The
serial killers’ impetus is under scrutiny more today than at any other point in
history. There are many television shows dedicated to murderers in general, but
the highest ratings go to the serial killer. In these shows, there are those
who argue that these sociopaths kill in order to become famous. While this
argument may hold some water, it is like a boat with a hole in the aft section;
it will not float for long unless there are people willing to scoop out the
water and plug the hole. Instead of “water, water everywhere, and not a drop to
drink” (Coleridge, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner) it is blood, blood everywhere
and many a drop to preen. To say that serial killers kill in order to gain
notoriety is akin to saying the bulimic vomits because vomiting is fun. Turn
that line around and you get the truth. Bulimics vomit to stay thin and stay
popular while serial killers kill because, to them, killing is fun. Media attention
is just an incidental thrill. The killer kills to kill and would kill whether
or not mass media existed.
Any
thinking person knows that vampires and werewolves do not exist, not in the
mythological way. Vlad Tepish drank blood and implaled tens of thousands, and
Elizabeth Bathory bathed in the blood of virgins. They did not do this to be
written up in the papers, for there were no papers back then. Woodcuts existed,
sure, but not mass media newspapers giving killers clever names. Neither one of
them ever turned into a bat and flew away, though Tepish did escape. To go back
further, no printing press existed in the days when Tiberus threw people off of
high cliffs for fun or when Caligula raped senators’ wives and had them impaled
and infected with syphilis. These lunatics killed for the same reason anyone
kills—power.
As
time passed, the serial killer did find it fun to cajole the police. Jack the
Ripper (or H.H. Holmes, if you prefer) sent the police many notes on his
British vacation and did the same thing while he killed in America,
masquerading as a doctor with a brilliant castle in the city of Chicago. He
began killing, as many serial killers do, as a child, when he was Herman
Mudgett and pushed a young friend off the top of a hayloft in New Hampshire.
Older, he gassed and gave acid baths to his victims, many of them from the
World’s Fair or The White City, as it was called at the time and he never said
a word. The one time he did leak out was to Marion Hedgepeth in a Missouri jail
where Holmes was being held for fraud. I believe he did this because he had
become bored.
However,
they do enjoy their games. The Zodiac played games with code. John Wayne Gacy
played games by not only being an incredibly upstanding member of Chicago
society, but also by allowing the police into his home for various dinners—one of
which would lead to his getting caught. Jeffery Dahmer played games, but only
with his victims. Had he not zoned out on alcohol at the wrong time he may
still be alive and killing today. Albert Fish played games—sending letters to
the families of his victims, most notably Grace Budd, talking about how
succulent her flesh tasted, and bragging that he did not rape her. The one
thing these killers have entirely in common, other than that they are obvious
sociopaths is that they did not write or cajole to make the papers; they did it
to fuck with the police. (Though in Dahmer’s case, he only fucked with the cops
once to save his own skin.)
It
is not the serial killer using the media, it is the media using the serial
killer. The media gives the killer clever names—Zodiac, Green River Killer, The
Butcher of this, the Strangler of that, and, let us of course not forget the
lawyers who write entire books about how awesome they are for putting killers
away, like Charles Manson. You have to wonder what motives lay behind the
writing of Helter Skelter. Factually
speaking, historically speaking, the serial killer will kill anyway, regardless
of media attention. For me, it is the media and the novelists who exploit the killer
and not the other way around.
So,
that being said, who are the real assholes?
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