Characteristics Of Serial Killers

Looking into the minds of serial killers is a tricky task, a couple questions to start with are questions such as what is a Serial killer? According to the FBI’s version of the definition, a serial killer is conventionally defined as a person who murders three or more people in a period of over a month, with “cooling down” time between murders. “For a serial killer, the murders must be separate events, which are most often driven by a psychological thrill or pleasure. Serial killers often lack empathy and guilt, and most often become egocentric individuals; these characteristics classify certain serial killers as psychopaths.” (crime museum editors, 2017). Xxx explain quote Even though the definition seems straightforward, multiple others

Often a characteristic in serial killers is directly correlated to a mix of nature and nurture rather than one or the other. Another thing that divides serial killers from other murderers is the motives behind their actions. Most murders committed are done by people that know the victim, and had some motive or reason behind killing them, serial killers usually have no direct motive other than a want for power and control over the victim. This is why serial killers can kill so many without being caught and the police finding only strands of evidence behind them on multiple different

Her mother abandoned her and her brother Keith, her father killed himself in prison after being convicted of child molesting. Being raised by her alcoholic grandmother, and abusive grandfather, she was beaten and raped, and conceived at age thirteen after being assaulted by a stranger and subsequently giving birth. After Aileen gave birth she gave the baby up for adoption. When she was fifteen she was kicked out of her house and worked as a prostitute on a Florida highway. The first person she killed was a man named Richard Mallory; he was found in a junkyard with five more men’s bodies (College). Aileen Wuornos was found out and convicted with the death sentence; even if her sanity was questioned she was executed by lethal injection in 2002. On the psychological side of the scale, both Nature and Nurture are present in this case. Aileen had a very bad upbringing being abused, and abandoned which in tow would seem as if the nurture of her past drove her over the edge to commit those murders, but on the biological side of things her dad had some sort of problems as well, her father being a child molester that it could be argued that he gave her traits of being a molester, through heredity. This being said, in this case both nature and nurture had some play in part to why Aileen Wuornos became a serial