Why We Love Serial Killers (12 page)

In the 2012 report on psychopathy published by the FBI, Dr. Paul Babiak and his colleagues explained that psychopaths will often demonstrate a profound lack of remorse for their aggressive and predatory actions, whether violent or nonviolent, along with a complete lack of empathy for their victims.
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These central and defining traits enable psychopaths to act in a cold-blooded and calculating manner toward their victims. They manipulate those around them in order to achieve self-centered goals and satisfy their often insatiable needs and desires. Dr. Babiak and his associates offered these important insights:

Most psychopaths are grandiose, selfish sensation seekers who lack a moral compass—a conscience—and go through life taking what they want [without consideration for how their actions may affect others.] They do not accept responsibility for their actions and typically find a way to shift the blame [away from themselves and toward] someone or something else.
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Although it may be difficult for the average person to fathom, the reactions of psychopaths to the considerable harm they cause is typically cold indifference combined with a sense of power, excitement, or arrogant satisfaction, rather than regret, concern, or remorse.
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Such reactions by psychopaths are due to their profound emotional deficit and detachment from other people and emotional events. People closely associated or involved with a psychopath may have a feeling that something is wrong with that person but have no idea as to the nature or severity of their disorder. Moreover, it is very common for normal people to blame themselves for the troubles they encounter with a psychopath, regardless of severity or whether the problems occur at work, at home, or in a social situation. “After interacting with psychopaths, most people are stunned by these individuals’ ruthlessness, callousness, and denial or minimization of the damage they have caused,” according to the FBI report.
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Due to their considerable social skills, many psychopaths have little difficulty joining the ranks of business, politics, entertainment, criminal justice, government, and academia, as noted by Dr. Martin Kantor in
The Psychopathy of Everyday Life: How Antisocial Personality Disorder Affects All of Us
.
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John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy, for example, both had successful civic and political careers despite being ruthless, psychopathic serial killers. Indeed, psychopaths flourish in all types of careers, from high-ranking business executives and medical professionals to blue-collar workers. As reported by the FBI in 2012, a psychopath can be male or female although more men are psychopaths than women in the general population. There is no consensus among experts on why this is so. In addition, they represent all races, religions, cultures, education levels, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Some psychopaths are very intelligent, even brilliant, while others may possess just average or below-average intelligence. They come from both stable and broken homes, and in adulthood they are frequently married with children.
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Psychopathy and Crime

Psychopathy is highly correlated with criminal behavior and violence. In
Psychopathy: An Important Forensic Concept for the 21st Century
, the powerful connection between psychopathy and crime is well articulated by Dr. Babiak and his colleagues.
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Key findings from that 2012 report on psychopathy are discussed below in which I complement the authors’ conclusions with my own observations.

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 Psychopathic 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.
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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.
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