Depths of Depravity 7

 This post is one of a series about the book The Anatomy of Evil by Dr Michael Stone. It is recommended that these posts be read in order. Unless otherwise noted all quotes used are from the book The Anatomy of Evil.

In the next chapter doctor Stone took on Serial Killers and Torturers. I think that if one tries to examine humanity and what it means to be human there is an obligation to look at us at our best and worst. 

In a way I must confess that I would far prefer to look at the best of people and embrace only that, but it would be a tremendous error to try to understand anything or any people and to only look at what is pleasing to the observer. If I just wanted to feel good it might be useful, but I want to look at the reality of humanity, what it means to be human - the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

In looking at the evil side of humanity it seems that serial killers and torturers occupy a special corner of hell. These unimaginably evil creatures are human beings and the fact that they seem to not be in some ways doesn't absolve us of responsibility for them as part of humanity. To understand ourselves we need to understand them.

 "Perhaps because we in America no longer have a frontier, serial killers have replaced cowboys as objects of popular fascination. There is even a secret admiration, since these men do as they please, whereas the rest of us are obliged to rein in our more violent impulses.

Not all serial killers are cut from the same cloth; as a result,the phrase is used in confusing ways. There are three major varieties. The serial murder of patients by unscrupulous nurses and doctors - a few of whom we encountered in chapter 6 - make up one of the less common varieties: one in which a sexual motif is lacking. A second variety concerns murders with fairly long intervals in between of random strangers, irrespective of age or gender. These killers are misanthropic men who simply hate people; again, there is no sexual motif. This is also the rarest type. Finally, there is the largest (albeit still uncommon) group: men committing serial sexual homicide. When people speak of "serial killers," this is the type they usually mean. The sexual element is central to the type, since the scenario is one of rape followed by murder (more common) or else murder followed by sex with the corpse (this necrophilic type is less common).

We could even speak of yet another variety of serial killing with a sexual overtone but without rape. If we were to make this into a fourth type, it would truly be the rarest of all the varieties: serial homicide committed by women who are seeking vengeance symbolically for sexual wrongs done to them (incest, usually). But I prefer to categorize this scenario as an uncommon variant of serial sexual homicide - one in which more attention is paid to the motive than to the overt act. The men (and the rare women) in this category belong to the higher levels of the scale: Categories 17 to 22.

There are not many persons who devote themselves single-mindedly to torture in peacetime that do not show at the same time a perverse sexual preoccupation. " (page 196)

Stone pointed out that most people who torture as part of an official capacity for a military during war upon returning home never torture again, but that the evil they commit is in a category outside the scope of his work. 

When he started his work decades ago Stone realized that both nature and nurture combine to influence who we become and what we do. He found many experts only paid attention to some details of the lives of offenders while ignoring many relevant factors. Over time Stone added more variables such as whether an individual had head injuries or certain medical conditions and on and on. 

Things that earlier scholars didn't realize might be relevant over many years in looking at hundreds and thousands of offenders have shown differing degrees of correlation with varies crimes. Often several offenders have committed progressively worse similar crimes in their paths to becoming serial killers. 

Similar to the Harvard Grant study which found that alcoholism and drug addiction are a major factor in the lives of men who become unhappy, unsuccessful in relationships and get into trouble so too did Stone find that in examining 130 serial killers alcoholism and drug addiction are often present. Many serial killers have one or both parents as alcoholics and Stone found this for a third of the subjects studied. It is far too long a list to cover in detail. 

Stone also found that the biographies he read sometimes left out important information. An author might not see the relevance of a detail or care to ask about certain details. 

 "Looking at all of these and similar risk factors made one thing clear, however: there is no one-size-fits-all profile for serial killers. Instead, there is a complicated mix of nature and nurture adversities, on top of which are still other highly unpredictable situations, such as being born " funny-looking," which leads to being mocked by classmates. Coming from a poor or even a working-class family adds to the chances for aggressive behavior, as does coming from a culture of machismo, where it is common for men not only to control women but to use physical force to exercise that control. Or, there may be a seduction by a close relative early in one's life that suddenly and drastically creates an obsession, an idea that one can never get out of one's mind and that shapes forever the pattern of one's behavior. " (page 200)

 "The pattern - here, an addiction really - may be one of violent revenge that one must carry out again and again on all who resemble those who mistreated him in adolescence. I will give an example of a serial killer transformed and transfixed by such an experience in his midteens. But before that, I would like to provide a menu of characteristics and occurrences before and after birth that we see more or less frequently in the ranks of serial killers: attributes that contribute importantly to the development of a serial killer, granted that no serial killer shows all of them, and a few show almost none." ( page 201)

 " THE MENU

From the Nature side

Mental illness (severe, with psychosis)

Schizophrenia

Manic-Depression (especially the manic type)

Autism or Asperger's Syndrome

Delusional Disorder

Psychiatric Conditions (less severe, without psychosis)

Attention Deficit Disorder (with it without hyperactivity)

Alcoholism (of the familial/inheritable type)

Epilepsy (such as temporal-lobe epilepsy)

Inordinate sexual drive (in the absence of overstimulation in early life; may be related in some men to very high innately determined testosterone levels)

Personality Disorders (inheritance accounts for about half the disorder)

Antisocial (more common in males)

Psychopathic (more common in males)

Schizoid (chief characteristic: aloofness; more common in males)

Paranoid

Impulsive-Aggressive/Intermittent Explosive " (page 201)

 "From the Nurture Side

Parental (any primary caretaker) cruelty/physical abuse

Severe parental neglect/abandonment

Severe parental verbal abuse/humiliation

Death of a parent

Growing up without a father

Parents divorce before child is sixteen

Being adopted

Family with low socioeconomic status

Parental sexual abuse/seduction, with subsequent hypersexuality.

(This may include the repetitive witnessing of parental overt sexuality/promiscuity, sexual misuse of a sibling, and the like)

Brain disease or damage - especially head injury to frontal lobe(s)

Immersion in violent television - in psychologically vulnerable children

Of Mixed or Uncertain Origin

Paraphilia Voyeurism, sexual sadism, bondage, exhibitionism, etc.)

Early "after-effects" of adverse nature-nurture events

Juvenile delinquency

Substance abuse (especially cocaine, methamphetamine, angel dust)

Alcoholism (if not primarily on a genetic basis)

Conduct disorder in childhood (can reflect nature: ADD or early signs of manic illness, or nurture: parental cruelty)

Animal torture and/or fire setting

Rape or other sexual offenses committed in adolescence

As one can see from this list, these characteristics could be assigned to a simple set of categories:Bad Genes, Bad Parents, Bad Luck (head injury for example), Bad Drugs, and "Raging Hormones." This menu, or "schema" can be understood as a collection of ingredients from which a prescription for violence in general may be written. The murderers and rapists sketched in previous chapters showed either a few or many items from this menu. " (page 202)

I included the entire menu verbatim because it demonstrates the variety of different traits that are often found in serial killers and also because it in many ways corresponds with the traits of cult leaders like Ronald Hubbard and David Miscavige.

For experienced ex Scientologists and Scientology watchers the task of checking off the traits that they are aware of can be informative.

Stone remarked on the fact that for a man to cross over from merely having these traits to being a serial sexual killer is a nudge. The nudge is either abnormalities of a sexual nature or an exaggerated thrill seeking that can only be satisfied by intense sexual experiences. 

He described next in detail a man who fits the description quite well.  Stone met the man who was incarcerated for four murders. He was a man in his forties who had strangled four men over about two years. The man would seduce another man at a gay bar, promise sex, then get the victim very drunk and take him to a secluded spot, have sex with him and then strangle him to death afterward while picturing his mother as the person he was strangling.

The man had a policeman for a father and a large security guard for a mother. The mother was big and tough and used her baton at home.

The mother had five sons she regularly best with her baton. The man Stone met was the favorite of the mother, so at fourteen she started having sex with her son. She would alternate between savage beatings one day and sex the next.This alternated day by day until he left home five years later at nineteen.

He described an intense hatred for his mother that was 70 percent because of the beatings and 30 percent because he knew her seducing him was wrong.He was symbolically killing his mother over and over. 

Stone described the incest that pushed this man into sexual crime and that without it he may have only committed property crimes or even no crimes at all.

Stone pointed out that we have no lack of examples of serial killers who fit the menu regarding nurture, nature and what he termed misadventure, he used the examples of head injury and being raped while in a reformatory and I think it's worth pointing out that a tremendous number of the most hateful people in the world were raped or abused as young children or teens.

Aside from Charles Manson we have the superb example of Carl Panzram. Panzram was a prolific murderer and their who displayed criminal versatility and committed many types of offenses for years. He is the subject of several books and films. He claimed to have been raped by several hobos when he was a young boy and viciously sodomized despite begging for mercy.

Along with several murders it was reported that Panzram committed over a thousand acts of sodomy against boys and men. He robbed and raped several young boys and plotted to kill as many people as possible. 

Here are a few quotes to let Panzram describe himself and his outlook:

 "In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings. I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies Larcenys, arsons and last but not least I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. for all of these things I am not the least bit sorry. I have no conscience so that does not worry me. I don’t believe in Man, God nor devil. I hate the whole damed human race including myself. "

― Carl Panzram

"After serving about 2 years there I was pronounced by the parole board to be a nice, clean boy of good morals, as pure as lily and a credit to those in authority in the istatution where I had been sent to be reformed. Yes sure I was reformed all right, damn good and reformed too. When I got out of there I knew all about Jesus and the bible so much so that I knew it was all a lot of hot air. But that wasn’t all I knew. I had been taught by christians how to be a hypocrite and I had learned more about stealing, lying, hating, burning and killing. I had learned that a boys penis could be use for something besides to urinate with and that a rectum could be use for other purposes than crepitating. Oh yes I had learned a hell of a lot from my expert instructors furnished to me free of charge by society in general and the state of Minnesota in particular. From the treatment I received while there and the lessons I learned from it, I had fully desided when I left there just how I would live my life. I made up my mind that I would rob, burn, destroy and kill every where I went and everybody I could as long as I lived. That’s the way I was reformed in the Minnesota State Training School. Thats the reasons why. "

― Carl Panzram

“I am sorry for only two things. These two things are: I am sorry that I have mistreated some few animals in my lifetime, and I am sorry that I am unable to murder the whole damned human race.”
― Carl Panzram

“I don't believe in man, God nor Devil. I hate the whole damned human race, including myself. I preyed upon the weak, the harmless and the unsuspecting. This lesson I was taught by others: might makes right.”
― Carl Panzram

 "I have no desire whatever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform other people who try to reform me. and I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill em. My motto is, Rob em all, Rape em all and Kill em all. I am very truly yours signed Cooper John II Carl Panzram " 

― Carl Panzram

Panzram likely was sodomized repeatedly by bigger and older boys while in reformatories. I want to again emphasize that we have many examples of people who became rapists or killers who were raped or sodomized, often in reformatories or prison and then ended up as some of the most hateful and prolific offenders, including the truly heinous examples like Charles Manson and Carl Panzram. 

If they were not brutally sodomized repeatedly in reformatories would they have been so hateful and so motivated to hurt and violate and viciously kill human beings as they were? We don't really know,  but,  I suspect, on average, if we find some way to prevent or greatly reduce the acts of rape and sodomy that people experience, particularly as children and teens and in reformatories and prisons, it would dramatically reduce the number of extremely bitter and profoundly hateful people in society, a significant number of which commit a very high level of the most inhuman and monstrous crimes against other human beings, including rape, child molestation and murder. These people inspire other offenders, as some of their victims continue the terrible cycle of being abused then becoming the abuser. 

Stone described several more truly monstrous killers including Leonard Fraser, who again is a case of a boy raped by the bigger boys in the reformatories who in his turn raped smaller boys and "graduated" to becoming a serial rapist and finally a serial killer. He also fits the all too familiar pattern of a serious offender who committed rape, child rape or murder and was released far, far too soon and the people who he raped and murdered paid the price for that terrible error.

After being released from a reformatory at seventeen he started raping women. He was arrested for rape at twenty-three and sentenced to twenty-one years. He was released after only seven. The prison psychiatrists diagnosed him as a psychopath but their warning fell on deaf ears, so two huge red flags in his rape conviction and the diagnosis were ignored. 

He was arrested again for rape and was sentenced to only two months.He was arrested several more times and after release raped sixteen more women and raped and killed then performed acts of necrophilia on the corpses of three more women and a nine year old girl and of course tortured cats and raped dogs. He kept a women locked up and raped her six times a day

Fraser apparently from the moment he woke up to when he went to sleep focused on raping women and anything he could get his hands on. 

I have to point out that upwards of twenty women would have been far better served if his earlier crimes and diagnosis as a psychopath were taken far more seriously, not to mention families and the animals and on and on.

Whatever opinions we might have regarding other people who end up in prison like drug addicts, marijuana users, petty thieves and so on, I think we need to simply accept the truth that some offenders, including rapists, murderers and child rapists are extremely harmful to society and that they often have an extremely high chance of committing other truly heinous crimes if they are ever released. People like Doctor Stone can evaluate the  nature of the crimes and the minds of the criminals and advise us on the worst case scenario if these offenders are released, not based on prejudice or guesses but on probabilities, probabilities that are ignored with tragic consequences.

I know a man who was a prison guard and he told me he felt there should be two types of prisons, one for murderers rapists and child molesters and another for other offenders. He described the environment as dominated by the predators and since they set the tone everyone else must match it or go along to survive as best they can. If they had two sets of prisons and one was for the worst in his it would have a positive effect on the other inmates as they would know they are for the most part dealing with people on a lower level. In some descriptions some jails for offenders who have not committed violent or sexual offenses are described as having a better atmosphere.

I am not saying these ideas are perfect, or fully fleshed out of that no others should be tried, I am just saying that they are worth throwing in the mix.

I wanted to point out a few other things Stone described, he found that 87 percent of the 145 serial kill in his personal records were psychopaths. He found this to be the most common disorder in serial killers.

 "Serial killers in general are predators who, by their very nature, are indifferent to their victims and are self-centered to the utmost. These men are narcissistic at the least. Most go the extra mile and show the special traits of callousness, lack of remorse, glibness, and deceitfulness that put them at the outer edge of narcissism - that is, in the category of the psychopath.

Perhaps it is their total lack of compassion for their victims that is their most important characteristic, even in those serial killers who, like Gary Ridgway or Herman Mudgett, led double lives and retained a measure of compassion for their wives. " (page 210)

Now, I personally have trouble believing these men truly had compassion for their wives, or anyone else. I don't have absolute proof they didn't but I would need a lot of evidence to support the claim that men who are this far gone care about anyone else. 

Stone described several more horrific monsters including serial rapist and murderer Paul Bernardo, Ed Kemper and several others. 

Again, a particularly heinous one is worth mentioning. David Parker Ray.

Stone stopped to make two remarks before proceeding to describe Ray. He said Ray's personality and crimes are so sadistic that he must apologize before describing them.  Keep in mind, this is after everything he has presented to this point.  Further, Stone said he won't describe the crimes in full detail as has with many others be The details are too horrific. These words carry a lot of force when we consider everything that Stone has presented. Stone described Ray as appearing to be the most cruel and sadistic all serial killers.

Stone pointed out something positive, and crucial to putting people like Ray and other monstrous offenders in perspective. He said that while many people have thoughts of violence (far more in men than women) and even murderous revenge fantasies, especially after having suffered insults, humiliation, firings, rejections, assaults, 97 percent of men and 99 percent of women NEVER assault or torture anyone. 

That's astounding! Especially after the tour through inhuman cruelty we have taken so far. To think that only three percent of men and one percent of women actin violent impulses and the rest restrain themselves is not what I expected given everything else Stone has shown us.

 "It is characteristic of men who become serial killers that they relish the sense of godlike power over others, the moment of a victim's death establishing as "factual" this power. This can go a long way to paper over what are shameful feelings of worthlessness and inferiority in the pre-murderous phase of the killer's personal life. The "serial" part can best be understood as stemming from the addiction to this morbidly fulfilling "high" - where the petite morte (as the French sometimes call an orgasm: the little death!) comes at a the moment of someone else's grande morte.  Lust and addiction by definition are acts that must be repeated - calmness, building up of the craving, calm - in an endless cycle. Once the train becomes wired for this cycle, it is like flowers pressed in Lucite - stamped eternally and unmodifiable. " (page 219)

Ray, like Panzram, Manson and many of the other individuals who I chose to focus on fits the unimaginably evil, likely irredeemable and certainly never to be released, under any circumstances whatsoever category. These offenders being released is simply a crime against humanity.

If any level of degradation or violation is too extreme for you, then you should probably skip everything regarding David Parker Ray.

Stone described Ray, who was born in 1939 in rural New Mexico, near Albuquerque, as a mechanic of uncommon skills, a superlative draftsman, a meticulous recorder of his fantasies, and a diabolically clever inventor of torture devices.

Ray started to fantasize about bondage at about thirteen and he tied a woman to a tree in his midteens and tortured her to death. Ray had a talent for mechanical things. He moved from job to job but appeared likable.

He was a park ranger for a time at Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. By the early 90s he built a torture chamber in a double-wide mobile home in the remote and very isolated Elephant Butte.

The trailer was called the Toy Box by Ray. It had everyone to delight him. It was soundproofed, and featured pulleys, chains, gynecological devices, nail-encrusted dildoes, bondage and stretching devices, stun-guns, cameras and TV monitors, cattle prods, syringes, chemicals and fortified walls and doors. Ray used his instruments of torture to focus on the organs of sex.

Ray fantasized about increasingly grotesque bondage and torture until he could only orgasm in his thirties by masturbating and thinking about the fantasy of murdering woman. In his forties Ray began kidnapping and torturing women, subjecting them to painful sex, with the emphasis on anal sex which Stone described as so typical of sexual sadists of heterosexual orientation. He also described Paul Bernardo (abuser and husband of Karla Homolka) as similar in his desires.

By 1993 Ray had created what he called an Introductory Tape. It was sixteen pages and Ray would lure women from a bar to his home then put them in the Toy Box and immobilize them by suspending them from the ceiling with pulleys and chains.

Ray had an accomplice, Cindy Hendy, who estimated that Ray killed perhaps a dozen or several dozen women but Ray eliminated any remains, so the true number remains unknown.

Stone pointed out that at this point he had studied murders for over twenty years. He had studied murderers for twenty years. He told a colleague he could not get past the first few pages of the Introductory Tape. A locksmith who opened the trailer for police felt an evil presence in the air and wanted to get away.

Stone reprinted just a few sentences from the tape but I can assure you, for a victim, in the context of being suspended and bound tightly, her mouth covered in duct tape hearing about what is about to happen to her must have been terrifying. 

In the evidence compiled against Ray is a file entitled Copies of Drawings Illustrated Women Being Subjected to Sexual Torture. It is forty-seven pages long. Ray depicted the use of various combinations of restraints and torture devices in meticulous detail, not in a way that would arouse anyone, except a sexual sadist, but his designs were intended to help him realize his fantasies as an illustrated guide, a how to book for his darkest desires. 

Make no mistake, Ray savored the humiliation, the degradation, the debasement and the suffering of women and had not the slightest bit of compassion for their suffering, their humiliation or ultimately their deaths. 

I try to be charitable and possibly even optimistic about human beings, but, well, I am sorry, I just can't fathom either the reform or ethical release of such a person.  It just is beyond my comprehension.