Running Head: SERIAL MURDERERS 6
Types of Serial Murderers
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Institution of Affiliation
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Introduction
A Serial murderer is also termed as serial killing which is the unlawful homicide of more than two people, which may be carried out over some time. Whenever a person kills several victims especially of a particular type over a period of time, with varying intervals in between apparently without any motive except for selfish and sexual or sadistic gratification is known to be a serial killer or murderer. Many times he is a male and more often the culprit is an individual psychiatric entity. The serial killers are all over the world. Some of the serial killers are more mad than others thereby causing more havoc and harm to innocent and vulnerable victims.
Types of Serial Murderers
There are four types of serial murderers according to many scholars, as discussed below;
visionary murderers
mission-oriented killers
Hedonistic murderers
power control killers
Visionary killers
Also known as psychotic killers and this is the rarest of all the four types of murders. They suffer from one sort of psychosis that makes them hallucinate. They are compelled by voices or visions to compel them to kill certain kinds of people. Many times they blame the devil from their acts. They are considered to be insane. Whenever they hear the visions and hear certain noises telling them to take some actions that are usually violent thus ending up in killing others (Philbin, 2009). The Psychotic killers always attribute the sources of the hallucinations and dreams to God or an evil power like Satan. Because of their belief on a supreme being, they argue that they take orders directly as told. Same as God gave the commandments to be followed in the Bible, so they end up obeying what they see in their visions. A vivid example is Herbert Mullin who killed thirteen people in four months period and when was asked he said that he got orders from God and as God commands obedience to His commandments he had to obey as well.
Mission Oriented murderers.
This, unlike the visionary they don’t hallucinate, they feel the need or a duty to kill certain people or class of people. Like a religious or racial groups or better still prostitutes. They tend to seek revenge by eliminating a specific person. They only target a kind of particular group of people in society and terms of victim profile it is easy to determine and predict the next person to be executed. More often the killers target prostitutes and even the physically challenged in society. Because they believe that they are corrupted and sinful and a disgrace to society. An example in East Africa Uganda was a tyrant Idi Amin who killed by drowning the physically challenged in Lake Victoria. And another example is Joseph Paul Franklin who killed twelve young Africans males who had white girlfriends. In all these examples the serial killers thought that by eliminating the less fortunate in society was a way to clean up society but forgot about the sanctity of life in itself. And by killing the Africans Franklin thought it was a way to show that they deserved not to have white girlfriends (Mark, 2005).
Hedonistic Killers
This type of killers murder someone just for pleasure and satisfy themselves. This killer can also be described as lust or thriller killers. He receives pleasure from the act and has eroticized the whole experience. They torture their victims and mutilate their bodies. They may be organized and disorganized at the same time as they pick a victim randomly accessible at that time. The lust- oriented killers sexually violate the victim after the murder. In addition to that, the thrill oriented murders’ main motivation is the excitement derived from the killing. They always want their victim to be aware of the whole ordeal they face. Therefore they severely torture the victims to cry and scream to beg for mercy. Therefore they subject the victim to a heinous act rather than the actual kill in itself. Another category of the hedonistic murderers is comfort-oriented or the gain in financial matters. These ones are focused to gaining financial interests especially money. They are indeed materialistic. Especially women serial killers belong to this category. An example is an American prostitute Aileen Wuornos as she worked as a highway prostitute; however, as she wanted to gain more money she started killing her customers because the money she got wasn’t enough. Worldly material is always the motivation of this killer. And because the killer doesn’t have an emotional attachment towards the victim, she uses him as a tool to reach his goal and satisfy his underlying motivation. Jeffrey Dahmer is known to be one of the hedonistic killers in history from the years 1978 to 1991 as he murdered seventeen boys and raped many as well as cannibalizing quite a number.
Power or control oriented Killers
This type of killers are motivated by the sense that they have power over the victim. And the idea of having absolute power over the victim satisfy them most. And they can always think of the best way to allow the victim to live or die how and when exactly. They keep on fantasizing about having absolute power and total control over their victims instead of killing them. By so doing them obviously make the victim to feel prone and susceptible to them and believe that they are the only authority that can let the victim alive or even kill them. By so doing the killer is thrilled and excited as the victim may be active in his or her mercies and the act makes them happier to commit the act.
The most Violent Serial Killer
All of the four types are all bad because terminating a human life isn’t good at all. But the most violent mission-oriented killer, this is because it entails a specific kind of people. In case one is among those that are to be killed they live in fear and completely detached from the members of the society. As the mission-oriented ones seek revenge to the victims, he may be having revenge on innocent young ones who didn’t even know the issues at hand. By the elimination of those people in society makes others live in fear all through. Moreover, they go hand in hand with the Hedonistic killers because of the killers’ rape, cannibalize and do dismemberment on the victims. By torturing the victim and subjecting the victim to the whole ordeal and the killer finding excitement from the same heinous acts.
The Least Violent type of serial killer.
The least violent killer is the visionary one. This is because before this killer goes forth to start killing the victim who may not be aware, he must have heard a vision and hallucinated on the same. It therefore, means that without then having the vision he is not violent and does not kill anyone. Thus he remains peaceful as long as he doesn’t have the hallucinations. They are relatively not in the act because of their nature, once not impressed by the Supreme Being they remain peaceful and don’t kill the victims. No type of killing is lesser violent though because the bottom-line life is lost. In spite of the psychotic killer being lesser violent still, if he isn’t restrained may cause a lot of havoc.
Conclusion
From the above discourse, it’s clear that the serial murderers are all violent and negate life. Since sacred life is sacred no one is expected to kill the other and from all the killers above no one is better off, the victims don’t deserve to be killed as well. So it’s a matter of knowing the sanctity of life and see the giver of life and because He is the only one supposed to terminate anyone’s life especially by natural cause and not ended by a fellow human. If the serial killers are not known earlier then they can be so dangerous to the family, community and the society at large, the nation will as well suffer if the head of state advocates and does not give proper warning to the citizens to value each other as a brother. From the brotherhood encouraged by the head of state and the importance of co-existing that no one will be at the extremes and all members of the nation will be at peace and living not in fear from each other. Due diligence must be followed, and the detectives concerned to maintain law and order should be upbeat and single out those endangering other innocent victims.
References
Hills, A. Mark &Morton J. Robert. Serial Murder multi-disciplinary perspectives for investigators, San Antonio/ Texas, 2005
Lester, D Serial Killers: The insatiable passion. Philadelphia: The Charles Press 1995.
Simons, L. Cassandra. The Justice professional. Anti-social personality Disorder in Serial Killers: The Thrill Of The Kill 2001 Pages 3465-346
Michael Philbin, Tom Philbin, Killer Book of Serial Killers: Incredible Stories, Facts, and Trivia from the World of Serial Killers, Sourcebooks, 2009.
Richard N. Kocsis Serial Murder and the Psychology of Violent Crimes, Springer Science & Business Media, 2008
Sears DJ. To Kill Again; The motivation and development of Serial Murder. Wilmington: DE Scholarly Resources Book; 1991
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