The Mind of a Serial Killer...

This was easy for me to write, because I’m fascinated by them=> Serial Killers.

Why does a serial killer decide to kill? Who does he choose to kill? How does he choose to do it? How do all of those elements fit together, and what does it all mean? “it’s not weird to be fascinated by that. It’s weird not to be.”

My purpose is not to glorify these men, but to explain their effect on me and on my writing.

Another fact is that they are very smart, very capable, and very willing to do anything necessary to get away, including a leap from a speeding car. So you may not classify them as insane. That’s a remarkable window into the man’s mind: so intense is their need to kill—an actual, physical need—that even with an eye witness and a swarm of police hunting for them, they have to keep going. Once that need gets into their heads, serial killers will keep going until their need is satisfied. I won’t say too much, but that driving, blinding, unstoppable need plays a huge part in their killings.

Serial killers do what they do for specific reasons, whether or not those reasons make sense to the rest of us, and those reasons are very rarely fulfilled by a simple death—the killer has to go further, often arranging or defacing the body, and very frequently taking something from it. This is called “ritualization”, and in the killer’s mind it grants the killing some kind of meaning or significance that satisfies their need to kill.

Some of them are human paradox, simultaneously good and evil, and that more than anything else is the reason I am drawn to serial killers. For me, it’s the idea that great darkness can exist at the heart of something light; that in our darkest thoughts any one of us, no matter how pure, is capable of evil.This is their hope, and often the only hope, for if a good guy can turn bad, it just might be possible that a bad guy could turn out good in the end.