Why Serial Killers Kill | Psychology behind The Night Stalker and Jeffrey Dahmer | TCC

[Music] there is a darkness in humanity that has manifested itself in a Lust For Blood throughout the ages the Old Testament and ancient myth catalog murder and revenge as part of the fabric of life in ancient times Cain slew Abel Romulus slew Remis unleashing the Beast Within is a possibility for all of us the decision to kill from Passion or premeditation has often defined our world past present and [Music] future Wars have terrorized entire populations for thousands of years the American West was home to ruthless Killers who were idolized in fiction and folklore evil evolved to a hideous new form with the genocidal dictators of the 20th century such as Hitler St [Music] M Tong who ordered the death of tens of millions but in the middle of the 20th century a new and chilling phenomenon emerged in post-war Western Society the serial [Music] killer as if fashioned from our nightmares they terrify and fascinate us lurking behind masks of bland and normality they often evade capture for years decades or eternity they are America's serial killers and killed her we dumped her body off and that was it nothing to it every year in this country we have about 20 serial killers 10 of whom are apprehended 10 of whom are on the loose and they are in total responsible for some 200 deaths so 200 victims of serial killers on a yearly basis and what makes this particularly important for us is that the average serial killer is responsible for 10 deaths that's a huge body count America's serial killers portraits in evil will strip the covers from a world of profiling and forensic science as we expose America's most brutal serial [Music] killers [Music] so why do serial killers kill kill innocent unsuspecting victims why does a person feel the need to not only kill once but again and again is there something that we can point to and say that's what made Jane topan aka the angel of death calmly kill 31 patients who were placed in her care something we can say that made the Boston Strangler asfixiate 13 women is there something we can say that made John Wayne gasy snuff out the life of 33 innocent boys and young men is there something that could have been done to prevent these heinous acts and once these perpetrators of death are caught what should Society do with them to begin to understand why serial killers kill it is important to place their killing in the broader context of why humans kill each other Dr Frederick reamer has created a topology of death a map of human killing if one examines the range of serial killers out there this very diverse group they fall into patterns and in my own research I have come up with a typology I call it the typology of criminal circumstances that in my opinion helped to explain this diversity one category includes what I call crimes or murders of greed where you have somebody who is hired to Snuff out somebody else's life you know organized crime and that sort of thing there are those who are um filled with rage um who may murder somebody um who um diss them a gang member from a rival gang and I've got to get rid of this guy and it's a crime of Rage there are crimes of what I call retribution um these folks fired me from my job I hate them they harassed me they made me so angry they fired me me and I'm going to go back to my workplace and I'm going to kill people it's retribution it's cold it's calculated there are crimes of what I call Frolic where you have Thrill Seekers who are out there um getting their jollies killing other people snipers who for the fun of it want to hurt others I've talked to people who have committed crimes like that another category in this typology is what I call crimes of addiction um I worked with a man who killed three people including a four-year-old girl where he slit her throat it it's a dreadful Dreadful crime this is a man who had no violent history at all he was under the influence of drugs a phenomenal number of drugs when this happened and there's a direct link between that drug induced psychosis and his murder of three people including this little girl there are uh crimes of mental illness the sorts of people who have manifestations or symptoms of schizophrenia um you know there's a lot of speculation that Ted kazinski um suffered from schizophrenia and that there's a link between his mental illness and his activities as the unibomber uh there is evidence that um people like John Wayne gasy struggled from mental illness and that there's a direct link between his illness and his murders Jeffrey dmer and others so I in my experience it's it's helpful to distinguish among these subtypes in this typology crimes of Rage crimes of Retribution crimes of addiction crimes of what I call Frolic uh crimes that are a function of mental illness and crimes of greed people who make money killing other people but many in the field of serial killers will say mental illness is a euphemism for evil that people who kill for the pure joy of killing are a breed apart a different kind of killer and some of these killers are worse than others embodying every form of sadistic perversion the two worst in America's long history of serial killers were men born in the same year 1960 but were born Worlds Apart they are the Milwaukee monster Jeffrey dmer and Richard Ramirez AKA The Night Stalker a man who enjoyed playing Satan inscribed the Demonic pentagon symbol on his palm and made the devil's horns with his fingers while uttering I have killed 20 people I love all that blood Ramirez grew up in the rundown bario of El Paso Texas by all accounts he was no better nor worse than the other kids who grew up facing the same problems all Hispanics faced at that time but when he was 13 his life Twisted away from his penitent Catholic upbringing toward a life of crime rira's fall into the abyss of evil began strangely enough with Bible reading classes when he was young he became fixated on the devil and his power over Earthly things his fall toward serial killing accelerated at age 12 when a war hero cousin returned from Vietnam the two smoked marijuana together and the cousin fascinated Ramirez with stories of torture and murder of Vietnamese peasant women then at age 13 Ramirez stood only 2 feet away when he saw his cousin shoot and kill his wife from this point on Ramirez lost any chance for a normal life he dropped out of school lived on a diet of fast food candy and drugs began stealing he openly worshiped Satan and called the devil his protector he purposely cultivated a satanic look with his emaciated build and haunting appearance rotten teeth made his breath stink the foul smell of the demon within which he decided to unleash in a reign of killing and Terror his fall into complete evil and a life of killing began in California at age 24 he lived in La where petty theft and burglaries bankrolled his drug habit then stealing turned to murder one of the things that sets him apart uh a little bit is the um the fact that he was a home Invader you know that's a little bit different um but again you have a guy who I think got caught up in the the um mythology of it and the attention of it he loved it uh he played into it he he he specifically tailored his acts to uh attain additional attention when Ramirez would attack middle class families in the middle of the night uh he was seen as a tremendous threat uh to the residents of Los Angeles he was seen as uh what he was a guy who could attack anyone which means that you could be next and that terrified the people who lived there starting in March of 198 5 he struck with the same demonic speed as the Gainesville Ripper with the same perverted cruelty as The Boston Strangler with the same horrific savagery of Charles Manson and Ted Bundy he became the brutal Night Stalker he was the worst of them all he entered where people thought they were the safest their homes he shot some he stabbed some and he kicked some to death he mutilated the bodies of many in the end 14 were dead and who knows how many others he ins sodomized but one of these victims escaped then they had a witness and of course the witness was what did it because they put his the drawings that the witness gave the artist up on placards all all around La and somebody saw the resemblance when he was trying to break into a car and uh the whole mob grabbed him all all the people on the street grabbed her miras that's way he was caught caught by citizens in the bario of East LA one of the toughest neighborhoods of the city the nightstalker was at last stopped the day was August 31st 1985 6 months after the most demonic serial killer Unleashed his reign of terror but in an irony that is unique to Modern America Ramirez imprisonment was not the last of the vicious Night Stalker like the devil he worshiped his horrific crimes kept coming back to haunt the public consciousness at his trial he taunted the police and prosecutors with satanic gestures even sitting on death row in prison could not stop his cult celebrity status I don't know where he picked up the satanic uh rituals that he came through I think that was just part of his uh Buzz for the women because he did get a lot of women interested in him and he got a lot of wedding proposals in fact the Donahue show did a special on uh women who are either married to serial killers or have proposed to serial killers which I've seen part of and it's it's amazing that these women actually want to marry these folks but for whatever reason it's serial killers are sexy I guess so like the Mad religious cult leader David Kesh of Waco Texas infamy Richard Ramirez the Demonic Knight stalker has commanded the allegiance of many seduced followers a modern-day cult leader a cult leader awaiting execution but there is no cult following for the Superstar of serial killers the serial killer whose sheer horror has yet to be topped Jeffrey dmer a gay killer whose perversions top those of gay Killers John Wayne gasy Wayne Williams Randy craft and William [Music] bonnan unlike Ramirez and his haunting good looks Jeffrey dmer was unremarkable looking ordinary even and unlike Ramirez dmer did not have that captivating quality that Mystique which inspired cult [Music] followers but Dahmer's serial killing world was more perverted and more heinous than anything Ramirez could have dreamed of indeed Dahmer's ghoulish actions hearkened back to the myths of werewolves and vampires and would give him the nickname the Milwaukee monster [Music] but he was no myth he was a real monster living in the last quarter of the 20th century dmer was born in West Alice Wisconsin his father had a good job as a research chemist and the family was solidly middle class and well off but Jeffrey was not well at an early age dmer caught wild animals tortured them and finally impaled them on Stakes where he stripped the flesh from their bodies using strong acids Dahmer's first killing came the summer after graduating from high school he picked up a hitchhiker Steven Hicks and took him home here he killed him with a barbell and then smashed his bones with a hammer but it wasn't until 1987 while living in Milwaukee that dmer became a serial killer began to kill and hoard his kills in his apartment apparently he would meet men at a at a a gay bar and and establish a conversation and a rapport and uh uh sometimes over more than one encounter and then eventually bring them back to his place living in Milwaukee dmer killed 16 young men and boys he was stopped only because one of his intended victims Tracy Edwards managed to escape the terrified Edwards handcuffs dangling from his wrists ran out of the apartment building into the arms of two police officers he brought them back to the apartment what they found was worse than any horror movie when they eventually broke into his apartment the police came to his apartment they found the carcasses of several humans in various stages of um disassembly uh he had uh body parts in his refrigerator there was body parts in a in a pan that had been cooked he he he was engaging in cannibalism uh in blood drinking but he ate human flesh the there was a human carcass in his bathtub that was dressed out he he was butchering these people and there was a number of victims in his apartment at the time police prosecutors and the public were astonished and sickened by the depravity uncovered in this chamber of [Music] Horrors not since Dr HH Holmes had built his castle of death in 19th century Chicago had anything so ghastly been discovered but while Holmes had constructed an elaborate three-story Victorian Mansion complete with with furnaces for getting rid of the bodies dmer lived in a pathetic one-bedroom apartment an apartment where he surrounded himself with his kills How could a person have done this to other human beings I think you could connect a guy like dmer to say a guy like Ed g a guy who his Fascination was with death itself and with the bodies of the victims um perhaps even more than the killing itself it was the possession of the victims uh the desire to consume them to make them part of himself that satisfied his fantasy or his pathology cannibalism uh has a couple of functions that a lot of people don't understand uh first of all it is the ultimate form of Revenge it's the ultimate form of aggression you literally eat the fruits of Victory you you you Devour the remains of your enemy and so it's a it's it it is a an extreme way of expressing hostility uh maybe because of something that happened to you in your own life um but that's only part of the functions that cannibalism they perform and many of these killers uh like Albert Fish and Jeffrey dmer felt profoundly rejected by other human beings and they wanted desperately to keep these people around uh there's an affectionate side to cannibalism you know by devouring their Remains by consuming them they become part of you forever they don't leave they're not rejecting you the only thing prosecutors had to consider in Dahmer's case was his sanity but of course Mally clinically ill and legally or two different definition all entirely so like the issue of dmer guilt was not a that wasn't an issue the issue was was he insane when he committed those acts and the jury found that he was not not that he was legally he had control of his faculties he knew what he was doing he knew it was wrong so they declared him not to be sane and sentenced him to prison for life and of course that was a death sentence because he was killed a few months later Dahmer's depravities were unique even for serial killers but what he did with the bodies of his victims was not unique in fact there are three ways that serial killers dispose of their kills body Keepers body dumpers and body deserters body dumpers are men and women who kill the victim in one place and dump the body in another California's Highway Killers Randy craft and William bonnan perfected the body dump after picking up hitchhikers and killing them they kicked the lifeless bodies out of the car as they drove along and the hillside stranglers Angelo buono and Kenneth bian baffled Los Angeles police by dumping their victims on random hillsides body deserters leave their victims where they killed them Jane topan the angel of death murdered her victims with syringes of morphine and atropine then walked out of the room leaving the body in bed The Boston Strangler raped and killed women in their apartments and then left them with his trademark ligature of death around their necks for family or neighbors to find dommer was a body keeper one of those Killers who surrounds himself with his victims the smell of decaying flesh the sight of his lifeless prey turned him on dmer was like HH Holmes and John Wayne gasy who kept the entire cadav to remind them of their deeds what would bring men like Jeffrey dmer and Richard Ramirez to do such unspeakable acts our understanding of why serial killer kill has evolved at first it didn't seem possible that any human being could do the kinds of things Ramirez and dmer did in the 19th century people sought out a supernatural explanation such as the werewolves and vampires of ancient myths there was Albert Fish who like dmer cannibalized people killed cooked and ate children during the decade of the Roaring 20s in New York City his Acts were so brutal he could not be human like us he must truly be a monster the boogeyman the vampire of Brooklyn this explanation was followed by a different idea the idea of The Bad Seed the Evil Within passed down from mother to daughter such as in the case of Jane topan or from father to son such as the case of Kenneth bian who was raised by his pedophile grandfather we now look at genetics uh rather than the supernatural to explain uh what we might call The Bad Seed uh we see some of the Monsters uh and they are truly monsters in terms of their misdeeds coming from uh nature rather than nurture that is they're born with a predisposition to do the most horrendous things to other human beings that is The Bad Seed and it depends for example on uh organic brain dysfunction it may depend on uh some genetic predis disposition that uh that these these guys actually inherit uh it may depend on uh natural phenomena that we still do not understand I think our understanding of why people kill has evolved I think we now have a much more nuanced sophisticated understanding of the diverse reasons why people stab and kill why people strangle and kill why people pull out a gun and kill why people poison and kill and although we have this deep-seated wish to come up with relatively simplistic explanations there's a Freudian explanation there's a bad seed explanation in truth there are many explanations and I think today we have a much greater appreciation of the subtleties of among these different explanations in fact there is no single common factor among serial killers no one factor that they all had for example many had bad even hideously brutal childhoods such as Charles Manson Henry Lee Lucas and Robert Hansen but some like Atlanta's Wayne Williams and Chicago's William hirn the lipstick killer didn't and many psychologists would say Jeffrey dmer had caring parents many serial killers like dmer tortured and mutilated animals while growing up these included HH Holmes who killed hundreds at the turn of the century Dennis Raider the infamous BTK killer BTK stood for bind torture kill a practice he perfected on animals when he was growing up but there are many kids who mutilate and kill small animals that don't become serial killers what experts agree on are four things first serial killers choose to kill it can be somebody who has deep psychological problems has some sort of psychosis hears voices that tells them to do it to somebody that's just evil and this is something that he's got to do and he's driven by that not by Voices but by his internal mechanism whatever that may be I don't think they're all crazy I think certainly some some number are crazy but some number are just bad bad bad people and this is how they lash out at women or Society or some element of society or whatever that might be that they're angry at you have to without a doubt go beyond all of that and and say that there is at the root level an element of individual choice that even people that have been horribly traumatized that have gone through awful things the their minds take them to a place where they feel that there's a decision to be made for you and me there may never be a decision I'm not going to kill anybody you're not going to kill anybody but for certain people they come to this Crux of their existence I want to am I going to do it and there it is that's the bottom line thing how many people do you think come up to that you know come up to that thing I mean I'm I'm a I'm I'm a man I understand that there are women that I believe are incredibly attractive that I would love to have sexual relations with but it's you know I don't know them I don't you know I'm not going to get to know them I may not be able to fall in love with them I may not all the conditions that for me are necessary before sexual contact before you know and all those things aren't in place so for me the simple fact that I find them attractive isn't enough to cause me to act any differently than I usually do but for some individuals that choice becomes boy I really want to get with her what am I going to do about it and she you know and and not am I going to go up and talk to her not am I going to buy her a drink at a bar but how am I going to get her a loone so I can do the things I want to do you know maybe all that psychological stuff that dark deep ugly awful things that people experience that they hold in their hearts maybe that is what gets them to the point where they feel there's a decision to be made am I going to act act on an Impulse or not right maybe that's the source of the impulse but for the overwhelming majority of these people who commit these acts there's a point where they say I want to and I'm going to the second aspect of Serial killing that experts agree on is that serial killers enjoy killing I think it's a mistake to think that you know they've got this internal uh compulsion over which they have no control just the opposite these guys love control and they are in control and that's that's exactly what gets them so high on killing they're kind of like drug addicts they need larger and larger doses of sadism in order to maintain that high and so when you see a really brutal sadistic murder you've got to think this is probably not the first one committed by these people and that's usually true they enjoy it it it it may be just that simple that they enjoy killing and all these psychological uh theories albe it you know I have respect for psychologists and some of those theories uh and granted I'm not sure why people enjoy to kill but these people sure certainly enjoying it third serial killers are psychopaths or sociopaths they feel no remorse for their victims this characteristic has been experienced many times by criminologists and psychologists in the process of interviewing serial killers such as Henry Lee Lucas who may have murdered more people than anybody else now he always claimed later on that he had empathy had concern for these victims I don't believe it the man was like man was not capable of empathy or sympathy these were objects to him he talks about them being objects then and now he has empathy they're still objects to him they were objects to him till he died of uh they called it natural death I suspected was thosis of the liver in a Texas prison when you interview the offender you get this kind of cool calm demeanor suggesting that this individual isn't upset by the killings and of course that's deeply disturbing to talk to someone who doesn't seem to be rattled by these remarkably heinous murders and in my experience in those cases often what you're dealing with is somebody who manifests Psychopathic qualities last serial killer experts agree serial killers are not insane well Insanity um is a term that apparently doesn't even exist outside of the legal Arena and it purely has to do with the ability of a person to either have responsibility or not have responsibility for their crimes um the definition being the classic mcon rule uh are you capable of appreciating that Society thinks that you're crimes are wrong and um therefore I think that's a pretty um I think that's a somewhat difficult standard to meet I think for a person to commit crimes that they don't believe that Society thinks are wrong they probably aren't going to commit a lot of crimes because they're probably going to be discovered relatively quickly I think in the case of Serial murderers I think the notion of uh Not Guilty by reason of insanity uh is um uh a standard that you're serious IAL killer probably isn't going to be able to meet because they are capable over a long period of time of evading detection um of Performing acts which will minimize the possibility of detection and therefore these people are by definition not insane now take away that legal word and go crazy these guys are crazy well I think that's you know I mean that's pretty true in the end most of the notorious serial killers are caught go through the courts and end up in jail as the nation entered the 21st century some serial killers were in jail serving life sentences or waited on death row this gallery of incarcerated monsters included the nightstalker Richard Ramirez Drifter Henry Lee Lucas Alaska's killer Hunter Robert Hansen the Gainesville Ripper Danny Rowling America's ultimate longdistance killer Ted kazinski aka the unibomber the hillside stranglers Angelo buono and Kenneth bian Charles in one half of the Northern California survivalists Doug Clark and Carol Bundy the Sunset Strip Killers Gerald Gago Randy craft the first of California's notorious Highway Killers Eileen waros Florida's lesbian prostitute who killed her John's the Atlanta child murderer Wayne Williams Charles Manson leader of the fish Manson family Son of Sam David burkowitz and Chicago's lipstick killer William hirn others had already been put to death John Wayne gasy the Killer Clown William bonnan the second of California's High Highway Killers Ted Bundy who died in Florida's electric chair old Sparky do I the vampire of Brooklyn Albert Fish and America's first serial killer Chicago's Dr HH Holmes who built the world's first house of horrors and still others had died in prison Jeffrey dmer the Milwaukee monster Otis tul Leonard Lake the other half of the northern California survivalist Killers Wisconsin's Ed gy Albert Dal Salvo the infamous Boston Strangler Boston's Angel of Death Jane topan the questions today are can sir Killers be rehabilitated and what is appropriate Justice and punishment for their monstrous acts experts whether in criminology law enforcement or psychology agree that serial killers are different than other homicidal killers in my experience someone who commits a murder statistically is often a good risk after he or she is released from prison prison now I'm not talking here about multiple murderers I'm not talking about serial killers I'm talking about someone who had a vicious argument with his spouse or wife and there was some domestic violence and things spun out of control and he had a lot to drink that night and he grabbed a knife and he stabbed her the statistical likelihood that that individual would be released from prison and commit another murder is quite low I am much more concerned about the person who is convicted of a multiple murder and there was a cold calculated quality to it somebody convicted of Serial killing with clearly was an effort to hurt other people it wasn't committed in the midst of a drunken stuper but there was a cold calculated quality to this often a psychopathic quality to this in my experience that sort of person poses a much greater risk and as somebody who often decides who gets out of prison and who stays in prison I am much more concerned about that kind of inmate when you deal with the nature of what these people made a decision to do um uh the simple fact that they aren't going to go out and kill any more people doesn't mean that they're not still capable of acts that would you know crimes simply because they've proven that they're willing to do what it is they want to do um regardless of whether Society thinks it's okay or not so uh um I think once we've got our hands on them um uh we need to keep our hands on them what do you do with them you put them away forever now I consider myself a fairly liberal criminologist in that I'm not not in favor of the penalty I also tend to be hypocritical because I might think differently if my family was involved if my family was hurt so I'd probably want to get those people the best I could most serial killers uh are never released into the community again uh they either get the death penalty or they serve a life sentence without parole eligibility very few exceptions to that rule and thank goodness for that because we don't know how to rehabilitate serial killers uh and anyway who would permit it they've already used up whatever tolerance we had for them now that they're incarcerated and they can't hurt people we're not going to even care one bit about making changes in their attitude uh except possibly as a management issue in prison uh the truth is that most of them are sociopaths and we don't know how to change sociopaths how do you give a guy a conscience when he's 42 years old I mean if he didn't have it in the third grade he probably never will uh these murdering bastards deserve anything that happens to them and I uh can't imagine any punishment being um too cruel and unusual uh given the kind of crimes that some of these individuals have committed some victims loved ones uh want revenge and they may do it by uh supporting the death penalty uh making sure that uh a killer is never paroled that certainly has happened to Charles Manson who was now 73 years old and he when he comes up for parole he doesn't even bother to attend his own parole hearing he knows the truth that Sharon Tate's sister will be there lots of other people will be there and he'll never get out well a serial killer once they're caught I don't know that there's any way to rehabilitate them um it I don't think that a serial killer can be fixed you can put him in psychotherapy you can do all kinds of treatments you can do anger management you can do aversion you can do all of the catchy things that that crop up almost daily but I don't think in in the long run any of that's going to fix them the understanding of why serial killers kill has come a long way from Mythic monsters to Bad Seeds to split personalities to mental disorders with names like sociopath psychopath and dissociative disorder but in many ways these psychological terms are only descriptive of the characteristics of really bad people in an odd way we have come full circle serial killers are just evil [Music] [Music] oh [Music] he

Channel: True Crime Central

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Keywords: Australian Crime, Crime Stories, Jeffrey Dahmer, Serial Killers, Ted Bundy, True Crime, True Crime Central, asmr, cases, cold cases, community, crim, crime, crime recaps, doco, documentary, full episodes, gangsters, murder, murder mystery, podcast, podcasts, recap, treu crime, true crime, true crime addict, true crime asmr, true crime podcast, true crime recaps, bundy, true crime documentary, serial killers documentaries, serial killers last meal, serial killers last words

Id: WKj14qGDhw8

Length: 46min 4sec (2764 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2024