Strange thought perhaps. Have many serial killers been parents? I’m drawing a blank, and noticing a trend.
[quote=“Leaffan, post:1, topic:557963”]
Strange thought perhaps. Have many serial killers been parents? I’m drawing a blank, and noticing a trend.[/QUOTED
Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, has two kids. AFAIK he was not an abusive parent.
John Wayne Gacy married, and had a son and a daughter.
A lot of the female ones had kids. Nannie Doss, Martha Beck, Belle Gunness just jump out.
Well, just looking at Australia, where I live:
Catherine Birnie, who with her partner David Birnie murdered four women in the 1980s, had seven children. (David Birnie was not the father; he had no children.)
Elizabeth Harvey, one of the Snowtown murderers, was the mother of James Vlassikis, another of the murderers.
Eric Cook, who murdered eight people in Perth in the 1950s and 1960s, was the father of seven children.
Kathleen Folbigg’s four victims were her own children.
John Wayne Glover, who killed six women in 1989/90, was married with children.
I don’t know if precise figures on parenthood exist, but serial killers often do defy the “unbalanced loner” stereotype and lead normal lives in their communities, complete with families and jobs. Rader and Gacy are obvious examples, as is Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer. Ridgeway was employed as a truck painter for thirty-two years, was married to his third wife at the time of his arrest, and like Rader was active in his local church.
Russell Williams is unusual in that he climbed so high in rank and position, but successful military men with families have turned out to be serial killers before him. Robert Lee Yates, who killed seventeen prostitutes in and around Spokane, had a 19 year career as a decorated U.S. Army helicopter pilot and lived in a nice middle class neighborhood with his wife and five children.
Not exactly the same situation, but Ted Bundy is also rumored to have fathered a daughter while in prison in 1982, with his wife Carole Anne Boone.
More information about Yates:
Fred West married 2 daughters - one of which his wife murdered, this was a husband and wife team of serial killers, utterly horrible individuals.
Every serial killer had parents.
You’d hope to be dead before your kid was revealed to be a serial killer.
Worst case – you die in the process of discovering your kid is a serial killer.