

Visionary serial killers suffer from psychotic breaks with reality, sometimes believing they are another person or are compelled to murder by entities such as the Devil or God. The motives of serial killers are generally placed into four categories: visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic and power or control however, the motives of any given killer may display considerable overlap among these categories Visionary Some were involved in petty crimes, such as theft, fraud, vandalism, dishonesty or similar offenses.They were frequently bullied as children.However, recent authorities question or deny the statistical significance of this figure. More than 60 percent wet their beds beyond the age of 12.They are involved in sadistic activity especially in children who have not reached sexual maturity, this activity may take the form of torturing animals.A disproportionate number exhibit one, two, or all three of the MacDonald triad of predictors of psychopathy:.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). 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. From an early age, many are intensely interested in voyeurism, fetishism, and sadomasochistic pornography.They may have high rates of suicide attempts.They were often abused - emotionally, physically and/or sexually - by a family member.Their families often have criminal, psychiatric and/or alcoholic histories.As children, they are often abandoned by their fathers and raised by domineering mothers.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. Often, they have trouble staying employed and tend to work in menial jobs.Only serial killers who use bombs have IQs significantly above the population mean. A sample of 174 IQs of serial killers had a median IQ of 93. Other typical characteristics of serial killers include: 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. population, whites are not more likely than other races to be serial killers. 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. 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. The racial demographics regarding serial killers are often subject of debate. 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.
#Serial killer definition series#
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. 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.
