Help with Serial Killer story

[SAW]

Re: Help with Serial Killer story

 

If you can get a copy of the first Dark Champions (4th edition) book there is an excellent serial killer story in the back of the book all fleshed out already. It gives what the cops think, what the evidence points to, and what really happened at each of six or seven (I can't remember) murder scenes. Now this is Dark Champions so against full-blown supers you might need to beef up the killer a bit but otherwise you could probably hit the ground running.

 

SAW

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Help with Serial Killer story

 

I gave two examples; I don't have access to them all, but I know there's more than "3" in the 20th Century. However, I didn't refer to them as commonplace nor did I mention it was a rule. Make sure you don't confuse your generalization of "people" with "Kirby," we're different entities.

 

As a reminder, I'm just trying to help someone with a direction in his campaign, I'm not here to play "my serial killer fu is better than your serial killer fu."

Not what I was trying to do, and my apologies if you thought I was trying to put words in your mouth.

 

My point is simply that the leaving-clues-to-taunt-the-police thing is far and away the exception, not the rule. I don't know the numbers either, but I'd be amazed if it's even 1 in 100. But a large chunk of the general public - who may or may not be named Kirby - believe that the reverse is true.

 

 

bigdamnhero

"You will all go directly to your respective Valhalla's.

Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect two-hundred dollahs."

[Kirby]

Re: Help with Serial Killer story

 

But a large chunk of the general public - who may or may not be named Kirby - believe that the reverse is true.

I lay blame on CSI, Law & Order, and their spinoffs.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Help with Serial Killer story

 

Not what I was trying to do, and my apologies if you thought I was trying to put words in your mouth.

 

My point is simply that the leaving-clues-to-taunt-the-police thing is far and away the exception, not the rule. I don't know the numbers either, but I'd be amazed if it's even 1 in 100. But a large chunk of the general public believe that the reverse is true.

It may not be common for serial killers to taunt the authorities, but several of the most famous serial killers (including Jack the Ripper; the most famous of all serial killers) did just that (One could argue, of course, that that was part of what made them famous, but I digress.) In any case, in a comic-book world it would certainly be appropriate for a serial killer to taunt the cops - or perhaps, even more chillingly, taunt the heroes themselves.

[MCMaenza]

Re: Help with Serial Killer story

 

I definitely think a serial killer plot in a campaign is a nice change of pace from the usual super-hero threat. It can have an effect on the tone of the campaign if what is run is traditional four-color - since a serial killer plot is definitely more dark. Still, its good to mix things up a bit.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Help with Serial Killer story

 

Y'all got me thinking, so I re-read (well, re-skimmed) John Douglas’ Mindhunter looking for other RPG-usable serial killer ideas. (Douglas is the near-legendary former head of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences unit, and supposedly the basis for Scott Glenn’s character in Silence of the Lambs.) Many of these have been mentioned before:

 

• “[M]ost of these guys are angry, ineffectual losers who feel they’ve been given the shaft by life…”
  
• Most start out with lesser offenses (or just weird-but-legal behavior) before progressing to more serious crimes.
  
• Serial offenders mostly fall into one of two categories: organized, who plan their killings methodically; and disorganized whose victims tend to be chosen situationally/impulsively.
  
• “[W]hile few police officers go bad and commit violent crimes, frequently serial offenders had failed in their efforts to join police departments and had taken jobs in related fields, such as security guards…”
  
• Even more common are “police buffs” who hang out in cop bars and so forth. Apart from giving the offender “the vicarious thrill of a policeman’s power” it frequently gives them an inside link on the progress of the investigation.
  
• Similarly, many offenders “insert themselves into the investigation” by contacting the police with bogus information, tips, or by claiming to be a witness.
  
• Many violent criminals really do return to the scene of their crimes, either out of remorse or a desire to relive the crime; similarly, some killers will visit the graves of their victims.
  
• Another common trait is to keep some “trophy” from the victim, such as a ring or necklace, and then give that item to his wife or girlfriend. This both allows the killer to relive the excitement of the kill, but also mentally asserts his control over his partner. [ick!]
  
• “By their very nature, most serial offenders are good manipulators.”
  
• Many serial offenders closely follow press reports of their crimes, and even respond to the press coverage. For example, if he sees on TV that the police are searching the wrong area for bodies, he might deliberately leave his next victim in that area.
  
• The two most common “triggers” that send people over the edge into killing are: losing their job, or losing their wife/girlfriend.
  
• Most serial offenders operate alone, of course, but there have been a few cases of them working in pairs.
  
• Serial killers rarely stop of their own volition; when a string of murders suddenly stops, one of three things has happened: the killer has been arrested on an unrelated charge, he has moved to a new area, where he will soon start again, or he’s committed suicide.
  

 

FWIW, he doesn’t talk much about killers communicating with the police or the press, and doesn’t state anything about how frequent or infrequent it may be. Only in a handful of the cases he discusses was this a feature, and they’re all ones we’ve already mentioned. At the risk of beating a dead horse, it occurs to me that another reason this may seem more common is simply that killers that do communicate with the police or the press tend to get more press coverage.

 

(Incidentally, Douglas firmly believes that the Jack the Ripper letters were NOT written by the actual killer. He said the same thing about the pseudo-copycat “Yorkshire Ripper” case in 1983, and turned out to be right.)

 

Some other quotes that I found interesting:

 

“In adults, it seems the only time you hear about multiple personality disorder is after someone is on trial for murder. Somehow, it never comes up until then… I’ve often joked that if you have an offender with multiple personalities, I’ll let the innocent personalities go as long as I can lock up the guilty one.”

 

“True psychotics – those who have lost touch with reality – don’t commit serious crimes very often. And when they do…they are generally caught fairly quickly…. [F]or a killer to avoid detection and get away with ten murders, he has to be pretty good at it. Don’t make the mistake of confusing a psychopath with a psychotic.”

 

Paraphrasing here, but Douglas’ complaint about the mental health community is that many of them rely too heavily on self-reporting, and many criminals are clever enough to tell them exactly what they want to hear. “[One convicted criminal] said that if I gave him a copy of the current edition of DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and pointed to any condition described in it, by the next day he could convince any psychiatrist that he was genuinely suffering from that affliction.”

 

“Our research has shown that virtually all serial killers come from dysfunctional backgrounds of sexual or physical abuse, drugs or alcoholism, or any of the related problems.”

 

And at the risk of veering into NGD: "More police and more courts and more prisons and better investigative techniques are fine, but the only way crime is going to go down is if all of us simply stop accepting and tolerating it in our families, our friends, and our associates.... Crime is a moral problem. It can only be resolved on a moral level."

 

 

Whew! Hope some of this is of use...

 

 

bigdamnhero

“Damn you! I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!”