SERIAL KILLER MIND

  Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(10)   Helen Gavin     9.    Female serial killers (10) Are we getting closer to an explanation for our female serial killer? We can agree that the most likely motive for a female serial killer is financial gain and security. However, although there are typologies that include gain, we must also include the insane or rage filled, like Wuornos, the rare hedonistic pleasure seeker like Bathory, and the ‘disciple’ who kills to please a charismatic leader or partner, like Hindley. What is clear is that the female serial killer is a rare and unusual creature, and that our perception of her is bound up with notions of femininity, subservient womanhood and evil.

  Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(9) Helen Gavin 8.    Angels of Death (9) Nurses feature prominently in serial killing, the caregiver who intentionally harms or kills the people in her care. This is murder from a position of power; the ‘angel’ often claims that victims were suffering and ending life is an act of mercy. Neutralization theory suggests the killers understand what they are doing is wrong but that the helping behaviour neutralises the wrong doing. [i] The alternative explanation is an issue of mental health. In 1991, Beverley Allit killed four children and attempted to kill at least a further three in the Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, where she was a nurse. She administered large doses of insulin or injected air into her victims. She received several life sentences and is detained in a secure psychiatric hospital. She is in hospital, not prison, as she has been identified as being mentally ill with a facti

  Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(8)   Helen Gavin 7.    Couples who kill (8) On the 23rd May, 1934, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death by police in Louisiana, the culmination of one of the most spectacular manhunts of the time. They were understood to have committed 13 murders, usually during the commission of armed robberies. Barrow was also suspected of killing two police officers and kidnapping a couple in Louisiana. [i] When Parker met Barrow she was already married to an imprisoned killer; it is clear that she was attracted to Barrow for being a dangerous person. The paraphilia of being sexually aroused by someone who has committed an outrageous or horrific crime is called Hybristophilia but it has also been dubbed the Bonnie and Clyde syndrome. Some women do attach themselves to men and fall into a downward spiral of behaviour that the world sees as depravity. Notable examples include Myra Hindley, the female p

  Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(7) Helen Gavin 6.    Comfort serial killers (7) Comfort serial murderers kill for profit in order to fund a comfortable lifestyle, but also can be said to be providing comfort as a means to ensnare victims. A review of the writings on female serial killers by Frei et al showed that, amongst the very sparse literature, it is difficult to categorise by patterns and/or motives, but that the most common motive identified is material gain. [i] Perhaps the most vilified profit killings are those done by women who were trusted with the lives, literally, of the vulnerable. During the 1980’s, Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house for elderly or mentally handicapped residents in Sacramento, California. She was, however, pocketing a large portion of their monthly benefits payments. This deception was netting her somewhere in the region of $6000 a month. Some of the tenants started to disappear. In 1988, police call

  Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(6) Helen Gavin     5. Biology (6) There must then be some explanation for why we cannot find women providing the sexual reasons for serial killing. Are men and women just so biologically different that they cannot kill in the same way and for the same reasons? Is evolutionary dimorphic presentation of aggression a possible explanation? If violence is a complex behavioural adaptation, can it explain serial murder? There is no evolutionary advantage to be gained from killing the types of victim seen here, the death of a prostitute provides no territorial or genetic gain. It also does not explain any female serial murderer, as, according to evolutionary theories, it is male humans who have evolved the physiological and psychological means to effect personal violence of this nature. It is also difficult to draw any comparative biological evaluation of murderous violence in a modern society when distinct

  Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(5)   Helen Gavin 4. Deviant sexuality (5)     According to Stone, when we think of serial killers, the image we have is of serial sexual homicide, compulsive killing for sexual release of one nature or another. [i] Paraphilia features strongly in the serial killer population. Prentky et al   identified high incidence of paraphilia and paraphiliac fantasy in serial killers, and Dietz et al suggested that a large pr oportion of male serial killers exhibit more than one paraphilia, some of them clearly not harmless, involving death, dying and murder. [ii] Necrophilia and erotophonophilia feature largely in the life histories of some serial killers, but are they as equally attractive to the female serial sexual murderer?     Necrophilia in females is extremely rare, notwithstanding any practical difficulties (which are reportedly possible to surmount). Moreover, there is no recorded instance of a fema

  Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(4)   Helen Gavin   3. Society (4)     As well as developmental theories, there are compelling social explanations for serial murder. The more sociological in nature suggest that high crime rates are a result of societal problems and that serial murder is no exception. This may not hold completely true for some of the more lurid of the serial killers’ behaviour, but a society that allows sex workers and runaways to remain unprotected may need to take some blame. In addition, inadequate socialisation may be a direct result of a societal breakdown at a micro level. Serial killers rarely come from a background of understanding and caring, but usually one of abuse and neglect, teaching the child that his (or her) world is one of pain and rejection. But so many abused children fail to become serial killers; if abuse and poor socialisation were an adequate explanation the world should be rampant with hate, a

  Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(3)   Helen Gavin     2. Childhood (3)     It is clear that abuse figures largely in the childhoods of male serial killers, and female serial killers may follow this pattern. Wuornos claimed that each of her seven male victims had raped, or attempted to rape her. As a plea of self-defence, this statement did not work, but examination of her upbringing goes some way to explaining her actions, and the view she may have had of men. Wuornos’ teenage mother abandoned her children when Aileen was nine months old. Aileen and her brother were adopted by her grandparents, and there has been speculation that her grandfather sexually abused her. Clearly, the household was not ideal for young children, with alcohol abuse and violence a daily occurrence. [i] Aileen had few friends due to the chaotic nature of the home, and her own unpredictable temper. She learnt very quickly that having sex with neighbourhood b

  Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(2) Helen Gavin   1. Introduction (2) It is tempting to suppose that the serial killer is a modern phenomenon, because the first time this term was used was in the 1930’s. However, simply because they were not named as such does not mean that serial killers have not been with us for some time, they may have just not been subject to the same scientific attention as now. The descriptions of murder and mayhem found in folk tales still appear to be stories about serial killers, albeit supernatural in nature. [i] Many include women as the central evil character, the murderer. For example, Hansel and Gretel encounter a witch who wishes to eat them; it is unlikely they are her first potential victims. However, real life serial killers are much more likely to be male, choosing predominantly female victims. When we encounter a female serial killer, the surprise is not just her rarity, but also her ordinary na

  Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(1) Helen Gavin   Abstract (1) It is 16th century Hungary, and young peasant girls are going missing. They have been offered well paid work in the Castle Czejte, Transylvania and then never seen again. The king sends an army to the castle where they report finding mayhem and bloodshed. There are witnesses aplenty to testify against the Countess Elizabeta Bathory; the villagers certainly thought she was evil. Describing atrocities over a twenty-five year period, it sounds like the peasants were happy to get their own back on a woman who was probably medically and legally insane, and just possibly the nobles were happy to accept this testimony as fact, because she was the heir to the throne. Leap forward a few hundred years, and modern cinema sees us depicting Elizabeta and her modern day sisters-in-blood as truly evil or as monsters. These women are not monsters, but people who have done monstrous things

  Is the role of deviant sexual fantasy related to the types of sexual offence committed by Ted Bundy? Draw upon underlying theory in your answer. (9) QUOTATION BY UNKNOWN OWNER   9 Conclusion The present case study illustrated the role of high risk sexual fantasies in Ted Bundy’s case.   Although his fantasies played an important role in terms of selecting a victim, planning an offence and, nevertheless, coping mechanism, other factors, such as psychopathy, pornography, sexual sadism, compulsion to kill and victims’ availability are as well important in order to explain Bundy’s case. However, I acknowledge that a second data analysis of this kind is eventually biased as it does not allow for a clear understanding of Bundy’s life due to the large number of controversial biographies that have been published after his execution. Moreover, the present paper is limited as it does not specify to exact degree to which Bundy’s fantasies and the other factors contributed to his crimes

  Is the role of deviant sexual fantasy related to the types of sexual offence committed by Ted Bundy? Draw upon underlying theory in your answer. (8) QUOTATION BY UNKNOWN OWNER   8 However, sexual sadism is not only interrelated with psychopathy, but it is also part of Krafft-Ebing (1886) model of serial homicide. The model highlights the role of intense sexual fantasies and sexual sadism together with the compulsion to kill (Schesinger, 2000). The process that leads offenders to act out their fantasies can be explained in terms of the escalation of those fantasies not only in intensity, but also infrequency, which drives these individuals to violent sexual criminal episodes (Howitt, 2004). Although deviant sexual fantasies are found to motivate serial homicide in Burgess (1989) theoretical model (Burgess et al, 1986), Krafft-Ebing (1886) suggested that those individuals who act out their sadistic fantasies do so because of a compulsion to act out. The need to commit the act i

  Is the role of deviant sexual fantasy related to the types of sexual offence committed by Ted Bundy? Draw upon underlying theory in your answer. (7) QUOTATION BY UNKNOWN OWNER   7 Williams et al (2009) proposed that there are different factors that predict sexual behavior together with high risk fantasies, namely psychopathy and pornography. The research is the first to report a link between psychopathy and sexual fantasies. It was found that deviant sexual fantasies may be appealing and welcomed by those scoring high in psychopathy (Williams et al, 2009). Psychopathy is a clinical construction defined by a constellation of interpersonal, affective, and lifestyle characteristics on both interpersonal and affective levels. On an interpersonal level, psychopaths are grandiose, arrogant, callous, dominant, superficial, and manipulative. On an affective level, they are short-tempered, unable to form strong emotional bonds with others, and lacking in guilt and anxiety. These interp