What causes people to kill?

Great Debates
1

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/04/29/children.stabbed.ap/index.html

Another sick individual has killed her children, stabbing each, 100 TIMES! Were the first 50 stabbings not enough for you, sweetheart? :dubious:

I want to talk about the psychological aspects of why a person would flip the switch in their head that tells them, “Today, I’m going kill.”

Now, I’m not talking about your garden-variety self-defense cases. Not even vigilante cases, even that I can understand. Not that I accept it, but I can certainly put into context why someone would kill because they have been wronged for things like money, revenge for murder, rape, etc…

Basically, I want to understand how the human mind works when it comes to people like Tonya Vasilev. This could be extended to your Ted Bundy types as well. Because I realize that not all murderers are the same (God forbid I stereotype on the SDMB :slight_smile: ), there are different types; one on one, mass murderers, and then your serial killers. And I’m sure there are plenty of other classifications as well. The one thing they all have in common though, is that they carried out the deed. That’s what I’m trying to figure out… what is it that makes them actually go through with it?

Now, I’ve actually tried to wonder, “Am I capable of doing something like this?” And the answer is no. Every. Fucking. Time. My rationale simply will not allow it.

I assume most people are like that. Rather, I Hope most people are like that! I can be strongly empathic sometimes, and when I put myself in place of these kids who were stabbed, I actually feel the terror emotionally. And a person who would do that to a child (hell, anybody), I just cannot connect the dots as to how their mindset could justify it. I’m talkin’ to you Scott Peterson!

So what’s the latest these days in the world of psychology with understanding why these sick individuals would do this to people? How about philosophically, what are some theories there? Are we getting closer to identifying these types of people before hand? Because I don’t agree with the bad childhood, fatherless family, “The quiet shy one” theories. Not everyone that has had a bad hand in life feel the need to take others lives. There are probably a couple billion people that fit these profiles that keep to themselves and respect other peoples lives just fine.

2

[ul]
[li]Fear[/li][li]Lust[/li][li]Pain[/li][li]Anger[/li][li]Hate[/li][li]Greed[/li][li]Resentment[/li][li]Desperation[/li][li]Grief (in revenge killings)[/li][/ul]

Or, their opposite–utter & complete callousness to the act.

All forms of passion–or no feelings at all.

In all things, the path to happiness lies in the middle way.

3

Correct me if I’m wrong, but most people have felt these things. Some feel these things everyday, and sometimes all at once. I understand that everybody’s different, but a lot of people feel these things on a daily basis. And sometimes pretty intensely, and they’re not running around killing innocent people.

Do they somehow feel that they’ll be rewarded if they kill out of desperation?

4

From what I understand, she lost another child in a fire. The child was a baby girl, three months old. Vasilev tried twice to re-enter the house to save her baby but each time was hauled back by neighbors and firemen. My guess is that this event set in motion some sort of mental instability that ultimately led to the destruction of her remaining children. The motives? Who knows? Perhaps she was driven crazy with guilt and killed her other kids because she felt she didn’t deserve to have them. Or perhaps she was driven crazy by the fear that something would happen to them and ultimately killed them herself to be rid of the fear.

Whatever the reason (and the above are only hypotheses), I think she’s pretty clearly gone 'round the bend. I feel sorry for her, for her kids, and for their families. These kinds of tragedies just don’t seem to be preventable.

5

…assuming she didn’t set the house a blaze the first time. But if that’s what happened, I still don’t get it. I probably never will, because it’s just not me. I realize this, but I gotta try.

You mentioned guilt and fear. I’m sure these things played a good part of it, but how would these things trigger a killing reponse?

6

Well, I’m not a psychologist, but I would think living with either guilt or fear 24/7 for years could cause such stress and unhappiness that a person would finally snap and lash out in such a way as to eliminate the cause of the stress, pain, fear or misery. I don’t think she really wanted to kill her children so much as to alleviate some sort of mental anguish. The human mind doesn’t always respond in a rational way to great stress and emotional pain.

Regarding the possibility that she set the original fire, the news account I read said the cause was undetermined but that foul play was never suspected. The article was on CNN. The link follows:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/04/29/children.stabbed.ap/index.html

7

Guns! Guns make people kill!

Just kidding.

8

Why not stab the hell out of a mattress then? Why would someones anguish be alleviated by taking a life? I’m not trying to demand answers from you personally, they’re open to anyone who can answer them. Just looking for some insight on this.

I read that too, sounds like a good reason to reopen that case. It’s quite possible that she’s had issues for a while now. The fire situation is highly suspect given the circumstances now.

9

The thing is, it’s impossible to know. But the only thing that helps is to know your odds.

The way I see it- and please tell me the right mathematical answer :smiley: - if there are 16,000 murders each year in America, and there are 300 million of us, that’s one murder per 18,750. That’s counting everyone- men, women, children, of all races in all areas- equally likely to be murdered each year. Over 70 years (a lifetime?) in America, these odds only add up to 1 in 267. If 80 years 1/234, if 90 1/208, if 100 1/187. And if you don’t fit these descriptions:

[ul]
[li]Gang member or other criminal [/li][li]Big-city dweller[/li][li]Someone who gets in bar fights or frequent heated arguments with strangers[/li][li]Dangerous work (police, spy, vampire slayer)[/li][li]Abused child/spouse[/li][/ul]

your odds over these lifetimes are far less than the above numbers. Take me, for example. I don’t meet any of these descriptions, and may never. Over a 70 year lifetime, my odds could be more like 1/400 or less! My odds of dying in a car wreck over this same time: 1/100. And if you add in handicappings in car wrecks: 1/30. So fear your driving more than psychos. :frowning:

Oh, and there’s only like 20 or 30 serial killers in America, probably. I’m not even going to justify the topic by calculating anything- YOU WILL NEVER MEET ONE. EVER. You’ll probably win the lottery while being struck by lightning first. :smiley:

10

Yes, I understand. And given that I’m not qualified to give more than an opinion, I’ll just offer this one more thing and then leave it to others who may have more to contribute. Regarding the stabbing of mattresses, I would think that if the children were the source of the stress or anguish, the stabbing of mattresses would be no more effective than cutting the grass. If the children were the source of whatever pain this woman was experiencing, eliminating the children themselves would probably be necessary in order to alleviate the pain, stress, guilt, or whatever this woman was experiencing.

I imagine they’ll take a good, hard look at it now.

11

I used to have a slight problem with murderous rage. Fortunately, I usually don’t have the guts or the means to do it.

Once, though, I was angry enough to almost incur serious harm on my little brother - I was so furious that I didn’t realize what I was doing. Fortunately, I came to my senses before anything too bad happened, and I was smart enough to flee the house until I calmed down.

12

If you want the in depth psychology behind murder, I don’t know if you’re going to find it here. But people do irrational things sometimes, and the more I learn about humanity the more I start to think that the best any of us manage is a veneer of rationality on top of a lot of irrational thoughts and behaviors. People do crazy things sometimes to regulate feelings they can’t control, like starving themselves or mutilating themselves, or getting into drugs or any number of other things. It doesn’t make sense to expect rational behavior out of people with something uncontained. Not everyone snaps, true, and I don’t know if anything is known about why some people do and some people don’t.

13

Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: Frequently, there must be a beverage.

–Woody Allen.

14

People with a mental illness do not follow logical thought processes. To put it simply, for them, two and two no longer equal four; two and two equal ice cream, or what have you.

If this woman is truly mentally ill (which she seems to be) she can no more be blamed for killing her children than she can for breathing. She could not control herself and she did not have the clarity of mind to realize what was happening and either leave or call for help.

We cannot judge her by saying, “Oh, well I’ve felt this and I was able to control myself and leave.” Those that are able to leave are not crazy-- there’s the difference.

No, I’m not saying we should pat her on the head and say all’s forgiven. This woman needs serious help, and should be put into a secure facility where she can get it. I don’t, however, feel that she needs to be punished per se, after (if) she regains sanity. She could not stop herself, and I daresay the agony she will feel once she realizes what she’s done will be punishment worse than anything the state could dish out to her.

15

I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist and I’d be lying if I was one and said I understood why people killed on another. On a deep psychological level it’s still something that isn’t wholistically understood.

But obviously there tends to be a few things that come together:

-Desire to kill

-Means to kill

-Lack of empathy or suspension of empathy

The desire could be, “Someone is attacking me, I need to fight back and kill them.” You suspend your empathy for the other person there because, hey, it’s you or them.

The desire could be, “She’s going to tell my wife I was cheating on her. I’ll lose my reputation, money, my house, all that I’ve worked for.” There, the killer suspends empathy because they are innately selfish, their needs are much more important, so much more important that in their mind they justify killing.

I think one thing that is common in all people that kill for reasons other than self-defense or extreme mind-weakening rage/grief is the fact that they don’t associate other people as their equals. They don’t feel that hurting another person is like hurting themselves.

To them all humans are less human than themselves.

For my little analysis to work define empathy as “appreciating the feelings of another human being.” If you recognize and appreciate the internal feelings of others then we have to also assume you logically could not justify killing such a person. Sometimes it is necessary to suspend empathy. I had to suspend my empathy for others while in the Army.

The big question mark comes in when we try to figure out why some people think certain things justify suspension of empathy.

Or in the case of serial killing/raping sadists like Ted Bundy we have to wonder why they never had any empathy to begin with, and why they had such desires in their head. I’ve never once had the desire to rape and murder a woman who resembles one of an ex-girlfriend. But he obviously did, many times have that desire.

I think murderers like that start off on a whole different playing field from the rest of the population.

16

Yesterday, I got a copy of a negotiable instrument against my bank account for $99.00 off of my online banking thing (you can get copies of cancelled checks instantly now). I calmed down and was almost civil when I took it to the bank and explained that mrs.lanelee could not have possibly authorized this draft on 04/25/2005 since she had died on 06/28/2004.

Ms. Winn was very sympathetic and said that she could get my money back but that she could not tell me where I could take my dull axe and commit violent murder.

17

Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of thinking that I would not be capable of murder.

Briefly: My parents divorced when I was 9. When I was 13, my mom married a guy she had met at work. He was an extremely controlling drug abusing alcoholic. He seemed to think that my brother and sisters and I were trying to take her time away from him, and treated us really, really horribly.

One night, when I was 17, I lay in my bed and realized that I could do something about it - I could stop it. I had the power to keep my brother and sisters safe, and make sure that he would never treat anyone else like this again. I knew that it would mean punishment for me, but I could easily accept that.
If a magic genie had told me that I could get rid of him by committing suicide, I would have barely hesitated.

I laughed. I actually laughed with just… pure joy. It was probably the first time I had actually laughed since he had begun his reign of terror and humiliation. Laughing was actually one of the first things he had forbidden, along with ever being barefoot, eating anything at all with fingers (including sandwiches and french fries) and making any noise at all when in the car.

I had only two choices - there were only two ways that things could have gone once they reached that point where I lay on my bed in the dining room, just three feet from the dining room table, and laughed with joy at the thought of my stepfather’s blood spilling over my hands as his life drained out of him.
I could kill him - it would be easily done, I knew that I could do it. That would save my brother and my sisters and any future victims from him.
Or I could leave.
There was no way that I could stay and be the same person as I was before I had grinned at the idea of taking a very specific life. That thought, that urge, that joy had changed me forever.

The next time he came into the dining room - my “bedroom” - and stood behind me, ranting about some made-up slight, I just… turned around. I just looked at him. I don’t know what he saw in my expression, but he stopped in mid-sentence and left me alone.

The next time he threatened me - mimed stabbing me in the back of the neck with a fork, actually, in front of my younger brother and sisters - I got up from the table and looked at him again. He left again.

Then I started packing.

I realized that my brother and sisters would not want me to kill for them. That even though I knew that it would be worth it, they would not think so. Since what I would do it for them, I had to keep their thoughts in my heart. That meant that I had to leave.

I know, absolutely and for sure, that I could kill somebody. I know what point it would have to get to, and I know that I would have an easier time doing it to protect those that I love than doing it for myself. I don’t believe that I could deliberately kill if it were not in one of those circumstances.

I was just a kid and didn’t know that I could have gotten help in any other way. I thought it all rested on me. But if I had decided that I knew better than my brother and sisters, or if I had not thought that they would eventually regret the decision that I had made, I would have become a murderer.
Even as I left the house the next day to go to my aunt’s I was really, really unsure that I had made the right choice.

18

And the thing with Ted Bundy, is that he was an apparently very intelligent man. So you have the case with people with suffer severe mental illness, and probably have a whole different thought process then everyone else, as Lissa was alluding to. Then you have people like Ted Bundy, who could likely have been a great lawyer, or an actor even, and he chooses to kill. Wouldn’t his logic tell him (even if he’s void of empathy), that he’ll likely get caught for this actions? And how smart could he be if he thought he’d never get caught? Maybe it’s a combination of empathy, and a bit of logic that shuts down as well.

19

I’m willing to bet the majority of people here are rational and normally wouldn’t kill. I’m also willing to bet that the majority of murders aren’t rational at the time; and at the time, the things kermit mentioned are what causes the person to not think about what they’re doing.

It’s all very well sitting back and thinking: “Well If I was in that situation I wouldn’t kill them because…” and giving a reason because if you’re in that situation you don’t sit back and think about it, you’d kill the people that later, you’d agree shouldn’t have been killed. Spur of the moment things seem like the right thing at the time. It’s merely about having the sense to control your senses and actions over your base instincts, which are fundemetally violent.

20

I’m willing to bet the majority of people here are rational and normally wouldn’t kill. I’m also willing to bet that the majority of murders aren’t rational at the time; and at the time, the things mentioned are what causes the person to not think about what they’re doing.

It’s all very well sitting back and thinking: “Well If I was in that situation I wouldn’t kill them because…” and giving a reason because if you’re in that situation you don’t sit back and think about it, you’d kill the people that later, you’d agree shouldn’t have been killed. Spur of the moment things seem like the right thing at the time. It’s merely about having the sense to control your senses and actions over your base instincts, which are fundemetally violent.