David Berkowitz who was a serial killer, exclaimed that, “I love to kill.” Robert W. Dolan, the author of Serial Murder, explains that there are a total of seven different phases that a serial killer will do which begins with the aura phase and ends with the depression phase. After the depression phase has taken place all the phases will repeat once again if the murderer is not caught before they can get to the next phase. However, in the ‘The Landlady” by Roald Dahl, the killer landlady was not caught and these steps were repeated and unfortunately, Billy was her next victim. In the other hand, not all the phases were shown throughout the story. However, the phases that were shown clarifies that the landlady is a serial killer.
To begin, one
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The totem phase is where a murderer would have “preserved” the victims remains to be kept as a trophy (Dolan 54). Why a killer may do this because, the “killer” might “try to prolong the feeling of power” to postpone the depression phase even though it will come eventually (Dolan 54). The depression phase is when the killer will grieve over what they have done and sometimes might even turn him/herself in at this point. If they are not caught before the end of the depression phase then they will end up back on the trolling phase which is the phase where you look for a victim. The landlady was never caught so she went back to the trolling phase. After finding her victim Billy and killing him, she will stuff him like she did with her pets. When Billy first saw the bed and breakfast he saw a “parrot” that looked like “it was alive” (Dahl 5). The landlady did such a good job stuffing the pets that they don’t “look in the least bit dead” (Dahl 5). The ladyland also mentions that the only two other residents are still staying there. The only way for “both” of the two other residents to still be there after being a time gap between Billy and the other two is if she killed them and stuffed them like she did with her pets (Dahl 4). All serial killer try so hard to postpone the depression phase by keeping a trophy of their victim and the landlady's way was to stuff them. The landlady goes through the