The Serial Killers: A Study in the Psychology of Violence (23 page)

The McCrary-led ‘A Team’ gave on-site assistance during the holiday period in two other, unrelated serial murder investigations in up-state New York: one at Windsor, the other at Rochester.
The Rochester case concerned the unsolved murders of eleven prostitutes – all ‘high risk’ victims because of the nature of their trade, a factor which makes profiling more than usually difficult.
On this occasion the profile said that the unknown killer would return to the scene of the crime (pp.
70–1).
He did.
Following his arrest by the Rochester police, the astonished offender led his captors to the spot where two of his victims were buried.

Such accurate profiling seems almost uncanny to most outsiders.
In fact it is based squarely on the far-sighted, meticulous research which began in the classrooms of the FBI Academy at Quantico, at the persuasion of Howard Teten and his handful of fellow instructors in the early 1970s – and blossomed into the mass survey of thirty-six convicted, incarcerated, sex killers carried out by agents of the FBI, under the aegis of the Behavioural Science Unit, between 1979 and 1983.
Among the more meaningful behavioural characteristics which they examined in offenders were their ‘rearing environment’, their history of physical, sexual and psychological abuse, the influence of violent, sexualised fantasy on their adult lives, their unnatural preference for ‘solo sex’ (masturbation), and their failure during the critical development years to fulfil their academic promise.

Their rejection of family ties made them self-centred loners.
They blamed their own failures on an unjust world, in which their hatred for society flourished naturally.
Their response to the physical, psychological and/or sexual abuse they encountered in their formative years was to inflict it on others: first in their fantasy world, and then – as the fantasies grew increasingly violent – on dumb animals and finally, people.
Their rejection of normal relationships led to masturbation as an outlet; an unnatural preference stimulated by pornography and ‘Peeping Tom’ activity and ending, inevitably, in sexual assault.
The whole interwoven pattern of unreasoning hatred of society, violent fantasy and sexual immaturity fused eventually into an overwhelming desire to dominate others – by force.

And murder, say the analysts, is the ultimate expression of this ‘will to power, or desire to control’ (
see here
).

¹
George Metesky did not stand trial for the bombings.
Instead he was declared unfit to plead, and was confined in an institution for the criminally insane for the rest of his life.
Ironically, as assistant commissioner for New York State’s mental health department, Dr Brussel was one of his official visitors.

²
Genetic fingerprinting (or coding) by analysis of semen, blood, skin tissue, etc.
was not discovered until 1984.

³
Thanksgiving is a variable date, falling on the fourth Thursday in November.

⁴
Burgess retired from the FBI in 1990.
He was succeeded as Unit Chief of the BSIS unit by SSA John E.
Douglas.

⁵
Attempted murder is classed as aggravated assault.

⁶
See Howard Henty Holmes, p.
78.

Four

The Power Syndrome

SERIAL MURDER IS
not about sex; it is about power.
Freud once commented that a child would destroy the world if it had the power.
In this sense, the mind of the serial killer is that of a child.
Fantasy takes precedence over actuality.
And the fantasy is about power.

This fact was noted by agent Robert R.Hazelwood, of the FBI Behavioural Science Unit.
‘One individual we talked to had a very ritualistic method of operation.
For example, he would select six victims in advance.
On the evening he would decide to rape one of the victims he would put on his “going-in clothes”, as he referred to them: an oversize pair of tennis shoes to confuse the police, baggy nondescript coveralls, a ski mask and work gloves.
He would then enter the residence and stand by the victim’s bed and count from one to ten in increments of one half.
And then he would leap on the victim, rape her, and then immediately leave after tying her up.
And when I asked him why he counted to ten, he stated that he was putting off the rape.
And I said: “I don’t understand.” And he said: “Rape is the least enjoyable part of the entire crime.” I asked him: “In that case, why didn’t you just turn around and leave at that point?” And he stated to me: “Pardon the pun, Mr Hazelwood, but after all I’d gone through to get there, it would have been a crime not to have raped her.”

‘Now the actual time he spent with the victim was less than two minutes.
He told us this was the least enjoyable part of the entire crime.
Which substantiates the fact that sexual assault services non-sexual needs – it’s power needs, it’s anger needs, and the need for
control
.’

This sounds an incredible statement.
After all, we know that some rapists spend hours with the victim, raping her again and again.
It can only be understood if we remember that ‘self-esteem’ crime is a fairly recent phenomenon.
It springs out of the desire for ‘recognition’, a craving to ‘become known’ – or at least, to feel that you
deserve
to become known.
When Hazelwood speaks of the need for control, he is not referring simply to control over the victim.
This type of criminal has a sense of inadequacy, of inferiority, which produces a burning feeling of resentment.
The crime relieves his anger and produces a sense of power, of being ‘worthwhile’, of being in control
of himself
.
As strange as it sounds, such crimes are an attempt to leave behind his immaturity and to grow up.
When rape is involved, sex is not the prime objective.
The prime objective is to feel himself the
master
– of himself and other people, and to hope that some of this feeling will stay with him.

A case that received nationwide publicity in America in 1985 is perhaps the classic illustration of the power syndrome.

On 19 May 1977 a twenty-year-old girl named Colleen Stan set out to hitchhike from Eugene, Oregon, to Westwood in Northern California, where she intended to help a friend celebrate her birthday.
At Red Bluff, a young couple in a blue Dodge offered her a lift; the woman had a baby on her knee, and her husband was a mild, bespectacled individual.
Half an hour or so later, in a filling-station restroom, Colleen had an odd intuition that she was in danger and ought to escape; unfortunately she ignored it.
When the young couple suggested turning off the main road to look at some ice caves in a national park, Colleen raised no objection.
When the car stopped in a lonely place, the man placed a knife to her throat, then handcuffed her hands behind her back.
He placed a strap round her head and tightened it under her jaw so she could not open her mouth.
Then he bound her, and placed a peculiar wooden box over her head.
It had obviously been purpose-made, and when it had been closed it left her in total darkness, hardly able to breathe.

Hours later, the man took her into the cellar of a house, and stripped her naked.
His motive was not rape.
Instead, he suspended her from the ceiling with leather straps, and whipped her.
Then the man and his wife had sexual intercourse beneath her feet.
Later, the ‘head box’ was again clamped round her neck, and she was placed in a large wooden box, about three feet high, and locked in for the night.
He also placed a ‘prickly object’ between her thighs.
It was designed to give her an electric shock, but failed to work.

The next day she was chained by her ankles to a rack, and given food.
When she showed no appetite, he hung her from the beam again and whipped her until she was unconscious.
Later the man made her use a bedpan, which he himself emptied.
Then the headbox was clamped on again and she was locked up in the box.

This went on for weeks.
When she became dirty and unkempt, he made her climb into the bath.
He raised her knees and held her head under water until she began to choke.
He did this over and over again, taking snapshots of the naked, choking girl in between.
After that, her female jailer tried to comb her hair, then gave up and snipped off the knots and tangles with scissors.

The man’s name was Cameron Hooker, and he had been born in 1953.
He was a shy, skinny boy who had no close friends.
When he left school he went to work as a labourer in a local lumbermill.
His only reading was pornography, particularly the kind that dealt with flagellation and bondage.
His daydream was to flog nude women who were tied with leather straps.
When he was nineteen, he met a plain, shy fifteen-year-old named Janice.
She was delighted and grateful to be asked out by this quiet, polite youth who drove his own car and treated her with respect.
So far she had fallen in love with boys who had ignored her or treated her badly; in fact, the worse they treated her, the more she adored them.
Cameron Hooker was marvellously different.
When he explained that he wanted to take her into the woods and hang her up from a tree, she was frightened but compliant.
It hurt her wrists, but he was so affectionate when he took her down that she felt it was worth it.
In 1975 they married, and she continued to submit to strange demands, which included tying her up, making her wear a rubber gas mask, and choking her until she became unconscious.
Finally, he told her of his dream of kidnapping a girl and using her as his ‘slave’.
Eventually, she agreed.
She wanted a baby, and longed to live a normal life; perhaps if Cameron had a ‘slave’, he would stop wanting to whip and throttle her.
It sounds incredible but, as we shall see later, such total compliance of a medium-dominance woman to a high-dominance male is by no means unusual.

That is how it came about that Colleen Stan was kidnapped on that May afternoon in 1977, and taken to their basement in Oak Street, Red Bluff, where she was to spend the next seven years.

After a month or so, Janice felt she could no longer stand it.
The idea of holding someone captive sickened her.
What was worse was that the captive was an attractive girl.
Even though her husband had agreed that there would be no sex between him and his ‘slave’, it was obvious that he was deriving from Colleen the same sexual satisfaction that he derived from tying up his wife.
Janice decided to weaken the ties with her husband.
She went to stay with a sister, and found herself a job in Silicon Valley.
She returned every weekend, but this brought about the situation she had been trying to avoid.
Left alone with his ‘slave’ for the whole week, Cameron Hooker gave way to temptation.
He made Colleen perform oral sex on him, reasoning that he was not going back on his bargain so long as there was no vaginal intercourse.
He also burned her with a heat lamp, administered electric shocks, and throttled her until she blacked out.
Six months after the kidnap, he started giving her small tasks, such as shelling walnuts or doing crochet.
The Hookers sold the results of her labours in the local flea market.

In January 1981, Hooker discovered an article in an ‘underground’ newspaper about a company of white slavers who made girls sign a slavery contract, and decided that Colleen should do the same.
And on 25 January Colleen was made to sign a long document declaring that she handed herself over, body and soul, to her Master, Michael Powers (alias Cameron Hooker).
She had to agree to obey every order cheerfully and instantly, to maintain her body parts in such a way that they should always be open to him – for example, she was never to wear panties, and to make sure that, when in the Master’s presence, she always kept her knees apart.
Finally, after protest, Colleen signed – and was told that her new name was Kay – or K – Powers.

Now she was allowed to come upstairs and help with household chores, but if Cameron came in and shouted ‘Attention’, she had to strip off her clothes and stand on tiptoe with her hands above her head.
Soon after this, Janice herself suggested to her husband that he should have sex with his slave.
Perhaps she would hoping that he would cite his original agreement and refuse; in fact, he promptly brought Colleen up from the basement, spreadeagled her naked on the bed, with a gag in her mouth and her wrists and ankles tied to the corners, then raped her.
Janice, meanwhile, rushed off to vomit in the bathroom.
After that, Colleen was put back in the box.

A point came when he decided that he would prefer to live in a more secluded place.
He gave notice of leaving to his landlord, and bought a trailer on some land beyond the city limits.
Nearby ran the Interstate 5 highway – which, in two years time, would earn itself a new and sinister significance as its name became associated with a random serial murderer known as the I.5 killer.
Underneath a large waterbed, Hooker constructed a kind of large rabbit hutch, which was to be Colleen’s home.
Colleen was moved in – blindfolded and handcuffed – one afternoon, and immediately confined in her new quarters.

Now life became a little freer.
She was let out for an hour or so every day to perform her ablutions and help with the chores.
She made no attempt to escape – Hooker had told her all kinds of horror stories about what happened to ‘Company’ slaves who tried to run away: having their fingers chopped off one by one was the least of them.
To remind her that she was his slave he periodically hung her from the ceiling and flogged her with a whip.
He also burned her breasts with lighted matches.
There were compensations.
In the autumn, Hooker went up into the mountains to cut wood on the land of the company that employed him; he took his slave with him.
He made her work; he also made her swim in a pond and run along a dirt road.
When she was ‘disobedient’, he tied her down on a kind of mediaeval rack and ‘stretched’ her.
This excited him so much that he stripped naked and made her perform oral sex.
On another occasion he raped her on the ‘rack’.
Janice was not told of these sexual episodes.
Soon after this, the slave was made to drink most of a bottle of wine, then to perform oral sex on Janice; it made her sick.