Serial Killers

Serial Killers

Essay in MLA Format

Serial Killers
Early Signs and Murders

Criminology
April 16th, 2010

In early years of childhood, you may be able to recognize warning signs of a serial killer. Serial killers at a young age may start out by harming and torturing small animals. In some cases they will spend hours inflicting a slow death. This act of sadism is a form of control, and allows the person to receive the power they crave.

Another early sign of a serial killer is bedwetting. Over sixty percent of serial killers wet their bed past the age of twelve. (Fisher) Bedwetting may be a sign of abuse. It can inflict emotional pain on the child. In some serial killers the parents would abuse the child by making fun of them, or calling them names, and this is very embarrassing. Some serial killers had a nickname such as “Pissy” and people in the neighborhood would call him by that name.

One of the largest signs of future violence is a fascination with fire. Some serial killers would start out by just burning small objects, then later move on to setting small animals on fire, such as cats. Once boredom kicks in some may even go as far as burning down homes and causing a great amount of damage.

When most serial killers were young, they were very anti-social. They would withdraw themselves from society and not care about anyone else but their selves. This is known as Anti-Social Personality Disorder. Some may later be very social as they mature. Most if not all serial killers had some form of sexual deviance, including sexual violence.

Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont, to Eleanor Louise Cowell. He had grown up being told his real mother was actually his sister. He later learned that Louise was his mother while he was in high school. For the first few years of his life, Bundy and his mother lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1950, while he still believed she was his sister, they...