There are a number of different motivations. For some it’s a perfect storm of a high degree of psychopathy combined with an extremely virulent paraphilia, particularly sexual sadism (sometimes comorbid with necrophilia), as appeared to be the case with Ted Bundy and Dennis Rader. Others may be highly psychopathic but have financial gain as a motive rather than sexual deviance, e.g. Charles Sobhraj. Others may be severely psychotic like Richard Chase. In some cases we can only guess at their motives.
A common crime back before the average Joe used banks - there would be rumors that someone, usually an older person, was a miser and had a secret stash of money hidden in the house. Like most good stories in small towns, it was probably more in the tellers’ imaginations. However, occasionally some thief or group of thieves would decide the story was real and decide to help themselves to the loot. After breaking in, they would torture the person to reveal the location of the money. Since sadistic tendencies are not unusual in bullies, they would probably go too far trying to get the (usually non-existent) money.
Can you count sadism in commission of robbery as a serial-killer crime? Generally we think of serial killers as people who kill for no other good reason other than it gets them off.
I’ll dispute that. Some hunter gatherer groups are extremely war-like and some are peaceful. We can look at the Amazon as a modern-day example, where many hunter-gatherer groups still exist. Some, like the Yanomano, spend all of their time plotting how to kill other groups of Yanomamo. Others, like the Piraha, would never dream of harming another human being.
One commentary I read about the age of exploration: generally, the Europeans exploring new areas of the world were originally treated with politeness and kindness (until they used their classic white man’s charm to piss off the locals). The logic was that a tribe may see their neighbours as rivals for the resources they need to live, but a small group of travellers that show no sign staying and every sign of just continuing on their way were a welcome novelty and no threat.
Here’s a few examples of the sort of murders or unsolved deaths I mentioned before, from the English Coroner’s Rolls.
It happened that Alice Charles of Maldon was found dead in Maldon […] in the forty-fifth year of Edward III… a certain Catherine Ronges of Messing, who was insane, met Alice at the heath of the aforesaid village [Maldon] and struck her on the head with great tiles and with sea-coal, and afterwards threw her into the sea, and thus she came to her death.
From browsing through these records, several things stand out:
– The king’s highways seem to have been riddled with robbers, as lots of people are attacked and killed while traveling along them.
– A disturbing number of children were found drowned. Lots of examples of small children falling into wells, rivers, or even pans of milk and drowning.
– Actually drowning killed a lot of adults too, usually while bathing or swimming.
– Another common cause of death: Quarreling followed by knife fighting.
– One sad case is that of a man who beat his wife, who’s cries drew her brother. Her brother killed her husband, and both he and his sister were arrested.
That’s quite fascinating and disturbing, Mississippienne. One question …
(Bolding mine)
What did the coroner mean by “great tiles” and “sea-coal”? Anybody know? Are we talking about things like the tiles they use to put on modern kitchen floors and the like, or something else?
ETA: And where were you able to find these 14th-century coroner records? Are they available online?
Sounds like material for a poem…
How bad?
Read the opening of “A Tale of Two Cities”. It was the worst of times…
Tiles I don’t know, but “sea-coal” is what we now know as coal (contrasted with “Char-coal”
“Tiles” can just mean flat stones suitable for use in paving or floors, like shale or slate.
Well, it sort of depends – it’s meant different things depending on where or when you were. Around here it would be specifically coal from a beach – either washed up after being eroded from an exposed coal seam, or part of the waste from a mine. If times were hard, a modest living could be made gathering and selling sea-coal, right up to the 20th century.
OT, I know, but I’m curious: what exactly do you mean by “lots”? Do you mean that a high proportion of travellers are falling prey to bandits, or that highway robbery seems more common than other forms of theft? Does death by drowning seem unexpectedly common, or is it simply that, in a pre-industrial society, there are fewer alternative means of accidental death that might be reported to a coroner’s court?