Serial Killer

A **Serial Killer** is a person who murders multiple people, usually with a "cooling off" period in between.

## Types

There are four primary types of serial killer.

### Visionary

They suffer psychotic breaks from reality and sometimes believe they are another person or are compelled to murder by deities such as God or the Devil. The two most common subgroups are "God-mandated" or "Devil-mandated".

### Mission-oriented

They typically justify their actions as "ridding the world" of certain types of people, such as homosexuals, prostitutes, or people of a different race or religion, but are normally not psychotic.

### Power/Control

They try to exert and gain power over their victims. They are sometimes abused as children, which gives them a sense of powerlessness and inadequacy as adults.

### Hedonistic

They seek thrills and derive pleasure from killing, seeing their victims as expendable means to achieve this goal. So far, there have been three sub-types of the hedonistic killer:

#### Lust

They are primarily motivated by sex, whether the victims are alive or dead, and their fantasies play a large role in their killings. Lust killers will most commonly rape their victims, before or after death. Some serial rapists progressed to becoming lust killers after the sex act itself no longer gave them the same thrill. Lust killers are further classified in four subgroups:

Power-assertive: The power-assertive sexual murderer is characterised by the driving motivation for power and dominance. While sexual assault on the victim is planned by the offender, the murder is not. Consequently, the murder is generally a result of the murderer’s desire for control over the victim, resulting in an increased aggression that ultimately leads to the victim’s death. In the end, the death of the victim demonstrates the offender’s success of dominance over his victim.

Power-reassurance: The power-reassurance sexual murderer does not anticipate the death of his victim either. The initial purpose of the sexual activity is to act out the offender’s fantasy. It is commonly when the victim resists these sexual fantasies that the offender kills in a final effort to gain power and control. In order to complete his fantasy, the power-reassurance murderer explores the body post mortem, engaging in mutilation and necrophilia.

Anger-retaliatory: The anger-retaliatory sexual murderer commits a sexual offense with the intent of killing the victim during or after the sexual activity. The drive behind the anger-retaliatory murderer lies in a deep-seated hatred of women. This hatred stems from the offender’s resentment of a dominating or conversely, absent, female figure often present in early life. Consequently, the offender’s victim is used as a surrogate for the figure that caused the killer to feel emotionally invalidated.

Anger-excitation: This killer takes sadistic pleasure in torturing his victim. For this murderer, the act of torture-killing is what brings him sexual gratification.

#### Thrill

They are primarily motivated to induce pain or a sense of terror in their victims, which gives the killer more stimulation and excitement.

#### Comfort/Profit

They are primarily motivated by material gain and a comfortable lifestyle, and achieve this through killing.

## Examples

### Power/Control

XYXY (he also showed "anger-retaliatory" characteristics with his female victims)

### Hedonistic

#### Lust

Eddie Cochrane (Anger-retaliatory)

Michael Cochrane (Anger-excitement/power-reassurance)

Sebastian Hixson (Power-reassurance)