Serial Killers

A very interesting study entitled – A Descriptive Study of Sexual Homicide in Canada: Implications for Police Investigation – has been released and it contains some surprising findings for Canadian sexual serial killers.

According to the authors of the study, Eric Beauregard and Melissa Martineau, the prior work on examining sexual homicide had been few and based on small sample sizes. Their look at the subject differs in that they used cases from across Canada stretching back 62 years. The aim of the study is to examine offender and victim characteristics, victim targeting and access, and the killer’s modus operandi.

Some of the findings of the study include a picture of the average sexual serial killer as being what most expect – a single white male, age 28, with a thin or average build. But the study diverges from our normal view of a sexual serial killer being a loner. The study suggests some serial killers have a very outgoing personality and actively seek out people to be and do things with.

The study further finds that 80 per cent of serial killers have no prior criminal record for any sex-related crimes but they often have convictions for violent offences and for property offences.

There is a lot more information from this study including a look at the victims, the types of attack, victim selection and more.

View the study: http://ijo.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/08/03/0306624X12456682

As serial killer cases go, one of the most bizarre and downright sickening is the Jeffrey Dahmer case. Dahmer initially became fixated with sex with men but evolved his strange desires into more brutally inhuman tastes. Gregarious and active as a child, his playful personality underwent a change after a move. The Dahmers were by all accounts a fairly healthy family whose second child arrived shortly after Mr. Dahmer achieved his Ph.D in a Chemistry. 4-H gardening and animal raising was a father and son bonding activity.

No serious or extreme changes marked the childhood fascination with nature and animals except after the Dahmers’ marriage problems. Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother was hospitalized just about the time puberty onset occurred. Dahmer’s obsessive roadkill gathering and backyard dissection grew. The fantasies became an aggressive reality, with mental plans for lying beside a nude man. But by the time high school started Dahmer was taking alcohol before school time to vanquish thoughts of partaking in sex with men.

Dahmer’s extroverted behaviour drew attention to himself from casual observers around school. Dahmer even talked his classmates into meeting with Vice President Walter Mondale during a trip to the nation’s capital. Dahmer’s academia was erratic from good grades to failure due to boredom or lack of attention. No close friends or partners meant a social life spent inside the world of animals while living on a diet of fantasies. High school was spent mantling his inner traumas of his parent’s bickering and escapist sexuality involving men and animals.
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