The Creation of a Serial Killer: Nature Vs. Nurture

Murder, it is the most vindictive crime any human can commit. Society often wonders, what makes an individual want to commit such a horrific crime. It is hard to believe that an innocent looking child , years later could commit a heinous crime but ,are they born into this world that way, with a brain abnormality ? Or are they made by their lack of parental guidance,child abuse or had suffered from a childhood trauma? One may say that Jeffrey Dahmer had a very good childhood and he had a very easy life. Andrei Chikatilo, on the other hand, had one of the worst childhoods a kid could have.

Andrei Chikatilo, a former school teachers he was convicted of killing 53 younger people, although he confessed to many more. Chikatilo's childhood was not the greatest. He was born during Stalin’s creation of these policies that had to do with collecting agriculture and it caused hardship throughout the country. His family and the ones around him had only very small quantity of goods; only a fraction of the food that they needed. Later on in his life, he said that he had never had bread until he was 12. The family had to eat leaves and grass just to say alive. The worst part of his life, that probably hurt him the most mentally, and the thing that he would never forget, is when his brother of only four years old had been kidnapped and cannibalized by their also starving neighbors. This most definitely had impacted him so much as a child and had to do with the many many killings and butchering that he committed.

Jeffrey Dahmer, one of the most infamous serial killers. He was an American serial killer who, over the course of about 13 years killed 17 males. Many people that knew him and family members said that he was a very lively and content child. That was until the age of 4 when he had a double hernia and he had to get surgery. If they didn’t do the surgery is would have been fatal. But the surgery had took a toll on Young Dahmer. As a very child when you have a surgery like this the oxygen levels in the brain change and you end up killing parts of your brain .The family said that after the surgery it changed him completely. From a very young age Dahmer was fascinated my dead animals that he found on the round close to his house. He would take the carcasses that he found, behind his childhood house in a wooded area, and take apart and dismember them. At the least he was obsessed be dead things. He also would kill his neighbors cats and dogs and sever their heads off and impale them with sticks and try to scare his neighbors. As he got a little older about in his teens he was very withdrawn and wanted to only be with himself; he didn’t have many friends in school. This is a case where the serial killer was very loved and didn’t have much to worry about as a child. He only had a complication during his procedure that led him to not have enough oxygen and left him a little different than he was before.

Do all serial killers suffer from mental disorders or illnesses? Although serial killers fall under a couple of stereotypes like having a severe mental illness that makes them with was or they are these very smart geniuses usually that is not the case. But some fall under the category of the mental illnesses and they are said to have a type of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). These people will have symptoms like not caring to follow rules or laws. They are usually very angry and show it. They don’t care about the rights of other people. And they don’t show any type of sorrow or self accusation of any kind. But even if you have this it does not mean that you won’t be charged with anything because you have a mental illness. To be classified as having a such bad mental disorder that you don’t know at the time of the murder(s) that you are doing anything wrong is very very rare. While there are many cases like Ted Bundy where he was very aware and acted on a compulsive want. This proves that there are many different things that can contribute the killings not just metal disorders.

It is very hard to understand why someone would do something like this or try to put them in some type of category. Law enforcement have tried to understand and detect them but it is impossible to do. But there are four main types of serial killers, power and control, visionary, mission, and hedonistic. The first, power and control, most of the serial killers that you see are this type. They like to dominate and humiliate their victims by raping them and they get sexual gratification. The next is visionary, these types are the ones that you see that they say that God is telling them to kill certain people or the see things in thief brains to do this. This in one of the rarer types. Next is mission, this type is like on “Dexter” where he kills other murderers or criminals that have committed very heinous crimes. He says that they deserve it and he is doing a duty to the world and to the neighborhood. The last one is hedonist killers, this type of killer like the thrill of the act. They often like to mutilate and torture their victims. There are also a combination of some of these and a couple of ones that aren’t listed. Buts it’s hard to put them in a bracket.

Although it’s hard to believe that an innocent guiltless looking child could be culpable of something like this, there have been many children and teens that have murdered their family or even murdered innocent other children. Hypothetically speaking, you can be born with being a serial killer and also have a bad childhood and that could just make it worse. Being born with it and/or having something wrong with your brain is more likely than just having a bad childhood. There are many many children with harmful inadequate parents that turn their lives around and become a very valuable person. They are born that way.

To sum things up, there are many different types of serial killers and we will never find out exactly why they do the things that they do. Like stated before there are many things that could contribute to these gruesome and macabre acts. Andrei Chikatilo has a bad life and was brought up very poor and angry. His life was scary and it was hard to go through his life knowing what happened to his brother. Jeffrey Dahmer in the other hand had a very good upbringing and he was just infatuated with dead things and dead carcasses. He was born this way. In summary the reason that they kill is because they are born with the want to commit these villainous crimes.

Cite this page