A Killer Start

Your fun source to a not so fun subject.

[akillerstart]

WE SEE THEM ROLLIN’, WE HATIN’ (then we catch them): The profiles of serial killers.

On the fourth page of our story, we will go an investigation to see how each serial killer commits their crimes in order to understand their motive, behaviour and “style”.

Serial killers can be defined as either an organized or disorganized killer under which four main categories that currently exist, which can be further broken down into multiple subcategories.

(Source: https://sites.google.com/site/psychologyofpsychopaths2a/what-is-the-profile-of-a-serial-killer-1/what-are-the-different-types-of-serial-killers)

The Visionary killers - when psychotic break with reality - have an inherent belief that they are being told by a real voice or power that is real, when it is fact not so. These can be things told to them by what are essentially inner demons but can also be perceived as a message from “God” or another higher being/power. This type of serial killer has often experienced a psychotic break or severe emotional breakdown, causing them to “snap”. Unlike other killers who target specific types of victim, such as people of colour, figures reminiscent of a past abuser, prostitutes or homosexuals the murders can seem random and only make sense in the mind of the killer themselves.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Berkowitz)

For example: David Berkowitz (Son of Sam) said that his God had asked him to punish those women. All of his victims were young women with long dark hair. He would blitz attack them via shooting and revisited his crime scene to relive the moment.

“I enjoyed it” - he once confessed.

Next, we have the Mission Oriented type. These killers murder their victims under a self-approved impression that by killing their targets, they are doing the society a favour and eliminating “tainted” people. Many of their targets are prostitutes, unemployed or marginalised races, whom they see as unfit.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski)

For instance: Ted Kacynzski (also known as the Unabomber) was one such killer who intended to start a revolution by mailing out homemade bombs in an anarchistic attempt to oppose industrial revolution. Previously he had abandoned his position as a scholar to live a more primitive lifestyle.

“You know, the irony is, they’re gonna show this cabin as evidence that I’m crazy. But if everyone was content to live simply like this, we’d have no more war, no poverty, no pollution.” – he noted.

After that, here comes the Thrill seeking killers. They are killers who derive immense pleasure, which can be pure adrenaline or sexual. This can be from the process leading up to the murder to the execution itself, though usually all that leads up to it being what they find most ‘thrilling’. These killers are psychopathic and therefore never have any sense of remorse if any at all. The victims are random and varied.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Lee_Lucas)

In this case: Henry Lee Lucas was a drifter and abused as a young child by his prostitute mother and bullied relentlessly in school. Throughout his span as a serial killer he killed both strangers as well as ending up killing his own mother after hitting him with a broom one night.

“One I’ve done a crime; I just forget it. I go from crime to crime” – he said.

Finally, we get to the Power/Control killers. They, who are primarily motivated to dominate and control their victims and like thrill seeking killers enjoy the process leading up to murdering their victims such as the stalking, capture and torture but their ultimate satisfaction come from the kill itself.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy)

One of the most notorious killers here is John Wayne Gacy (Clown Killer). He was a power/control killer who raped and murdered anywhere up to a total of 33 young boys and proceeded to bury the majority of them under his home. As a child Gacy, like most serial killers was abused and also struggled with his sexuality. He was found guilty in 1980 and sentenced to multiple life and death sentences.

“The dead won’t bother you, it’s the living you have to worry about.” - he declared.

[akillerstart]

"HELTER SKELTER, HELTER SKELTER! LOOK OUT ‘CAUSE HERE SHE COMES.” - THE BEATLES, 1968: Breaking down Charles Manson

Among the killers there are even more notorious ones, whose crimes go beyond our expectation. I personally find Charles Manson the most disturbing, yet most interesting killer of all time. Comparing to the other well-known such as Ted Bundy or Pedro Alonso Lopez, who was believed to have killed and assaulted more than hundreds of young girls, Manson is seemed to be just a minor threat.

But is it really just about the quantity of death?

(Source: http://lynncinnamon.com/2016/02/charles-manson-convince-young-women-kill/)

On 12th November 1934 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, Charles Manson was born to Kathleen Maddox - a 16-year-old-mother. Without knowing his biological father, Charles was an unnamed child for a long time until his mother married William Manson, who soon filed a divorce and fled out of their life. When it comes to Charles’s childhood, “troublesome” would be an understatement. His alcoholic mother Kathleen was put in prison for robbery during his early age, he was then sent to live with his relative.

Untrustworthy and deceitful were what people described little Charlie. The number of times Charles skipped school equals the number of trips he was sent to prison, which is A LOT. His sudden desire for others’ properties brought him to his second home. He was bullied all the time due to his skinny appearance, eventually, Charles had to teach himself to be scarier than anyone who scares him in order to survive.

During his jail time, he was obsessed with The Beatles. He believed that they’re the prophets and their songs delivered the words of the holy one. He believed that he is the chosen one because he is “The Son of Man”.

After being released the second time from prison in March 1967, he tried to blend in and lived a seemingly normal life in a district in San Francisco. Charles began to observe the hippie transition and used it as a tool to spread his “ideology” and gain followers by bringing out the worst in them.

This was Manson’s signature manipulation tactic. He never had to directly order his followers to commit murder, not only could Manson persuade them to kill whoever he wanted but also he could make it seem like it’s their idea. He pimped the weak minds, made them depend on him, used them for sex or financial gain, exposed them to experimental and mind altering substances and reformed their thought without any objection from his followers.

Manson was a very charismatic individual with a somewhat intoxicating presence that drew in his followers, both men and women. This is how one of his most memorable and violent crimes came to be, albeit only orchestrated by him. The vicious murder of Sharon Tate. On August 8th 1969, in the rented home of her famed director husband Roman Polanski located at 10050 Cielo Drive, Benedict Canyon, actress Sharon Tate, along with her house guests at the time, which included coffee heiress Abigail Folger and celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring. At the time Tate was eight and half months pregnant. She was chosen as a target due to the fact that a former resident of the home had refused to sign a recording deal with Manson.  The inhabitants along with Tate were brutally slain by stabbing.

(Source: http://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/568197?imagelist=1)

6 deaths and Manson’s hands were untainted. In one of his interrogations, he still insisted on his destructive belief and simply described himself as a mirror.

“I did no crimes” - he said...

“I just reflect what people want to see.”

To this very day,  Manson is a well-known and infamous icon that represents the atrocious crimes he played out. People idolise Manson, and before his death in 2017 he was admired by many fans who wrote numerous letters and requests to become a part of “The Family”.

[akillerstart]

DRAWING THE LINE: What you need to know about killers

On our first date, we have discussed about humans and crimes: Why it is completely okay to understand about the dark pit of criminology. Not a perfect choice for most dates but still, you’re here once again! So now, to our second discussion.

There are many types of killers but not everyone understands those meanings. So, if you commit an unlawful intentional killing of a living being - in this case, a human being -  then holy macaroni,  you’re a murderer with a third degree diploma. Usually, that tiny piece of guilt will tick and stop you from being worse. However, some people are driven further by anger or perhaps, jealousy, therefore, we have the term spree killer, which is like the first type but on a spree: killing two or a bit more than two people at a short time and in various locations. Alongside of that is the mass murderer. They are those, whose wrath is in control most of the time and eventually, they kill a considerable number of people ( more than four) in one occurrence.

Finally, we are left with the serial killer.

Before the 1970s, they were widely known as mass murderer by criminal justice specialists and media until a clear distinction was drawn. Serial killers manifest their crime at separate events (sometimes, they take a cooling off vacation after each murder and blend back in the society) and their victims range from three or even up to one hundred. Due to the timespan, it can be tricky to catch them.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL A KILLER START (literally)

A survey back in 2009 marks that about 4% of general world population are sociopathic and another 1% is filtered as psychopathic. They are popular terms in psychology and share the same diagnosis as antisocial personality disorder which leads many people to mistake their identity quite frequently.

It has been proved that almost all serial killers are either one of these two types.

BUT NOT ALL SOCIOPATHS AND  PSYCHOPATHS ARE SERIAL KILLERS SO DROP YOUR PHONE.

PSYHCOLOGIA.CO has summarised thoroughly the first two terms, which are psychopath and sociopath in the infographic below.

(Source: http://psychologia.co/psychopath-vs-sociopath/)

Well-known serial killers who are sociopathic include: Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy, Aileen Wuornos etc. While in the psychopath category we have: Ted Bundy (with the IQ of 136), Paul Bernardo (an enthusiastic boy scout and a university student), Dennis Rader (church council president) etc.

A human, like many other humans among us. We might have walked past them several times, might have seen them on TV, might have heard their name sung in honourable awards and yet, we have never noticed or even thought that they would be a gruesome monster.

Or maybe we just genuinely forgot that they, just like everyone else, are given a choice to be one?

Keep calm and stay tuned until we meet again on our next adventure.

[akillerstart]

THE MIND 101: Why criminology is not a bad thing

A FEW WORDS BEFORE YOU CALL THE POLICE.

Knowing about the deep dark world doesn’t make you a deep dark person, whom people are usually afraid of.

So put down the phone and give this blog a chance.

Nikola Tesla once stated: “Antisocial behaviour is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists”. Maybe in their perspective, humans are destructive and normal people don’t go around destroying other human beings. They observe and learn to treat how they are treated; still thinking they are the one who is normal.

If psychology teaches us about human behaviour, how their mind works, their actions, interactions and reactions, then learning about crimes helps us know what makes a killer’s mind so twisted and different. Killers are also humans. They, who have moral consciousness, who know what is right and wrong, choose to harm their fellow human beings.

HUMAN EVOLUTION or WHY WE DON’T MONKEY AROUND ANYMORE

Murder, death, crimes are unpleasant subjects, which are considered as something monstrous but those are the elephant in the room that we can’t ignore. In his book “The Descent Man, and Selection in the Relation of Sex”, Charles Darwin had said: “I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important”. Animals don’t have a sense of moral so when they kill, it all comes from their survival instinct and nothing can judge them doing what they have always been doing for centuries. Humans, on the other hand, are a complicated species with a highly developed mind. Their consciousness not only offers them a trait of good and evil but also the ability to choose it.

Isn’t it scary to know that evil is a completely exceptional feature to humanity?

True crime has been one of the most exploited subject for decades. Perhaps due to murder is being one of the most atrocious acts a human being commit against a fellow human being - the psychological mindset  behind that of a murderer  is fascinating and intriguing, and is something we can gain valuable knowledge to assist in future understanding and deconstructing of crime. This will lead to further and more effective solutions and prevention of such disasters, while also drawing much needed attention and also vital awareness to this matter. That is what makes crime so fascinating to me. How else can learn and gain new insight into the education of such imperative matters that cause such devastation to society as a whole? When people disregard topics due to how morbid they are, we are essentially erasing the memory and importance of the not only the victims, but also families and friends affected by these horrendous acts.

(Source: http://flavorwire.com/250761/grizzly-crime-scene-photography-of-1940s-new-york/6)

Because true crime is not a twisted or taboo subject to be interested in. It does not make one mentally ill or defective, nor more likely to commit a crime. How else do you explain the great strides made by people who were all took brave enough and had the the drive to take the initiative to enter these fields.

After this, I believe our interrogation is over? So now, grab your shovel, because we are about to dig deeper into the psyche of one such serial killer.