Are We Born Serial Killers

Serial Killers: Nature vs. Nurture

Coldbloodedkiller: Motives of serial killers: Visionary - Visionary serial killers suffer from psychotic breaks with reality, sometimes believing they are another.

Drilling into the skull of a young man he began to funnel

a stream of sulfuric acid into the head of his unconscious

victim to create a zombie to fulfill all of his fantasies.

Dead within a day, he mummified the head of his victim

placing it in the freezer beside the skulls of those who

came before. Dismembering the remnants of the body he

placed skin, blood, and bone into a fifty-gallon vat of

acid dissolving what was left of the young man. This is

the mind of Jeffrey Dahmer, he murdered not in anger,

revenge, or financial enrichment but on impulse and desire.

Like many serial killers before him like Albert DeSalvo,

Theodore Bundy, and David Berkowitz, psychologists, criminologists,

and scientists searched to answer the question of why

serial killers commit these mass killings and how they

became such violent humans. What is left are two schools

of thought, are serial killers born with predetermined

genes that play an integral part in creating their homicidal

tendencies or do psychokillers become murderous through

their surroundings as children. Though it is important

to understand how killers become such vicious individuals

it is critical to understand what defines a serial killer

and what makes them so incredibly different from other

A large distinction that separates serial

killers from other murderers are their motives to kill.

Normally homicides are committed due to disputes that

range from family affairs, gang violence, financial difficulties,

and disputes between lovers and between friends. A

psychokiller, I should make clear, is not a regular murderer.

A murderer has a vendetta, a nice specific personal thing

against his victim Corin 188. Unlike that of a

normal homicide, serial killers are only driven by instinct

and a desire to kill. Due to these sexual desires and

the need to fulfill their arousing fantasies it often

drives these individual to murder those who are complete

strangers. Though serial killers only make up for one

percent murderers nearly a dozen account for one hundred

to two hundred murders annually Fox 102.

Grover Godwin who profiles serial killers

collected data from one hundred and seven serial killers

and their seven hundred and twenty eight victims from

sources that came from the FBI, local police departments,

newspaper reports, and from the Homicide Investigations

and Tracking System HITS database in Washington State.

From Godwins investigation he found that nearly ninety

percent of victims were complete strangers to the killer

and that only three percent were friends and one percent

were that of family members Fox 105. This explains why

serial killers are able to get away with the massacres

for so incredibly long. When detectives go to investigate

the disappearances of those missing there is no link between

the killer and the victim making it practically impossible

solve these mysteries. In an identical study by criminologist

Eric Hickey, he assembled a database of nearly four hundred

serial killers in which he found that eighty four percent

of killers were male, twenty percent were of African American

descent, and that the first murder committed by a serial

killer was at the average age of twenty seven and a half

years old Fox 106. Even in movies these statistics can

be found such as Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and the

Saw series in which Hollywood has repeatedly created characters

that fit the description of a white male in their mid

twenties to thirties creating this stereotypical image

Publicized in movies, magazines, and

on TV serial killers have Clearly become a fixture

in our popular culture Fox 102. Unlike in the

movie Silence of the Lambs where Dr. Hannibal Lector is

a man of intelligence and riddles with an above average

IQ, most serial killers do not have an education past

that of high school. Grover Godwin found that only sixteen

percent of the nearly one hundred and seven serial killers

he had studied went to college and of those, only four

percent actually graduated Fox 105. Though most have

very little education, successful serial killers must

still possess the cleverness and wit to be able to dispose

of multiple bodies and outsmart the police by leaving

little to no traces of evidence.

Many of them are exceptionally

skillful in their presentation of self, so much so that

they are beyond suspicions and thus are difficult to apprehend

Fox 105. Incorrect is the assumption that serial killers

wear hockey masks or walk around in pull ups carrying

a chain saw. Movies and TV have put an image into our

minds that these are the characteristics of a murderer

when in reality they are masters at disguising their emotions

and thoughts letting them blend into society. Magicians

of death, they reel their victims into a false sense of

security by many times tricking them with an offer of

sex and drugs. Once they have control of their victims

they remove their fake personality killing their victim

with any weapon that they can find, fulfilling there wants,

Not to say that the aftermath of serial

killers is trivial but the real controversy among theorists

lies on how and why serial killers take the step from

fantasy to reality. We are all made up of tiny individual

genes that make up our personality traits defining who

and what we are. Many believe that murderers do not grow

into the shell of a killer but have predetermined genes

that make up the chemical balance of our brain, body,

thoughts, ideas, and most importantly actions. Generally

speaking biological factors vis-à-vis the causes

of behavior can be defined as those processes and conditions

that typically are considered as belonging to or characteristic

of the organism Jeffrey 78. As Lucy Corin in

Everyday Psycho Killers presents, violence and death is

apart of whom we are as humans and shows that violence

is most prevalent when we are in our youth. Corin relates

to the nature of violence in children and desires that

we have whether good or bad in our everyday lives. One

girl had grabbed another girl by the front of the shirt

through to her bra and flung her against the beam. The

girl lay crumpled on the locker room floor, her head bleeding,

her eyes saying more and the girl who had flung her stood

over the body, hands on hips, with enormous thighs

Back in 2000 a report that was published

in Science by Dr. Richard Davidson at the University of

Wisconsin at Madison compared brain scans of more then

five hundred people between those who were prone to violence

and those who were considered to be normal. The study

found that the brain images of those who had been convicted

of a murder with aggressive or antisocial disorders showed

distinct brain activity compared to those who were considered

normal. If this study is correct then these murderers

must have been born with an entirely different genetic

makeup then that of those in the majority of the population

who are not violent. These brain scans showed a relationship

between the orbital frontal cortex, the anterior cingulated

cortex, and the amygdale, which plays a large part in

the control of negative and violent emotions. The orbital

frontal cortex has been found to control and restrain

the impulse of emotional outbursts, the anterior cingulated

cortex was found to deal with responses to conflict, and

the amygdale is known to control reactions to fear. When

Davidson and his colleagues reviewed the brain images

they found that brain activity in the orbital frontal

cortex and the anterior cingulated cortex had diminished

or was non existent compared to the amygdale which controls

reactions to fear which stayed at the same activity level

or went higher Ramsland 35. Serial killers may be influenced

by the culture that they are surrounded by, but those

who can affect their thoughts do not have control over

the reactions to ideas that are apart of our DNA. If it

is possible to diagnose these genetic defects early, children

can be treated and watched to make sure that the increase

in emotional tendencies does not become uncontrollable

causing them to hurt those around them. We have

accepted as proper for sociological study the environment

external to the human person; perhaps we now should consider

appropriate the environment internal to the person, not

just the social psychological environment Jeffrey

In the publication of Beyond the Pleasure

Principle in 1920, Freud came up with two theories about

the aggression in which humans express. Creating two different

and opposing instincts, Freud came up with the death instinct

and the life instinct. The death instinct is that of destructive

behavior towards the society around them. What Freud had

found that led him to the theory of the death instinct

was that those he had studied who had experienced unpleasing

experiences kept repeating those experiences even though

they were still unpleasing. Opposite of that is the life

instinct in which Freud believes that people try to maintain

a better life and try to achieve bigger goals for themselves.

Born with these aggressive and destructive stimuli serial

killers go onto commit these horrific crimes even though

they know most of the time that it is wrong. Abel 41

Jeffrey Dahmer for example had always been intoxicated

before committing a murder because his conscious knew

that what he was doing was wrong. Though Freud hits the

nail on the head that those with destructive behavior

tend to repeat the same actions over and over again, I

believe that serial killers qualify for only a fraction

of this theory. Though serial killers repeatedly commit

the same acts of destruction and violence it is not a

totally unpleasing experience. When Dahmer committed his

first murder at the age of eighteen he began drinking

heavily because in his conscious he knew that what he

did was unacceptable. Though he knew what he did was wrong

he still felt pleasure from committing such a horrible

Though we are all classified the same

as human, we each are unequally different in our genetic

makeup. This concept states that we as humans as

well as other organism, though similar in our biological

and biochemical composition, are absolutely unique; and,

especially, that each biochemical composition has a pattern

and distribution all its own Jeffery 90. Compare

the fingerprints, moles, or skin tone of any two individual

and you will find that each persons genes are pieced together.

Genetics does not just go skin deep but affects the whole

system including our minds and our thoughts. In 1915 Freud

claimed that active stimuli in humans push them into action

and that these active stimuli are emanating within

the organism and penetrating to the mind Weiner

12. If this is true then man does not have control over

their actions and are instinctively born with these internal

stimuli that decide when we take action and when we run

from a situation in a fight or flight situation. Genes,

many argue is the answer to understanding the mind of

a serial killer and the only was to stop these murders

is to detect these genetic defects early in their childhood.

Naturally we are all born with a different

genetic make up but many argue that differences in DNA

do not create a psychokiller. The main focus of many criminologists

and psychologists are the origins and the surroundings

Modern geneticists have pointed

out that a nature-nurture dichotomy is clearly untenable,

incorrect, and meaningless. The subject has to be discussed

in terms of the continuous and complex interactions between

an organism and its environment, and the relevant contributions

of both sets of variables in determining the behavior

Taking a look at Jeffrey Dahmers childhood

you will find that at an early age he was a fun and active

child who his father described as, Very exuberant,

he liked to wrestle, liked to run around, ham it up for

the camera and he liked to play with kids and get together

with them The Monster Within. These are not characteristics

of a serial killer who scientists say are born with this

gene of aggressiveness. Dahmer had been a normal child

until his father received his Ph. D in chemistry the family

moved to Ohio relocating three times before settling down

in Bath Ohio. When Dahmer had moved his father and mother

noticed that he had become shy and anti-social. Jeffrey

then began collecting road kill and dissecting it in experiments.

Criminologists and social behavioral

psychologists have come to argue that childhood

experiences and repeated psychological trauma,

during the early stages of growing up can cause a child

to seek relief through activities of violence such as

killing small animals. Christine Falling was probably

about as retarded as this friend of mine. And violent.

At fourteen, she d already been dropping cats from windows

for years. Sometimes she d squeeze them to death

Corin 149. Much like Dahmer, when his parents began

to fight he felt alone and would escape by himself out

into the woods to find comfort in the pile of dead carcasses

he had collected. Feeling abandoned by not only his parents

but classmates he tried to seek attention by those around

him by doing what his classmates called a Dahmer,

which was to act up and do things that were out of the

norm and socially unacceptable. Unlike his family and

classmates the dead carcasses gave him a feeling of comfort,

fulfillment, pleasure and emotional release.

Sociologist Arnold Arluke compared the

criminal records of one hundred and fifty three animal

abusers with one hundred and fifty three non animal abusers

and what he found in his study is that those who were

animal abusers were five times more likely to commit acts

of violence such as assault, rape, and murder against

others. What was understood from this study is that serial

killers in their childhood would resort to killing animals

because they felt powerless against their parents who

had control over them. Since these children did not have

control in the household, they resorted to killing small

animals in which they could exert their dominance and

power over to do anything that pleased them Fox 113.

In a study of sixty two male serial

killers, Eric Hicky a criminologist found that, forty

eight percent of them had been rejected as children by

a parent or some other important person in their lives

Fox 113. Though this happens to many children, it certainly

represents a turning point for those who become serial

killers. Once rejected many of these killers begin to

dive into their self indulgences and are unable to understand

how and who they are when going through puberty. The

social experiences which make people dangerous violent

criminals are the significant experiences rather than

the trivial ones in their lives Athens 19.

Victims of abuse and rejection, serial

killers find comfort in their fantasies and dreams that

take them into a realm that only they can control. Psychokillers

take their fantasies and make them a reality living their

dreams. Growing up Jeffrey Dahmer had felt rejected by

his parents and in turn kept the violent homosexual thoughts

inside of him. Dahmer fantasized of having a male sexual

partner but in his thoughts he received pleasure not only

by having intercourse but also killing his partner. Most

sex murders demonstrate both the need for, and the terror

or, engulfment by a figure onto whom ones primary attachment

needs have been projected Stein 9. The need to

kill fulfils this sexual desire of many killers turning

their fantasies into a controllable reality. Without a

proper relationship to model after in the household many

of these killers do not understand to truly must interact

with each other and coexist peacefully. Serial killers

are violent humans and the only way to stop their killing

sprees many argue is to put a stop to domestic violence

Understanding how and why serial killers

commit such horrific crimes is an important step to stopping

the homicidal rampages these psychokillers go on. Scientists

searched and found what is believed to be hard evidence,

that genetics is the key role in determining who becomes

a serial killer unlike criminologists and psychologists

who argue that large events such as abuse and abandonment

create the setting and foundation in which serial killers

grow into sadistic mass murders. Though both arguments

are strongly proved and explained through research and

statistics neither are individually the answer to why

serial killers exist. In reviewing the evidence of both

explanations I have found that it is a mix of both genetics

and cultural upbringings. Though many humans must deal

with violent situations as children and experience horrific

events many do not become mass murderers. It is true that

many children who are victims of abuse become violent

in their adult lives but to cross into the category of

a serial killer one must be born with a different biochemical

makeup. In my conclusion nature does choose what traits

we are born with but at the same time these traits cannot

be exposed without a mechanism that triggers these individuals

to commit these horrific crimes. Without the alignment

of both natural genetic defects and the cultural nurturing

in which humans are brought up in, serial killers cannot

become vicious killers. If we can curb domestic violence

then the chances for a serial killer to become violent

will decrease significantly making our world a safer place.

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Corin, Lucy. Everyday Psycho Killers:

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of Alabama Press, 2004. Print.

Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster Within.

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Fox, James Alan and Jack Levin. The

Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder. Boston:

Abel, Donald C. Freud on Instinct and

Morality. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,

Ramsland, Katherin M. Inside the Minds

of Mass Murderers: Why they Kill. Westport, CT: Praeger

Jeffrey, Ray C. Biology and Crime. Beverly

Hills: Sage Publications, 1979. Print.

Athens, Lonnie H. The Creation of Dangerous

Violent Criminals. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

Stein, Abby. Prologue to Violence: Child

Abuse, Dissociation, and Crime. Mahwah, NJ: Analytic Press,

Weiner, Bernard. Theories of Motivation:

from mechanism to cognition. Chicago: Rand McNally College

Publishing Company, 1972. Print.

My first reaction as a psychology student is This got to be false. How is it possible that the month of birth can be correlated to a person s psychopathic.

Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and psychopathic serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.

Note: This article on America s famous serial killers was originally published on September 7, 2008 and has since been updated to include profiles of additional.

Drilling into the skull of a young man he began to funnel a stream of sulfuric acid into the head of his unconscious.