Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream: A Forensic Psychiatrist Illuminates the Darker Side of Human Behavior (41 page)

Impotent with women, despised and shunned by everyone, he found his life was made tolerable only by his increasingly violent sexual fantasies. At first, in his acting out, he needed only to touch. Later he needed to have total power over the girls, to torture and to kill. He required that they suffer, and it was on this need that he became hooked, because his gratification came not from intercourse but from thrusting his knife into the bodies of his victims. He would masturbate over his victims, then frantically try to push his sperm into their bodies with his hands.

In his parodies of passion, Andrei Chikatilo managed to kill and mutilate at least 52 victims in 12 years before he was finally apprehended. Each lust murder was more grisly and sadistic than the previous one. His hunters later called him the Red Ripper because he slashed his victims’ bodies and stabbed their eyes in a sort of mutilation that they came to know as his “signature” and distinctive trademark. As Chikatilo later told the world, “The purpose of life is to leave your mark on this earth.”

Chikatilo lost an eleventh-hour appeal for clemency. He was taken from his prison cell and marched along a stone corridor to the execution room. Chikatilo was made to kneel as his sentence was read. The executioner drew a Makarov automatic and fired a single bullet into the back of the serial killer’s head. Unlike his victims, Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo died quickly and mercifully.

In a terrible coda, Chikatilo became the model for Alexander Pichushkin, who, according to his confession, set out to murder 64 people—one for each square on a chessboard—to outdo Chikatilo. He was convicted of 48 murders and claimed a total of 61.

If Wishes Were Horses

When bad men do what good men dream, psychiatrists are called upon to explain why. Murder is the crime of crimes. Murder inspires the ultimate in feelings of repugnance, fear, and fascination about the violation of God’s commandment, Thou shalt not kill. There are endless depictions of murder in songs, books, plays, movies, and video games. For many people, these representations of murder produce inexhaustible delights, thrills, and titillating horror.

Given the horrible circumstances of many murders, the neophyte forensic psychiatrist’s first interview with a murderer is usually an astonishing experience. For the murderer is not a blood-dripping monster but is usually a quiet, reasonably cooperative, guy-next-door type of human being who is uncomfortably like any other person—including the psychiatrist. The comparison between the guy next door and the blood-dripping monster becomes even more unnerving when one realizes that even good men’s consciences are regularly roiled by murderous fantasies and dreams. As Theodore Reik, a pioneering psychoanalyst once succinctly put it, “If wishes were horses, they would pull the hearses of our dearest friends and nearest relatives. All men are murderers at heart.” In the O. J. Simpson murder trial, testimony was given by a longtime friend that Simpson had dreamed of killing his wife. The prosecution strategy was to expose Simpson’s state of mind (i.e., that he was fatally obsessed with his wife, Nicole). The law, however, punishes criminal acts, not antisocial thoughts. If murderous thoughts and dreams were a capital crime, we all would be on death row.

The FBI defines murder as the
unlawful
taking of life for the purpose of achieving or expressing power, brutality, personal gain, and, occasionally, sexuality. In the criminal justice system, murder is considered to be a subset of homicide that also includes other forms of taking life such as an unpremeditated auto fatality (vehicular homicide), manslaughter, and criminal and noncriminal negligent homicide. In this book I use the terms
homicide
and
killing
interchangeably with murder.

In 1960, there were approximately 10,000 murders a year in the United States. From 1976 to 1992, according to the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the number of murders has fluctuated from a low of 16,605 in 1976 to a high of 24,703 in 1991 before dipping slightly in 1992. In 2006, the number of murders was 17,034. The murder rate had dropped significantly since the high of 1991, but increased by 1.8% for the second consecutive year in 2006. It is estimated that 50% of all violent crimes go unreported in the United States. These figures reflect the fact that murder is terribly common among us.

Despite a rising rate of random “stranger” murders—drive-by shootings and hate crimes—the UCR statistics show that two-thirds of homicide victims are family members, friends, or acquaintances of the murderer. In 2004, 3,233 victims were murdered by acquaintances, 1,694 by family members, and 1,046 by friends or neighbors. In 1993, for the first time, the FBI Uniform Crime Report revealed the chilling statistic that a stranger is just as likely to kill us as a family member or friend. The FB I reports that every American has a “realistic chance” of being murdered. In a survey of 25 countries, the homicide rate for infants was as high as or higher than the rate for adults. Most child murders are committed by women. Men who kill their children are usually found to be severely mentally retarded or to have an emotionally explosive disorder.

Overall, recent research has found an important but only modest correlation between violence and mental disorder. The National Institute of Mental Health Epidemiologic Catchment Area study estimated that 90% of persons with current mental illnesses are not violent within 1 year. If a person is not having a psychotic episode or if psychotic symptoms are not part of the psychiatric problems, then he or she is no more likely to be involved in violent behavior than the average person. In particular, though, mentally ill persons who become violent are more likely to kill family members or acquaintances than to kill strangers. Most murders of mothers are committed by schizophrenic sons who live with them alone. Of the people acquitted of murder by reason of insanity, a study shows a significant fraction had paranoid schizophrenia. These people are more likely to have killed a parent or a child than a spouse or a stranger.

In a study of adolescent killers, it was found that over two-thirds of the victims were family members or acquaintances. If the adolescents killed a family member, it was most likely to be the father, after prolonged conflict between father and son. The murder was most frequently committed with a gun. If the victim was an acquaintance, the weapon more frequently used was a knife. The deed happened while the murderer was in the throes of intense emotion or during the commission of another criminal act.

Homicide numbers make for difficult reading. Moreover, they lack human detail. But also, homicide numbers are probably underreported. Every murder is unique, defying classification because of the complexity of interwoven personal factors, motivations, and circumstances. Because the combined numbers of family and acquaintance murders are so high, it is also clear that many murders occur within the context of an existing relationship between perpetrator and victim.

The term
serial murderer
was coined by FBI Special Agent Robert K. Ressler, an expert on serial killers, during the David Berkowitz “Son of Sam” killings in New York in the 1970s. At that time, and for some years before it, there were probably only a half-dozen such killers in the United States. In recent years, estimates of them have run from 50 to 500. The FB I estimates that 500 serial killers are at large who kill at least 3,500 people each year. Another, more conservative estimate has the death toll from 200 serial killers at 2,000 people each year— or approximately 10% of all murders. Gary Leon Ridgway, the Green River Killer, likely the most prolific serial sexual killer in U.S. history, admitted to strangling and sexually abusing the bodies of 48 young women from 1982 to 1998. “I picked up prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught,” Ridgway told prosecutors.

Serial killers are rare—50 to 200 killers among the population is not a large number of people. We do not need to run out and buy serial killer insurance. Still, their crimes frighten us because serial killers murder more than their share of victims and because, for the most part, they kill people who are total strangers. However, serial killers differ from those who commit random or hate murders because serial killers act out an intense fantasied relationship with their victims. In fact, serial sexual murderers require their victims to be anonymous props on whom they can inflict their lethal fantasies to achieve what they desire: the exhilaration of orgasm.

Serial killers are classified by the FBI in a different group from other mass murderers, who kill many people at one time. One of the latter, Colin Ferguson, a 35-year-old Jamaican immigrant, walked down the aisles of a Long Island Railroad train, firing into a car of 23 passengers, killing six and wounding many others before he ran out of ammunition. He was finally wrestled to the floor by several other passengers. Serial murders, by the FB I’s classification and definition, are those that involve more than three victims and a cooling-off period between murders—something that indicates the premeditation of each one. A classic serial killer was Ted Bundy, who murdered more than 30 times over a period of 6 years and in at least five different states.

But premeditation is not the real difference between the mass murderer and the serial murderer. The common perception is that it is the ordinary guy who becomes the mass murderer, the guy who simply goes berserk one day and starts shooting. But contrary to popular perception, most mass murders are planned. Also, according to forensic psychiatrist Park Elliot Dietz, “It’s never a normal person who snaps. It’s always an abnormal person, often in a pressure situation. Generally, it’s a sad toll of tragic proportions because the harm is so foreseeable.” Mass murderers tend to suffer from a lethal combination of paranoia and depression. They feel despondent and hopeless while blaming others for their plight.

The mass murderer’s fantasies tend to be common and unartful— revenge against his perceived persecutors—and his weapons tend to be military-style assault weapons that he uses at some distance from the victims. Serial killers have baroque fantasies, and they kill in an “up close and personal” way, by knifing or strangling their victims.

Serial Sexual Murderers: Lethal Recreational Predators

Serial sexual murderers, though not so named, first entered public consciousness in 1888, in London, when Jack the Ripper killed at least five prostitutes during a 10-week killing spree, slashing the victims’ throats and slitting their bodies open. In the late 1920s, in Düsseldorf, Germany, Peter Kurten obtained his gratification by catching blood spurting from his victims’ wounds into his mouth and swallowing it. The “Vampire of Düsseldorf” was convicted of nine murders and hanged in Cologne in 1931.

In the more modern era, there have been notable serial sexual murderers overseas—Dennis Nilsen killed 15 men who visited his London flat. Chikatilo killed at least 52 victims at various sites all over Russia—but the United States produces more serial sexual murderers than any other country: an astounding 75% of them. It is likely that less sophisticated crime detection techniques in less industrialized countries contribute to the underreporting of serial sexual killers outside the United States. Nonetheless, the United States has the dubious distinction of leading the world in this category of serial murderers.

Serial sexual murderers are a distinct subcategory of serial killers. Not all serial murderers are serial sexual murderers. Some kill for reasons other than sex, such as money, jealousy, revenge, power, or dominance. For example, Aileen Carol Wuornos, a 34-year-old hitchhiking prostitute, became known as the “Damsel of Death” for robbing and murdering middle-aged men who stopped to give her a ride. Robbery was her chief motivation, though power and dominance may also have been factors. She pleaded guilty to seven murders and was sentenced to death. In October 2002 she was executed by lethal injection. Wuornos was not a female version of the Ted Bundy–type true predator serial sexual killer. She would likely be classified as a serial enterprise killer according to the FBI Crime Classification Manual. In other words, Wuornos killed for material gain, in this case money. In fact, most women do not appear to experience murderous, sexually sadistic fantasies. If they do experience them, they do not act them out in serial killings.

I do not know of any female serial sexual killer who operated alone. Women have collaborated with husbands in serial sexual killings. Fred and Rosemary West of Gloucestershire, England, tortured, raped, and murdered 12 young women including their 16-year-old daughter. In Canada, husband and wife Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka teamed together to rape and kill 3 teenage girls; one was Karla’s sister. Karla procured girls for Paul to rape, and videotaped the husband’s rape of her sister. It seems that these women’s selves were coopted and fused with their husbands, who had these terrible sexual murder fantasies. The wish to psychologically fuse with others is a normal human tendency. Romantic love is a good example. But taken to an extreme, on one end of the scale it can result in participation in evil deeds, but on the other, it can lead to the ecstatic fusion with God experienced by saints.

No sexual fantasies were reported in the case of 64-year-old Sacramento landlady Dorothea Puenta, another criminal enterprise murderer, who was convicted of murdering three of her elderly tenants. Here the motive seems to have been greed. She was charged with nine killings in all, for poisoning her former tenants in order to get their government benefit checks. Seven bodies were unearthed from the yard of her Victorian boarding house. She received a life sentence.

Less than 5% of serial killers are women. When women commit multiple murders, they tend to do so in one episode. Sylvia Seegrist walked into a shopping mall near Philadelphia and opened fire with a rifle, killing three and injuring six others. Seegrist was found to be legally insane and was committed to a mental institution. Poisoning is a favored method of female killers. Usually, the degree of sadistic aggression is less in female murderers, perhaps due to acculturation of women against violence and the relative absence of the male hormone tied to aggression: testosterone. Women who do have murderous impulses more typically turn them on themselves and commit suicide. In every setting except where women are acutely psychotic, men have a higher incidence of violent behavior.