If serial killers gloat over their misdeeds, they almost never do so publicly, and rarely to other individuals. Doing so would betray them. To risk exposure would court severe punishment. Although they may be proud of what they’ve done—frustrating the police, terrifying the public at large—and revel in their notoriety, their crimes are so monstrous that they will go to any length to thwart detection.
Mostly their efforts will be aimed at keeping a low personal profile to avoid arrest and denying culpability, much as might any lesser criminal. This is not to say that some may not taunt the police, once they believe they can safely do so. A few grow so arrogant as to dare lawmen to find them or learn their identity. And some few, once captured and facing certain punishment, may agree to cooperate with their captors by revealing their actions, usually in hopes of evading a death penalty.
On those rare occasions when a serial killer does talk of his exploits (most, but not all, serial killers are male), some of the mystery recedes. Those moments have been infrequent, but revealing. One classic example is that of Alexander Pichushkin, a Russian convicted of killing forty-eight individuals and attempting to kill three others. The thirty-three-year-old former supermarket worker was called the Chessboard Killer; he placed coins on the squares of a chessboard as a way to keep a running total of his victims. He lacked only No. 64 when police apprehended him, indicating even more deaths than he was charged with.
He killed his victims in Moscow’s sprawling 6.6-square-mile Bittsa Park, promising vodka to those he lured there. He smashed their skulls with a hammer or threw them into sewage pits after getting them drunk. Most of the victims were men, many of them homeless. When the killings accelerated in 2005, the public panicked. Pichushkin later said that police had stopped him repeatedly for identity checks but had let him go. He was finally arrested when officers found his name and phone number on a piece of paper in his last victim’s apartment, a woman who worked with him. At first he denied any connection with her death. Then police presented subway surveillance camera footage showing them together, and he confessed and led police to bodies of other victims. “As we were heading to the park and talking,” he said, “I kept thinking whether to kill her or to take caution. But finally I decided to take a risk. I was in that mood already.” Three men survived being thrown into sewage pits, and one was able to identify him.
Calm and aloof, Pichushkin said he had first killed a classmate in 1992 when he was eighteen. Though questioned in that case, he was never charged. The Bittsa Park murders began about a decade later.
When sentenced to life in prison—the first fifteen years to be in solitary confinement—Pichushkin’s words to the court, as quoted by the McClatchy News Service out of Moscow, documented the heights of grandiosity he had ascended as a result of his crimes.
“I have now been detained for 500 days. All this time, my fate has been decided by a huge number of people—cops, lawyers, prosecutors, judges, jurors,” he said. “In my time I myself have decided the fate of sixty people. I was an executioner. I decided myself who would live, and who would not. I was almost a god.
“For me, a life without murder is like a life without food for you. I felt like the father of all these people, since it was I who opened the door for them to another world.”
He emphasized that he never robbed his victims. “I don’t need junk, even if it’s very valuable. I’m only interested in human life. That’s more precious than anything. I took the most valuable thing.”
No one would argue his point on the value of what he’d taken. His grandiose assertions offer little insight into why he had killed so many or why he would have taken more lives had he not been apprehended. His words do tell us how at least one serial killer felt about his “accomplishments.” By indirection we may gain a glimpse into the inner workings of a mind that needed this feeling of god-like power.
The granting of life or death is a basic, primitive expression of power. In the lives of serial killers, the delivery of death affords a sense of power they don’t publicly or legally have. This, in turn, suggests a perceived need for control or power that comes forth in extralegal means on a one-on-one basis. Whether an individual death stands as a symbol for revenge or anger upon a larger segment of society, or as a surrogate for other individuals, may not be readily determined. But in any instance, the killings are likely to continue until some event—arrest, accident, death, institutionalization, intensive surveillance, retreat to a new location—intervenes.
Compared to Pichushkin’s numbers, the Phantom’s toll was paltry—only five known dead, three injured. To each victim’s family and friends, however, the pain was as great, as deep, as anything experienced by survivors of Pichushkin’s murderous impulses. Just as important, in comparing the tolls in Moscow and Texarkana, the small American twin city was relatively harder hit. Moscow, an industrial center and the Russian capital, with a population of well over 10 million, was at least 200 times larger, even though the Moscow killer restricted his malefaction to a portion of the city that was in his “comfort zone.”
Did the Phantom, like Pichushkin, also feel god-like as he shot his innocent victims? Probably. He demonstrated his power. He made headlines (or vice versa). An entire community feared him. He was known, albeit by his moniker, nationwide, even abroad. His name, as “the Phantom,” was on everyone’s lips. Policemen sought him futilely. He had committed perfect crimes, attesting to his skills and brilliance. He had outsmarted the smartest. He was “almost god-like.” In 1946 he must have felt what Pichushkin, thousands of miles away, did sixty years later.
If Pichushkin gave us a quick glance inside his mind, he left vast areas yet to be explored when it comes to trying to understand the psychology of a serial killer. Fortunately we don’t have to rely solely on a Russian serial killer’s courtroom outbursts for a peek into the inner workings of this peculiarly perverse pathology. The past several decades have generated a vast amount of data that dispels much, but far from all, of the mystery.
What, exactly, is a serial killer? Clearly Pichushkin qualified. So did the Texarkana Phantom. How do they differ from other killers of multiple victims—the spree killer and the mass murderer?
These questions were addressed in a three-day symposium sponsored by the FBI in San Antonio in 2005. Participants included 135 subject-matter experts from ten different countries on five continents. Serial killers may be found anywhere in the world, in many guises in many cultures.
For purposes of law enforcement, a definition was adopted.
“The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events.”
An older description, cited by FBI agent John Douglas and others, classified such a killer as “someone who has murdered on at least three occasions, with what we call an emotional cooling-off period between each incident. This cooling-off period can be days, weeks, months, even years. Occasionally, it is only hours. But the important consideration is that each event is emotionally distinct and separate.”
The Phantom case fits either definition.
With the spree killer, there is no cooling-off period.
The mass murderer kills four or more at one time and place.
Douglas, known to millions via television, has called serial killers “the most bewildering, personally disturbing, and most difficult to catch of all violent criminals.” Because they’re motivated by more complex factors than other criminals, their patterns are more confusing. But they have three intentions in common: manipulation, domination, and control.
Douglas and others categorize the killers by how they behave at the crime scene—whether they are organized, disorganized, or a mixture of the two types.
The organized offender takes measures to protect himself from suspicion and arrest. He is careful. He often moves the body from the death scene, postponing its discovery and giving him time to distance himself. He often has an uneven work history. Though sexually inadequate, he is socially adept, which may help him catch his victim unawares. His intelligence is average or above average.
The disorganized offender, on the other hand, may become impulsive under stress and leave the murder weapon or other evidence at the scene. He is, in a word, sloppy—disorganized. He also tends to be sexually incompetent. He claims to be heterosexual but seems to be ignorant of sex and may have sexual aversions. (A psychiatrist in another analysis has ascribed a fluid sexuality to serial killers, enabling them to function as either heterosexuals or homosexuals.)
The mixed offender exhibits characteristics of both types, blending organized and disorganized behavior.
The Texarkana killer demonstrated both organized and disorganized features. He moved the bodies of Richard Griffin and Polly Moore into the car so they would not be discovered for hours; Betty Jo Booker’s body also was left in a wooded area. He left no fingerprints. He was prepared, taking a gun and, at least twice, a flashlight to the scene. These fit into the organized category. But he also exhibited spells of disorganization: he left Paul Martin’s body in plain sight, and he left the flashlight outside the Starks home.
These patterns would earn him a mixed label, tending toward organized.
Though categories tell us the types of serial killers, they do not offer much of a profile fitting a certain perpetrator.
The first profile of the Phantom killer came in early 1946—from his first victim, Jimmy Hollis, who from his up-close encounter pictured the assailant as a young white man, not over thirty, and desperate. It wasn’t much to go on and officers ignored it, but in time other analyses supported his view, as professional insights contributed additional patterns. The government psychiatrist Dr. Anthony Lapalla made valid points months later that are hard to fault. Unfortunately, he confirmed the public’s worst fears by suggesting that the killer could be virtually anyone.
Twenty-five years later, in 1971, three Texarkana psychiatrists provided comments based on public information then known. Dr. James H. Thomas, the only one who’d lived in the area during the murders, believed the Phantom was a psychopathic personality or sexual deviate or both. He doubted the killer was a war veteran, because his warped personality would have been detected and rejected. Dr. Russell Walling, another psychiatrist, agreed that the man probably was a psychopathic personality, devoid of conscience. “They don’t have feelings of anxiety, except when they are apprehended. Then they become very anxious,” he said.
A third psychiatrist agreed with the psychopathic, or sociopathic, designation. Dr. Luther White, who’d taken his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, cited the criminal’s rage as probably mostly directed against women, that he was angry at his mother and fearful he’d be punished severely by his father if he didn’t live up to expectations. He doubted the killer had raped his victims or, if he had, he thought he had done it only once. “When women become manifestations of the person’s mother, sex becomes incest, in a sense, and therefore forbidden,” he said.
Dr. White established the killer’s age as well into his twenties or older—“old enough to have experienced failure vocationally and in his masculine role. He felt inadequate as a man. I think he had failed a lot up to that. A successful person would be less likely to commit such a crime.” Dr. White also concluded that the killer was insecure in confronting people and needed a weapon, with his victim at a disadvantage, as happened.
He estimated the killer’s intelligence as low average, even a bit below average. “It doesn’t take much of an IQ to get in trouble.” He believed the killer had had prior criminal experience, possibly had learned police tactics in jail, and also took pride in being tough.
These views, of course, were at best preliminary, delivered by professionals who did not specialize in forensic medicine, dealing with limited information about the case.
In recent decades, profiling, as well as explaining, such criminals has developed into a refined science. Experts can now delve much deeper into the behavior, patterns, and motives of serial killers as well as other murderers. From this reservoir of research we can draw a better likeness of such offenders, though still far from knowing the last word on the subject.
Serial murders are relatively rare, amounting to less than one percent of all murders in a given year. But while the number of serial killers is relatively small, the social impact of sheer terror in a large population is beyond measuring.
Overall, it is risky to generalize what type of person a serial killer could be. Some may be dysfunctional loners; not all are. As the 2005 FBI symposium put it, some seem to be normal, with families and jobs. They may blend in. “Many serial killers hide in plain sight within their communities.” Nor are they all white males; they come from all racial groups. (One expert, criminologist Jack Levin, has estimated that seventy-five percent of serial killers act alone, while one fourth have an accomplice.)
Not all serial killers are sexually motivated. Other motivations—anger, thrill, financial gain, attention seeking—may play strong roles. In serial murder, motive is difficult to isolate. The killer may have more than one motive or may develop other motives as he adds to his deadly toll. Focusing on a motive doesn’t necessarily lead to a prime suspect. Anger repeatedly turns up in psychological assessments.
“Regardless of the motive,” the 2005 consensus statement reminded, “serial murderers commit their crimes because they want to.”
In most homicides, the killer and victim know each other. This enables the police to round up suspects in a timely manner. But in serial murder, the killer and victim rarely know each other. The term once used, “stranger killings,” remains descriptive. The killer benefits by having strangers for victims, making it much more difficult for police to track him. It could be anyone. As Northeastern University professor of criminal justice Jack Levin observed in another setting, “Most serial killers—especially those who manage to stay on the loose—target strangers. The last thing they want is to be connected back to the people they victimize.” This also partially explains why serial killers don’t usually kill those they associate with, even if those people may already harbor vital information about them, may even have been witnesses or confederates. Harming their associates could directly draw attention and possibly lead to arrest.
“Most serial killers have very defined geographical areas of operation,” experts at the FBI symposium agreed. “They conduct their killings within comfort zones that are often defined by anchor points (e.g., place of residence, employment, or residence of a relative).” Sometimes they go outside the comfort zone either to avoid arrest or when they’ve grown more confident and move to new territory.
In either case, according to John Douglas, driving around may become a habitual pattern. As the killer scouts out the territory, he familiarizes himself with landmarks and potential sites for his practices. (In Texarkana, that seemed to be lovers’ lanes.) When he drives at night, he considers himself hunting, a night hunter stalking human game—in this case, couples.
A serial killer may be compulsive when he decides to kill, even before he has selected or happened upon his victim, but his compulsion is obviously under his control and conscious decisions. Otherwise he might commit his crimes, night or day, with witnesses or in venues likely to attract attention. His crimes are usually carefully planned. Though he may be impulsive, he is ready when opportunity appears.
Even if he claims his victim in a moment of opportunity, the serial killer has spent time working out the crime in his mind, through fantasies and planning. He usually seeks a special category of victim (as did the Phantom), vulnerable individuals at a time and place when the killer can maintain control. After a cooling-off period of days, weeks, or months, he will strike again. As the FBI’s Robert K. Ressler and associates put it:
“He thinks he will never be caught, and sometimes he is right.”
Other findings seem to apply particularly to the Starks shootings. Specialists have concluded that some killers may change their modus operandi, or MO, thus confusing the police into believing a later crime is not related to the earlier series. The killer may use a different gun or switch to a knife or other weapon, anything to suggest a different person is to blame. James Alan Fox and Jack Levin point out a parallel possibility: “It is also commonplace for them to branch out to more respectable victims as they become convinced that they are smarter than the police and will never be apprehended.”
This feeds into the copycat belief, which as Helen Morrison has pointed out is “very common in serial murder cases.” Many persons feel such horrible crimes couldn’t be committed by the same person, that others must have been involved in some of the cases. This resonates in the Starks case—where the killer used a .22 instead of a .32 and invaded a home and not a lovers’ lane—because many people believe a killer always strikes in the same way. “The victims indeed may be similar, but the way of killing varies somewhat,” said Morrison.
The making of a serial killer, the experts concluded, involves “a complex process based on biological, social, and environmental factors.” The biological predisposition and psychological makeup must combine at “a critical time in their social development. . . . The most significant factor is the serial killers’ personal decision in choosing to pursue their crimes.”
Psychopathy turns up frequently in the discussions. The psychopath, or sociopath, mixes charm, manipulation, and intimidation to achieve his selfish ends. His charm is superficial, while he exhibits a grandiose sense of self-worth and is a pathological liar. He feels no guilt or remorse, shows no empathy for others. He seeks stimulating behavior, is impulsive, lives off of others, pursues no realistic life goals. He probably had behavior problems in childhood as well as juvenile delinquency.
Somewhere along the line of development, the serial killer came up short, to the detriment of society. His conscience didn’t develop at a critical time. He felt he could do as he wished, so long as he was not caught, without regard for morals, laws, or social pressures. It’s the story of the bad seed—frequently with exacerbating factors.
Yale developmental psychologist Paul Bloom believes a serial killer is likely the result of a developmental defect—a genetic accident, which then is exacerbated by environmental factors. The “accident of genes,” as he put it in an Associated Press interview, may leave a person more likely than others to become a serial killer but is far from being the sole explanation. He cited genetic differences in people’s empathy and compassion and how much they care about others. This includes their ability to control violent rages. “I’m sure a serial killer is somebody who has the genetic short end of the stick. Then you toss in certain environments. Your typical serial killer had a very unhappy childhood. There’s some evidence that people who turn out to be psychopaths, even murderous psychopaths, have the short end of the genetic stick.” But, he added, there is a multitude of environmental factors to consider as well.
When criminals are sociopaths, they commit crimes without a feeling of guilt or of any sympathy for their victims and victims’ families. But all sociopaths aren’t murderers, least of all serial killers, just as all murderers aren’t sociopaths.
A serial killer may have no conscience or a weak one.
“The behavior of a serial killer after his capture provides some insight into his level of conscience,” write James Alan Fox and Jack Levin. “Genuine sociopaths almost never confess after being apprehended. Instead, they continue to maintain their innocence, always hoping beyond hope to get off on a technicality, to be granted a new trial, or to appeal their case to a higher level.”
In 1988 Robert Ressler and associates, after studying thirty-six sexual murderers in depth, drew a number of conclusions that seem to relate to many other killers, including serial killers. All but seven had killed more than once. The crime held a symbolic significance to the killer, a finding possibly of importance to the Phantom case. There were sexual concerns, implied in the Phantom case. All of these factors were spurred on by fantasies turned into reality.
Characteristics of the killers included lying, living with fantasies, school failure, poor work habits, and a preoccupation with family and personal problems. The killer had followed a long and active fantasy life that featured violent thoughts and fantasies. Before the first killing, many of the fantasies revolved around murder. Afterward, the fantasies focused on improving the murder technique, to do the next one better than the first. Their thought patterns began early in life and continued amid social isolation, functioning as an escape mechanism. As inner stress grew, the crucial step was acting out his fantasies. Thought preceded the act. The killer sees nothing wrong with what he has done, leading researchers to a conclusion that “these men murder because of the way they think.”
A central question persists: Why did the Texarkana killer specialize in attacking and killing couples? Petty robbery hardly explains it. Holdups were common at the time, netting a wide range of proceeds; some in early 1946 may even have been committed by the Phantom. One of the females was raped but not others. If sex or robbery was not a primary motive, what was?
The eminent psychiatrist Dr. Shervert H. Frazier of McLean Hospital, affiliated with Harvard Medical School, in a telephone conversation during which he was supplied the basic facts of the Texarkana cases, stated his opinion that the killer was troubled by a relationship in his life, one he could not enjoy. Resentment builds up. Revenge is deep in his heart. His violent reaction toward unknown couples serves as a way of getting even for his own perceived emotional injury. Seeing couples parked or at home reminds him of his lost or shattered relationship. He feels the couple is happy. He knows that he, the shooter, is not. He aims to even the score, symbolically. Though he is attacking strangers, they symbolize, in his mind, what he has lost and whom he blames. They become surrogates upon whom to inflict his vengeance. (Dr. Frazier grew up in Marshall, in northeastern Texas.)
Though not discussed during the telephone interview, Dr. Frazier authored a paper in 1975 that seems to fit into the Phantom case, even though he was referring primarily to adolescent murderers and not serial killers. At the time, Dr. Frazier was psychiatrist in charge of the McLean Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard. “Murder is a process—not an event, but a phasic development,” he wrote, pointing out that the killer’s self-concept is deficient, leading the criminal to wreak vengeance not on his primary target but on a stand-in for his fury.
Dr. Frazier’s paper explained that “the acting out becomes a desperate attempt at mastery, an attempt that fails. The murderer has a learning deficit that is reminiscent of the behavior of toddlers for whom each act is a new event, an attempt to learn about the self.” Still speaking of adolescent murderers, Dr. Frazier wrote that with a deficient self-concept, the killer encounters confusion, resulting in a disorganized action pattern.
Dr. Frazier found defects in the early socialization of many murderers he had studied. The individual becomes unable to respond to emotional cues, presenting defenses that are inadequate to cope with stresses. The resulting depression leads to acting out by unleashing rage at some substituted figure of authority, which may have been the object of an earlier anger.
“To the early adolescent, external causes are very important. The person who gets killed is substituted for the intended person.”
To go beyond what Dr. Frazier wrote and build upon his findings, we may speculate that a violent inner drama precedes the murders and may continue even after he has “settled the score” with surrogates. What, specifically, is the relationship that spurs him to take others’ lives? It could be any relationship in his life, in or out of his family. His victims may represent parental or authority figures who displeased him or a love relationship in which he lost out to a competitor, perhaps one in which he was spurned. Possibilities are endless. His perceptions may not appear realistic to an objective observer, but to him they are paramount. They are the cause of his unhappiness and lack of success. In the Phantom case, he was poisonously resentful of the male victim, whom he killed first, and in some instances, purposefully humiliated by forcing him to pull down his pants. He may have been less angry with, or may have entertained mixed emotions toward, the female. He also seemed to take some pains to conceal her body, rather than carelessly leaving her in open view. He did not desecrate her body, suggesting some degree of respect toward her. The ages of his victims would not reflect an exact comparison with those with whom he was “getting even.” They could be younger or older. He simply found a couple approximating those he despised.
By choosing strangers for his vengeance, the killer demonstrates his inability to deal directly with those he deems to have treated him unfairly. He is afraid to confront that person face to face, though he harbors cold anger and resentment and yearns for revenge. The ultimate revenge is to destroy. The best—perfect—model for the victim in such a case is a stranger. Neither knows the other. By killing the selected stranger the perpetrator has exacted his revenge, albeit a step removed from his primary target. On the face of it, there is no motive, unless one erroneously assigns robbery or another act as a motive, making it increasingly more difficult to identify the culprit. Thus, murder of surrogates.
Once he has destroyed the victim or victims, he is emotionally appeased—for the time being. Other elements may enter in, including possible addiction to the rush, the excitement and power he feels in the act of killing other human beings, but he is also acting out a drama of revenge, driven by deep-seated anger that may have persisted for much of his life. While he may savor his peak moments of murder and escape from the police, in time fantasy isn’t enough. When triggering, or stressor, events occur, he sets out to kill again, to regain that feeling of excitement and power he has experienced no other way.
In every instance, the Phantom found his preferred victims: vulnerable couples isolated, at night, helpless before a man with a gun and no scruples.
Other psychological considerations may relate to the Phantom’s behavior.
“Serial killers may be compensating for the inferior role they were forced to play during childhood. Killing gives them everything missing from their otherwise drab, dreary, and mundane existence,” wrote Jack Levin, who also attended the FBI symposium. “Rather than be just an ordinary person with ordinary talents and ordinary abilities, serial killers see themselves as becoming supermen who cannot be stopped by the police or the FBI. . . .
“Taunting law enforcement is one way to feel powerful. Another is to spread fear and terror throughout a community, if not an entire nation, and become infamous in the process.”
He added: “They want to be given a moniker—a notorious name—that will ensure that their evil deeds are permanently embedded in our collective memory, that they become a household word. . . . The press often complies by creating a moniker that is widely known—Son of Sam, Hillside Strangler. . . .”
The media-dubbed Phantom became a household word as he spread terror over the Four States Area, with his “achievements” heralded over the nation.
Once started, can serial killers stop killing? Most, perhaps, may be compelled to continue, while some few do stop. The BTK killer in Wichita, Kansas killed from 1974 to 1991, then did not kill again, all the way to his arrest in 2005. He’d found substitutes for murder, apparently legal activities that somehow better channeled his needs.
“It is not that serial killers want to get caught; they feel that they can’t get caught,” said Dr. Levin.
Should a serial killer evade capture, will he continue to kill? The consensus is that he probably will, barring physical disability or, possibly, aging factors that would limit such high-energy crimes.
Most authorities seem to agree that the sociopathic killer cannot be rehabilitated and once incarcerated should never be released. The offender failed to develop a conscience at the critical age and never will. Whatever his intellectual potential, he will never grow emotionally into a normal individual who is “safe” enough to re-enter society. And often, the more intelligent psychopaths will be able to discern what psychiatrists are looking for and feign the appropriate results.
“There is no realistic way to rehabilitate a sadistic sociopath who has made a career of killing,” writes Jack Levin. “A forty-two-year-old repeat rapist or murderer doesn’t suddenly develop a conscience. He may find religion, shed tears, say all the right things, but chances are, he is no more remorseful now than he was when he raped or killed for the pleasure of it.”
Applying the varied data and observations of a number of experts, ranging from FBI specialists to academics to clinical psychiatrists and psychologists—mostly compiled over the years since 1946—a tentative profile can be drawn of the Texarkana terrorist. He probably would be an obscure, angry, ineffectual, cold-blooded loser, a sociopath; white, at least twenty-five years old, of average intelligence and probably sexually inadequate; from a dysfunctional background, and a stranger to his victims, not a veteran of the recent war; a local resident familiar especially with the Texas side roads, who spent a lot of time driving.
If he had experienced a string of failures, he, like Pichushkin decades later, had taken human life but remained a free man, undetected. He had committed perfect crimes. He had terrorized a region. Everybody feared him. They trembled at the mention of his pseudonym.
He was The Phantom, publicized by the media and known from coast to coast. He was somebody at last!