The universal scare around every social animal is death. No one knows who their environment incorporates and what goals and thought processes they have inside themselves. There are complex reasons conspiring behind the tendency to hurt someone physically or mentally. Throughout this blog, the distinct focus would be inclining towards the sociological and psychological dispositions of a serial killer.
The prospect of ‘motives’ in the context of serial killers is extremely necessary to focus upon. From the time a homicide takes place till the time the criminal has been found, the idea of finding the motive behind the crime also follows. A research study by Morrall (2006) shows that there are many kinds of motives behind a crime, such as lust, love, loathing, loot, lack of conscience, personal revenge, and being wrong.
The general idea of these motives is to display the ‘cause’ of a crime, however, to avoid any kind of crime to happen, the culprit’s mind regarding committing the crime needs to be learned so people can be aware.
In the context of social psychology and criminology, the modern phenomena of serial killing have been the focal point of research. Serial killing is known to be the rarest manifestation of murder. It can be called serial killing when the murder of more than three people is done by an individual and the three people are known/unknown to that particular individual.
As per Kruger (2009), in her research work, it has been mentioned that serial killers grow up or have been a part of a broken family. Most of them have also faced abandonment in their youth by their family or close friends. Generally, the preference of their first victim usually depends on their sexual preferences. For instance, Ted Bundy had killed and raped 36 women. Along with that, Katie Kruger (2009) mentioned in her work how serial killing depends on how much time they take to finish their education. According to Holmes and DeBurger (1985), one of the major factors which have been noticed in serial killers is the neglect and abuse they face during their childhood from their parents, which completely relates to their change in behavior & actions in the future. Additionally, the other factors mentioned by other experts in the work of Kruger (2009) could be depression and schizophrenia leading to their tendency of serial killing (Gacono, 1991). Both of the above-mentioned factors have shown to be interrelated by Whitman and Akutagawa (2003). They both focused on the mother-child relationship of serial killers; basically, if the mother abused a kid in any manner, it led to built-up aggression in their minds.
Serial killers have been victims of abuse (sexual, mental, physical) in their childhood or in other stages of their life. This directly relates to the manner in which they kill their victims. If the serial killer has faced more physical abuse in their childhood, they are more likely to hurt others in the same way. However, it is not necessary for every single serial killer to have all the characteristics mentioned by the researchers.
However, a demonstration of various fields with respect to profiling helps in the advancement of society in the terrain of crimes. The exploration for this topic has been done through various studies to make people understand how an individuals’ life can get affected in such an inadequate manner. One can never know when a person starts developing perceptions like this. Wrongdoing done on a person in their youth can exceptionally influence their adulthood choices and activities which can frequently lead to serial killing.
That is why it is important to understand that the more responsively society acts towards any kind of bizarre behavior in their surroundings/neighborhood, the more everyone will be able to live fearlessly.
Muskaan Kashyap
