Henderson 1

Andrew Henderson

Prof. Archer

ENGL 20803

23 April 2019

Assessing Childhood Development in Serial Killers

Jeffrey Dahmer, John Gacy, Edmund Kemper, these names bring to mind thoughts of

vicious acts of killings that left their imprint on American minds for years to come. They were

horrible, gruesome murders that shocked the nation and confused many people how it was

possible that human beings could do this to one another without being caught. There has been

much debate regarding the idea of how these men were driven to become serial killers, such as

whether or not individuals are born like this or if there are underlying events that lead them to

this from their upbringing as a child. The behavior of various serial killers can more often than

not be traced back to childhood abuses or neglect, and in so doing can provide explanations and

awareness for as to why these men chose to commit countless murders.

Jeffrey Dahmer, born May 21, 1960 to Joyce and Lionell Dahmer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

is a notorious serial killer who in his lifetime committed 17 murders. He was a gruesome killer,

raping and dismembering his victims, mostly consisting of boys and younger men. He even

resorted to cannibalism at one point, eating the flesh of his victims for the sole purpose of

possessing absolute control. Dahmer’s first murder was not like the others. His primary murder

spree took place mostly in the early 1990s, but Dahmer got his first taste for blood in 1978 when

he was only 18 years old. Weeks after graduating high school, Dahmer was driving along the

road and found a young Steven Hicks on his way from a rock concert. Dahmer invited Hicks into

his home under the presumption that the two would drink some alcohol and continue the party
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that Hicks had just come from. After hanging out for a while, Steven expressed his desire to

leave and be on his way, but Dahmer simply “didn’t want him to” so he struck him over the head

multiple times with a dumbbell weight (Purcell 77). Then he strangled him on the floor, stripped

off his victim’s clothes and pleasured himself over the dead 19-year-old. From there he began the

process of dealing with the remains of the boy, he dissected the body in the basement of his

house and dissolved the body parts in acid. The flesh-acid solution was then poured down the

drain and then Dahmer smashed the bones into dust and tossed the flurries of powder in the

woods in his backyard (Higgs 14). It all seemed too simple for the high school graduate and

afterwards he was calm and collected. His parents had moved out of the home since they were

just recently divorced, so nobody was home, and it was highly unlikely that anyone would be

looking for the boy in Milwaukee since he was out of town. Jeffrey Dahmer got his first taste for

blood on that fateful day in June, and from that point on he felt this necessity to kill, an

underlying feeling that gnawed at his very being until he killed again. Dahmer had this incessant

desire for control since it was deprived of him as a child.

As an infant, Dahmer was severely neglected by his mother and father. His mother refused to

breastfeed him because she found it tedious and tiring. His father, Lionel, was always at work

performing his studies which left little Jeffrey Dahmer devoid of any care or attention received

by any parental figure in his life. This would later lead Dahmer to a life of solitude, but for now

it simply was a part of his childhood development. His mother ill and with a father needing to

take of her, Dahmer found himself often times alone (Masters 27). Growing up, Dahmer is not

what you would classify as a normal kid. He had alcohol abuse issues, as well as social exclusion

throughout his years in high school. As a loner, Dahmer found himself with an increasing

fascination with the dissection of animals. Son of a chemist, Dahmer had an ample supply of
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various acids to which he would dissolve the flesh and bones of dead animals that he had found

or killed himself. At the age of four, Dahmer began collection the bones of rats and other rodents

that were roaming around his property. He would pick up the bones and let them fall into his

hand, “oddly thrilled by the sound they made.” (Silva 2). From this early fascination with

animals, the future serial killer then began putting his focus on the human body and feeling an

innate desire to understand and see how the skeleton was interconnected. By the time he reached

puberty and developed sexually, this desire brought itself forward with full force and began to

consume Dahmer’s way of life. While he was in high school, he “stole a shop-window dummy

and lay with it in bed when his parents were not home” (Martnes 300). This would be

foreshadowing to some of Dahmer’s future actions that he would later commit in his murderous

years. Jeffrey Dahmer was deprived of control all of his life. He had no control over his parents’

divorce at home, he was a loner at school and bullied somewhat, and then as a homosexual

Dahmer found frustration with expressing his desires. He was a man who had no control in

nearly every aspect of his life. He possessed a human shaped object that he solely had complete

and utter dominance over, especially with regards to sex. Dahmer sought out to have a zombie-

esque sex slave in which he had authority over it. Eventually Dahmer’s pseudo sex slave was not

enough for his desires and he soon found himself prowling the local night clubs in search of

potential victims.

Edmund Kemper in his childhood had a horrible relationship with his mother behind closed

doors. He was born a very large baby, weighing in at 13 pounds. As a young boy Kemper found

a fascinating with cruelty to animals. He buried the family cat alive, and then once it had died,

decapitated the head and placed it on a stick. Kemper was very close to his father and was

devastated when they split and forced to live with his mother. They had a horrible relationship
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together; she was an alcoholic which did not help their already fragile connection. He was

constantly verbally abused and berated by his mother, often hearing on a daily basis what a

disappointment he was and how he should’ve never been born. She would lock him in the closet

out of fear that he would hurt his sisters. There was nothing he could do about it either, because

his mother had absolute control over her son. Later in life at the age of 15, he got into an

argument with his grandmother and fatally shot her in the back of the head with a hunting rifle,

then proceeded to kill his grandfather before he found out about his wife being dead. He was

diagnosed with multiple mental disorders and placed in a psychiatric hospital (Bonn). Growing

with severe mental and physical abuse drove Kemper to process stress and anger in very

different ways than a normal individual would. Therefore, for someone to have that kind of

upbringing it would be seen as almost assumed that he would lash out in the way he did.

John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago, Illinois to Marion and John Stanley Gacy. Here

Gacy had a traumatic upbringing, primarily from his father. Gacy’s father was an alcoholic and

would constantly physically abuse his son, often for being overweight. It would not be a rare

occurrence to find Mr. Gacy beating his son with a leather belt for very simple mistakes while

working on cars out in the garage. His father would do this on a regular basis, and also give

verbal abuse, often stating that he was “never good enough” (Cahill 1986). His mother attempted

to protect Gacy from his abusive father, but this was only met with more insults and abuses from

his father. Mr. Gacy was trying to do what he felt would make his son a man, but the pain he put

his son through at such a young age lead Gacy to commit countless numbers of murders on

young boys. This sexual desire Gacy possessed toward children began as a child, when he was

caught attempting to fondle another girl his age, to which Gacy was beat with a leather belt yet

again. That same year, Gacy was molested by a contractor that was a family friend of the Gacy’s.
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He did not feel as though he could tell his father about these abuses and traumatic experiences

because he was deathly afraid his father would beat him as a result of it. As a student, Gacy was

a bit of a loner because of his weight and he was not involved in any sports due to a heart

problem. This left the poor boy as an easy target for bullying by other children. The world John

Gacy lived in was one of constant verbal and physical abuse that was inescapable. Later on in

life, Gacy would murder a total of 33 teenage boys throughout his criminal career.

For most of the 20th century, it was a widely held belief that criminals are born the way they

are, not made. In a comparison of individuals, there is a higher likelihood of criminal behavior if

the individuals in question are born with various genetic disorders such as schizophrenia. People

are more prone to exhibit criminal like behavior if they are born with these issues in oppose to

individuals without them. In addition to this, people born into families of past criminal behavior

are more likely to become criminals themselves. Children of criminal parents are more than

twice as likely to exhibit criminal behavior themselves. From this we can understand that

individuals can be born to commit crime at a higher probability than an individual with no

criminal parents. There is a transfer of criminal life from generation to generation within the

United States. This can obviously be attributed to things such as socioeconomic status or drug

abuse, but nevertheless there still is a higher chance of breaking the law. Men are also more

likely to commit criminal acts than women are, so by that logic men are more likely to become

serial killers than women are (Dennet). Some people are naturally born to be killers, in that they

have a higher likelihood of going into a life of crime merely from having a biological criminal

parent. Babies grow up watching their parents to understand how to correctly act in the world.

So, if a child is going through and seeing their parents act a certain way, then that child will

believe that this is the correct way that individuals operate in daily life. In essence, it appears as
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though some people are predisposed to become criminals in the future, or at least have a higher

chance of it.

Childhood neglect more often than not will start within their family. As a baby they

become attached to their parent, so when the parents are neglectful, abusive, or in general not

around, this has been linked to impulsive behavior, delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse, and

suicide. Families are a child’s first figures in the socialization process and if a child has a

neglectful family, the associated outcomes are usually impulsive behavior, delinquency, drug or

alcohol abuse, and even suicide. If children do not receive a proper upbringing then they won’t

know how to socially interact with other people, so that leads to them being a target from others

later in life. They are most at risk when they are very young. Child maltreatment is one of the

deadliest forms of neglect. Without the support from one’s family at a very young age, children

will exhibit behavior that lashes out at others. They express characteristics that would differ from

the societal norm, and in the process, they are further excluded of society. From a child’s very

early stages of life, they are constantly learning. They are always taking in new information,

processing it, and then outputting a response, however simple it may be. Those events that a

child undergoes can have a lot of impact on their development and eventually elicits personality

traits later on in adult life. Childhood trauma has a direct link to behavioral changes in adulthood.

Children that are neglected are more likely to be depressed later on in adulthood than a child that

received proper care. A child that experiences constant abuse will more often than not grow up

with various negative traits. Inability to deal with stress and anger is one of the primary factors

that is most commonly seen in children with abusive parents. The moral character of children can

greatly be affected if they are abused and or neglected. If you were to compare two adults, one

that was neglected and abused, “differences [would be] found between maltreated and
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nonmaltreated children’s moral and social judgments.” (Hildyard 682). This is applicable to our

argument through the idea that it might seem plausible that our killers would not be able to

distinguish the true moral nature of their murders. To them, killing might seem not as horrible of

an act than what a normal person would see it as.

These various traits in troublesome individuals such as cruelty to animals, dependency on

alcohol or drugs, physical abuse, or exclusion from society can all be observed and given

treatment for through the means of therapy. These individuals that have had poor upbringings

have an impulse to kill in the way that they do, and they more often than not will do it as a way

of obtaining control. They lack a coping mechanism to deal with the stresses they have endured

throughout the entirety of their lives. This underlying instinct to have control is more often than

not something that arises from childhood, therefore being able to recognize these habits and

actions early on would limit or even eliminate the serial killer’s obsessive compulsion to kill. If

individuals of rough backgrounds are to exhibit the signs of serial killers in the way that Dahmer,

Gacy, or Kemper did, then it would be beneficial to them and society to intervene and offer

treatment, so that the vicious acts of killings would not occur. These men have had severe

childhood developmental problems that have played a key role in the actions that they later

undertook in life where they murdered countless numbers of people. These serial killers suffered

from mental problems, childhood neglects and abuses, and above inability to operate normally in

society. As it is shown that childhood maltreatment is correlated to later problems in adulthood

related to coping mechanisms, it can reasonably be inferred from the research that being able to

recognize these problems at an early age would be beneficial to children around the world. By

intervening and placing children in special care, where they can receive proper treatment, we
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would be able to severely diminish crime and murders, especially with regards to serial murders

like those of Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, and Edmund Kemper.

The stories of Jeffrey Dahmer, Edmund Kemper, John Wayne Gacy are all filled with

stories of tremendous sadness and pain. They were brought into this world dealing with issues

that a normal individual would never have to deal with on a daily basis. They were all verbally

abused, neglected, and tormented by their parents that drove them to lash out in the way that they

did. Proper childcare plays a primary role in the development to adulthood and these men simply

were not raised in a loving environment so it would seem inevitable that they would grow up to

become vicious murderers that left their imprint on society for years to come. Their upbringings

are directly correlated to how they acted as adults.

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horror-tale-the-twisted-co-ed-killer.

Cahill, Tim (1986). Buried Dreams: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer. Bantam Books. ISBN 0-

553-05115-6. OCLC 12421532.

Dennett, Daniel. “Are Criminals Born or Made?” Prospect Magazine Are Criminals Born or

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violence-adrian-raine-daniel-dennett-review.

Higgs, Tamara, "Jeffrey Dahmer: Psychopathy and Neglect" (2012). All Regis University eses.

240. h ps://epublications.regis.edu/theses/240

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Comparative Criminology 4 9.3 (2005): 298¬307. Web. 28 Apr. 2016.

Masters, Brian (1993). The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-

59194-9.
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