feeling sorry for serial killers
The Jeffrey Dahmer documentary has had me returning to a thought I’ve long had and often tried to repress; should we have more compassion for serial killers?
By Enya McIntyre
The Jeffrey Dahmer documentary has had me returning to a thought I’ve long had and often tried to repress; should we have more compassion for serial killers?
After all, it is a mental illness, isn’t it? We feel sympathy for those with depression, anxiety and alcoholism and seek help for them but when it comes to psychopathy, sociopathy and narcissism we lock the door and throw away the key.
Before I continue I want to make it crystal clear that I do not for a moment condone or excuse the heinous crimes perpetuated by serial killers. I just wish to understand them better. If humans, for the most part, are born of the same anatomy then how does one go on to become a monster while the others become potential victims.
And if they are psychopaths, moulded by their traumatic childhoods then are they fully responsible for their actions? Are they truly sane?
If you’ve ever been or are a smoker trying to quit then you will know the incessant itch to inhale a cigarette versus the voice of reason reminding you of the health implications and the reasons you want to quit. You know it’s bad but you can’t stop yourself. I’ve often wondered is this compulsive urge similar to what serial killers feel?
These are the questions that rack my brain when I think about these people we deem monsters and on further investigation it seems this sympathy phenomenon is not that unusual, in fact it’s actually more common than not.
The very act of feeling sympathy for serial killers is ironic in ways because it demonstrates our ability to feel empathy and see from other’s perspectives - a quality that’s absence is the very definition of psychopathy.
According to Jeff Lindsay, “serial killers are psychopaths”.
In an opinion piece to the New York Times, the Dexter author revealed that, “current research in brain mapping indicates that psychopaths are born, not made. There is an actual, physical, difference in their brains; you can’t become a serial killer by reading about one, any more than you can get magical powers from reading “Harry Potter.”
“You can watch “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” 20 times and it will not inspire you to butcher the neighbors. We can no more move from watcher to killer than we can breathe water” says Lindsay supporting the argument of nature over nurture.
On the nurture side of the argument, it is widely accepted that hostile upbringings and traumatic childhood experiences such physical or emotional abuse or a traumatic head injury, can lead to the development of psychopathy and eventually serial killers.
However, this is not to say broken homes automatically make killers.
As the Canadian author and historian, Peter Vronsky puts it in an article with The Guardian, “if 100 kids grow up in an abusive foster home, and one turns out to be a serial killer – what about the other 99? They grew up to be, well, maybe not all well-adjusted citizens, but certainly not serial killers”.
Even more so, Vronsky author of ‘Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present’ and other serial killer books, notes that not all serial killers experienced early trauma. Some grew up in perfectly favourable circumstances and for no apparent reason, became serial killers. The prime example of this is Ted Bundy who experienced no childhood trauma.
Yet, according to the Hare psychiatric test, not all serial killers display evidence of psychopathy. In other words, they are capable of empathising with others, just like we are, yet they still commit these atrocities.
More to the point, not all serial killers are insane, in fact most are legally sane.
“The legal definition of insanity is an inability to distinguish right from wrong and an inability to understand the consequences of an action. But serial killers are very aware of what they’re doing. That’s why they disguise themselves, hide evidence, leave the scene of the crime”, says Vronsky.
If serial killers are (a) not all psychopaths ie they are capable of feeling emotions and (b) generally legally sane meaning they knew right from wrong at the time they committed the murders, then in lay man terms, it seems they willingly choose this path in life.
Still, I have to admit this deduction is far from satisfying to me. Take psychopathy and sanity out of the equation and you’re still left with the issue of compulsions. Why are they compelled to kill in the first place? And are they really to blame for their urges?
Earlier I pondered the parallels between smoking addictions and serial killers, but now I wonder is a fairer comparison with the urge to throw your phone over a bridge or a high ledge. We’ve all had this irrational thought but we recognise it as exactly that; irrational and so we don’t do it.
Sane serial killers must too recognise the magnitude of the wrong they are about to commit but just choose to push it aside and do it anyway.
The more I looked into this topic, the more unclear the conclusion became. For every two similarities, there’s one anomaly. If a concrete explanation for the cause of a serial killer does not exist than how are we to stop them becoming themselves?
In psychologist Frederic Reamers, book ‘Heinous Crime: Cases, Causes and Consequences’, he searches for answers before coming to the conclusion that rehabilitation methods for serial killers are largely futile and the best means of dealing with these perpetrators is by focusing on prevention; basically the owness is on us to stop them before they act.
Vronksy’s article with The Guardian finishes on a chilling note;
“We are only now realizing how little we know [about serial killers]. That’s partly because the more serial killer case studies we aggregate, the less clear the patterns become. We are starting to see all these anomalies”.
“As we as a society become more scientific and less philosophical it becomes more difficult for us to explain this kind of abnormal behavior. All that is left is the very human definition: evil. But what is that? It is not a term that can be tested or duplicated in the scientific sphere. It was easier when we just thought of them as monsters”.