Most serial killers are psychopaths. They are really frighteningly irrational people, but people who have no human conscience and no capacity for remorse. They also see other human beings as objects that can be manipulated and exploited and used for their own depraved purposes. It is nearly impossible for them to feel any sort of sympathy. Ed Gein raises the question in my mind, “Are monsters born, or are they created?” In this case study, I am going to explain who’s, what’s, when’s, where’s, why’s, and how’s of Edward Theodore Gein.
Edward Gein was born August 27, 1906, in La Crosse County, Wisconsin. He was the younger of two boys. His father, George Gein, was a worthless, good for nothing man who had drinking problems and could not keep a stable job to support his family. Augusta, Edward’s mother, was the proprietor of their small family grocery store. She was the perfect example of an overbearing, controlling individual. She hated her husband, in which their marriage had the quality of a lacerating nightmare (Schechter, 1989). Augusta saw George as a weakling, afraid of hard work. Thus, she quickly took on the role of domestic tyrant. For unknown reasons, the Gein family moved to a small dairy farm in the lowlands near Camp Douglas, forty miles east of La Crosse. In 1914, the Gein’s made their second and final move to a one-hundred-ninety-five-acre farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin, also known as the old John Greenfield place. Plainfield was your ideal image of a close-knit community that was kept quiet and filled with hardworking people. Perhaps, the isolation from moving caused the family dynamic to grow stranger and stranger. In 1940, Edward’s father died at the age of sixty-six due to heart failure, consequently tied to his dr...
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...al state and returned to his home empty handed. During his trial, he was found to be mentally incompetent, and suffering from schizophrenia. July 26, 1984, Edward Gein died of respiratory failure at Mendota. The next night, he was buried in an unmarked casket directly next to his mother in the Plainfield Cemetery.
Edward Gein’s twisted world will forever be America’s obsession. His story is so peculiar and deviant that we can’t help but wonder why. It is very rare that someone would develop into this kind of personality without suffering some tremendous abuse. Though that supports his reasoning, it in no way justifies his actions. Edward did not only leave the family members of the victims heartbroken, but he also left the community feeling shocked, upset, devastated, and horrified. Having read this case study on Edward Gein, are monsters born, or are they created?
“The only motive that there was was to completely control a person… and keep them with me as long as possible, even if it meant just keeping a part of them.” Using this statement, Jeffrey Dahmer offers his insight about what made him the cruel, demented being people have known him to be for the last 25 years. Many questions still remain, however. How do we, in society, define the term “monster”? What makes a monster? What shapes our perceptions of monsters, and how do these perceptions change over time? Several centuries passed between the time of Grendel from the epic poem, Beowulf, and the Milwaukee Monster, Jeffrey Dahmer, for instance. Grendel is a creation of the Anglo-Saxons, whose culture
On July 26, 1984, Gein died of respiratory and heart failure due to cancer in the Mendota Mental Health Institute. His grave site in the Plainfield cemetery was often vandalized over the years, people chipped off pieces of his gravestone for a souvenir before the whole piece of it was stolen in 2000. The gravestone was found around june of 2001 near Seattle and is now in a museum in Waushara County Wisconsin. (http://murderpedia.org/male.G/g/gein-edward.htm).
Herman Mudgett, better known as Dr. H.H. Holmes, was born May 16th, 1861, and died May 7th, 1896. He was an American serial killer who trapped, tortured, and murdered possibly hundreds of people. It is believed that his early life is what influenced his love for death and killing. According to Jerrod Brown, Eric Hickey, and Blake Harris, “the childhood of Holmes was shaped by physical abuse, difficulties in socializing with peers, and cruelty towards animals” (Brown, Hickey, and Harris). Holmes obsession with inflicting pain on others would eventually lead him to becoming America’s first documented serial killer. In this paper, Holmes early abusive life and late life will be discussed as well as his life of a serial killer
As years go on so will the research on serial killers and hopefully we as a society will fully understand them and one day be able to cure whatever inside that makes them have the urge to kill. Works Cited The Electronic Journal of Sociology, published by the University of Guelph, Ontario. http://www.scribd.com/doc/167086215/How-Serial-Killers-Work. According to the article “10 Most Common Traits of Potential Serial Killers By Hestie Barnard Gerber. According to Comrade Chikatilo: The Psychopathology of Russia's Notorious Serial Killer.
Monsters and the Moral Imagination, written by Stephen Asma, presents many possible outcomes as to why monsters are the rise. Mr. Asma discusses why monster portrayals could be on the rise in movies, books, and stories throughout his subsection Monsters are on the Rise. Perhaps the rise is due to traumatic events in recent history such as the holocaust or the terroristic attacks of 9/11 in
Simon, Robert I. "Serial Killers, Evil, And Us." National Forum 80.4 (2000): 23. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
Serial killers have long eluded law enforcement while simultaneously grabbing the attention of the public, and now more than ever, criminal psychologists are beginning to understand what makes a serial killer. In his true-crime documentary, In Cold Blood, Truman Capote depicts the horrifying murders of four members of the Clutter family and the search to find the criminals responsible for the deaths. Eventually, two killers are caught, one being Perry Smith, a detached and emotionless man. And although his carnage of the Clutters labeled him a mass murderer, many of Perry’s personality traits are characteristic of a serial killer. In fact, if detectives had not caught him, Perry could have easily become a serial killer.
Behavior is sometimes defined as the response of an individual, group, or species to its environment. Parents, girlfriends, sisters, brothers, and peers can all affect a person's behavior. Not everybody necessarily will have the behavior of a serial killer. In this paper, I will attempt to show the difference between the psychopath and the psychotic. Explain how the environment, upbringing, and treatment of serial killers led them to become who they are today.
Typically, when one thinks of serial killers, such images as Son of Sam, John Wayne Gacy, or the Boston Strangler, come to mind. Though these men do indeed fit the description, there are many myths and misconceptions surrounding the definition of serial killer, first and foremost that serial ...
The earliest warning signs of serial killers can be traced back to their childhood. It is believed that the mind of a murderer is charged with a turbulence of emotions stored from early childhood (Abrahamsen 18). When these often repressed emotions are activated, the mind, particularly when aroused or frustrated, becomes violent, and so it is that a person who may appear quite normal and well adjusted on the surface, becomes possessed by a mind that murders (Abrahamsen 18). The study of 36 incarcerated killers by Robert Ressler, Ann Burgess, and John Douglas, which can be found in their book Sexual Homicide Patterns and Motives, found many common behavior indicators in their childhoods. These behaviors include daydreaming, compulsive masturbation, isolation, chronic lying, bed wetting, rebelliousness, nightmares, destroying property, fire setting stealing, cruelty to children, poor body image, temper tantrums, sleep problems, display assault toward adults, phobias, running away, cruelty to animals, accident prone, headaches, destroying possessions, eating problems, convulsions, and...
A serial killer is traditionally defined as the separate killings of three or more people by an individual over a certain period of time, usually with breaks between the murders. (Angela Pilson, p. 2, 2011) This definition has been accepted by both the police and academics and therefore provides a useful frame of reference (Kevin Haggerty, p.1, 2009). The paper will seek to provide the readers with an explanation of how serial killers came to be and how they are portrayed in the media. Several serial killers have a definitive and common personality profile.
'Serial murder'; has long been a term used to describe those human beings that repeatedly commit heinous crimes. It is rare that the average person probes the mind of a serial killer without bias. However, what lies behind the eyes of a serial killer deserves more than the cold hard look that society so often gives (Aaronson, Inter...
As if molded directly from the depths of nightmares, both fascinating and terrifying. Serial killers hide behind bland and normal existences. They are often able to escape being caught for years, decades and sometimes an eternity. These are America’s Serial Killers (America’s Serial Killers). “Even when some of them do get caught, we may not recognize what they are because they don’t [sic] match the distorted image we have of serial killers” (Brown). What is that distorted image? That killers live among everyday life, they are the ones who creep into someone’s life unknowingly to torture and kill them. The serial killers that are in the movies, Norman Bates, Michael Myers, and the evil master mind of SAW, these characters are just that characters. They have been made up as exaggerated fictional characters from the Hollywood imagination.
Brogaard, Berit. "The Making of a Serial Killer." Psychology Today. Berit Brogaard, D.M.Sci., Ph.D in The Superhuman Mind, 07 Dec. 2012. Web. 08 Apr. 2014.
The question of whether or not man is predetermined at birth to lead a life of crime is a question that has been debated for decades. Serial killers are made not born; it has been demonstrated that a man 's initial years are the most vital years. A youngster 's initial couple of years is a period of experimentation, a period to make sense of things for themselves, a period to set up the bits of the riddle. Like a newborn child, the mental health is reliant on its environment. A youthful youngster 's mind resembles a wipe; it gathers data through perception. The surroundings of a serial killer as a little child can enormously impact the way he or she will go about his or her life and his or her style of murdering. Certain experience, for example, youngster misuse, divorce, liquor misuse, tyke disregard, as well as medication misuse, can be negative to the advancement of a little child. Numerous serial killers were illegitimate kids. Due to their childhood and early backgrounds, serial killers swing to crazy murdering frenzies.