Book Of Serial Killers Summary

Prior to reading the Killer Book of Serial Killers there were already a couple of questions I had in the back of my mind regarding serial killers. I hadn’t given them too much thought in the past. I occasionally watch true crime shows, but those are mostly about crimes of passion. There aren’t many shows out there that talk about serial killers and how they are different from people who commit murders out of passion. I hadn’t really thought about the distinction between the two myself until I started reading the book. I took a class last semester called Criminal Law, and it wasn’t until about halfway through that class that I began to really get interested in crime and criminals, and what causes people to do the things they do. That class was …show more content…
nurture. In the case of Bobby Joe Long, there is evidence to suggest that brain damage was the cause of his serial killing. Researchers have done studies on prison inmates that showed differences in the brains of psychopaths vs non-psychopaths, and that psychopathy could be linked to the dysfunction of the temporal and frontal lobes. In addition, according to some studies, there are some factors such as brain damage, disorders, hormones and family history that can cause a person to become a serial killer. The study brought up an interesting question: If serial killers are born then why do most of them share similar backgrounds of childhood abuse? The answer is pretty complicated, but what I understood from it is that a person’s abusive upbringing can be the catalyst that causes them to become serial killers, and the necessary brain dysfunction was already there. Some people can be sort of reconditioned by a nurturing environment so that they can go on to lead good, successful lives, even if they show some of the signs of psychopathy. This shows that both a person’s genes and upbringing are important factors in whether or not they become serial …show more content…
This was interesting to me because it explained that deviant behavior is behavior that violates social norms and brings about negative social reactions, and that this changes depending on where a person lives. What is acceptable in one society could be criminal in another society, even in the deviant behavior is not a necessarily harmful behavior. Once again this brings up a lot of questions in my mind, especially why some societies view certain deviant behavior the way they do, and how they decide what should and shouldn’t be punishable based on majority opinion. For example, homosexuality is considered a deviant behavior, and in some societies people are executed for the behavior simply because their customs say that is wrong, even though it doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s still a crime. The book says that ideally criminal law bans behaviors that society considers immoral, but that brings me back to the question of who gets to define morality because everyone’s morals are different, and should a behavior, such as homosexuality, be outlawed or banned just because a segment of a population believes it isn’t right? And why should the opinions and views of one group be more “correct” than another just because it may be an opinion that is more traditional or long held? I know that