When we think about serial killers, we think about the emotionless, villainous, sociopathic beings that only have one goal in life: to terrorise society with their gruesome crimes and ruin the lives of countless innocent people. Scientists and psychologists have spent many years trying to answer one question: why do certain people become serial killers with the mindset and capability to kill whereas we would never even consider such crimes?
We can agree that everyone is born into a different lifestyle. A life where things could be very different from the majority. A life where some people thrive and others don’t. Particularly in 2021, with COVID-19 wreaking the havoc it has, it is true that there are those that live this difficult lifestyle whether it is financially, or emotionally. Research has been done on the background of killers and most of them, with the lack of remorse they had for their victims, never had a proper, loving childhood.
The story of The Nightstalker influenced this statement. Richard Ramirez, a well known serial killer in the United States, began his mass killing when he was only 24 years old. Throughout his life as a young child and teenager, he was constantly exposed to violence in several forms. Drug use and physical abuse were common in El Paso, Texas, where Ramirez lived. His older cousin, Miguel, a Vietnam War veteran and criminal, exposed him to highly explicit stories and images of the women he had raped and dismembered. The situation at home did not improve as Miguel shot his own wife in front of Richard when Richard was only 11.
In the case of Ted Bundy we see similar patterns emerge. Bundy claimed that he had grown up in an ordinary home with loving parents, but his family was questioned about this. They confirmed that his childhood was very uneventful. Some claims were made that Louise Cowell, the killer's own mother, had allegedly been raped by her own father due to his violent temper. This was not confirmed by Bundy but his mother claimed otherwise. The theory was never confirmed but signs showed that this information, whether it was the truth or not, had affected him as a young child questioning who he really was.
With these two case studies of two very different people, we can infer that exposure early on during childhood to drugs and violence, affects them throughout their lives. We have yet to prove this theory entirely because of the denial from the killers themselves when asked about it but researchers have definitely noticed patterns when interviewing the families of the mass killers all around the world relating to their childhoods.
There is so much we still do not know about these people though. How exactly did they decide to murder? What caused them to keep going? What about cutting one’s life short and permanently damaging someone psychologically or physically helped them deal with their inner struggle? Most questions remain unanswered as even though they appear so similar to us, they are so different mentally and there is still so much we need to do in order for us to really understand them.
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