Forensic psychologist explains why America seems to have the most serial killers
Have you ever wondered why the majority of infamous serial killers that we've all read about and watched documentaries on seem to come from the United States? Well, a forensic psychologist may just have the answer.
Dr Eric Hickey specializes in serial and mass murder, victimology, and criminal profiling, spending his entire career studying and learning about the behaviors of serial killers - and he has set out to try and understand why these people do what they do.
Now, if you think of a serial killer, who first comes to mind? Jeffrey Dahmer? Ted Bundy? John Wayne Gacy? Dennis Rader? These are just a handful of some of the world's most notorious killers, but there are two things they have in common - they're men, and they're from the US.
Speaking exclusively on LADbible's Minutes With series, Dr Hickey explained. "We have to consider culture when we think about why the US has apparently so many serial killers compared to other countries.
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"And I've done some international comparisons and, you know, there are serial killers in every country I've looked at.
'In Hollywood, we glamorize violence'
"I've looked at maybe 35 countries. In Western, we see them. It's often not as reported in other countries. Homicides are not reported nearly as much. We're much more accurate in our reporting.
"We have Hollywood. And in Hollywood, we glamorize violence. A lot of societies don't do that. And so that's not part of what they do. And so that helps us understand it. And of course we have domestic violence, and we have a lot of that."
He adds: "And with that in the open, we have all these movies and documentaries and stories. And so it brings people's attention to that. And so some guy says, 'Oh, I can do that. I can do better than that. I can kill more people'.
"That's why we have so many mass murders, attempted mass murders in the United States."
Dr Hickey went on to lift the lid on why men are more likely to commit such heinous crimes, telling LADbible that this behaviour usually stems 'from childhood trauma'.
'Women generally find other ways to deal with their trauma than men'
"We've learned that men and women respond differently to trauma and how they handle that trauma," he says. "And some turn to violence and women generally tend not to turn to violence when they do other things.
"That's why we only have maybe 16 percent of serial killers are female, because women generally find other ways to deal with their trauma than men. And then we're socialised differently."
'They have remorse for their lives being wasted'
Later in the episode, Dr Hickey also elaborates on why serial killers don't have empathy or remorse for their victims.
Giving an example of Jeffrey Dahmer - the serial killer who drugged, assaulted and killed 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, before going on to consume their body parts - Dr Hickey says: "Necrophiles like Dahmer have remorse. Not because they've killed people. They don't connect with the victims. They have remorse for their lives being wasted.
"Dahmer said: 'My life was pathetic'. He never talked about the victims because they cannot connect to the victims."
"They don't have that empathy. They lack empathy. That's one of the hallmarks of these people. They lack the empathy. They lack the ability to have attachments to people."
Watch the full Minutes With episode here:
'They don't want to remember the victims'
He goes on: "However, with necrophiles, none of them are psychopaths. They're sociopaths. So, because they have connections. They have attachments to bodies, right? Dead people.
"But they don't have emotional attachment to them, whereas, like, you have a domestic violence situation, someone killed their spouse, they may have loved that spouse, they may have hated them, but when you talk about people who are true psychopaths who kill them, they don't have any connections at all.
"Sociopaths also, some are serial killers, but they have connection. They have attachment to people. So the question is, 'Do they have any feelings about the victims?'
"They never talk about the victims. They don't want to remember them."
Topics: True crime, Crime, Features
Emily Puckering