Why We Love Serial Killers (27 page)

Moral panic is both a public and political response to an exaggeration or distortion of the threat posed to society by some allegedly harmful individual or group. More specifically, moral panic includes an exaggeration of certain events by enhancing the empirical criteria such
as the number of individuals involved, the level and extent of violence, and the amount of damage caused. Of course, this is not something that happens spontaneously, but rather, is a result of the complex dynamics and interplay among several social actors. As originally explained by Cohen, at least five sets of social actors are involved in a moral panic. These include: 1) folk devils, 2) rule or law enforcers, 3) the media, 4) politicians, and 5) the public. An examination of these social actors and their roles in a moral panic drama can offer insights into the social construction of serial killers and their larger-than-life and highly stylized public identities.

First, in the lexicon of moral panic scholars,
folk devils
are those individuals who are socially defined or alleged to be responsible for creating a threat to society. Unlike some deviants, folk devils are completely negative. They are the embodiment of evil and the antagonists in a moral panic drama. Second,
law enforcers
such as the police, prosecutors or the military are vital to a moral panic as they are charged with upholding and enforcing the codes of conduct and official laws of the state. These agents of the state are expected to detect, apprehend, and punish the folk devils. Law enforcers have a sworn duty and moral obligation to protect society from folk devils when they present themselves. Furthermore, law enforcers must work to justify and maintain their positions in society. A moral panic can offer law enforcers legitimacy and purpose by ridding society of folk devils that allegedly threaten its wellbeing.

Third, the
media
are a particularly powerful set of actors in the creation of a moral panic. Typically, news media coverage of certain events involving alleged folk devils is distorted or exaggerated. News coverage makes the folk devils appear to be much more threatening to society than they really are. Public concern and anxiety are heightened by journalistic hyperbole concerning the folk devils. Public concern and anxiety over the folk devils lead to moral panic. As previously discussed, the media have a vested interest in tantalizing and even shocking or scaring their audiences. Sensationalized news content attracts a wide audience, and a large audience attracts advertising revenue.

Moreover, there are two important news media practices that contribute to moral panic. These are known as
framing
and
priming
. Framing refers to the way an issue is presented to the public or angle it is given by the news media. Framing involves calling attention to certain aspects of an issue while ignoring or obscuring other
elements. In other words, framing gives meaning to an issue. Dr. Gaye Tuchman proposed that the news media rely on “news frames” to determine what events to cover and how to cover them.
¹⁰³
Just as the photographer’s choice of lens affects a photograph, the journalist’s choice of news frame affects a story. Tuchman theorized that journalists select news frames for a story based in part on routine procedures and the organizational constraints of their particular medium. In addition, the choice of frame is influenced by prior news frames, the power and authority of news sources, history, and even ideology. Thus, news frames are contested or negotiated phenomena rather than being based solely on objective events. Most importantly, an audience will react very differently to an issue or story depending on how it is framed by the news media.

In contrast, priming is a psychological process whereby the news media’s emphasis on a particular issue not only increases the salience of the issue on the public agenda, but also activates previously acquired information about that issue in people’s memories. The priming mechanism explains how the news frame used in a particular story can trigger an individual’s pre-existing attitudes, beliefs, and prejudices regarding that issue. Priming is an individually based factor that can have great variability within a society given past events and news coverage. An example of priming would be the triggering of varied individual responses such as outrage or pity to the framing of Dr. Conrad Murray—Michael Jackson’s accused killer and personal physician—during his 2011 manslaughter trial. Given the news media’s prior framing of the legendary Michael Jackson as an eccentric and troubled genius, people naturally had different reactions to the framing of Dr. Murray due to their own individual interpretations of the image of Jackson.

Fourth,
politicians
are also vital actors in a moral panic drama. As elected officials who must operate in the court of public opinion, politicians must present themselves as the protectors of the moral high ground in society. Similar to law enforcers, politicians have a sworn duty and moral obligation to protect society from folk devils when they arise. Politicians often fuel a moral panic by aligning themselves with the news media and law enforcers in a moral crusade against the evils introduced by the folk devils. In other instances, such as the US war on drugs launched in the late 1980s, a key politician such as President Ronald Reagan may define the folk devils—in this case, urban crack
cocaine dealers—and precipitate a moral panic over the evils of crack cocaine and alleged threats these evils present.

The fifth and final set of actors, the
public
, is the most important player in the creation of a moral panic. Public agitation or concern over the folk devils is the central element of a moral panic. A moral panic only exists to the extent that there is an outcry from the public over the alleged threat posed by the folk devils. Moreover, the success of politicians, law enforcers, and the media in precipitating and sustaining a moral panic is ultimately contingent upon how successfully they fuel concern and outrage toward the folk devils among the public.

In summary, I believe that the moral panic concept provides useful insights into the social construction of serial killers and their monstrous public identity. However, it is not my intention to argue that serial killers are antagonists in a socially constructed moral panic drama. Unlike many folk devils who represent little or no threat to society, serial killers are brutal predators who bring real danger, torture, and death to innocent victims. Every human life taken by a serial killer is an unnecessary and tragic loss. The families of their victims can profoundly testify to the very real horrors perpetrated by serial killers. At the same time, however, the actual threat to society posed by serial killers is exaggerated and distorted by the news media and state managers who transform them into grizzly popular culture celebrities.

As previously noted, serial killers are responsible for less than 1 percent of all murders and non-negligent manslaughters in the US annually, claiming approximately 150 victims per year. Serial killers receive a disproportionately high level of media attention and exposure considering the relatively small piece of the homicide puzzle they represent. Serial killers are defined as folk devils in that their terrible exploits are exaggerated and their crimes grow to mythical proportions in the minds of the public. I use the moral panic concept for guidance in this book because it offers a powerful sociological lens through which to examine the roles of key social agents such as the mass media, law enforcement authorities, politicians, and the criminals themselves in the construction of serial killers in the US. In the remainder of this chapter, I introduce another important concept known as
atrocity tales
that provides additional insights into how and why the public is influenced by distorted and stylized media images of serial killers.

Atrocity Tales

The social construction of evil and moral panic are both facilitated by the use of colorful and shocking atrocity tales. What exactly are atrocity tales? Communications scholar David Bromley and his colleagues offer the following definition:

An
atrocity
may be defined as an event which is viewed as a flagrant violation of a fundamental cultural value. Accordingly, an
atrocity tale
is a presentation of that event (real or imaginary) in such a way as to (a) evoke moral outrage by specifying and detailing the value violations, (b) authorize, implicitly or explicitly, punitive sanctions, and (c) mobilize control efforts against the alleged perpetrators.
¹⁰⁴

Stated differently, atrocity tales are highly inflammatory stories used by those in positions of authority and influence to ignite or prime public outrage toward a socially disvalued individual or group. Atrocity tales are central to the social construction of evil because of their unique ability to evoke powerful emotional responses from the public.

The use of atrocity tales in the social construction of evil is analogous to the framing and labeling of folk devils by state officials and the news media in a moral panic drama. As is the case of allegations against folk devils in a moral panic, it is not important whether allegations made in atrocity tales are actually true or false. The intent of atrocity tales is not to present the complexity of an event dispassionately. Rather, the intent is to provide purported evidence to support a claim that the targeted group is evil and thus worthy of punishment or even elimination. When atrocity tales are employed by those in positions of power and authority they can be very persuasive, given the perceived credibility of the source of the tales.

In a recent example from my own research, former US President George W. Bush used atrocity tales in his political rhetoric after 9/11 to bolster a case for invading Iraq.
¹⁰⁵
During the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, he frequently referred to atrocities allegedly perpetrated by Saddam Hussein against the Iraqi people such as the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in Northern Iraq prior to the Persian Gulf War in 1990. President Bush manufactured atrocity tales to provide so-called evidence, regardless of whether the claims were true or false, to support the administration’s argument that Saddam Hussein and his followers were evil and represented a growing threat to US security. It didn’t matter that the alleged atrocities occurred fifteen
years earlier or that they had nothing to do with US security. The atrocity tales employed by Bush were designed to trigger hostility toward Iraq among the US public. Stated differently, atrocity tales were used to prime retaliatory sentiments toward Iraq in US citizens who were hungry for revenge against Arabs after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

As previously discussed, once a particular individual or group becomes defined as evil in society, those in power have the moral authority and obligation to eliminate the evildoer or doers. This premise is central to the moral panic concept and it is also very consistent with the principles of social constructionism because objective reality does not matter in such instances. What matters is the degree of concern felt by society toward the alleged threat or offender and the belief that the evil label is accurate and valid. The label becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as public fear and media coverage both prompt and justify punitive actions by authorities against the evildoers.

I present empirical evidence in chapter 10 that law enforcement officials and the news media use highly stylized and exaggerated atrocity tales to apply the label of evil or monster to serial killers. Ironically, the actual accounts of serial killers are so barbaric that no dramatization of them is necessary to elicit shock or horror from the public and yet their exploits are exaggerated nonetheless by law enforcement officials and the news media. Consider, for example, the following true story of a prolific serial killer who was transformed into a cartoonish monster through sensationalized atrocity tales in the mass media.

The Incredible Tale of Ed Kemper

Edmund Kemper III, a serial killer and necrophile who became known as the “Co-ed Killer,” was born December 18, 1948, in Burbank, California. He was arrested in April of 1973, at the age of twenty-four, after murdering six female students, his own mother, and his mother’s best friend. Despite his relative youth upon capture, Kemper had actually committed his first two murders nearly a decade earlier. Kemper was an extremely intelligent child but he engaged in psychopathic behavior early on. For Kemper, this psychopathic behavior included the torture and killing of animals, which is a common childhood practice among nearly half of all serial killers. During childhood, Kemper was physically and emotionally abused by his alcoholic mother, Clarnell, who was divorced from his father. Clarnell frequently locked her son in a dark basement alone at night.

Not surprisingly, Edmund grew up to hate his mother and at the age of fourteen ran away from home in search of his father in Van Nuys, California. After locating but being rejected by his father, young Edmund was sent to live with his paternal grandmother and grandfather in North Fork, California. Kemper claims that his grandmother, similar to his mother, was very abusive and he disliked her intensely. In 1964, at the age of fifteen, Edmund shot his grandmother in the head allegedly just to see what it felt like. He then killed his grandfather, too, because he believed that his grandfather would be angry at him for killing his grandmother. Kemper was subsequently committed to the Atascadero State Hospital for the criminally insane. To his chagrin, he was released into his mother’s care in 1969 after less than five years of confinement and treatment. His juvenile criminal record was expunged.

As a young adult, Kemper was an imposing giant—standing six-foot-nine and weighing 280 pounds. He frequently thought about killing his mother by 1970 but was not yet ready to do so. The prospect of killing his mother without first perfecting his murder skills on others was too overwhelming for Kemper. So, between May 1972 and February 1973, Kemper embarked on a series of six shocking serial murders in which he picked up hitchhiking female students along the highway and then transported them to rural areas where he would kill and then decapitate them, and have sex with their corpses. He collected their dismembered heads in his apartment and would later have sex with them also. Similar to other infamous serial killers such as Dennis Rader and the Zodiac Killer, Ed Kemper sought public recognition and acclaim for his murders. This led him to socialize and drink in a bar called “The Jury Room” with the very law enforcement officers who were pursuing him. His law enforcement friends began calling him “Big Eddie.”