ABSTRACT

To reemphasize, there is a fundamental problem which handicaps our understanding of serial murder. This is the fact that serial murderers are an extremely heterogeneous population which has not on the whole been classified into meaningful groups. A serial murder, whether for sexual sadistic purposes or revenge, is just a label for what is in fact a quite complex behavior. These labels tells us little about the individual who carries out such behavior. Yet we tend to think of rapists, for instance, as members of a group more like each other, and researchers try to understand their behavior based on one aspect of that behavior: choice of victim. In other, nonsexual offenses, such as burglary or domestic homicide, no other consideration is given to such things as personalities of thieves or murderers, or a social psychology of stealing or killing. However, the literature often refers to sex murderers as if they can be distinguished by phrenology or some other aspect of their intra-psyche.