# Do evil people have friends?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-evil-people-have-friends/155564>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 17, 2003, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-evil-people-have-friends/155564 "2003-02-17T03:40:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2003, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-evil-people-have-friends/155564/41 "2003-02-20T00:09:21Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> As I told my friend the other day, “There are no such things as good guys or bad guy’s life is not a video game, comic book or movie.”

Ahh **mswas** , life _is_ a video game, a comic book, and a movie.  
Knowing that is the secret to happiness.

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**Author:** ![jack\_ss](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c77e96/32.png) [@jack\_ss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jack_ss)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2003, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-evil-people-have-friends/155564/42 "2003-02-20T00:39:58Z")

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What about evil people who are not in positions of power? Did Jeff Dahmer have any friends? Eileen Wuornos? Andrei Chikatilo? John Wayne Gacy? Richard Speck? Ed Gein? David Berkowitz? Albert Fish?

I believe that a lot of these guys (Dahmer, Chikatilo, Gein & Berkowitz, maybe others) lived lives of isolation, with little human contact except their victims. I’m nearly certain that most of these people didn’t have friends over to just hang out in the last few weeks before they were caught.

Social isolation seems to be a large component of the serial killer lifestyle.

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**Author:** ![Slugworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4bbf92/32.png) [@Slugworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slugworth)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2003, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-evil-people-have-friends/155564/43 "2003-02-20T01:30:19Z")

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Gein was well liked, but generally regarded as strange - A nasty side-effect of chatting up people about skin slippage. Dahmer had plenty of friends. Chikatilo, no clue, but I have my doubts. Manson had more than friends, he had a family. Mary Bell had at least one friend. Serial killers tend to be far from isolated, except out of necessity (The reek of decaying bodies under the floor boards doesn’t bode well for dinner parties). I wouldn’t chalk it up to some sort of manipulation either - The oudatedness of the term aside, psycopaths come in a wide variety of flavors. Some are completely detached from reality, others just have weak empathatic abilities.

As for Hitler’s social life, the OSS was just as interested as we are.

[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.html](http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.html)

It’s wordy, but interesting. He definitely had friends in the traditional sense of the word, and he also threw tearful tantrums when things didn’t go his way. That’s got no real connection to the conversation at hand, I just find the image of Hitler crying over spilled milk pretty funny.

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