Ok, so it's kind of a huge joke that I'm 'Serial Killer Girl' and if anyone wants to know anything about a particular case they should come to me cos I'm bound to know something about it, but it turns out that even I have my limits. I am going to state, here and now, that I am admitting there is something morbidly gruesome about my fascination with the inner workings of these people's brains, and that devouring books and documentaries on the subject is in fact not normal. I still maintain it's an academic interest but I'll confess to it being strange and perhaps a little scary to most people.
Now I've read and seen some fairly horrific things throughout the course of my studies - both at university and in my personal reading - but I draw the line at having a blog dedicated to serial killers and which not only posts crime scene photographs (including some frankly sickening ones of victims bodies in situ) but which also gives you the prison address of a well-known serial murderer so you can write to him and say hello. Just...no. It turns out there are lines even I won't cross...
One of the things people need to know about any serial murderer is the fact that they get off on the power and control. If they can terrorise an entire area, or do as Ian Brady has done and remain schtum about the location of his last remaining victim's body, it's a huge power trip for them and only feeds their ego and their narcissistic personalities. Even well known authors such as my own personal hero John Douglas, who helped develop the FBI's criminal profiling department and is a real life 'Criminal Minds' superhero, has admitted sometimes he worried that writing the books he has might contribute to the grandiose and overblown sense of self-worth these guys have; they love the fact that people are still talking about them years after they were caught and sent to prison, and any way they can insinuate themselves into investigations or perpetuate their own personal glory myth is exactly what gets their rocks off. In an ideal world, once these people were convicted and sentenced there'd be no books, no television programmes, no 'nicknames' bestowed on them by the media - just a simple case of prison cell --> anonymity --> death behind bars, but that would also have implications for the forensic psychology field which studies serial murderers and tries to understand them, with the aim of both preventing further incidents and being able to catch them quickly before they kill again and again and again. Finding the balance between informative study and gratuitous publicity isn't always easy, and the majority of these men (for it is mainly men) have the sociopathic and psychopathic abilities to ingratiate themselves into things long after they should have been locked down and forgotten about. Ted Bundy, for example, offered to 'help' the Green River Task Force identify the "sort of guy" who was killing women and dumping their bodies in and around the Green River in Washington State; others have contributed to books or sold their own works of art since being behind bars. Manipulating people is second nature to them; being in control and in charge of things is what makes their little worlds go round. Providing the address of one of these scumbags to the whole of the fucking Internet is irresponsible and frankly deplorable; these men can smell weakness like a shark smells blood and if someone vulnerable was to write to this particular individual, he'd suss it out straight away and start playing with them. The consequences could be catastrophic...
Some of the posts I saw on this particular blog (which has since been reported, although I highly doubt it'll get taken down, and which I won't post the name/URL of because frankly I don't want to give it the publicity) were disgusting. And this is me saying this, which probably gives you some idea how absolutely fucking awful this thing was to read. Now I'm all for trying to understand how these people tick, because it makes me sleep better at night knowing there are people out there who can catch these scumbags, and I freely admit I find a lot of the cases interesting from a psychological point of view - it's so abnormal for the vast majority of people to think the way serial killers do that I'm curious to know what they were thinking when they carried out there acts, and why on earth they thought it was a good idea to do it in the first place - but I draw the bloody line at making them into folklore heroes and misunderstood, glamorous outlaws; they are sick individuals who for whatever reason - nature, nurture, whatever the hell it is - have committed unthinkable, unforgivable crimes and enjoyed doing it; even suggesting that these people are anything other than total bastards is morally bankrupt and reprehensible, if you ask me. I'm actually not sure who concerns me most - the people asking questions like "which one is your favourite serial killer?" and "if you had to be killed by a famous serial killer which one would it be?", or the owner of the website who actually posted the questions and then answered them, as if it was some trite question like "do you prefer Edward Cullen or Jacob Whatever-His-Name-Is?" Probably her, actually, since she's apparently studying criminology but sees nothing wrong with posting graphic images of dead victims all over the fucking Internet.
Oh, and the Football League Show has just compared someone to the Boston Strangler! FFS, STOP IT!! Stop making these people out to be some sort of folkloric legend worthy of continual everyday reference!! No one goes around comparing people to "Tony the burglar doing six years for robbing me Granny"; why the hell would you use a psychopathic serial murderer on a power-trip as a cultural reference point?!! Am I missing something here?
I realise I may come across as hypocritical because I, after all, possess books on the subject and have seen a few documentaries, but I don't go around singing their praises to the skies as if they were heroes. And if I ever do start doing that, you have my permission to either get me sectioned or put a bullet through my brain because I will have passed the point of no return to normal humanity. And the one thing I keep coming back to, probably because the first books I ever read on the subject were by John Douglas and he takes great pains to keep the victims in the readers mind at all times, is that every single one of these monsters is only 'famous' because they killed a number of innocent people for no reason (curiosity or because it's how they get their rocks off is not and never will be a valid reason to my mind). It may be freaky that I can name several victims of serial murderers the way some people can reel off the 1966 World Cup winners, but at least I'm actually sparing a thought for the innocent men, women and children who were murdered, which is more than the likes of these bastards ever did (again, reliving what they did to their victims for sexual/other gratification is not remembering the victims). It's not the serial killers that need their names bandied around, it's the innocents whose lives they took who ought to be remembered...
Ugh, I wanted to do a nice happy post about penguins and then I started trawling the Internet and now look what I've done...ranted. Penguins tomorrow, I think. Definitely. This needs a cheery-uppy end ideally, but posting random penguin pictures seems disrespectful in light of the end of the previous paragraph. Definitely happy thoughts tomorrow...
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