- I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
- I've never encountered a serial killer
who would behave quite so much in that pantomimic way.
I have encountered serial killers
who have tried to scare me,
but I wouldn't be scared by Anthony Hopkins.
I'd have laughed, frankly,
if you'd told me about fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Hi, my name is David Wilson.
I research, write about, and work with people
who've committed violent crimes,
specifically murder and serial murder.
Today, we're gonna be breaking down clips from TV shows
and movies about serial killers.
This scene is from "Zodiac."
- Don't get up.
I want her to tie you up.
- Okay.
- What's interesting about this clip
is that you begin to see
one of the basic original FBI binary classifications,
that serial killers are organized or they're disorganized.
By organized, we simply mean that the serial killer
brings with him those things
which he's going to need to incapacitate his victims.
So in this scene, the Zodiac Killer brings with him rope,
he's wearing gloves, he's masked.
Usually we would also say
that if you're an organized serial killer,
that will imply, for example, that you're employed,
that you've got a higher intelligence,
that you're sexually competent,
that you're able to drive a car.
The other aspects of organization
that we see in this particular clip
is just how much control
the serial killer has over his victims.
A serial murderer as a phenomenon, in my experience,
always starts from a sexual fantasy.
And I think we've got some of that sexual fantasy
in this particular clip around bondage,
being powerful, being in control.
Not only is he masked and wearing gloves,
he's also wearing black clothing.
He's also got a symbol on his black clothes.
All of these things are about
instilling fear in his victims.
It's also about how he can make his fantasy real.
He's fantasized about what he's going to do
for a very long period of time.
I always say that nobody wakes up overnight
and decides that they're going to be a serial killer.
A serial killer is a long time in the making.
This is simply a way that he now wants to make
the fantasy become real.
Once they've engaged in the fantasy once or twice,
it's no longer fantastic,
and therefore, the sorts of things they'll do
within the crime scene will become more bizarre,
more exaggerated, more extreme.
It's interesting that he also brings a gun,
but he chooses not to use the gun initially.
He ties his victims up,
he's gonna threaten them with the knife.
This is the difference between those serial killers
who are act focused,
and those serial killers who are process focused.
The act focused serial killer
simply wants to kill his victims.
End of, bang, they're dead.
The process focused serial killer is interested
in extending the length of time
that he has with his victims.
He wants to tie them up,
he wants to see the fear that they're experiencing,
he wants certain words to be spoken,
he wants them to plead for their lives before he kills them.
That actually makes him feel sexually powerful,
sexually in control, to be the person that he wants to be.
- Get on your stomach so I can tie your feet.
- We hear the flatness in the Zodiac Killer's voice.
- I'm taking your car and going to Mexico.
- That is often characteristic
of an underlying personality trait called psychopathy,
an inability to show empathy, to show sympathy,
to walk in another person's shoes.
- It gets really cool out here at night, we could freeze.
- Of course, we see the male victim in the scene
trying to engage in conversation.
In my experience of working with serial murderers,
they are simply not interested in that kind of rapport.
They don't want to see you as being another human being.
Usually they're psychopaths,
and therefore they can't walk in your shoes.
They don't care about your suffering.
In fact, your suffering is actually
what they're seeking to do.
Next up is a fictional serial killer called Dexter.
[man grunting]
- You're mine now, so do exactly as I say.
- Dexter fits a type of serial killer
called the mission orientated serial killer.
He's a serial killer who's on a mission
to rid the world of other serial killers.
And that's very typical of a number
of actual serial killers criminologically.
- Trust me, I definitely understand.
See, I can't help myself either.
But children?
I could never do that.
Not like you.
Never, ever kids.
- He establishes very quickly
that there's some kind of moral hierarchy
in the phenomenon of serial murder.
Of course, there's no such thing as a moral serial killer.
Everybody who takes another person's life
is by the very nature of the fact immoral.
In "Dexter," we've got the ultimate
organized serial murderer.
He has a garrote that he's able to control his victim.
Ultimately he's going to inject his victim
so that he becomes paralyzed.
Dexter has a very elaborate MO
and a very unique signature.
MO stands for modus operandi.
It is the means by which the serial killer
or the murderer kills.
The MO would change because of how the victim might react,
whilst the signature is a particular way
that a killer will leave the crime scene
what will be unique to that particular individual.
Dexter is somebody who's going to torture,
and the context for that torture is almost medicalized.
He's usually giving poisons,
he's in a particular medical room, his kill room.
That kind of medicalized signature
is not that common in my experience,
with one particular caveat,
because, of course, a significant number
of healthcare professionals have been serial killers.
This next clip is one that is a particular favorite of mine,
"The Silence of the Lambs."
- You're one of Jack Crawford's, aren't you?
- I am, yes.
- May I see your credentials?
- Certainly.
- Hannibal Lecter does something
which is very true to life, in my experience.
When I'm interviewing murderers,
they're only prepared to talk to me once they've got my CV.
They love knowing that they're being interviewed
by the "top bloke."
- You use Evyan skin cream,
and sometimes you wear L'Air Du Temps,
but not today.
- I've never had a serial killer mention my aftershave,
but that seducing behavior
is something that I have to manage on a regular basis.
So, for example, I had to speak on the telephone
to an infamous serial killer who's in jail.
He was sometimes known as the Bikini Killer or the Serpent.
He said, "You look much younger than your 64 years."
It was the very first thing that he said.
It just shouted out as psychopathy.
The next scene is from "Se7en" by David Fincher.
- This was found on the wall behind the refrigerator
in the obesity murder scene.
- Long is the way and hard,
that out of Hell leads up to light.
- It's from Milton.
"Paradise Lost."
- Some serial killers do leave evidence,
clues if you want to call them clues.
And often in my implied work,
I'm asked, "Is that because they want to be caught?"
Well, that's not why the clues are left.
That's not why the evidence is left at all.
It's usually simply by the end of their killing cycle,
they're operating in an entirely parallel moral universe
that is different to the moral universe
that you and I inhabit,
that they simply don't understand
that what they're doing is so bizarre, is so extraordinary,
that of course these kinds of things left at the crime scene
are going to be able to be harvested
to identify who the killer is.
However, there are some serial killers
who do want to be caught, ultimately, a very small number,
because of course they want to stand out.
They want to be seen as extraordinary,
and therefore they can't be seen as extraordinary
if they don't get caught.
- Have you ever seen anything like this?
- No.
- What we have in "Se7en" is the sense in which
the serial killer is super intelligent, is a super predator.
And again, this is playing on one of the stereotypes
that the media have about serial killers,
that they'll be super intelligent and trying to outfox
almost as if they were playing a game of chess
with the law enforcement.
The other thing about "Se7en" that I think is interesting,
spoiler alert if you haven't seen "Se7en,"
but the head of one of the chief characters
in the movie is cut off.
Serial monitors will often take body parts as trophies,
and we tend to call that, in my world, overkill.
The killer is using much greater violence than is necessary
to achieve what it is that he wants to achieve,
which is to affect the kill of his victim.
- Put your gun now. - No, show me the box.
What was in the box?
- When I first started out in my professional world,
I had only ever encountered one man
who had beheaded his victim.
Of late, I've seen overkill during the pandemic
become much more common.
I now encounter overkill and mutilation all the time.
This next scene is from Alfred Hitchcock's
extraordinary movie, "Psycho."
- Is anyone at home?
- No.
- Is somebody sitting up in the window?
- N-N-no, there isn't.
- Oh sure, go ahead, take a look.
- Oh, that must be my mother.
She an invalid.
It's practically like living alone.
- Ah, I see.
- Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins, is wonderful
as a particular type, or a trope,
of what we've come to understand as being the serial killer,
somebody who is transsexual, transvestite,
he wants to dress up as his mother.
What Hitchcock gets wrong is the sense in which
it's these transgressive sexual identities
that is the motivating force behind serial murder.
And, of course, he's also wanting to present Norman Bates
as effectively psychotic.
I wouldn't necessarily describe Norman Bates
as a psychopath.
He probably does have some psychopathic traits
as a character.
I would see him as having some sort of psychosis.
In other words, he's hearing voices, having visions.
He's operating in an unreal world.
If Norman Bates had existed in reality,
Norman Bates would have behaved so bizarrely,
so aberrantly that he would have been caught very quickly,
because he would have stood out.
Of course, there's another media trope being used here,
which is that the detective is actually interviewing
the serial killer, but doesn't realize,
but might suspect that he's interviewing the serial killer.
That really doesn't happen in real life,
although a phenomenon that does occur on a regular basis
is that often murderers will return
to where they've committed murder.
Sometimes they just simply like the risk taking
that they are engaging with,
which is one of the reasons why often photographs are taken
at the crime scene,
because there might be the perpetrator
within that photograph.
- Let's just say, just for the sake of argument,
that she wanted you to gallantly protect her.
You'd know that you were being used,
that you wouldn't be made a fool of, would you?
- But I'm not a fool, and I'm not capable of being fooled,
not even by woman.
- In my real work with people
who've committed serial murder,
I often say that they are beta males
trying to become alpha males.
They are often losers,
and we get that sense of the loser I think in Norman Bates.
This is somebody who doesn't seem to be able to be competent
in any way that one would expect of an adult man.
And therefore, for me, Bates fits that pattern
that I see a lot of my applied work
that the serial killer, far from being a super predator,
is often just simply a loser.
Our next clip is from the film "Ma,"
played by Octavia Spencer.
- I can feel those big doe eyes watching me.
Maggie.
You are something else.
That much diazepam can knock out a Great Dane
for five hours.
- "Ma" really is just simply a genre Hollywood's movie
about a serial murderer,
but what's really interesting about it
is that we tend to think of serial murderers
as white professional men, as super predators,
and rarely do we get a character portrayed
who is of a different gender and of a different ethnicity.
And yet, the reality of serial murder in the United States
is that some 20% of serial murderers will be women.
- I got us a beer pong table
and a keg of Bud Light is on ice.
- The thing though about Ma as a character
is that she's desperate to be liked.
She wants to fit in,
but of course, in fitting in,
she's also secretly desperate to stand out,
and that's actually got a kernel of truth it seems to me.
They want to be seen as being like you and me,
but secretly, they want to also be different.
They want to stand out from you and me,
because they want to be seen as somehow special.
Ma's victim group, of course, are also students.
We tend not to see students
as being particularly vulnerable in reality
to serial murder.
If a serial killer was to start to attack a group
who had social capital, and who certainly have parents
who are likely to have social capital,
that serial killer will by and large be caught
much more quickly than serial killers
that would target sex workers, the homeless, the elderly.
This next clip is from "American Psycho."
- Howard.
It's Bateman, Patrick Bateman.
You're my lawyer, so I think you should know
I've killed a lot of people.
Some escort girls in the apartment uptown,
some homeless people, maybe five or 10,
an NYU girl I met in Central Park.
I left her in a parking lot behind some donut shop.
I killed Bethany, my old girlfriend, with a nail gun.
- I've never encountered a white collar investment banker
as a serial killer.
They will often be delivery drivers, taxi drivers.
They will often have a background in law enforcement.
I've encountered several white investment bankers
who undoubtedly were psychopaths,
and if I was to encounter Patrick Bateman in real life,
I would just simply find him very fetishistic.
He is wearing particular clothes, he has a particular look,
he's very surface, he's very shiny, he has no deep emotion.
I would think of him as a psychopath.
And frankly, I'd try and avoid him.
- I don't want to leave anything out here.
I guess I've killed maybe 20 people, maybe 40.
- I have encountered serial killers in real life
who just simply couldn't remember.
Certainly wouldn't remember the names of their victims.
Certainly wouldn't remember
what they did with their victims.
And that's partly because often by the stage
that they have been arrested,
there have been killing for such a long period of time
and so regularly, that they literally don't remember.
With one or two serial killers
that were prepared to talk about
the murders that they committed,
I felt that they were talking to me about them
because they were wanting to relive the moment
that they took another person's life,
and I merely became, therefore,
a vehicle for them to relive their fantasy.
And you see a sense of joy
in this particular characterization of Patrick Bateman.
You know, he moves from being remorseful
to one in which he's boastful.
- I killed Paul Allen with an ax in the face.
His body is dissolving in a bathtub in Hell's Kitchen.
- Batement ends this clip by having this sort of insight.
- I mean, I guess I'm a pretty sick guy.
- He's a pretty sick guy, which of course he is.
But by and large, I've never had serial killers
talk about themselves in that derogatory way.
I've had serial killers
who've thought of themselves as Superman,
as extraordinary human beings.
And you think, "My gosh, do they have no insight at all
"about what they've done?"
And the answer to that question is,
of course they have no insight into what they've done
or they wouldn't have done it in the first place.
This next clip is from "No Country For Old Men."
- What's this about?
- Step out of that car, please, sir.
- What is that?
- I need you to step out of the car, sir.
- What is that for? - You.
Would you hold still, please?
- We're dealing really with a characterization
of the serial killer
that isn't really at all based on reality.
This is the serial killer
as the super predator, the bogeyman.
What is accurate about the movie is the sense in which
lots of serial killers who are able to repeatedly kill
without being caught have to be geographically transient,
have to be mobile, are often engaged in occupations
which allows them to be in different places
at different times legitimately.
You see instrumental reasons being expressed
by Javier Bardem's character,
and also psychological reasons being shown.
He simply wants to steal the car,
that's the instrumental,
whereas the psychological will be when he's playing
cat and mouse with the gas station owner.
He's simply expressing his power.
He's simply expressing his control.
- [Chigurh] What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?
- Sir?
- The most you ever lost on a coin toss.
- But here's the downside
that I think the Cohen brothers get completely wrong.
If somebody like Javier Bardem's character
existed in real life, he wouldn't need to kill
because he's so powerful and in control anyway.
He'd be running multinational corporations.
He'd be running for president.
He doesn't need to get his kicks
through killing people in gas stations.
It just doesn't hold water for me.
This next clip is from the show "Riverdale."
- Can any of you guess
what the murderers all have in common?
- Nothing.
Isn't that kind of the point?
- Actually, they all have one thing in common.
A specific set of genes.
[dramatic music]
- They discovered that you have the MAOA
and the CDH 13 genes. - CDH 13.
Also known as--
- The serial killer genes.
[dramatic music]
- Let's get rid of immediately
the idea there's a serial killer gene.
It's an attractive idea,
and of course it's cropped up repeatedly in our history,
and so we have to nail that one on the head.
- Now, before I start filling in all the details,
any guesses on which one of these men is the murderer?
- It's the third man.
- The idea that there could be somebody
who is going to be able to simply look at photographs
or walk down the street
and identify who the serial killer is,
is just complete nonsense.
I hope that isn't too disappointing to you,
but it is complete and utter nonsense.
Serial killers are banal and ordinary.
Serial killers are never spectacular.
They're always too human.
If the serial killer really wants to be effective,
they've got to fit in,
because if they stand out,
they're not gonna be able to get access to the people
that they want to kill.
This next clip is from "Copycat."
- Nine out of 10 serial killers are white males,
age 20 to 35, just like these.
- I love this movie,
because it both plays on some of the cliches
that I've been talking about,
but it also provides just enough
authentic information to be credible.
- The FBI estimates that there could be
as many as 35 serial killers cruising for victims
even as I speak.
- The truth is, well, the FBI has said
that there are between 25 to 50 active serial killers.
What Sigourney Weaver's doesn't say
is that they will only kill about 1%
of all the murder victims in the United States.
She makes it sound as if there are lots of serial killers
killing lots of victims.
- The act of killing makes him feel intensely alive.
What he feels next is not guilt, but disappointment.
It was not as wonderful as he'd hoped.
Maybe next time it will be perfect.
- The other thing that she captures
that seems to me to be absolutely authentic
is what the serial killer is getting from having killed,
and how he probably feels disappointment after killing
because he wants to kill again,
because it's the moment of killing that he seeks.
That scene is so like scenes from my own life
whereby I've had to address public audiences,
and I've had to have security at those lectures
because I've had to deal with some pretty bizarre things.
This next clip is from the TV series "Mindhunter,"
when we see the real serial killer, Ed Kemper,
being interviewed.
- You see, Bill, I knew a week before she died,
I was gonna kill her.
She went out to a party.
She got soused.
She came home alone.
I asked her how our evening went.
She just looked at me.
She said, "For seven years,"
she said, "I haven't had sex with a man because of you,
"my murderous son."
So I got a claw hammer and I beat her to death.
Then I cut her head off
and I humiliated her.
I said, "There, now you've had sex."
- It is true that Ressler and Douglas
did interview 36 convicted serial killers,
which was the beginning of the FBI's understanding
about serial murderers,
and one of the serial murders that they did interview
was Ed Kemper.
And, of course, what we see portrayed there
is a very chilling picture of the kinds of things
that he did, and he did indeed kill his mother
in the way that he was describing,
and he did indeed behead her,
and he did indeed have sex with her decapitated body.
So, there's a lot going on here
that's completely and utterly accurate.
- Even as a child, I had kind of a rich fantasy life.
- You had fantasies of what, real women?
- Oh yeah.
And my mother would yell and scream at me,
tell me I was sick.
- The one that seems to connect all of the serial murderers
is that there is an underlying sexual fantasy
that is a seed that then grows and grows and grows
until that particular individual serial killer
wants to make that fantasy real.
And why they choose to do that
will be specific and unique to that individual.
- In this modern society,
what do we do with the Ed Kempers of the world?
- Death by torture?
- Of course, Kemper requested the death penalty.
Lots of serial killers I've worked with
can be quite moral in other aspects of their life.
They will have standards about behavior
that they will insist the I should have about my life.
One serial killer would constantly correct my grammar
or my punctuation in letters that I'd send to them.
- Did your mother humiliate you?
[disquieting music]
Ed?
- What's interesting about the series
is that it's also about that other trope that we see
in a lot of Hollywood movies, that people like me
would try and enter the mind of a serial killer.
I am not interested in what motivates a serial killer.
I am much more interested in who is is
the serial killer is able to kill.
If we concentrated our attention on the groups
that serial killers constantly target,
we would do a lot more to reduce the incidence
of serial murder in our cultures,
as opposed to any number of offender profilers
who claim that they can enter the mind of a serial killer.
If you really want to do something
to reduce the incidence of serial murder in our culture,
let's challenge homophobia,
let's have a grownup debate about how we police
those young men and young women who sell sexual services,
and above all, let's try and work out
why the elderly are so vulnerable in our culture
because they don't have a voice and have no power.
Thank you so much for watching,
and thank you Vanity Fair for inviting me.