Why We Love Serial Killers (16 page)

Power/Control Killers

The final type of serial killer—also a process-focused killer—identified by Holmes, Holmes, and De Burger and explained by Peter Vronsky is the power/control killer. They are perhaps the most common of all serial killers and classic examples of this type include Gary Ridgway, John Wayne Gacy, and Dennis Rader. The primary motivation of these serial killers is to control and dominate their victims. They enjoy torturing their prey and find it sexually arousing, but the act of murder is normally the most satisfying and final expression of their power and control over their victims. They kill their victims slowly in order to prolong their own sadistic pleasure. Such behavior is empowering because the killer gets to decide when, how, and under what circumstances his victims will die. Dennis Rader is a leading example of this type of serial killer in whose twisted mind, prolonged torture and killing are the only means to quench his otherwise insatiable thirst for power and control.

Power/control killers are frequently stone-cold psychopaths and they fall into the FBI’s organized category of predators because they are meticulous planners, unflappable, and patient. Such serial killers are frequently charming, charismatic, and intelligent. Many power/control killers sexually assault their victims but, unlike hedonist lust killers, for them rape is not motivated by lust. Instead, rape is another means of dominating and controlling their victims. Also, power/control killers do not necessarily lose interest in their victims after they are dead, as thrill killers do. Sometimes, a power/control killer will return to have sex with the decomposing corpse of a victim long after the murder in order to perpetuate his domination and control of the deceased. Because necrophilia totally eliminates the possibility of unwanted rejection, the power/control killer can return to violate the victim whenever he pleases. This affords a psychopathic serial killer with a tremendous sense of empowerment while avoiding the disturbing prospect of rejection and disappointment by a living person. Voracious postmortem sexual
behavior was manifested by Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway, for example, who were both serial killers of the power/control variety.

The Essential Role of Fantasy

The Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI has concluded that serial killers program themselves in childhood to become murderers through a progressively intensifying loop of fantasy.
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The definition of fantasy in this context is an elaborate mental fixation that is anchored in the daydreaming process.
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Fantasy can be experienced through mental images and/or feelings. Fantasy serves to relieve anxiety or fear and most people have them to one extent or another. Although some fantasy in childhood is normal, it can become a compulsive form of escapism in children who are abused, neglected, or otherwise traumatized.
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The child who lacks bonding and a sense of contact with others may internalize his fantasy and cloud the boundary between fantasy and reality.

Many serial killers have confessed to both trauma and morbid preoccupation with fantasy during childhood. For example, Ed Kemper, the “Co-ed Killer,” who was severely abused as a child by his mother has said, “I knew long before I started killing that I was going to be killing, that it was going to end up like that. The fantasies were too strong. They were going on for too long and were too elaborate.” In another example, the notorious “Acid Bath Murderer” John George Haigh said, “As I grew up I realized, though imperfectly, that I was different from other people and that the way of life in my home was different from others. . . . This stimulated me to introspection and strange mental questionings.”

When fantasies are combined with masturbation, a sexual component is added to the cognitive or mental process.
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In-depth interviews with incarcerated serial killers have revealed that the most common childhood traits among them, which extended into their adolescence and adulthood, are daydreaming and compulsive masturbation. Jeffrey Dahmer and David Berkowitz both have stated that their strange and bizarre fantasies thrived in youthful isolation, masturbation, and powerful feelings of anger and rage. Isolation and feelings of anger and resentment often become part of a cyclical process in the lives of fledgling serial killers. Fantasies of violence prompt their isolation from society which, in turn, creates a greater reliance on fantasy for pleasure and relief from anxiety. In a disturbing example of this, John Joseph Joubert, a serial killer who murdered young boys, recalled that as an
adolescent he compulsively masturbated to fantasies of strangling and stabbing boys dressed only in their underwear.
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Serial killers often fantasize about murder and sexual violence for years before claiming their first victim. Eventually, fledgling serial killers reach a point where they need to actually live out their darkest fantasies. They often obsessively ponder every minute aspect of their first murder for years leading up to the actual event. They may drift into an almost trance-like state, enraptured in fantasy, in the days immediately preceding it. The intended victim is reduced to being a hapless pawn in the serial killer’s ghoulish fantasy of sex and murder. After committing their first murder, novice serial killers generally become obsessed with the need to kill.
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Having found the key to acting out their secret desires, they continue to murder in order to experience their fantasy again and again. As explained by Peter Vronsky, some serial killers level out and begin to practice a ritualistic routine in their murders from which they try never to waiver.
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Other serial killers become bored with their original fantasy once they have actualized it, so they escalate to more elaborate or violent fantasies in an obsessive, addictive pursuit of a more orgasmic high.
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The overwhelming significance of fantasy to serial killers was expressed by Jeffrey Dahmer when he said, “I made my fantasy life more powerful than my real one.” His English counterpart in serial murder and necrophilia, Dennis Nilsen, similarly said, “I made another world, and real men would enter it and they would never really get hurt at all in the vivid, unreal laws of the dream. I caused dreams which caused death. This is my crime.” In many ways, the key to unlocking the pathological mind of a serial killer lies in the nature or content of his fantasy and how he actualizes it.

Driven by obsessive fantasy, serial killers are compelled to murder repeatedly in order to satisfy their desires. However, the brutal and messy reality of murder never completely fulfills the promise of a serial killer’s fantasy. In fact, the aftermath of murder usually results in an emotional letdown for the killer, yet the fantasy does not go away because it is too deeply ingrained in the killer’s mind and psyche.
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Ted Bundy observed, “The fantasy that accompanies and generates the anticipation that precedes the crime is always more stimulating than the immediate aftermath of the crime itself.” When a serial killer is disappointed by a failure to experience his ultimate fantasy in real life exactly the way he envisioned it in his mind, he will continue to kill in an attempt to
achieve the ideal fantasy. Such is the obsessive, compulsive, and cyclical nature of serial murder.

Keeping Trophies of Murder

Many serial killers keep souvenirs or trophies from their crimes which serve to sustain and refuel their violent and sexual fantasies. When Ted Bundy was asked why he took Polaroid photos of his victims, he said, “When you work hard to do something right, you don’t want to forget it.” The former FBI profiler John Douglas has said that keeping mementos from a victim such as a lock of hair, jewelry, ID card, or a newspaper clipping of the crime helps to prolong and even nourish the serial killer’s secret fantasy. In between their murders and while targeting future victims, serial killers often take out their trophies to help them relive past murders through fantasy. Trophies help a prolific killer such as Bundy to recall each one of his many victims. Similarly, Dennis Rader kept a locked treasure chest of trophies in the basement of his home which helped him to prolong and heighten his autoerotic fantasy life as he recalled each one of his victims.

Some serial killers such as Bundy and Gary Ridgway give their trophies to a family member or intimate partner. The recipient might be the wife or a girlfriend who was causing the killer psychological pain at the time the trophy was acquired. Like a cat that catches a mouse and gives the special item to its owner, a serial killer may take a trophy home and present it to his significant other. For example, Ted Bundy would give an item of jewelry to a woman in his life and say, “Look at what I found on the street. I want you to have it.” When the killer later sees the trophy being worn by his wife, girlfriend, or mother, it becomes part of his secret game. He will look at her wearing it and fantasize about the victim he raped and murdered in order to acquire it. Bundy said that in such moments he would think to himself with much delight, “If she only knew that the necklace she is wearing came from someone I murdered.” (I provide further insights into the significance of trophies and fantasy in chapter 7 based on my correspondence with BTK.)

The Unique Motivations and Techniques of Female Serial Killers

As briefly discussed in chapter 2, the motivations of female serial killers differ significantly from their male counterparts. In particular, sex is
generally much farther down on the list of motivations for female serial killers. In fact, sexual or sadistic motives are extremely rare among female serial murderers. Psychopathic traits and histories of childhood abuse are often found among the very few female serial killers who have sexual or sadistic motives. Unlike male serial killers who are frequently driven by sexual lust, female serial murderers tend to take a much more pragmatic approach to their killings.
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Female serial killers are much more likely than males to kill for profit or revenge and, therefore, they are more likely to be hedonist comfort/gain killers than any other type. Unlike male serial killers who usually target unknown victims, females tend to kill men who are emotionally and physically closest to them, particularly husbands or lovers, and they generally kill to improve their lifestyle. However, victims of female serial killers are not confined to male husbands or lovers. An important psychological study of eighty-six female serial killers in the US found that their victims also included children and the elderly.
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The news and entertainment media have popularized the female comfort/gain killer in the cultural image of the “Black Widow.” The black widow serial killer is a woman who murders three or more husbands or lovers for financial or material gain over the course of her criminal career. The black widow killer was featured in the 1944 classic dark comedy film
Arsenic and Old Lace
starring Cary Grant. This highly popular film tells the fictional tale of two sisters who murder elderly gentlemen by serving them elderberry wine laced with arsenic.

Although they comprise less than 20 percent of all serial killers, females are very effective in their work and they typically use quieter and less messy methods to kill than their male counterparts.
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The methods they use for murder are more covert or low-profile such as murder by poisoning, which was the preferred choice or
modus operandi
of female serial killers in the aforementioned research study. Other methods of murder that were also identified in the study include shooting, stabbing, suffocation, and drowning.
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Female comfort/gain killers are frequently involved in theft, fraud, or embezzlement prior to becoming serial killers due to their interest in material things.
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Although most female serial killers murder for money or other profit, some do it for the attention and sympathy they receive following the death of someone they cared for. It is not uncommon for female comfort/gain killers to be employed as caretakers in nursing homes for the elderly. Female serial killers generally operate in a specific place that they know well such as their home or a health care facility where they are employed. They rarely go trolling for victims out in the open as male serial killers often do, but rather find victims in their family or workplace. As previously discussed, the deadly landlady Dorothea Puente is the prototypical female hedonist comfort/gain killer.

Dorothea Puente, the Sacramento boarding house landlady and serial killer, during her trial. (photo credit: Associated Press)