Greetings! Dr. Mark Winton here and this
is one of the videos that I''l be making
for our class on serial murder and
the criminal justice system.
What I'd like to do is introduce you
to the textbook and some of the areas
that we'll be covering.
We have an excellent textbook. It's a
great resource that you could use
throughout your career:
Serial Murderers and their Victims,
6th Edition, written by Professor
Eric W. Hickey.
And Dr. Hickey does a superb job of
comprehensively addressing serial murder.
So I think you'll find a variety of
areas of interest as we progress
through the semester.
In Chapter 1, Introduction to Phenomena
of Serial Murder, we begin to explore
some of the myths related to serial
murder and how those have been created
by society and the media and the general
public. And then we move on to looking
at basically the definitions of the
different types of criminal activities
related to serial murder and murder in
general, and then we take a look at the difference
between mass murder and serial murder.
We try to get some estimates of how
much serial murder and mass murder
occur in the United States. And then
we look at some of the cases. You'll find
a wealth of cases for comparative
analysis within your textbook.
There are a lot of different areas that
you can also bridge this material in
your work, whether you work in cases
of serial murder or not or you work in
some type of investigatory capacity
or in the legal system or if you have
an interest or if you want to find out
really the information and compare and
contrast the research findings to what
you see in the media and what you hear
about in general public to see what's
accurate and what's inaccurate.
So there's a variety of reasons why
people have taken this course -- some for
their interest, others for their interest
and their professional development, and
others to learn about a topic that they
like to explore in their future work, and
some who may be investigating a variety
of crimes, violent crimes, and will
find this information useful in their
own work. Of course, if you're conducting
research, there will be a lot of
useful information as well.
So basically murder is the illegal
taking of another's life. And a lot of times
you will see that when we talk abut
murder, the big features that come into
play is intent. So someone who comes up to s
someone and gets in an argument and
stabs them with a knife and had planned
to do this because they had some type
of disagreement is very different from
someone who's walking down the street and
they accidentally bump into someone who
falls, bumps their head and dies. So we have
a lot of different situations, and I'm
sure that you can see how in the press
and in the courtroom these definitions
are often debated.
And so you can see the different types of
murder: premeditated murder, for example,
justifiable homicide, manslaughter,
involuntary manslaughter, and then you
can see the different other types of
homicide related basically to age and
relationship, for example, the killing of
newborns or infants or siblings or
parents and then you can see that we
move into a variety of other definitions
related to mass murder and serial murder
and your author provides some cases.
Holmes comes up with a classification
of mass murder, and that's kind of an
interesting feature to look at because then
you start to look at the whole idea of
classification and how we actually do that.
And so that would be relevant to look at.
But let me back up a moment and let me
define mass murder according to the FBI.
And mass murder is the killing of 4 or
more persons at one time. And so there
we have a definition of mass murder. What
you will see here when we start
differentiating different types of
murders that the number and whether or not
there's a cooling off period becomes
very relevant. So mass murder is
basically killing 4 or more persons
at one time. There's been a bunch of
examples of mass murder, and one that
is being discussed in the press right now
is Dr. Hassan, the psychiatrist at Fort
Hood, who in 2009 shot over 40 military
personnel, killing 13. That would be
from at least, your textbook classifies
that as a mass murder.
Dr. Amy Bishop, in 2010 in the state
of Alabama, shot 6 faculty members, killing
3 at her university. So that is a profile
of mass murder in your textbook, but then you
say, "Okay, killing 4 or more persons is the
FBI definition" and so you know, we have
to see that there are some
inconsistencies. So we will stick to some
of the general themes, but you'll see that
different researchers and organizations may
have different definitions. And Holmes,
for example, starts looking at mass
murder classifications and comes up with,
for example, the family slayer or
annihilator and the murder for profit,
murder for sex, the pseudo commando, and the
set and run killer. So here again, you look
at these types of classifications and
you see that not only does it relate to
how many people are killed in the time
period, but also the major motive,
the motivating factor for the killing.
Additionally, for example, the psychotic
killer, the disgruntled employee, the
disciple-type killer, the ideological
mass murderer who may be involved in some
type of cult, and institutional mass
murderers. And in my own research, one of my
specialty areas is genocide, and a lot
of my studies focus on mass murder conducted
by those engaging in genocidal regimes. And
I'll discuss more of that and my research
as we progress in the semester. But that
would be kind of an institutional mass murder
type.
What's interesting about the mass murderers
is that they usually don't seem to have
a great concern about being captured
or being killed and some may be killed by
police and others kill themselves, commit
suicide once they complete their massacre.
And some simply just wait for the police and
and then are arrested. And we'll see that
that dramatically differs from serial
killers.
And in some cases of mass murder, mass
killings, the offender may commit murders in
one location and then move to another
location, another building or another
address and that is bifurcation and so we
see that split into two places. But there's
NOT a cooling off period. There will be one
cooling off period in the case of serial
murder, but not in cases of mass murder.
And, um, we have many case studies in our
textbook. One thing that we find is that
mass murderers are usually caught by the
police or as I mentioned before killed by
the police or commit suicide. And we've seen
of course, the media attention to the mass
murders. Mass murderer is, again, either
going to get caught or die, while serial
killers focus their attention on preventing
being caught or captured and may commit
murders for years and years and years
and years. Um, a spree murder, as your author
points out, we get into that problem of
defining the cooling off period that
occurs between killings, that mass
murderers usually within, let's say, minutes
or hours; the serial killer, the
differentiation of time would be days,
weeks, months, or years. And then, we get
into that area where we're not very clear and
then we might see some difficulty there
agreeing.
Serial murder, in contrast, is defined
by the FBI as the unlawful killing of two
or more victims by the same offenders in
separate events. Okay, so we will of course
say, "Well, what do you mean by separate
events?" There's a cooling off period.
So you might say, "Well, what about
someone who, you know, kills 2 people in a
home and then goes home and waits for a day
because there's a snowstorm before going
to another home down the street and
continuing the killing?" Is that mass
murder? Is that, you know, serial killing,
serial murder, or something else? And so
there is some issue with the definitions.
Of course on exams, I'll keep it very
straightforward.
So the FBI definition of serial murder is
the unlawful killing of 2 or more victims
by the same offenders in separate events.
Now, we get into some of the myths of serial
murder.
One is that serial murderers are almost
all the time white. That's actually
not the case.
That serial murderers are men, even though
the majority may be male, there are
female serial killers. It's a myth that
serial murderers are insane. Some may be,
but many are not. Many are not judged to be
legally insane. And again, insanity is
not really a mental health term; it's a
legal term. For practical purposes, we say
that the person is out of touch with reality
and cannot tell the difference between
right or wrong, and then the cases we will
they knew what they were doing was illegal,
they knew what they were doing would
be considered wrong by society. Some argue
that serial murderers tend to be very
highly intelligent. Some are. Some are of
average or low intelligence. Some argue ta
there's a sexual motive for all serial
murders. That's not necessarily the case.
Some believe that serial murderers tend
to kill alone. Some do but some choose to
kill in pairs or small groups. Some say
they cannot stop the killing, but we see
that actually many serial murderers may
stop killing for long periods of time, and
we'll see some case studies where that is
the case. Some believe they have some type
of a conscious desire to be caught. That
is not the case because many are not
caught for many, many years or are never
caught.
And so, for example, one study found 17%
of serial murderers were female. The majority
of them are male, but 17% is a relatively
large number if you were going to say "most"
or "all" are men, that's not true. And so,
the statistics also show that a very small
percentage are legally insane. They say
under 5%, and so that's important to
recognize. Some believe that serial killers
kill hundreds, but we see that most kill
under 10 victims. And many of the serial
murders occur in a particular geographical
location, and as I mentioned, there may be
several years between the murders and
we see a variety of factors that are open
you know, for debate. But we also find some
clear patterns that begin to emerge. So
the major motivating factors that are
described in your textbook for serial murder
relate to anger, criminal enterprise,
financial gain, ideological belief systems,
power/thrill, sexual motive, or a motive
based on some type of psychosis. And through
this course we can look at the different
types as we progress through the semester
and into more detail.
The FBI has this organized/disorganized
dichotomy, to look at the organized serial
killer and the disorganized serial killer,
and there's a lot of debate about that
because many seem to fall somewhere in
between, where there's some organization
aspects to the killing and some very
disorganized. And sometimes you see a serial
murder where it's very disorganized, other
times very organized, the person, that is,
and other times you see somewhere in between.
So, um, there may be difficulty in using
this typology unless you're looking at just
the extremes.
Holmes again develops typologies of serial
murder, such as the visionary, the mission-
oriented, the hedonistic, and the
power/control oriented. So a variety are
very useful information there.
And so I think Chapter 1 starts to give you
this general overview of the extent, and we
can see that, again, we're really not
sure -- these estimates vary widely -- how
much serial murders actually occur, how
many are actually caught because again we
run into these definitional problems, these
linkage problems, that there may be some
serial killers who over a period of time
lapses or are never linked or they may kill
in different areas, and that may be an
issue. And of course, the media aspects of
mass murder, serial murder, are clearly
there, especially with the 24/7 news that
we see what has happened recently with
serial killers or mass murderers that are
portrayed in the media. I can tell you my
own perception, when I first became aware of
serial killing that was back in the 60s
when I was a youngster in California. And
the Zodiac was killing people in the Bay Area
and I got a little better information about
that -- not that much because I was
relatively young, but I knew something bad
was happening. I knew someone was going
around killing people and from what I could
gather from the press, I don't remember
seeing much of that on television when I
watched television, probably because the
news was on once a day and probably tried
to avoid watching that back when I was
young and there wasn't much discussion. My
friends would just say to stay in groups
don't go out at night. We tended to know
our neighbors. But that fear is always
there. What I do remember is that at some
point, a knife with blood on it and clothes
were found in the wooded area near where
we lived and that was the last time I was
able to go out there in the woods by my
self or with friends. And no one knows,
or I don't know, certainly, what became
of that knife with blood on it and clothes
and so on because no one ever explained,
but shortly thereafter we moved to a very
safe state where there was no crime, Florida,
and everything was fine. But I can r
remember over the years though, even seeing
cases, I'd work with agencies over the
years in my capacity as a sociologist
and a counselor. I've never been in law
enforcement before, and I've never
investigated cases of serial murder or
anything like that from a police
perspective, but I've worked with
agencies that assisted in a variety of
investigations. And so I kind of have some
background in information from there, and I
can say that over the years things have
changed dramatically. When I first started
working in the field, we did not even have
computers at that time. We had tape
recorders to do dictating of our notes, and
we had typewriters, and if we made mistakes
we had to start over. We had to use some
chemical called White Out, which led to a
lot of controversy because apparently
people would sniff it, and then they'd
make more mistakes with their typing and
they had to take that chemical out. And so
there's lots of changes, basically. And I
want you to think about those changes
that have occurred over the years when you
are reading these cases, think about the
cultural climate, the historical time
period, what was going on, the politics,
the community, the investigatory abilities,
and then think about even in the future, how
we'll see investigations proceed.
So welcome to the course, and I hope you're
able to learn a lot about different types
of serial murder and different types of
violent crimes during this course that will