Tag: BTK

Portrait of a Psychopath

Experts say serial killers can look extraordinarily ordinary on the outside.

Written by Denise Mann
 Medically Reviewed by Ann Edmundson, MD, PhD
(Editor’s Note: Fun fact, Jack Levin, referenced in the following sentence, was my Professor at Northeastern back in 1986)

Jack Levin, PhD, knows a lot about psychopaths and serial killers.

He’s the director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University in Boston and the author of several books on serial killers, including Extreme Killings. Levin said that serial killer Dennis Rader’s cool and dispassionate detailing in a Kansas courthouse last year of his 10 murders was not surprising for a psychopath. Even Rader’s gory name he created for himself, BTK (“bind, torture, kill”) — is an example of a psychopath’s pride in his work.

“For a person with a conscience, Rader’s crimes seem hideous, but from his point of view, these are his greatest accomplishments and he is anxious to share all of the wonderful things he has done,” Levin tells WebMD. “He held this close to his vest for three decades.”

 

Psychopaths May Appear Outwardly Successful

As many as 5% of people display psychopathic or sociopathic personality disorders. That’s according to experts and the professional bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). These personality disorders are marked by antisocial and impulsive behavior, disregard for societal standards, and no indications of fear or guilt.

“There is a stereotypical view that serial killers are loners, antisocial, and unable to maintain any relations, but that’s mythology,” Levin says.Some psychopaths and serial killers may appear outwardly successful and ‘normal’. “Rader, like so many of the others, was extraordinarily ordinary,” Levin says. He was married with two children. “He looked beyond suspicion, he was active in the church, a Boy Scout leader and a compliance officer, and that is the secret to the success.”

Serial killers often “don’t look like sociopaths or deranged killers, because if they looked like monsters, they would be apprehended almost immediately,” Levin says.   more

Why does it seem like serial killers all wear the same glasses?

A brief history of murderers and their chosen eyewear, from Jeffrey Dahmer to the BTK Strangler to the Zodiac Killer

A teenager with red hair swooping over one eye takes a selfie at an eyeglass store and posts it on Tumblr. “I saw these Jeffrey Dahmer-like glasses,” he writes in the caption. “I feel like [they] look cute on me. Is that bad?” He tags the photo #serialkiller.

The list of serial killers who wore glasses is long and bloody, from Dahmer to BTK to Harold Shipman and his professorial frames; even the Zodiac Killer, never caught, wears a thick-rimmed pair in a police sketch. The aesthetic of “serial killer glasses” is so pervasive that it pops up everywhere from Urban Dictionary (“Eyeglasses with heavy or severe frames that live somewhere between fashionable and creepy”) to TV Tropes (where “a guy who is cold, emotionless … or even a soulless monster” is given glasses “to quickly tip off the audience to his personality”), and countless Tumblr posts in between.  more