ABSTRACT
This chapter explores reflections regarding interactions between Gothic criminology, and teratological rhetorics. It focuses on the use of monstrous metaphors, and how these monstrous metaphors function rhetorically in media narratives. In contrast, in the case of Wuornos, reputedly America's first female serial killer, becomes associated with the pitiful and ugly outcast, the Frankensteinian monster. The chapter examines the monstrous metaphors that reside in the prosecutions mythic portraiture of Wayne Williams as America's first black male serial killer. In media and popular culture, male serial murderers are typically depicted as possessing metaphoric vampiric qualities and epitomizing the primordial evil that such murderers seek to cultivate, assuming the status of a vengeful deity in relation to their victims. However, once a female serial killer becomes the object of the narrative, it is less the vampire than the Frankensteinian Monster, which becomes the main analogue.
