You’ve all heard of Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer, infamous serial killers whose crimes are still talked about in the true crime world. But have you ever wondered exactly how they became the monsters they are known as today? People aren’t born killers. In this article, we will discuss the original causes and the effects these have on soon-to-be killers.
There are many different reasons why serial killers choose the dark path, mainly due to a disturbing childhood. Serial killers usually have suffered some sort of childhood abuse or other trauma in childhood. It could have been physical, like actual beatings/whippings. It also could have been mental abuse, such as constant yelling, cruel remarks, or cursing. This would obviously lead them to hate their parents and any parental figures in general. In this case, the person who had suffered abuse would not have gotten help, causing their feelings to get bottled up without the slightest clue what to do about it. This could result in them lashing out violently and turning to substances for relief instead. It all first starts small, such as harming or torturing animals. But it escalates quickly, their first kill not taking too long to occur. Similarly, a single traumatic event could forever imprint the child, which could alter their perception of the world, and this could also lead to them to start murdering or hurting people in ways they should never have been taught too.
Jeffery Dahmer
Jeffery Dahmer definitely didn’t have an easy childhood (which started on May 21, 1960), but he did have one better than most serial killers. Dahmer’s mother, Joyce Dahmer, suffered from depression and had many accounts of attempted suicide. With a parent such as her, it was clear that this impacted Dahmer in a way that wasn’t good. However, when interrogated, Dahmer stated that his mother and father were loving. But his father was always absent from the house because he worked a doctoral career, trying to give his two sons a good life while Dahmer was struggling with the relationship between his brother, David Dahmer. When Dahmer was born, five-year-old David resented him as they competed for their parents’ attention and care.
Dahmer had also moved around a significant amount of times between when he was six to eight years old, finally settling in Bath, Ohio, where he lived until he graduated from high school.
Even with all of this happening in his childhood, Louis Schlesinger, a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an expert on serial sexual murder, claimed that it had nothing to do with Dahmer’s reason for being put behind bars.
Even as a teenager, the killer had a dark mind with an instinct to hurt. This included animal assault/cruelty, where Dahmer decapitated a dog, impaled the head on a stick, and hung it in the woods behind his house.
According to Schlesinger, the instinct to kill doesn’t start randomly; this simply doesn’t begin overnight. It all grows in the mind. “Having your mother attempt suicide and become hospitalized is not a pleasant event,” retorts the professor, “but it doesn’t make you become a serial killer.” This all points to the fact that Jeffery Dahmer was simply born with his soul dark and mind twisted.
Although his mother suffered with mental-health issues, Dr. Carl Wahlstrom stands firm to the belief that she was still a loving mother. “She had the one-year baby book, with locks of his hair and lots of pictures,” says Wahlstrom. “His parents seemed in the broad range of normal.” In conclusion, we can take from all of this that Dahmer is not like others who had an abusive, absent, and dark childhood, but rather a decent one. It’s just a childhood where we’ll never know where he went wrong.
Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy, one of the more popular serial killers on this list, was born on November 24, 1946. He was the son of Louise Cowell, but no one knew who the father truly was. Some people say it was one of Louise’s coworkers, while others believe it could have been her own father. This mystery still remains unsolved.
When he was an infant, his mother put Bundy into the care of her grandparents to get rid of any discrepancy about who Bundy’s paternal figures were. Bundy was brought up to believe that his mom was actually his sister, and that his grandparents were his real parents. He later found out about this, and when interviewed, he said, “Maybe I just figured out that there couldn’t be twenty years’ difference in age between a brother and a sister, and Louise always took care of me. I just grew up knowing that she was really my mother.” This started a deep resent towards his mother that would only grow from there.
In most cases, childhood abuse is caused by one family member. In Bundy’s, it was his grandfather, Samuel Cowell. He would physically and psychologically abuse Bundy throughout his childhood. Bundy’s grandmother, Eleanor Cowell, was fortunately not abusive, but still suffered from depression. Both of these traits only worsened Bundy’s mental state. The trauma he got from living with his grandparents led to many disturbing incidents, one being that when he was a toddler, he placed knives near his aunt while she was asleep. She didn’t know what to do about it, and no one else in the family seemed worried about it, so she did nothing further on the matter.
Like all serial killers, Bundy’s incidents started out as smaller things which would later escalate to killing. One thing he would do is dig up holes, put stakes inside, then cover it with vegetation so people would fall into the trap. Bundy was also violent towards animals, which turns out to be extremely common among future killers. He would buy mice, and since he liked having control, he would “play God” and decide which mice he would kill and which one he would spare. He would then cut up the misfortunate in the forest. This desire for control was also part of his inspiration for his future kills. Bundy also shoplifted ski supplies he wanted because he could not afford, then stealing tickets so he could go for free.
To summarize, Bundy’s difficult and traumatic childhood was his main motive to start killing, then later on as an adolescent, he would start by harming animals and setting traps to scare others. He did all of these things because he wanted to have a sense of control. Ted Bundy was a terrible person, but a lot of what he did was based on his terrible childhood, along with his sickening mental state.
Abusive childhoods, deceived minds, dark souls, and twisted ideas. The majority of serial killers have gone through tough childhoods – some did, some didn’t. No one will understand where they went wrong, not even us. Reading these articles took time to fully digest to attain information from, as some of the things we read were just completely insane. Although they went through hard times, it does not give them the right to do such horrid crimes without feeling guilt or even regret. Ultimately, while their troubled pasts may offer some insight, it does not excuse or justify the dreadful actions they did, leaving us with the constant reminder of the darkness that can reside within the human mind.
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