The Brain Behind The Facade Of Serial Killers

Charlie Merida

Mrs.Crafft

English

March 20, 2023

The Brain Behind the Facade of Serial Killers

“In July 1991, Milwaukee Police Officers made a gruesome discovery when they entered

Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment — and found body parts cooking on the stove and human heads in the refrigerator” (“Key Players in the Jeffrey Dahmer Case: Where Are They Now?”). The

Federal Bureau of Investigations’ definition of a serial killer is someone that has made two or more separate murders. The FBI statistics show that there are roughly around 15,000 murders per year and approximately 150 serial killers per year (“15 Gruesome Serial Killer Facts You

Shouldn’t Miss in 2021”). Most serial killers become such because of their past; mainly their childhood. Some serial

Serial killers or murderers are one of the most complex occurrences that there are. More research needs to be done to determine what separates one serial killer from another.

Some serial killers are more controlled than others in what they do and how they do it.

Some serial killers premeditate their murders, down to the clean up, while others can go out and kill without any planning or forethought. They just go with their intrusive thoughts and have nothing else to say about what they have done. Pinpointing the exact time, how, when, where, then the decision to kill is taken. The decision may not be found or linked to just one factor, or one environmental cause or causes. The gene mutation can both affect how and why someone can become a serial killer.

Is the result of human nature or an environment what causes someone to become a serial killer? Some factors in serial killers are “unstable home life, death of parents, divorce, corporal punishments, sexual abuse, and other negative events” (“Serial murderers and their early childhood environments”). Factors like unstable home life, divorce, death of parents,

Serial killers that have experienced death at an early age in childhood can suffer from fractured identity syndrome. A serial killer who has had trauma in adolescent years can cause a much more visible fracture in their personality. Following incidents after the trauma can cause the person to explode with their emotion or possibly irrational and harmful things to themselves or others. Given the effect of childhood and the abuse as well as everything that has happened it is implied that something within the person will affect their mental state.

Not all serial killers have the same mental makeup. That is why it is so hard to pinpoint what a serial killer will do next and if and when they will commit another murder. Most likely, when a killer is questioned they will not admit who their victims are or why they have killed them, to add a layer of uncertainty. Some serial killers get pleasure out of not giving closure to the families of their victims. They will not disclose any details about their crime or describe it in a gruesome way to enjoy seeing others suffer long after the murder has been done. Other serial killers will do the opposite. They will enjoy giving explicit details about the murder and