a motorcycle accident. According to many researchers, brain defects and injuries have been an important link to violent behavior. When the hypothalamus, the temporal lobe, and/or the limbic brain show damage, it may account for uncontrollable aggression.
17. Deadly Fantasies
18. The Last Straws
19. Social Evils
Violent Contemporary Culture Many multiple murderers blame our violent culture for feeding their appetites. Days before he was executed, Bundy declared that hard-core pornography was responsible for his murderous rampage. In our entertainment, sex and violence seem to go hand in hand. Is there any validity to Bundy's claim?
20. Conclusion
When Do They Stop? When does a serial killer stop? Either when they are caught or killed. Very few have turned themselves in. Only Ed Kemper called the police to confess, and waited at a phone booth to be picked up. Recently, a Humboldt county truck driver walked into a police station with a female breast in his pocket as proof of his deeds. Some plea to be caught, yet coyly disappear before the cops arrive to arrest them. William Heirens wrote his memorable message ("For heavens sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself") in bizarre, red lipstick cursive on the wall, while his victim lay dead, shot and stabbed in the neck. If there are any serial killers who quit because they were satiated or bored, we cannot know because they are not in captivity.
1. Monsters or Victims?
"It 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."
— Edmund Kemper
2. Who they kill
3. Family Tree
4. Early Killers: How did they explain their evil?
Although Lombroso and his measuring tape have long since been discredited, the concept of a lingering animalistic brutality is still popular today. As we move forward, becoming more technologically advanced, there is something that refuses to budge, some primitive holdout of the darkest recesses or our psyche. Is it the caveman within, as some contemporary paleopsychologists say, the vestigial beast that got us through the "survival of the fittest" when we needed it, but now that we live in a civilized society, it is no longer needed.
5. Childhood Abuse
"I have several children who I'm turning into killers. Wait til they grow up" - message scrawled on David Berkowitz's apartment wall, with an arrow pointing to a hole in the wall. Are some children just born "bad"? Some serial killers are precociously demented, fascinated by sadistic violence at a very early age. As a child, Ed Kemper was already beheading his sister's dolls, playing "execution" games, and once told his sister that he wanted to kiss his second grade teacher, but "if I kiss her I would have to kill her first."
6. Monstrous Mothers
"We're still blaming mothers." - Joyce Flint, Dahmer's mother
7. The Dahmer Case
8. Childhood Events
For different reasons, many multiple murderers are isolated as children. Lucas, who was already a shy child, was ridiculed because of his artificial eye. He later said that this mass rejection caused him to hate everyone.
9. The Triad
Animal Cruelty, Pyromania and Bed Wetting.
10. Psychopaths?
"I'm the most cold-blooded sonofabitch you'll ever meet," said Ted Bundy. "I just liked to kill, I wanted to kill." The hallmark of the psychopath is the inability to recognize others as worthy of compassion. Victims are dehumanized, flattened into worthless objects in the murderer's mind. John Gacy, never showing an ounce of remorse, called his victims "worthless little queers and punks," while the "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe brashly
declared that he was "cleaning up the streets" of the human trash.
11. Inside the Psychopahtic Mind
12. Lustmord
13. Sex & Death
Other killers who had abnormal sex drives include the "Boston Strangler," Albert DeSalvo, who reportedly needed sexual release at least five times a day. He even went on to blame the murders on his wife's coldness. "It really was Woman that I wanted, not any special one, just Woman with what a woman has," he said. David Berkowitz compulsively masturbated, and "his preoccupation with oral sexuality," wrote Dr. David Abrahamsen, "suggests his immature sexual development."
14. Are they insane?
Are serial killers insane? Not by legal standards. "The incidence of psychosis among murderers is no greater than the incidence of psychosis in the total population," said psychiatrist Donald Lunde.
15. Natural Born Killers I
Serial killer Carl Panzram himself wrote: "All of my family are as the average human beings are. They are honest and hard working people. All except myself. I have been a human-animile ever since I was born. When I was very young at 5 or 6 years of age I was a thief and a lier and a mean despisable one at that. The older I got the meaner I got."
16. Natural Born Killers II
"After I'm dead, they're going to open up my head and find that just like we've been saying a part of my brain is black and dry and dead," said Bobby Joe Long, who suffered a severe head injury after a motorcycle accident. According to many researchers, brain defects and injuries have been an important link to violent behavior. When the hypothalamus, the temporal lobe, and/or the limbic brain show damage, it may account for uncontrollable aggression.
17. Deadly Fantasies
18. The Last Straws
19. Social Evils
Violent Contemporary Culture Many multiple murderers blame our violent culture for feeding their appetites. Days before he was executed, Bundy declared that hard-core pornography was responsible for his murderous rampage. In our entertainment, sex and violence seem to go hand in hand. Is there any validity to Bundy's claim?
20. Conclusion
When Do They Stop? When does a serial killer stop? Either when they are caught or killed. Very few have turned themselves in. Only Ed Kemper called the police to confess, and waited at a phone booth to be picked up. Recently, a Humboldt county truck driver walked into a police station with a female breast in his pocket as proof of his deeds. Some plea to be caught, yet coyly disappear before the cops arrive to arrest them. William Heirens wrote his memorable message ("For heavens sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself") in bizarre, red lipstick cursive on the wall, while his victim lay dead, shot and stabbed in the neck. If there are any serial killers who quit because they were satiated or bored, we cannot know because they are not in captivity.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
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Comments
yeah, that sounds like a good reason to let them out again.
that nobody gives a shit? yeah, very.
have i given you enough attention now?
Is that all you read?
I think the most important thing is the rest of it that explains a lot of how a person comes to be a serial killer.
Arschloch.
i dont see the point in it. what do you propose we do, eliminate all pain and suffering from the world? great, you figure that out. meanwhile, those of us in the real world will try to find appropriate ways to cope with the tragedy that is unfortunately inevitable in real life.
It seems like your way of coping with tragedy is to point blame at people. I guess it works to pass the buck.
Well then you can thank me for stopping the buck, with me around you always have someone to direct your hate at.
i dont hate you. that'd require more energy than you're worth. im just fascinated by your neuroses. you're as interesting as greenteadisease to me. i cope with tragedy in the way that does the most good for the most people. coddling serial killers who "cannot be stopped until killed or captured" does not do the most good for the most people. it does a very small amount of good for the serial killer while creating a lot of harm for the victims and potential victims. since we will never be able to create a utopia where no one is ever sad or upset or hurt, we will always have serial killers. my concern is how to keep them way from victims. not how to make them feel better after they destroyed the lives of many victims.
That's where you and I differ. What's most important to me is helping people before they become serial killers and kill someone. Once the deed is done, it's done. I want to learn how to stop them before they kill.
more power to you. but you'll never stop them all before they do and so we also need people to deal with them after the fact, and that does not include sending them to therapy instead of jail.
The main problem is, I alone can't protect people from society. Society as a whole needs to do that.
Are you planning on being a prosecutor by any chance?
Ahnimus, I'm going to ask this again in the hopes that you can see the logical end of your arguments:
What would it matter how we treat criminals if they (and we) are only victims of our environments?
What should be done with these people? They pose a real danger to others in society, and they aren't really amenable to treatment at this time.
Yea, so a few months ago. My cousin told me that a little boy cut up a kitten in the park behind their house. She said "That sick little bastard." of course she was probably right. He may have not had a father figure, and he is definately sick. But he needs help, not labels.
Did she say that to hsi face? If not then it shouldnt be a problem.
We are active members of our environments. So if we understand how the criminal mind develops, we can actively prevent it from happening. So with that knowledge we can change the way things are. Without that knowledge, we can't do anything of the sort. Either way, we are subjects of our environment. T he knowledge is the key.
Natur vs Nurture issue. Thats not for certain
No she didn't, but she spoke of it to neighbours and that. So they all get together and talk about him and form a public percept that is applied to his every action. 15 years from now, everyone will remember what he did.
Nature or Nurture, they are both beyond our control.
And it's actually Nature and Nurture.
Why would we do that? Why wouldn't we actually encourage it to happen?
The key to what? Change? What's the purpose of change?
Sociocultural evolution. Why would we stop burning witches?
That's a good question. If everything we are is simply the sum total of our environment, I see no good reason to stop burning witches (or anything else for that matter).
I dont think the nurture issue is...that all depends on your enviornment and the type of up-bringing.
And it can be nature and nurture or nature vs nurture.
It's evolution, just as the plants and animals change over time, our society and culture evolves.
How your parents nurture you, is beyond your control.
It's never nature vs nurture man. I've never seen that disputed in any textbook or anything. It's a social discussion.
Ok. But they don't evolve for the purpose of "not burning witches" or treating criminals nicely, do they? I mean, if we burned more witches, or simply imposed the death penalty for every conceivable crime, that would be evolution too, wouldn't it?
im not sure. more likely a corporate headhunter. there's more money getting corporations off the hook for liability. id consider a prosecutor position, but given that i have a record of my own, im not sure they'd allow it. i wouldnt be a defense attorney. they're overworked and underpaid and have little little control over who they represent and what they can do for them.
Certainly it would, but as with evolution, the greater sum of the changes tends to be good. We learn, we understand, we change.