Table Of ContentContents
Introduction
PART ONE: PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS IN HISTORY
Emperor Nero
Charles VI of France
Vlad the Impaler
The Borgias
Countess Erzsébet Bathory
Ivan the Tenible
Peter Stubbe
PART TWO: 19th CENTURY PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS
John Lynch: the Berrima Axe Murderer
Jack the Ripper
Dr Thomas Neil Cream.
H. H. Holmes
PART THREE: 20th CENTURY BRITISH PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS
John Reginald Christie
John George Haigh: the Acid-Bath Murderer
Dennis Nilsen
Peter Sutcliffe: the Yorkshire Ripper
Patrick Mackay
PART FOUR: 20th CENTURY AMERICAN PSYCHOPATHIC
KILLERS
Baby Face Nelson
Ed Gein
Harvey Glatman
Albert DeSalvo: the Boston Strangler
John Wayne Gacy
Gary M. Heidnik.
Jeffrey Dahmer
Ted Bundy
Ed Kemper: the Co-ed Killer
Richard Speck
Richard Ramirez – the Night Stalker
PART FIVE: 20th CENTURY EUROPEAN PSYCHOPATHIC
KILLERS
Bela Kiss
Henri Landru
Peter Kürten
Adolf Hitler
Joseph Stalin
Andrei Chikatilo: Citizen X
PART SIX: PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS FROM THE REST OF THE
WORLD
Idi Amin
Pol Pot
Ivan Milat: the Backpacker Murders
Javed Iqbal
PART SEVEN: PSYCHOPATHIC CHILD KILLERS
Gilles de Rais
Albert Fish
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley: the Moors Murderers
Arthur Gary Bishop
Robert Black
Michel Foumiret
PART EIGHT: PSYCHOPATHIC WOMEN KILLERS
Belle Gunness
Mary Ann Cotton
Nannie Doss
Velma Barfield
Aileen Carol Wuornos
Ma Barker
Introduction
They are different to the rest of us. While we do our level best to maintain the
checks and balances that keep us civilised, there are some amongst us who do
not, or cannot, have the ability to set loose the monster within with devastating
and often shocking consequences. They are narcissistic, ruthless, emotionally
cold, cruel, vicious, self-seeking, easily bored men and women who are totally
uninhibited in the methods by which they achieve their goals. But at the same
time, they can be charm itself, capable, very often, of manipulating people into
doing or believing things they would never dream of. What other explanation
could there be for the mass hysteria created by Adolf Hitler before and during
World War II, when an entire nation took part in horrific acts of cruelty and mass
murder? Pol Pot’s depraved regime in Cambodia in the 1970s, when hundreds of
thousands of Cambodians were killed, provides another example of an entire
country being manipulated into carrying out unspeakable acts. Or how do you
explain Myra Hindley’s chilling compliance with whatever her lover Ian Brady
demanded of her – graduating from posing for pornographic photographs to
helping him to find children on whom he could work out his depraved fantasies?
Gilles de Rais, a powerful man in 15th century France, seems to have had little
trouble in recruiting a whole team of accomplices who helped him to find
innocent children to be the victims of his cruel games.
The psychopath often does not kill for financial gain or improvement. He or
she does it simply because it provides psychological gratification, or, as
notorious serial killer and psychopath Ted Bundy put it shortly before his
execution: ‘I’m the most cold-blooded sonofabitch you’ll ever meet … I just
liked to kill, I wanted to kill.’ Dr Thomas Neil Cream did not even have to be
present when his victims succumbed to the potions and pills he doled out to
them. The simple knowledge that they were going to die was enough for him.
Others try to explain their acts away by citing voices in their heads, as in the
case of John Lynch, the Berrima Axe-murderer, or attempt to justify their acts as
some kind of moral crusade. The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, claimed to be
‘cleaning up the streets’ by killing thirteen prostitutes, while John Wayne Gacy,
killer of thirty-three boys and men in the 1970s, described his victims as
‘worthless little queers and punks’. There is little doubt that the legendary Jack
the Ripper was also on some kind of moral crusade, cleaning up the squalid
streets of 19th century Whitechapel in London’s East End. John Reginald
Christie, the murderous strangler of 10 Rillington Place seemed to be on a
mission to exorcise his hatred for women, a mission he shared with the famous
Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, the rapist, sodomiser and gruesome serial killer
of women, whose victims died smelling his foul breath, gained from eating an
excess of junk food during the neglect of his childhood.
Of course, some do gain from their acts. John George Haigh, the ‘Acid Bath
Murderer’ killed people for their bank accounts or property before giving them a
hot bath, but his behaviour was that of a psychopath who belived he was
invincible, somehow above the law. Unfortunately for him, he was just not quite
insane enough to escape the gallows. Velma Barfield, Nannie Doss and Mary
Ann Cotton, the famous women serial poisoners killed in the main to benefit
from insurance policies, but there is no denying that they also killed for
themselves, because their victims stood in the way of their happiness, something
that is unwise around a psychopath.
Some are, however, beyond the pale. How can you account for the sick acts
and behaviour of men such as Dennis Nilsen, Robert Black, Ian Brady, John
Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein or Patrick Mackay? These are men whose actions place
them outside of society with little chance of finding their way back in. For them,
killing was an act to be enjoyed, to take pleasure from and to do again and again
until they were stopped. Other lives did not matter. For Dennis Nilsen, for
instance, killing was all about him and his terrible loneliness. He never at any
moment stopped to consider the life he had snuffed out. Neither did Patrick
Mackay, very often killing and staying for a while in the house of the person he
had killed, listening to the radio or watching television.
Ultimately, their pleasure and gratification is all that matters. Peter Kurten, the
‘Vampire of Dusseldorf’, as he was known, loved killing and gained sexual
gratification from it, achieving orgasm when he poured petrol over one of his
numerous victims and set it on fire. Patrick Mackay talked about the erotic
nature of a wound he had inflicted on a priest who was dying in front of him. He
also spoke about how euphoric he felt after killing, a feeling that would remain
with him for several days.
How did they become monsters? Of course, some were just born that way, but
it is interesting how many of the killers in this book were born to a life of abuse,
anger and neglect. Peter Kurten’s father would rape the mother of his thirteen
children in front of them; he would also rape his daughters. The stepfather of
Aileen Wuornos became a psychopathic child molestor who would eventually
hang himself in prison. Velma Barfield was beaten by a drunken disciplinarian of
a father. Richard Speck had an abusive stepfather and Ed Gein lived in a rigidly
disciplined religious household where his mother did not allow him or his
brother to cultivate friendships and spent afternoons reading the Bible to them.
All of these negative experiences were stored away by these men and women,
either to be copied when they got older or to be avenged.
Evil Psychopaths examines the excesses to which some people’s demons will
drive them and examines the lives of psychopaths, their motivations, their
methods and the journeys their lives took to the fatal moment when they found
that they enjoyed no greater pleasure than taking another life.
