Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mulligan I am sure in the broad generalizations the lecturer may certainly be true. But Jeffrey Dahmer CLEARLY stated in an interview a few months before he got killed in prison that his upbringing and parents had absolutely nothing to do with his actions at all. He himself was the lone responsible person for his actions.

I completely agree - - it was amazing to me to hear him talk about his killings, as though they were simply experiments. I don't think we can ever truly understand why a serial killer commits such heinous crimes. Some claim a bad childhood caused it, but I am skeptical. A lot of people have terrible childhood experiences and don't go around killing people, and I agree with Daumer that his parents seem like nice people who provided the best childhood for him that they could. I think that it is easier to understand the thought processes of a parrot than those of Daumer or other serial killers. The answer to the question of why they committed these crimes cannot be found within our frame of reference IMO. Similarly, I doubt that one of them can understand our lives and decisions. Reading or listening to their explanations is, for me, like trying to understand little green men speaking Martian.

This is why I am so fascinated by them, I guess. I think they are different somehow but don't understand.

What's more, I think that the (failed) attempts to understand serial killing has sometimes been a big impediment in locating and arresting the serial killer. I think that was a problem in figuring out who was responsible for many of the Baton Rouge serial killings, anyway. They revolved around the LSU campus, so everyone figured it was someone involved with the university who had developed hatred for certain very accomplished women there and killed them (but really Derrick Todd Lee was simply in that neighborhood regularly for other reasons and was calmly picking off strangers that he didn't know or hate at all). If law enforcement is looking for someone with a motive, they are SOL when it comes to crimes like this, IMO, because I think serial killers are wired so differently than most of us.

[EvrClrx311]

There i no doubt that serial killers have something messed up in their head... its usually a combination of upbringing and wiring, but often one can completely trump the other.

Example of a messed up head: a paranoid schizophrenic can kill a loving family member and not understand why or how they did it.

Example of a messed up environment: a child with a perfectly healthy mind can be abused or emotionally scarred from some event growing up that causes they to go on a rampage... look inside the minds of suicide bombers and how they are manipulated into believing what they are doing is "right"