Case I

This offender was a White male who at the age of 30 began killing female prostitutes, most of them
White. He was adopted and grew up in a large urban area. He had a limited history of dating
females his age and had no lasting romantic relationships, though he did have a few social friends
of both sexes. He had no record of treatment for psychological disorders. As an adult, he took some
college courses, but dropped out and later resumed living in his family home. He had a few sporadic
and lowpaying jobs and failed in several business ventures. He had grown accustomed to using
prostitutes to satisfy his sexual urges, having done so routinely for several years. He met them
primarily on inner-city streets, paid for their services, and carried out his sexual interactions with
them while inside his personal vehicle. Occasionally, though, he would bring a prostitute back to
his mother’s home, where he also lived, for a longer liaison. (These limited situations occurred
when his mother was away.) During these years of frequenting prostitutes, he was arrested once for
solicitation, but was never charged with any violent crimes. The women he killed ranged in age
from 21 to 41. He strangled all 17. He varied his methods of disposing of the victims’ bodies. He
buried them; placed them under discarded items (e.g. a mattress); placed them in bodies of water;
and hid them in wooded areas. He dismembered three, then scattered their remains in locations in
and around the metropolitan area where he lived. No patterns or discernable changes over time were
noted in these disposals. He stated he simply took advantage of opportunities that arose which
allowed him to avoid or delay detection. He sometimes kept personal belongings of his victims;
many of these, including jewelry and photo identification, were found when his home was searched
following his arrest. He felt his actions were influenced by several factors, among them family
instability, the death of his father two years prior to the first murder, social isolation, and a deep
resentment toward young women. He claimed to have had consensual Serial murder in America 399
Published in 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Behav. Sci. Law 22: 395–414 (2004) sexual
intercourse with all the victims before killing them. He could not articulate any specific reasons for
the murders, but did profess an intense interest in watching some of them die. He had a look of
detachment during the interview, and the researchers noted an apparent lack of remorse as he
described his actions. At one point the offender admitted, unabashedly, that his killings had become
‘‘a very problematic hobby for me.’’ His murders spanned a period of just over four years. The time
between murders varied considerably, from 1 to 18 months. During his interview he attempted in
vain to explain why he chose certain victims over other potential ones. He sometimes left home
knowing that he would kill later that day. At other times, however, he did not know he would kill
until just before the opportunity presented itself. (This assessment of opportunity included his
evaluation as to the remoteness of the location, the absence of other people in the area, his
emotional state, and his general ‘‘desire’’ to kill.) This self-reported variation in his thought
processes highlights a tremendous challenge in projecting or tracking a serial killer’s activities and
progress over a course of time. For this offender, for example, his relative degree of stealth, his
selection of vulnerable victims with a transient lifestyle, and the variations in his methods of body
disposal allowed him to remain undetected for many months. When arrested, he readily confessed
to the murders, expressing little feeling. During his interview, he displayed some traits of
psychopathy. These included irresponsibility, impulsivity, poor behavioral controls, promiscuous
sexual behavior, a parasitic lifestyle, callousness, and lack of empathy. However, with a score of 24
(out of a possible 40) on the PCL-R, he did not reach the higher level historically noted for
psychopaths. He described having an extremely high degree of mobility, in that he drove
extensively throughout the area where he lived. It was the impression of the interviewers that
driving in this seemingly aimless and restless fashion was perhaps in fact more purposeful, allowing
him to evaluate and mentally map the area, so that he could later strategize as to how he would
obtain and/or dispose of future victims.
Case II

This offender was also a Black male with a highly unstable home life while growing up. He claimed
to have been verbally abused by his father. While there are no Serial murder in America 405
Published in 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Behav. Sci. Law 22: 395–414 (2004) indications of
any psychological problems, he attended special education classes due to learning difficulties. He
had a speech impediment and an IQ of 68 (mentally deficient). These developmental problems may
have contributed to his unacceptable behaviors; they certainly did not deter him from becoming
immersed in criminal activity. In early adolescence, he was extremely isolated and stole frequently
from others. He was also involved in fire-setting and animal cruelty. As he entered adulthood, he
continued stealing, abused illegal drugs, and became assaultive against adults. He served time in a
state penitentiary for a burglary. It was there that he claimed to have learned ways to improve his
chances of success as a criminal. Starting at the age of 33, he killed three women (two White and
one Hispanic) and two men (one Black and one White) over an 18-month period. Though reported
in prison records to be of low intellect, he possessed, in some limited respects, a remarkable level of
criminal sophistication, which contributed to his being rated a psychopath. For example, although
he used the same handgun for all five offenses, he altered it after each murder so that the cases
could not be forensically linked through ballistic comparisons. He demonstrated a considerable
range of motives, from profit (a failed burglary, during which the victim woke up and was shot); to
revenge (a burglary he planned with a male cohort, whom he killed during the burglary in
retaliation for a joke the partner had previously played on him); to a situation wherein a male
relative of two teenage girls the offender had just raped confronted him unexpectedly, at which time
the offender shot the man to death. Of note is that, in a separate incident during this period, he also
exacted revenge against a woman who had, he reported, played a joke on him. He achieved his
vengeance by raping her ten-year-old daughter, and professed no remorse for this crime. This
offender’s choice of victims seems to have been indiscriminate; they ranged in age from 38 to 87.
Three were women and two were men, and they were of various races, including White, Black, and
Hispanic. It appears that rather than meticulously planning each murder, he killed simply because of
circumstances that arose at the times he was engaged in committing burglaries, robberies, and rapes.
The murders, then, went beyond his initial profit and/or sexual motives. These conditions included
burglaries in which homeowners awoke and confronted him, and one situation wherein he attacked
a woman outside her home with a quickly formed plan to rob her, but killed her instead. While
these actions could be symptomatic of his lack of self-control, more likely they were simply
indicative of impulsive self-preservation. Only in one situation did he set out specifically to kill the
victim, and in that case his motive was revenge. His low IQ seems to have precluded him from
developing a sense of insight and self-examination. This can be seen in the reason he gave for
stealing a woman’s scarf during a burglary and homicide: ‘‘I thought it was pretty and would look
good with a gold suit I’ve got.’’ On the other hand, he had the foresight to hide his murder weapon
in the attic of his father’s home after the homicides (though he later admitted where it was). This
offender scored in the ‘‘high’’ range (33) on the PCL-R psychopathy scale, due to numerous early
behavioral problems, juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility, impulsivity, proneness to boredom,
chronic lying, and other factors.