Free The Serial Killers by Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman Page A

who had questioned him: ‘God only knows what thoughts go through my mind when it is captive within a destructive binge. Maybe the cunning, stalking killer instinct is the only single concentration released from a mind which in that state knows no morality . . . There is no disputing the fact that I am a violent killer under certain circumstances. It amazes me that I have no tears for these victims. I have no tears for myself or those bereaved by my actions. Am I a wicked person, constantly under pressure, who just cannot cope with it, who escapes to reap revenge against society through a haze of a bottle of spirits?’
    The same detailed behavioural research which first indentified the importance of fantasy in the evolution of the serial killer also examined the part played by pornography. Between 1979 and 1983 agents from the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit conducted an in-depth psychological study of thirty-six convicted, incarcerated sex murderers held in United States prisons nationwide. Of those thirty-six murderers, twenty-five were serial killers: the other eleven were either ‘spree’ killers (a detailed classification of murderers appears in the next chapter), or single or double sex murderers. Nearly half of those who co-operated with the FBI analysts (43%) were found to have been sexually abused in childhood, one third (32%) during adolescence, and a slightly larger percentage (37%) over the age of eighteen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most admitted to ‘sexual problems’ as adults. More importantly in the context of pornography, nearly seventy per cent said they felt ‘sexually incompetent’ (as adults), and relied heavily on visual stimuli– with a large majority rating pornography as the most effective stimulus.
    Pornography is seen by analysts of the Behavioural Science Unit as a factor which fuels the serial killer’s violent fantasy, rather than as a cause of the murders he commits. In particular they condemn the ‘bondage’ type pornography – so frequently portrayed on the cover of American detective magazines – as the sex stimulus most likely to fuel, say, the Bundy-type murderer’s fantasies.
    ‘That is what appeals most to the sexual sadist. To see a woman who is bound, or restrained in some way with a gag round her mouth, looking terrified as someone threatens her with a knife or a gun. That is their fantasy: to dominate and control, to inflict pain and suffering on the victim. To see this portrayed on the cover of the magazine may fuel that fantasy – but it’s not the cause of the murder (he commits). Such killers have these desires, they have this violent tendency within them, and that’s why they’re attracted to this type of pornography. We find the sexual sadist and the really violent offender more drawn to this type of pornography than what one might call “classical” pornography, with its explicit sexual content. What the sexual sadist looks for is dominance, control over the victim, and that’s what he sees in this kind of magazine cover. Bundy may have blamed pornography for his “sick obsessions” but that kind of statement is typical of the serial killer. He always blames someone – or something – else for what he’s done; he is not to blame, it’s never his fault.’
    Although the original survey of the thirty-six murderers was completed in 1983, the practice of interviewing convicted offenders by FBI analysts is a valued, ongoing process. No inducement of any kind is offered to the prisoners concerned – some of whom may be on Death Row, awaiting the outcome of their appeals – in return for their co-operation. Furthermore, no visitor may carry weapons inside prison for obvious security reasons, with the result that the lone FBI agents who carried out those pioneer interviews ran considerably personal risk in questioning convicted, violent murderers who literally had nothing to lose, no matter how they reacted. That practice ceased after one agent – who