Causes Of Serial Killers

Henry Lee Lucas was told by his mother at a very young age that he was evil and would probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Lucas was suspected, along with his partner Otis Toole, to have committed hundreds of vicious murders. His mother would torture him as a child. She would dress him as a girl, putting ribbons in his hair. He was malnourished, dirty, and smelly; he was an outcast to his peers. His mother would severely abuse him. In fact, she once beat him unconscious with a two-by-four. She forced him to drink urine, and burned him with cigarettes. It came to no surprise that his favorite sexual fantasies as a child were torturing his mother to death. He developed an inability to love. At an early age he would kill animals and have sex with their remains. He would even skin animals alive. At the age of fifteen Lucas had committed his first murder. His second murder was that of his mother. When Lucas killed, he became sexually aroused (Meadows, Kuehnel).

Lucas is a prime example of the stereotypical serial killer. Murders of serial killers account for nearly 10 percent of all murders in the United States. The United States alone accounts for nearly 75 percent of the world's serial killers (Ramsland). "Serial killers differ from mass murders and spree killers in that the killings are separate, usually with a cooling-off period between kills, but escalating over a period of time, sometimes years" ( Meadows). They kill compulsively and they do not stop; instead they die, get hospitalized or get caught (Ramsland). However, what is it that causes serial killers, like Lucas, to become the way they are? What is it that drives these people to commit so many brutal murders? Is it a tough life at their homes? Do environmental factors play roles? Or are these people just born this way? This paper will discuss the some of the reasons why serial killers commit the crimes they do, briefly mention the different typologies of serial killers, as well as mention some famous serial killers and a few of the traits they may have in common.

Each type of these killers has a different motive for killing their victims. There has to be some type of reason as to why these people are the way they are. Law enforcement has studied serial killers for years, dating back to the time of the first known serial killer, Jack the Ripper, and they can not come up with just one single verdict. There are multiple opinions as to why these people end up this way. Some people say that it is some genetic trait, some people say it is because of brain trauma, or it is an effect from abuse and/or neglect from their family, and it has been said that these people make the wrong choices.

There are four subtypes of a serial killer; each one has a different motivation for killing. The first one is the visionary killer. The visionary killer is often psychotic, they usually feel compelled to murder because they hear voices, or see visions which are telling them to kill certain kinds of people. Then there is the mission oriented killer. This killer sets out their goal to kill a specific group of people because they feel as if these people are unworthy to live and that the world would be a better place without them. A prime example of this type of killer is Gary Ridgway who killed 48 women, most of which were prostitutes. Next, there is the hedonistic killer who kills for the excitement of it. These types of killer enjoy hunting their victims. Subcategories of a hedonistic killer include sadistic killers, lust killers, and those who kill for financial gain (Hitman). Lastly, there are the power-oriented killers who enjoy having complete control over their victims. They enjoy having their victims obey every little command (Meadows).

In most serial killers it all begins with one thing, anger. That seed of anger is planted in them at a very young age. It starts with the first fantasies of violence, and then leads to full-fledged commissions of felonies, which ultimately leads to the complete set of signature murders. When we look into the histories of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and George Russell we can see that, at the heart of the killer's vision of the world, is an ongoing nuclear chain reaction of anger. Bundy, Dahmer and Russell were all sexual killers whose crimes reflected the translation of anger into explicitly sexual offenses. Their backgrounds are commonly alike, and their anger which motivated them is easily accounted for (Keppel, Birnes).

In the cases of Bundy, Dahmer, and Russell, the families may have seemed privileged and strong from the outside, but on the inside, it was a different story, there was an inner weakness. The child who ultimately became the killer, dropped out of that family's structure at such a critical time in their growing up that for the rest of their lives, whatever a family was suppose to provide, it did not. This kind of anger can be defined as clinical anger. This kind of anger can be described as totally abnormal, it is constant, beyond the control of the person, not understood by the person, increases with age, can not be compensated for except through violent acts. Clinical anger becomes the driver for deviant behavior, keeps getting worse until stability is reached, it incites the predator into violent behavior in replacement of representatives of the source of anger, requires medication to keep under control, and finally it "becomes imprinted psychologically in such a way that the child or adult develops a pattern of signature behaviors throughout the rest of their life, right through the performance of their crimes" (Keppel).

Keppel points out that a lot of serial killers are sociopaths, meaning that they do not respect other people's boundaries. They may steal, cheat, and lie without remorse or feelings of conscience. Sociopaths have no sense of personal boundaries, they feel no remorse for the pain that they cause when they hurt others, and regard all possessions as their own. People can develop this type of behavior if they never learned personal boundaries as infants or young children. If their parents abandoned them as infants or young children, they can develop sociopathic behavior patterns. As these people grow older they seem unable to play by any social rules and ultimately may tend to have no regard for law and may be at high-risk for criminal behavior at all levels.

One of Keppel's beliefs is