Serial murder is a repulsive, yet compelling, topic. True, people sometimes find me odd when I talk about my hobby – criminology, studying the minds of some of the worst serial killers to have walked the earth. Why do I do that? Because it’s interesting. I am right there, looking evil right in the face, yet from a safe distance. Who would not be fascinated with that?
What is serial killing?
Serial murder is the killing of three or more people over a period of more than 30 days, with a significant cooling-off period.
Although several books have been authored that focus on the study of serial killings, contemporary thoughts on serial murder is the first to join the opinions of acknowledged experts in the field along with the perspectives of emerging authorities on serial murder. New things are being discovered.
While overseas research suggests that serial murder is predominantly perpetrated by persons not known to the victims, in the case of serial murder in Australia, 25 victims did not know their attacker (stranger homicides) while 24 victims knew their attacker, either intimately or as an acquaintance. It’s interesting to me that so many victims actually knew their killer. I have always pictured serial killers as people who target strangers because that makes it harder to catch them.
The majority of victims are white, supporting researchers' claims that serial murder is intra-racial.
Rarely do we see a white serial killermurdering a black person. Also, serial killers are mainly white males, in their twenties-thirties.
Serial murder is such an astonishingly maladaptive behavior that I find it interesting whether we shall one day see a gene that is adaptive and can lead to this behavior?
I do believe there is some sort of brain defect that makes these people act the way they do. They come from different backgrounds, different cultures, different walks of life. I am left with the assumption that it has to be a physical abnormality within them. Something we haven’t discovered yet. Either that or they are just possessed with an evil force that we can’t understand. But that’s such a medieval way to look at it. I prefer science. So we can fix it.
How about you?
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