Capstone Outline
1. Purpose: The purpose of my Capstone paper is to define serial murder, identify the
motivating factors and classifications behind such heinous crimes, recognize the gender
differences between male and female killers, and assess the validity of profiling
techniques.
2. Thesis: Although research suggests many motivating factors behind the act of serial
killing, the primary motives for such heinous crimes are sexual desires, power or control,
personal satisfaction, and financial gain.
3. Defining Serial Murder
a. Serial Murder vs. Mass Murder
i. A serial killer is someone who kills at least three victims over a period of
time with a distinguished cooling-off period; a mass murderer kills as
many victims as possible at one time (Miller, 2013)
b. 3 main elements (TwistedMinds)
i. Quantity (there have to be at least 3 murders)
ii. Place (the murders have to occur at different locations)
iii. Time (there has to be a cooling-off period or an interval between the
murders that can last anywhere from several hours to several years)
c. Evolution of Definition (TwistedMinds)
i. FBI definition taken from the FBI Crime Classification Manual from
1992: Three or more separate events in three or more separate locations
with an emotional cooling-off period between homicides too broad
ii. More flexible, accurate definition by the National Institute of Justice
A series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually,
but not always, by one offender acting alone. The crimes may occur over a
period of time ranging from hours to years. Quite often the motive is
psychological, and the offenders behavior and the physical evidence
observed at the crime scenes will reflect sadistic, sexual overtones.
4. Common Characteristics of a Killer
a. Childhood family dynamic
i. Victims of significant emotional, physical, or sexual abuse (Anthes, 2015)
lead to profound feelings of humiliation and helplessness
(TwistedMinds)
ii. Absence of a parent; resentment toward distant or abusive fathers which
causes them to have a great deal of trouble with male authority figures;
dominance by a material figure causes them to have a powerful hostility
toward women
b. History of psychiatric problems
i. Suicidal thoughts/behavior as teenagers due to extreme isolation and a
general hatred of the world (Anthes, 2015)
ii. Mental illness, institutionalized
c. Fascination with fire-setting
i. Lust for destruction
d. Sadism/animal torture at a young age
i. Derive pleasure from the mistreatment/suffering of lower life forms
dehumanization of victims, hurting smaller creatures
5. Classifications and Motives
a. Sexual desires
i. Sadist-masochist serial killers are motivated by the fulfillment of sexual
desires and the pleasures of pain (Miller, 2013)
ii. Rape/sexually assault their victims before killing
iii. Prey vs. predator (Myers et al., 2005)
b. Power/control
i. Professional killers; male & female pairs seeking empowerment
ii. Violation of another persons intimate self (Miller, 2013, pg. 4)
iii. Female serial killers kill for excitement and power in institutional settings
like hospitals or nursing homes vulnerability of victims (angels of
death) (Myers et al., 2005, pg. 3)
iv. The feeling of needing to improve society by killing a certain group of
people seen as their mission, redeems them of their wrongdoings
(TwistedMinds); murders that are carried out for religious purposes or cult
activity (Miller, 2013)
v. Deciding whether, and how, the victim will live or die
c. Thrill/personal gratification
i. Hedonistic serial killers murder for comfort, power, or thrill, deriving
pleasure and a sense of peace from the suffering of their victims; killing
makes them happy (Ioana, 2013)
d. Financial gain
i. Female serial killers tend to kill for money (black widow killers) (Myers
et al., 2005)
ii. Ex. Death House Landlady Dorothea Montalvo Puente was a
grandmotherly looking woman who ran a boarding house for the elderly,
she would cash their social security checks for her own use and kill all
those who complained (Kaplan, 2015)
iii. Women kill for resources, which resembled their primary drive in the
ancestral environment; female serial killers gather and male serial killers
hunt reflects ancestral tendencies (Kaplan, 2015)
e. Organized Nonsocial Killers vs. Disorganized Asocial Killers (Hazelwood &
Douglas, 1980)
i. Organized nonsocial
1. Irresponsible, self-centered attitude while being completely
cognizant of their actions
2. Commit crimes for their impact on society, fulfilling a mission
3. Crimes tend to be secluded or isolated location, making it easier to
transport the body of the victim
4. Signs of dissection show an attempt to hinder the identification of
the body
5. Less physical evidence left at the crime scene
ii. Disorganized asocial
1. Feel rejected and lonely because of difficulty in interpersonal
relationships; seek acceptance
2. More prone to using a weapon to torture or mutilate a victim prior
to death
3. Insert foreign objects out of curiosity
4. Cannibalism/anthropophagic acts
6. Differences Between Male and Female Serial Killers
a. Motives
i. Unlike male serial killers who usually kill for sexual reasons, most female
serial killers kill for either money or for excitement and power in
institutional settings like hospitals or nursing homes (Myers et al., 2005,
pg. 3)
b. Using Stereotypical Gender Roles to Their Advantage
i. Female serial killers pursue stereotypical feminine professions such as
nurses, care-givers, or Sunday School teachers that gave them greater
access to vulnerable victims (Kaplan, 2015)
ii. Targeting children, the elderly, or the ill (Anthes, 2015)
iii. Use their sexuality/attractiveness to their advantage to lure in their victims
c. Victims
i. While most victims are unknown to a male murderer, female serial killers
murder people they know, often their own family members (Kaplan, 2015)
ii. Husbands and children (Anthes, 2015)
d. Methods of Killing
i. The primary weapon of choice for female serial killers is poison; males are
more likely to shoot, strangle, or stab victims (Anthes, 2015)
e. Killing Career
i. Female serial killers tend to have longer killing careers than men,
presumably because their crimes are more methodically planned out
(Myers et al., 2005)
ii. Rarer than male counterparts; many people dont believe women are
capable of committing such crimes, society is in denial and often
dismisses the possibility given the stereotypical perceived innocence &
inferiority of women (Anthes, 2015)
7. Profiling Techniques and Validity
a. Signatures (Promish & Lester, 1999)
i. Either BOTH clean-cut and polite/almost meek (TYPE 1), or NEITHER
clean-cut nor polite/almost meek (TYPE 2)
ii. General link between signature and type because while 4 out of 8 type one
subjects were seriously misclassified, only 2 out of 19 type two were
seriously misclassified
iii. Presence of rape, dismemberment, burning, torture, biting, masturbation,
foreign object in vagina, foreign object in mouth, blunt instrument strike,
drugs/alcohol (unique signatures) in relation to each serial killer
b. Chromosomal Abnormalities
i. Klinefelters Syndrome: extra X resulting in a 47 XXY (five times higher
in criminals than among the general population) (Ioana, 2013)
ii. Crime Chromosome: extra Y resulting in a 47 XYY (ten times higher in
criminals than among the general population) (Ioana, 2013)
iii. Chromosomal abnormalities expressed particularly by males during
puberty (Rogers, 2012)
c. Methods of identification (White, Lester, Gentile & Rosenbleeth, 2011)
i. Psychological profiling, behavioral profiling, criminal profiling,
investigative profiling, FBI method of profiling
ii. Relationship between psychological and physical evidence
iii. Conducted a study of 200 serial killers in which they examined the
variables that led to police focusing their attention on specific suspects and
developed 12 categories that describe how serial killers come to the
attention of the police Victim released (1%), murderer killed during the
crime (1.5%), voluntarily went to police and confessed (2%), identified by
witness as being with victim(s) just prior to murder (2%), sent
communication to media/police (2.5%), caught in the act (5.5%), victim
survived after being left for dead (7.5%), victim escaped (8%), linked to
crime scene (16.5%), linked to victims other than by eyewitnesses
(16.5%), arrested for a different offense (16.5%), turned in by someone
who knew offender (20.5%)
d. Validity/Challenging Public Opinion (Kocsis, 2004)
i. Failures in profiling (1996 Olympic Games bombing and the 1992 murder
of Rachel Nickell) have led many people to question the validity/value of
profiling and whether it should be used during criminal investigations and
as evidence in trials
ii. Studies found that profiling is generally accurate and the group with the
highest proficiency was the professional profilers
iii. But the skills required to be proficient werent experience in law
enforcement but the capacity for logical and objective reasoning
