Latest / History Dark / Why Serial Killers Kill _ Psychology behind The Night Stalker and Jeffrey Dahmer

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Why Serial Killers Kill _ Psychology behind The Night Stalker and Jeffrey Dahmer · History Dark

• 0:19
  Speaker 1: There is a darkness in humanity that has manifested itself
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: in a lust for blood throughout the ages. The Old
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Testament and ancient myths catalog murder and revenge as part
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: of the fabric of life in ancient times. Cain slew Abel.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Romulus slew Remus. Unleashing the beast within is a possibility
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: for all of us. The decision to kill from passion
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: or premeditation has often defined our world, past, present, and future.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Wars have terrorized entire populations for thousands of years. The
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: American West was home to ruthless killers... who were idolized
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: in fiction and folklore. Evil evolved to a hideous new
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  Speaker 1: form with the genocidal dictators of the 20th century, such
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  Speaker 1: as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung, who ordered the
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  Speaker 1: death of tens of millions. But in the middle of
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the 20th century, a new and chilling phenomenon emerged in
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  Speaker 1: post-war Western society. The serial killer. As if fashioned from
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  Speaker 1: our nightmares, they terrify and fascinate us. Lurking behind masks
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  Speaker 1: of bland and normality, they often evade capture for years, decades,
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  Speaker 1: or eternity. They are America's serial killers.
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  Speaker 2: Every year in this country, we have about 20 serial killers,
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  Speaker 2: 10 of whom are apprehended, 10 of whom are on
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  Speaker 2: the loose. And they are, in total, responsible for some
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  Speaker 2: 200 deaths. So 200 victims of serial killers on a
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  Speaker 2: yearly basis. And what makes this particularly important for us
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  Speaker 2: is that the average serial killer is responsible for 10 deaths.
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  Speaker 2: That's a huge body count.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: America's serial killers, portraits in evil. We'll strip the covers
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: from a world of profiling and forensic science as we expose...
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  Speaker 1: America's most brutal serial killers. So why do serial killers kill?
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  Speaker 1: kill innocent, unsuspecting victims? Why does a person feel the
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: need to not only kill once, but again and again?
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  Speaker 1: Is there something that we can point to and say,
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  Speaker 1: that's what made Jane Topan, aka the Angel of Death,
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  Speaker 1: calmly kill 31 patients who were placed in her care?
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  Speaker 1: Something we can say that made the Boston Strangler asphyxiate
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  Speaker 1: 13 women? Is there something we can say that made
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  Speaker 1: John Wayne Gacy snuff out the life of 33 innocent
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  Speaker 1: boys and young men? Is there something that could have
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  Speaker 1: been done to prevent these heinous acts? And once these
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  Speaker 1: perpetrators of death are caught, what should society do with them?
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  Speaker 1: To begin to understand why serial killers kill, it is
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  Speaker 1: important to place their killing in the broader context of
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  Speaker 1: why humans kill each other.
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  Speaker 3: Dr.
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  Speaker 1: Frederick Reamer has created a topology of death, a map
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  Speaker 1: of human killing.
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  Speaker 4: If one examines the range of serial killers out there,
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  Speaker 4: this very diverse group, they fall into patterns. And in
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  Speaker 4: my own research, I have come up with a typology.
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  Speaker 4: I call it the typology of criminal circumstances that, in
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  Speaker 4: my opinion, help to explain this diversity. One category includes
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  Speaker 4: what I call crimes or murders of greed, where you
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  Speaker 4: have somebody who is hired to snuff out somebody else's life,
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  Speaker 4: you know, organized crime and that sort of thing. There
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  Speaker 4: are those who are criminals. filled with rage, who may
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  Speaker 4: murder somebody, who dissed them, a gang member from a
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  Speaker 4: rival gang, and I've got to get rid of this guy,
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  Speaker 4: and it's a crime of rage. There are crimes of
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  Speaker 4: what I call retribution. These folks fired me from my job.
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  Speaker 4: I hate them. They harassed me. They made me so angry.
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  Speaker 4: They fired me, and I'm going to go back to
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  Speaker 4: my workplace, and I'm going to kill people. It's retribution.
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  Speaker 1: It's cold.
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  Speaker 4: It's calculated. There are crimes of what I call frolic,
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  Speaker 4: where you have thrill seekers who are out there getting
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  Speaker 4: their jollies, killing other people, snipers who, for the fun
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  Speaker 4: of it, want to hurt others. I've talked to people
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  Speaker 4: who've committed crimes like that. Another category in this typology
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  Speaker 4: is what I call crimes of addiction. I worked with
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  Speaker 4: a man who killed three people, including a four-year-old girl
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  Speaker 4: who slit her throat. It's a dreadful, dreadful crime. This
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  Speaker 4: is a man who had no violent history at all.
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  Speaker 4: He was, under the influence of drugs, a phenomenal number
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  Speaker 4: of drugs when this happened. And there's a direct link
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  Speaker 4: between that drug-induced psychosis and his murder of three people,
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  Speaker 4: including this little girl. There are crimes of mental illness,
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  Speaker 4: the sorts of people who have manifestations or symptoms of schizophrenia.
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  Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot of speculation that Ted Kaczynski
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  Speaker 4: suffered from schizophrenia and that there's a link between his
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  Speaker 4: mental illness and his activities as the Unabomber. There is
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  Speaker 4: evidence that people like John Wayne Gacy struggled from mental illness,
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  Speaker 4: and that there's a direct link between his illness and
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  Speaker 4: his murders, Jeffrey Dahmer and others. So in my experience,
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  Speaker 4: it's helpful to distinguish among these subtypes in this typology,
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  Speaker 4: crimes of rage, crimes of retribution, crimes of addiction, crimes
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  Speaker 4: of what I call frolic, crimes that are a function
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  Speaker 4: of mental illness and crimes of greed, people who make
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  Speaker 4: money killing other people.
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  Speaker 1: But many in the field of serial killers will say
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  Speaker 1: mental illness is a euphemism for evil. That people who
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  Speaker 1: kill for the pure joy of killing are a breed apart,
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  Speaker 1: a different kind of killer. And some of these killers
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  Speaker 1: are worse than others. embodying every form of sadistic perversion.
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  Speaker 1: The two worst in America's long history of serial killers
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  Speaker 1: were men born in the same year, 1960, but were
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  Speaker 1: born worlds apart. They are the Milwaukee Monster, Jeffrey Dahmer,
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  Speaker 1: and Richard Ramirez, a.k.a. the Night Stalker. a man who
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed playing Satan, inscribed the demonic pentagram symbol on his
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  Speaker 1: palm and made the devil's horns with his fingers while uttering,
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  Speaker 1: I have killed 20 people. I love all that blood.
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  Speaker 1: Ramirez grew up in the rundown barrio of El Paso, Texas.
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  Speaker 1: By all accounts, He was no better nor worse than
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  Speaker 1: the other kids who grew up facing the same problems
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  Speaker 1: all Hispanics faced at that time. But when he was 13,
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  Speaker 1: his life twisted away from his penitent Catholic upbringing toward
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  Speaker 1: a life of crime. Ramirez's fall into the abyss of
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  Speaker 1: evil began, strangely enough, with Bible reading classes when he
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  Speaker 1: was young. He became fixated on the devil and his
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  Speaker 1: power over earthly things. His fall toward serial killing accelerated
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  Speaker 1: at age 12 when a war hero cousin returned from Vietnam.
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  Speaker 1: The two smoked marijuana together and the cousin fascinated Ramirez
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  Speaker 1: with stories of torture and murder of Vietnamese peasant women. Then,
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  Speaker 1: at age 13, Ramirez Ramirez stood only two feet away
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  Speaker 1: when he saw his cousin shoot and kill his wife.
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  Speaker 1: From this point on, Ramirez lost any chance for a
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  Speaker 1: normal life. He dropped out of school, lived on a
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  Speaker 1: diet of fast food, candy, and drugs, began stealing. He
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  Speaker 1: openly worshipped Satan and called the devil his protector. He
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  Speaker 1: purposely cultivated a satanic look with his emaciated build and
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  Speaker 1: haunting appearance. Rotten teeth made his breath stink. The foul
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  Speaker 1: smell of the demon within, which he decided to unleash
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  Speaker 1: in a reign of killing and terror. His fall into
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  Speaker 1: complete evil and a life of killing began in California
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  Speaker 1: at age twenty-four. He lived in L.A., where petty theft
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  Speaker 1: and burglaries bankrolled his drug habit. Then, stealing turned to murder.
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  Speaker 5: One of the things that sets him apart a little
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  Speaker 5: bit is the fact that he was a home invader.
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  Speaker 5: That's a little bit different. But again, you have a
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  Speaker 5: guy who I think got caught up in the mythology
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  Speaker 5: of it and the attention of it. He loved it.
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  Speaker 5: He played into it. He specifically tailored his acts to
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  Speaker 5: attain additional attention.
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  Speaker 2: When Ramirez would attack middle class families in the middle
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  Speaker 2: of the night, he was seen as a tremendous threat
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  Speaker 2: to the residents of Los Angeles. He was seen as
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  Speaker 2: what he was, a guy who could attack anyone, which
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  Speaker 2: means that You could be next. And that terrified the
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  Speaker 2: people who lived there.
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  Speaker 1: Starting in March of 1985, he struck with the same
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  Speaker 1: demonic speed as the Gainesville Ripper, with the same perverted
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  Speaker 1: cruelty as the Boston Strangler, with the same horrific savagery
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  Speaker 1: of Charles Manson and Ted Bundy. He became the brutal
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  Speaker 1: Night Stalker. He was the worst of them all. He
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  Speaker 1: entered where people thought they were the safest, their homes.
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  Speaker 1: He shot some, he stabbed some, and he kicked some
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  Speaker 1: to death. He mutilated the bodies of many. In the end,
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  Speaker 1: 14 were dead. And who knows how many others he ensodomized.
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  Speaker 1: But one of these victims escaped.
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  Speaker 6: Then they had a witness. And of course the witness
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  Speaker 6: was what did it because they put the drawings that
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  Speaker 6: the witness gave the artist up on placards all around L.A.
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  Speaker 6: and somebody saw the resemblance when he was trying to
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  Speaker 6: break into a car and the whole mob grabbed him.
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  Speaker 6: All the people on the street grabbed Ramirez. That's the
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  Speaker 6: way he was caught.
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  Speaker 1: Caught by citizens in the barrio of East L.A., one
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  Speaker 1: of the toughest neighborhoods of the city, the Night Stalker
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  Speaker 1: was at last stopped. The day was August 31st, 1985,
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  Speaker 1: six months after the most demonic serial killer unleashed his
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  Speaker 1: reign of terror. But in an irony that is unique
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  Speaker 1: to modern America, Ramirez Imprisonment was not the last of
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  Speaker 1: the vicious Night Stalker. Like the devil he worshipped, his
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  Speaker 1: horrific crimes kept coming back to haunt the public consciousness.
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  Speaker 1: At his trial, he taunted the police and prosecutors with
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  Speaker 1: satanic gestures. Even sitting on death row in prison could
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  Speaker 1: not stop his cult celebrity status.
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  Speaker 6: I don't know where he picked up the satanic rituals
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  Speaker 6: that he came through. I think that was just part
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  Speaker 6: of his.
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  Speaker 6: Buzz for the women because he did get a lot
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  Speaker 6: of women interested in him and he got a lot
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  Speaker 6: of wedding proposals in fact the Donahue show did a
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  Speaker 6: special on women who are either married to serial killers
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  Speaker 6: or have proposed to serial killers which I've seen part
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  Speaker 6: of and it's it's amazing that these women actually want
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  Speaker 6: to marry these folks but for whatever reason serial killers
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  Speaker 6: are sexy I guess.
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  Speaker 1: So Like the mad religious cult leader David Koresh of Waco,
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  Speaker 1: Texas infamy, Richard Ramirez, the demonic night stalker, has commanded
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  Speaker 1: the allegiance of many seduced followers. A modern-day cult leader.
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  Speaker 1: A cult leader awaiting execution. But there is no cult
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  Speaker 1: following for this superstar of serial killers. The serial killer
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  Speaker 1: whose sheer horror has yet to be topped. Jeffrey Dahmer,
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  Speaker 1: a gay killer whose perversions top those of gay killers
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  Speaker 1: John Wayne Gacy, Wayne Williams, Randy Kraft, and William Bonin.
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  Speaker 1: Unlike Ramirez and his haunting good looks Jeffrey Dahmer was
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  Speaker 1: unremarkable looking ordinary even. And unlike Ramirez Dahmer did not
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  Speaker 1: have that captivating quality that mystique which inspired cult followers.
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  Speaker 1: But Dahmer's serial killing world was more perverted and more
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  Speaker 1: heinous than anything Ramirez could have dreamed of. Indeed Dahmer's
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  Speaker 1: ghoulish actions harkened back to the myths of werewolves and
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  Speaker 1: vampires and would give him the nickname the Milwaukee Monster.
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  Speaker 1: But he was no myth. He was a real monster
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  Speaker 1: living in the last quarter of the 20th century. Dahmer
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  Speaker 1: was born in West Allis, Wisconsin. His father had a
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  Speaker 1: good job as a research chemist, and the family was
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  Speaker 1: solidly middle class and well off. But Jeffrey was not well.
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  Speaker 1: At an early age, Dahmer caught wild animals, tortured them,
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  Speaker 1: and finally impaled them on stakes, where he stripped the
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  Speaker 1: flesh from their bodies using strong acids. Dahmer's first killing
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  Speaker 1: came the summer after graduating from high school. He picked
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  Speaker 1: up a hitchhiker, Stephen Hicks, and took him home. Here,
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  Speaker 1: he killed him with a barbell and then smashed his
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  Speaker 1: bones with a hammer. But it wasn't until 1987, while
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  Speaker 1: living in Milwaukee, that Dahmer became a serial killer. Began
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: to kill and hoard his kills in his apartment.
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  Speaker 5: Apparently he would meet men at a gay bar and
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  Speaker 5: and establish a conversation and a rapport, and sometimes over
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  Speaker 5: more than one encounter, and then eventually bring them back
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  Speaker 5: to his place.
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  Speaker 1: Living in Milwaukee, Dahmer killed 16 young men and boys.
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  Speaker 1: He was stopped only because one of his intended victims,
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  Speaker 1: Tracy Edwards, managed to escape. The terrified Edwards, handcuffs dangling
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  Speaker 1: from his wrists, ran out of the apartment building into
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  Speaker 1: the arms of two police officers. He brought them back
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  Speaker 1: to the apartment. What they found was worse than any
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  Speaker 1: horror movie.
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  Speaker 5: When they eventually broke into his apartment, the police came
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  Speaker 5: to his apartment, they found the carcasses of several humans
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  Speaker 5: in various stages of disassembly. He had body parts in
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  Speaker 5: his refrigerator. There was body parts in a pan that
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  Speaker 5: had been cooked. He was engaging in cannibalism, in blood drinking,
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  Speaker 5: but he ate human flesh. There was a human carcass
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  Speaker 5: in his bathtub that was dressed out. He was butchering
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  Speaker 5: these people, and there was a number of victims in
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  Speaker 5: his apartment at the time.
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  Speaker 1: Police, prosecutors, and the public were astonished and sickened by
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the depravity uncovered in in this chamber of horrors. Not
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  Speaker 1: since Dr. H. H. Holmes had built his castle of
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  Speaker 1: death in 19th century Chicago had anything so ghastly been discovered.
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  Speaker 1: But while Holmes had constructed an elaborate three-story Victorian mansion,
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  Speaker 1: complete with furnaces for getting rid of the bodies, Dahmer
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  Speaker 1: lived in a pathetic one-bedroom apartment. An apartment that, where
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: he surrounded himself with his kills. How could a person
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: have done this to other human beings?
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  Speaker 5: I think you could connect a guy like Dahmer to, say,
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  Speaker 5: a guy like Ed Gein, a guy whose fascination was
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  Speaker 5: with death itself and with the bodies of the victims,
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  Speaker 5: perhaps even more than the killing itself. It was the
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  Speaker 5: possession of the victims. the desire to consume them, to
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  Speaker 5: make them part of himself that satisfied his fantasy or
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: his pathology.
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  Speaker 2: Cannibalism has a couple of functions that a lot of
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  Speaker 2: people don't understand. First of all, it is the ultimate
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  Speaker 2: form of revenge. It's the ultimate form of aggression. You
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  Speaker 2: literally eat the fruits of victory. you devour the remains
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  Speaker 2: of your enemy. And so it is an extreme way
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  Speaker 2: of expressing hostility, maybe because of something that happened to
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  Speaker 2: you in your own life. But that's only part of
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  Speaker 2: the functions that cannibalism may perform. And many of these killers,
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  Speaker 2: like Albert Fish and Jeffrey Dahmer, felt profoundly rejected by
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: other human beings. And they wanted desperately to keep these
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  Speaker 2: people around. There's an affectionate side to cannibalism. You know,
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  Speaker 2: by devouring their remains, by consuming them, they become part
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  Speaker 2: of you forever. They don't leave. They're not rejecting you.
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  Speaker 1: The only thing prosecutors had to consider in Dahmer's case
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  Speaker 1: was his sanity.
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  Speaker 6: But of course, clinically ill and legally ill are two
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  Speaker 6: different definitions all entirely. So, like, the issue of Dahmer's
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: guilt was not a, that wasn't an issue. The issue was,
• 22:24
  Speaker 6: was he insane when he committed those acts? And the
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: jury found that he was not, that he was legally,
• 22:30
  Speaker 6: he had control of his faculties. He knew what he
• 22:33
  Speaker 6: was doing, he knew what was wrong. So they declared
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  Speaker 6: him not to be sane and sentenced him to prison
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  Speaker 6: for life. And, of course, that was a death sentence
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  Speaker 6: because he was killed a few months later.
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  Speaker 1: Dahmer's depravities were unique even for serial killers. But what
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: he did with the bodies of his victims was not unique.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, there are three ways that serial killers dispose
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  Speaker 1: of their kills. Body keepers. body dumpers and body deserters.
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  Speaker 1: Body dumpers are men and women who kill the victim
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  Speaker 1: in one place and dump the body in another. California's
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: highway killers, Randy Kraft and William Bonin, perfected the body dump.
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  Speaker 1: After picking up hitchhikers and killing them, they kicked the
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  Speaker 1: lifeless bodies out of the car as they drove along.
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  Speaker 1: And the hillside stranglers, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, baffled
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  Speaker 1: Los Angeles police by dumping their victims on random hillsides.
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  Speaker 1: Body deserters leave their victims where they killed them. Jane Topan,
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  Speaker 1: the angel of death, murdered her victims with syringes of
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  Speaker 1: morphine and atropine. Then walked out of the room, leaving
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  Speaker 1: the body in bed. The Boston Strangler raped and killed
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: women in their apartments and then left them with his
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  Speaker 1: trademark ligature of death around their necks for family or
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  Speaker 1: neighbors to find. Dahmer was a body keeper, one of
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: those killers who surrounds himself with his victims. The smell
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: of decaying flesh, the sight of his lifeless prey turned
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: him on Dahmer was like H.H. Holmes and John Wayne Gacy,
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  Speaker 1: who kept the entire cadaver to remind them of their deeds.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: What would bring men like Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez
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  Speaker 1: to do such unspeakable acts? Our understanding of why serial
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: killers kill has evolved. At first, it didn't seem possible
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: that any human being could do the kinds of things
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Ramirez and Dahmer did. In the 19th century, people sought
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: out a supernatural explanation, such as the werewolves and vampires
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: of ancient myths. There was Albert Fish, who, like Dahmer,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: cannibalized people, killed, cooked, and ate children during the decade
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: of the Roaring Twenties in New York City. His acts
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: were so brutal he could not be human like us.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: He must truly be a monster, the boogeyman, the Vampire
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: of Brooklyn. This explanation was followed by a different idea,
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  Speaker 1: the idea of the bad seed. The evil within passed
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  Speaker 1: down from mother to daughter, such as in the case
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: of Jane Topan.
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  Speaker 2: Or.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: from father to son, such as the case of Kenneth Bianchi,
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  Speaker 1: who was raised by his pedophile grandfather.
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  Speaker 2: We now look at genetics rather than the supernatural to
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: explain what we might call the bad seed. We see
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  Speaker 2: some of these monsters, and they are truly monsters in
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: terms of their misdeeds. coming from nature rather than nurture.
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  Speaker 2: That is, they're born with a predisposition to do the
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: most horrendous things to other human beings. That is the
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: bad seed. And it depends, for example, on organic brain dysfunction.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: It may depend on some genetic predisposition that these creatures
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  Speaker 2: these guys actually inherit. It may depend on natural phenomena
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  Speaker 2: that we still do not understand.
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  Speaker 4: I think our understanding of why people kill has evolved.
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: I think we now have a much more nuanced, sophisticated
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: understanding of the diverse reasons why people stab and kill,
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  Speaker 4: why people strangle and kill, why people pull out of guns.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: and kill, why people poison and kill. And although we
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: have this deep-seated wish to come up with relatively simplistic explanations,
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: there's a Freudian explanation, there's a bad seed explanation. In truth,
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: there are many explanations. And I think today we have
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: a much greater appreciation of the subtleties among these different explanations.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: In fact... there is no single common factor among serial killers.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: No one factor that they all had. For example, many
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: had bad, even hideously brutal childhoods, such as Charles Manson,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Henry Lee Lucas, and Robert Hanson. But some, like Atlantis
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Wayne Williams.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: And Chicago's William Hirons, the lipstick killer, didn't. And many
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: psychologists would say Jeffrey Dahmer had caring parents. Many serial
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: killers like Dahmer tortured and mutilated animals while growing up.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: These included H.H. Holmes, who killed hundreds at the turn
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: of the century, Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK killer. BTK
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: stood for Bind, Torture, Kill, a practice he perfected on
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: animals when he was growing up. But there are many
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: kids who mutilate and kill small animals that don't become
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: serial killers. What experts agree on are four things. First,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: serial killers choose to kill.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: It can be somebody who has deep psychological problems, has
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: some sort of psychosis, hears voices that tells him to
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: do it, to somebody that's just evil and this is
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: something that he's got to do, and he's driven by that.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: not by voices but by his internal mechanism whatever that
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: may be i don't think they're all crazy i think
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: certainly some some number are crazy but some number are
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: just bad bad bad people and this is how they
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: lash out at women or society or some element of
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: society or whatever that might be that they're angry at.
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: You have to, without a doubt, go beyond all of
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: that and say that there is, at the root level,
• 30:08
  Speaker 5: an element of individual choice. That even people that have
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: been horribly traumatized, that have gone through awful things, their
• 30:19
  Speaker 5: minds take them to a place where they feel that
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: there's a decision to be made for you and me
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: there may never be a decision I'm not gonna kill
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: anybody you're not gonna kill anybody but for certain people
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: they come to this crux of their existence I want
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: to am I going to do it and there it
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: is that's the bottom line thing how many people do
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: you think come up to that you know come up
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: to that thing I mean I'm a man. I understand
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: that there are women that I believe are incredibly attractive
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: that I would love to have sexual relations with, but
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: I don't know them. I'm not going to get to
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: know them. I may not be able to fall in
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: love with them. All the conditions that for me are
• 31:13
  Speaker 5: necessary for sexual contact and all of those things aren't
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: in place. So for me, the simple fact that I
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: find them attractive isn't enough to cause me to act
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: any differently than I usually do. But for some individuals,
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: that choice becomes, boy, I really want to get with her.
• 31:32
  Speaker 5: What am I going to do about it? And not,
• 31:36
  Speaker 5: am I going to go up and talk to her? Not,
• 31:38
  Speaker 5: am I going to buy her a drink at a bar?
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: But how am I going to get her alone so
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: I can do the things I want to do? Maybe
• 31:45
  Speaker 5: all that psychological stuff, that darkness, ugly, awful things that
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: people experience that they hold in their hearts, maybe that
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: is what gets them to the point where they feel
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: there's a decision to be made. Am I going to
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: act on an impulse or not? Maybe that's the source
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: of the impulse. But for the overwhelming majority of these
• 32:06
  Speaker 5: people who commit these acts, there's a point where they say,
• 32:09
  Speaker 5: I want to, and I'm going to.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: The second aspect of serial killing that experts agree on
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: is that serial killers enjoy killing.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: I think it's a mistake to think that they've got
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: this internal compulsion over which they have no control. Just
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: the opposite. These guys love control, and they are in control.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly what gets them so high on killing.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: They're kind of like drug addicts. They need larger and
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: larger doses of sadism in order to maintain that high.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: And so when you see a really brutal, sadistic murder,
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: you've gotta think, this is probably not the first one
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: committed by these people. And that's usually true.
• 33:02
  Speaker 6: They enjoy it. It may be just that simple that
• 33:08
  Speaker 6: they enjoy killing. And all these psychological theories albeit I
• 33:17
  Speaker 6: have respect for psychologists in some of those theories. And granted,
• 33:23
  Speaker 6: I'm not sure why people enjoy to kill, but these
• 33:26
  Speaker 6: people are certainly enjoying it.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Third, serial killers are psychopaths or sociopaths. They feel no
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: remorse for their victims. This characteristic has been experienced many
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: times by criminologists and psychologists in the process of interviewing
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: serial killers, such as Henry Lee Lucas, who may have
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: murdered more people than anybody else.
• 33:54
  Speaker 6: Now, he always claimed later on that he had empathy,
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: he had concern for these victims. I don't believe it.
• 34:01
  Speaker 6: The man was not capable of empathy or sympathy. These
• 34:06
  Speaker 6: were objects to him. He talks about them being objects then,
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: and now he has empathy. They're still objects to him.
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: They were objects to him until he died of, they
• 34:21
  Speaker 6: called it natural death, I suspect it was cirrhosis of
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: the liver, in a Texas prison.
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: And when you interview the offender, you get this kind
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: of cool, calm demeanor, suggesting that this individual isn't upset
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: by the killings. And, of course, that's deeply disturbing to
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: talk to someone who doesn't seem to be rattled by
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: these remarkably heinous murders. And in my experience, in those cases,
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: often what you're dealing with is somebody who manifests psychopathic qualities.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Last, serial killer experts agree serial killers are not insane.
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: Well, insanity... is a term that apparently doesn't even exist
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: outside of the legal arena. And it purely has to
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: do with the ability of a person to either have
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: responsibility or not have responsibility for their crimes. The definition
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: being the classic McNaughton rule. Are you capable of appreciating
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: that society thinks that your crimes are wrong? And therefore,
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: I think that's a pretty... I think that's a somewhat
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: difficult standard to meet. I think for a person to
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: commit crimes that they don't believe that society thinks are wrong,
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: they probably aren't going to commit a lot of crimes
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: because they're probably going to be discovered relatively quickly. I
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: think in the case of serial murderers, I think the
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: notion of not guilty by reason of insanity is a
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: standard that your serial killer probably isn't going to be
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: able to meet because they are capable over a long
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: period of time of evading detection of crimes performing acts
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: which will minimize the possibility of detection, and therefore these
• 36:09
  Speaker 5: people are by definition not insane. Now, take away that
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: legal word and go, crazy, these guys are crazy. Well,
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: I think that's, you know, I mean, that's pretty true.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: In the end, most of the notorious serial killers are caught,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: go through the courts, and end up in jail. As
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: the nation entered the 21st century, some serial killers were
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: in jail serving life sentences or waited on death row.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: This gallery of incarcerated monsters included the night stalker Richard Ramirez,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: drifter Henry Lee Lucas, Alaska's killer Hunter Robert Henson, The
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Gainesville Ripper, Danny Rowling. America's ultimate long-distance killer, Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: The Unabomber. The Hillside Stranglers, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Charles Ng, one-half of the Northern California Survivalists. Doug Clark
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: and Carol Bundy. the Sunset Strip Killers, Gerald Gallego, Randy Kraft,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: the first of California's notorious highway killers, Eileen Wuornos, Florida's
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: lesbian prostitute who killed her Johns, the Atlanta child murderer,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Wayne Williams, Charles Manson, leader of the fiendish Manson family,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: son of Sam, David Berkowitz, and Chicago's lipstick killer, William Hirons.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Others had already been put to death. John Wayne Gacy,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: the killer clown. William Bonin, the second of California's highway killers.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Ted Bundy, who died in Florida's electric chair, Old Sparky.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: the vampire of Brooklyn, Albert Fish, and America's first serial killer,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Chicago's Dr.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: H.H.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Holmes, who built the world's first house of horrors. And
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: still others had died in prison. Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Monster,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Otis Toole, Leonard Lake, the other half of the Northern
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: California survivalist killers, Wisconsin's Ed Gein, Albert DeSalvo, the infamous
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Boston Strangler, Boston's Angel of Death, Jane Topan. The questions
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: today are, can serial killers be rehabilitated? And, what is
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: appropriate justice and punishment for their monstrous acts? Experts, whether
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: in criminology, law enforcement, or psychology, agree that serial killers
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: are different than other homicidal killers.
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: In my experience, someone who commits a murder statistically, is
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: often a good risk after he or she is released
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: from prison. Now, I'm not talking here about multiple murderers.
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: I'm not talking about serial killers. I'm talking about someone
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: who had a vicious argument with his spouse or wife,
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: and there was some domestic violence, and things spun out
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: of control. And he had a lot to drink that night,
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: and he grabbed a knife and he stabbed her. The
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: statistical likelihood that that individual would be released from prison
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: and commit another murder is quite low. I am much
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: more concerned about the person who is convicted of a
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: multiple murder and there was a cold calculated quality to it.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: Somebody convicted of serial killing where there clearly was an
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: effort to hurt other people. It wasn't committed in in
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: the midst of a drunken stupor, but there was a cold,
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: calculated quality to this, often a psychopathic quality to this.
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: In my experience, that sort of person poses a much
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: greater risk. And as somebody who often decides who gets
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: out of prison and who stays in prison, I am
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: much more concerned about that kind of inmate.
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: When you deal with the nature of what these people
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: made a decision to do, The simple fact that they
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: aren't going to go out and kill any more people
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: doesn't mean that they're not still capable of acts that would,
• 41:27
  Speaker 5: you know, crimes, simply because they've proven that they're willing
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: to do what it is they want to do, regardless
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: of whether society thinks it's okay or not. So I
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: think once we've got our hands on them, we need
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: to keep our hands on them.
• 41:44
  Speaker 6: What do you do with them? You put them away forever. Now,
• 41:50
  Speaker 6: I consider myself a fairly liberal criminologist in that I'm
• 41:54
  Speaker 6: not in favor of the death penalty. I also tend
• 41:59
  Speaker 6: to be hypocritical because I might think differently if my
• 42:02
  Speaker 6: family was involved, if my family was hurt. So I'd
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: probably want to get those people the best I could.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Most serial killers are never released into the community again.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: They either get the death penalty or they serve a
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: life sentence without parole eligibility. Very few exceptions to that rule.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: And thank goodness for that. Because we don't know how
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: to rehabilitate serial killers. And anyway, who would permit it?
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: They've already used up whatever tolerance we had for them.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: Now that they're incarcerated and they can't hurt people, we're
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: not going to even care one bit about making changes
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: in their attitude, except possibly as a management issue in prison.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: The truth is that most of them are sociopaths, and
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: we don't know how to change sociopaths. How do you
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: give a guy a conscience when he's 42 years old?
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, if he didn't have it in the third grade,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: he probably never will.
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: These murdering bastards deserve anything that happens to them, and
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: I can't imagine any punishment being too cruel and unusual
• 43:28
  Speaker 5: given the kind of crimes that some of these individuals
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: have committed.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Some victims' loved ones want revenge, and they may do
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: it by supporting the death penalty making sure that a
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: killer is never paroled. That certainly has happened to Charles Manson,
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: who is now 73 years old, and when he comes
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: up for parole, he doesn't even bother to attend his
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: own parole hearing. He knows the truth, that Sharon Tate's
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: sister will be there, lots of other people will be there,
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: and he'll never get out.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: Well, a serial killer, once they're caught, I don't know
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: that there's any way to rehabilitate them I don't think
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: that a serial killer can be fixed. You can put
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: them in psychotherapy. You can do all kinds of treatments.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: You can do anger management.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: You can do aversion.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: You can do all of the catchy things that crop
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: up almost daily. But I don't think in the long
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: run any of that's going to fix them.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: The understanding of why serial killers kill has come a
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: long way. From mythic monsters, to bad seeds, to split personalities,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: to mental disorders with names like sociopath, psychopath, and dissociative disorder.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: But in many ways, these psychological terms are only descriptive
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: of the characteristics of really bad people. In an odd way,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: we have come full circle. Serial killers are just evil.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: Thank you.