102. Ten Traits of Serial Killers.

"At the tenth triennial meeting of the International Association of Forensic Sciences held at Oxford, England, in September 1984, Robert Ressler and John Douglas of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, along with Professors Ann W. Burgess and Ralph D'Agostino, delivered a seminal paper on serial murder, based on a study of thirty-six jailed offsenders, including Edmund Kemper and Herbert Mullin. In their presentation, they listed the following traits as the "general characteristics" of these killers:

1. Most are single white males.
2. They tend to be smart, with a mean IQ of "bright normal."
3. Despite their intelligence, they do poorly in school, have spotty employment records, and generally end up as unskilled workers.
4. They come from deeply trouble families. Typically, they have been abandoned at an early age by their fathers and grow up in broken homes dominated by their mothers.
5. There is a long history of psychiatric problems, criminal behavior and alcoholism in their families.
6. As children, they suffer significant abuse--sometimes psychological, sometimes physical, often sexual. Such brutal mistreatment instills them with profound feelings of humiliation and helplessness.
7. Because of their resentment toward their distant, absent, or abusive fathers, they have a great deal of trouble with male authority figures. Because they were dominated by their mothers, they have a powerful hostility toward women.
8. They manifest psychiatric problems at an early age and often spend time in institutions as children.
9. Because of their extreme social solation and a general hatred of the world and everyone in it (including themselves), they often feel suicidal as teenagers.
10. They display a precocious and abiding interest in deviant sexuality and are obsessed with fetishism, voyeurism, and violent pornography.

It is important to remember, however, that these triats were extrapolated from a small sample of thirty-six sadistic lust-murderers, all men and most of them white. There are many other serial killers who possess different characteristics."