research articles on serial killing

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• v.27(1); 2020

A Behaviour Sequence Analysis of Serial Killers’ Lives: From Childhood Abuse to Methods of Murder

Abbie jean marono.

a Psychology Department, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK;

b University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;

Enzo Yaksic

c Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

David Adam Keatley

The aim of the current research was to provide a new method for mapping the developmental sequences of serial killers’ life histories. The role of early childhood abuse, leading to types of serial murder and behaviours involved in the murders, was analysed using Behaviour Sequence Analysis. A large database ( n  = 233) of male serial killers with known childhood abuse (physical, sexual, or psychological) was analysed according to typologies and crime scene behaviours. Behaviour Sequence Analysis was used to show significant links between behaviours and events across their lifetime. Sexual, physical, and psychological abuse often led to distinct crime scene behaviours. The results provide individual accounts of abuse types and behaviours. The present research highlights the importance of childhood abuse as a risk factor for serial killers’ behaviours, and provides a novel and important advance in profiling serial killers and understanding the sequential progression of their life histories.

Homicide is legally defined as the killing of another person. Homicide is an all-inclusive term, and there are different subcategories of homicide, such as murder, multicide, and manslaughter. Serial homicide, as defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is “the unlawful killing of two or more victims in separate events.” Serial homicide is an intentional, premeditated act, not a crime carried out on impulse or in response to a perceived provocation or threat (Reid, 2016 ). Athrough it is form of multicide, serial homicide is not to be confused with mass murder, which is defined as four or more murders that occur in one event, with no distinctive time lapse between them, or spree-killing, which is any murder that occurs at two or more locations with no emotional cooling-off period between (Douglas et al., 1992 ).

Advances in computational intelligence and the establishment of large datasets have meant that researchers in serial homicide are moving towards predictive models and understanding. In particular, researchers are now beginning to develop models to help to predict who is likely to commit serial homicide, and how to interpret offending patterns as a way to predict later offending behaviour (Hewitt, Beauregard, & Martineau, 2016 ; Ioana, 2013 ; Miller, 2014 ). Regardless of the type of prediction, to develop any such model, it is important that researchers understand the chain of events that preceded the homicides. One way in which researchers do this is by grouping related behaviours together, using a “thematic” or offending style typology approach (Grubin et al. 1997 ).

Since the 1970s, investigative profilers at the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit (BSU) have been analysing crime scenes in the attempt to generate ‘profiles’ of violent offenders. Profiles consist of aggregated data collected from several sources, which combine to indicate specific characteristics relevant to the offender (Douglas, Ressler, Burgess, & Hartman, 1986 ). These profiles, in turn, are meant to aid law enforcement officers in the detection and apprehension of violent offenders, including serial killers. Originally, the analysis of crime scenes revealed a dichotomized classification of a crime that was considered to be either organized or disorganized (Hazelwood & Douglas, 1980 ), the organized typology being a form of murder carried out by an individual who appeared to plan the crime, target the victims specifically, and displayed control (Douglas et al., 1986 ). Disorganized scenes, in contrast, exhibited a form of murder carried out by an offender who was less apt to plan the offence, who obtained victims by chance, and who behaved haphazardly during the crime (Douglas et al., 1986 ).

This original typology, that of the organized or the disorganized offender, was deemed overly simplistic and has since broadly expanded (Canter, 1994 ; Holmes & Rossmo, 1996 ; Turco, 1990 ). Recently, researchers have developed more sophisticated typologies including (1) visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power-control oriented killers (Holmes, De Burger, & Holmes, 1988 ); (2) thrill-motivated killers, murders for profit, and family slayings (Levin & Fox, 1985 ); and (4) travelling serial killers, local serial killers, and place-specific serial killers. Despite the development of refined typologies, research has found that there is no such thing as a prototypical serial killer, consequently limiting the usefulness of the typologies developed so far (Walters, Drislane, Patrick, & Hickey, 2015 ).

Profiles are created retrospectively – that is, after a crime had been committed. They are developed viay a thorough observation of the crime scene, interviews with surviving victims, and even wiretappings of taunts made by the subject to the victims’ families (Douglas et al., 1986 ). However, one limitation to this is that the profiles generated rely, to a large extent, on the use of educated guesses developed on the basis of data that may be unreliable. While profiles are undoubtedly a useful investigative tool that should not be overlooked, the accuracy of profiling could still be developed.

Studies have suggested that it is important to include personal histories and personality factors when proposing an ‘offender profile’ (Hazelwood & Warren, 2000 ). The FBI’s BSU also noted the value of this when they conducted a series of extensive interviews with several violent sexual offenders, including 25 serial killers, in the 1980s (Ressler, Burgess, & Douglas, 1988 ). The results from those interviews have helped to inform the development of criminal profiles today. The present study uses a broader categorization, such as those designed by Holmes and Holmes ( 1998 ). The present study includes influencing factors before the kill, such as personal histories and serial killers’ experiences of abuse.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines child abuse as “all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child” (World Health Organization, 1999 , p. 80). Although this definition covers a spectrum of abuse, the three main types defined in the present study are physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. Physical child abuse relates to acts that cause actual physical harm or have the potential for harm. Sexual abuse is defined as those acts in which a child is used for sexual gratification. Psychological abuse includes the lack of an appropriate and supportive environment or acts that have an adverse effect on the emotional health and development of a child.

Research has suggested that the ‘profile’ of a serial murderer typically includes abuse during childhood (Ressler, Burgess, Douglas, & Depue, 1985 ). It is possible that this is due to habituation and tolerance of pain, depending on the extent to which the abuse had been experienced as violent or painful (Joiner, 2007 ). Childhood abuse has also been associated with later cognitive processing problems, which may lead to an aggressive thought pattern – for example, encoding errors, hostile attributional biases, accessing of aggressive responses, and positive evaluations of aggression (Dodge, Pettit, Bates, & Valente, 1995 ).

Furthermore, research has shown that there is a very strong link between early childhood abuse and individuals who kill for sexual gratification (Lust/rape typology), as previous research has found that all types of abuse, excluding neglect, were significantly higher in the lust typology serial killer population than in a controlled sample (Mitchell & Aamodt, 2005 ). On average, 50% of serial killers suggest that they have experienced psychological abuse, 36% have experienced physical abuse, and 26% have experienced sexual abuse (Mitchell & Aamodt, 2005 ). Therefore, abuse in childhood is linked to serial killers’ later behaviours; however, what is not known is the sequential pathway between childhood abuse and different types of serial killer. A method is needed that can systematically link and sequence childhood abuse with typology of the criminal and crime scene behaviours. The present study provides this novel methodological approach to understanding the link between childhood abuse and later serial killer behaviour.

Behaviour Sequence Analysis (BSA)

A useful method for understanding the dynamic relationship between progressions of behaviours and social interactions occurring over time is Behaviour Sequence Analysis (BSA; Beune, Giebels, & Taylor, 2010 ; Marono, Clarke, Navarro, & Keatley, 2018 ; Taylor, Keatley, & Clarke, 2017 ; Keatley, Barsky, & Clarke, 2016 ; Keatley, 2018 ). BSA, also referred to as lag sequence analysis, is a method for investigating how chains of behaviours and events are linked over time.

Behaviour Sequence Analysis involves the study of transitions between behaviour pairs (Marono et al., 2017 ). Sequences can be on large (lifetime, e.g., Keatley, Golightly, Shephard, Yaksic, & Reid, 2018 ) or small (millisecond, e.g., Marono et al., 2017 ) scales. In lag-one BSA, which the present study uses, the antecedent behaviour (e.g., type of abuse) is the first event in a pairing, and the sequitur (e.g., first murder behaviour) is the second behaviour in the pair. Obviously, there are intervening behaviours and events through the lifetime; however, the purpose of the present study is to highlight BSA as a method for understanding homicide and connecting established risk factors and behaviours. This provides a simplified model of types of abuse linked to type of murders. Put simply, a BSA will determine how likely it is, compared to chance, that a sequitur occurs following an antecedent. The analysis indicates which pairings of behaviours occur above the expected level of chance – for instance, if an individual suffers ‘abuse type A’, how likely is ‘Behaviour B’ or ‘Behaviour C’ to follow. Sequence Analysis is not limited to only two behaviours; it is possible to analyse the pattern between potentially unlimited numbers of behaviours (from the start to end of a sequence). This technique has been applied to a variety of behaviours and social interactions and is commonly applied to forensic contexts, such as rape cases (Ellis, Clarke, & Keatley, 2017 ; Fossi, Clarke, & Lawrence, 2005 ; Lawrence, Fossi, & Clarke, 2010 ), violent episodes between people (Beale, Cox, Clarke, Lawrence, & Leather, 1998 ; Taylor et al., 2017 ), and marital conflict (Gottman, 1979 ).

Present study

The present study uses a BSA approach to investigate the effects of different types of early childhood abuse (physical, psychological, and sexual abuse) on later serial killings. The pattern of actions explored begins with this early abuse, leading on to the typology of the serial killer. This is included in the analysis to indicate links between abuse and typology, rather than direct sequential effects. 1 The effect of experiencing multiple types of abuse at the same time was also investigated. Typologies were classified into four groups, dependent on the serial killer’s motivation: lust, anger, power, and financial gain. The next behaviour explored was the crime scene behaviour – such as how the victim was killed and what was done with the body. Thus, the sequence from early childhood abuse, typology of the killer, and crime scene behaviours was analysed. While formal hypotheses are not made, owing to the novel nature of the research, several expected links can be outlined. First, it is likely that childhood sexual abuse will lead predominantly to sexual typologies, taking into account previous literature highlighting that violent upbringings influence later delinquency, adult criminality, and violence (Maxfield & Widom, 1996 ). It is also likely that individuals who have experienced early physical abuse will show a greater amount of violence – for example, signs of torture and overkill (infliction of excessive and unnecessary violence).

An all-male sample of 233 serial killers with a documented history of childhood abuse was collected. Numbers experiencing each type of abuse were as follows: psychological abuse ( n  = 35), physical abuse ( n  = 36), sexual abuse ( n  = 21), psychological and physical abuse ( n  = 88), physical and sexual abuse ( n  = 7), and physical, sexual, and psychological abuse ( n  = 46). The dates of first kill ranged from 1850 to 2014. The date of last kill ranged from 1893 to 2014. In calendar years of the sample at the time of their first kill ranged from 6 to 60 ( M  = 28, SD = 8.96), and their last kill ranged from 16 to 68 ( M  = 34, SD  = 10), although the exact age in childhood when abuse occurred is unknown. The number of kills ranged from 3 to 138 within several countries: Brazil ( n  = 3), Canada ( n  = 6), Australia ( n  = 6), USA ( n  = 176), Argentina ( n  = 1), Columbia ( n  = 4), Ecuador ( n  = 1), England ( n  = 8), France ( n  = 4), Germany ( n  = 4), Italy ( n  = 1), Mexico ( n  = 2) Ireland ( n  = 1), Scotland ( n  = 1), Pakistan ( n  = 1), Russia ( n  = 5), South Africa ( n  = 7), and Spain ( n  = 2). As the sample had been obtained from secondary sources and so does not contain any studies with human participants, ethics approval was not needed.

Coding procedure

The sample was split according to the type of abuse experienced in childhood. The typology of the serial killer in each group was then coded (Lust/rape, power, financial gain, or anger) into the BSA. Lust/rape killers were those whose murders involved sexual elements, including rape, sexual assault without penetration, or symbolic sexual assault such as the insertion of a foreign object into body orifices (Douglas et al., 1992 ). Power killers were those who derived pleasure from having complete control over their victims. Financial gain killers were those who killed for motivations based on the accumulation of goods or finances. Anger killers were those who killed for motivations that stemmed from feelings of anger, frustration, or betrayal, whether real or imagined. The overall methods used across kills was also recorded for all killers. 2 The final factor considered for each individual was what they had done with their victim’s body(s) after the murder (e.g., moved the body to a different location and buried it, hid the body at the crime scene, etc.). Percentages of participants for each individual were calculated at each stage.

A coding scheme was developed based on every recorded outcome/behaviour reported in the dataset. Given the straightforward nature of the task, there was no ambiguity over responses or coding. The typology of serial killers was assessed by forensic psychologists.

Statistical analysis

After data were coded into chains of discrete behaviours and categories, data were entered into the statistical software R (R Core Team, 2013 ) and analysed using a behaviour sequence analysis program developed by the researchers. The program calculated frequencies of individual behaviours, transitional frequencies, chi-square (χ 2 ) statistics, and standardised residuals.

The main stage of BSA is to focus on the transitions between pairs of behaviours. Transition frequencies between antecedents and sequiturs are calculated, and chi-square analyses are indicated if these transitions occur above the level of chance. State transition diagrams can then be drawn, which indicate pairs of behaviours with high standardised residuals ( SR ). It is important to note that while pairs of behaviours can be connected to form longer chains, the analyses are only on pairs of behaviours. Longer chains, though intuitively appealing, are actually limited in terms of generalizability, owing to over-fitting of data. All of the transition lines in the diagram are significant ( p < .05) (see Figure 1 ).

State transition diagram for type of abuse experienced, typology, and crime scene behaviour. Standardised residuals indicated by line thickness (see key).

Importantly, Figure 1 shows that there is a clear distinction between type of abuse experienced and later typology of the serial killer. For example, experiences of sexual abuse most likely to lead to the power typology ( n  = 6, SR  = 9.21), compared to other typologies. Rape/lust typology was the most common typology in the current dataset ( n  = 152). However, it had followed more frequently from psychological abuse ( n  = 10, SR  = 7.06) and a combination of all three types of abuse ( n  = 12; SR  = 7.04). There did not seem to be a strong connection between financial gain and any type of abuse or combination of abuse, as it was infrequent in all cases, particularly the experience of all three combined. There was no strong pattern between any single type of abuse and anger typology, and only 23 subjects classified as this typology. There was a clear pattern between rape/lust typology and torture of the victim ( n  = 16, SR  = 9.59). There was a clear pattern between financial gain and the murder being carried out quickly ( n  = 12, SR  = 8.33). An additional benefit of the BSA approach is that particular cases can be highlighted and analysed individually. For instance, the following analyses focused on each type of abuse sequence by itself. This allows researchers and investigators to refine their search parameters and to begin narrowing in on particular sequences based on evidence or interests.

Physical abuse

For physical abuse ( Figure 2 ), there was a distinct sequence between the experience of physical abuse and rape/lust typology ( n  = 6, SR  = 4.80) and anger typology ( n  = 2, SR  = 2.77). Those with rape/lust typologies were more likely to carry out the murder quickly ( n  = 5, SR  = 5.75), and crime scenes exhibited signs of the victim having been bound ( n  = 3, SR  = 4.64). There was also evidence of overkill, and in all cases where overkill occurred, the body had been left at the crime scene.

State transition diagram for physical abuse, typology, and crime scene behaviour. Standardised residuals indicated by line thickness (see key).

Psychological abuse

For psychological abuse ( Figure 3 ), there was a distinct sequence between the experience of psychological abuse and rape/lust typology ( n  = 10, SR  = 6.50) and financial gain ( n  = 5, SR  = 4.60). Murders were carried out quickly in all cases where the motivation was financial gain; however, if the typology was rape/lust, then fewer were carried out quickly ( n  = 5, SR  = 3.63). There was also a strong link between torture and evidence of overkill ( n  = 5, SR  = 6.25), and evidence of overkill and mutilation of the body ( n  = 6, SR  = 6.84).

State transition diagram for psychological abuse, typology, and crime scene behaviour. Standardised residuals indicated by line thickness (see key).

Sexualabuse

Unlike the other types of abuse, sexual abuse was linked to all four typologies (see Figure 4 ). The rape/lust typology was slightly more likely to the torture of victims ( n  = 4, SR  = 5.92) compared to showing signs of overkill ( n  = 4, SR  = 4.27). The power typology was more strongly related to carrying out the murder quickly ( n  = 4, SR  = 5.23) than to mutilating the victim ( n  = 2, SR  = 3.16). The anger typology showed a link to carrying out the murder quickly ( n  = 2, SR  = 2.16), and financial gain was also linked to carrying out the murder quickly ( n  = 4, SR  = 5.85). Finally, there were strong links between torturing and binding the victim ( n  = 4, SR  = 9.39), and the victim being bound and mutilation ( n  = 4, SR  = 8.63).

State transition diagram for sexual abuse, typology, and crime scene behaviour. Standardised residuals indicated by line thickness (see key).

All types of abuse

When a combination of sexual, physical and psychological abuse was experienced ( Figure 5 ), the rape/lust typology for killing was most likely to follow ( n  = 12, SR  = 6.76). Rape/lust was more likely to lead to the victims being bound ( n  = 6, SR  = 7.11) than to killers carrying out their murders quickly ( n  = 4, SR  = 2.63). Subjects who killed for anger were more likely to carry out the murder quickly ( n  = 4, SR  = 4.49) than show evidence of overkill ( n  = 2, SR  = 1.61).Those who killed for financial gain carried out the murder quickly ( n  = 3, SR  = 5.03).

State transition diagram for typology and crime scene behaviour following experience of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. Standardised residuals indicated by line thickness (see key).

The main aim of the present study was to examine whether there were distinguishable sequences that occur after experiencing different types of abuse in childhood, leading to different typologies/motivations for killing victims, and how murders were carried out. The outcome is an insight into the sequential chains that different types of abuse result in for an individual. Within the current dataset, results indicate that different types of abuse affect later typologies and murder behaviours.

Previous literature suggests that early physical abuse leads to later aggression and violence (Widom, 1989 ). Current results partially supported this. Although those who were physically abused were more likely to demonstrate ‘overkill’ of their victim, the most specifically violent methods of kill were practised by those who had been sexually or psychologically abused in early life. For example, mutilation, torture, and binding the victim were more typical of serial killers who had experienced sexual abuse. Furthermore, those who had been sexually abused rarely showed evidence of overkill, and the murders tended to be carried out quickly. This was not the case for both physical and psychological abuse, as both showed evidence of overkill. The exact reason for this cannot be clarified from this sequence chain, although based on previous research (Briere & Elliott, 1994 ; Wyatt & Newcomb, 1990 ), it may be that these patterns emerge because those who have experienced sexual abuse suffer from deep-seated anger and self-blame, leading them to lash out and kill their victims quickly, and they are more likely to feel guilt or remorse afterwards and thus are unlikely to show evidence of overkill.

Furthermore, all recorded murders were carried out quickly by those who were classified as motivated by power. There was also no evidence of any torture, mutilation, or overkill. Although again, the sequence chain cannot direct determine the reason as to why this is, based on previous research (Canter & Wentink, 2004 ; Holmes & Holmes, 1998 ), a reason could be that this stems from a need to control the victim and assert dominance. Therefore, killers see the act of killing as a necessity, rather than obtaining any enjoyment out of the kill, per se. In these killings, there is, therefore, no unnecessary means of killing, infliction of unnecessary pain, or evidence of enjoyment.

Those who were classified as exhibiting rape/lust typology commonly engaged in post-mortem sex, regardless of the type of abuse experienced as a child. There was also no evidence of overkill in any of the cases, although torture was commonly used. A possible explanation for this is the presence of abnormal paraphilias or sexual sadism, which supports Dietz, Hazelwood, and Warren’s ( 1990 ) argument that psychopathic sexual sadists kill for the sheer pleasure of torturing and murdering their victims in a sexual way. Importantly, the experience of sexual abuse, whether isolated or experienced alongside physical and/or psychological abuse, led to the mutilation or torture of the victim. Similarly, individuals who classified as lust/rape typology where more likely to torture or mutilate their victims. This suggests a correlation with sexual behaviour and a need to inflict pain.

Additionally, results are incongruent with previous literature on typologies, as there was no consistent pattern for method of killing and disposal of the body within each typology. This supports the suggestion by Canter and Wentink ( 2004 ) that features of power/control typologies were consistent for serial killers rather than forming a distinct type. Thus, the reliability of isolated typologies is less mutually exclusive than previously believed, and more attention should be paid to what factors influence specific methods of killing than to the motivations of individual offenders. Indeed, it may be that the cross-sectional approach to typology defining could be developed to include temporal dimensions. The current analytical method can be used to show linkages between behaviours and events, over time, which may provide investigators with a clearer understand and method for developing typologies.

A limitation of the current research is the potential influence of additional life events that may intervene in the current diagrams, as these were not available to be analysed. These other variables and events may have effects on later behaviours; however, the present research outlines a new approach to understanding serial killers’ life histories, rather than a complete timeline. Given the nature of the coding and behaviour sequence analysis, future research can be added directly to the current data to extend the sequence pattern, and other influential factors can be added. Indeed, this research marks the beginning of a new framework for understanding life histories and behaviours of serial killers, which can be developed and expanded. This research underlines the important impact of childhood abuse on serial killers’ motivations and behaviours. Future research should aim to fill in the gaps between childhood abuse and other life events leading up to the first murder, and then further murders.

1 It is possible that other, unmeasured variables play an important role in the sequence; however, the current research is presented as a framework foundation on which more complex sequences can be built in the future. The methods and statistics are open to additions being imputed into the sequences at later times, to develop more complex sequential chains.

2 Owing to limitations of the dataset, behaviours for each sequential murder are not known. Therefore, overall behaviours across murders are presented in the current dataset. While we acknowledge this is a limitation of the study, it still indicates typical crime scene behaviours for each individual killer.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest.

Abbie Marono has declared no conflicts of interest. Sasha Reid has declared no conflicts of interest. Enzo Yaksic has declared no conflicts of interest. David Keatley has declared no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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The social study of serial killers

Kevin Haggerty and Ariane Ellerbrok examine the cultural and historical context of serial killing

The study of serial killers has been dominated by an individualised focus on studying the biography of offenders and the causes of their behaviour. Popular representations of Jeffrey Dahmer, Harold Shipman, John Wayne Gacy and other notorious figures emphasise the sociopathic tendencies of the lone serial killer, presented in accounts that accentuate how assorted personality traits and risk factors ostensibly contribute to their otherwise unfathomable behaviour. While this emphasis on personal biography lends itself to much needed psychological analysis, the cumulative effect of such accounts is that serial killing can appear a-historical and a-cultural, as though such predispositions might manifest themselves in identical ways irrespective of context.

In fact, serial killing is intimately tied to its broader social and historical setting, something that is particularly apparent when such killing is considered in relation to a series of broad historical changes that have occurred over approximately the past 400–500 years, commonly associated with the rise of modernity. So, while throughout human history there have probably always been individuals who engaged in serial predation, in previous eras it was not possible for an individual to be a serial killer. Serial killing is a distinctly modern phenomenon, a product of relatively recent social and cultural conditions to which criminologists can provide fresh insight by accentuating the broad institutional frameworks, motivations, and opportunity structures within which serial killing occurs (Haggerty, 2009).

Serial killing is the rarest form of homicide, occurring when an individual has killed three or more people who were previously unknown to him or her, with a ‘cooling off’ period between each murder. This definition is accepted by both police and academic experts and therefore provides a useful frame of reference. Unfortunately, it also narrows the analysis of such crimes, as it fails to incorporate many of the familiar (although not inevitable) characteristics of serial killing. These include such things as the diverse influences of the mass media on serial killers as well as their tendency to select victims from particular walks of life. Attending to these (and other) factors can provide insight into the broader social and historical contexts that constitute the structural preconditions for such acts.

Here we briefly identify three aspects of serial killing that are often taken for granted, but that are intimately tied to the emergence of serial murder in its contemporary guise. These include the rise of a society of strangers, the development of a culture of celebrity, and cultural frameworks of denigration and marginalisation.

Society of strangers

Mass urbanisation is a distinctive characteristic of the modern era, something that has profoundly altered the nature of human relationships by virtue of generating an unprecedented degree of anonymity. In pre-modern societies individuals knew one another by name, often having intimate knowledge of their neighbour's family history, daily routines and personal predilections. Strangers were rarely encountered, and when encountered were the subject of rumour and suspicion. The average medieval citizen might have only met 100 strangers during the course of their entire life (Braudy, 1986), a number markedly low by contemporary standards, where one could confront hundreds of strangers simply on the daily commute to work.

The rise of capitalism and related processes of mass migration to urban centres resulted in individuals being immersed in a sea of strangers (Nock, 1993). This development also proved to be a key precondition for the emergence of serial murder, given that a defining attribute of serial killers is that they prey on strangers (something that distinguishes them from the vast majority of homicides, which typically involve some form of prior relationship between killer and victim). Thus dense modern urban environments represent ideal settings for the routinised impersonal encounters that operate as a hallmark of serial killing.

Mass media and the culture of celebrity

Although serial killing is statistically rare, it is nonetheless a ubiquitous cultural phenomena, one that for the vast majority of people is best understood as a media event (Gibson, 2006). Serial killers have become an inescapable point of reference in movies, television fiction, novels, true crime books and video games. This global system of mass media – again, a characteristic attribute of modernity – has made many citizens intimately familiar with the dynamics of serial killing and the lives of particularly notorious offenders.

The relationship between media and serial killing is, however, not straightforward. By widely circulating the details of specific serial killers, the mass media establishes the ‘serial killer’ as a dominant cultural category. One upshot is that, whereas in antiquity killing sequentially may have been something that someone did, today a serial killer is something someone can be. By placing the category of ‘serial killer’ into wide circulation, the media makes the specifics of such behaviour open to potential imitation, although this is not to suggest that serial killing might be the product of some straightforward ‘media effect’.

The media has also fostered a culture of celebrity. In our predominantly secular modernity the prospect of achieving celebrity has become desirable to the extent that it promises to liberate individuals from a powerless anonymity, making them known beyond the limitations of ascribed statuses such as class and family relations. For some this promise of celebrity is merely appealing, while for others it is an all-consuming passion, to the point that not securing some degree of fame can be experienced as a profound failure. Serial killers are not immune to the appeals of celebrity. As Egger (2002) has demonstrated in his analysis of seven of the most notorious American serial killers, the majority ‘seemed to enjoy their celebrity status and thrive on the attention they received’. Hence the complaint of a serial killer to local police is telling: ‘How many times do I have to kill before I get a name in the paper or some national attention?’ (Braudy, 1986).

Marginalisation

Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of serial murder is that such killings appear random. This, however, is a misleading characterisation, for while serial killers do target strangers, their victims are not haphazard (Wilson, 2007). Rather, the victims of serial killers tend to mimic the wider cultural categories of denigration characteristic of contemporary society. All societies have their own distinctive structures of symbolic denigration, whereby certain classes of people are positioned as outcasts or ‘lesser’ humans. Such individuals, often singled out by modern institutions for reprobation, censure and marginalisation, are also disproportionately the targets of serial killers, who tend to prey upon vagrants, the homeless, prostitutes, migrant workers, homosexuals, children, the elderly and hospital patients (ibid.). Gerald Stano likened the killing of his victims to ‘no different than stepping on a cockroach’ (Holmes and DeBurger, 1998). Such a statement keenly demonstrates the extent to which serial killers embrace and reproduce the wider cultural codings that have devalued, stigmatised and marginalised specific groups. Through a distorted mirror, serial killers reflect back, and act upon, modernity's distinctive valuations.

Recognising the dynamics of victim marginalisation is particularly germane to the study of serial killers, for the denigration of particular social groups is connected to specific opportunity structures for murder. Criminologists have emphasised the importance of ‘opportunity structures’ as a means of ascertaining the increased likelihood of criminal behaviour in certain contexts – noting that crime is more likely to occur when there is a combination of a possible victim accessible to predation, a motivated offender, and a lack of competent guardians. That the victims of serial killers tend to be drawn from modernity's disposable classes can also mean that these victims are outside of effective systems of guardianship, and are targeted not only because they are more accessible, but also because their deaths are less likely to generate timely investigation or legal consequences.

Modern phenomena

While serial killing is routinely presented as the unfathomable behaviour of the lone, decontextualised and sociopathic individual, here we have emphasised the unnervingly familiar modern face of serial killing. Several distinctively modern phenomena, including anonymity, a culture of celebrity enabled through the rise of mass media, and specific cultural frameworks of denigration, each provide key institutional frameworks, motivations and opportunity structures for analysing such acts. To exclusively focus on aetiology and offender biography systematically ignores this larger social context, and elides a more nuanced understanding of the hows and whys of serial killing.

Kevin Haggerty is Professor of Sociology and Criminology and Ariane Ellerbrok is a PhD student at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Braudy, L. (1986) The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History, New York: Oxford University Press.

Egger, S. (2002)  The Killers Among Us: Examination of Serial Murder and Its Investigations , Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. 

Gibson, D. (2006) Serial Murder and Media Circuses , Westport, CT: Praeger.

Haggerty, K. (2009) Modern serial killers. Crime Media and Culture , 5 (2), pp 168–187. 

Holmes, R. and DeBurger, J. (1998), “Profiles in terror: the serial murderer”. In Contemporary Perspectives on Serial Murder , Edited by: Holmes, R. and Holes, S. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  

Nock, S. (1993) The Costs of Privacy: Surveillance and Reputation in America , New York: Aldine de Gruyter.  

Wilson, D. (2007) Serial Killers: Hunting Britons and Their Victims , 1960–2006 , Winchester: Waterside.

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The Unravelling of an Expert on Serial Killers

By Lauren Collins

A brother and a sister are standing on the balcony of a sixth-floor apartment in Monte Carlo. It’s the nineteen-seventies, in May, the afternoon of the Grand Prix. The sun is glinting off the dinghies in the turquoise shallows of the harbor. The trees are so lush they’re almost black.

The brother, Stéphane Bourgoin, is in his twenties. He’s come from Paris to visit his sister Claude-Marie Dugué. Race cars circle the city, careening onto the straightaway on Boulevard Albert 1er, which Dugué’s apartment overlooks. Over the thrum, Bourgoin leans in and tells her something shocking: in America, where he’d recently been living, he had a girlfriend who was murdered and “cut up into pieces.” Her name was Hélène.

Bourgoin’s revelation was one of those moments when you “remember exactly what you were doing that day at that precise moment, the news is so striking and indelible,” Dugué recalled recently. “It was stupefaction and shudders, amid the revving engines of Formula 1.” Dugué and Bourgoin shared a father but had different mothers. They had got to know each other not long before, and Dugué didn’t feel that she could probe for details about a girlfriend she hadn’t met, or even heard of until that day. “I found the whole situation disturbing,” she said. She simply told Bourgoin how sorry she was.

At the time, Bourgoin had a career in the realm of B movies, reviewing fantasy and horror films for fanzines and dabbling in adult film. Later, he started writing his own books, which became hugely popular and helped establish him as a prominent expert on serial killers in France. His best-known work, “Serial Killers,” a thousand-page compendium of depravity, was released in five editions by the prestigious publisher Grasset. Travelling around the country to book festivals, Bourgoin built up a particularly devoted following within the already zealous subculture of true crime. One fan, Bourgoin said, sent him annotated copies of his own books, with items such as scissors, razors, and pubic hairs glued to the pages, corresponding to words in the text.

Bourgoin also had admirers in law and law enforcement. “He was one of the first people in France to say that serial killers weren’t only in America,” Jacques Dallest, the general prosecutor of the Grenoble appeals court, told me. Dallest was so impressed with Bourgoin that he invited him to speak at the École Nationale de la Magistrature, France’s national academy for judges and prosecutors. Bourgoin also gave talks at the Centre National de Formation à la Police Judiciaire, a training center for one of France’s main law-enforcement bodies, for which he claimed to have created the country’s first unit of serial-killer profilers.

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An energetic self-promoter, Bourgoin appeared frequently in the press and on television. “I counted, I did eighty-four TV shows in one month,” he once said. “I get up at 4:45 A.M. to be on the morning shows and go home at midnight to have a bite to eat.” He cultivated a flamboyantly geeky look, with equal shades of Sherlock Holmes (ascot, horn-rimmed glasses) and Ace Ventura (cerulean blazer, silky skull-print shirt). A quirky-shoes enthusiast, he sometimes wore a pair of white brogues made to look as though they were spattered with blood. On Facebook, he claimed to possess the remains of Gerard Schaefer, a serial killer from Florida. “To each person who buys my book, I will offer a small bag containing a little piece of Schaefer—fingernails, hair, ear, kneecap, skin, bones, etc.,” he wrote, in 2015. Female fans, he added, would be given priority.

Bourgoin was most famous for his jailhouse interviews with murderers. In the course of more than forty years, he had conducted seventy-seven of them, he said, “in the four corners of the planet.” He riveted audiences with tales of his encounters with the “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz (“David, I come here, you agreed to meet me, but I hope you’re not going to tell me the same bullshit that you told at your trial”), with the homicidal hospital orderly Donald Harvey (“He confesses seventeen additional crimes to me that he hadn’t even been suspected of”), with the “Killer Clown” John Wayne Gacy (who, Bourgoin said, grabbed his buttocks during the encounter). “Confronting these individuals can be dangerous from a mental point of view,” Bourgoin wrote, in “Mes Conversations avec les Tueurs” (“My Conversations with Killers”), a 2012 book. “To make them talk, you have to let down your guard, open yourself completely to a psychopath, who manipulates, lies, and is devoid of any scruple.”

If you dedicate your life to serial killers, the first question anyone asks is “Why?” Bourgoin’s answer was that Hélène’s death made him want to confront the worst that humanity had to offer, as “a form of catharsis” or even as “a personal exorcism.” At some point, he started pronouncing her name “Eileen,” the American way. He said that he’d met her in the mid-seventies, when he was living in Los Angeles, working on B movies; that, in 1976, he went on a trip out of town; that when he returned to the home they shared he discovered her dead body, “mutilated, raped, and practically decapitated.” The killer was apprehended two years later, and eventually confessed to almost a dozen other murders. He was now awaiting execution on death row.

When an interviewer asked for an image of Eileen, Bourgoin would produce a black-and-white photograph of the young couple. It was beautifully composed, almost professional-looking. In it, the two of them are pictured in closeup, facing each other. Eileen has feathered hair and rainbow-shaped brows. Bourgoin’s hair is long, and he appears to be wearing a leather jacket with a big shearling collar. He is turned toward her in a protective stance. She looks up at him with a snaggletoothed smile. They’re so close that their noses are almost touching.

“Eileen was his hook,” Hervé Weill, who co-runs a crime-fiction festival at which Bourgoin often appeared, told me. The story of her death stirred the public’s emotions, adding a sheen of moral righteousness to Bourgoin’s vocation. “I knew of Stéphane Bourgoin well before this program having seen almost all his interviews with prisoners, but I’m only here learning that he was the partner of a victim,” a YouTube user wrote, after watching one of Bourgoin’s television appearances. “Incredible man.”

In his public appearances, Bourgoin delivered even the most gruesome anecdotes with weary didacticism, as if he had seen it all and emerged omniscient, emotion transmogrified into expertise. He spoke in data points: seventeen crimes, seventy-seven serial killers, “hundreds of thousands” of case files that he claimed to have stored in his cellar. “For nearly fifteen years, I accumulated files that I synthesized into more than five thousand tables, four of which are reproduced in the book,” he said at one point, announcing that he had, in all likelihood, solved the long-standing mystery of the murder of Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia.

Bourgoin could seem a little off at times, more like an admirer than a dispassionate observer of the killers he studied. But it was easy enough to interpret this macabre streak as a consequence of his trauma. His social-media feeds featured an uncomfortable mixture of cat pictures (he named a cat Bundy), promotional brags (“once again a packed house, for the seventeenth time in a row”), morbid memes (“ BEING CREMATED IS MY LAST HOPE FOR A SMOKING HOT BODY ”), and crime-related kitsch (barricade-tape toilet paper; gloves and a jacket designed to look as if they were made from human skin). He spoke of his opposition, on moral grounds, to the death penalty, but he’d pose for a photograph in a fake electric chair, captioning it “Today, I’m lacking a little juice.” What might normally have seemed in bad taste could feel like defiance coming from a bereaved partner. He showed up for interviews in a Jeffrey Dahmer T-shirt and signed books “With My Bloodiest Regards.”

In 1991, Bourgoin travelled to the Florida State Prison to meet Ottis Toole, sometimes called the Jacksonville Cannibal, for a French-television documentary. Toole claimed to have eaten some of his victims and allegedly issued a recipe for barbecue sauce calling for, among other ingredients, two cloves of garlic and a cup of blood.

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Bourgoin opened the interview brightly, saying that someone had sent him the recipe for the sauce. “And I must tell you that I tried it,” he said.

“Was it any good?” Toole asked.

“Yeah, it was very good,” Bourgoin answered, his voice quickening. “Although I didn’t try it on the same kind of meat that you did!”

Despite Bourgoin’s inclination toward facts and figures, his own memories could be indistinct. Sometimes he said that he’d been introduced to serial killers, in the late seventies, by a police officer he got to know from Eileen’s case; at other times, he said that he’d met some sympathetic cops at meals hosted by Robert Bloch, the author of “Psycho.” Bourgoin refused to identify Eileen’s killer, or to give her last name, saying that he was preserving her anonymity out of respect for her parents. Whether because of decency, laziness, or esteem for his reputation, Bourgoin’s interlocutors tended not to press him very hard. “I seem to have been prepared to put down his evasions to professional caution or eccentric obsession,” Tony Allen-Mills, a British journalist who interviewed Bourgoin in 2000, told me. “He was accepted as an expert, and that’s how I treated him.”

Bourgoin knew the power of fandom, having spent decades stoking the public’s emotional investment in true crime. But he underestimated the intelligence of the audience. After years of watching TV specials, attending talks, reading books, and replaying DVD boxed sets about necrophilia, satanism, bestiality, torture, infanticide, matricide, patricide, and the like, followers of the genre had learned not to count on anybody’s better angels, or to underestimate humankind’s capacity for deceit. They were connoisseurs of the self-valorizing lie, having been trained by authors like the “master of noir” himself.

One group of true-crime fans, disturbed by inconsistencies in Bourgoin’s stories, launched their own investigation, which would unravel his career. “Can you imagine yourself in a long hallway?” a member of the group told me. “Each time you open a door, behind it there’s another door. That’s how many lies there were.”

One seemingly grandiose element of Bourgoin’s life story is true: his father, Lucien Joseph Jean Bourgoin, was a great man of history. Jean, as he was known, was born in 1897, in Papeete, Tahiti. He joined the French military at the age of seventeen, fighting with distinction in the First World War before studying at the élite engineering school École Polytechnique. During the Second World War, he made a bold escape from French-colonial Indochina after being put under surveillance for his support of the Free French, and was personally summoned by Charles de Gaulle to join the government-in-exile in London.

As a civilian, Jean travelled the world building roads, tunnels, railroads, irrigation systems, and electrical networks. Later, he became a Commander of the Legion of Honor, and took part in UNESCO ’s effort to relocate the ancient Egyptian temples of Abu Simbel. His twenty-two-page dossier in the National Archives of France chronicles countless missions, decorations, and “special services rendered to Colonization” in roughly twenty countries. “I’ve heard that there was much more to the story, that he was also a high-level intelligence officer,” Julien Cuny, his grandson, told me.

Bourgoin’s mother, Franziska Glöckner, was as mysterious and daring as her husband. Born in Germany in 1910, she moved to France in the thirties after marrying her second husband, a French diplomat. In 1940, with her husband at war, she took a job as an interpreter with the German command at Saint-Malo, on the coast of Brittany. “Intelligent, courtesan-like, and calculating,” according to one writer, she spent the war years facilitating fishing permits, attending cocktail parties, and consorting with the Grand Duke of the Romanovs, who was living in exile at a nearby villa. A French official recalled that she eventually acquired “such an influence that she was known to all as ‘Commandante du Port.’ ” A newspaper article later dubbed her the “Mata Hari of Saint-Malo.”

Toward the end of the war, Franziska was arrested on charges of treason and was accused of acting as an informant. At her trial, ten local witnesses, including the former mayor of Saint-Malo, testified in her defense. “It was thanks to her exceptional situation with the high German command that the docks of Saint-Malo, where ninety-six mineshafts had been set, were not exploded,” a newspaper article reported. She was ultimately acquitted.

Jean and Franziska married in Saigon in 1951. He was fifty-three and she was forty. Two years later, their only child, Stéphane, was born in Paris. The family lived in a Haussman-style apartment in the Seventeenth Arrondissement, not far from the Arc de Triomphe. Stéphane spoke French, German, and English, and attended the venerable Lycée Carnot. He seems to have been an awkward child. “The second the bell rang, three minutes later I was outside with twenty people, but he was rather isolated,” Jean-Louis Repelski, a classmate, recalled.

An unremarkable student, Bourgoin left high school without a diploma. He was obsessed with cinema, sometimes seeing five movies in a day. “He was a walking dictionary,” Claude-Marie Dugué told me. “He knew all the directors and films by heart, and inundated me with references and anecdotes.” At some point, Bourgoin parlayed this interest into a series of jobs in adult film. He is credited as the screenwriter of “Extreme Close-Up,” “La Bête et la Belle,” and “Johnny Does Paris,” a series of late-seventies and early-eighties productions starring John Holmes, the prolific American porn actor.

Bourgoin has said that his career in movies got started in the U.S., but, despite featuring some American actors, the three films were shot in France. Bourgoin did go to America at least once in his youth, as I learned from the papers of his father’s former wife, Alice Gilbert Smith Bourgoin. Alice was a New England patrician, with a degree from Smith College, who appears to have had an ardent but melancholic relationship with Jean, exacerbated by the turbulence of their era. Toward the end of her life, she wrote an affectionate letter to Jean offering to return “two handsome and valuable rings you gave me—a solitaire diamond and a beautiful dark blue sapphire.”

Alice’s letter arrived in Paris on June 7, 1977, but Stéphane was the one to receive it. Jean had died, of a heart attack, three days earlier, at a ceremony hosted by his alma mater. Jean’s death must have been a shock, but Stéphane replied to Alice, in a letter dated the same day. “You do not know me, but I am Jean’s son, Stéphane, born in 1953, and, by the way, the only child of his last mariage [ sic ],” he wrote, in English. “Perhaps you want to know a little bit more about me.”

He told her that he had recently spent almost a year in America, but the letter made no mention of a murdered lover, or of a serial killer. “I love very much the USA and the kindness of the Americans,” he wrote. He added that he was engaged to an American girl who was living in France, a love story just like Alice and his father’s. “Right now, I am keeping aside every penny I earn to be able to make another trip to the States.” He concluded by giving Alice his telephone number and his address.

In the bottom left-hand corner of the second page of the letter, there is a handwritten note, made at a later date by a nephew of Alice’s:

Stéphane subsequently came to the USA and visited ASB, at her expense, when she handed over the rings. He never wrote to express any appreciation and was not heard from again before she died.

As a young man, Bourgoin resembled a character out of a potboiler. In the late seventies, he began working at Au Troisième Œil, a secondhand crime bookstore in Paris’s Ninth Arrondissement, which he later took over. Customers could find him there, presiding “like a spider in his web,” according to a longtime client. The shop was a narrow room bursting with first editions, forgotten genre novels, and rare crime fanzines, stacked double on shelves that ran from floor to ceiling. “It was a lair stuffed with literary treasures, and you could spend ages there talking about le roman noir ,” the writer Didier Daeninckx recalled.

The cultivated seediness of the place and its proprietor was irresistible to the writers who frequented the shop. Daeninckx put Bourgoin into one of his books, as a bookstore manager who deduces that a key character has cribbed his tale of suicide by piano from the plot of an obscure novel. Bourgoin also seems to have inspired the character of Étienne Jallieu, a “self-taught erudite shopkeeper” who outwits professional sleuths, in Jean-Hugues Oppel’s thriller “Six-Pack.” Bourgoin spun the myth out further, co-writing several especially grisly true-crime books (one focussed on infanticides) under the pseudonym Étienne Jallieu.

Bourgoin got an early taste of public attention in 1991, as a writer on “100 Years of X,” a cable documentary about porn. This was also the year of Bourgoin’s first filmed meeting with a murderer. Serial killers were having a cultural moment, following the success of Thomas Harris’s novel “The Silence of the Lambs.” On the eve of the book’s publication in French, Bourgoin wrote an article for a small crime-literature review about “a new type of criminal: the serial killer.” He seems to have sensed that a phenomenon was in the air, one that would only gain momentum with the release of a film version of “The Silence of the Lambs,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. One night in Paris, Bourgoin regaled guests at a dinner party with tales of these new American murderers and the profilers who spent their days tracking them. “We were utterly captivated,” Carol Kehringer, a documentary producer who attended the dinner, told Scott Sayare, writing in the Guardian . “I started asking him all sorts of questions,” she added. “The more he spoke, the more I thought to myself, We’ve got to do a film!”

Kehringer and Bourgoin were acquaintances and had worked together before, so she asked him to conduct the interviews for the documentary. In the fall of 1991, Bourgoin and a crew flew to the United States to shoot the film for the French television channel FR3. At Quantico, they met with John Douglas, the pioneering F.B.I. criminal profiler who would later gain fame through his book “Mindhunter.” They travelled to Florida and California for meetings with murderers, arranged by the production crew.

The film, sold as “An Investigation Into Deviance,” was Bourgoin’s first public foray into the world of serial killers, but, by the time it was finished, Bourgoin and Kehringer were no longer speaking. “When he had the killers in front of him, it was as if he was sitting across from his idols,” she told the Guardian . Still, other producers continued working with him, and he soon published his first book on serial killers, a study of Jack the Ripper. He followed it with a flurry of spinoff volumes and, in 1993, with the first edition of his masterwork, the “Serial Killers” almanac.

Eileen doesn’t figure in Bourgoin’s work from this time. He seems to have introduced her into his professional repertoire sometime around 2000, even though, according to his sister, he had been telling the story privately for decades. “I had doubts when he said his girlfriend had been murdered, simply because I had known him for years and he had never spoken about it before,” François Guérif, a well-known French crime-fiction editor and Bourgoin’s former boss at the bookshop, recalled. Bourgoin was clearly conscious of a need to add emotional punch to his work. “He could cry on command,” Barbara Necek, who co-directed documentaries featuring Bourgoin, told me. Some of Bourgoin’s peers considered him a hack who presented himself as a globe-trotting criminologist when he was merely a jobbing presenter. “Neither I nor any of our mutual friends at the time had heard the story of his murdered girlfriend, nor of his so-called F.B.I. training,” a colleague and friend of Bourgoin’s from the eighties told me. “It triggered rounds of knowing laughter among us, because we all knew it was absolutely bogus.”

But elsewhere Bourgoin was taken seriously. As his career progressed, he came into contact with family members of the victims of killers. They saw him as a kindred survivor, someone who could be trusted to treat them with integrity, because of his personal experience. Conversely, proximity to them was valuable to Bourgoin as a form of reputational currency. “Each month, two or three people contact me,” he boasted, of his relationship with victims’ families, in 2012. Through his association with a victims-advocacy group called Victimes en Série, Bourgoin got to know Dahina Sy. She had been kidnapped and raped at the age of fourteen by Michel Fourniret, who later murdered seven young women.

One evening, Sy went to a dinner at Bourgoin’s house. The atmosphere there was peculiar—a “museum of horrors,” according to a journalist who once visited, filled with slasher-film posters, F.B.I. memorabilia, porcelain cherubs in satin masks, and case files of uncertain provenance. Sy told me, “He said, ‘Come here, I want to show you something.’ ” Bourgoin began pulling crime-scene photographs out of a folder. “Puddles of blood,” Sy said. “It was absolutely abject.” Sy had suffered from post-traumatic stress for years after her abduction. One of its manifestations was extreme arachnophobia. At the dinner table, Bourgoin put a plastic spider on her shoulder. “I was paralyzed, and he was laughing,” Sy recalled. “I think it gave him pleasure to mess with my mind.”

In 2018, Bourgoin began collaborating with the publishing house Glénat on a branded series of graphic novels (“Stéphane Bourgoin Presents the Serial Killers”). The second installment, about Fourniret, came out in March of 2020. Alerted by an acquaintance to the book’s existence, Sy was shocked to encounter her adolescent image rendered “flesh and bone” in a cartoon strip, with Fourniret threatening her (“I will be forced ​​to disfigure you if you don’t do exactly as I say”), his words suspended in dialogue bubbles. Sy says that neither Bourgoin nor the publisher had notified her about the book, or about the fact that it reprinted the entirety of an interview that she’d given in a different context years earlier. She hired a lawyer to send a letter of complaint to the book’s publisher, which withdrew it from the market. “It was like being defiled a second time,” she told me.

Bourgoin never interrogated Fourniret, but, oddly, the book’s writer inserted a character inspired by Bourgoin throughout the text, a revered criminologist who goes by Bourgoin’s old pseudonym Étienne Jallieu.

“I admit that I’m having trouble understanding the dynamics of your relationship with your wife,” Jallieu tells Fourniret, facing him across a table in an alfresco interrogation room set up on a prison basketball court. “Probably because none of you tell the exact truth.”

“What is the truth for you, Monsieur Jallieu?” Fourniret asks.

“What you’ve spent your entire life trying to hide, Monsieur Fourniret,” Jallieu replies.

In 2019, a man who goes by the pseudonym Valak—inspired by a demon in the film “The Conjuring 2”—picked up a Bourgoin book that happened to be at hand. Valak, who is forty-five, lives in a port city in the South of France and works in a field unrelated to serial killers. When we spoke one day, over Zoom, he sat in a small room in front of a red velvet curtain. He wore a black baseball cap, a black polo, and a black mask, an outfit that was intended to protect his identity but also gave off a whiff of stagecraft. Valak told me that he had always been interested in human psychology, particularly at its extremes. He had enjoyed Bourgoin’s work as a teen-ager, but, revisiting it as an adult, he was struck by its sloppiness.

“There were things that didn’t seem coherent,” Valak told me. “I told myself, ‘O.K., it must be me that’s paranoid, that’s looking for a nit to pick.’ And then I discovered Facebook.”

One day, in a large Facebook group of true-crime enthusiasts, someone posted a link to an article about Bourgoin. Valak commented, expressing his unease about the work. He recalled, “There were a bunch of people who responded after that, saying, ‘ Bah , oui , I agree.’ ”

The skeptics—about thirty of them—formed a chat group to discuss their doubts about Bourgoin. That group eventually splintered into a smaller cohort, composed of Valak and seven others, living in France, Belgium, and Canada. (One member left the group after a falling out.) They called themselves the 4ème Œil Corporation (the Fourth Eye Corporation)—a play on Au Troisième Œil (At the Third Eye), the name of the bookstore that Bourgoin once ran.

At first, the group members saw their task as largely literary. They set to work combing through Bourgoin’s dozens of books, expecting to find instances of plagiarism. Bourgoin had, in fact, lifted passages from English-language works that hadn’t been translated into French. In some cases, he had even pilfered other people’s life experiences. He claimed, for instance, that, while visiting a crime scene in South Africa with the profiler Micki Pistorius, he was splattered by maggots and decomposing body parts that had been churned up by police helicopters. (Pistorius did experience a similar incident, but Bourgoin was not there.)

The members of the collective weren’t professional researchers, but they were assiduous. “As soon as we started looking,” Valak recalled, “we found more and more inconsistencies.” They decided to expand the scope of their investigation. Soon, they were devoting as much time to Bourgoin as they were to their day jobs. They contacted Bourgoin’s purported former colleagues, sent letters to prisons across the U.S., and scoured YouTube for clips of obscure speaking engagements and television appearances, like music lovers searching for concert bootlegs. They were completists, even interviewing a representative of the clerk of court in St. Lucie County, Florida, about Bourgoin’s claim that he possessed most of the case evidence related to Gerard Schaefer, who was sentenced there in 1973. (Bourgoin had neither the evidence nor the remains that he had bragged about.) This was the inverse of fandom: a passionate connection driven by disappointment rather than by admiration. One man became so consumed by the work that his relationship nearly ended.

In January of 2020, after months of research, the collective began posting a series of damning videos on YouTube. They contended that Bourgoin, a “serial mythomaniac,” had fabricated numerous aspects of his life and career. Eileen, for example, was not Bourgoin’s first wife, as he sometimes claimed (alternatively, he called her his “partner,” “girlfriend,” or “very close friend”): French public records obtained by the group established that his first wife was a Frenchwoman, and that they divorced in 1995. The collective showed that Bourgoin had also given wildly conflicting accounts of the timing, the place, and even the manner of Eileen’s death. Her supposed killer, furthermore, was nowhere to be found. The 4ème Œil had gone through a list of prisoners awaiting execution in California, and there wasn’t a single one who had killed the correct number of people in the time period that Bourgoin had laid out. Nor did they find evidence of a victim who fit the description that Bourgoin had given of Eileen.

Bourgoin’s professional résumé was as dubious as his personal history. By the collective’s reckoning, he had not interviewed seventy-seven serial killers but, rather, more likely only eight or nine. An interview with Charles Manson? Nobody in Manson’s camp had ever heard of it. In setting out his credentials, Bourgoin often claimed that the F.B.I. had invited him to complete two six-month training courses at Quantico with Douglas’s team of profilers. The 4ème Œil contacted Douglas, who, according to the group, replied, “Bourgoin is delusional and an imposter.”

Bourgoin’s lies ran the spectrum from pointless little fictions to brazen fabulation. In some cases, he tried to make himself sound more important than he was—he really did give talks at the Centre National de Formation à la Police Judiciaire, even if he had nothing to do with creating the law-enforcement body’s profiling unit. He really did know the writer James Ellroy, but a picture of the two of them that he had tweeted wasn’t taken “on vacation”; it was from a crime-fiction and film festival. Bourgoin also often took risks that didn’t comport with their potential payoff, as when he claimed that he had played professional soccer for seven years with the Red Star Football Club before moving to America. Bourgoin was born in 1953, and by 1976, the year in which Eileen was allegedly murdered, he was supposed to have been living in the U.S. “If his career had lasted for 7 years,” the 4ème Œil deduced, “he would have been pro at 16.” (Red Star: “No trace of him.”)

Bourgoin’s story wasn’t so much a house of cards as a total teardown. Some of his lies hardly made sense except in fulfilling his seemingly irresistible desire to become a character in dramas that didn’t concern him. At a talk that he gave to high-school students in 2015, he showed a clip of the interview he had done with the killer Donald Harvey, who was accompanied by his longtime attorney, William Whalen. Bourgoin called Whalen “a very close friend of mine.” He told the students, “Whenever he came to Europe, he stayed at my place in Paris. Unfortunately, last year he committed suicide, and in his suicide note he said that he was ultimately never able to live with the fact that he’d defended a killer like Donald Harvey.” Whalen, Bourgoin concluded, was a “new victim” of Harvey’s. Whalen’s family told me that they had never heard of Bourgoin, that Whalen had never travelled outside North America, and that Whalen was, to the end, a strong believer in the American judicial system and “very proud of defending Donald Harvey.”

The 4ème Œil even composed a psychological sketch similar to the serial-killer profiles with which Bourgoin had titillated the public: “The typical mythomaniac is fragile, subject to a strong dependence on others, and his faculties of imagination are increased tenfold. Whatever his profile, he is often the first victim of his imaginary stories, which he struggles to distinguish from reality.” The collective described Bourgoin as a “ voleur de vie ”—a stealer of life. “We’re by no means accusing Stéphane Bourgoin of being an assassin,” the group wrote. “By voleur de vie we mean that he helps himself to pieces of other people’s lives.”

Most cons become harder to keep up the longer they go on, but Bourgoin’s was cleverly self-sustaining. His lies enabled him to gain the very experience that he lacked, and every jailhouse interview doubled as a master class in manipulation. Blagging his way into prisons and police academies, Bourgoin, in pretending to be a serial-killer expert, at some point actually became one.

The 4ème Œil has extended the right of reply to Bourgoin on several occasions, but he has never responded to the group directly. The closest he came was when he hired a legal adviser who, citing copyright and privacy violations, got the group’s videos removed from YouTube. In February of 2020, Bourgoin announced that he was closing his public Facebook page and migrating to a private group. (It has nearly three thousand members, but its administrators blocked me as I was reporting this story.) He was going to be less active on social media, he said, but only because he needed to save all his time and energy for “the most important project of my life,” whose parameters he didn’t specify. Almost airily, he mentioned that he had been the victim of a “campaign of cyberbullying and hate on social media” and was being targeted by “bitter and jealous” individuals. Their acts, he declared, were akin to those of people who snitched on their neighbors during the collaborationist regime of Marshal Pétain.

Three months later, with pressure on Bourgoin mounting in the French press, he spoke to Émilie Lanez, of Paris Match. “ STéPHANE BOURGOIN, SERIAL LIAR?” the headline read. “ HE CONFESSES IN MATCH .” The article was empathetic, attesting to Bourgoin’s “phenomenal knowledge” and the respect that he commanded in the law-enforcement community, and presenting his lies as an unfortunate sideshow to a largely legitimate career. Bourgoin seemed erratic, toggling between tears and offhandedness, lamenting the weight of his lies but then dismissing them as “bullshit” or “jokes.”

Even as he unburdened himself, Bourgoin was sowing fresh confusion. The article explained, for instance, that Eileen was actually Susan Bickrest, who was murdered by a serial killer near Daytona Beach in 1975. The article described Bickrest as a barmaid and an aspiring cosmetologist who supplemented her income with sex work. Before her death, she and Bourgoin had seen each other “four or five times,” and he had transformed her into his wife because he “didn’t want people to know that he’d been helping her out financially.” The dates of Bickrest’s murder and her killer’s arrest didn’t align with the Eileen story, however, and even a cursory glance at photographs of the two women revealed that, except for both having blond hair, they didn’t look much alike.

“Day after day, we patiently untangled the threads, trying to distinguish true from false in the jumble of his statements,” Lanez wrote. Engaging with Bourgoin’s lies, I found, could have a strange generative power, inspiring in those who tried to decipher them the same kind of slippery speculation that they were attempting to resist. Étienne Jallieu, people pointed out, was nearly an anagram for “ J’ai tué Eileen ”—“I killed Eileen,” in French. (A more likely derivation is the town of Bourgoin-Jallieu, near Lyon.) A bio of Bourgoin at the end of an old, undated interview claimed that he had sometimes used the alias John Walsh in his adult-film days. John Walsh is a common enough name, but it also happens to be the name of the man who hosted “America’s Most Wanted” for many years. Walsh’s six-year-old son was murdered in Florida in 1981, and in 2008 Ottis Toole, the Florida drifter with whom Bourgoin joked about barbecue sauce, was posthumously recognized as the child’s murderer. Might Bourgoin have refashioned himself as the family member of a victim in imitation of Walsh? Or was his desire for proximity to mass killing born of his work on the films of John Holmes, who was later tried for and acquitted of the so-called Wonderland murders of 1981?

Just when I thought I was gaining some traction on Bourgoin’s story, a tiny crack would open up, sending me down a new rabbit hole. The Paris Match article, for instance, made the unusually specific claim that Bourgoin, in the seventies, lived on the eleventh floor of an apartment building on 155th Street in New York. I remembered that Bourgoin had once given a similar address in a Facebook post, claiming that he’d “lived in New York at the moment of the Son of Sam’s crimes.” That address turned out to be slightly different: 155 East Fifty-fifth Street. Curious, I typed it into a database. One of the first hits was a Times article from 1976—the year of Son of Sam—describing an apartment at the address as a “midtown house of prostitution.”

Xaviera Hollander, a former sex worker who now runs a bed-and-breakfast in Amsterdam, confirmed that 155 East Fifty-fifth Street was “the famous, or should I say infamous, apartment building where I started off as the happy hooker,” in the early seventies, but she had no memory of Bourgoin. Hollander added that the building used to be called the “horizontal whorehouse,” where “every floor had one or two hookers.” Eventually, I found the owner of apartment 11-H, where Bourgoin supposedly lived, and he told me that a man named Beau Buchanan had rented it in 1976. A director and producer of porn movies, Buchanan died in 2020. He easily could have known Bourgoin—but did Bourgoin take Buchanan’s address and make it his own, or had he really lived there?

It seemed a reasonable guess, given the period fashions and the professional composition, that the photograph of Bourgoin and the woman he had identified as Eileen had been taken on one of the movie sets he worked on in the seventies. The 4ème Œil felt reasonably sure that Eileen was Dominique Saint Claire, a well-known adult-film actress of the era. A porn expert I contacted suggested, independently, that Eileen might be Saint Claire, but, looking at the pictures of Saint Claire that were available online, I wasn’t convinced. (My attempts to contact Saint Claire were unsuccessful.)

I watched a head-spinning selection of films from the era and called a number of former actors—one was a maker of traditional and erotic chocolates—searching for some hint of Eileen. The movies that Bourgoin wrote are almost impossible to get ahold of, but Jill C. Nelson, a biographer of John Holmes, agreed to mail me a DVD of “Extreme Close-Up” from her personal collection. It’s a love-triangle story in which, as the DVD’s jacket copy notes, an American writer “is led into a world of European sexual delights where fantasy merges with reality.” I watched the movie attentively—at one point pausing an open-mouthed-orgasm scene to search for a snaggletooth—but none of the women resembled the one in Bourgoin’s photograph.

In early March, I called Bourgoin from a street corner in a rural village on France’s southwest coast, near where he now lives. I wasn’t expecting him to answer; I had tried to contact him before, without much luck. But, to my surprise, he picked up and quickly furnished his address. Several miles down the road, I found him standing in funky green shoes outside a modest house with an orange tiled roof and voile curtains with teapot appliqués and gingham trim.

Bourgoin invited me inside. I noticed, as he made coffee, that his knife rack was shaped like a human body, stuck through with blades at various points: forehead, heart, groin. Eventually, we sat down at a small table in the sunroom. He seemed unruffled by my unannounced visit, almost as though he’d been waiting for someone to show up.

A person who was once close to Bourgoin told me that he was an “excellent actor” and “extremely convincing, because, when he lies, he believes it very strongly, and so you believe it, too.” At the table, though, Bourgoin was diffident. He didn’t seem to be putting much effort into making me—or, possibly, himself—believe what he said. Or maybe he believed it so deeply that the delivery was no longer relevant. When I asked how many killers he had actually interviewed, he replied, in English, “It depends. Each time I was going to a jail, I asked to meet serial killers other than the ones I was authorized to film or interview. So sometimes at Florida State Prison I met in the courtyard during the promenade—I don’t know, two? five?—other serial killers.” He was just as evasive on other subjects. I asked him about the prank that he played on Dahina Sy. “It was a fake spider,” he said, as though that explained everything. (He later claimed that he was unaware of Sy’s arachnophobia.) When I brought up the rings that Alice, his father’s former wife, had given him, he said that he had called to thank her the next time he was in New York.

His instinct, in tense moments, was to show me his collections: piles of dusty tabloids, stacks of pulp fiction, an attic full of DVDs, desks and dressers and wardrobes containing boxes of old notebooks in which he had dutifully listed and rated, in a prim, upright hand, every film he’d seen. When I asked about the apartment at 155 East Fifty-fifth Street, he produced three large envelopes, postmarked in the early fall of 1975 and sent to “Stéphane Bourgoin, A.R.T. Films” at that address. A.R.T., he said, was a distribution company that had belonged to a friend of his, Beau Buchanan. The envelopes didn’t shed much light on Bourgoin’s doings in seventies New York, but for him such objects seemed almost equivalent to experiences.

In an article called “How I Was Bamboozled by Stéphane Bourgoin,” the Swiss journalist Anna Lietti examined her decision to write a mostly positive article about Bourgoin, despite her discomfort with his “overly smooth” presentation. “I was disappointed by the superficiality of my interlocutor and the lack of depth of his remarks,” Lietti, describing him as a sort of human reference book, wrote. “He lined up facts, dates, details, without offering a perspective, an original key to understanding these monsters to which he devoted his life.” In his countryside house, Bourgoin seemed a sad figure—a collector of trivia and paraphernalia, a man who just as easily could have spent decades amassing esoteric toys or obsessing over cryptocurrency, rather than living off the misfortunes of others. It was as though he thought that gathering enough props would make him a protagonist.

“I’m sorry that I lied and exaggerated things,” Bourgoin told me, at one point. “But I never raped or killed anybody.”

I asked what lies he was apologizing for.

“All the lies,” he said. But, he added, “there was mostly one important lie that I would do again.”

Bourgoin was referring to the Eileen story—the foundational lie upon which he had constructed his career. He admitted that he had invented her name, and the location of the murder. But, he insisted, he had really had a girlfriend who was murdered by a serial killer. “It was just a young girl that I met three times that I had sex with,” he said. Later, he was more explicit: “I invented that story because I was afraid that people would think that . . . I paid for a prostitute.”

Bourgoin didn’t want to give the woman’s name, even if I promised not to publish it. I asked if he could at least give me the identity of the woman in the photograph, but he claimed not to remember. “I think she was Spanish!” he added later.

The only time Bourgoin truly came alive was when he talked about the anonymous collective that had brought him down. We stood in his office, surrounded by fright masks and first editions, and he said that he was “quite happy it came out, but not the way that the 4ème Œil did it.” He asked me if I’d looked into the group’s membership. “You must have done some research on the people who accused me,” he said, suggesting that I get to work on a counter-investigation of his investigators.

Claude-Marie Dugué found out that her brother had been lying to her for half a century when the Paris Match article came out. She had never suspected it, but the news didn’t shock her. “Nothing surprises me in my family,” she said. Nor was she offended, on a personal level, by the breach of trust. “He didn’t really deceive me,” she said. “He let me into his world.”

Dugué’s son, Julien Cuny, told me that one quote from the article jumped out at him. “ Parfois, je me fais des films dans ma tête. J’ai toujours voulu qu’on m’aime ,” it read. “Sometimes I make films in my head. I’ve always wanted to be loved.” Cuny is an accomplished tech executive in Montreal, but he has always been daunted by his family’s distinction. To him, Bourgoin’s words were an almost inevitable response to an overwhelming mythology, “a phantasmagoric picture of distant family members (you almost never meet) who are always on an adventure somewhere.”

The first time Dugué and I exchanged e-mails, she told me something that I wasn’t expecting: she was the product of an extramarital relationship between Jean Bourgoin and her mother, Béatrice Pourchasse, as was her sister, who was born thirteen months before her. The girls lived with their mother in the Fourth Arrondissement. Jean Bourgoin lived with his family—Franziska and Stéphane—across town. Jean organized his parallel lives strictly, keeping them “watertight,” Dugué recalled, but she always felt loved by her father, who “followed and protected his liaison with my mother until the end,” providing money for the family, keeping track of the girls’ studies, and seeing them regularly. Even if he didn’t live with them, Dugué said, she felt immense pride “to be the daughter of such a man.”

One day, Dugué decided that she wanted to meet her younger brother. She was in her early twenties, and had known about him her entire life. He was maybe sixteen, a high schooler, and had no idea that she existed. “I posted myself discreetly inside the building where he lived, waiting for his return from the Lycée Carnot,” Dugué recalled. When he came home, she introduced herself: his secret sister. “He hardly believed me,” Dugué remembered. Nonetheless, they immediately got along. She remembered Bourgoin as a shy and serious boy with round glasses, adrift in a world of extravagantly accomplished adults. “How must Stéphane have perceived himself next to these two exceptional parents, crushed by so much strength and power?” she said. “He was happy to discover all at once that he had two sisters, and we started to communicate amongst ourselves.” They sent long letters between their father’s two households, written in violet ink.

The incident may have been Bourgoin’s initiation into the power of secret lives. “Back to my childhood I felt I didn’t do enough compared to my parents,” Bourgoin told me. “So I had always an inferiority complex.” Cuny echoed the sentiment. “I decided very early on that having a normal life means boring, and that would be the most horrible thing that could happen to me,” he told me. “My bet is Stéphane would prefer this outcome to being a local accountant who never left town.”

In “My Conversations with Killers,” Bourgoin wrote, “The immense majority of serial killers are inveterate liars from a very young age. Isolated, marginalized in their lives, they take refuge in the imaginary to construct a personality, far from the mediocre reality of their existence.” “ Parfois, je me fais des films dans ma tête. J’ai toujours voulu qu’on m’aime ,” Bourgoin said, as though he were performing a voice-over for his own life. “Sometimes I make films in my head. I’ve always wanted to be loved.” ♦

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The Dark Psychology of Serial Killers: Unpacking the Factors Behind their Brutal Behaviour

Serial killers have long captivated the public’s imagination with their shocking and senseless acts of violence. But what drives individuals to commit such heinous crimes? In an effort to answer this question, psychologists and criminologists have been exploring the complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors that can contribute to the development of a serial killer.

While there is no one-size-fits-all explanation for why someone becomes a serial killer, research has shed light on several key factors that can increase the likelihood of violent behaviour.

One of the most well-known biological factors is brain structure and chemistry. Studies have shown that a malfunctioning amygdala , the region of the brain responsible for regulating emotions and aggression, may be involved in the development of violent behaviour. Additionally, low levels of serotonin , a neurotransmitter that regulates mood, have also been linked to impulsive and violent behaviour. This means that a serial killer’s brain structure and chemistry can play a significant role in their behaviour, leading to an increased likelihood of violence.

Childhood abuse and trauma are also important factors in the development of serial killers. Childhood abuse can have lasting effects on an individual’s mental and emotional health, and research has suggested that individuals who experienced childhood abuse are more likely to engage in violent behaviour compared to those who did not experience abuse. In some cases, this abuse can lead to the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can further increase the likelihood of violent behaviour.

Personality disorders also play a role in the development of serial killers. Serial killers often display a range of personality disorders, including antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), narcissistic personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder .

ASPD, in particular, is characterised by a lack of empathy and a willingness to engage in criminal behaviour, making it a key factor in the development of serial killers. These personality disorders can lead individuals to become detached from reality and engage in violent behaviour.

Social and environmental factors also play a role in the development of serial killers. Growing up in dysfunctional families or communities where violence is common can increase the likelihood of violent behaviour. Exposure to violent media, such as films and video games, has also been linked to an increased likelihood of violent behaviour. This exposure can desensitise individuals to violence and normalise it in their minds, leading to an increased likelihood of violent behaviour.

The psychology of serial killers is complex and multifaceted, and it is unlikely that any one factor can fully explain why someone becomes a serial killer. Instead, it is likely that a combination of biological, psychological, and social factors contribute to the development of violent behaviour.

A 2022 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health  explored the psychological profiles of serial killers and found that they often share several key characteristics. These include a lack of empathy, a history of childhood abuse and trauma, a desire for control, and a fascination with death and violence. The study also found that serial killers often display traits of both psychopathy and sadism, suggesting that these two personality disorders may be key factors in the development of serial killers.

A 2005 study published in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology looked at the role of childhood abuse in the development of serial killers. The study found that childhood abuse is a strong predictor of violent behaviour and can have lasting effects on an individual’s mental and emotional health. The study also found that individuals who experienced childhood abuse are more likely to engage in violent behaviour, including serial murder.

Knowing what makes a serial killer tick is crucial in stopping them from striking again. Researchers are diving into the mix of biological, psychological, and social factors to figure out why some people feel the urge to kill multiple times. This understanding can then be used to create better prevention strategies and help with future investigations.

Finding out why serial killers do what they do can also bring comfort to victims’ families and help society tackle violent crime in a more complete way. The study of serial killer psychology is ongoing and full of new discoveries. By looking into the complicated nature of serial murder, researchers are working towards a world without these horrible crimes.

Dennis Relojo-Howell   is the managing director of  Psychreg.

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Defense lawyers say Multnomah County DA candidate violated ethics by accusing client of being a serial killer

Defense attorneys say Nathan Vasquez, a longtime prosecutor currently running for Multnomah County district attorney, violated ethical rules by publicly accusing a man not currently charged with a crime, of being a serial killer .

Vasquez, a senior deputy district attorney, is running to unseat his boss, current District Attorney Mike Schmidt.

Senior deputy Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez said he has not seen the bar complaint, but confirmed and defended his remarks in the voter guide.

Multnomah County District Attorney's Office

In a statement attributed to “Nathan” and published in the Oregon Secretary of State’s Voter’s Guide that is posted online and will be mailed to voters before the May election, Vasquez criticized Schmidt’s tenure:

“Under my opponent’s watch, a violent criminal who was arrested for kidnapping and assaulting a police officer was released from prison. Once free, he murdered four women. This is unacceptable.”

Attorneys representing Jesse Lee Calhoun wrote to several top prosecutors in the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office last month to complain.

“This is an unprecedented situation, particularly given that Mr. Calhoun has not been formally charged in this matter, much less convicted in a court of law,” Cameron Taylor, an attorney at Metropolitan Public Defender, wrote in a March 29 letter to Senior Deputy District Attorney Todd Jackson. Schmidt and Vasquez were also copied.

“For a ranking member of your office to issue an unequivocal statement of our client’s guilt in such a forum, in the absence of any due process and for the sole apparent purpose of obtaining political advantage against another member of your office, is deeply troubling and antithetical to our system of justice.”

Taylor noted that Oregon’s juries are drawn from voter registration rolls. In the event Calhoun was charged and the case went to trial, all potential jurors would have been exposed to Vasquez’s statement, Taylor added.

“It is even more concerning that the statement was made in an official government publication, which would likely be interpreted by the average citizen as a more trustworthy source than, for example, a media outlet,” Taylor wrote.

The voter guide statement also prompted an Oregon State Bar ethics complaint against Vasquez last week by Lewis & Clark Law School Professor Aliza Kaplan. She says Vasquez made dishonest and misleading statements and violated his special role as prosecutor.

“His actions not only undermine the public’s trust in the legal profession but also jeopardize the fairness and integrity of the judicial process, especially when viewed in light of his current and desired prosecutorial authority,” Kaplan wrote in the complaint. Kaplan supports Schmidt for district attorney and has donated $250 to his campaign.

In an interview Friday, Vasquez said he has not seen the bar complaint, but confirmed and defended his remarks in the voter guide.

“Everything I did was well within the election laws,” Vasquez said. “I’m only saying what’s been put out in the media.”

Law enforcement has not publicly named Calhoun. Media accounts that first named Calhoun as “a person of interest” were attributed to anonymous law enforcement sources.

Vasquez then suggested his remarks were not as significant as Calhoun’s defense suggested.

“I didn’t name him,” Vasquez said of Calhoun. “It’s a voter pamphlet for Multnomah County — their argument would be, ‘Oh we can’t get a fair trial.’”

Vasquez blamed any controversy surrounding his voter guide on his opponent.

“This is pushed forward by Mike Schmidt,” Vasquez said. “How would these defense attorneys know about this? That was sent to them by Mike Schmidt.”

Vasquez alleges his boss, District Attorney Mike Schmidt, is behind the ethics complaint. In response, Schmidt called it “desperate and untrue” for anyone to suggest his campaign would send information to defense attorneys about an open criminal case his office was investigating to benefit his reelection bid.

Courtesy Mike Schmidt

Vasquez said that at the time the defense attorneys sent their letter, the voter guide was an “obscure online find.”

In response, Schmidt called it “desperate and untrue” for anyone to suggest his campaign would send information to defense attorneys about an open criminal case his office was investigating to benefit his reelection bid.

In the voter guide statement, Vasquez stopped short of naming the person he accuses of murdering four people after being released from prison. Vasquez told OPB he was referring to Calhoun, a 39 year-old man currently incarcerated at the Snake River Correctional Institution in eastern Oregon.

In July 2023, law enforcement agencies investigating the deaths of four young women in Polk, Clackamas and Multnomah counties said they “identified at least one person of interest that is linked to all four of the decedents” and that there was no danger to the public.

Calhoun has not been charged in any of the four deaths.

Calhoun was one of 40 people whose sentences former Gov. Kate Brown commuted after they joined crews to help fight the devastating 2020 wildfires. He had less than a year left to serve in a sentence for unauthorized use of a vehicle. That was the last of several convictions that sent him to prison, including assault on a public safety officer and burglary.

Commutation refers to the governor’s power to change a convicted person’s sentence. Sometimes commutation means a shorter sentence, other times it can result in a person’s release from prison, or an opportunity to appear before the parole board to petition for early release.

Calhoun left prison on July 22, 2021 — 11 months early. Even if he had served his entire sentence, he still would have been out in December 2022, when the first woman in the suspected string of killings was reported missing.

Still, Schmidt has been criticized by other elected district attorneys, and Vasquez, for not reviewing the wildfire commutations, including Calhoun’s.

Before Brown awarded the firefighter commutations, she had the Oregon Department of Corrections notify local district attorneys who had prosecuted the prisoners she was considering. Statewide, 14 of Oregon’s 36 district attorneys responded with concerns to certain prisoners poised to receive a commutation, records show. In several cases, when prosecutors raised a concern, the governor removed that prisoner from her commutation list.

Schmidt’s office never responded to the corrections department about 15 people his office had prosecuted who were up for early release. The agency said prosecutors could, but were not required, to respond.

Last fall, the Office of Public Defense Services granted Calhoun the use of a public defender, even though he had not been charged in the killings. The state agency can assign public defenders to people who have not been charged with a crime when the person is “a clear target of the investigation,” among other factors.

Typically, prosecutors take great pains to not comment publicly before charges are filed and a case goes to trial. Public announcements about charges against defendants issued by the district attorney’s office usually carry the disclaimer that charges are allegations that have not been proven in court and that the defendant is presumed innocent.

In her ethics complaint to the state bar, Kaplan says Vasquez’s voter guide statement jeopardizes not only the integrity of prosecution, but also the larger criminal justice system.

“Designed to influence public opinion and electoral outcomes, Mr. Vasquez’s statement risks prejudicing potential proceedings and heightening public condemnation of an individual who has not been charged with the crimes mentioned,” Kaplan wrote. “Mr. Vasquez’s actions demonstrate a disregard for the ethical obligations that safeguard the fairness and impartiality of legal proceedings, essential tenets of the justice system he is sworn to serve.”

Anyone can file a complaint to the state bar if they believe an attorney has violated ethical rules. It’s more common for an unhappy client, not satisfied with their representation or outcome of their case to file a complaint against their lawyer. It’s less common for attorneys to file ethics complaints against one another. Last year, the bar received 1,655 ethics complaints, but just 244 — less than 15% — moved to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel for further investigation.

Schmidt said he was aware of the statement Vasquez made in the voter pamphlet.

“He is not speaking on behalf of this office,” Schmidt said in a statement Friday. “Of paramount importance to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office is achieving justice for crime victims and their families. My office is focused on protecting the integrity of every investigation and prosecution. Any deliberate action which makes that goal more challenging is unacceptable.”

Vasquez said the criticism shouldn’t be about the statements he made, but rather about Schmidt’s decisions as Multnomah County’s top prosecutor.

“The real question here is why didn’t Schmidt review this in the first place?” Vasquez said. “And why hasn’t he brought this to the grand jury to give the victim’s families justice?”

Vasquez also criticized Kaplan, who has worked with Schmidt and his office on commutations:

“It’s such a biased source, it is a meaningful component to this,” Vasquez said of Kaplan’s ethics complaint.

Kaplan helped people secure clemency during Brown’s tenure, but did not work on group commutations that included Calhoun.

The race for Multnomah County prosecutor has turned heated, and has included other bar complaints. Last week, former Multnomah County prosecutor Chuck French filed a complaint against Schmidt accusing the district attorney of failing to follow state commutation laws for two people convicted of murder.

“Those offenders were granted clemency by the Governor after repeated instances where MCDA [the Multnomah County District Attorney] failed to follow the office’s obligations under Oregon law in processing those offenders’ clemency applications and in some cases misrepresented the facts of those cases to the Governor and later to the public,” French wrote.

That complaint was first reported by Willamette Week. Both people whose sentences were commuted got the opportunity to appear before the parole board. Both had their requests denied and remain in prison.

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Mexican police investigate a man as a possible serial killer after finding bones and a saw

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico City police said late Friday they are investigating a murder suspect as a possible serial killer after bones, a saw, blood and the ID cards of missing women were found at rooms he rented.

Mexico City prosecutors did not identify the suspect by name, but said that he was being held over for trial on charges of murder and attempted murder of two women.

Those charges stemmed from a brazen attack Tuesday in which the suspect apparently waited for a woman to briefly leave her apartment. He then rushed in and sexually abused and strangled her 17-year-old daughter.

The mother returned and saw him leaving, but he slashed her in the neck and fled. The mother survived but her daughter did not.

Because the suspect lived near the scene of the crime, he was quickly identified and caught. In keeping with Mexican law, police identified him only by his first name, Miguel.

When investigators carried out a search of an apartment he rented nearby, they found shocking evidence “that clearly indicate we are looking at a possible serial killer of women,” according to city prosecutor Ulises Lara.

Lara said that during the search of the apartment, detectives found “biological material” — he did not specify whether that was flesh — blood stains, bones, a saw, cell phones and missing women’s ID cards.

Most chilling, they found “a series of notebooks that may well be narrations of the acts that Miguel carried out against his victims,” Lara said.

Lara did not say how many sets of bones or ID cards had been found, but local media reported figures ranging from seven to as many as 20 possible victims.

Whatever the number, Mexico City authorities have been plagued by questions about why they do so little to investigate the cases of missing women — until their bodies turn up.

Without proper funding, training or professionalism, prosecutors in Mexico have routinely failed to stop killers until the bodies pile up so high they are almost unavoidable.

In 2021, a serial killer in a Mexico City suburb was only caught after years of alleged crimes — 19 bodies were found hacked up and buried at his house — because of the identity of the final dismembered victim: the wife of a police commander.

In 2018, a serial killer in Mexico City responsible for the deaths of at least 10 women was caught only after he was found pushing a dismembered body down the street in a baby carriage. He dumped most of the bodies of his victims in vacant lots.

Mexican police investigate man as possible serial killer after finding bones and saw

Mexico City police say they are investigating a murder suspect as a possible serial killer after bones, a saw, blood and the ID cards of missing women were found at a room he rented

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico City police said late Friday they are investigating a murder suspect as a possible serial killer after bones, a saw, blood and the ID cards of missing women were found at rooms he rented.

Mexico City prosecutors did not identify the suspect by name, but said that he was being held over for trial on charges of murder and attempted murder of two women.

Those charges stemmed from a brazen attack Tuesday in which the suspect apparently waited for a woman to briefly leave her apartment. He then rushed in and sexually abused and strangled her 17-year-old daughter.

The mother returned and saw him leaving, but he slashed her in the neck and fled. The mother survived but her daughter did not.

Because the suspect lived near the scene of the crime, he was quickly identified and caught. In keeping with Mexican law, police identified him only by his first name, Miguel.

When investigators carried out a search of an apartment he rented nearby, they found shocking evidence “that clearly indicate we are looking at a possible serial killer of women,” according to city prosecutor Ulises Lara.

Lara said that during the search of the apartment, detectives found “biological material” — he did not specify whether that was flesh — blood stains, bones, a saw, cell phones and missing women's ID cards.

Most chilling, they found “a series of notebooks that may well be narrations of the acts that Miguel carried out against his victims,” Lara said.

Lara did not say how many sets of bones or ID cards had been found, but local media reported figures ranging from seven to as many as 20 possible victims.

Whatever the number, Mexico City authorities have been plagued by questions about why they do so little to investigate the cases of missing women — until their bodies turn up.

Without proper funding, training or professionalism, prosecutors in Mexico have routinely failed to stop killers until the bodies pile up so high they are almost unavoidable.

In 2021, a serial killer in a Mexico City suburb was only caught after years of alleged crimes — 19 bodies were found hacked up and buried at his house — because of the identity of the final dismembered victim: the wife of a police commander.

In 2018, a serial killer in Mexico City responsible for the deaths of at least 10 women was caught only after he was found pushing a dismembered body down the street in a baby carriage. He dumped most of the bodies of his victims in vacant lots.

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Crime and public safety | lawyers for gilgo beach serial killer suspect rex heuermann get more evidence from prosecutors.

The team prosecuting suspected Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann shared with his lawyers lab reports and disclosures focused on 388 leads detectives were investigating.

Heuermann appeared in court Wednesday with his lawyers, who despite the shared information, said they have not received all the evidence they are entitled to.

But Suffolk County DA Raymond Tierney said there is a mountain of material, and that it is hard to turn it all over in a timely fashion.

“We’re talking about a tremendous amount of material,” Tierney said outside of court. “When you’re talking about terabytes upon terabytes upon terabytes of information it doesn’t happen overnight. It can’t. It’s impossible.”

Tierney said the material includes 6,000 pages of various background checks, and thousands of pages on persons of interest and missing persons investigations.

Heuermann, in a wrinkled gray suit, stood with his hands cuffed behind his back. His estranged wife, Asa Ellerup, watched from the gallery with her attorney Bob Macedonio next to her.

Large square sunglasses covered her eyes. Ellerup filed for divorce just days after his July 2023 arrest in the high-profile case.

Ellerup declined to comment on her way in and out of the courtroom.

Ellerup has said she didn’t think Heuermann was capable of the crimes.

“I will listen to all of the evidence and withhold judgment until the end of trial,” Ellerup said in a statement last month. “I have given Rex the benefit of the doubt as we all deserve.”

In the statement, she said, “Nobody deserves to die in that manner.”

Heuermann’s attorney, Michael Brown, said the defense team requested information from prosecutors related to an earlier investigation of another potential suspect. Prosecutors turned over these documents to Brown Wednesday morning.

As for Heuermann’s state of mind, Brown said his client is eager to get to trial.

“You have to remember he’s not with the general population. He’s isolated in one jail cell. He has no interaction with any other inmates,” Brown said.

“I see him as frequently as once a week. He wants to get to a trial. He maintained from the beginning of this case, and still maintains today, he is not the guy. He said that over and over.”

Heuermann, 59, was initially charged in July with the murders of three young sex workers, Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy and Amber Costello.

This January, he was also charged with the murder of a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes.

Their bodies were found in December 2010 within one-quarter mile of each other, dumped along Gilgo Beach.

Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.

Judge Timothy Mazzei said he wants the pretrial phase to be done by July.

The next court date is June 18.

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Manitoba judge denies attempt to quash alleged serial killer's murder charge in death of Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe

With identity of 4th victim still unknown, jeremy skibicki's lawyers argued charge should be quashed.

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WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

A judge has dismissed an attempt to quash one of four first-degree murder charges against a man accused of killing four Indigenous women in Winnipeg, just two weeks ahead of his jury trial.

Jeremy Skibicki, 37, pleaded not guilty in November to all four counts, which involved the deaths of three First Nations women — Marcedes Myran, 26, Morgan Harris, 39, and Rebecca Contois, 24 — and a fourth unidentified woman, who was given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman , by community members.

Police have said they believe Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe was Indigenous and in her mid-20s. Their investigation suggested she was the first of the four women to be killed, on or around March 15, 2022.

Skibicki's lawyers filed a motion earlier this month to quash the count involving the unidentified woman, arguing the fact that there is no victim identified or body found makes the charge what's known as a "nullity," meaning it has no legal force.

"Our main point is that we do not have an identifiable victim, and that the count should be quashed on its face due to that," defence lawyer Brittney Hoyt told Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal during a 40-minute hearing on Tuesday afternoon.

Skibicki sat in the prisoner's box with his ankles shackled during Tuesday's hearing, while relatives of the slain women sat together in the gallery, the sister of one of the women anxiously tapping her heel as she listened.

Crown attorney Renee Lagimodiere argued that accepting the defence's argument on the motion would amount to "a ruling that a violent crime can only be proven when the Crown knows the identity of the victim. 

• What do we know about Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe? Details still scarce as her alleged killer is in court
• A timeline of what we know about 4 slain Winnipeg women and alleged serial killer Jeremy Skibicki

"And from the Crown's perspective, that is simply not the case," Lagimodiere said.

Joyal said he did not accept the arguments made by Skibicki's defence team and dismissed the motion.

The judge said he found the details of the charge involving the unidentified woman were "sufficiently identified, and can be seen to be clear enough so as to enable the accused to know what it is that he faces in the prosecution that will take place in two weeks' time."

While details of the application to quash the charge can be reported, a limited publication ban applies to other information that emerged during the hearing.

Contois's partial remains were recovered from the Brady landfill in June 2022, and police have said they believe Myran's and Harris's remains are in the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg, but the location of Buffalo Woman's remains are unknown.

Last month, the provincial and federal governments each pledged $20 million to fund a search of the Prairie Green landfill.

Skibicki's 28-day jury trial is scheduled to begin April 29.

Support is available for anyone affected by details of this case. If you require support, you can contact Ka Ni Kanichihk's Medicine Bear Counselling, Support and Elder Services at 204-594-6500, ext. 102 or 104 (within Winnipeg), or 1-888-953-5264 (outside Winnipeg).

Support is also available via Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Liaison unit at 1-800-442-0488 or 204-677-1648.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caitlyn Gowriluk has been writing for CBC Manitoba since 2019. Her work has also appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, and in 2021 she was part of an award-winning team recognized by the Radio Television Digital News Association for its breaking news coverage of COVID-19 vaccines. Get in touch with her at [email protected].

• Follow Caitlyn Gowriluk on X

With files from Özten Shebahkeget

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Screen Rant

A hidden cyberpunk 2077 braindance detail uncovers an eerie & disturbing truth.

A hidden Cyberpunk 2077 detail makes one of the game's more disturbing braindance sequences even more eerie and reflects a damaged psyche.

• Uncover disturbing secrets in Cyberpunk 2077's braindances, revealing the twisted past of a serial killer.
• Explore different perspectives in the game's immersive braindance editor, highlighting key clues in investigations.
• Encounter supernatural elements in braindances, like the mysterious figure linked to the killer's haunting past.

A hidden Cyberpunk 2077 detail makes one of the game's more disturbing braindances even more eerie. Throughout CD Projekt Red's sci-fi RPG, players are able to relive moments from other Night City residents' perspectives through a virtual reality-type recording called braindances, which lets V feel their emotional states and anything they physically felt, as well as watching events unfold. In the Cyberpunk universe, this is used as a major form of entertainment covering adult content, adrenaline chasers, and more, but V often uses them as ways to help with investigations, rewinding the footage and inspecting it on different levels to find clues.

Braindances can be viewed in three ways in its editor, Visual, which plays back events as the person recording would have seen them, Thermal, which highlights the temperature of some items or characters, and Audio, which hones in on specific sounds in the environment or dialogue.

This is the case during Cyberpunk 2077 's The Hunt side quest , where V helps former NCPD detective River Ward with the search for his missing nephew, Randy . While searching on Randy's computer, V and River find various ominous files, and with the help of one of River's police acquaintances, Joss, they're able to pull several braindances from them that could lead to the location of Randy's kidnapper.

Cyberpunk 2077 Has A Surprising Reason For Why Its Side Quests Are So Good

What are the braindances in cyberpunk 2077's the hunt quest, a glimpse into a serial killer's mind.

These braindances are all told from the perspective of Anthony Harris, a serial killer who abducted and murdered Night City's youth at Edgewood Farm over several years before he was ultimately defeated by the NCPD in 2077. Harris was raised by his strict father, who used corporal punishment if a young Anthony made any mistakes. This harshness seems to stem from the fact he seemingly blamed Anthony for her death, outright saying he " killed her " when chastising him for not checking the chemical and hormone levels of the livestock.

The braindances show several events from Anthony's childhood and explain how the abuse he endured seemed to manifest the pathologic behavior that would later result in his killings. One sequence involves his teacher confronting him for killing a classmate's pet turtle, with cruelty toward animals being a well-documented trait in those who have become killers in the real world, even though in Anthony's mind he was putting the turtle out of its misery.

Before his operation was uncovered, Harris was referred to as " Peter Pan " by River and the NCPD, but afterward, he was known as the " Meatman " by Night City because of how his victims were treated like cattle.

Whether Harris' memories offer a correct representation of the events or not has not been questioned within the game as they do ultimately lead to a real location in which V can save Harris' victims, but certain details do not fit within the borders of reality. The braindance has a surreal quality that feels out of place compared to other braindances in the game due to being combined with Harris' dreams, with elements such as Harris' teacher turning into a cow to represent how Harris saw his potential victims as cattle.

Cyberpunk 2077: 10 Best Side Quests To Complete

A ghostly figure appears in antony harris' braindance, the figure oversees harris' horrific operation.

As pointed out by wrospierski on the r/cyberpunkgame subreddit, during the final section of Harris' braindance, in which the killer walks through his gruesome operation on the farm toward one of his victims trying to escape, a mysterious character could be spotted in the Thermal view watching from the distance . The figure also appeared during the sequence beforehand involving Harris' father, in the all three modes, she can be seen standing behind the plastic divider next to the farm's office, and disappears as soon as the divider is moved, suggesting a supernatural quality (as shared in a separate Reddit post by dulipat .

This figure is no longer scannable in the game following a patch, but originally, her name appeared as that of Anthony Harris' deceased mother. This suggests that, in Harris' mind at least, his mother's ghost was always haunting him , especially with her appearances starting shortly after his father comments on the young boy's role in her death. Fellow Redditor RBWessel poses the theory that in the final sequence where she watches Harris approaching his victim from outside, that she's observing from the spot where she's been buried, which is plausible as TheEvilCub states that when visiting that location outside of Harris' braindance, a body is located there, suggesting it's a known burial ground on the farm.

The Hunt is certainly one of Cyberpunk 2077 's more memorable side quests, incorporating horror and psychological thriller elements using the unique technology of the Cyberpunk universe to put its own spin on things. Showing the damaged psyche with all of its surreal elements also better helped to truly immerse players inside the mind of one of Night City's more nefarious figures, and made the level far more disturbing than if the braindances just replayed events as they happened.

Source: wrospierski/Reddit , dulipat/Reddit RBWessel/Reddit , TheEvilCub/Reddit

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is an RPG set in a future dystopian world. Players take up the role of V, who works as a mercenary in Night City in California. Gameplay involves branching dialogue, open-world exploration, character classes, and combat.

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M. night shyamalan’s ‘trap’ trailer features josh hartnett as a serial killer at a concert.

Warner Bros. released the trailer for the filmmaker's newest thriller on Thursday.

By Zoe G Phillips

Zoe G Phillips

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Warner Bros . released the trailer for M. Night Shyamalan ‘s newest thriller, Trap , with Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue and Saleka Shyamalan on Thursday. The upcoming film will feature Hartnett as a serial killer at a pop star’s concert.

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The trailer shows Hartnett’s character with his daughter, Jody (Donoghue), at a concert for pop star Lady Raven (played by Shyamalan’s daughter and R&B singer, Saleka). When Hartnett goes to the bathroom, he finds groups of federal agents looking for a serial killer whom a concession worker refers to as “The Butcher,” named for the way he “goes around just chopping people up.” The trailer then reveals Hartnett to be the killer, who is holding a victim hostage and now must find his way out of the concert venue.

Along with the trailer, Warner Bros. dropped the song “Release” by Saleka as Lady Raven, at www.ladyravenmusic.com.

Trap is Shyamalan’s first movie to hit theaters since his move from Universal to Warner Bros., announced in August 2023.

“Where I write and direct is my home,” Shyamalan said at the time of the move. “Disney and Universal, where I’ve made most of my films, will always be home and family to me. Warner Bros. has a storied history of cinema. Through its recent experiences, the company has rediscovered its love and appreciation for filmmakers, and the impact of the theatrical experience. We all win when movies succeed in theaters. I believe David Zaslav, Michael De Luca, and Pam Abdy have dedicated themselves to unique filmmakers, and to filling theaters all around the world for years to come.”

Trap hits theaters Aug. 9.

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