When I first started researching psychopathic serial killers I didnt know where I was going with the project or what my end goal really was. All I really had set was that I wanted to study five of the most notorious killers in the world, but that changed not too far into the research when with the help of my teachers I decided to cut it down to three of the most notorious killers in the United States.
The Role Perspective Plays
Perspective plays a very large role in my project. There are plenty of different views on the events that took place over the years of 1906-1994. Some people percieve these men as monsters for what theyve done but they know little of what has happened to them in the past. These people do not know the real monsters that ruined these men.
Edward Gein
Ed Gein was born on August 27, 1906 in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Not too long after Gein was born his family moved to a farm just outside of Plainfield. Gein had a rough childhood. His father was vicious when drunk, but his degrading mother was worse. Gein’s mother Augusta was very religious and pounded many things into Gein’s young mind. Gein’s father, brother, and mother all died within the span of 5 years. After Gein’s mother died he nailed her bedroom door shut for “interior design”. Gein often questioned his gender identity and thought about SRS, Sex Reassignment Surgery (“Sex” ). He thought that the operation was too expensive and intimidating. Gein even thought about becoming female “part time”. People around his neighborhood started knowing him by the nickname “crazy old eddie”. Gein adopted a deeply disturbed obsession with the female anatomy.
Gein started digging up decaying female bodies from a graveyard nearby and dissecting them and keeping certain parts of the body. He would wear the skin and genitalia of the females around the house and let his farm slowly decay along with the dead women. Gein’s obsession was getting more intense and he wanted “fresher” parts. His only victims were 51-year-old Mary Hogan and 58-year-old Bernice Worden. Not long after Worden’s disappearance her naked decapitated body was found hanging upside down from a meat hook in Gein’s woodshed. Also found in the woodshed were her intestines and head in a box; detectives found Worden’s heart in the dining room. “The skins from ten human heads were found preserved, and another skin taken from the upper torso of a woman was rolled up on the floor… a chair upholstered in human skin, the crown of a skull used as a soup-bowl, lampshades covered in flesh pulled taut, a table propped up by a human shin bones, and a refrigerator full of human organs. The four posts on Gein’s bed were topped with skulls and a human head hung on the wall alongside nine death-masks – the skinned faces of women – and decorative bracelets made out of human skin. The stunned searchers also ...a shoebox full of female genitalia, faces stuffed with newspapers and mounted like hunting trophies on the walls, and a “mammary vest” flayed from the torso of a woman. Gein later confessed that he enjoyed dressing himself in this and other human-skin garments and pretending he was his own mother (Maria)...” ...after Gein’s arrest there was an estimated amount of 15 bodies found on his property. Gein said that he does not remember which he had killed or how the murders had taken place. Gein was taken to Wautoma County Jailhouse to be interrogated. He refused to admit to the murders then after a few days of silence finally told investigators about the horrific things he did to worden. Throughout the interrogation Gein showed no remorse for what he did. Though Gein was only linked to two murders there were other “fresh” body parts found in his home that did not belong to his victims. It was suspected that Gein probably murdered his brother but there was no proof. January of 1968 he was found insane and was sent to Central State Hospital, at Waupun, Wisconsin. About 10 years later gein was called for another trial and was found criminally insane being sent to another hospital Mendota Mental Health Institute. He lived until 1984 and was remembered as a quiet and model prisoner.
Theodore Bundy
Thoedore Bundy was born to his tenty-two year old mother Louise Cowell November 24, 1946, in Burlington, Vermont with the last name of Cowell.
Jeffery Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer was born May 21, 1960 in the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital Milwaukee, Wisconsin; his parents were Lionel and Joyce Dahmer ( ). As a young child his parents had an unstable marriage and he took these battles between them to heart. Just before Dahmer was four he had been diagnosed with a double hernia, so he had to have an operation that left him feeling exposed and scared not understanding what was going on ( ). This medical experience was not the only trauma Dahmer had experienced throughout his childhood. Some time while Dahmer was eight, he was molested by one of his neighbors; he never reported this, and it is thought that this may be one of the causes of him turning into a serial rapist/murderer. By the time he turned ten he was already playing with dead animals: “decapitating rodents, bleaching chicken bones with acid, nailing a dog’s carcass to a tree and mounting its head on a stake”(). Dahmer wasn’t the most popular kid in high school; most people would avoid him for the simple fact of how he talked oddly and had a short temper. During these years is when he began drinking, which he continued to do heavily. Dahmer’s senior year his parents finally split.Neither of his parents took custody over him, so he returned to the house he grew up in that was now empty. Left alone and abandoned by his father, all Dahmer had left were his deranged fantasies.
The summer after Dahmer graduated is when he finished his “experiments” with the animal carcusses and moved on to murder. His first victim was Steven Hicks, a hitchhiker he picked up and took home. Hicks’ only mistake was trying to leave Dahmer. Dahmer had to quickly find a way to stop Hicks from leaving, so: “Dahmer crushed his skull with a barbell, strangled him to death, then dismembered – storing the pieces in plastic bags – and buried his corpse. Later, he buried the bones-only to dig them up, pulverize them with a sledgehammer, and scatter the fragments in a wooded ravine behind the house.” This first kill made dahmer have a sense of normalcy, but not too long after he tried more “average” things. Dahmer tried at college for a bit but ended up signing up for the military. Not even two years after he signed a four contract, Dahmer was discharged because of his drinking habits. Things were looking up for Dahmer when he moved back home to Wisconsin until of all the things that Dahmer’s done, he got arrested for urinating in public. Dahmer started hanging around a local gay bar and that’s where he picked up his next victim. The two got drunk, went to a hotel, and had sex. The next morning dahmer wakes next to a dead body not remembering much after him and the stranger sleeping together. Dahmer went out buying a suitcase and returning stuffing the body into it. He took a cab back to his grandmother’s house dismembering and disposing of the body. About a year later dahmer found another victim taking him back to his grandmother’s house before murdering him keeping the victims skull after completely removing the flesh from it. Another year after that he went on a spree killing more than twelve men in that year. 1991 Dahmer almost got caught when one of his victims escaped and two women call the cops seeing Dahmer chase after the naked 14 year old. Dahmer managed to persuade the police into believing that they were gay lovers that got into a simple quarrel. In the end the boy was left back in Dahmer’s clutches again. Dahmer’s grandmother was getting tired of his bizarre behavior and told him to move out. He felt rejected and unloved once again when his grandmother kicked him out. When police talked to her she told them that there was constant banging and a nauseating smell coming from the basement where Dahmer had stayed. She had said that she was getting too old to be Dahmer's babysitter. A little while after dahmer had moved into his new apartment he went out meeting his last victim Tracey Edwards who he grown to like and let live longer than his other victims. His mistake was trying to put handcuffs on Edwards while he was trying to leave. While Dahmer was trying to get one of the handcuffs on Edwards, Edwards punched him in the face and kicked him in his stomach sending him to double over on the the floor. Edwards took the chance to escape and ran down the street where there were two policemen and told them what had happened. When Dahmer finally caught up to Edwards the police asked him for the keys to the handcuff dangling from Edwards left hand. When dahmer refused a scuffle broke out between the three. After they finally got Dahmer in custody there were eleven bodies found in his home. Investigators went into Dahmer’s apartment finding a nightstand drawer full of polaroid pictures of mutilated bodies. Throughout the apartment were plenty of other horrors like human skulls and internal organs found in his fridge, male genitalia, hearts, and liver found in a lobster pot on his counter, and five whole skeletons. Tools he would use in his murders were also found such as three electric saws, acid, chloroform, and formaldehyde. During the trial Dahmer pleaded guilty to all seventeen murders he was charged with but to the account of him being insane. He was given fifteen life sentences to serve. Dahmer had multiple threats on his life while he was in prison and almost had his throat slit, but never pressed charges. Dahmer eventually died in november of 1994 at the hands of 25-year-old Christopher Scarver who killed him instantly by smashing in his skull with a nearby iron bar.