Serial Murderers Introduction Chapter 1

Please note that we have moved to the 2016 7th edition of the text starting in the summer 2015 semester.

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