Serial Killer - Characteristics

Characteristics

The racial demographics regarding serial killers are often subject to debate. Compared to the United States and South Africa, Australia has a much lower incidence of known serial murders. In the United States, the majority of reported and investigated serial killers are white males, from a lower-to-middle-class background, usually in their late twenties to early thirties. However, there are African American, Asian, and Hispanic (of any race) serial killers as well, and, according to the FBI, based on percentages of the U.S. population, whites are not more likely than other races to be serial killers. Criminal profiler Pat Brown says serial killers are usually reported as white because the media typically focuses on "All-American" white and pretty female victims who were the targets of white male offenders, that crimes among minority offenders in urban communities, where crime rates are higher, are under-investigated, and that minority serial killers likely exist at the same ratios as white serial killers for the population. She believes that the myth that serial killers are always white might have become "truth" in some research fields due to the over-reporting of white serial killers in the media.

Some authors state that African American serial killers are as prevalent, or more so, in proportion to the African American population. According to some sources, the percentage of serial killers who are African American is estimated to be between 13 and 22 percent. Another study has shown that 16 percent of serial killers are African American, what author Maurice Godwin describes as a "sizeable portion". Anthony Walsh writes, "While it is true that most serial killers are white males, white (Anglo) males are actually slightly underrepresented in the serial killer ranks in terms of their proportion of the general male population" and that "hatever the true proportion of black serial killers in the United States is or has been, it is greater than the proportion of African Americans in the general population." Other reports show about 80% of serial killers being identified as white, placing nonwhite serial killers as accounting for less than 20% of serial killers. While it is not conclusively known if black Americans are statistically less or more likely to be serial killers, reasons for under or overreporting of black serial killers could be due to racial profiling, the same factor that could account for the popular perception or reporting of serial killers as uniformly white. Popular racial stereotypes about the lower intelligence of African-Americans, and the stereotype that serial killers are white males with "bodies stacked up in the basement and strewn all over the countryside" may explain the media focus on serial killers that are white and the failure to adequately report on those that are black.

Typical characteristics of serial killers include:

• Generally being described as possessing IQs in the "bright normal" range, although they are more likely to have low/average intelligence. A sample of 174 IQs of serial killers had a median IQ of 93. Only serial killers who used bombs had an average IQ above the population mean.
• Often, they have trouble staying employed and tend to work in menial jobs. The FBI, however, states, "Serial murderers often seem normal; have families and/or a steady job." Other sources state they often come from unstable families.
• They were often abused—emotionally, physically and/or sexually—by a family member.
• Fetishism, partialism, and necrophilia, are paraphilias which involve a strong tendency to experience the object of erotic interest almost as if it were a physical representation of the symbolized body. Individuals engage in paraphilias which are organized along a continuum; participating in varying levels of fantasy perhaps by focusing on body parts (partialism), symbolic objects which serve as physical extensions of the body (fetishism), or the anatomical physicality of the human body; specifically regarding its inner parts and sexual organs (one example being necrophilia).
• A disproportionate number exhibit one, two, or all three of the Macdonald triad (see below) of predictors of psychopathy:
  • Many are fascinated with fire setting.
  • They are involved in sadistic activity; especially in children who have not reached sexual maturity, this activity may take the form of torturing animals.
  • More than 60 percent wet their beds beyond the age of 12. However, recent authorities (see citations in the Enuresis section of the Macdonald triad article) question or deny the statistical significance of this figure.
• They were frequently bullied as children.
• Some were involved in petty crimes, such as theft, fraud, vandalism, dishonesty or similar offenses.

There are exceptions to these criteria, however. For example, Harold Shipman was a successful professional (a General Practitioner working for the NHS). He was considered a pillar of the local community, even winning a professional award for a children's Asthma clinic and was interviewed by Granada Television's World in Action. Dennis Nilsen was an ex-soldier turned civil servant and trade unionist who had no previous criminal record when arrested. Neither were known to have exhibited many of these signs. Vlado Taneski was a career journalist who was caught after a series of articles he wrote gave clues that he had murdered people; Taneski was a crime reporter. Russell Williams was a successful and respected career Royal Canadian Air Force Officer who was convicted of the murder of two women, along with fetish burglaries and rapes.

Some serial killers additionally exhibit various degrees of psychopathy, though this is not always the case. Psychopaths lack empathy and guilt, are egocentric and impulsive, and theoretically do not conform to social, moral and legal norms. Instead, psychopaths often follow a distinct set of rules which they have created for themselves. They may appear to be normal and often quite charming, a state of adaptation that psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley called the "mask of sanity". In the DSM-IV, psychopathy is listed under Axis II Personality disorders NOS. It is a disorder mainly defined by traits of both antisocial personality disorder and narcissism. In the near future, the concept of psychopathy requires revision because the new version of the DSM (DSM-V) no longer includes narcissism. Robert D. Hare created a checklist to differentiate psychopathy from antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), known as the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). The questionnaire scores people on Axis I interpersonal/affective and Axis II Behavioral traits (anti- social). His test found that while 50–80 percent of criminals were diagnosed with ASPD, only 15–30 percent scored as primary psychopaths on the PCL-R test.

Serial killers exhibiting degrees of ASPD, however, are often aware of how to hide many of the characteristics listed above in order to blend with the rest of society. Serial killer Ed Kemper became particularly notorious for doing this when he tricked psychiatrists into believing he was "cured" seven years after being admitted to the Atascadero State Hospital for the murders of his two grandparents. Three years after his release, Kemper went on to murder at least eight additional victims.

The Macdonald triad—animal cruelty, pyromania, and persistent bedwetting (also known as enuresis) past the age of 12—is often exhibited by serial killers during their childhood. Subsequent research, however, suggests that bedwetting may not be related to psychopathy.