Serial Killer Research Articles

Narcissistic female serial killers: A psychobiographical study of Cecilia Johanna Steyn

This article examines the psychobiography of Cecilia Johanna Steyn, a female serial killer from South Africa. The study analysed Cecilia Steyn’s childhood development to suggest possible adverse childhood experiences predisposing her to instigate murders on her demand. Drawing on the narcissistic theoretical frameworks of Heinz Kohut and Robert Hare, we analysed Cecilia Steyn’s childhood development, indicating the occurrence of narcissistic injury. We found that Cecilia Steyn could be considered a highly manipulative, narcissistic female serial killer. The analyses provided a profile of a gendered female serial killer, highlighting similarities and differences based on narcissism and psychopathy.

Psychological Profile of Serial Killers: Analysis of Personality Traits, Motivation and Emotional Dynamics

Psychological Profile of Serial Killers: Analysis of Personality Traits, Motivation and Emotional Dynamics

On Accountability: Genetic Tools for Justice and Injustice in Criminal Proceedings

Analysis of DNA found at crime scenes has made headlines when used to solve serial killer cold cases. The DNA Identification Act of 1994 approved the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a database that stores profiles of 20 genetic markers for forensic investigations. The CODIS markers were specifically chosen because they were thought to be unlinkable to personally identifiable individual traits. However, advances in genetics research have expanded the traits associated with CODIS markers and increased the tools and applications of forensic genetics, thus further increasing the information investigators could gain from a suspected person’s CODIS profile. This is also true regarding private companies, who may analyze genetic information beyond that included in a CODIS profile. These scientific developments may lead to infringements on genetic privacy rights. Additionally, in 2013, the US Supreme Court held in Maryland v King that people who have been arrested, even if they are acquitted or never indicted, can be added to CODIS databases. Due to racial biases in policing and arrests, this has led to inequity in who is represented in CODIS databases, specifically an over-representation of Black individuals’ genetic profiles. Therefore, the use of genetic tools in criminal proceedings, including but not only from CODIS databases, pose risks to privacy and also serve as a seemingly race-neutral tool that, in practice, promotes racial inequity. We suggest implementation of state-specific research and oversight boards with three charges focused on CODIS and investigations using genetic tools employed by private companies: (1) study uses of genetic tools in criminal investigations; (2) study the impact of genetic tools in criminal proceedings and interface with stakeholders and the general public; and (3) use knowledge from (1) and (2) to inform policy recommendations, for which we make several initial suggestions. These boards will provide accountability to increase accuracy, privacy, and equity when using genetic tools in criminal proceedings.

Searching for Justice: Indigenous Self-Determination over the Landfill Search as a Matter of Justice for MMIWG2S

“Search the Landfill” is an Indigenous-led movement for justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) which originated through Indigenous resistance to police racism in Winnipeg, Canada. The movement calls upon all levels of government to support and execute the search of the Prairie Green Landfill, just north of the City of Winnipeg, to recover the bodies of at least two of four First Nations women who were murdered in early 2022 at the hands of a white male serial killer. Through an analysis of the news articles, press releases, and reports, this paper explores the way in which Indigenous leaders resisted and rewrote the discourses that surrounded the search. By at once condemning the Winnipeg Police Service’s refusal to search the landfill and rejecting police authority and control over the decision-making process, Indigenous women who became the leaders of this movement crafted the space to articulate for themselves how and why the search must be done as a matter of Indigenous rights. This paper explores how Indigenous leadership offers glimpses of what a decolonizing approach to justice may look like in cases of MMIWG2S and which, in turn, invites further opportunities to problematize, subvert, and move beyond the Western legal norms and traditions.

Why young adults consume media content about serial killers: Evidence from Russia

This article explores Russian young adults’s motives for consuming media content related to serial killers. Based on a sociological perspective of consumption, the research integrates concepts such as consumerism and “new hedonism” postulated by Campbell with Giddens’s structuration theory and Goffman’s stigma theory. We argue that consumerists’ motivations and images of serial killers are products of modernity. A total of 26 semi-structured online interviews were conducted with young adults aged 18–35 years from 14 cities in Russia. We then performed a thematic qualitative analysis using the AtlasTI software. Our findings show that consumers of media content about serial killers have two main categories of motives: cognitive and emotional. Cognitive motives could be viewed through the lens of the need for ontological security, an attempt to study a potential threat. Emotional motives were associated with satisfying the consumerist need for constant emotional stimulation and pleasure. Future studies may focus on classifying audiences based on their motives for consuming serial-killer media content and examining correlations with consumption practices as well as the supply-side motives of producing this type of content.

Forensic Psychiatry Analysis and Methods for Assessing The Mental Health of A Serial Killer.

Psychosis is a mental illness that causes an alteration in the notion of reality, where a world of its own is formed in the mind of the psychotic, in other words, he lives in a delirium and suffers hallucinations, hearing voices and having bizarre visions. Objectives: To carry out a literature review on Forensic Psychiatry and how to assess the mental health of a serial killer. Method: The methodology used was a literature review. The research was carried out by means of an electronic search for scientific articles published on the Scielo (Scientific Electronic Library Online) and Lilacs (Latin American Health Sciences Literature) and Pubmed websites. The health terminologies consulted in the Health Sciences descriptors (DeCS/BIREME) were used; regarding Forensic Psychiatry and how to assess the mental health disorder of a serial killer.The inclusion criteria were: original article, published in Portuguese and English, freely accessible, in full, on the subject, in electronic format and published in the last years (2010 to 2024), totaling 26 articles. Results and Discussion: While antisocial personality disorder is a medical diagnosis, the term “psychopathy”, which belongs to the psychiatric-forensic sphere, can be understood as a “legal diagnosis”. There is still no effective treatment for so-called “serial killers”. Conclusion: Personality disorders, especially the antisocial type, still represent a real challenge for forensic psychiatry today. The most appropriate and fair place for its sufferers, as well as homogeneous treatment recommendations, are still unanswered questions.

Chronic stimulation desensitizes β2-adrenergic receptor responses in natural killer cells.

Adrenergic receptors (ARs) are preferentially expressed by innate lymphocytes such as natural killer (NK) cells. Here, we study the effect of epinephrine-mediated stimulation of the β2-adrenergic receptor (β2AR) on the function of human NK cells. Epinephrine stimulation inhibited early NK cell signaling events and blocked the function of the integrin LFA-1. This reduced the adhesion of NK cells to ICAM-1, explaining how NK cells are mobilized into the peripheral blood upon epinephrine release during acute stress or exercise. Additionally, epinephrine stimulation transiently reduced NK cell degranulation, serial killing, and cytokine production and affected metabolic changes upon NK cell activation via the cAMP-protein kinase A (PKA) pathway. Repeated exposure to β2AR agonists resulted in the desensitization of the β2AR via a PKA feedback loop-initiated G-protein switch. Therefore, acute epinephrine stimulation of chronically β2AR stimulated NK cells no longer resulted in inhibited signaling and reduced LFA-1 activity. Sustained stimulation by long-acting β2-agonists (LABA) not only inhibited NK cell functions but also resulted in desensitization of the β2AR. However, peripheral NK cells from LABA-treated asthma patients still reacted unchanged to epinephrine stimulation, demonstrating that local LABA administration does not result in detectable systemic effects on NK cells.

Psychoanalytic Interpretation of the Killings by Javed Iqbal Mughal aka Kukri

The current case study article is an attempt to interpret the killings by notorious serial killer of Pakistan, Javed Iqbal Mughal aka “Kukri” via a psychoanalytic prism. For this purpose, facts about the case were collected from authentic secondary sources (like international news reports, books and encyclopaedic works) and analyzed. It utilized case study method. The analysis reveals that he was a homosexual paedophile sex offender who was a psychopath and megalomaniac. He had a high need for dominance and control. Before the precipitating event, he was dominated by his sexual drive and was using his ability to fulfil it by creating opportunities of encounter with his preferred sex objects. But in response to the attack, he developed a very strong vengeance fantasy and due to a lack of superego, he was dominated by death instinct and executed his vengeance fantasy. It appears that what forced him to complete this process was his desire of fame that was present even before he was attacked by a masseur but was intensified as it glorified his revenge. This article revels the psychological process that manifested in the killings by Javed Iqbal and explains the phenomenon in context of the thinking and behaviors of a psychopath.

When the Dead Cry: Crime, Population, and Popular Literature in Early Modern Southwark

Drawing on parish registers, records from the assizes, and an anonymous ballad, this article reconstructs the events surrounding the murder of John Clarke by his own master, silk weaver Richard Price. Price, it turns out, had killed before, and in many respects fits what we would today call a serial killer. The article thus examines the way parish registers might usefully be supplemented by legal and literary texts to get at not only the births, marriages, and deaths of parishioners in the aggregate but also their lived experience, how they responded to tragedy not on the nearby stage but in their neighborhood. The article thus argues for the importance of careful examination of the archives to understand the lives of ordinary people in the early modern period, and the article further suggests a symbiotic relationship between “big data” and microhistory.

Killer Corporations: Changing Student Attitudes on Corporate Crime Using an In-Class Exercise

The purpose of this paper is to share a teaching exercise on corporate deviance and an assessment of its effectiveness. A pre/posttest survey was utilized to investigate the impact of the exercise on student attitudes concerning corporate deviance. In particular, the project was intended to teach students about the serious nature of corporate crimes. While Americans think corporate crime is a serious issue, they tend to resist giving harsh penalties to corporate criminals. This exercise illustrated that even when corporations commit serial murder, they often get light punishments compared to those individuals who have committed similar crimes. Ultimately, the purpose of the exercise was to illustrate the disparity in punishment for similar crimes. The assessment of the exercise indicated support for our hypotheses. There was an increase in the percentage of students that think corporate deviance should be treated more similarly to street crime from the pre to the posttest.

An immigrant Irish contingent in the crowd at the execution of William Burke in Edinburgh in 1829.

The work of the serial killers William Burke and William Hare, immigrant Ulstermen who came to Scotland in 1818, is well known. When they were finally caught, having murdered 16 people and sold their bodies for dissection, Hare turned King's evidence and after a dramatic trial Burke was hanged in January 1829. The notoriety of the case resulted in a crowd for Burke's public execution that is generally regarded as the largest that ever assembled in Edinburgh for a hanging, being estimated at between 25,000 and 35,000 people. A contemporary journal kept by a medical student named Thomas Hume was recently acquired by The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. It contains new information regarding a contingent of immigrant Irishmen who were present at the hanging. In the lead-up to the execution, they took up a position in front of the gallows and tried to prevent any non-Irish from approaching the area immediately in front of the gallows, a futile aim given the huge, rapidly accumulating mob. On being questioned by Hume on their motives, they said it was bad enough for Burke, 'the poor devil', to be hanged, but they feared he would be mocked and denigrated by the crowd and so they were there to keep the crowd away from him as much as they could. The Irish in Scotland at that time were a marginalised and ghettoised group who saw Burke as one of their own. Therefore, they most likely saw it as their duty to at least try and protect him during, in their view, his final and most harsh mistreatment by a society that had habitually mistreated him and them.

The transmedial triangulation of Dracula: how cinema turned the Gothic bloodsucker into a Gothicized serial killer

G. M. Amza and Al. Bilciurescu’s Vampirul (The Vampire), the first vampire novel in Romania, was published in 1938, a decade after the release of the first translation of Dracula into Romanian. Instead of emulating Stoker’s bloodthirsty undead aristocrat, the two authors envision a priest who exploits the community’s magical thinking, masquerading as a vampire-serial killer and haunting the increasingly industrialized community in the hopes of discouraging capitalistic ventures. Although evoking East-Central European representations of heretic vampire priests, there is textual and circumstantial evidence suggesting that the villain in Vampirul was (in)directly inspired by movies which revolutionized the Gothic trope of the vampire via exposure to real-life crime cases such as that of the Vampire of Düsseldorf. Through a close reading analysis, the article revisits Franco Moretti’s theory of the (semi)peripheries importing “foreign plots” through “local characters” and expands Andrei Terian’s concept of “cultural triangulation” to include cinema, which offers fresh insights into the evolution of literary tropes. As for the influence of this medium on the vampire myth, the article shows that the first vampire narrative in Romanian literature is the product of transmedial triangulation, a process whereby the narratives of 1930s horror cinema influenced the literary reception of the “foreign plot” in Dracula, which was, in turn, reinterpreted through a serial killer vampire priest, a “local character” who embodies the period’s concerns about a lingering feudal order that threatens to hinder the development of the then fledgling Romanian society.

Intuitive moral bias favors the religiously faithful

Belief in powerful supernatural agents that enforce moral norms has been theoretically linked with cooperative altruism and prosociality. Correspondingly, prior research reveals an implicit association between atheism and extreme antisociality (e.g., serial murder). However, findings centered on associations between lack of faith and moral transgression do not directly address the hypothesized conceptual association between religious belief and prosociality. Accordingly, we conducted two pre-registered experiments depicting a “serial helper” to assess biases related to extraordinary helpfulness, mirroring designs depicting a serial killer used in prior cross-cultural work. In both a predominantly religious society (the U.S., Study 1) and a predominantly secular society (New Zealand, Study 2), we successfully replicated previous research linking atheism with transgression, and obtained evidence for a substantially stronger conceptual association between religiosity and virtue. The results suggest that stereotypes linking religiosity with prosociality are both real and global in scale.

Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying System can Enable Healthcare Serial Killing.

The Canadian approach to assisted dying, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), as of early 2024, is assessed for its ability to protect patients from criminal healthcare serial killing (HSK) to evaluate the strength of its safeguards. MAiD occurs through euthanasia or self-administered assisted suicide (EAS) and is legal or considered in many countries and jurisdictions. Clinicians involved in HSK typically target patients with the same clinical features as MAiD-eligible patients. They may draw on similar rationales, e.g., to end perceived patient suffering and provide pleasure for the clinician. HSK can remain undetected or unconfirmed for considerable periods owing to a lack of staff background checks, poor surveillance and oversight, and a failure by authorities to act on concerns from colleagues, patients, or witnesses. The Canadian MAiD system, effectively euthanasia-based, has similar features with added opportunities for killing afforded by clinicians' exemption from criminal culpability for homicide and assisted suicide offences amid broad patient eligibility criteria. An assessment of the Canadian model offers insights for enhancing safeguards and detecting abuses in there and other jurisdictions with or considering legal EAS. Short of an unlikely recriminalization of EAS, better clinical safeguarding measures, standards, vetting and training of those involved in MAiD, and a radical restructuring of its oversight and delivery can help mitigate the possibility of abuses in a system mandated to accommodate homicidal clinicians.

“Baggage in the business”: The investigative challenges of serial homicide

“Baggage in the business”: The investigative challenges of serial homicide

“Tender Murderer”: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer in Thom Gunn’s Boss Cupid

This article examines Thom Gunn’s poem “Troubadour,” in his final collection Boss Cupid (2000), containing five songs “Hitch-hiker,” “Iron Man,” “The Visible Man,” “A Borrowed Man,” and “Final Song”, all of which are sung by the infamous serial killer, Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. Gunn’s study of Dahmer, evoking compassion, furnishes a murderer who performs his own role of “troubadour” while singing his intense feelings and aberrant actions from his own voice in a romantic mode. This act of speaking for himself highlights a strong sense of self-awareness and renders a murderer who is cognizant of his miserable situation. Thus, the poet’s treatment is with a particular empathy for such all-consuming sexual passion through an act of romanticizing the killer’s horrendous ways of murdering. Based on the poet’s lack of prejudice towards any propensities and his courage of going against the poetic conventionalities in his time, this study explores Gunn’s portrayal of Dahmer as a ‘tender murderer’, a desperate intimacy seeker victimized by his damaged psyche, thereby having sexual gratification in killing, the only way to stop his partner from leaving him. While the article engages with the phases of Dahmer’s homicidal acts operating on tender feelings in these songs, it does so through Jacques Lacan’s theories of the psyche with its three diagnostic structures: Neurosis, Psychosis, and Perversion. Two of these fundamental categories of diagnosis will be utilized to define particular symptoms, which cater to reading the tender murderer’s motive(s).

Serial Murderers In Japan (1882-2017): A Narrative Analysis

A retrospective narrative analysis of 61 serial murder-ers (a few, belonging to health care profession, such as physicians, midwives and paramedic) in Japan was attempted. Materials available in the online databases including Wikipedia entries on individual criminals were studied. Among the studied total of 61 serial murderers covering the time span from 1882 to 2017, 59 were convicted and 2 were non-convicted. All five categories of Deitz typology of serial murderers were represented among the convicted sample. These include, psychopathic sex-ual sadists (e.g: Ryuun Daimai, Yoshio Kodaira, Genzo Kurita, Kiyoshi Okubo, Takahiro Shiraishi), crime spree killers (e.g: Kanae Kijima, Chisako Kakehi), custodial killers (e.g: Shige Sakakura, Miyuki Ishikawa and Hayato Imai), psychotic, religious-cult killers (e.g: Sachiko Eto, Shoko Asahara and his 12 collaborators) and organized crime functionaries (e.g: Satoru Nomu-ra). Tomomasa Nakagawa, personal doctor of the Aum Shinrikyo Buddhist religious-cult leader Shoko Asakara, may hold a record for a scientist on death row to publish a paper in a peer-reviewed journal.Limitations of this study include, (1) omission of the methods of killing used by the murderers from analysis (2) total reliance on media reports for information, in preference to voluminous records of Japanese court cases. Despite these limitations, details presented in this analysis of 59 convicted and 2 non-convicted se-rial murderers in 45 court cases held in Japan may be useful for comparative studies in forensic science and law enforcement.

A PSYCHOBIOGRAPHY AND ILLUSTRATION OF SCHAHRIAR SYNDROME MODEL IN VERA RENCZI.

The current study's goal was to demonstrate the efficacy of the Schahriar Syndrome Model by using it to create a psychobiography of a female serial killer. The objective was to identify the social and psychological mechanisms included in the Schahriar Syndrome Model (SSM) of serial killing. The case study also aimed to understand better the motivations of such homicides and the attributes and factors that make a female commit them and it offers a fresh perspective on Vera's life. The case study used a qualitative single case design that contains the tracking of experiences and events of an individual in a lifetime. It used both historiographic methodologies and psychological models to identify and analyze the development and specific socio-psychological settings of Vera Renczi, a historical serial murderer from the 20th century (1903-1960). This psychobiography includes secondary data about her development and crimes collected from previous research, archives, and books that contained reliable sources. Vera Renczi demonstrated throughout her life and at several socio-historical junctures, each of the five primal mental processes such as omnipotence, sadistic fantasies, ritualized performance, dehumanization, and symbiotic merger. Vera Renczi's life was impacted by a mixture of socio-historical antecedents including her aristocratic status, the experience of loss and abandonment, and the need for control and devotion. The Schahriar syndrome paradigm is relevant today, and this study invites relevant fields, such as the forensic sector, to reevaluate its applicability, especially on female subjects. The Schahriar syndrome model may be used to identify the psych mechanism of a female serial murderer. This research adds to the knowledge about Vera Renczi and offers information from new angles and fresh perspectives on how she operated.

Multiple homicide: a descriptive study of serial homicide and mass murder in England and Wales

ABSTRACT Homicide involving multiple victims is relatively rare in England and Wales. When it does occur, mental illness is assumed to have played a significant role. However, reliable evidence to support this is often lacking. We aimed to describe the prevalence of multiple homicide and its subgroups: serial murder, mass murder and familicide and the presence of mental disorder. Data were obtained from the Home Office, HM Court Service, the Police National Computer and NHS Trusts. In England and Wales 470 killed multiple victims between 1997 and 2018. Most did not have evidence of mental health symptoms at the time of offence (85%) or a recorded history of mental disorder (69%). Mental disorder was also not found in most serial homicides (90%), mass murders (94%), or familicides (70%). A tenth of all multiple homicide perpetrators had been under the care of mental health services a year before the incident. This finding challenges commonly held views about mental disorders and the stigma that is perpetuated when multiple-victim homicides occur. Low prevalence and low levels of contact with mental health services make preventing multiple homicide difficult. Reducing violence across society by adopting a multi-agency public health approach is recommended.

Unmasking the Minds of Serial Killers: A Jungian Analysis of Jeffrey Dahmer's and Javed Iqbal's Personalities

Unmasking the Minds of Serial Killers: A Jungian Analysis of Jeffrey Dahmer's and Javed Iqbal's Personalities