![]() ![]() Unabomber Ted Kaczynski is the poster child for this myth, and for good reason, since he got a PhD from the University of Michigan, became an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley at age 25, and supposedly had an IQ of 167. Sure, there are certainly some very smart serial killers. Torturing animals is 1 of 3 behaviors, along with bedwetting and fire starting, cited in the now discredited “Macdonald triad” as a hypothetical predictor of serial violence.įALSE. There is a strong link between serial killers and torturing animals, though that doesn’t mean that every child who tortures animals will grow up to be a serial killer. Serial killers tortured animals as children.A recent study at Pennsylvania State University looked at the differences between the way male and female serial killers kill. Statistics gathered on 3,873 serial killers in the Radford University/Florida Gulf Coast University Serial Killer Database show that since 1900, 90.8 percent of serial killers have been male. See if you can tell which of the following statements are true and which are false. Many people may be diagnosable under the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM-5’s, definition of antisocial personality disorder, the disorder encompassing both sociopathy and psychopathy, but very few of these people are serial killers. There’s a tendency to think of the terms sociopath, psychopath, and serial killer as interchangeable, which is incorrect. Also, many mass murder sprees end with the capture or suicide of the murderer, while serial killers can kill undetected for years and rarely commit suicide. But, according to the FBI, a mass murderer kills several people at one time with no “cooling off” period between murders, while serial killers do have a cooling off period between victims. By definition, both kill multiple people. The seemingly endless parade of shootings in America is deeply troubling, but the motivations that drive serial killers are arguably more complex and disturbing. ![]() But as a recent incident in West Virginia makes clear, they are still out there. And over the weekend, a terrible story about a man who killed eight people in their own home emerged out of Houston, Texas.Īs the horror of these crimes dominates the headlines, we seem to hear fewer stories of serial killers. Last week, James Holmes was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a particularly notorious 2012 shooting that took place in an Aurora, Colorado theater, in which 12 people lost their lives and another 70 were injured. ![]() Mass shootings in America are becoming increasingly common. It’s a sad state of affairs when the concept of a serial killer almost seems quaint. ![]()
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