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Source: Studii de securitate public

Public Security Studies

Location: Romania
Author(s): Tudorel Butoi
Title: PORTRETUL ROBOT AL CRIMINALULUI N SERIE AMERICAN
THE PORTRAIT OF THE AMERICAN SERIAL KILLER
Issue: 1/2013
Citation Tudorel Butoi. "PORTRETUL ROBOT AL CRIMINALULUI N SERIE AMERICAN". Studii de
style: securitate public 1:66-69.

https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=36678
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PORTRETUL ROBOT
AL CRIMINALULUI N SERIE AMERICAN

THE PORTRAIT OF THE AMERICAN

SERIAL KILLER

Tudorel BUTOI

Abstract
The serial killers epicenter is indeed in the United States, not far
from the San Andrea fault, between Santa Cruz and the great plains of the
Midwest. From them to operate, murderers need cities, space and air.
Their gesture needs land, of action. Between one murder and another
sometimes passes a short time. Serial killers move continuously. They fool
the police, who, from one city to another, communicate better than a
passenger train. The killers psychological derive is accompanied by a
geographical error.

Keywords: The serial killer, police, murder, violence, the United

States.

The number of serial killers increased significantly until 1989.

From 1977 to 1989, F.B.I. identified 169 of them. But that does not mean
that there are not others who haunt the area.
The serial killers have therefore become the subject of hundreds of
books and thousands of studies. Their mothers, their erections, obsessions
that haunt them were shelled by countless psychiatrists. It seems that
about 66% of them suffer from mental problems and are tormented by
dominant mothers, in 47% of the cases, the natural father left home before
they were 12; about half of them suffer from sexual handicaps; at about
63% their ancestors suffered mental disorders and at 69% of them the
parents were drunks.
F.B.I. and its national IT program VICAP allowed to define these
different psychological profiles. Most famous were filmed, recorded and
over-interrogated. Many times, they played with the examiners nerves.

PhD. Tudorel BUTOI is forensic expert and university professor at the Spiru Haret
University of Bucharest.

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When Ed Kemper was locked in a cell with a member of the FBI,

he was waiting the time for the guards to change to whisper: "If I
suddenly become violent, you would have some problems, right? I could
unscrew your head and put it on the table to welcome the guard". There
followed a small dialogue and the guard was not coming. Since then, no
such person has not been questioned by a single investigator.
When they are not executed, the serial killers often offer
themselves their services. One of them, Dennis Nielsen (the author of 15
murders in England between 1978 and 1983, discovered because he
clogged the sewer of the building where he lived with his victims debris
that he had thrown down the toilet), he "explain", on demand, the
psychological case of the "prince" of this kind, Geoffrey Dahmer,
nicknamed the "Cannibal of Milwaukee".
It happens that, once arrested serial killers claim a
disproportionate number of crimes, which, in reality, they have not
committed. This boastfulness is explained, in part, by a desire to increase
their fame in a country like the United States where the electric chair may
be the end of the road. Each new confessed murder is the subject of new
researches and an extension of the process, sometimes for years. As no
horror is not foreign to them, America now resembles with the Sade's
office, in which the executioners first enjoy listening to stories the old
prostitutes relate.
Coprophagia, gerontophile, sadomasochistics, pedophiles,
cannibals, some shoot on video their crimes or record on tape their
victims reactions. Apparently they are normal people: neither crazy,
nor neuropathic or mentally ill - in the classic sense of the word.
Shawn Johnson, a California psychiatrist who has spent more than
ten years as an expert before the courts, is convinced of this. Nothing
in their daily behavior allows their differentiation. The famous
Geoffrey Dahmer, accused in 1991 to have tortured, murdered and raped
15 people, he was a esteemed worker, really loved by his colleagues from
the chocolate factory in Milwaukee. When they kill, these "serial killers"
respond to a sexual stimulus , most times - comparable in intensity with
the desire of a man who asks his partner to wear black underwear. No
more, no less ... Well, not a big deal after all.
Intelligent, methodical, more gifted than ordinary criminals, the
serial killers "made in USA" are almost always Caucasian men, aged 20-
30 years old. They live in highly populated areas. The champion of such
crimes is California State. In 10 years in this eastern region were
committed two times more serial crimes than in any other state.

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A study by Park Dietz, analyzing 130 crimes of serial killers

shows that 50% of victims were killed by strangulation after being
mutilated. Serial killers prefer their own hands instead of firearms. One of
them cut the penis of a teenager with some scissors, and another hit the
victim in the head during intercourse etc. Often, says Park Dietz, they
close their victims 14 hours or more claiming of them a waterfall of
sexual acts.
The sex returns constantly in the specialists comments charged to
explain these crimes that continue to proliferate: 8.5% of the murders
committed in 1976, 17.8% in 1981, 22.1% in 1984, 22.5% in 1985 and
after 25% today. About 50% of he "serial killer" keep memories of their
victims. They call them necro-fetish, and they are called necrofetishists.
One of the criminals keep the decapitated head of one of his victims, and,
in the shower, he used it for the satisfaction of oral sexual fantasies. 40%
of the murderers keep objects that belonged to the victims: a jewel, a
shoe, a photo etc. Many of the killers are cannibals: once they kill their
victims, eat parts of their body. It seems that the chest is preferred. Some
cook the meat and then eat it. There is also coprophagia, meaning killers
eating their victims feces.
In the list of great maniacs, F.B.I. also included the necrophiliacs,
those who have sex with corpses. They first kill and then they sexually
abuse the victim's body. The gerontophile are also quoted by the police,
meaning those who only kill the elderly, and then the "observers" (those
who look at a couple during sex and then kill the partners), the pedophiles
and homosexuals.
From their prison cells, many of these killers tell, write, confess.
Their memories passionate the Americans. They know a huge success in
the bookstore. Especially videotaped productions, a practice increasingly
common in the U.S.A, where you can find increasingly more tapes-
books.
Examples: Henry Lee Lucas story written by himself, was a
triumph despite a poor quality sound. He tells in detail the 157 murders
committed in the most horrifying conditions. A mixture of rape, torture of
children, sadistic torture. At the age of 45 years he was practicing also
the cannibalism, animated, he says by sexual impulses. "Lee Lucas,,
started" the murders at the age of 15 years old by killing a woman, at
Blacksburg, in Virginia State. Then, at age 24, he killed his own mother.
The other crimes followed naturally, with a peace almost procedural.
Another serial killer, very famous in the U.S.A is Robert Bundy.
His book has sold in thousands of copies. Bundy was executed by electric
chair in 1980, being convicted of killing, between 1974 and 1978, 30
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women in five different states, especially students. His methods?

Bludgeon, club, strangulation ... Alcoholic, before he killed, he raped,
torture and practiced sexual mutilation.
American murderers list is endless. Robin Getcht terrorized
Chicago in 1980, the city where he tortured and murdered dozens of
women. Robert Berdella confessed in 1989 that he killed a lot of gays
after he had relations with them.
Emmanuel Tanay, a psychiatrist from Detroit who examined
numerous cases, including those of Bundy's, says that serial killers do not
usually copy, meaning that they do not inspire from the gestures of other
criminals to commit their atrocities. But Park Dietz has a different
opinion: "... Those who commit sensational crimes are very careful at the
crimes of their predecessors, he says. They have studied the techniques
used by the police. There were often found at the killers residence,
newspaper clippings on fingerprint technique... ".
Why so many "serial killers" and why in the United States? No
one really knows. Undoubtedly, there is the noise society, of television
violence, sex, racism, but the American evil does not explain everything.
James Breiling, who studies the sexual assault at the National Institute of
Mental Health, estimates that there should not be generalized an
explanation "... It is very sensitive, however, to try to understand them
studying their childhood or adolescence... ".
Park Dietz believes that there are two necessary conditions to
become a "serial killer" to suffer from psychopathy and have a highly
developed tendency to sadism. Some American pediatricians say they can
recognize a child sadistic tendencies, through three combined signs: if he
pees in bed at an older age, if he likes to torture animals and if he likes to
play with fire.
Finally, another track gave by the researchers: the nervous system
of agitated people-so of the serial killers-is slower than the average for
other people, it will produce, thus, less adrenaline. Will therefore need
stimuli to cause sexual arousal. There are, of course, only theories. The
serial killers make the psychiatrists dream and the publishers to live.

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