Nature vs Nuture

Drilling into the skull of a young man he began to funnel a stream of sulfuric acid into the head of his unconscious victim to create a zombie to fulfill all of his fantasies. Dead within a day, he mummified the head of his victim placing it in the freezer beside the skulls of those who came before. Dismembering the remnants of the body he placed skin, blood, and bone into a fifty-gallon vat of acid dissolving what was left of the young man. This is the mind of Jeffrey Dahmer, he murdered not in anger, revenge, or financial enrichment but on impulse and desire. Like many serial killers before him like Albert DeSalvo, Theodore Bundy, and David Berkowitz, psychologists, criminologists, and scientists searched to answer the question of why serial killers commit these mass killings and how they became such violent humans. What is left are two schools of thought, are serial killers born with predetermined genes that play an integral part in creating their homicidal tendencies or do psychokillers become murderous through their surroundings as children? Though it is important to understand how killers become such vicious individuals it is critical to understand what defines a serial killer and what makes them so incredibly different from other homicidal murderers.
A large distinction that separates serial killers from other murderers are their motives to kill. Normally homicides are committed due to disputes that range from family affairs, gang violence, financial difficulties, and disputes between lovers and between friends. "A psychokiller, I should make clear, is not a regular murderer. A murderer has a vendetta, a nice specific personal thing against his victim" (Corin 188). Unlike that of a normal homicide, serial killers are only driven by instinct and a desire to kill. Due to these sexual desires and the need to fulfill their arousing fantasies it often drives these individual to murder those who are complete strangers. Though serial killers only make up for one

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