In 1989 Westley Allan Dodd was hanged to death for sexually assaulting and heinously murdering three defenseless children; all boys aged 11, 10, and 4. The details and events from his shocking diaries portray horrific accounts of the murders he committed and those he planned to enact had he not been finally brought to justice by one of his potential victims. Dodd was born in Washington State, July 3rd 1981. He had two older brothers and often described his home as loveless. His parents divorced when he was 15 years old (Newton, M n.d.). “Dodd stated his dad criticized a lot of what he did and that he could never live up to his expectations.” (Branch, Bryan, Giovenco, Nichols, Yeatts, n.d.). At 13 it is believed that Dodd began abusing children. He would expose his self from an upstairs window or bike around the neighborhood and expose his self to children. Dodd never claimed to be sexually abused but he wasn’t educated about sex. “Westley’s father, Jim Dodd, told The Oregonian that he acknowledged his son’s sexual deviancy with “father-son chats,” but mostly avoided talking about it, despite Westley’s increasing arrests and warnings. The eldest of three kids, Westley was otherwise well behaved. “He never did drugs, he never drank, he never smoke” said the elder Dodd.” (Scott, S n.d.). Dodd’s exposing abnormalities began to escalate to molesting around the time his parents divorced. Dodd would put his self in positions of trust with children. He often would baby sit the neighborhood boys; he also became a camp consular and would play games with children, later to trick them into performing some type of sexual activity. It is believed that Dodd molested or abused as many as 50 young boys with ages ranging from two to twelve year... ... middle of paper ... ... from now on I would be a little more forceful. I would no longer accept no as an answer to my requests.” (Dodd, W.A., Steinhorst, L. 1994). While in Seattle, Dodd realized children were less likely to turn him in out of embarrassment. At this time Dodd was still attending counseling sessions for his pedophilic urges. Here his attacks turned more brutal as he started to fanaticize about killing his victims. Later in his book he stated, “The more I thought about it, the more exciting the idea of murder sounded. I planned many ways to kill a boy. Then I started thinking of torture, castration, and even cannibalism.” (Dodd, W.A., Steinhorst, L. 1994). Dodd’s intelligence allowed him to manipulate the justice system and stay out of jail. He had become a killer in his mind; a sexual sadist that was stimulated by his thoughts and fantasies of murdering his next victims.
The two killers' childhoods were obviously dissimilar, and their differences bring to question the formation of a killer's mind. Is it childhood that affects the criminal mind's mentality? Smith's lack of companionship during his childhood led him to search for companionship in Hickock. Hickock took advantage of Smith's need by promoting Smith's fantasies. Hickock truly felt that Smith's fantasies were ludicrous, but he supported his fantasies because he needed Smith's aid to commit the murders.
Susan Leigh Vaughan Smith was born September 26, 1971 in Union, South Carolina to Linda and Harry Vaughan. She was born the third child in the Vaughan family, with two older brothers. Linda Vaughan divorced Harry when Susan turned 7, and five weeks later Harry committed suicide at 37 (Montaldo). Within weeks of Linda and Harry’s divorce, Linda got remarried to Beverly (Bev) Russell, a local successful businessman. Linda and the children moved from their home into Bev’s, a larger house located in an exclusive subdivision in Union, South Carolina. Susan grew to be a well-liked teenager, and even became president of her Junior Civitan Club and Friendliest Female in her senior year (Montaldo). Everyone liked her, and she put on a great show at school. But after the last bell rang, she had to look forward to seeing Bev at home, something she feared above anything else. Bev had taken to molesting Susan when she turned sixteen, and it was not long afterward that she sought help with the local Department of Social Services (Wiki). The Department of Social services did little to help Susan, only making Bev attend a few counseling sessions (Wiki). When he returned home, he chastised Susan heavily for “airing their dirty laundry in public” and continued with the molestation (Montaldo). I believe thi...
Pryor was born December 1, 1940 in Peoria, Illinois. In Peoria, he had a rough childhood living next door to a brothel ran by his grandmother and his mother even being a prostitute. Abandoned by his mother at the tender age of ten, he experienced an absence of a maternal figure growing up. His father, a WWII veteran, was a bartender and boxer who was an alcoholic and not necessarily a “fit father.” As a young teen, he was moved into his grandparents’ home, along with his other siblings. Throughout his life, Pryor was molested by a teenage neighbor and a Catholic priest. To escape this tyranny, he would spend his time in a local theater. In school, Pryor was noticed as a class clown. However at age fourteen, his clownery ways resulted in him being expelled from school. As a result of his consequences, Pry...
These two men, both coming from different backgrounds, joined together and carried out a terrible choice that rendered consequences far worse than they imagined. Living under abuse, Perry Smith never obtained the necessary integrity to be able to pause and consider how his actions might affect other people. He matured into a man who acts before he thinks, all due to the suffering he endured as a child. Exposed to a violent father who did not instill basic teachings of life, Smith knew nothing but anger and misconduct as a means of responding to the world. He knew no other life. Without exposure to proper behavior or responsible conduct, he turned into a monster capable of killing an entire family without a blink of remorse. In the heat of the moment, Perry Smith slaughtered the Clutter family and barely stopped to take a breath. What could drive a man to do this in such cold blood? The answer lies within his upbringing, and how his childhood experiences shaped him to become the murderer of a small family in Holcomb, Kansas. ¨The hypothesis of unconscious motivation explains why the murderers perceived innocuous and relatively unknown victims as provocative and thereby suitable targets for aggression.¨ (Capote 191). ¨But it is Dr. Statten´s contention that only the first murder matters psychologically, and that when
Daniel Harold Rolling did not have an easy childhood. Throughout his adolescence, his father, James Rolling, would physically and emotionally abuse him, his brother, and his mother (Donnelly, 2009, p. 434). As described in WordPress, “escape would become a method of survival for Rolling” (“In The News,” 2006). Some of the punishments that he received from his father included whippings, beatings, and suffocation (Donnelley, 2009, p. 434). Consequently, because of both his father’s cruelty and mother’s emotional breakdowns, as a child, teachers and other adults often described him as “suffering from an inferiority complex, with aggressive tendencies and poor impulse control” (Donnelly, 2009, p. 434). At the age of thirteen, Rolling had his first
Upon execution of his criminal acts, Bundy often visited the secondary scene of crime where he performed sexual acts with the decomposing bodies of the victims until destruction by wild animals or decomposition made further interaction with the bodies impossible. In addition to these criminal acts, Bundy decapitated heads of some of his victims and kept their heads in his residence for a period of time as mementos (Rule, 2009). The cases involving Bundy and his victims are cases of murder, rape, necrophile and kidnapping. These are capital offences that were well planned and executed by the perpetuator who made subsequent follow-ups of his criminal acts by visiting the secondary scene of crime.
A. Aileen Wuornos was born to a teenage couple. Her father was arrested for child molestation and hung himself in jail. Her mother abandoned her, and the maternal grandparents assumed guardianship. Most of western culture can agree the abuse of a child is a deviant act. In the case of Aileen, what social factors and “social controls” impeded the recognition of such deviant behavior?
In 1993, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, aged ten at the time, abused and murdered a two-year-old boy, James Bulger. There was media uproar about the case with the two boys being described as ‘evil’, ‘monsters’ and ‘freaks’ in the media (Franklin & Horwath 1998). There were many references to evil in the newspapers; with the telegraph stating that Thompson’s nickname was ‘Damien’ (from The Omen) and declaring that Venables birth date was Friday the 13th. The majority of society was united in the belief that these two boys were the epitome of evil and it was the media that nurtured this belief. ‘Newspaper reports were unequivocal in their denunciations of Thompson and Venables as inherently evil, prompted perhaps initially by Justice Morland’s description of the murder as an act of unparalleled ev...
...of Sexual Abuse." Recognizing Signs of Sexual Abuse. Child and Family Institute, 2001. Web. 21 Apr.
Ted Bundy is one of the most infamous, sadistic serial killers known to man. During his tenure as a killer, Bundy confessed to the murders of 30 women, though the official number of kills is unknown to this day. Bundy’s sadistic habits began at an early age due to his rough upbringing and abusive parents. His tactical methods of killing left miniscule amounts of evidence, which remained undetectable by the “still rudimentary forensics techniques of the 1970s” (Crime Museum). Bundy also managed to uphold an impressive “clean-cut appearance” and portrayed characteristics of an “upstanding character” (Crime Museum). Ted Bundy, through the course of a troubled childhood and keen wit, managed to successfully become known as one of the most infamous
David Berkowitz, otherwise known as the “Son of Sam”, was notorious for his crimes committed between 1976 and 1977 that ended the lives of six innocent victims and wounded several others in New York (“David Berkowitz Biography”, n.d.). At first, police did not make a connection between the murders because there was nothing unusual about them; all the victims were shot with a 40 caliber gun, not fairly unusual during this time or place especially since the killings were over an extended period of time. Police finally made the connection when Berkowitz began to live behind notes that were meant to tantalize authorities since they had yet to catch him (“David Berkowitz| Son of Sam Killer,” 2015). Often times, the psychological structure of a human
Another criminology theory that may apply to help explain the criminal behavior of Ted Bundy is the Psychodynamic theory. This theory is largely based on the findings of Sigmund Freud. The underpinnings of this of the approach are that the unconscious mind affects behavior and emotion. The theory advances the argument that no behavior is without cause and that childhood experiences affect emotions and behavior as adults. Serial killers like Ted Bundy therefore are particularly affected by their unconscious mind. Bundy did not receive proper care as a young boy and the negative impact of his sense of rejection and isolation negatively impacted his adulthood with aggressive tendencies. In short, Bundy’s adult actions under this theory can be viewed as manifesting his anger over his childhood oppression in the form of brutal rapes and
...lect, can have a momentous impact on an individual, like it did with both Cholly and Junior. She did not dismiss the notion that sexual abuse is and can be extremely damaging, but she did want to point out how abuse that wears away at one’s mind can be worse in certain situations. Morrison did not offer answers to this issue of abuse to one’s mind, but rather she wanted to make people think about how they perceive these two forms of mistreatment. Morrison wanted to raise awareness on why psychological harm should be viewed as just as damaging as some of the other disparaging treatments towards children.
"Child Sexual Abuse Facts." - The Children's Assessment Center Houston, Texas USA The Children's Assessment Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.