The term serial killer refers to a sole offender, male or female, responsible for a succession of murders over a matter of months or years, and frequently in different settings. In modern society there is a growing fascination with the ‘serial killer’. Public libraries, the media and book sales are filled with ‘true crime’, this category particularly committed to the focus of serial murders, However, serial killers are not exclusively a produce of our century as history proposes that they have always been around (W.Patherick et al, 2005).
From as early as 1886, Krafft Ebing, a physician in psychopathology, identified three types of killings, one of those being serialist and next the lust murder (or sexual sadism). Dietz (1986) a century later proposed that in order to be classified a ‘serial’ killer, the offender would have had to have committed the offence on five sperate occasions. With this information based primarily on his own methodical experiences, Dietz’ typologies were; psychopathic sexual sadists, contract killers and supposed psychotics- who may be mentally ill, hallucinating or just malingering (J.A. Kincaid, 1997).
Holmes and DeBurger (1988) characterised four different types of serial killer and examined the motives said to have influenced them. Their assumption included the belief that such crimes are psychogenic and secondly the assumption involves an “intrinsic locus of motives”, meaning that the motives can only be valued by the offender because of their existence entirely in his or her mind. In the mind of a serial killer the motivations are often very meaningful where as in the mind of a “normal” being, we have great difficulty in thinking how someone could inflict this wrongdoing on someone else. It is suggested that a reward for the killing is usually psychological even though some killers may benefit materially from their offences. According to core characteristics Homes and Deburger continue to identify four types of serial killers (E. Hickey, 2003).
Number one being the visionary type, the killer commits crimes because they hear voices or see visons, their crimes are generally spontaneous and disorganised and are commit in response to the voices they hear.
Then there is the mission-oriented type where the killer has a goal. The type to rid the world of immoral people such as prostitutes or beggars. These killers are not usually psychotic, rather they have an impulse to solve the problem directly. The victims are normally strangers who are categorised to fit the offender’s criteria to which he or she considers a legitimate target, the killer would plan the killing then carry out the crime efficiently.
The Hedonistic Type. Killing for pleasure. There are two typologies broken down into sub-categories for this subject firstly killing for excitement and pleasure, these thrill orientated killings are usually sourced by random strangers with no specific characteristics with the murders being spontaneous and disorganised, however, the lust killer the second typology for this killer type, kills for a sexual motive and his or her victims have a required characteristic. This type of killer obtains their gratification by inflicting pain and abusing others (R.H. Burke, 2009). Lust killers are likely to repeat their crimes, making them serial in nature. For these aggressors, sexual pleasure and fulfilment depend on the amount of torture and mutilation they can inflict on their victims, therefore ultimate pleasure is sought by sadistically killing others, it then becomes clear that this type of serial murderer is motivated and driven by a violent and powerful need for continuous sexual satisfaction (Kafka, 2003).
Among many possible explanations for the violent immoral crimes a serial killer inflicts on his or her victims, comes the social learning theory. Commonly associated with Albert Bandura, the social learning theory implies a strong social component to aggressive behaviour. The theory suggests that an individual such as the perpetrator, is an active problem solver who encodes, perceives and makes decisions according to the constraints of his or her environment and considers human beings to possess individual and unique world views and live according to those limits (E. Hickey, 2003).
One well known aspect of Bandura’s work is observational learning, he suggests that an individual’s learning occurs by observation of other people leading to the individual imitating their behaviour, a term Bandura coined modelling. Bandura’s famous study, The BoBo dolls experiment, showed significant relationship between aggressive behaviour and the attributes of nursery children in an experimental group constructed by Bandura, attributes such as low self confidence or lack of self-esteem, he proposed that those lacking either of these qualities were more likely to imitate behaviour. Another contribution from Dollard and Miller (1946) demonstrated how performance on a novel task could be improved by witnessing another carrying it out. They suggested that observational learning is imperative in development as children learn from observing adults and other children that are novel to them, therefore observational learning could explain how adaptive and maladaptive behaviours are learnt (J. Maltby et al, 2013).