The Development of Serial Killers: A Grounded Theory Study: Part 1

This podcast discusses the development of serial killers in depth; etiologies; theories; and the analysis of three notorious serial killers

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Episode Transcript

(00:07):
A composition of a killer fans.Doctor Cassidy here, thank you for joining
me today. We're going to betalking about the development of serial killers from
a grounded theory study that I found. As always, when we're talking about
diagnoses on this show, on thispodcast, it's not meant to be a

(00:31):
clinical diagnosis, so please remember thatas we discuss now today again we're going
to talk about a master's thesis thatI stumbled upon in my research and I
really like it. It's by MayhairSharma and it talks about, of course,
the development of serial killers. Excuseme. Grounded theory is a systematic

(00:55):
methodology that has been largely applied toqualitative research. And qualitative research is any
research that deals with number. Noexcuse me. Qualitative research is the one
that deals with like, if youinterview people, it's a lot of words,
you have coding. Social scientists reallyuse this more than they use quantitative.

(01:22):
Quantitative is data like like numbers andstatistics, those type of things,
so you can have mixed methods.My dissertation was a mixed methods where I
had qualitative and quantitative. But groundedtheory involves the application of inductive reasoning and

(01:48):
Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoningwhich is a general principle derived from a
body of observations. It consists ofmaking broad generalizations based on specific observation.
And really, when you're talking aboutserial killers, we are talking about a
very broad generalization because there's no it'snot black and white. Everyone's different.

(02:12):
They may be called serial killers justbecause they have the same they've killed multiple
people, two or more people overthe course of time, with the cooling
off period in between. But there'salways a little something different, you know,
And that's why we look at thingslike that's why we look at their

(02:36):
childhood. We interview teachers, weinterview classmates, anyone that has anything to
do with these people, and becausewe want to know what the trigger was,
and we're trying to figure that out. And again, it's different for
a lot of people. So anabstract of this is we typically think of

(02:58):
a serial killer as being quite maleand evil, monster with an unusual appearance,
having dysfunctional relationships, engaging in animaltorture, or being sexually or physically
abused in childhood, and therefore,sadistically killing for sexual gratification should really be
challenged. That's the premise of thisstudy, Layton and Scraphic suggested that researchers

(03:28):
should approach with open minds while searchingfor knowledge relating to this phenomenon, without
preconceived assumptions or hypothesis. Further,every serial killer's drive to kill multiple victims
may be unique, dependent on hisor her history and experiences, and it
is therefore difficult to quantify the currentstudy. This study here set out to

(03:50):
compare detailed and descriptive accounts from thelives of three serial killers, Gary Ridgeway,
Ted Bundy, and Richard Ramirez.And you'll recall that the early my
first few podcasts covered like the topfive serial killers, and I have a
podcast on Gary Ridgeway, there's oneon Ted Bundy, there's several on Ted

(04:13):
Bundy, and then Richard Ramirez.And and I think that he chose three
really good examples of the differences inserial killers. But when you're when you're
doing a research study, you wantto look at the material without assumption or
bias, or you know, youhave a hypothesis of how these may turn

(04:38):
out, but you want to goin with an open mind, forgetting that
you have, you know, priorknowledge of each of these people and seeing
what it is that that he canfind from from this research. So the

(04:59):
majority of the data that he usedwas taken from books written about each serial
killer. So it's definitely a qualitativestudy for sure, because we're talking about
a lot of examples of descriptions.There's a lot of descriptions. So the

(05:23):
following factors he identified were stress andtrauma. These are codes. The codes
that he used stress and trauma,power, control, need for belonging,
loneliness, low self esteem, sexuallysadistic, and violent pornography, the American
culture, peer influences, satanism,parent relationship patterns, and neuro developmental complications.

(05:46):
And each of these three men fallinto or have these adjectives as pretty
accurate descriptors. Ted, of course, liked power and control. He was
not. He did not have aneed for belonging or loneliness because he had

(06:09):
relationships outside of his serial killing.I mean, he had long term girlfriend,
lived with her, she had adaughter. They were safe, although
he had originally planned to kill them, but he he ended up not doing
that, of course, And Iwould say he definitely was sexually sadistic,
but there's no report that he watchedviolent pornography. Now, Gary Ridgway,

(06:31):
he did watch violent pornography, andhe had a lot of stress and trauma.
Definitely had a need for belonging.He wanted power and control. He
was married a couple of times,but very low self esteem and that was
because of his mother. I mean, his mother was really awful to him.
So he had that typical early childhoodthat we associate with serial killers.

(06:57):
And again that is a realization becauseTed Bundy supposedly had a really good childhood
and his mother supported him all throughthe trial, and you know, never
thought he was guilty, So it'sit's unusual. You know, Richard Ramirez,

(07:17):
he I remember him because specifically becausehe was somewhat handsome. I mean,
I think some people would say itwas handsome for sure, because he
was one When they were doing thetrial and they were doing any motion,
women just went crazy over him andthey would storm the courthouse trying to get

(07:41):
a seat so that they could geta glimpse of him, and they were
they had signs outside. I meanit was if you look at this stuff
on it, there's videos and soforth. He up until he died in
prison, he received all kinds ofyou know, love letters from women on
over the country. I don't knowwhat the psychology of that is. I

(08:05):
think that's interesting, and that's maybethat's a subject that we talk about another
day because there's so much to it. Why would anybody want to start a
relationship with someone convicted of serial killingor murder or a violent offense knowing they're
never going to get to be withthem on the outside, And maybe that's
part of it. Maybe it's thatthey feel safe because they know they're not

(08:28):
going to be alone with that person. I don't know what it is.
I don't know, but certainly interesting. All right. So, there have
been numerous television shows like The Fall, movies like The Perfume, and songs
like The Ripper by Judas Priest thatprovide evidence of a widespread fascination with serial

(08:50):
killers. In serial killers have operatedthroughout history and around the world, and
we can go back as far inthe United States dates as far as I
think eighteen o seven. I maybe off on that a little bit,
but I know I did a podcastabout it not too long ago, but
as far as a written history ofserial killers, but as far as worldwide.

(09:16):
Newton said that Locusta was identified hewas a professional killer from Rome,
best known for poisoning Emperor Claudius andhis son Britannicus and six other unnamed victims
in the first century CE. Andthat so he's technically the first documented serial
killer in the world. Newton alsodescribed the case of Gills Deray, a

(09:41):
leader in the French army. Hewas a companion in arms of Joan Arc.
Joan of Arc and a confessed serialkiller best known for killing a large
number of victims which happened to beone hundred children in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. So quite a history ofpeople. I would say that there's been

(10:01):
serial killers since the beginning of time, the beginning of mankind. Right again.
Documented serial murder cases date back tothe eighteen hundreds, but one of
the first. One of America's firstand most famous serial killers was H.
H. Holmes, and there's apodcast on him as well. Reports confirmed

(10:22):
that he killed at least twelve people, including men, women, and children,
during the eighteen hundreds, although heclaimed to have killed twenty seven.
Very common for some serial killers totry to inflate their number of kills their
body count because they want to becomeinfamous. They want to be this monster

(10:45):
that everyone thinks that they are,and of course they are, to be
able to do this to people isvery sick. So we don't know.
There's not enough proof to prove thathe killed twenty seven, but as time
goes on, sometimes they add.You'll see that in many cases they'll add
different victims when they're able to tiethose victims to the serial killer. And

(11:11):
usually that's because we have advancements inscience DNA, new information comes to light,
all kinds of new evidence may showup. Someone who knows about it
may decide to speak out after thirtyyears. There's just a lot of reasons.
But he was it was confirmed thathe killed twelve people. And then

(11:41):
one of his questions that he wantedto ask, there were two questions in
this study that he wanted to ask, what leads serial killers to commit murders?
And what are the underlying motivations ofa serial killer? And again using
ground to theory, he chose thosethree serial killers to analyze. And there

(12:05):
are there's a lot of typologies thathe also discusses, which I find interesting.
I have an opinion on them,and I'll share that opinion when I
get, you know, a littlecloser to the end of this. So
there's a plethora of ideological theories andtypologies to determine the making of a serial

(12:28):
killer. Criminologists, law enforcement officials, mental health professionals, and social scientists
have attempted to include various criteria forthe underlying motivations of serial killers. The
aim of classifying serial killers into thesetypologies is to gain information to furtherish's law
enforcement agencies in profiling, investigating,and eventually apprehending violent serial murders. The

(12:52):
shows that we watch on TV whenwhen you see the police investigators and they're
sitting in a room and they've gotall this information on a board and they're
talking about the things that they knowabout this person. That's what they're doing.
They're profiling that person. What isit that they do that's their mark

(13:13):
and what other crimes can we linkto this if that's how that's one of
the ways that they, you know, caught bt K. They not only
did he confess, you know,and his egos what got him caught,
really, but he had the samemo in every case. He wouldn't rape

(13:37):
a person or he wouldn't rape avictim, but he was sexually charged by
that you know, binding and torturingthem so that he would leave semen on
the scene. And of course theydidn't have he wasn't in the in the
books, so they could run theDNA on that all day long, but

(13:58):
it didn't match anybody. So,you know, profiling and don't do that.
Mellikates with us today. Profiling isjust another way. It's a tool
that the police officers use, departmentsused to narrow down the field. There's

(14:22):
also organized and disorganized killers special agentsfrom the FBI Training Academy at Quantico.
Remember, FBI is who really setthese words, the definitions that we use
today. All of the things reallythat we know about serial killers stems from
the FBI and the studies that theydid back in the seventies. So they

(14:43):
developed a system designed to categorize serialkillers as organized or disorganized based on information
from the crime scene. Wrestler suggested. Wrestler and others suggested that facets of
the criminal's personality are evident in hisoffense, like a fingerprint, the crime
scene can be used to aid inidentifying in identifying the murderer. They propose

(15:07):
that by classifying the crime scene asorganized or disorganized, and offender's characteristics and
behavior can be identified, so theorganized killer. According to this model,
the organized defenders lead methodical lives thatare also replicated in the way they commit
crimes. They are likely to killafter experiencing some sort of trigger coming from

(15:30):
an intimate relationship, finances, oremployment problems. These offenders, it is
claimed, are likely to have skilledemployment, be between an average of high
level of intelligence, and be sociallyproficient, which is very different from our
stereotype of a serial killer. Youknow, we typically seem to think that

(15:52):
they are antisocial, they have somesocial disorder like that, intelligent, although
I will say statistically it shows thatserial killers are usually more intelligent than the
average person. But it's the stereotypesthat we, you know, kind of

(16:14):
shapes our opinions, and it's interestingto find out that we are wrong a
lot of the time. So organizeddefenders are said to premeditate defenses, bring
weapons to commit the murder, andtake them away after committing the murder.
Often they restrain victims and reflect alevel of control in the situation. So

(16:36):
another great example, I think isa better example than the three that he
chose would be BTK because he wasvery methodical. He didn't make mistakes.
He planned everything out and made surethat he had thought of everything, and
when the crimes once he started,he followed it out to the end.

(17:03):
You know, there was only oneperson who escaped BTK, and that's because
he was so very organized. Youknow, he had thought about everything and
was very good about not leaving alot of evidence. And some would say
that Willie left seamen, that's prettybig. Not when you don't have your

(17:23):
DNA in the system. You know, it took them years, I mean
think about it, thirty odd yearsto catch him, and he did have
a cooling off period of oh,I don't know, I can't remember ten
or fifteen years where he didn't killanybody. So he had a pretty substantial
cooling off period, and that waswhen he was raising his family. He
had young children and did not haveopportunity like he did when they were younger

(17:48):
or before they were even born.So he picked back up when his children
became more independent, maybe went tocollege, that kind of thing. All
right, So, mostly organized defenderscrime scenes are controlled as a consequence of
them being socially skilled and being ableto handle impersonal interactions. Therefore, organized

(18:12):
offenders are more likely to communicate oruse a verbal approach with their potential victims
before the violence. They choose theirvictims based on common characteristics such as age,
physical appearance, gender, hairstyle,or hair color. And that is
common, very common in people whoare who have had bad childhoods, and

(18:34):
they have a double resentment of theirmother. So if their mother had dark
hair and was slim and dark skinned, their victims typically look that way.
And so they go into this almostlike a psychosis. They go into and
in their mind they're really killing theirmother and torturing their mother, but it

(18:57):
in fact is another victor them andwe see that quite a bit as well.
Borguson and Koonel added that most organizeddefenders live with a partner, are
sexually competent, follow media reports oftheir crimes, and are mostly in a
controlled and stable mood, and thatright there is one hundred percent BTK.

(19:18):
It's also Ted Bundy. You know, they both had partners, they were
sexually competent, they followed the media, they wanted media coverage, they encouraged
media coverage, and they were controlledand stable. I think the worst I
think that the one time that TedBundy was probably not quote unquote stable during

(19:44):
a kill. Was his last killwhere he went into the sorority house and
he just killed killed those girls intheir beds. He wasn't careful about that.
He was methodical, of course,but uh, you know, he
he had an opportunity and he wastrying to kill before he got caught again

(20:07):
because you know, he had escaped, he had been in jail, he
had escaped at the courthouse, andso he knew his time was limited.
He knew he was going to getcaught again, so he wanted to commit
those crimes before he got you know, locked up. Now, the disorganized
killer, in contrast to the organizedkiller's methodical and controlled crime scenes, they

(20:36):
show there's there's chaos and little premeditation, so I call them opportunistic. The
disorganization may include evidence such as semen, blood fingerprints, or the murder weapon.
Disorganized defenders are likely to be sociallyincompetent, have below average intelligence,
and often display the body in openusing minimal restraints. These offenders killed opportunistically

(21:00):
and live close to the crime scene. We see that in cases like the
juvenile killers who would just go nextdoor to their neighbor's house when they knew
that the car was missing. Oneof the cars was missing, so that
person that was in there was alone, and they took that opportunity to go
in and kill them. We seethat Craig Pricet did that. Looked at

(21:22):
his neighbor's window and she was lyingon the floor asleep, and he went
in and killed her, knowing thather brother, who had been living there,
was gone to work. So here'san opportunity, I'm going to take
it. There's a lack of healthyintimate relationships which increased the chances of potential

(21:44):
sexual or sadistic acts as part ofthe murders. Usually, if they have
these social you know, anti socialbehaviors, they don't have girlfriends or boyfriends,
they don't have a lot of friendsperiod, so they are very sexually
frustrated. There's quite a few thatare sexually frustrated for one reason or another,

(22:06):
and a lot of it's because theywere abused as children, sexually abused
as children and are still feeling likethat abused child even as an adult,
just because they never really get that, they never really get past that.
So when they get a trigger,they get an opportunity, they take it.
There is a classification of a mixedkiller and the mixed defender of classification

(22:29):
was introduced by Douglas and others inninety two to classify those offenders who cannot
be easily identified as organized or disorganized. A serial killer falling into this classification
is said to have both organized anddisorganized characteristics. Again, this is why
you can't put serial killers in abox. People are different, and so

(22:53):
you have some characteristics in organized andsome characteristics in disorganized, and you call
it men. A serial killer fallingunder this classification, his type of offense
may involve more than one offender,and even though there must have been some
sort of planning, there may beunforeseen events. In other words, they

(23:14):
just didn't think it all through.This might include a victim resisting or the
offender escalating into a different pattern ofviolence. It suggested that the crime may
be messy, with extreme violence committedagainst the victim. The offender might leave
the victim's body poorly covered, andmay be young and or involved in drugs
or alcohol. However, numerous doubtsand questions have been raised on the effectiveness

(23:37):
and the validity of the organized,disorganized, and mixed typology. That is
simply because, as I said,you can't put these people in a box.
Every human being is different. Youcan do a broad characterization, you
can have a broad definition of whatthis is. You know, we've already
classified them as serial killers because they'vekilled two or more people over the course

(24:00):
of time with a cooling off periodin between. That's a very broad definition
of a serial killer. And thenwhat these people are trying to do is
just narrow that down to where wecan put all serial killers in these three
one of these three categories. Itdoesn't always work. It just doesn't always

(24:22):
work. So homes and de Burgerand eighty eight classified serial killers according to
the presumed psychological reinforcers and intrinsic motivationsfor their crimes. You know, what's
happening on the inside that's making themwant to do this, what's that intrinsic
desire that they have. One ofthose types is visionary. These offenders believe

(24:47):
in their psychotic symptoms kill as aresult of obeying auditory and or visual hallucinations
and or delusions. There's mission orientedtype. These offenders believe that if their
sole duty to help the world getrid of certain populations. For example,
prostitutes, immigrants, people of certainethnicities, age groups, gender, and

(25:11):
so on. Gary Ridgeway mostly killedprostitutes. They were available to him.
He frequented prostitutes. They were aneasy target and he felt like, you
know, he took his anger fromhis towards his mother out on his victims,

(25:34):
so he could fall into that missionoriented type as well. There's hedonistic,
which is these type of offenders aredivided into two categories. The lust
killer and these types of killers attainedsome sort of sexual gratification. However,
their murders do not always evolve traditionalsexual acts, and such a killer can
gain pleasure from committing the murder itself. Other ways to obtain sexual pleasure are

(25:59):
from mastering, cannibalizing, dismembering,indulging, indulging in necrophilia, and other
such acts after killing the victim.Of course, the most notorious serial killers
are the ones that do this typeof thing. Uh, Jeffrey Dahmer,
we know that he was a cannibal, We know that he dismembered, We

(26:21):
know that he indulged in necrophilia.Ted Bundy he was into necrophilia and he
really was. I think he andJeffrey Dahmer are the exceptions to many of

(26:44):
these rules, because I think JeffreyDahmer actually had some bit of remorse.
I think he did have some empathy. I don't think any of the others
have empathy, don't. I don'tthink there's anything in their records that indicate
that they have empathy. But Ido think that Jeffrey Dahmer was empathic,
and he even in jail, showedquite a bit of remorse, and he

(27:10):
became saved in prison. A lotof people do, and that's a good
thing, but certainly exceptions to therules. Right, there's a thrill killer,
and they're motivated by feeling the excitementduring the murders. That's why their
murders involve extended periods of torture andsadism. Once they realize the victim is
dead, the offender loses interest inthe murder, and that would be a

(27:33):
good example, would be BTK.Then there's another type, power control oriented
type. These offenders derive pleasure fromexerting their power, control, and dominance
over their victims. Their primary motiveis not sexual in nature, but to
make their victims feel helpless and thusmake themselves feel in control. Of the
situation. Richard Ramirez did that,Gary did that. I think Bundy to

(28:02):
a degree did that. He didhe was very sexually motivated, but he
also enjoyed the power that he wasso clever in being able to talk women
into helping him that I think thatwas a lot of the chase for him,
was a lot of the enjoyment.You know, he really enjoyed tricking

(28:26):
them and getting them in the carand tying them up and getting them to
another location. And he enjoyed thatentire process. And even after they died,
we know that he would dig themup and do sex acts with the
bodies. So he had a prettyextremem I think Cancer and others suggested that

(28:59):
the abovement topology and tells the organized, organized, and disorganized topology in the
form of a continuum, with thevisionary killer reflecting the disorganized, the end
of the spectrum anxious, the crimescene being disarrayed, and the power controlled
oriented killer reflecting the organized end incontrol planning the crime in advance. So

(29:21):
there's a ton of topologies and there'sa I mean, we talked about a
lot of information and a short amountof time, so we're gonna have to
we're gonna have to break this upinto a couple of podcasts, so this
one we're gonna end at this pointand we will pick back up on the
ideological theories of serial killing. Andagain that's another in depth look at you

(29:48):
know, serial killers being put intointo two different groups, so there's always
depending on if you're working in psychology, if you're looking at neurodevelopment, and
everybody has their own categories that theywant to put these people in. So
we're going to look at some moreof those, so be sure and look

(30:08):
for that. I'll probably get thatreleased a little bit later this weekend,
and we may even have to Thisis a This study is over one hundred
pages and while we don't I mean, there's a lot of we don't we
won't cover because it's repetitive. Youknow, there's a lot of repetitive information

(30:30):
in here. But it may takeus even three to get through it all.
But right now we're gonna we're gonnastick with starting a second session and
that's going to be on the ideologicaltheories of serial killing. As always,
if you have thoughts or questions,be sure and reach out to me at
doctor Kimberly Cassidy eighty nine at gmaildot com and have a wonderful day.

(30:56):
Thanks for joining me.