Many people believe that a serial killer is just someone who commits more than one killing. In truth a serial killer is someone who commits over 3 murders in a period of time that spans for over one month. One thing about serial killers that is not in the official definition, but tends to be true, is that they commit the murders for a psychological benefit. Most all true serial killers have a motive for their killings; serial killers are people who are motivated by some emotion, to kill. The emotion is not necessarily hatred or anger, the emotion might be sadness. Some killers are sad for a specific reason and they express it by killing. On the official F.B.I website, fbi.gov “they differ on specific requirements, such as…the types of motivation”(serial). Think of it in a specific situation such as, a young man was in love with a girl with short, dark brown hair and blue eyes, with a smile that was white and bright, but she did not love him back. When the man who was in love with her asked her to Prom-with his heart in his hands- and she rejected him in front of everyone at the school, he would be heartbroken. Now because of this he became the saddest man on earth, or so he thought, then he might lash out by killing. This type of serial killer would probably kill women who reminded him of that woman who crushed him. This specific case was real and so are many others that you couldn’t believe. I found some interesting stories on biography.com about serial killers, such as the Boston Strangler. According to biography.com he “murdered at least 11 and as many as 13 women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964.”(boston). There are many more interesting facts like that on a lot of different killers. Serial killers can have a numerous amount of motives, but the outcome is all the same, death. Although serial killers can have different motives they all want one thing, and that is, to express their feelings through murder. The worst part about serial killers is the death that they cause and it can only be worse if they aren’t caught and accordingly punished. According to listverse.com there are many unsolved murders like The February 9th Killer. This killer was a man/woman who would kill a woman on February 9th for an unknown reason. Some murders cannot be solved meaning that some murderers cannot be caught; listverse.com says: “he may never be caught.”(10). Going back to the main question of this post, “What is a Serial Killer?” to sum it up a serial killer is a man or woman who has some strong emotion-whether it is anger, sadness, or fear- and they believe that they can express that emotion by killing multiple people. Most victims of serial killers have some kind of connection that causes the serial killer to want them dead. Sometimes when a serial killer acts purely out of anger the victims might be random.
Psychology of a killer 