But serial killers are very aware of what theyРІР‚в„ўre doing. The legal definition of insanity is an inability to distinguish right from wrong and an inability to understand the consequences of an action. Serial killers choose to act on their compulsions.Р”Вuring the first big wave of celebrity serial killers in the 1960s and 1970s, some defense lawyers tried to argue in court that serial killers are not guilty by reason of insanity, because an irresistible compulsion to kill is a form of temporary insanity. My sense is responsibility falls on the offender here. But hereРІР‚в„ўs the problem: if 100 kids grow up in an abusive foster home, and one turns out to be a serial killer РІР‚вЂњ what about the other 99? They grew up to be, well, maybe not all well-adjusted citizens, but certainly not serial killers. ItРІР‚в„ўs true that almost all serial killers suffered childhood trauma. If killers are the products of childhood trauma, or underdeveloped brains, are they still РІР‚СљresponsibleРІР‚Сњ for their actions? When you read these killersРІР‚в„ў biographies it is no surprise they turned into what they did. I really donРІР‚в„ўt know.Р”В«ut there is nothing in his past that obviously parallels the early lives of, say, Charles Manson or Henry Lee Lucas.

It could be that there is something but he doesnРІР‚в„ўt want to admit it. He comes from a nuclear family РІР‚В¦ the father was there, the mother was there, and there is no clear history of trauma or abuse. I am currently studying a serial killer called Richard Cottingham. There is also the strangeness of the late age at which he started. There is nothing in his childhood to explain his behavior.

He was flying the equivalent of Air Force One РІР‚вЂњ flying around the prime minister, visiting dignitaries РІР‚вЂњ then suddenly in his 40s, a colonel, he commits two sexual homicides. We had a killer here in Canada who was the commander of an air force base. Mugshot of murder suspect Ted Bundy, 1980. He did, however, grow up believing that his mother was his sister. No one has really found any evidence of РІР‚СљtraumaРІР‚Сњ in his childhood, in the dramatic, traditional sense. That being said, there do seem to be some examples. Most serial killer biographies are self-reported, so you are relying on what they tell you. Trauma is the single recurring theme in the biographies of most killers.Р”Р„re there any cases of serial killers who had well-adjusted childhoods? Many serial killers are survivors of early childhood trauma of some kind РІР‚вЂњ physical or sexual abuse, family dysfunction, emotionally distant or absent parents. And often that capacity is grafted onto a sexual impulse РІР‚вЂњ aggression sexualized at puberty. What remains behind is these un-fully-socialized beings with this capacity to attack and kill. Perhaps itРІР‚в„ўs not that serial killers are made, but that the majority of us are unmade, by good parenting and socialization. Killers are anachronisms whose primal instincts are not being moderated by the more intellectual parts of our brain. My basic argument is that it is intrinsic to the human survival mechanism that we have this capacity to repeatedly kill. Are serial killers a product of nature (genetics) or nurture (environmental factors)? One of the oldest questions in criminology РІР‚вЂњ and, for that matter, philosophy, law, theology РІР‚вЂњ is whether criminals are born or made.

John Wayne Gacy, who was responsible for 33 murders.

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