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Eric Skinner
Police Constable
Username: Eric
Post Number: 3
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 2:25 pm: | 
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Hi Everyone,
Here a very interesting paper I found which was written by a man called Edward Mitchell for his Masters of Philosophy at Cambridge. In it, he argues for a multi-disciplinary approach in studying the reason people become serial killers. It's a bit long but is very interesting.
http://forensic.to/webhome/venoutsos/Serial_Killer_Thesis.htm |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1074
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 5:06 pm: |
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Eric
This is of interest and when I get the blessed time I’m going to study it in detail. But a quick read worried me.
The author is basing his entire ‘typing’ of serial killers on the post-arrest evidence of Lucas, a man who knew he would never see the light of day again, and had absolutely nothing to lose. If I remember correctly Lucas claimed in those interviews - which do form a large part of the FBI’s whole approach to the subject - to have sailed up the Congo river in a Tahitian war canoe and murdered and then eaten at least twenty pygmies; to have cut off his own arm and leg and roasted them on a BBQ before consuming them; killed every new born child in the state of Israel; climbed Mount Everest and then killed Sherpa Tensing and roasted him on the remains of a long-dead Yeti; shot President Kennedy who hadn’t even been born yet; shot and slaughtered the entire Romanov family, and eaten every person on the planet Earth before flying off to the moon and killing Elvis Presley… then eating him of course.
I felt it unwise to use such testimony in what is supposed to be a serious paper on such killers.
God help the FBI, as they do it to.
I feel that Lucas has become a myth, and the reality of his probably banal crimes has been fuelled out of all proportion by the FBI profilers in their flaccid attempts to make a fast buck from flatulent books.
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Natalie Severn
Chief Inspector
Username: Severn
Post Number: 723
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 5:29 pm: |
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Hi AP,well i have just read some of it [and skimmed through more or less all of it and I really didnt pick up on this particular serial killer in it.Several are mentioned and many factors explored concerning sexual and non sexual serial killers.I was very interested in his description of the psychopath/sociopath and its relationship to serial killers.Ditto regarding psychotic killers especially schizophrenic killers.most interesting of all his exploration of those who through a factor resembling boredom
kill for hedonistic reasons.The bits on dissociation esp regarding the Nazi killers who once outside the camps went home to lead "normal" lives.
So I thought it helpful but without sufficient in depth analysis.
Best Natalie |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1075
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 5:45 pm: |
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I'm holding my breath about this, Natalie, in fact I'm holding it so much that I might strangle myself.
Somewhere on another thread I said recently that outside events - or even inside events for that matter - can evoke different attitudes in all of us. Some might read a paper and get upset by what they read, others might find it of an abiding interest, but then still others might neatly fold the paper and come to the conclusion that they should go out and kill someone.
It is really as simple as that.
A rancid mother-in-law could drive some people to drink, and it could drive some people to murder... me personally I'd just drink.
Which I do, but I don't even have a mother-in-law.
This pigeon-holing of killers is nonsensical.
It's not boredom, it's life, you swerve to its purpose or you make it swerve to yours.
I thought the piece about as helpful as an empty bottle of brandy, but I gotta read it a bit more. |
Natalie Severn
Chief Inspector
Username: Severn
Post Number: 725
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 6:13 pm: |
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Oh well AP I bow to your superior knowledge.I think though that the paper implies much the same thing-that pigeon holing just doesnt seem to work with serial killers.[psst I did enjoy your posts above!]
Natalie |
A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Sergeant
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 16
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 10:02 pm: |
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I got about a fifth of the way through the paper and gave up after reviewing the grid. The grid here reflects the distant, unfocused sighting of an iceberg tip, and that's pretty much what most of Ripperology literature presents.
Here's a fellow who has just begun the next generation of subject matter experts. I'll raise a pint and which him Godspeed. He's screwing up in all the ways we all have before we get bounced on the head by something that resembles reality.
It's not an excercise in intellectual degree. It's an exercise in intellectual humility. Most likely the rarest of commodities, eh?
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1077
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 2:30 pm: |
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Yes, we have a chap here who is playing musical chairs with killers running round the room, stop the music and they all sit down, but one is left standing.
He did it, obviously.
The author comes on with an introduction to the Brave New World of serial killers and the varmints that profile them and then wades through so much muck that trout boots wouldn’t have saved him.
I could press a couple of buttons now, on this site, and find any number of more pertinent and worthy attempts to explain the unexplainable.
Every time someone flags up a new paper, book or something similar on this site I always think ’yes! Maybe at last here is someone who is going to light my fire! Rock my boat! Away to go!’
But every time I just see the same old tripe rolled out again and have to spend my time looking at Joe’s old cod rotting away on his stall.
Quite honestly I think we should all give up writings books and papers and just send posts. They rock. They have fire.
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