What's your profile for Jack?

[Semper_Eadem]

Hi Semper,

A similar case is that of the artist Kim Noble (not the male comedian of the same name):

http://kimnoble.com/

She claims to have suffered sexual abuse as a child, though not at her parents' hands.

Maybe females tend to turn their pain in on themselves, or manage to block it out completely, while some males choose to turn it outwards and inflict suffering on others?

I use the word 'choose' deliberately here, as we are talking about a male killer (or killers, hi Lynn ) who got away with murdering and/or mutilating each female victim because nobody was ever seen in the act. I don't think that was merely a lucky accident each time, on the part of a madman who didn't know or care about any potential witnesses.

Love,

Caz
X

How you been? Thanks for the example. I posted this and totally forgot about it. Sorry I am so late replying.

I think if JTR was a Jeffery Dahmer type of serial killer. Martin Fido could argue this way better then I could. I will try though.

I think the killer was in control enough between his frenzies to sense when someone might have been coming down the street. I'm sure he had an animal like cunning in his arsenal. Maybe I was too vague when I used the term mad man or crazy because if JTR was fall down nuts they probably would of caught him sooner.

Geo~

[caz]

When given the chance to exert a preference, he did. And those girls did look like his ex. She isn't the reason he started killing. But she did define his preference. And if my best friend can't date blondes anymore because of one bad girlfriend, I don't think it's out of line to say that women who looked like his ex provoked a certain reaction. They didn't have to look like her for him to get off, but if they did that was clearly better. Or else he wouldn't have established a preference of girls who looked like his ex. An ex he went to what we consider to be extreme lengths to cultivate and then humiliate years after their initial breakup. So he had some issues associated with her. It doesn't take a great leap of logic to think that maybe some of that spilled over into his murdering.

I am not saying this girl started him killing. I am not saying she inspired the murders, I am not saying that had she let him down easier none of this would have happened. It would have. I am saying that Bundy's resentment of this woman caused him to seek out women who resembled her when given a choice. He went to a lot of trouble to try and dominate and humiliate his ex. Given that his entire MO was based on dominance and humiliation, a long haired brunette with certain features clearly might be more appealing to him than a Chinese immigrant. He already had an association in his mind. It would be peculiar if he didn't act on it.

Hi Errata,

I'm not sure you can even go that far. Chicken and egg. He chose his girlfriend because he was attracted to women with her looks. His preference for those looks were established when he saw her. And if he was already fantasising about dominance and humiliation, it was pretty inevitable that when they broke up his resentment would manifest itself in that way. I don't think you can conclude that it was her looks which caused an association in his mind between a relationship gone bad and women with similar looks. If he had always been drawn towards her type, she was just one - possibly not even the first - of the long line of women who suffered because of who he was.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I'm not sure why we always get on to Bundy and for that I apologize. Since we are profiling I guess it's at least indirectly related to the thread topic..

Anyway Errata, I still don't really buy the look-alike proposition. Perhaps he had a type for those he stalked but many of his crimes were ones of opportunity.

When the girl left the sorority house at midnight in the semi-darkness do you think he thought....."hmmm...let me see, is her hair parted down the middle, oh goodie, yes it is, tick that box, now let me see does she have nice white teeth and big hooters...hmmm, yes and yes again....Ok, wonderful I'm in...I'll approach this one....."

Of course not. It was simply, creature approaching, it's young and female i.e.; victim. Many of his were this way. Again, he trolled where there would be pretty young girls....he didn't go looking down the alleys in Chinatown...

Also, he was reading detective magazines, peeping in windows and wanking off long before he met the college girlfriend. I don't really believe in the trigger or going off the edge thing, at least usually, it's typically an evolution. Bundy, by his own admission, had been fantasizing and stalking for years.

We also don't know when he started, some think it was when he was 14 and the 8 year old girl down the street disappeared......He was a paraphilic who conflated sex and violence and evolved until he was ready to act on it........once he did he was addicted and enjoyed it......

Greg

I agree with you entirely here, Greg. It's all a bit chicken and egg, which is why some are taken in by the idea that it was the girlfriend trouble that set him off, while others (me included) see the girlfriend trouble as inevitable for someone like Bundy, and something that could be turned into an excuse for himself and an explanation for the profilers, for his subsequent violence against other young women, whether they were clones of the girlfriend or just similar in the broadest sense.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I didn't know we knew this! Wow!

Well most of us know that our sexual leanings are chosen for us before we are born, Greg. But then some continue to think evolution is not a proven scientific fact and we were all created in God's image. So we can never please everyone.

I think too much is made of Bundy re-killing his girlfriend. They say something about girls with hair parted down the middle. Hello people, all girls in the 70's parted their hair down the middle, it's called a style...I was there...I think he simply looked for good looking college girls...it's a matter of taste and college campuses were places where he was very comfortable...

I agree with you here. It was a matter of personal taste.

The ripper similarly felt comfortable walking the streets in the early hours where his victims also walked. If we look at the age range, state of health and impoverished circumstances of the Spitalfields victims, it's pretty much what we would expect if the killer was simply picking on lone and vulnerable females at random - those who were too weak, too sick, too drunk or too broke to put up any resistance. And that, to my mind, makes it impossible to conclude anything about his victim choice connected with his childhood.

...I also think the Freudian mommy thing is overdone...There's no evidence Bundy was physically abused, he may have been neglected. I think some people get their wires crossed concerning normal sexual attraction. Some link it with violence for some unknown reason. What's terrifying is that the psychopath will act on it...

Yes, I agree with this. But look at how it was interpreted by Littlechild, who linked homosexuality with sadism and masochism. I sincerely hope nobody would do that today.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I once read an interesting article in a print journal, which I haven't been able to locate again, by a psychiatrist, formerly in clinical practice, later in research into what makes people violent, who had gathered a huge amount of raw data on both people abused as children who had not become abusive, and also people in prison for violent crimes, both those who had been abused as children, and those who had not. His initial analysis showed that people abused as children committed violent crimes at a statistically higher rate than those who had not, but were still not the majority of people who had been abused as children.

His criteria for abuse were stringent, and included, IIRC, at least two ER visits, or one overnight hospital stay, or a third-party report to child services, and this was dealing with adults who had been children between something like 1940-1970.

Anyway, he started looking for commonalities between the non-abused, and abused violent inmates, and discovered that nearly all of them had a documented closed-head injury with loss of consciousness. Many of the abuse victims got their head injuries as the result of parental abuse, while the others had fallen out of trees, been in car accidents-- it varied greatly. There were very few head injuries among the non-violent adults abused as children.

So, it would seem that being abused puts you at risk for becoming violent, but only in that it increases your risk for sustaining a head injury.

It's possible that car seat and bike helmet laws could decrease the number of future serial killers.

Hi Rivkah,

This is all quite fascinating, but the fact remains that as least as many girls as boys are the victims of some kind of childhood abuse, and presumably as many girls suffer head injuries as a result of abuse or accident. So there must be some other factor at work here, because girls hardly ever grow up to become the kind of violent serial offender who will often 'take it out on' complete strangers.

Love,

Caz
X

[Abby Normal]

I think too much is made of Bundy re-killing his girlfriend. They say something about girls with hair parted down the middle. Hello people, all girls in the 70's parted their hair down the middle, it's called a style...I was there...I think he simply looked for good looking college girls...it's a matter of taste and college campuses were places where he was very comfortable...

The nature/nurture argument is a bit silly too because you can't have one or the other, they're codependent......part of the same puzzle......we're all a unique combination of this symbiosis...I also think the Freudian mommy thing is overdone...There's no evidence Bundy was physically abused, he may have been neglected. I think some people get their wires crossed concerning normal sexual attraction. Some link it with violence for some unknown reason. What's terrifying is that the psychopath will act on it...

We do know that psychopaths have retarded emotional development. It's like they're stuck in the narcissistic child state and their amygdala and frontal cortex indicate abnormalities when exposed to certain situations. They're basically sharks with little emotional life at all. Whether this is strictly a genetic thing or develops through life is unknown. I certainly believe in a genetic component but more evidence is needed...

The human mind/brain is the most complex thing that we know of and our understanding of it, I'm afraid, is in its infancy...


Greg

[/QUOTE]Hi Greg
Completely agree. And I also have never bought the whole Bundy getting revenge on his girlfriend thing and picking victims that looked like her-I dont how many times I have seen that misguided idea blindly repeated. Besides he got revenge on her anyway by winning her back and then dumping her. He killed his victims because he liked to and picked them because they were young, pretty and perceived to be happy and successful.

Now, if someone wants to put forth that his girlfreind dumping him may have been some sort of trigger I may listen to that, but his fantasy and desires (and early crimes and possibly murder) started wayyyyyy before his girlfriend dumped him.

Just like the ripper probably.

[Errata]

I'm not sure why we always get on to Bundy and for that I apologize. Since we are profiling I guess it's at least indirectly related to the thread topic..

Anyway Errata, I still don't really buy the look-alike proposition. Perhaps he had a type for those he stalked but many of his crimes were ones of opportunity.

When the girl left the sorority house at midnight in the semi-darkness do you think he thought....."hmmm...let me see, is her hair parted down the middle, oh goodie, yes it is, tick that box, now let me see does she have nice white teeth and big hooters...hmmm, yes and yes again....Ok, wonderful I'm in...I'll approach this one....."

Of course not. It was simply, creature approaching, it's young and female i.e.; victim. Many of his were this way. Again, he trolled where there would be pretty young girls....he didn't go looking down the alleys in Chinatown...

Also, he was reading detective magazines, peeping in windows and wanking off long before he met the college girlfriend. I don't really believe in the trigger or going off the edge thing, at least usually, it's typically an evolution. Bundy, by his own admission, had been fantasizing and stalking for years.

We also don't know when he started, some think it was when he was 14 and the 8 year old girl down the street disappeared......He was a paraphilic who conflated sex and violence and evolved until he was ready to act on it........once he did he was addicted and enjoyed it......


Greg

Bundy is either a classic example or the world's most famous exception. He works as an example for a lot of reasons. A trigger doesn't mean something catastrophic happened. A trigger simply means that something happened that gave a serial killer "permission" to start killing. It can be the loss of a job, a breakup, a bad business deal, the death of a parent... it can be almost anything. But it is either so stressful that the killer gives himself permission to kill to relieve the stress, or the last thing anchoring them to society is gone. And it may be inevitable, but in most serial killers they fantasize and commit smaller crimes long before they start serial killing. But something happens that allows that person to stop trying to control themselves. Ed Gein's trigger was the death of his mother. While it was certainly traumatic for him, it's probably more fair to say that there were certain things he couldn't do with his mom around, that finally he could do. Like collect a box of vulvas. Moms are kinda strict about those things. Bundy's first kill was probably a low risk target. A runaway or a prostitute. It's pretty typical. But dominating a prostitute or a child is not going to give him the sense of superiority he wants. So he moves to co-eds.

When given the chance to exert a preference, he did. And those girls did look like his ex. She isn't the reason he started killing. But she did define his preference. And if my best friend can't date blondes anymore because of one bad girlfriend, I don't think it's out of line to say that women who looked like his ex provoked a certain reaction. They didn't have to look like her for him to get off, but if they did that was clearly better. Or else he wouldn't have established a preference of girls who looked like his ex. An ex he went to what we consider to be extreme lengths to cultivate and then humiliate years after their initial breakup. So he had some issues associated with her. It doesn't take a great leap of logic to think that maybe some of that spilled over into his murdering.

I am not saying this girl started him killing. I am not saying she inspired the murders, I am not saying that had she let him down easier none of this would have happened. It would have. I am saying that Bundy's resentment of this woman caused him to seek out women who resembled her when given a choice. He went to a lot of trouble to try and dominate and humiliate his ex. Given that his entire MO was based on dominance and humiliation, a long haired brunette with certain features clearly might be more appealing to him than a Chinese immigrant. He already had an association in his mind. It would be peculiar if he didn't act on it.

[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby,

I tend to agree with your last post.

I think my problem was essentially with the argument that the ripper may have selected only female victims because he had once been abused or dominated by a female. There are at least as many male abusers out there, and yet I don’t recall hearing a similar argument for male-on-male serial killers having had a male abuser in their past, explaining their gender choice.

When a specific gender is targeted, it is typically presumed these days - rightly or wrongly - to be an indicator of the killer’s sexuality (eg homosexual men will tend to select male victims), and we now know that our sexual inclinations are with us at birth, and therefore a matter of nature, not nurture.

If this is an accurate indicator that the ripper was born heterosexual (whether or not we believe the murders were sexually motivated), then he would presumably have selected female victims regardless of what or who may have buggered up his formative years and triggered, or nurtured his urge to kill.

In short, the mere fact that the Whitechapel victims were female can tell us little, if anything, about what motivated their killer(s) in the first place.

Love,

Caz
X

agree

[GregBaron]

Baby steps to madness...

Bundy's victims did not just share similar characteristics. They really looked like they could be sisters. Long brown hair parted in the middle, oval faces, prominent chins and cheekbones. And we know Bundy had serious issues with that girlfriend, because he went and got successful, came back, convinced her to date him again, all so he could break up with her in a particularly rude fashion. That's a lot of work. That's pathologic.

I'm not sure why we always get on to Bundy and for that I apologize. Since we are profiling I guess it's at least indirectly related to the thread topic..

Anyway Errata, I still don't really buy the look-alike proposition. Perhaps he had a type for those he stalked but many of his crimes were ones of opportunity.

When the girl left the sorority house at midnight in the semi-darkness do you think he thought....."hmmm...let me see, is her hair parted down the middle, oh goodie, yes it is, tick that box, now let me see does she have nice white teeth and big hooters...hmmm, yes and yes again....Ok, wonderful I'm in...I'll approach this one....."

Of course not. It was simply, creature approaching, it's young and female i.e.; victim. Many of his were this way. Again, he trolled where there would be pretty young girls....he didn't go looking down the alleys in Chinatown...

Also, he was reading detective magazines, peeping in windows and wanking off long before he met the college girlfriend. I don't really believe in the trigger or going off the edge thing, at least usually, it's typically an evolution. Bundy, by his own admission, had been fantasizing and stalking for years.

We also don't know when he started, some think it was when he was 14 and the 8 year old girl down the street disappeared......He was a paraphilic who conflated sex and violence and evolved until he was ready to act on it........once he did he was addicted and enjoyed it......


Greg

[Errata]

I didn't know we knew this! Wow!


I think too much is made of Bundy re-killing his girlfriend. They say something about girls with hair parted down the middle. Hello people, all girls in the 70's parted their hair down the middle, it's called a style...I was there...I think he simply looked for good looking college girls...it's a matter of taste and college campuses were places where he was very comfortable...

The nature/nurture argument is a bit silly too because you can't have one or the other, they're codependent......part of the same puzzle......we're all a unique combination of this symbiosis...I also think the Freudian mommy thing is overdone...There's no evidence Bundy was physically abused, he may have been neglected. I think some people get their wires crossed concerning normal sexual attraction. Some link it with violence for some unknown reason. What's terrifying is that the psychopath will act on it...

We do know that psychopaths have retarded emotional development. It's like they're stuck in the narcissistic child state and their amygdala and frontal cortex indicate abnormalities when exposed to certain situations. They're basically sharks with little emotional life at all. Whether this is strictly a genetic thing or develops through life is unknown. I certainly believe in a genetic component but more evidence is needed...

The human mind/brain is the most complex thing that we know of and our understanding of it, I'm afraid, is in its infancy...


Greg

Bundy's victims did not just share similar characteristics. They really looked like they could be sisters. Long brown hair parted in the middle, oval faces, prominent chins and cheekbones. And we know Bundy had serious issues with that girlfriend, because he went and got successful, came back, convinced her to date him again, all so he could break up with her in a particularly rude fashion. That's a lot of work. That's pathologic.

He was physically abused by his father, but I think the real trauma came from finding out that his sister was actually his mother and that it was highly likely that his father was also his grandfather. Which is definitely a harsh blow. While Freud certainly popularized the idea of mommy issues, he didn't get it right. So it is overdone, but in truth, it's also simply shorthand for the masses. It's something 60 minutes can give to their audience so they understand that there was some serious psychological issues concerning his identity and sense of self. But it is such a simplistic explanation that it is in fact wrong. But people who study this kind of thing certainly understand the vast complexities involved, even if they don't understand the complexities themselves.

There is a simple question that no one can answer, and that is what makes a man turn into a serial killer? Nobody knows. And anyone who says they do is lying. There are traits mostly common to serial killers, but they aren't absolute. They weren't all abused, they aren't all psychopaths, they don't all have TBI, thy don't all start fires or torture animals. There are multiple exceptions to every rule. Some serial killers get caught, and no one is surprised that this guy turned out to be a killer. Some are caught, and no one can understand it, or believe it. Some have the warrior gene, some have dims spots in their frontal cortex.We don't know what flipped their switch so that they needed to kill, or even if there is a switch to be flipped. I don't have any idea what made Bundy a killer. But I can point to parts of his life and say with a fair amount of certainty that these events informed his killing. Who he chose, how he killed, how he disposed of the bodies and why that way. A lot of that is psych 101. But here's the big question. Clearly there is a point in time in which someone is not a serial killer. And then they are. Usually because of some stressor. So when did killing people become an option? At birth? As a child? As an adult? After a specific event? Is it even fair to say that there was a time in which this person was not a serial killer? Is a switch flipped? A series of switches? Is it more like a falling Jenga tower? Is it the natural state of man? Nobody knows. We don't know why they did what they did. But we can know why they did it the way that they did.

[RivkahChaya]

It's also possible that Bundy had a type, and that his victims, as well as the girlfriend who dumped him had long brown hair, because Bundy liked long brown hair.

You can't discount the "style" factor, though, because long, straight hair with no bangs, parted in the middle was pretty common. People were into "natural" looks, so permed and dyed hair was at an all time low, and so was any kind of cut that needed upkeep, even bangs.

Also, if you actually look at photos of his victims, some of them have perfectly straight hair, but others have wavy hair. Some have hair so dark brown it borders on black, and others have very light brown hair, and were probably blonde as children. Also while some had center parts, others parted it slightly to one side.

So yeah, they all looked similar, but not anymore than other people often date people who are a type. It's creepy because he killed them, but they didn't look spookily alike. If he'd kept them prisoner, and dyed their hair, and made them dress in his old girlfriend's clothes, that'd be something else entirely.

[lynn cates]

absent

Hello Michael. Thanks.

What if he were temporarily absent from home?

Cheers.
LC

[GregBaron]

Mommie dearest...

and we now know that our sexual inclinations are with us at birth

I didn't know we knew this! Wow!

it basically boils down to the classic nature vs nurture discussion. I myself believe its a combination of both but more nature than nurture-as in serial killers are born not made. And I think some who are born with the disposition to be killers would not otherwise become them if they had "normal" childhoods(they would be able to overcome or control their murderous urges)-the abusive childhood puts them over the edge.

I think too much is made of Bundy re-killing his girlfriend. They say something about girls with hair parted down the middle. Hello people, all girls in the 70's parted their hair down the middle, it's called a style...I was there...I think he simply looked for good looking college girls...it's a matter of taste and college campuses were places where he was very comfortable...

The nature/nurture argument is a bit silly too because you can't have one or the other, they're codependent......part of the same puzzle......we're all a unique combination of this symbiosis...I also think the Freudian mommy thing is overdone...There's no evidence Bundy was physically abused, he may have been neglected. I think some people get their wires crossed concerning normal sexual attraction. Some link it with violence for some unknown reason. What's terrifying is that the psychopath will act on it...

We do know that psychopaths have retarded emotional development. It's like they're stuck in the narcissistic child state and their amygdala and frontal cortex indicate abnormalities when exposed to certain situations. They're basically sharks with little emotional life at all. Whether this is strictly a genetic thing or develops through life is unknown. I certainly believe in a genetic component but more evidence is needed...

The human mind/brain is the most complex thing that we know of and our understanding of it, I'm afraid, is in its infancy...


Greg

[RivkahChaya]

I once read an interesting article in a print journal, which I haven't been able to locate again, by a psychiatrist, formerly in clinical practice, later in research into what makes people violent, who had gathered a huge amount of raw data on both people abused as children who had not become abusive, and also people in prison for violent crimes, both those who had been abused as children, and those who had not. His initial analysis showed that people abused as children committed violent crimes at a statistically higher rate than those who had not, but were still not the majority of people who had been abused as children.

His criteria for abuse were stringent, and included, IIRC, at least two ER visits, or one overnight hospital stay, or a third-party report to child services, and this was dealing with adults who had been children between something like 1940-1970.

Anyway, he started looking for commonalities between the non-abused, and abused violent inmates, and discovered that nearly all of them had a documented closed-head injury with loss of consciousness. Many of the abuse victims got their head injuries as the result of parental abuse, while the others had fallen out of trees, been in car accidents-- it varied greatly. There were very few head injuries among the non-violent adults abused as children.

So, it would seem that being abused puts you at risk for becoming violent, but only in that it increases your risk for sustaining a head injury.

It's possible that car seat and bike helmet laws could decrease the number of future serial killers.

[caz]

Hi Abby,

I tend to agree with your last post.

I think my problem was essentially with the argument that the ripper may have selected only female victims because he had once been abused or dominated by a female. There are at least as many male abusers out there, and yet I don’t recall hearing a similar argument for male-on-male serial killers having had a male abuser in their past, explaining their gender choice.

When a specific gender is targeted, it is typically presumed these days - rightly or wrongly - to be an indicator of the killer’s sexuality (eg homosexual men will tend to select male victims), and we now know that our sexual inclinations are with us at birth, and therefore a matter of nature, not nurture.

If this is an accurate indicator that the ripper was born heterosexual (whether or not we believe the murders were sexually motivated), then he would presumably have selected female victims regardless of what or who may have buggered up his formative years and triggered, or nurtured his urge to kill.

In short, the mere fact that the Whitechapel victims were female can tell us little, if anything, about what motivated their killer(s) in the first place.

Love,

Caz
X