Originally posted by Paddy
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MO/Signature changes don't indicate a permanent break from the prior MO. The new MO could be because of environmental pressures. When those pressures are gone, there is no reason why they couldn't go back to their old MO. So the only thing preventing Chapman from carrying on as JtR was whatever had changed since the end of the Whitechapel murders that prevented him from carrying on.
We see this with BTK. His MO change was so different, he wasn't even killing people to get his fix. He was a compliance officer destroying women's lives. However, Dennis Rader claims he was always planning to kill again. Whether he could or not at his age (age/health/athletic ability is a reason for MO changes.), is another matter, but the urge was always still there for him.
When it comes to MO changes I see the modern view as being you take a list of all the way serial killers have murdered people down one column, then you duplicate it for another column and randomly scramble that duplicate column with the only rule that a row can't be the same. Those are all the MO changes that can happen.
There seems to be no golden rule that serial homicidal maniacs can't de-escalate, or commit other crimes, regardless of what their original MO and signatures were. All you need is for a pause in the first MO, followed by a second wave of crime with MO and signatures different to the first, but the first MO is just paused throughout. It need not disappear. It isn't de-facto replaced. It is no more replaced that if a Serial Killer went on a burglary spree or raped and didn't his targets.
It looks like Ex-Officer Joseph James Deangelo stopped murdering people completely. For 32 years. Worked in a warehouse home depot type place when he was caught. Believe he was a truck mechanic or something. However is that a stop, or one big pause? Would he kill again? BTK seems to suggest that yes, he very well could have.
Basically, I don't see anything in the professional literature today that suggests evisceration is something special in the list that can't be interchanged with another crime of any sort for a while. It seems to say "MOs can change" is just that.
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