#What makes a serial killer tick serial

#What makes a serial killer tick serial

Neuroscientist Jim Fallon has studied the brains of serial killers for over 20 years. Brain injuries are common among serial killers. Some of the serial killers were adopted and often set fires or tortured animals. Generally in their 20s or 30s, many were abused physically or emotionally as children. A common serial killer is a white man with a lower-to-middle-class history. The problem with profiling the average serial killer is that there is no such thing, said Stanton Samenow, a criminal psychologist and author of the book 'Inside the Criminal Mind' (Crown, 1984). What makes them tick You may be asking yourself, what makes a serial killer Science has come a long way in explaining that, and it has found that the brain of a serial killer is dramatically different than what is considered normal. Killers typically select defenseless victims. But when all of the demographic variables were combined, only about 18 percent of killers were white males in their mid-to-late 20s.

In research presented in 2007 at a Society for Police and Criminal Psychology meeting in Massachusetts, Aamodt and his co-authors found that of the killers in their database, 90 percent were male and 74 percent were white. Norris explains that the serial killerвЂ™s addiction to crime is also an addiction to specific patterns of violence that ultimately becomes their way of life.

is the founding member of the International Committee of Neuroscientists to Study Episodic Aggression.

When you break down the numbers, Aamodt told LiveScience, that profile accounts for less than one in five serial killers. IвЂ™ve done a lot of research into serial killers and what makes them tick. 'Unless you are directly involved in the case, you've been at the crime scene, you've seen all the files, anyone else is just using the typical white male, mid-to-late 20s profile,' said Michael Aamodt, a professor of psychology at Radford University in Virginia who maintains a research database of more than 1,700 convicted serial killers.