One might define a serial killer as someone who kills randomly or kills and hides a body. Faqeer Muhammad describes a serial killer as “someone who has murdered at least three people in less than a month, with at least some ‘cooling-off’ time between each murder,” and a PDF written by the FBI describes a serial killer’s actions as “The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events.” Both state that serial killers kill two or more people in different ways, locations, and sometimes with different motives. Some serial killers are more organized with their plans and manipulate their victims into thinking that they care about them. Whereas unorganized killers just kill, don't hide anything, and kill without …show more content…
One such theory suggests certain mental disorders cause people to kill as they lose touch with reality (Mohammad). Four mental health-related motivational categories given to serial killers are visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power/control-oriented (Yadav). A certain motivation that serial killers use is a visionary motive meaning that they lose touch with reality and their delusions bring them to murder someone as they believe that it's God or the devil telling them what to do (Yadav). The FBI website article “serial murder” stated that serial killers aren’t usually limited to different things like sex, age, race, or religion. It's stating how driven the serial killers can get for their own reasons and motives. Another motive that they have is mission-oriented. Meaning that they are driven to kill by “Mission-oriented serial killers target people they deem undesirable and feel it’s their justifiable duty to eliminate them. These victims are usually from different race, religion or sexual orientation.” The mission-oriented serial killers are motivated by other people that don’t fit in anywhere in society and “eliminates” them no matter the race, religion, or their sex. There is another motive. The Website FBI “Serial Murder” acknolwedges that mental health can play a role in creating a serial killer since “as a group, serial killers suffer from a variety of personality disorders, including psychopathy, anti-social personality,” but there are also many other motivations: sex, “anger, thrill, financial gain, and attention seeking” (Johns). This motive can be called the Hedonistic serial killer. These types of serial killers are one who “seeks thrills and derives pleasure from killing. Forensic psychologists have identified three sub types of the hedonistic killer: ‘lust’, ‘thrill’, and ‘comfort’.” (Yadav) The Power/control motive where the serial killer wants control of something and how