Free The Serial Killers by Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman

– in their minds at seven and eight years of age, occasionally even earlier. These aggressive daydreams continue to develop and expand through adolescence into manhood, the age when their violent dreams are usually first translated into the physical act of killing. (Some serial killers commit murder in their teens. In the next chapter we discuss one youth who committed four murders by the age of fifteen: pp. 129–31, The Profilers.)
    Serial killers are almost invariably found to have experienced environmental problems in their early years. In many cases they stem from a broken home in which the parents are divorced or separated, a home with a weak or absent father-figure and dominant female, sometimes a home-life marked by a lack of consistent discipline. As policemen and probation officers have long known, the psychological damage resulting from such a deprived or miserable childhood all too often manifests itself in a number of recognisably aggressive traits. They include defiance of authority, theft, persistent lying, acts of wilful destruction, arson, cruelty to animals and other children; with such symptoms accompanied by long periods of daydreaming (or fantasising) – that ever-available trapdoor leading into a private, make-believe world where the unhappy young can shape their revenge on society for all ill-treatment, real or imagined.
    In the context of serial murder, the triad of youthful behaviour most frequently seen as indicative of violence ahead is: enuresis (bed wetting) beyond the age of twelve (although analysts also recognise that there may be several different reasons for this). Next is arson – sometimes committed by children as young as five or six. Its long-term significance lies in the type of arson offence. A ‘disorganised’ young arsonist is likely to cause smaller fires and least monetary damage. In contrast the ‘organised’ arsonist – the one who thinks things through – usually starts his fires from the outset in occupied buildings. His intention is to hurt people, as well as to inflict maximum monetary damage.
    The ultimate state of the behavioural triad is cruelty , to animals and other people. ‘We’re not talking here about kicking the dog,’ said one analyst. ‘We’re talking about throwing puppies on to bonfires or tying firecrackers to the cat, that kind of behaviour. One serial killer talks about “Tying a cherry-bomb to the cat’s leg, lighting it – and blowing the cat’s leg off. Made a lot of one-legged cats.”’ This trait can be seen in children on both sides of the Atlantic who grew up to be serial killers. Moors murderer Ian Brady won a childhood reputation as an embryo psychopath who threw cats from tenement windows in the Glasgow Gorbals. When Ed Kemper, the Californian serial killer, was thirteen he cut the family cat into pieces with his Scout’s knife.
    ‘The next step is aggression against people. He chooses animals first because animals can scream, they show fear, they bleed, they do all those things we do – but they’re not people . This time, it’s projection. Now he’s getting even with society.’ Hostility to society is one of the hallmarks of the adult serial killer. Some express it in the murders they commit, others express it in words. We know that the man calling himself Jack the Ripper wrote ‘I am down on whores and shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled’. When actress Sharon Tate begged the Manson ‘Family’ gang to spare her for the sake of her unborn child, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel responded by stabbing her sixteen times, inflicting several wounds after her death. Finally Atkins dipped a towel in the actress’s blood and wrote ‘Pig’ on her living-room door. Dennis Nilsen – a heavy drinker – clearly felt this need to ‘get even’ with society in each murder he committed – including those he could barely remember next morning. While awaiting trial, he wrote from jail to the police