Fascinating Yet Horrifying

Since the beginning of civilization there have always been been people missing a few too many brain cells, and become a parasite to society. Feeding on the pain and misery of innocent human prey. The twisted minds of a psychos can be a fascinating yet horrifying thing and psychos become some of society's biggest plagues.

Worshippers of Kali – the monstrous goddess of destruction and demon-slayer, initiated India's Thug cult, who sacrificially strangled many thousands of victims, becoming the original killer cult. Thugs existed as a clandestine sect for almost a thousand years, longer than any other known killer cult. The full body-count of Thuggee victims, like its real origins, remains an unsolved mystery, but the cult spread across India like a plague. Their modus operandi grew increasingly gruesome and ruthless, joyfully massacring women, children and babies. This reign of terror only terminated when the British army hunted-down and hanged some four-thousand prototype, group serial killers. Incredibly, even now this cult remains shrouded in secrecy, yet they created a terrorist conspiracy with international links. Today this legacy is more relevant than ever.

Jim Jones, the son of a Klansman, considered himself the reincarnation of both Jesus and Lenin. He was also endowed with a huge penis which he used repeatedly in the name of Christ. Jim had visions of an impending nuclear holocaust in which only the towns of Ukiah, California and Belo Horizonte, Brazil would survive. With that in mind, he relocated his first People's Temple to Ukiah to await the Armageddon.

Tired of waiting for the third world war, he moved his church to San Francisco where he received numerous humanitarian awards and became the Chairman of the city's Housing Authority. It was there that he first practiced a ritual called "White Nights" in which he prepared his followers for an act of revolutionary suicide to protest racism and fascism.

By 1977, as things started getting weirder, he was forced to move his church to Guyana, South America. There, in the isolation of the jungle, Jimmy created his dream community, Jonestown, and lost his mind. Jim's nirvana rapidly deteriorated into a nightmare which he knew of only one way to end.

On November 18, 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan from San Francisco went on a fact-finding mission investigating alleged human rights abuses at Jonestown. After only a day at the jungle compound, a member tried to stab Ryan. The injury was minor, but Ryan decided to leave with his party and 18 temple members who wanted to to return to the United States. Other members of the cult followed the group to the airstrip and opened fire, killing Ryan, three journalists, and one of the departing members. Eleven others were injured.

Hours later, the good reverend ordered his followers to drink from a tub of grape-flavored Fla-Vor-Aid laced with potassium cyanide and tranquilizers. All 900+ did. Children died first; babies were killed by poison squirted into their mouths with a syringe. Then the adults. Most were poisoned, some forcibly. Some were shot by security guards. As the ritual suicide progressed, it is unclear whether Jim put a bullet through his brain, or someone did it for him.

Jonestown itself has all but vanished, stripped by villagers and consumed by a fire in the early 1980s. Some believe that Jimmy was linked to the CIA and that the Jonestown massacre was in fact a mind control experiment. If it was, it was a total success.

On February 28, 1993, when the ATF tried to enter the Branch Davidian compound in the outskirts of Waco, Texas, Dave and the gang answered with a rain of lead killing four ATF agents. Koresh, a failed rock'n roller turned doomsday prophet resisted the ATF siege that followed for fifty-one days. He also promised to bring forth a fiery apocalypse for all those with him in the compound.

On April 19, 1993, he delivered. As the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, under the lead of Bob Ricks launched their assault, the compound broke out in flames killing eighty-six people inside. The government claimed that Koresh ignited the flames and had the compound booby-trapped so it would go up in a fireball. Some, like the recently infamous Michigan Militia, believe the Feds and Attorney General Janet Reno were completely responsible for the deaths of Koresh and his fellow charred Branch Davidians.

It is said that Webster Hubbell, Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton ran the whole Waco siege from the White House. Many think Waco was behind the death of Vince Foster. Then there is the FBI director William Sessions who was fired the day after Vince Foster died. Davidian lawyer Dick Degarrin was a law school friend of Sessions. William Sessions said on ABC Barbara Walters show that Dick called him and convinced him to come down and talk to Koresh directly to end the siege. As soon as the White House found out he was put under "House arrest" in his office and fired and Vince Foster died all in the same couple of days. This all sounds a little to connected for me.

For years, law enforcement investigators, academics, mental health experts, and the media have studied serial murder, from Jack the Ripper in the late 1800s to the sniper killings in 2002, and from the “Zodiac Killer” in California to the “BTK Killer” in Kansas.

The topic of serial murder occupies a unique niche within the criminal justice community. In addition to the significant investigative challenges they bring to law enforcement, serial murder cases attract an over-abundance of attention from the media, mental health experts, academia, and the general public. While there has been significant, independent work conducted by a variety of experts to identify and analyze the many issues related to serial murder, there have been few efforts to reach a consensus between law enforcement and other experts, regarding these matters.

Serial murder is neither a new phenomenon, nor is it uniquely American. Dating back to ancient times, serial murderers have been chronicled around the world. In 19th century Europe, Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing conducted some of the first documented research on violent, sexual offenders and the crimes they committed. Best known for his 1886 textbook Psychopathia Sexualis, Dr. Kraft-Ebing described numerous case studies of sexual homicide, serial murder, and other areas of sexual proclivity.

Serial murder is a relatively rare event, estimated to comprise less than one percent of all murders committed in any given year. However, there is a macabre interest in the topic that far exceeds its scope and has generated countless articles, books, and movies. This broad-based public fascination began in the late 1880s, after a series of unsolved prostitute murders occurred in the Whitechapel area of London. These murders were committed by an unknown individual who named himself Jack the Ripper.

These murders and the nom de guerre “Jack the Ripper” have become synonymous with serial murder. This case spawned many legends concerning serial murder and the killers who commit it. In the 1970s and 1980s serial murder cases such as the Green River Killer, Ted Bundy, and BTK sparked a renewed public interest in serial murder, which blossomed in the 1990s after the release of films such as Silence of the Lambs.

Much of the general public’s knowledge concerning serial murder is a product of Hollywood productions. Story lines are created to heighten the interest of audiences, rather than to accurately portray serial murder. By focusing on the atrocities inflicted on victims by “deranged” offenders, the public is captivated by the criminals and their crimes.

In the past thirty years, multiple definitions of serial murder have been used by law enforcement, clinicians, academia, and researchers. While these definitions do share several common themes, they differ on specific requirements, such as the number of murders involved, the types of motivation, and the temporal aspects of the murders.

Previous definitions of serial murder specified a certain number of murders, varying from two to ten victims. This quantitative requirement distinguished a serial murder from other categories of murder (i.e. single, double, or triple murder). Most of the definitions also required a period of time between the murders. This break-in-time was necessary to distinguish between a mass murder and a serial murder. Serial murder required a temporal separation between the different murders, which was described as: separate occasions, cooling-off period, and emotional cooling-off period.

Generally, mass murder was described as a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders. These events typically involved a single location, where the killer murdered a number of victims in an ongoing incident (e.g. the 1984 San Ysidro McDonalds incident in San Diego, California; the 1991 Luby’s Restaurant massacre in Killeen, Texas; and the 2007 Virginia Tech murders in Blacksburg, Virginia).

Following the arrest of a serial killer, the question is always asked: How did this person become a serial murderer? The answer lies in the development of the individual from birth to adulthood. Specifically, the behavior a person displays is influenced by life experiences, as well as certain biological factors. Serial murderers, like all human beings, are the product of their heredity, their upbringing, and the choices they make throughout development.

Individuals have the ability to choose to engage in certain behaviors. The collective outcome of all influences separates individual behavior from generic human behavior. Since it is not possible to identify all of the factors that influence normal human behavior, it similarly is not possible to identify all of the factors that influence an individual to become a serial murderer.

Human beings are in a constant state of development from the moment of conception until death. Behavior is affected by stimulation received and processed by the central nervous system. Neurobiologists believe that our nervous systems are environmentally sensitive, thereby allowing individual nervous systems to be shaped throughout a lifetime.

The development of social coping mechanisms begins early in life and continues to progress as children learn to interact, negotiate, and compromise with their peers. In some individuals the failure to develop adequate coping mechanisms results in violent behavior.

Neglect and abuse in childhood have been shown to contribute to an increased risk of future violence. Substance abuse can and does lead to increased aggression and violence. There are documented cases of people who suffered severe head injuries and ultimately become violent, even when there was no prior history of violence. There is no single identifiable cause or factor that leads to the development of a serial killer. Rather, there are a multitude of factors that contribute to their development. The most significant factor is the serial killer’s personal decision in choosing to pursue their crimes.

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