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Social deviance: (1) impulsive; (2) poor behaviour controls; (3) need
for excitement; (4) lack of responsibility; (5) early behaviour prob-
lems; and (6) adult antisocial behaviour.

Psychopathy is well summed up by the “dead conscience” self-diagnosis

of Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker. But while many serial murderers
appear to possess psychopathic personalities, the disorder is not in itself a
sufficient condition for repetitive violence and most psychopaths are not
criminals, let alone serial killers (Andrews & Bonta, 1994; Hare, 1993; Siegel,
1992).

Ressler et al. (1988) analyzed motives and patterns of violent criminal

behaviour through interviews of 36 convicted and incarcerated male sexual
murderers, 29 of whom had killed more than one person. They also reviewed
various psychiatric, police, court, and prison archival data sources. They
construct a motivational model for sexual homicide that integrates social
environment, childhood and adolescent formative events, subsequent pat-
terned responses, resultant actions towards others, and offender reaction via
a mental “feedback filter” to violent acts.

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Stage one of their motivational model describes the existence of an inef-

fective social environment for the murderer during childhood (Ressler et al.,
1988). His caretakers tend to ignore his behaviour, support his distortions
of events, and generally act in a nonintervening and nonprotective manner.
Life attachments and bonding forces are thus inadequately developed. Stage
two of the model explains the critical importance of such formative events
as sexual and physical abuse, developmental failure through negative social
attachment, a diminished emotional response, and interpersonal failure
caused by inconsistent parenting and deviant role models.

Stage three involves the patterned responses to these early influences.

Rather than learning positive critical personal traits, the interviewed mur-
derers in this study developed fetishes, preferences for autoerotic activities,
feelings of entitlement, and characteristics of social isolation, rebelliousness,
aggression, and deceit. The resultant cognitive mapping and processing is
structured through daydreams, fantasies, visual thoughts, and nightmares.
Their internal dialogues involve absolutes, generalizations, and strong, lim-
iting presuppositions. Their fantasy themes include dominance, power, con-
trol, violence, sadism, masochism, revenge, torture, mutilation, rape, and
death (see Dietz, Hazelwood, & Warren, 1990). They require high levels of
kinesthetic stimulation and aggressive experience for sexual arousal.

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Ressler et al. (1988) note their motivational model only focuses on cognitive and psycho-

social factors, and does not address neurobiological or genetic influences that “may be
present under certain conditions” (p. 69). They do not state what those conditions are.

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The cognitive structure of the murderer during childhood eventually

influences his or her behaviour. Stage four describes the external actions
demonstrated by the offender during periods of childhood, adolescence, and
adulthood. Typical behaviour patterns of the sexual murderer as a child
involve cruelty to both animals and children, disregard for others, firesetting,
theft, mischief, and joyless, hostile, aggressive, repetitive play patterns. Ado-
lescent and adult criminal actions may include assaults, break and enters,
arsons, abductions, rape, nonsexual murder, and sex-oriented murder, often
involving rape, torture, mutilation, or necrophilia. It is significant to note
that many serial killers commit their first murder during their early or mid-
adolescent years. Henry Lee Lucas claims to have committed his first murder
at either the age of 8 (Peters, 1990) or 14 (Egger, 1990).

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There are similarities between some of these actions and the “Macdonald

triad,” a set of childhood characteristics associated with future violent behav-
iour: torture of small animals, firesetting, and enuresis (Macdonald, 1961,
1963; see also Beirne, 1999; Levin & Fox, 1985). David Berkowitz (the “Son
of Sam”) was responsible for numerous arsons and suspected of several dog
killings prior to, and during, his murder spree. He kept yearly journals with
detailed records of 1411 fires — locations, dates, times, and fireboxes (Ressler
& Shachtman, 1992; Terry, 1989; Time-Life, 1992b).

Stage five is a feedback filter process that serves as a justification system

for the violent acts of such offenders. By reacting to and evaluating earlier
antisocial behaviours the sexual murderer in effect learns more “efficient”
patterns of operation. Errors are eliminated; methods of avoiding detection
and punishment improved; new means to increase control, dominance, and
power discovered; and enhanced states of arousal learned. Fantasies become
more sophisticated and refined during this period; the potential for increased
violence and repetitive homicide lies at this stage of the model.

This is one of the few research projects directly examining the sexual

murder population. The study has some methodological problems, however,
and Ressler et al. (1988) caution their offender group is not a representative
random sample. The model has yet to be empirically tested, though a study
of 62 serial murderers by Cleary and Luxenburg (1993) found similar back-
ground characteristics of abuse and broken homes. Ressler et al. do not supply
tests of statistical significance and some of the reported relationships may be
the result of chance (Homant & Kennedy, 1998). Also, a lack of comparative
background data for the general population prevents their findings from
being contextualized. For example, 61% of the sexual murderers they inter-
viewed admitted to having rape fantasies during childhood or adolescence.

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This inconsistency is not due to source materials as both Peters and Egger personally

interviewed Lucas (for a dissenting view on Lucas’s other claims to homicidal fame, see
Jenkins, 1988a; Rosenbaum, 1990b).

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For this figure to have real meaning it must be placed in some sort of context
— what are the comparative responses to this same question from samples
of the overall populations of noncriminal males, criminal offenders, sexual
offenders, and nonsexual murderers? The lack of control groups limits the
interpretation of their research (see Robertson & Vignaux, 1995).

Lange and DeWitt, Jr. (1990b) state that the 36 sexual murderer sample

used in this research was inadequate for extrapolation purposes, and the
database flawed to the extent that the U.S. Department of Justice cut off the
project’s funding after an external review (see Nobile, 1989). They also
express concern regarding the uncritical acceptance by the FBI of the state-
ments of the interviewed killers (but see Ressler et al., 1988, for a partial
discussion of this problem). They underline their indictment with a quote
from sex murderer Colin Pitchfork: “Probation officers and psychiatrists,
these people are quite happy if you tell them what they want to hear .... I
can’t believe how easy it is to spin yarns to these people.” Others, while
somewhat skeptical of the methodology, view the FBI’s research from a more
balanced perspective (Copson, 1993).

Hickey (1997) has assessed possible applications of various criminolog-

ical theories for the explanation of serial murder. These include a form of
social structure theory (the relationship between urbanism and murder),
social process theory (the learning of aggression), neutralization theory (the
dehumanization of murder victims), Hirschi’s (1969) control theory (weak-
ened social bonds), and labelling theory (the formation of the killer’s self-
image). Hickey concludes that “Because research into serial murder is in its
infancy, the haste to draw quick conclusions about its etiology is not only
speculative but dangerous” (p. 85). He particularly questions beliefs concern-
ing the influence of alcohol and pornography on the cause of serial murder.

Hickey (1997) proposes a tentative multiple-factor model for the pur-

poses of future research and discussion. This trauma-control model describes
processes and factors that may influence early stages in the development of
a serial killer. A series of traumatic events (such as parental rejection, an
unstable family life, or sexual abuse) lead to feelings of inadequacy and low
self-esteem. As more trauma is suffered, increasingly violent fantasies start
to develop. “The most critical factor common to serial killers is violent
fantasy” (p. 91). States of dissociation may also result as a means of psycho-
logical protection.

In the cases of some serial murderers, background factors and facilitators

may be precursors to violence. These factors can be biological, psychological,
or sociological, and facilitators involve alcohol, drugs, or pornography. On
their own, however, these background factors and facilitators are insufficient,
as millions of people are constantly exposed to similar conditions without
becoming killers. Instead, such factors can act as catalysts for aggressive

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behaviour on the part of those who experience increasingly violent fantasies.
If this process of trauma and fantasy continues it may eventually lead to the
acting out of violent and murderous thoughts. When this develops into a
cycle where the killing feeds back into the trauma and the fantasy life,
repeated murders result unless the offender is caught. The validity of this
theory for serial killer development remains to be empirically tested.

Mitchell (1997) notes that most human behavior cannot be adequately

accounted for by any single explanation. He proposes an integrated approach
linking the background of the offender to triggers that prompt violent action.
His model of serial murder comprises three interactive elements: (1) the
foundation of the pathology (biological predisposition combined with envi-
ronmental trauma and stressors); (2) a path of stressors resulting in the first
murder (maladaptive coping skills, retreat into fantasy, and dissociation);
and (3) an obsessive-compulsive ritualistic cycle (refractory period followed
by a renewal of the homicidal urge).

Cameron and Frazer (1987) see social and political context as critically

important in the understanding of repetitive sexual and lust murderers. They
note that feminists “locate male violence against women in the realm of the

political

 ... a collective, culturally sanctioned misogyny which is important

in maintaining the collective power of men” (p. 164). Caputi (1990) states
that serial and sexual murder “are crimes of sexually political import ... a
product of the dominant culture. It is the ultimate expression of a sexuality
that defines sex as a form of dominion/power” (p. 2).

They suggest that male violence is facilitated through the depersonalization

of women and their objectified social representation. Sex murder, an extreme
form of this violence, can be viewed as a form of sexual terrorism, though
Cameron and Frazer (1987) caution that this account of sex murder is not
adequate by itself. However, they fail to address the central question why some
males — and females — repeatedly torture and kill innocent victims (both
female and male, human and animal) while the vast majority of the members
of society, subject to the same cultural images, never murder anyone. Feminist
scholarship in this area has been criticized for its sensationalistic preoccupation
with the male sexual murder of females, while ignoring those incidents involv-
ing male victims and female serial killers (Cluff, Hunter, & Hinch, 1997; Pear-
son, 1997). Misogyny may play an important role in understanding certain
types of serial and mass murder, and probably influences victim selection,

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but it is not in itself a sufficient explanation.

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The victims of serial killers are more likely to be female than male. Hickey (1997) found

35% of serial murderers targeted only females, 22% only males, and 42% both sexes. By
comparison, only about one-quarter of all murder victims in the United States are female
(Holmes & De Burger, 1988).

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Leyton (1986) characterizes serial murder from an historical sociological

perspective, describing it as a form of “sub-political and conservative protest
which nets the killer a substantial social profit of revenge, celebrity, identity,
and sexual relief .... a primitive rebellion against the social order” (p. 14).
Seeking to achieve personal status and revenge for past denial, the repetitive
killer strikes back at society. Consequently, different social orders produce
different types of serial killers. He describes several explanatory factors for the
modern American phenomenon of serial murder, observing the abnormal
number of serial murders there compared to other parts of the world.

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 Other

historical periods would possess distinct aetiologies dependent primarily upon
class structure and relations. The increased experience of family breakdown,
within the context of a stratified and class hierarchical society, has led to a
growth in the number of people who lack a feel of social “place.” These indi-
viduals may not ever develop a coherent socially constructed identity.

This lack of identity is agitated by the internal social crises created when

middle-class positions close and cultural ambitions are stifled. Many tensions
exist within modern North American society: urbanization, mobility, ano-
nymity, loss of community, family disintegration, failure, alienation, and
despair. These are most acute in the lower classes and their members the
most threatened. Leyton suggests such factors can lead the upper working
and lower middle classes to attack those they perceive as excluding or oppress-
ing them in an effort to “level” society. These attacks occur in a social context
significantly marked by the impact of a culture of violence. Modern American
society condones revenge and links violence to lust and sex. Consequently,
such revenge or grudge murders engendered by failed ambitions are a path
to “success,” to attention and celebrity.

While this seminal theory helped lay the groundwork for future research,

it was based on limited data, and the conjectures were not empirically tested.
All serial killers are grouped together, an approach that appears unjustified.
Also, the preponderance of data on serial murder victimology indicates that
members of powerless groups are most at risk (see below). Leyton’s ideas are
intriguing and informative, but on their own, historical and sociological
explanations are insufficient explanations for rare behaviours.

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The United States may have more than its share of serial killers, but there are many

documented cases from other countries.  Jenkins (1988b, 1994) lists 12 English serial murder
cases, involving at least 4 victims, from 1940 to 1985, and 7 German cases, involving at
least 10 victims, from 1910 to 1950.  The total for England represents 1.7% of all known
murders in that country, a similar percentage to that found for serial killing within the
U.S. (Fox & Levin, 1992; Jenkins, 1988b, 1994).  Pinto and Wilson (1990) list 17 cases of
serial murder in Australia from 1900 to 1990, 14 of which occurred since 1959.  Currently,
South Africa and the former Soviet republics appear to be plagued with a disproportionate
number of such killers.