ABSTRACT
Psychotic homicidal offenders have in recent times received attention, at least in the United States, consid-erably in excess either of their number or of the number of victims they have killed. There are two main reasons for this disproportion. Some of the murders committed by psychotic persons, even where there are only one or two victims, are bizarre or else repugnant in nature-as if somehow the out-of-the ordinariness, the madness of the crime matches the madness of its perpetrator. This creates headline-grabbing news in the tabloids, contributing to the public’s fearful assumptions that “crazy” people are especially dangerous, and worse than that-capable of inflicting suffering and horror beyond what a “normal” killer could inflict. Then there are the even rarer but still more dramatic incidents involving either serial sexual homicide or mass murder committed by persons who were described as mentally ill. From the standpoint of the public, such crimes have an even more electrifying impact, engendering widespread fear, and stirring up political conflict as to what should be done about the mentally ill-all of whom are suddenly lumped together in the public’s mind as harbingers of unspeakable evil.
