Serial Killers: A Psychological Analysis

There are those who think that people who do some type of heinous act are one of the same; driven by the same reason and carry out the action in similar ways. There are those who think that each criminal has a different reasoning for why they do what they do, whether it be a justified reason or not. On the subject of serial killers, people’s thought processes are the same; they are either evenly matched, compelled by the same motive, or they are completely different people, moved by different purposes. I argue that all serial killers are psychologically similar in the way that they are classified, their motives, and their methods of killing.
There are two kinds of killers: predictable and respectable. Predictable killers have long histories …show more content…
All are known simply as just another serial killer. Granted, they are killers, but none of them are the same according to the way they carry out their murders. One way to classify these criminals is to sort them into three different categories: disorganized, organized, and medical. Disorganized killers, like Miguel Rivera, kill on a whimsy and have very irregular patterns. They are extremely anti-social and because they take no precautions or attempt to cover up their murders, they move around a lot to avoid capture. “These killers are prone to have no recollection of their deeds, or to confess that they were motivates by voices in their heads or some other imaginary source” (“Serial Killers”). Of course, if there is a disorganized killer, then there is also an organized killer. Ted Bundy is the ultimate example of an organized serial killer. “Ted Bundy was so organized that the police never located the crime scenes where his first seventeen victims were actually killed. Six of his victims remain missing to this day” (Vronsky 102). Organized killers tend to be highly conscientious and very intelligent. Every factor of their crimes are planned accordingly and everything is worked out well in advance. The last type of murderer is medical. Extremely rare yet very feared, medical killers are “usually highly intelligent and know how to carefully and cleverly conceal their murders” (“Serial Killers”). With their knowledge of the medical …show more content…
Rippers, one of the most gruesome of all homicides, subject their victims to horrific mutilation and dismemberment of the limbs. Rippers are most often men whose victims are women and can often be associated with cannibalism and vampirism. Majority of rippers are sex-murderers with deep psychotic issues. Apart from Jack the Ripper, a world famous serial killer, there have been many other rippers terrorizing the public. Leger, a serial killer in Germany, “caught a girl twelve years old, violated her, mutilated her genitals, tore out her heart, ate it, drank the blood, and burned the remains” (Schechter 300). Peter Sutcliffe, also called the Yorkshire Ripper, liked to slice of the faces of his victims, gouge out their eyes, rip out their tongues, tear out their entrails and eat their genitals. Stranglers are sadistic psychos who get an arousal from strangling their victims. The first American serial killer of the twentieth century was Earle Leonard Nelson who liked to choke women to death then rape their corpses. Carlton Gary, a sex-killer nicknamed the “Stocking Strangler”, attacked seven elderly people with nylon stockings tied around their necks. Ax murderers were more infamous back in the nineteenth century; the slaughter of Maren and Anethe Hontvet in New Hampshire, The Vacelet