The minds of murderers

 Michael –Alternate Tuesdays

Guess who...

The crime reading and writing community obviously has a deep interest in what goes on in the minds of murderers – what are their motives, is the crime opportunistic or carefully planned, do they have favorite locations, weapons, approaches?

In most real cases, the killing is on the spur of the moment, motivated by anger or possibly by mental and physical abuse where the victim finally snaps. Those cases don’t make interesting police procedurals. The connection between the victim and the killer is usually apparent or quickly discovered. Once the motive is established, and remembering that the attack was unplanned, it’s easy to identify the prime suspect and join the dots. However, premeditated murder (at least in fiction) is usually planned quite carefully. The motive may be more obscure – money, love, hate, revenge, silence. The murderer will take trouble to avoid discovery and, perhaps, try to engineer an alibi. He or she will choose the time and place. They will know what sort of things the police will look for and try to avoid those using information from CSI and all the other true crime series flooding the streaming services. Now the detective has a challenge worth reading about.

The writer’s job is to make the villain believable, and to do that one needs to understand what’s going on in their mind. What is the real motive? How do they react to it? How do they think about it? How do they plan? What will they do when they’re caught? In a sense one needs to profile the character. If that’s not done well enough, the reader will exclaim, “He’d never do that!”, and the fictional dream will be lost.

So how does one approach that? Well, it’s actually reverse profiling. Create and understand the bad guy’s psyche, then deduce the behavior that would follow from it. It’s hard work to do that first step. One has to get into the mind of the murderer. One may even have scenes in the book from his point of view. And sometimes those may be unpleasant for the reader (and the writer) even if they are necessary for the story and character development.

It even looks human...

But what about when the mind of the murderer is really far away from anything the writer can conceive? I’m not talking about aliens in science fiction. (With a few exceptions, the aliens are either horrors or their minds work similarly to human minds. Otherwise, how do we relate to them as characters?) I’m thinking of psychopaths who perform grotesque murders apparently almost at random. How do you get into the mind of a murderer so removed from anything your own mind can understand? How believable would be a scene from such a character’s point of view?

John Douglas at the time of the book

Probably most readers of this blog will know the story of how the FBI started profiling serial killers by interviewing them in prison. John Douglas and Mark Olshaker told the story in their book Mindhunter. Douglas faced the same sort of questions, albeit with much higher stakes. Could one develop a good enough picture –physical and psychological – of the killer to be able to predict his behavior (it is almost always a “he”) and what physical and family attributes such a killer probably had. The book was dramatized in a Netflix series of the same name. The most fascinating parts of the series are the selection of interviews with serial killers based on the transcripts of Douglas’s actual interviews with them in prison. Despite stomach-churning crimes, these men are convincing in a way that few purely fictional characters are. The experiences that Douglas had with them enabled him to develop the art of criminal profiling and spread it through seminars to law enforcement. 

Kemper at the time of his arrest

The scenes with Edmund Kemper are particularly intriguing and he seems to be accurately portrayed in the Mindhunter series. A sociopathic killer who was known as “the coed killer” shot his grandparents as a boy, murdered and dismembered six young girls, and battered his mother to death with a claw hammer. He towers six foot nine inches with a weight to match. Yet if you knew nothing about him and met him in the street, you would describe him as well-spoken, intelligent and friendly.

Their technique consisted of sitting down with the convicted killer and asking questions about his background and his crimes. Kemper, in particular, loved to talk about himself and what had motivated him. As he told the story, his motive became believable if not understandable. If you have a psychopathic character, maybe pretend he's been caught, sit him down in prison and interview him the way Douglas did. If he can't convince you of the sense his actions make to him, it's unlikely the reader will be convinced either.

Although we’ve had quite a few pretty nasty bad guys in our books, we’ve never had a chapter from the point of view of a psychopathic serial killer. The closest we’ve come to a serial killer is the witch doctor in Deadly Harvest who kills, or orders killed, people for the black-magic potions that he sells at high prices to rich clients. But like “ordinary” serial killers, power is his real motivation. There is no section of the book from his point of view. He is hidden, unknown, we see his effects on other people, but not from the man himself. Some further evidence of how his mind twisted is revealed at the end, but not by him. In this case, less is more.

He is much like a serial killer. Apart from some clues to the sorts of people he chooses, there is no connection between him and his victims for the police to follow. Also, his clients are rich and powerful people, possibly even within the police. No case could be more daunting to a detective. Unless that detective has his or her own axe to grind as is the case in Deadly Harvest.

We agonized over that witch doctor. Had we managed to create a believable villain? Would people outside Africa be able to relate to the fear that even well-educated local people might hold for such a person? Apparently, we did a good enough job to impress the reviewers and even bag a place on the shortlist for an ITW thriller award for the year.

In our new book we have a different sort of bad guy. He may not have started life as a sociopath, but he’ll get there by the time we’re finished!

The Most Deadly Serial Killers--and why I could never be one

Wed--Kwei 

In response to a bad joke by a standup comedian who said he could never be a child molester because he didn’t have the money to buy an ice cream truck (it might take you a second), I began to reflect on the amount of work and subterfuge serial killers go through to lure, murder, and dispose of human remains. As a crime fiction writer, I can easily invent a serial killer, as I did in my novel CHILDREN OF THE STREET, but in real life, I’m amazed by the lengths to which serial offenders go to commit their dastardly deeds. Looking at some of the most infamous, serial offenders, I rate the level of difficulty (LOD) of their crimes and identify the deterrents that, apart from murder just being morally wrong, would prevent me from making the grade.

Theodore “Ted" Bundy

Bundy on 1978 FBI Most Wanted List
(From “Serial Killers, Time-Life Books)

I must say, I find it annoying when biographies and documentaries describe Mr. Bundy as “handsome, intelligent, and charming.” That's like saying a destructive wildfire is such a pretty color. Bundy confessed to the killings of 37 women, but some believe it might have been as many as 100 (some of these killers lose count). He roamed the states of Washington, Oregon Utah, and Colorado, often in his VW Beetle. He had a degree in psychology and later studied law, although he never got his qualification. He missed a lot of classes because he was out busy killing. It’s said he might have used his knowledge of psychology to his benefit in luring women to their death, but even if that were partially true, I believe he was just a natural conman.

Bundy is a classic example of what famous FBI profiler John E Douglas would call an organized serial killer: careful planning and execution of the murders. Disorganized killers are more opportunity-impulse offenders. Bundy used disguises and appealed to two aspects of human nature: (1) respect for authority: he sometimes pretended to be a cop; and (2) empathy: he would put on a false leg cast and use crutches, feigning difficulty in getting into his car with his intended victim nearby. As soon as she came to “help,” he kidnapped her. His victims were mostly dark-haired co-eds. He raped, strangled, and bludgeoned them, and sometimes had sex with some of the corpses. After Bundy's capture, he used his limited knowledge of the law to defend himself in court during a long, bizarre trial in which he had multiple episodes of histrionics. In a well-known but poorly-explained phenomenon, many young women who fitted the profile of Bundy’s victims, experienced strong sexual attraction to this ruthless killer, particularly while he was “conducting” his defense in court. On January 24, 1989, Bundy was executed with 2000 volts of electricity.

LOD 10

Deterrents

• Driving around all those states with the present gas prices? I don’t think so.
• I’m going to feel mighty stupid in those false getups and fake leg casts--I’ve never even dressed for Halloween before.
• How do you get a screaming, struggling person into a VW Beetle? I don’t think I have that kind of physical strength.
• I’m not a privileged white male. I’d never get away with it.

Richard “Night-Stalker” Ramirez

Richard Ramirez: LAPD mugshot 1984
(Image: Wikipedia/LAPD)

This particularly nasty piece of work was born in El Paso, TX, but operated as a serial offender first in Southern California's San Gabriel Valley (where I’ve lived for decades), and then moved the Bay Area. During those times, I remember the palpable fear generated in my neck of the woods by his nickname, the "Night-Stalker,” and “Valley Intruder.” His MO was to enter homes very late at night via an unlocked window or open screen door and proceed to torture, beat, rape, sodomize, and bludgeon his sleeping, startled victims to death. Unlike Bundy, Ramirez was all over the place with his victims: kids, the elderly, men, women, couples. With a horrific and violent childhood, Ramirez became fascinated by murder and the occult at an early age. He also suffered traumatic brain damage and temporal lobe epilepsy.

His murders were the very definition of overkill. Even after shooting his victims, he proceeded to chop some of them to pieces with a machete. His surviving victims often commented on one aspect: Ramirez’s disgustingly bad teeth and hideous breath. The LAPD made a connection between an eyewitness account, a fingerprint on a car he stole, and his police record. After his picture was released to the public, he was recognized by residents in Boyle Heights, a suburb of Los Angeles, who pursued him and ran him down, very nearly beating him to death in an explosion of vigilante violence. Again, as in Bundy’s case, many women declared their love for Ramirez during his trial. He was sentenced to the gas chamber, but never made it there when he died in 2013 from lymphoma.

LOD 8

Deterrents

• You need gonads of a kind I don’t have to sneak around neighborhoods at 2 o’clock in the morning breaking into people’s houses. It’s too creepy for my taste.
• I’m not getting out of bed that late at night for anything. I like sleeping and I have to work in the morning.
• I brush my teeth frequently. When my would-be victims comment on this, I would probably be so flattered I would say, “Aw, thanks--you’re too kind,” and leave them be to go home to bed.

Dennis Nilsen

“British Butcher” Dennis Nilsen
(Image: “Serial Killers,” Time-Life Books)

The UK doesn’t have quite the roster of serial murderers as the United States, but they’ve had some pretty horrible ones, e.g. Peter “Yorkshire Ripper” Sutcliffe. Another was Dennis Nilsen, shown above. He was one of those killers to whom, quite unlike Bundy, few people paid that much attention. With spectacles and an unremarkable appearance, he probably never made any significant impact on people in public--the kind of person you see in the supermarket and never give a second thought.

But he was a killer, all right. His MO was to lure young gay men back to his flat, where he would kill them, butcher them and hide them under his floorboards.

Nilsen lived on top floor; Mick Cattran (inset)
discovered the human remains in the sewer
(Image: “Serial Killers,” Time-Life Books)

Once the corpses became too decomposed and began to smell, he would bury them in a makeshift cemetery at the bottom of his garden. He burned some of his victims there as well, and no one in the neighborhood thought this was strange? Nilsen's problem was the burgeoning accumulation of bodies. Rather like Jeffrey Dahmer, he engaged in boiling his victims’ parts to make them easier to dismember. His downfall was trying to flush human remains down the toilet, which resulted in blocking up his apartment building’s plumbing, so that a foul stench permeated the place. A plumber had to unblock the toilets, and the source of the blockage was traced to Nilsen’s apartment.

LOD 6 for luring; 10 for disposal

Deterrents

• The house smelling of anything else but fresh flowers and fragrances? I don’t think so.
• Block your toilet with human remains? Are you looking to get caught, or are you just an incredibly stupid person?
• Again, I’d have to be up practically all night with this nonsense. No, thank you.
• Pulling up floorboards to hide human remains seems like an awful lot of work, and I’m not that handy. And what’s with these floorboards that have enough underlying space to hide people?

Elaborate execution

Many other serial killers had incredibly complex MOs: John Wayne Gacy, the "Killer Clown,” buried his young male victims in the crawlspace of his home, episodically pouring quicklime on them to accelerate decomposition. He killed almost always between 3 AM and 6 AM. Hillside Stranglers Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr. kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered their victims before dumping them on Los Angeles Hillsides (LA has quite a panoply of serial offenders.)

The bottom line

My satirical post is really saying that what makes these killers different from the “normal” (I use the word with some caution) world is that their compulsion to murder trumps simple human physiological needs like, um . . . sleep, and easily overcomes normal deterrents like the fear of being caught. In fact, one reason many serial killers elude detection for so long is that they are fearless and are expert at hiding in plain sight, which, as Agatha Christie will tell you, makes mysteries even more difficult to solve.

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