Can a Serial Killer Be Sane? And Can the Public Accept Not Sending Such a Person to Prison?

BY JEN STEVENSON

The threads of history that weave the great tapestry of time have been soiled by the tales of serial killers, sexual sadists, and mass murderers since society was young.

Caligula, Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer–the names evoke stories and memories of grievous horror, complete callous disregard for human life, and pain and suffering almost beyond comprehension.

The world is alternately horrified and fascinated with serial killers. Crowds flock to see movies like "Natural Born Killers," "Seven," "Copycat," "The Bone Collector," or one of this week’s most popular films, "American Psycho." They thirstily devour newspaper articles and broadcast news spots highlighting every gory detail associated with the horrendous acts of violence perpetrated by these twisted individuals.

It’s only when these murders hit home, like they did with the deaths of coeds Rachel Newhouse and Aundria Crawford, that the true horror of such barbarity is felt.

Rex Allan Krebs is charged with the torture, rape, and murder of the women. He has not been convicted, but someone killed them, which raises profound questions about human nature.

How can human beings commit such demented acts of violence against their peers? What leads the human psyche down such a dark, maniacal path? Is insanity the only excuse? Or perhaps worse–is it not?

While many psychologists are citing recent research and studies showing that serial killers may possess physiological traits that predestine them for a life of carnage, it seems that the general public, the legal system, and many of the best and brightest psychiatric minds just aren’t buying any excuses.

One of history’s most chilling psychological paradoxes can be found in a man whose name became synonymous with terror, torture, and murder in the 1970s–Theodore Robert Bundy, the "Ladykiller."

Girlfriends lauded him as loving, attentive, and romantic–perfectly poised and mannered, charming and kind, polite, with a nice smile. Landlords remembered him to be clean, tidy, and responsible.

He was a law student and political hopeful, very intelligent, and religious, and he seemed quite empathetic. For a while, Bundy was even a volunteer for a suicide hotline.

But underneath his facade of normalcy lurked a terrible demon, a cold, cruel, and heartless core, a man who could commit the most horrific and heinous deeds yet feel no remorse or pang of conscience.

He lured his female victims by pretending to be injured and in need of assistance or a policeman; he even pretended to be a rape crisis counselor to choose a victim. Sometimes he would attack victims, then revive them and pretend to be a good Samaritan coming to rescue them, toying with their emotions before finally killing them.

Some he simply stalked in the night, beating, sodomizing, and strangling the unsuspecting women. By the time he was caught and put to death, Bundy had viciously murdered more than 30 women, the youngest victim age 12.

"I am the coldest son of a bitch you’ll ever meet," stated the convicted killer in a now-famous quote. "I just liked to kill. I wanted to kill."

When faced with the tortured, angry outcry from the public and the grief-stricken families and friends of his victims, he expressed puzzlement over the stir he created, unable to understand why such a value could be placed on human life. "What’s one less person on the face of the Earth?" he actually asked aloud.

What could have created such a horrible, absurd anomaly within the psyche of a human being? It’s a question people have been clamoring for an answer to for centuries.

Along with the rest of the world, psychiatric professionals have struggled to comprehend the motivations of serial killers and, in the process, have created a hazy portrait, if not an unerring profile, of the minds behind the murders.

In their 1985 book titled "Mass Murder," Jack Levin, a sociologist, and James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice, put together a commonly accepted sketch of a serial killer, or multivictim killer, as they are often known.

Serial killers are typically white males in their late 20s or 30s. They choose to murder their victims over an extended period of time, usually one a time, usually preferring to strangle or beat them to death.

Their specific motivations vary but are typically associated with money, expediency, jealousy, or lust.

In 1990, Stanford professor and world-renowned expert on serial killers Donald T. Lunde with a partner, Henry Segal, undertook a similar study of 10 multivictim killers.

"I have seen more serial killers than any psychiatrist alive," he said simply, placing the tally at around 15.

Lunde and Segal found that, of the eight of their 10 subjects classified as "serial killers," all were white males with ages between 25 and 44. Seven of the eight did not display signs of being overly psychotic, and those same seven displayed obvious sexual motivation in their crimes, although many serial killers do not target victims for sexual purposes.

Lunde and Segal also found that most serial killers possess above-average intelligence levels; some even have IQs in the "superior" range.

This allows many serial killers to elude the law for a long time–like the Unabomber or Bundy, who even managed to escape from jail long enough to conduct several additional and horrific killing sprees before being apprehended again.

Another factor that enables serial killers to escape police for lengthy periods of time is perhaps one of their most frightening attributes–the way they can blend into a crowd, look like everyone else.

They can seem charming and kind to those who think they know them. They have friends they socialize with regularly; high-profile, high-responsibility jobs; pets they adore; spouses and children.

But underneath the "normal" exterior–often a well-crafted facade–lie mechanisms very unlike that of so-called "normal" human beings.

Most serial killers are psychopaths–their personality characterized by irrational antisocial behavior, shallow emotions, impulsiveness, irresponsibility, egocentricity, the tendency to manipulate, and an alarming lack of guilt, fear, or empathy.

In the 1800s psychopathology was called "moral insanity." Today it’s commonly called "anti-social personality disorder" or "sociopathology."

Being diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder, however, does not mean that an individual is insane or prone to becoming a serial killer.

"Most serial killers have elements of the anti-social personality disorder," Lunde said. "But that’s just a personality type. Most anti-social personalities don’t commit crimes, and 99.9 percent of them don’t commit murder, much less serial killing."

In fact, one psychological survey estimated that between 3 and 5 percent of all males and less than 1 percent of females are sociopaths.

Many, however, conduct normal, murder-free lives, and interestingly, many turn to such highly stimulating professions as careers on Wall Street or in law or police work and often excel at high-adrenaline careers like firefighting or the military.

"Psychopaths are attracted to danger and authority," said Christopher Patrick, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota. "They crave excitement and they crave power."

In his 1995 book "Anti-Social Personalities," author and psychologist David Lykken states, "The psychopath and the hero may be twigs on the same genetic branch."

But there are other influences that react with the foundation set by psychopathic tendencies–the lack of conscience, dulled emotions, and tendency to be attracted to mayhem–to create a deadly psychological Molotov cocktail, and in some instances, a serial killer.

Early childhood circumstances and life experiences can help create a killer, and intriguing recent research is purporting the belief that, in fact, the brains of serial killers are profoundly different from those of their "normal" counterparts. Many researchers also believe that sociopathic tendencies are hereditary.

Psychiatrists delving into the backgrounds of serial killers have discovered that many suffered extensive sexual and physical abuse during their childhoods, often by overbearing and overly punitive or overtly sexual mothers.

In his study, Lunde found a pattern of consistent histories of abnormal childhood experiences involving sex and aggression, often by the killers’ mothers. Perhaps as a result, many serial killers display an irrational hatred of women.

Ted Bundy targeted a specific female target, attractive women with long, dark hair parted down the middle–a profile reminiscent of the young, dark, beautiful fiancee who suddenly broke up with him in his earlier years.

Ed "the Butcher of Plainfield" Gein–the inspiration for the movie "Silence of the Lambs"–was reared by an abusive, alcoholic, fanatically religious mother who would regularly lecture her son on the dangers and filth associated with women.

Gein became fascinated with the female anatomy, digging up bodies from the graveyard late at night and dissecting them to examine the sex organs. When corpses no longer satisfied his curiosity he abducted and killed two women, skinning them to make macabre garments he would wear around his desolate Wisconsin farm.

New York’s infamous "Son of Sam" David Berkowitz, abandoned at birth by his natural mother and traumatized by the death of his adoptive mother at age 14, claimed that "howling demons" in his head told him to target young women with long, dark hair. As this pattern became noticeable in his killings, panicked young women in New York flocked to beauty shops to have their hair cut short and even dyed blond.

Even before his delusions of demons directed his animosity towards female victims, Berkowitz had displayed signs of resentment towards women. His earliest memories of women were negative–a group of girls who poured sand in his hair at a young age, girls who he felt rejected him throughout his life.

"I blame them [women] for everything," Berkowitz said. "Everything evil that’s happened in the world–somehow goes back to them."

And some killers seem to just have been born "evil," unable to control their violent impulses, supporting claims by researchers that this extreme impulse to kill repeatedly could be physiological in nature.

At age 5, Peter Kürten, who would become Germany’s infamous "Vampire of Dusseldorf," blithely pushed a schoolmate off a raft into the Rhine River, then subsequently held under both the hapless raftmate and a second companion who jumped in to save him until both drowned.

One killer’s sister recalled awaking suddenly one morning to see her 3-year-old brother standing by the bed with an eerie smile on his face, slipping a butcher knife between her sheets. At age 7, when his sister taunted him about wanting to kiss his second-grade teacher, he immediately and automatically replied that he would "have to kill her first."

Bundy himself ruminated over the idea that he was born without a conscience, expelled from his mothers womb devoid of the same feelings and sentiments found within "normal" people.

David Nilsen, who killed his victims, chopped them into little pieces, and flushed them down the toilet of his London flat, confessed that he felt he could not control his behavior.

"I wished I could stop but I could not," he said. "I had no other thrill or happiness."

Recent studies have delved into the possibility that those with anti-social personality disorder, or sociopsycopathic behavior, actually have acute differences within their brains from those of "normal" people.

Christopher Patrick, a leading psychiatric researcher and professor at the University of Minnesota, conducted a series of studies several years ago indicating that the fear reactivity of psychopaths is much less than that of "normal" humans.

Showing a mixed audience slides of various pleasant, neutral, and disturbing images, he recorded that those with psycopathic tendencies demonstrated much less reaction and aversion to, and even displayed an attraction to, the unpleasant images.

"Psychopaths show more of an interest, an engagement in a detached way, rather than normal revulsion or automatic fear," he said.

According to Patrick, that absence of fear can be attributed to deficiencies in the part of the brain responsible for fear stimulus.

This helps explain why psychopathic criminals seem to be drawn to reckless and impulsive actions, carelessly disregarding any thought of right or wrong or consequence.

Another study conducted on a group of murderers found "not guilty by reason of insanity" demonstrated that many had damage in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which can lead to impulsive behavior, loss of self-control, altered emotionality, and the inability to change behavior–all factors that can lead to overly aggressive behavior.

However, despite the scientific and psychological reasoning for the condition of serial killers, when it comes time for the verdict to be handed down, juries and judicial officials have typically proved to be little moved by claims of irregular impulses or abnormal childhoods.

Understandably, when presented with the details of a serial killer’s atrocious actions, the general public doesn’t respond favorably and usually overwhelmingly clamors for the death penalty.

Historically, the plea of insanity by serial killers has been poorly received by the general public and the judicial system, met with skepticism, scorn, and even complete disregard.

"The inclination of society is to say, ‘So what, they’re crazy? Kill them.’ It doesn’t matter that they’re insane; the sentiment is ‘kill them,’" said psychiatrist and psychology professor Clancy McKenzie, who has done extensive research with paranoid schizophrenics and was an expert witness in the murder trial of convicted serial killer Gary Heidnik.

"Lawyers mostly try not to use the insanity defense because there is no sympathy for it and it’s hard to win," he said frankly.

The criteria for insanity is based on the 19th century McNaughten Rules, which dictate that a person is innocent by reason of insanity if "at the time of committing the act, he was laboring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong." In essence–did they know what they were doing was wrong?

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have their own insanity statutes. Roughly half have adopted a test written by the American Law Institute during the 1950s, which states that a person would "not be responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law."

A third of the states, including California, use a variation of the McNaughten rules. Most have fairly strict criteria for determining insanity.

"Typically these individuals are not found insane, and that’s because the legal definition of insanity is very narrow," said Reid Melloy, forensic psychologist, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego, and author of "The Psychopathic Mind."

"So you could theoretically have an individual with an extreme history of mental disorder who knew what he was doing was judged wrong by society, and because he didn’t meet the elements of the insanity defense he could still be found guilty," Melloy said. "It’s rarely granted."

Two states, Montana and Idaho, have completely abolished the insanity defense. Anyone found guilty of a crime but mentally ill goes to prison along with the rest of the convicted criminals.

While many carry the perception that the insanity defense is a "get out of jail free" card, that perception is mistaken, according to University of California law professor Elyn Saks, who specializes in law psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

"The public has a very different perception of the insanity defense than what is reality," Saks said. "There are a lot of myths–for one, that the insanity defense is used a lot, and two, that when it is used people typically prevail."

In reality, according to a study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health, the insanity defense has been used in less than 1 percent of cases before the courts. Only 26 percent of those cases were successful, and the rulings in two-thirds of those were arranged previously with the prosecution.

"The public thinks there is a grave risk that someone will just walk away if found to be insane," Saks said. "People found not guilty by reason of insanity on average spend as much time in a secure psychiatric hospital as [guilty] people spend in prison."

In addition to the relative impotence of the insanity defense, many criminals avoid the label because they detest the connotation of it, Saks said.

"A lot of mentally ill people don’t raise the insanity defense because you can spend more time in a mental hospital than you would in prison–and because of the stigma associated with it," she said. "The criminally insane are both mad and bad."

According to Saks, the "insanity" defense is a legal term that means very little when measuring true mental deficiency in a defendant.

"Insanity is a legal term. Psychiatrists and psychologists no longer talk about ‘insanity’; they talk about mental illness," she said. "Insanity is a legal term for people who aren’t responsible or culpable for their actions. Clinically, people can be diagnosed with lots of serious mental illnesses and they’re still accountable for their actions."

According to New York forensic psychologist N.G. Berrill, director of New York Forensic, a private forensic consulting group, psychologists generally agree that most serial killers typically do not meet the criteria for true insanity and don’t deserve the defense anyway.

"Usually with serial killers, the psychological problems aren’t attributable to serious mental illness; it’s more a reflection of a personality disorder, namely, anti-social personality disorder," he said.

"While what they do is horrifying, often it really is the case that they don’t suffer from hallucinations or delusions but really are individuals who are predators," he said. "They enjoy hunting for people and destroying people for a host of reasons that don’t rise to the level of a serious mental illness. That’s why we don’t see them successfully adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity."

While generally–despite the variation between the legal and psychological definition of insanity–both professions agree on the ongoing danger posed by serial killers due to their inherent personality traits, there are sometimes differing opinions in some cases.

"There can be disagreements because issues and standards are different in the legal world," Berrill said. "If someone is seen as legally responsible for their actions, that doesn’t mean they aren’t suffering from a mental illness. It just means they aren’t meeting the criteria for insanity from the jury’s point of view."

Berrill said that, in his opinion, the Jeffrey Dahmer case was an example of the legal/psychological debate over insanity.

"Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t meet the standards for insanity," he said. "But from a clinical view you have a highly disturbed individual engaged in acts that were simply bizarre."

Yet, despite its proven lack of success, many serial killers try their hardest to manipulate the insanity defense, realizing it could be the only thing between them and death row.

Another killer, William Hickman, wrote a letter to a fellow inmate while in prison awaiting trial, explaining his intent to throw a laughing and screaming fit in front of the jury to try to convince them of his insanity in order to avoid the death penalty, but he closed the letter: "You know and I know that I’m not insane, however."

Some serial killers do suffer from psychotic maladies, like paranoid schizophrenic Berkowitz. The "Son of Sam" claimed to hear a cacophony of demons led by the demon "Sam" in his head, ranting at him to kill, and he complied, shooting six people dead, blinding or paralyzing two, and injuring seven.

But although a team of psychiatrists declared him "incapacitated," insane, and unable to stand trial, a special court-appointed psychiatrist found that while Berkowitz displayed traits of paranoia, he was still fit for trial. In the end, he was declared sane and sentenced to six consecutive terms of 25 years to life in prison, a term per murder.

However, even after he had gone to prison, many psychiatrists argued the validity of his mental delusions, pointing to ranting letters and disturbed drawings Berkowitz had produced in the past.

Some serial killers claim to have committed their heinous acts under the influence of an alternate personality, but in most of these instances, careful psychiatric evaluation has revealed the alter-ego defense to be a hoax.

John Wayne Gacy, who tortured and murdered 33 men and stuffed them into a crawl space beneath his Chicago home, claimed he acted under the influence of an alter ego, the tough, hard-drinking "Jack Hanley." His defense attorneys were unable to convince the jury of either an alternate personality or that Gacy was "a deeply sick individual" who was "crazy all the time." Sentenced to death, Gacy remains behind bars today and is famous for his oil paintings.

Several serial killers have actually been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics–plagued with auditory illusions that they claim command them to kill. However, in those circumstances most killers are generally declared legally sane and competent to stand trial in spite of their mental problems.

Gary Heidnik was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering two of the six women he had chained in the basement of his Philadelphia home, despite assertions by McKenzie that Heidnik had an extremely advanced case of schizophrenia.

"Gary Heidnik was the most documented schizophrenic you’ve ever wanted to meet, and in spite of that he was given two death sentences," McKenzie said.

A handful of serial killers, however, have been judged mentally ill and put into psychiatric facilities.

"The Moon Maniac" Albert Fish kidnapped a small child, cooked her into a stew, and then wrote rapturous letters to her parents describing how enjoyable a meal their offspring had made.

A repulsed jury found that Fish was insane, but that "he deserved to die anyway." He was electrocuted at New York’s Sing Sing Prison in 1936.

As far as rehabilitation of these individuals is concerned, according to Berrill, most serial killers are not capable of changing and truly belong in prison.

"It would be very hard to imagine a serial killer being successfully treated in therapy or rehabilitated," he said. "At the other end of treatment or incarceration, it’s unlikely you would find a healthy person. Usually they are just very dangerous. With serial killers, there’s no illness to treat...it’s more of a personality pathology. I suppose prison is really the only true way of containing these guys."

Melloy agreed.

"There is no evidence that there’s successful treatment or rehabilitation for serial murderers," he said. Æ

Jen Stevenson is a New Times staff writer.