A serial killer is usually defined as an individual that has murdered three or more people over a time period of more than a month, with a process known as a 'cooling off period' between the different murders. Their main motivation for killing is typically based on psychological gratification. Some sources disregard the 'three or more' criteria, and define the term as 'a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone' or, including the vital characteristics, a minimum of at least two murders. Often, a sexual element is involved in the killings, but the FBI states that motives for serial murder include 'anger, thrill, financial gain, and attention seeking.' The murders may have been attempted or completed in a similar fashion and the victims may have had something in common, for example, occupation, race, appearance, sex, or age group.Serial killers are not the same as mass murderers, nor are they spree killers, who commit murders in two or more locations with virtually no break in between. CharacteristicsThe racial demographics regarding serial killers are often subject of debate. In the United States, the majority of reported and investigated serial killers are white males, from a lower-to-middle-class background, usually in their late twenties to early thirties. However, there are African American, Asian, and Hispanic (of any race) serial killers as well, and, according to the FBI, based on percentages of the U.S.
Population, whites are not more likely than other races to be serial killers. Criminal profiler Pat Brown says 'serial killers are usually reported as white because the media typically focuses on 'All-American' white and pretty female victims who were the targets of white male offenders, that crimes among minority offenders in urban communities, where crime rates are higher, are under-investigated, and that minority serial killers likely exist at the same ratios as white serial killers for the population.' She believes that the 'serial killers are always white' myth might have become 'truth' in some research fields due to the over-reporting of white serial killers in the media. Other typical characteristics of serial killers include:. Low-average intelligence. A sample of 174 IQs of serial killers had a median IQ of 93.
Only serial killers who use bombs have IQs significantly above the population mean. Often, they have trouble staying employed and tend to work in menial jobs. The FBI, however, states, 'Serial murderers often seem normal; have families and/or a steady job.' Other sources state they often come from unstable families. As children, they are often abandoned by their fathers and raised by domineering mothers. Their families often have criminal, psychiatric and/or alcoholic histories. They were often abused — emotionally, physically and/or sexually — by a family member.
Hedonistic Serial Killers
They may have high rates of suicide attempts. From an early age, many are intensely interested in voyeurism, fetishism, and sadomasochistic pornography. Fetishism, partialism, and necrophilia, are paraphilias which involve a strong tendency to experience the object of erotic interest almost as if it were a physical representation of the symbolized body. Individuals engage in paraphilias which are organized along a continuum; participating in varying levels of fantasy perhaps by focusing on body parts (partialism), symbolic objects which serve as physical extensions of the body (fetishism), or the anatomical physicality of the human body; specifically regarding its inner parts and sexual organs (one example being necrophilia). A disproportionate number exhibit one, two, or all three of the MacDonald triad of predictors of psychopathy:.
Many are fascinated with fire setting. They are involved in sadistic activity; especially in children who have not reached sexual maturity, this activity may take the form of torturing animals. More than 60 percent wet their beds beyond the age of 12.