Motives of the Serial Killer

Abstract

For many people, social scientists and laymen alike, serial murderers have been summarily relegated to the realm of evil. The very existence of serial killers¹ turns up the rhetoric on evil. Why would someone be motivated to kill repeatedly if not as a manifestation of some evil force? However, just as we observe the behaviors of most serial killers to be “crazy”—yet not most killers themselves- we find ourselves in a similar position with respect to the evil of their deeds. While we may describe the series of killings as evil, the perpetrators are of decidedly human substance. Their “evil” is borne of their willful intent to destroy human life. Serial murderers do not inhabit a kind of “otherness,” but rather reveal extreme aspects of our very selves. My own experiences with them have taught me to accept them -but not what they do-unconditionally, as human beings. This permits a window into their killings; and access to a comprehensibility with regard to their motives.

The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in hell: Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav’n. Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. I, 1.247