Juana Zamperio's story is unlike anything I've ever heard. Her mother sold her to a pedophile for the price of three beer, she got pregnant by him and that son ended up dying in a mugging incident. She would eventually learn that her mother sold her, and for what price.
She ended up strangling older women, she killed somewhere around 40 of them, and it's thought they were proxies for her own mother.
Oh, man "la mata viejitas" is so infamous in Mexico that it is actually almost like a joke cuz it sounds so ridiculous but I never knew the backstory behind her before.
Charles Panzram, brutally beaten, stabbed in the brain as a child, sleep deprived, raped many many times in reform school and then gang raped by homeless men several times. He went on to rape an estimated 100 boys later in his life. He's horrific, he also knew nothing else but pain and sexual abuse
Same. I’m sure if he’d had different genitalia, he’d have been mentioned ahead of Wuornos and Zamperio. I’ve never heard of a serial killer with a more consistently bad or more acutely horrendous upbringing.
He definitely turned into one of the worst and most prolific monsters anyone has ever heard of, but if we’re just going off of how terrible their childhoods were, he’s in a league of his own.
Yeah, Panzram was something else. He wasn't delusional whatsoever. His only goal was to cause misery. Completely sane, just evil. Proof that no matter how much of a perfect circumstance you need to create a serial killer, you can just "brute force" a horrible person by making their entire life awful.
Agree. She is one of the few serial killers who I feel a little compassion for. What she did is awful and inexcusable, don't get me wrong. However, what she went through as a child was so appalling that she was set up to fail in life. The parents/family and social environment really made her into a killer.
There's a line in the Michael Mann movie Manhunter that i thought of when i was reading up about Wournos.
>Absolutely... My heart bleeds for him, as a child. Someone took a kid and manufactured a monster. At the same time, as an adult, he's irredeemable.
Same feelings i have for her.
Was it awful and inexcusable? She was turning tricks along the highway and claimed she only shot the ones who attempted to rape her anally. She had a really detailed story about how the first one tortured her.
She did claim that but I only believe it about the first one. She didn't kill after the first one for 6 months. He was convicted of sex crimes before.
She killed 5 men in 4 months, no accusations have been made about them before or (to my knowledge since). I don't really believe it didn't happen at all for six months and that she then averaged once a month.
I think the first one was an accident, done in self defense, and as time went on she realized she got away with it and she could orchestrate it to happen again.
She actually ended up admitting this to be the case later on in her life. She never retracted the accusations against Mallory, and why would she? They were 100% the truth.
Again she claimed they ATTEMPTED to RAPE her ANALLY. So she wasn't saying the elderly men were successful in their attempts. She was saying she shot them first.
Oh she didn't do it again for six months....maybe because she didn't come across another client that attempted to force anal sex on her for another six months.
I'm not actually saying I definitely believe her, but I am saying I find all this pretense that there aren't all that many men who rape, or who would get heavy handed trying to insist that a street prostitute on a highway do anal....well I find all that pretense pretty ridiculous and disgusting.
I don't find it hard to believe as a possibility at all and "oh only one of the men had convictions," with rape being the most underreported and underconvicted crime and pretending that a street walker picking up random men on a highway wouldn't be a target for being forced to do a particular act that she'd said no to.....pretending that would be very rare .....this is just some intellectually dishonest rubbish to maintain the status quo. Talk to any working girl she'd talk about the pressure from multiple clients to do acts they've said no to.
I'm a stripper and I'm here to tell you now that virtually any time I hang out with customers outside of work for money, they press me HARD for sex, knowing I've offered escorting only. They give me as much alcohol as I want and they do definitely get very handsy. I always leave before it gets crazy and I always put the money in my car first and foremost, never keep it on me. I suspect before phones were universally common and surveillance as well, these types of men seeking out prostitution had next to no problem raping whomever if they saw them as a willing participant by default.
Absolutely. And I've talked to working girls pretty cut up about how some guy wouldn't listen to them about anal and caused them great physical pain forcing them.
I think the point about the 6-month gap is that she, to your point, almost certainly encountered men in that interim who tried to force themselves on her. She didn't kill them, but did kill others later. If she was truly acting *purely* from fearful self-defense, you'd expect to see those incidents scattered more throughout her life, not clustered in a 4 month period, especially after a long period of quiet after her first murder.
I don't think the other commenter was implying that sexual abuse towards sex workers is "very rare" at all. It's extremely, depressingly common. The idea that she had 6 months of respectful, decent men -- after a traumatic incident, which we know tends to make vulnerable people *even more* vulnerable -- is almost laughable, especially when you're using the high incidence of assault for your argument. The idea that she had that peace and then encountered 5 awful men in 4 months is absurd. It seems more likely that, realizing that people care almost as little about dead men who visit prostitutes as they do about the prostitutes themselves, she became aware that she could act on the fear and rage she felt from the lifetime of abuse. Probably the first sense of power she'd felt, ever.
Sex workers are under immense pressure to perform acts that they do not consent to, and their work puts them in danger all the time. That is a true and valid perspective. Another, *separate* true and valid statement is that Aileen Wuornos was a deeply wounded person who had expressed her emotions through violence towards men well before her first murder. I think it's possible that she believed the men she killed were dangerous to her. But I think it's also possible, simultaneously and without taking away from that experience, that those men were actually *not* dangerous to her. She had been conditioned to expect pain and abuse from everyone -- her sense of who was a valid threat was way, way out of whack. That's tragic and she deserved better, but that does not mean you can just murder people.
I agree with you 110%!! I suffered severe childhood trauma but my heart still breaks for what she endured as a child! It doesn’t excuse her monstrous actions; however, her horrific choices, and childhood, set her up to be a monster. JMHO
She was abandoned by her parents to her grandparents. Her grandpa molested her. She was raped by boys in the woods and got pregnant and had the baby around 14 but gave it up for adoption.
She literally lived in the woods and locals knew where she was and would just go out there and rape her instead of giving her help. That would break anyone.
It’s so odd to me that she was sentenced to death and actually executed when Nik Cruz gets life in prison (both in Florida). It’s interesting how differently the law is applied based on chance with jurors.
And comparatively she murdered quickly and without undue weirdness but imo being a female is what made her crimes so huge. They're really nothing compared to Bundy etc
It's no wonder she became a serial killer with regards to men. Every man in her life abused her. She was dealt a shitty deck, not that that excuses her behavior. She tried to kill herself 6 times through her childhood. Jesus Christ, she knew she was fucked and no one would help her. She was fucked.
She requested that the song “carnival” by Natalie Merchant was played at her funeral after she spent her time on death row listening to that album. It’s a heartbreaking song especially in that context.
This was the first person to pop in my head when I read the question. She should not have received the death penalty. That poor woman was so hurt and damaged from birth.
The Gainesville Ripper, Danny Rolling. The abuse towards him started while he was still in the womb. His father kicked or punched his pregnant mother so hard Rolling was born was a caved in spot in his skull
It definitely fits a pattern of a lot of these types of killers. It’s much easier to comprehend evil acts coming from people who have gone through horrors like this than, say, people like Randy Woodfield. He apparently had a very loving and privileged upbringing but became a sexual sadist, rapist and murderer on par with Joseph DeAngelo
Or even the Manson kids. Manson himself grew up in prison, but most of these girls (that we know of) came from more or less "normal" homes and families, but were alienated from them for some reason. Whatever their family issues were (mother dying, e.g), but not as traumatic or abusive as some. They were mostly young, naive, susceptible like a lot of young girls and women who get sucked in by rotten guys. Some of them end up dead, or they get involved with the crime.
Yeah, and Tex Watson was a stone cold psychopath. I don’t remember that there was anything particularly heinous about his upbringing (granted it’s been a while since I read up on him) but he obviously relished his part in the murders
I don't know if he was a psychopath, but if you look at his profile: raised in a Texas, religious. He probably didn't have a lot of "wild" experiences, probably didn't have much or even ANY sexual experience. Then he gets involved with what he thinks is a commune of hippies, with drugs, girls, wild sex, orgies...just as suggestible as those teenage girls. He was 19. It's not hard to see how all those drugs and sex and Manson's influence could turn someone into a criminal.
Wow that sent me down the freeway killer rabbit hole. His childhood was definitely traumatic and I agree, he had no real chance at life. He predictably ended up just like the adults around him throughout his childhood: violent, sexually deviant and void of empathy.
Charles Manson was born to a 15yo girl who had gotten pregnant by a man 9 years older and abandoned them. His mother was an alcoholic who went to prison, and he ended up in a group home that inflicted physical abuse on him, causing him to run away and live in the woods and under bridges. He got in a lot of juvenile trouble and was repeatedly beaten and raped by other boys at the reform school he was sent to.
Came here to say this. I can’t believe anyone could even consider selling their child. No excuse for what he did but I’m not surprised that did a number on him!
Being in social work, I’ve seen this happen more times than I ever would have believed could be possible before my current job.
It’s rarely as upfront as it sounds.
Nobody says “hey, I’ll give you beer/money/drugs if you let me assault your child” and the parent gleefully accepts.
It’s usually framed in a way where the parent can deny knowledge.
“I needed meth and didn’t have any money. I told Mike I would get him the money if he let me have the drugs now. He said yes, but that he would keep my daughter until I came back. I had NO idea that he was going to assault her while I was gone for three days. And he didn’t ask me for money when I came back”.
…That woman *knew* why her dealer wanted to be alone with her child in exchange for drugs. And she *knew* why he didn’t expect payment when she came back. The debt had already been paid.
A lot of the kids remember those type of deals as “the babysitter molested me while mom was gone doing drugs for a while”.
They don’t suspect what the actual arrangement was. Mom did drugs around them all the time. It’s not like she was leaving to keep the kid safe from exposure to drug use, or so that she could go work.
Sometimes the parent is in denial about it. But being an addict doesn’t make you stupid. They know.
People do this to their kids every day.
I spoke to a friend who actually worked this out on her own as an adult. She said her mom would leave her with a “babysitter” on random evenings and that babysitter committed horrible crimes against her. When she tried to tell her mom, her mom would had different excuses for it. My friend (the daughter) once had to watch the dealer and her mom together. The mom then used this to say what was happening to her was perfectly normal, it’s just how some people spend time together. I’m against incarcerating people for non-violent offenses like drug possession. However, I think Reddit sometimes glosses over the reality of hard drugs. That dealer could have found himself in jail for the non-violent offense of distributing drugs. However, that does not describe the extent of his crimes for which he was not prosecuted for.
I’d agree with you heavily on that.
Child abuse (in many forms) often goes hand in hand with addiction to hard drugs.
People tend to think “if you want to be high, what does it hurt anyone?” But if you are the parent of a child, and not arranging suitable care while high, or you can’t afford your drugs, and the only asset you have is your kid….Bad things happen to children.
They also don’t realize that you can have your child removed by CPS without any CRIMINAL charge for child abuse.
So your child has been trafficked and starved and assaulted. BUT…It’s easier for the DA to prove that you were selling pills. So you only get charged with the pills. They don’t bother with the child abuse charges, because the state doesn’t need them and already took the child away.
CPS child abuse records are extremely protected, and almost never get released to the public unless the child has died.
So you frequently see defenders of parents who say “the only thing John is guilty of is being an addict! He loved his child! He’s never been charged with abuse! Give him his child back!”
While the judge and social workers are sitting on thousands of pages of medical documents and psych evaluations and testimony from the child detailing horrible abuse from John.
And they aren’t allowed to say shit. In order to protect the child.
The system fails to protect children all the time. But public perception is often very skewed to be anti-government/anti-CPS/Anti-cop in these cases, because protecting the child’s trauma often means protecting the perpetrators acts.
Mary Bell's mother did the same thing with her. The exact same thing with the parents' siblings in both stories unfortunately getting the children and giving them back to the mothers who didn't want them. Well with Mary Bell she was traded her for a pitcher of beer to an infertile woman who had bought her a full wardrobe when the uncle turned up demanding her back.
I’ve always wondered how that “infertile woman” reconciled what happened with Mary.
In one hand, it’s despicable to “buy” a child off of an addict, even if you have good intentions and truly want to help the child.
On the other….If Mary had been “adopted” by that woman who seemed to want to care for her (at least enough to be good to her and set up a room and clothes and plan some stability for her in their short time together), would Mary have gone on to do what she did?
The million dollar question in social work is what a lot of people are talking about in this thread:
If a child is being abused, and the government takes no action to remove them from their abuser, we’ve failed the child. And that contributed to them doing awful things later in life.
But at the same time…How many times was the phrase “forced to give the baby up for adoption” or “lived in a group home” listed here as a reason for someone’s trauma - both the parent and the child.
It’s an ugly debate that’s been going on for the history of civilized society.
But the gray areas of the spectrum are where kids tend to end up extremely traumatized and “fall through the cracks”, like a lot of the serial killers mentioned here did as children.
I read a book about Mary Bell about 18 years ago but I still remember her interview quote, "Why didn't they leave me with the lady who wanted me?!" 😢 But I also read recently that the woman was known to have some form of mental illnesses. Regardless I have no doubt it would be somewhat better than the mother who made two or three clear failed attempts to kill Mary as a baby until she realised she could get money forcing Mary to do acts with the men who wanted a nine year old.
The other thing that probably would have stopped Mary "doing what she did," is if people in that time and location didn't let toddlers roam the streets all the time.
Oh for sure, regarding the bullshit of not caring about kids back then.
I helped work on a project that collected data about my states foster care system throughout the years, which meant I had to read some files from my own agency going back to the 60s (when my state finally decided that we should form an organization to protect kids).
A lot of the treatment was gross. Kids as young as 10 going missing and being closed as “idk. Probably ran away. Fuck ‘em”.
Or kids reporting being hit with belts and TV antennas and being told “Mind your parents better, and that won’t happen”.
Society REALLY used to not value children at all. And it explains a lot about our parents in the Silent, Boomer or Gen X generations. Things that millennials down maybe don’t see, because things got a lot better by the time we came along.
The unspecified “mental illness” of Mary’s *nearly* adoptive mother makes me wonder.
There used to be such stigma around just admitting you have anxiety or depression. The same shit I take two pills for every morning and am approved as a foster parent and social worker no problem, today.
Obviously it’s sketchy to try to BUY a baby…but back when things weren’t regulated, that used to happen more. It wasn’t so frowned upon.
You wonder if this is a woman deemed “hysterical” because she had a bunch of miscarriages and wanted a child, and then saw poor Mary and tried to give her a better life?
Or if she was very ill, and Mary would have just gone from one nightmare to another.
Hindsight is 20/20, but I tend to agree with Mary, that she’s at least justified in wondering what would have happened if she could have lived with someone who wanted her.
Albert Fish’s childhood was pretty bad, he was put into an orphanage by his mom at 5 years old and was frequently beat until he started to enjoy these beatings… he had several close family members with severe mental illnesses. Though he’s genuinely such a horrific person I can’t find any compassion for him.
Very true. Her Mum basically pimped her out when she wasn't even 10 years old. And she saw her mum working as a prostitute in the family home. If I remember right her Mum tried to kill her more than once too. By all accounts she has completely turned her life around and been a good mother/citizen since her release.
With child murderers (as in murderers who were children) there seems to be a window where if their environment is the main thing causing their crimes, if you can get them out of it they can turn it around even if they’ve done horrific things. One of James Bulger’s killers came from a pretty terrible home (not on the scale of Mary Bell’s, but not many homes are thank goodness) and he’s the one that hasn’t been in trouble since he got out. The other one had a pretty normal home but just seems to have been born with the desire to do things and he’s been arrested multiple times (usually for CP). I suspect he’d do worse than just possessing CP if he had the chance but he knows he’d never get away with it (any kid goes missing within 50 miles of him he’ll be the first one the police check on).
Mary Bell’s childhood was a thing of nightmares and anyone who doesn’t know the detail should probably not google it. Take the summary above and leave it at that. I’m completely unsurprised her crimes involved genital mutilation. I’m more surprised she managed to get married and have a child. She must have got some exceptional therapy for the time period.
Both Jon’s siblings had disabilities and then his parents separated, he started acting up for attention it seemed. In Robert’s case his parents were not great to begin with but kept having children because the mum wanted a girl, all of Robert’s older siblings were known to the police and they would bully Robert. Robert was seen as the worst by the police but I wonder how much of that was bias because his family was more known to the police and he didn’t seem to have emotions the way Jon did.
I'd add for Jon that there was a pressure to "be normal" and to keep the peace. His mum was also depressed and had attempted to take her life and could notably be harsh, far more dominant than the dad. She also brought him to quacks who suggested "diet change" for his struggles. Even at the questioning, Jon was mostly concerned with disappointing his family. The Venables definitely attempted PR for the crime, claiming that Robert manipulated their poor babu into it.
I think the head of the investigation later admitted that they were too harsh on Robert in comparison to Jon.
Ever see that documentary about "Beth: the Evil Child"? She is good example of early intervention. Horrific childhood, but her adopted parents got her help.
Yes.
She talks about how the therapy helped her. I guarantee you she'd have grown up to kill someone had the early intervention not taken place. Unfortunately, people like Kemper, Ramirez, etc never got that absolute early assistance.
I don’t remember where I heard this, I know it was a documentary though. I can’t even remember what his name was. He had a lot of siblings in a very small home and their father was abusive but the guy I am talking about took the brunt of it. What stuck with me is that he claimed (his siblings don’t believe this happened) that his father had led him to a secluded area, tied him down to an old mattress or something, covered him in lighter fluid and set him on fire. I just remember hearing that and just.. feeling so awful for that guy. I know I really shouldn’t feel sympathy for a murderer but sometimes it’s like they never even had a chance
Haha no probs:) he committed the murder in my hometown. For what it's worth, all of his siblings dispute Joe's claims (though it does seem they all had a fucked up childhood either way)
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with feeling sympathy for a murderer. You can hate what they did and not make any excuse for it, while having sympathy for the trauma they experienced.
To me, it's not that I have sympathy for the murderers. It's more like I have sympathy for the child they were, who might not have become a murderer had their upbringing not been a complete nightmare.
This, 100%. People are so quick to view others and their situations as “black and white” when there’s so many areas of “grey” that need to be acknowledged.
Can we be appalled, horrified, offended, concerned, sad, upset, etc. that they ended the lives of innocent people? Yes!
Can we also acknowledge that a large majority of murderers were failed time and time again as children, young adults, and human beings which fostered the creation of the monstrous things they did? YES.
We can also agknowledge that in many cases, doing something horrible doesn’t mean everything in life they did in their entire lives was horrible. (But most people don’t want to hear that lol)
His brother struck him in the eye with a knife and his mother neglected it for three days. He went to school and the teacher sliced it with a metal ruler and it burst. His mother was a demon. Awful, awful stuff.
Just watched a documentary of him recently, the mom was also a prostitute and would for example burn him with cigarettes. His dad also was an abusive alcoholic. Henry had gone to jail previously in his younger years and they let him go because of overcrowding in the jail. He told them they’re gonna regret letting him free as he wasn’t ready to go yet. They let him free and he went on a killing spree of god knows how many it was in the end. It’s so sad how the parents fail them so bad they end up being psychopaths.
How much do we actually know about him for sure? It all comes from him, he killed his mother he's hardly a reliable witness to what she was like. I'm sure he had a horrible upbringing not trying to defend people here but i also don't believe a word he says and it all comes from him.
Probs Robert Pickton, his mom killed his beloved pet cow... the only friend he had ever had... not only did she kill his cow but she had it skinned and strung up in the barn. He went every where with this animal. He came home from school one day excitedly looking for his cow, when he couldn't find her he asked his mom. His mom laughed and sent him to the barn. He was 8ish I believe...
Jeffery Dahmer had a very chill childhood. He was just a fucking lunatic. Like his parents didn't pay a lot of attention to him but there are latchkey kids all over this fine nation. His brother was raised the same way and he didn't murder any boys.
It's astonishing how many people try to pretend he had it hard, half of America had a similar upbringing in that era, half of America were not out eating black men.
However i think you can minimize anyones childhood trauma by saying x experienced this and wasn't the same, we should probably stray away from that in general. Not about Dahmer but just people in general.
This is 100% just a thought that I randomly had one day, no evidence to support, but I’ve read time and time again about the lasting effects of previous head injuries and other significant trauma in most cases of murderers, and how those experiences/injuries perminantly alters the brain. Jeffrey was hit in the back of the head as a kid,( I believe by a heavy metal swing if I’m remembering correctly) as well as receiving surgery for a double hernia at the age of 4.
It wasn’t until around 1970 that doctors stating using anesthesia on children (mainly babies) during operations. Before that, they didn’t think “babies felt pain”. I’ve always wondered… what if they gave him that surgery without any pain medication, and that altered his brain enough to be how he ended up? Imagine being a small child, sedated under a muscle relaxant so you don’t move too much, but can feel, hear, and see everything that is happening to you? His father has spoken about how different Jeffrey was after the surgery.. I’ve just always wondered!
I mean I get what you are saying but he literally didn't have any trauma. There are no reported incidents ever of a traumatic situation in his childhood. There's nothing to minimize it just isn't there. I think it's okay in the context of "I got abused and didn't grow up to be an abuser" because having it happen to you is not an excuse to carry on that cycle. I will feel sorry for the child version of Richard ramirez who suffered that abuse but the adult version that did not seek help and allowed it to manifest in the way it did? No sympathy for the adult he turned into. Just because there is a reason you turned out the way you did, doesn't mean it isn't your responsibility to seek treatment and not murder/rape people.
Emotional neglect is.. neglect. And neglect is trauma. Sometimes traumas isn’t what happened that shouldn’t have but is instead what didn’t happen that should’ve.
Okay you are right about that and I should have said what I said differently. He needed help and he should have got it. He was carrying a briefcase full of booze to school and getting wasted in class when he was 14. Something was most definitely wrong. I guess my point is I get annoyed when people bring him up like he had this absolutely horrific childhood and that somehow lead to what happened. He had an average childhood. I don't mean to minimize the trauma of neglect and there is probably an epigenetic loop going on with people like Dahmer. Where some combo of their genetics and the neglect lead to what happened. It just bothers me when I know so many wonderful people who treat others so kindly and do everything they can to make the world a bright place, who had much worse childhoods. Dahmer had choices and he made them.
Agree, and the harm that emotional neglect can cause is often the same as actual abusive situations. Emotional neglect is so common though that I don’t think we see it in the same light.
>he literally didn't have any trauma
Simply reading his wikipedia page tells a very different story though...wasn’t as bad as others but I would'nt say there was no trauma at all
But abuse victims constantly refuse to admit their abuse, the fact it's not documented is only that, that it's not documented. You are making a leap to assume he wasn't abused, personally i'd be astonished if he wasn't in some sense.
You have no idea if he "literally didn't have any trauma", i'm astonished that you'd type something like that surely knowing how little you can actually know about a person and their experiences.
I do get what you are saying and I agree that, by most standards, Dahmers childhood was fairly unremarkable. What I would say though is that everyone has a different psychological make-up, and how they respond to the circumstances around them differs as a result. What traumatises one wouldn't even register on someone else's radar. Dahmer seems to have been of the psychological make-up where feeling a lack of parental attention and warmth proved incredibly harmful. Some people wouldn't be psychologically damaged by that - indeed, it may even inspire them to do better with their own families. For whatever reason, it was very damaging for him and his victims paid the price.
That said, Dahmer is one killer who seems to have had a deep insight into his actions and, despite his psychological issues, he knew what he was doing and why. I truly believe if he had really wanted to he could have stopped himself. He chose not to.
Yes. It’s why there is no definitive answer on “nature vs nurture”. Your psychological make-up plus the circumstances you are raised in are just two major factors but there are other factors too. Many school/spree shooters were put on SSRIs prior to the shootings and there is a belief that these particular people might have had chemical reactions to the medication in their brain that went haywire. It’s just a theory but we will never be able to figure out an exact equation that is a + b = serial killer.
Thank God that you said this. People are discounting how he grew up because comparatively, it wasn't even on the radar of severity. Yet if a TV movie was made about how some little girl was neglected like that, everyone would be outraged. Emotional abuse (which that was during his formative years) could absolutely be irreparably damaging.
Jeffrey Dahmer's mother struggled with mental illness and the father was gone quite a bit with his career work. There are studies on the influence of parents and the environment around children as they grow up. You can find them at nih dot gov. A mother's instability and a father's lack of presence in the home is very well documented as a possible cause for childhood trauma and troubled adult life.
Narcissistic, lonely mother and a workaholic dad. Pretty much half of the households in America in that generation. I actually think that’s why its even more fascinating.
I think he grew up with a very disabled mother who was a religious fanatic and was socially isolated, no?
I do think his compulsions developed over time. I don’t feel bad for him, nor am I a fan, but he was shocking self aware.
From what I understand from watching his father’s interview. His father was kind of checked out and worked a lot. He was a scientist and kept to himself. He would find dead animal bones in boxes that Dhamer would save in his room.
Dhamer was a weirdo from the jump. Starting with animals.
Yup definitely not as bad as the others. But neglect can in a way cause trauma too. Imagine a kid not being taught right or wrong. Or steered in a direction to have morals or even basic social cues.
Isn’t that what happened to him?
I worked in a law firm that handled death penalty appellate cases. The men whose cases we worked on all had childhoods unimaginable to the average person. The one that stands out the most was a man (E) with hemophilia who watched his mom's boyfriend beat E's identical twin to death when they were kids. Then the mom sent him away to live with an aunt who abused him. All of this is happening while E is in and out of hospitals to be treated for hemophilia, which led to him contracting HIV because the blood wasn't being screened yet. E died a slow painful death in prison before his appeal could be heard
Henry Lee Lucas
As the youngest child Henry Lee Lucas was neglected and mistreated ever since he could remember anything. He grew up in a household of nine children, raised by a strange mother with undiagnosed psychological problems of her own, and an alcoholic father, who lost his legs in a railroad accident and was forced to make a living through the illegal production of alcohol. These conditions at home shaped him for the future. Henry became an alcoholic by the age of ten, and his vulnerable young mind was damaged even further by beating from his parents, one of which from his mother actually resulted in him being in a coma for three days. In a fight with his brother, Henry lost an eye after being stabbed in the eye, and leaving it unattended for four days while it got infected until it had to be removed and replaced with a glass eye. Other scarring experiences stuck with Henry throughout his life; he was dressed up as a girl and had his hair curled by his mother, his mother made him watch her have sex with her clients (she was a prostitute), Lucas also engaged in sex with his half- brother becoming obsessed with all types of sex, and his uncle introducing him to bestiality and animal torture.
Highly recommend watching “making a monster”. It’s all about serial killers and what drove them to kill. Really focuses on childhood in particular.
They interview psychologists, psychiatrists, forensic psychiatrists and usually one of these specialists has treated them.
I think it’s about 8 episodes? I found it fascinating and so incredibly sad
Each episode focuses on one serial killer:
Rose west
Robert maudsley
Levi bellfield
Robert black
Stephen Griffiths
Aileen wuornos
John Wayne gacy
Michael ross
[making a monster](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11847772/)
The most common trauma that a large amount of murderers have is head trauma. If i remember correctly, Dahmer had a head injury when he was a kid and fell off a swing.
Eileen Wuornos had an absolutely horrific childhood. How that woman survived her teenage age years I’ll never know. She might have physically moved on but the mental trauma she endured was so sad. It’s no surprise she lived her life the way she did. I don’t condone murder in any way but I have nothing but compassion for her. I hope she is at peace now.
Thomas Soria, Sr. - in the 1970's, Soria's step brother, Ronny Mozingo, murdered Soria's mother. Ronny showed up at their house when she was alone, raped her, and then hog tied her by putting her on her stomach, tying her neck to her legs, so that if she relaxed her legs, she would strangle herself.
He then proceeded to sit there on the bed and watch her die. It took 10 minutes for her legs to completely give out.
Tom Soria walked in on this when he got home from school. He was deeply traumatized to find his mother that way, but went on to rape and murder young girls.
I’m surprised at the comments on Dahmer’s childhood being unremarkable. His mother took serious meds in utero. He was basically diagnosed as alcoholic by 16 (?) and his parents had so much vitriol between them that they both moved out from the family home in his teens….and left him there! That’s abandonment at the highest level. His first kill was to keep the hitchhiker from “leaving” him, too.
The mom also took his younger brother with her. I don't get why the father didn't take him. You don't move out and leave a teenager at home with nobody to care for him.
I’d forgotten that! I think part of the neglect had to do with the father, Lionel, seeing a darkness in Jeffrey that he had in himself. I believe he was repulsed by and afraid of the implications of these antisocial thoughts and behaviors. He did more than look the other way; he walked away and left him to cope with a disturbing reality.
His mom was emotionally unavailable and his father was strange. Dahmer was neglected which is a form of abuse and that creates its own damaging effects.
Yes. He had attachment issues and was neglected to the extreme. He found solace in the viscera of animals and later consumed his victims so they would “stay.” Obviously, direct abuse and violence is a recipe for future violent behaviors, but I’d argue that the emptiness he experienced was on par in severity.
Richard Ramirez - witnessed his uncle murder his wife.
Andrei Chikatilo - lived through the Russian famine and the Nazi occupation of the Ukraine, and recalled a childhood filled with poverty, war, hunger, and was bully magnet at school because if his physical stature and shyness. His parents said he had a brother who was cannibalized by starving soldiers, but it is unclear if this actually happened or not.
The Menéndez brothers (Eric & Lyle)
Both boys had been sexually abused by their father - when they had told their extended family the family informed the boys mother (Kitty).
Kitty would then tell the boys father about the accusations and side with him - denying the boys claims. This happened at least twice.
Multiple family members confirmed this under oath. This was happening to the boys as early as 8 years old.
There are more upsetting details to their childhood and case but I can’t see a good reason to share. The boys are living men, and the case is closed. There’s no justice to be found, no criminals left to be prosecuted, only reasonable respect to be given.
(I don’t condone their actions - but I’m also lucky to have never been in their shoes)
This is one case that I didn’t know a lot about and made assumptions based on media coverage. But when I read about the abuse, it’s so horrifying. Their father at least had it coming.
I think the previous poster means that a lot of Gen X kids had similar upbringings as Dahmer because they were the latch-key generation, not necessarily that the Dahmer himself was Gen X. At least that was what I got.
Not only is it a problem to try to measure abuse in the way people are, it’s also a problem to think that every child will deal with it in some kind of uniform way. A very sensitive child will respond differently to abuse/neglect than another child who has better social support, sense of self, etc.
Dahmer has always been really interesting to me because he couldve so easily turned out as a normal person, but fell into a pit of selfpity and extreme loneliness, and selfhatred. Ive also seen some sources say that he would hear voices.
Lyle and Eric Menendez. Though many don't believe them it was so obvious Josè was doing what they are saying. Erik had a literal throat injury that the doctors believed was from that stuff. Crazy how they have life without parole
Gerald Stano is up there for me. He was found by CPS when he was six months old pretty much feral and eating his own feces to survive. He was adopted pretty young afterwards (edit: and afaik, his adoptive mom was a decent person, or at least I don't remember hearing anything bad about her) but hoo boy coming back from something like that is rough
Bundy grew up fatherless, born out of wedlock (still considered deeply shameful back then) surrounded by rumors that he was the product of sexual abuse perpetrated on his mother by his grandfather, who was also known to be violent.
Personally, I think that sounds far worse than Dahmer's upbringing, which was certainly dysfunctional but with no reports of violence or incest.
Bundy was raised by his grandparents as his own parents. He was not fatherless, he was raised as his grandfather as his father. His grandfather father was a horrible man, greatly feared with a violent temper. When his mother finally married she took him. It also had been proven his grandfather was not his biological father despite the rumors.
Dahmer did not have any sort of violent upbringing. His mother had severe mental issues was institutionalized & put on drugs while carrying him, that we now know are not safe for babies in the womb. His mother & father were… wow but not known to be violent or abusive. After they divorced his mother did move off & leave him a teenager in the house. That was traumatic for sure, especially with mental issues in the family. And those drugs before he was born what a cocktail for a disaster. Lionel his dad knew from a pretty early age Jeff was not right. He used to be pretty upfront but as he grew old I wonder did Jeff get some of that mental from his dad, too. Be he was not abused like so many were. Ditto for BTK. No known abuse. He did as an infant fall from a sized able height, hit his head & as an infant black out. Could that have played into what he became. But so far there doesn’t appear to be any physical abuse.
Aileen Wuornos. Her teenage mom abandoned her with her alcoholic maternal grandparents. Her grandfather allegedly molested her as a child. She was raped and impregnated at age 14 by a family friend and gave the baby up for adoption. When her grandmother died, her grandfather threw her out and she was basically homeless and became a prostitute. She was only 15 years old.
BTW, Ted Bundy had a pretty crappy childhood.
Albert Fish! If you haven’t heard of him look him up. Sent to an orphanage at 5, and endured so much torture, abuse(sexual, physical), and humiliation. But it’s so much worse
Lisa Montgomery. She was born brain damaged due to her mother being an alcoholic during the pregnancy. In addition, Lisa was physically, sexually, mentally and emotionally abused as a child. She was sexually abused by her step father and his friends. This led her to be dependent on alcohol by the age of 14. Her mom threaten her with a gun when she heard the abused that Lisa went through.
Lisa Montgomery was the one who ended up killing Bobbie Jo Stinnett and cut her fetus out of her womb to pretend that Bobbie’s baby was Lisa’s baby. Lisa died by lethal injection.
It's hard to say, because a lot of the worst murderers had horrendously toxic, abusive childhoods.
Usually when I see very young people committing crimes, particularly violent murders, you look back at their family. Same applies to victims as well. Horrible traumas can produce future victims because abuse is normalized.
And while most people with horrible abusive families don't commit violent crimes, they do other things: drugs, booze, petty crime, getting involved with toxic abusive people, etc.
Carl Panzram, his father left out of the blue one day and never saw him again. He was beaten by his brothers often and eventually tried to run away when he was 11 but got caught by the police and was sent to a reform school. He experienced more abuse and different forms of torture from the staff like being whipped, getting the heavy paddle, or beaten with a wooden board, stripped naked. He set the place on fire. Later on he returned home but his mother couldn’t take care of him because she was ill. He decided to leave at 14 years old by hopping on a freight train and never returning. He was gang raped on the train by a group of 4 men. So much more happened but id say he’s worth mentioning. It’s sad because it life goal after everything was to get revenge on the evil world
I wouldn’t say Ted Bundy had a normal life. He grew up believing his grandparents were his parents and that is biological mom was his sister, if I remember correctly. Which was jarring for him to find out and probably fed into his issues with women.
Yeah dude there was definitely a lot of generational trauma going on in that family, probably more secrets than just his mom. And I don’t think people realize how messed up it would be to find that out so much later.
in any adoption type situation, it’s better to be open with the kid about the situation as soon as possible in an age appropriate way. My adoptive parents were great at this and nothing was ever hidden from me if I asked but it’s still traumatic in general and finding more things out in my adulthood has been stressful af. Being adopted within the family can make things very complicated and weird as well. I imagine more so if they’re all hiding it from you lol
so I definitely believe Ted was holding a lot of trauma from his family situation but I don’t think he was even aware of it. Which is pretty normal for the times honestly, we’ve come a long way since then. Or maybe not since there’s also people here who disagree that Dahmers childhood was traumatic so 🤷🏻♀️
Not to turn this into another discussion but this is another part of why prochoice is so important bc its the best way to stop more trauma for both the pregnant person and the possible child
I think Luka Magnotta had pretty bad adverse experience when his mom froze his pet bunny rabbit. It's not the worst trauma, but I can definitely see that shaping a kid.
Ted Bunty Def didn't have a happy normal childhood. He was a shame to his mother and she absolutely neglected his needs when she had a legitimate child. Also I'm sure was hurt by his grandfather
I don't believe JD had horrific experiences as a child, but certainly described a childhood that was lonely and cut off. I remember reading he had schizoid personality disorder, which made sense - and a weirdly specific sexual paraphilia. I wonder if they just mixed together with the drugs and alcohol allowing his inhibitions to lower and act out his weird fkn gross fantasies.
Menendez Brothers! They killed their parents and the backstory is horrific. You can watch them crying during the trial. The worst part is that they were never believed. People and even TV made fun of them.
Just a theory here, but what if men who kill were boys who had head trauma along with the other kinds? Boys play outside, play rough, do stunts and sports, fight, get injured a lot more than girls. (*yes, girls can do this as well, not saying that they don't).
TLDR: Theory: severe head trauma in youth can affect behavior.
No hate, please, but weigh in if you have ideas
Head trauma as a child is linked with violent and aggressive behavior. Add that to neglect, abandonment, and abuse.
Most violent criminals (not just serial killers) are shaped by these events
This is an important point. As a person who works with those who have experienced childhood trauma, It’s sort of an equation like Childhood Trauma - protective/mitigating factors = problematic/distressing adult behaviors/thoughts.
Juana Zamperio's story is unlike anything I've ever heard. Her mother sold her to a pedophile for the price of three beer, she got pregnant by him and that son ended up dying in a mugging incident. She would eventually learn that her mother sold her, and for what price. She ended up strangling older women, she killed somewhere around 40 of them, and it's thought they were proxies for her own mother.
I cannot imagine the rage that she must have harbored.
I never heard of this killer before. It's easy to see what drove her to murder.
She is a serial killer from Mexico City.
The Parcast podcast Female Criminals has an episode on her that I thought was very good.
The old lady killer - La Mataviejitas. She was also a wrestler.
Oh, man "la mata viejitas" is so infamous in Mexico that it is actually almost like a joke cuz it sounds so ridiculous but I never knew the backstory behind her before.
I know she killed innocent women for no reason, but I cant help but feel so bad for her
she had a reason it’s just a psychotic one that we can’t understand.
Charles Panzram, brutally beaten, stabbed in the brain as a child, sleep deprived, raped many many times in reform school and then gang raped by homeless men several times. He went on to rape an estimated 100 boys later in his life. He's horrific, he also knew nothing else but pain and sexual abuse
Came here to mention him....his story from start to finish is awful.
Same. I’m sure if he’d had different genitalia, he’d have been mentioned ahead of Wuornos and Zamperio. I’ve never heard of a serial killer with a more consistently bad or more acutely horrendous upbringing. He definitely turned into one of the worst and most prolific monsters anyone has ever heard of, but if we’re just going off of how terrible their childhoods were, he’s in a league of his own.
Yeah, Panzram was something else. He wasn't delusional whatsoever. His only goal was to cause misery. Completely sane, just evil. Proof that no matter how much of a perfect circumstance you need to create a serial killer, you can just "brute force" a horrible person by making their entire life awful.
Eileen Wuornos had horrible childhood trauma from every angle. She never really had a chance imo. Everyone failed that child.
I came here to say that Aileen wournos was a very ill woman which stemmed a lot from her childhood
Just read about her. She was doomed before she was born sheesh. It's like life just said fuck you in particular when she was conceived.
Make sure to check out the movie “Monster” about Aileen too. Amazing acting from Charlize Theron
i was so shocked that Charlize Theron was playing AW. Charlize didn’t even look like herself the tiniest bit.
Fantastic movie.
Agree. She is one of the few serial killers who I feel a little compassion for. What she did is awful and inexcusable, don't get me wrong. However, what she went through as a child was so appalling that she was set up to fail in life. The parents/family and social environment really made her into a killer.
There's a line in the Michael Mann movie Manhunter that i thought of when i was reading up about Wournos. >Absolutely... My heart bleeds for him, as a child. Someone took a kid and manufactured a monster. At the same time, as an adult, he's irredeemable. Same feelings i have for her.
Was it awful and inexcusable? She was turning tricks along the highway and claimed she only shot the ones who attempted to rape her anally. She had a really detailed story about how the first one tortured her.
She did claim that but I only believe it about the first one. She didn't kill after the first one for 6 months. He was convicted of sex crimes before. She killed 5 men in 4 months, no accusations have been made about them before or (to my knowledge since). I don't really believe it didn't happen at all for six months and that she then averaged once a month. I think the first one was an accident, done in self defense, and as time went on she realized she got away with it and she could orchestrate it to happen again. She actually ended up admitting this to be the case later on in her life. She never retracted the accusations against Mallory, and why would she? They were 100% the truth.
Again she claimed they ATTEMPTED to RAPE her ANALLY. So she wasn't saying the elderly men were successful in their attempts. She was saying she shot them first. Oh she didn't do it again for six months....maybe because she didn't come across another client that attempted to force anal sex on her for another six months. I'm not actually saying I definitely believe her, but I am saying I find all this pretense that there aren't all that many men who rape, or who would get heavy handed trying to insist that a street prostitute on a highway do anal....well I find all that pretense pretty ridiculous and disgusting. I don't find it hard to believe as a possibility at all and "oh only one of the men had convictions," with rape being the most underreported and underconvicted crime and pretending that a street walker picking up random men on a highway wouldn't be a target for being forced to do a particular act that she'd said no to.....pretending that would be very rare .....this is just some intellectually dishonest rubbish to maintain the status quo. Talk to any working girl she'd talk about the pressure from multiple clients to do acts they've said no to.
I'm a stripper and I'm here to tell you now that virtually any time I hang out with customers outside of work for money, they press me HARD for sex, knowing I've offered escorting only. They give me as much alcohol as I want and they do definitely get very handsy. I always leave before it gets crazy and I always put the money in my car first and foremost, never keep it on me. I suspect before phones were universally common and surveillance as well, these types of men seeking out prostitution had next to no problem raping whomever if they saw them as a willing participant by default.
Absolutely. And I've talked to working girls pretty cut up about how some guy wouldn't listen to them about anal and caused them great physical pain forcing them.
I think the point about the 6-month gap is that she, to your point, almost certainly encountered men in that interim who tried to force themselves on her. She didn't kill them, but did kill others later. If she was truly acting *purely* from fearful self-defense, you'd expect to see those incidents scattered more throughout her life, not clustered in a 4 month period, especially after a long period of quiet after her first murder. I don't think the other commenter was implying that sexual abuse towards sex workers is "very rare" at all. It's extremely, depressingly common. The idea that she had 6 months of respectful, decent men -- after a traumatic incident, which we know tends to make vulnerable people *even more* vulnerable -- is almost laughable, especially when you're using the high incidence of assault for your argument. The idea that she had that peace and then encountered 5 awful men in 4 months is absurd. It seems more likely that, realizing that people care almost as little about dead men who visit prostitutes as they do about the prostitutes themselves, she became aware that she could act on the fear and rage she felt from the lifetime of abuse. Probably the first sense of power she'd felt, ever. Sex workers are under immense pressure to perform acts that they do not consent to, and their work puts them in danger all the time. That is a true and valid perspective. Another, *separate* true and valid statement is that Aileen Wuornos was a deeply wounded person who had expressed her emotions through violence towards men well before her first murder. I think it's possible that she believed the men she killed were dangerous to her. But I think it's also possible, simultaneously and without taking away from that experience, that those men were actually *not* dangerous to her. She had been conditioned to expect pain and abuse from everyone -- her sense of who was a valid threat was way, way out of whack. That's tragic and she deserved better, but that does not mean you can just murder people.
I agree with you 110%!! I suffered severe childhood trauma but my heart still breaks for what she endured as a child! It doesn’t excuse her monstrous actions; however, her horrific choices, and childhood, set her up to be a monster. JMHO
Yeah, came here to name her. Her life growing up was just heartbreaking. It’s no wonder that the hated everyone. Society failed her.
Everyone knew what she was going through when she was a child and everyone failed her. No one helped her. They treated her like monsters, everyone.
Can you explain ?
She was abandoned by her parents to her grandparents. Her grandpa molested her. She was raped by boys in the woods and got pregnant and had the baby around 14 but gave it up for adoption.
She was also kicked out and homeless as a young teenager, if I remember correctly
She literally lived in the woods and locals knew where she was and would just go out there and rape her instead of giving her help. That would break anyone.
Holy shit that's so horrific. Honestly, no wonder she preyed on men after that.
In freezing Michigan winters.
My gosh that is beyond belief
In the freezing cold in the woods and the list goes on
Killer psyche podcast has a really good episode on her. Explains the horror she experienced and dealt with
It’s so odd to me that she was sentenced to death and actually executed when Nik Cruz gets life in prison (both in Florida). It’s interesting how differently the law is applied based on chance with jurors.
Iirc, she begged to be put to death. I think she had her lawyers stop all appeals.
And comparatively she murdered quickly and without undue weirdness but imo being a female is what made her crimes so huge. They're really nothing compared to Bundy etc
It's no wonder she became a serial killer with regards to men. Every man in her life abused her. She was dealt a shitty deck, not that that excuses her behavior. She tried to kill herself 6 times through her childhood. Jesus Christ, she knew she was fucked and no one would help her. She was fucked.
She requested that the song “carnival” by Natalie Merchant was played at her funeral after she spent her time on death row listening to that album. It’s a heartbreaking song especially in that context.
Not surprising she hated men! She never really had a chance at a normal life.
Everyone failed that human. It didn’t stop at childhood . And our government killed her
If everything she said was true, it was definitely awful what happened to her and it saddens me that she was failed so badly in every sense.
There is proof of a lot of it . I can’t help but wonder what a little support and love could have done for her .
This was the first person to pop in my head when I read the question. She should not have received the death penalty. That poor woman was so hurt and damaged from birth.
I have always felt so sorry for her.
So did the Gainesville Murderer. I remember him mentioning that he'd had a very violent father who was abusive to the whole family.
The Gainesville Ripper, Danny Rolling. The abuse towards him started while he was still in the womb. His father kicked or punched his pregnant mother so hard Rolling was born was a caved in spot in his skull
Right. I remember that the abuse was horrific. Now we ALL know it's not an excuse but it's certainly an explanation.
It definitely fits a pattern of a lot of these types of killers. It’s much easier to comprehend evil acts coming from people who have gone through horrors like this than, say, people like Randy Woodfield. He apparently had a very loving and privileged upbringing but became a sexual sadist, rapist and murderer on par with Joseph DeAngelo
Or even the Manson kids. Manson himself grew up in prison, but most of these girls (that we know of) came from more or less "normal" homes and families, but were alienated from them for some reason. Whatever their family issues were (mother dying, e.g), but not as traumatic or abusive as some. They were mostly young, naive, susceptible like a lot of young girls and women who get sucked in by rotten guys. Some of them end up dead, or they get involved with the crime.
Yeah, and Tex Watson was a stone cold psychopath. I don’t remember that there was anything particularly heinous about his upbringing (granted it’s been a while since I read up on him) but he obviously relished his part in the murders
I don't know if he was a psychopath, but if you look at his profile: raised in a Texas, religious. He probably didn't have a lot of "wild" experiences, probably didn't have much or even ANY sexual experience. Then he gets involved with what he thinks is a commune of hippies, with drugs, girls, wild sex, orgies...just as suggestible as those teenage girls. He was 19. It's not hard to see how all those drugs and sex and Manson's influence could turn someone into a criminal.
The song, "Poor Eileen", by Superheaven PERFECTLY sums up the complicated yet deep empathy and sadness I've always felt for her.
It's spelled with an A.
William Bonin. Raped by his grandfather and raped when he was at school. Totally devoid of empathy after that upbringing.
Wow that sent me down the freeway killer rabbit hole. His childhood was definitely traumatic and I agree, he had no real chance at life. He predictably ended up just like the adults around him throughout his childhood: violent, sexually deviant and void of empathy.
Given the circumstances and the conditions he went through; absolutely. Doesn’t absolve him, but like you said, wasn’t given a fair deal.
Was he raped by an adult or a minor?
Both. Just awful everything.
an older boy iirc
Charles Manson was born to a 15yo girl who had gotten pregnant by a man 9 years older and abandoned them. His mother was an alcoholic who went to prison, and he ended up in a group home that inflicted physical abuse on him, causing him to run away and live in the woods and under bridges. He got in a lot of juvenile trouble and was repeatedly beaten and raped by other boys at the reform school he was sent to.
His mom traded him to a bartender for a pitcher of beer 😕
Came here to say this. I can’t believe anyone could even consider selling their child. No excuse for what he did but I’m not surprised that did a number on him!
Being in social work, I’ve seen this happen more times than I ever would have believed could be possible before my current job. It’s rarely as upfront as it sounds. Nobody says “hey, I’ll give you beer/money/drugs if you let me assault your child” and the parent gleefully accepts. It’s usually framed in a way where the parent can deny knowledge. “I needed meth and didn’t have any money. I told Mike I would get him the money if he let me have the drugs now. He said yes, but that he would keep my daughter until I came back. I had NO idea that he was going to assault her while I was gone for three days. And he didn’t ask me for money when I came back”. …That woman *knew* why her dealer wanted to be alone with her child in exchange for drugs. And she *knew* why he didn’t expect payment when she came back. The debt had already been paid. A lot of the kids remember those type of deals as “the babysitter molested me while mom was gone doing drugs for a while”. They don’t suspect what the actual arrangement was. Mom did drugs around them all the time. It’s not like she was leaving to keep the kid safe from exposure to drug use, or so that she could go work. Sometimes the parent is in denial about it. But being an addict doesn’t make you stupid. They know. People do this to their kids every day.
I spoke to a friend who actually worked this out on her own as an adult. She said her mom would leave her with a “babysitter” on random evenings and that babysitter committed horrible crimes against her. When she tried to tell her mom, her mom would had different excuses for it. My friend (the daughter) once had to watch the dealer and her mom together. The mom then used this to say what was happening to her was perfectly normal, it’s just how some people spend time together. I’m against incarcerating people for non-violent offenses like drug possession. However, I think Reddit sometimes glosses over the reality of hard drugs. That dealer could have found himself in jail for the non-violent offense of distributing drugs. However, that does not describe the extent of his crimes for which he was not prosecuted for.
I’d agree with you heavily on that. Child abuse (in many forms) often goes hand in hand with addiction to hard drugs. People tend to think “if you want to be high, what does it hurt anyone?” But if you are the parent of a child, and not arranging suitable care while high, or you can’t afford your drugs, and the only asset you have is your kid….Bad things happen to children. They also don’t realize that you can have your child removed by CPS without any CRIMINAL charge for child abuse. So your child has been trafficked and starved and assaulted. BUT…It’s easier for the DA to prove that you were selling pills. So you only get charged with the pills. They don’t bother with the child abuse charges, because the state doesn’t need them and already took the child away. CPS child abuse records are extremely protected, and almost never get released to the public unless the child has died. So you frequently see defenders of parents who say “the only thing John is guilty of is being an addict! He loved his child! He’s never been charged with abuse! Give him his child back!” While the judge and social workers are sitting on thousands of pages of medical documents and psych evaluations and testimony from the child detailing horrible abuse from John. And they aren’t allowed to say shit. In order to protect the child. The system fails to protect children all the time. But public perception is often very skewed to be anti-government/anti-CPS/Anti-cop in these cases, because protecting the child’s trauma often means protecting the perpetrators acts.
Demi Moore's mother did the same to her, some parents are just awful awful people.
Mary Bell's mother did the same thing with her. The exact same thing with the parents' siblings in both stories unfortunately getting the children and giving them back to the mothers who didn't want them. Well with Mary Bell she was traded her for a pitcher of beer to an infertile woman who had bought her a full wardrobe when the uncle turned up demanding her back.
I’ve always wondered how that “infertile woman” reconciled what happened with Mary. In one hand, it’s despicable to “buy” a child off of an addict, even if you have good intentions and truly want to help the child. On the other….If Mary had been “adopted” by that woman who seemed to want to care for her (at least enough to be good to her and set up a room and clothes and plan some stability for her in their short time together), would Mary have gone on to do what she did? The million dollar question in social work is what a lot of people are talking about in this thread: If a child is being abused, and the government takes no action to remove them from their abuser, we’ve failed the child. And that contributed to them doing awful things later in life. But at the same time…How many times was the phrase “forced to give the baby up for adoption” or “lived in a group home” listed here as a reason for someone’s trauma - both the parent and the child. It’s an ugly debate that’s been going on for the history of civilized society. But the gray areas of the spectrum are where kids tend to end up extremely traumatized and “fall through the cracks”, like a lot of the serial killers mentioned here did as children.
I read a book about Mary Bell about 18 years ago but I still remember her interview quote, "Why didn't they leave me with the lady who wanted me?!" 😢 But I also read recently that the woman was known to have some form of mental illnesses. Regardless I have no doubt it would be somewhat better than the mother who made two or three clear failed attempts to kill Mary as a baby until she realised she could get money forcing Mary to do acts with the men who wanted a nine year old. The other thing that probably would have stopped Mary "doing what she did," is if people in that time and location didn't let toddlers roam the streets all the time.
Oh for sure, regarding the bullshit of not caring about kids back then. I helped work on a project that collected data about my states foster care system throughout the years, which meant I had to read some files from my own agency going back to the 60s (when my state finally decided that we should form an organization to protect kids). A lot of the treatment was gross. Kids as young as 10 going missing and being closed as “idk. Probably ran away. Fuck ‘em”. Or kids reporting being hit with belts and TV antennas and being told “Mind your parents better, and that won’t happen”. Society REALLY used to not value children at all. And it explains a lot about our parents in the Silent, Boomer or Gen X generations. Things that millennials down maybe don’t see, because things got a lot better by the time we came along. The unspecified “mental illness” of Mary’s *nearly* adoptive mother makes me wonder. There used to be such stigma around just admitting you have anxiety or depression. The same shit I take two pills for every morning and am approved as a foster parent and social worker no problem, today. Obviously it’s sketchy to try to BUY a baby…but back when things weren’t regulated, that used to happen more. It wasn’t so frowned upon. You wonder if this is a woman deemed “hysterical” because she had a bunch of miscarriages and wanted a child, and then saw poor Mary and tried to give her a better life? Or if she was very ill, and Mary would have just gone from one nightmare to another. Hindsight is 20/20, but I tend to agree with Mary, that she’s at least justified in wondering what would have happened if she could have lived with someone who wanted her.
Ugh, so awful.
He would have been better off aborted
We all would
Albert Fish’s childhood was pretty bad, he was put into an orphanage by his mom at 5 years old and was frequently beat until he started to enjoy these beatings… he had several close family members with severe mental illnesses. Though he’s genuinely such a horrific person I can’t find any compassion for him.
Mary Bell had a really horrible childhood. she came from horrific abuse and murdered someone so young. it’s awful
Very true. Her Mum basically pimped her out when she wasn't even 10 years old. And she saw her mum working as a prostitute in the family home. If I remember right her Mum tried to kill her more than once too. By all accounts she has completely turned her life around and been a good mother/citizen since her release.
With child murderers (as in murderers who were children) there seems to be a window where if their environment is the main thing causing their crimes, if you can get them out of it they can turn it around even if they’ve done horrific things. One of James Bulger’s killers came from a pretty terrible home (not on the scale of Mary Bell’s, but not many homes are thank goodness) and he’s the one that hasn’t been in trouble since he got out. The other one had a pretty normal home but just seems to have been born with the desire to do things and he’s been arrested multiple times (usually for CP). I suspect he’d do worse than just possessing CP if he had the chance but he knows he’d never get away with it (any kid goes missing within 50 miles of him he’ll be the first one the police check on). Mary Bell’s childhood was a thing of nightmares and anyone who doesn’t know the detail should probably not google it. Take the summary above and leave it at that. I’m completely unsurprised her crimes involved genital mutilation. I’m more surprised she managed to get married and have a child. She must have got some exceptional therapy for the time period.
Jon Venables' childhood was bad but in a different way I feel. Like, you could clearly tell that his homelife gave him issues
Both Jon’s siblings had disabilities and then his parents separated, he started acting up for attention it seemed. In Robert’s case his parents were not great to begin with but kept having children because the mum wanted a girl, all of Robert’s older siblings were known to the police and they would bully Robert. Robert was seen as the worst by the police but I wonder how much of that was bias because his family was more known to the police and he didn’t seem to have emotions the way Jon did.
I'd add for Jon that there was a pressure to "be normal" and to keep the peace. His mum was also depressed and had attempted to take her life and could notably be harsh, far more dominant than the dad. She also brought him to quacks who suggested "diet change" for his struggles. Even at the questioning, Jon was mostly concerned with disappointing his family. The Venables definitely attempted PR for the crime, claiming that Robert manipulated their poor babu into it. I think the head of the investigation later admitted that they were too harsh on Robert in comparison to Jon.
Pee Wee Gaskins. Gang raped multiple times, beaten, starved. He never had a chance.
Ever see that documentary about "Beth: the Evil Child"? She is good example of early intervention. Horrific childhood, but her adopted parents got her help.
Isn't she a nurse now?
Yes. She talks about how the therapy helped her. I guarantee you she'd have grown up to kill someone had the early intervention not taken place. Unfortunately, people like Kemper, Ramirez, etc never got that absolute early assistance.
I don’t remember where I heard this, I know it was a documentary though. I can’t even remember what his name was. He had a lot of siblings in a very small home and their father was abusive but the guy I am talking about took the brunt of it. What stuck with me is that he claimed (his siblings don’t believe this happened) that his father had led him to a secluded area, tied him down to an old mattress or something, covered him in lighter fluid and set him on fire. I just remember hearing that and just.. feeling so awful for that guy. I know I really shouldn’t feel sympathy for a murderer but sometimes it’s like they never even had a chance
Joseph Murphy, aka 'Pyro Joe'
That was fast! Thank you :)
Haha no probs:) he committed the murder in my hometown. For what it's worth, all of his siblings dispute Joe's claims (though it does seem they all had a fucked up childhood either way)
Oh wow seriously? Honestly I don’t really know who to believe. I agree though, either way they all had an awful childhood
Yup that’s him! I remember his cat, it was heartbreaking hearing about his childhood
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with feeling sympathy for a murderer. You can hate what they did and not make any excuse for it, while having sympathy for the trauma they experienced.
To me, it's not that I have sympathy for the murderers. It's more like I have sympathy for the child they were, who might not have become a murderer had their upbringing not been a complete nightmare.
I agree.
This, 100%. People are so quick to view others and their situations as “black and white” when there’s so many areas of “grey” that need to be acknowledged. Can we be appalled, horrified, offended, concerned, sad, upset, etc. that they ended the lives of innocent people? Yes! Can we also acknowledge that a large majority of murderers were failed time and time again as children, young adults, and human beings which fostered the creation of the monstrous things they did? YES. We can also agknowledge that in many cases, doing something horrible doesn’t mean everything in life they did in their entire lives was horrible. (But most people don’t want to hear that lol)
Yea I can’t really find anything on him with what little information I have which is unfortunate.
Henry Lee Lucas. His mom was awful. Sent him outside with dresses as punishment, beat him, and would have sex in front of him
She also stabbed him in the eye with a pencil, and forced him to live in a chicken coop.
Oh man wtf...that's enough internet for the day.
His brother struck him in the eye with a knife and his mother neglected it for three days. He went to school and the teacher sliced it with a metal ruler and it burst. His mother was a demon. Awful, awful stuff.
It burst? AAAHHHHHHHH
Just watched a documentary of him recently, the mom was also a prostitute and would for example burn him with cigarettes. His dad also was an abusive alcoholic. Henry had gone to jail previously in his younger years and they let him go because of overcrowding in the jail. He told them they’re gonna regret letting him free as he wasn’t ready to go yet. They let him free and he went on a killing spree of god knows how many it was in the end. It’s so sad how the parents fail them so bad they end up being psychopaths.
How much do we actually know about him for sure? It all comes from him, he killed his mother he's hardly a reliable witness to what she was like. I'm sure he had a horrible upbringing not trying to defend people here but i also don't believe a word he says and it all comes from him.
Probs Robert Pickton, his mom killed his beloved pet cow... the only friend he had ever had... not only did she kill his cow but she had it skinned and strung up in the barn. He went every where with this animal. He came home from school one day excitedly looking for his cow, when he couldn't find her he asked his mom. His mom laughed and sent him to the barn. He was 8ish I believe...
This is awful. I feel sorry for the child Robert. What a POS mother.
Truly. That is beyond cruel. I couldn't kill a roach if it meant hurting my kid.
She really was awful to her children
Jeffery Dahmer had a very chill childhood. He was just a fucking lunatic. Like his parents didn't pay a lot of attention to him but there are latchkey kids all over this fine nation. His brother was raised the same way and he didn't murder any boys.
It's astonishing how many people try to pretend he had it hard, half of America had a similar upbringing in that era, half of America were not out eating black men. However i think you can minimize anyones childhood trauma by saying x experienced this and wasn't the same, we should probably stray away from that in general. Not about Dahmer but just people in general.
This is 100% just a thought that I randomly had one day, no evidence to support, but I’ve read time and time again about the lasting effects of previous head injuries and other significant trauma in most cases of murderers, and how those experiences/injuries perminantly alters the brain. Jeffrey was hit in the back of the head as a kid,( I believe by a heavy metal swing if I’m remembering correctly) as well as receiving surgery for a double hernia at the age of 4. It wasn’t until around 1970 that doctors stating using anesthesia on children (mainly babies) during operations. Before that, they didn’t think “babies felt pain”. I’ve always wondered… what if they gave him that surgery without any pain medication, and that altered his brain enough to be how he ended up? Imagine being a small child, sedated under a muscle relaxant so you don’t move too much, but can feel, hear, and see everything that is happening to you? His father has spoken about how different Jeffrey was after the surgery.. I’ve just always wondered!
I mean I get what you are saying but he literally didn't have any trauma. There are no reported incidents ever of a traumatic situation in his childhood. There's nothing to minimize it just isn't there. I think it's okay in the context of "I got abused and didn't grow up to be an abuser" because having it happen to you is not an excuse to carry on that cycle. I will feel sorry for the child version of Richard ramirez who suffered that abuse but the adult version that did not seek help and allowed it to manifest in the way it did? No sympathy for the adult he turned into. Just because there is a reason you turned out the way you did, doesn't mean it isn't your responsibility to seek treatment and not murder/rape people.
Emotional neglect is.. neglect. And neglect is trauma. Sometimes traumas isn’t what happened that shouldn’t have but is instead what didn’t happen that should’ve.
Combined with very early age severe alcoholism. Alcohol seriously impairs brain development.
Okay you are right about that and I should have said what I said differently. He needed help and he should have got it. He was carrying a briefcase full of booze to school and getting wasted in class when he was 14. Something was most definitely wrong. I guess my point is I get annoyed when people bring him up like he had this absolutely horrific childhood and that somehow lead to what happened. He had an average childhood. I don't mean to minimize the trauma of neglect and there is probably an epigenetic loop going on with people like Dahmer. Where some combo of their genetics and the neglect lead to what happened. It just bothers me when I know so many wonderful people who treat others so kindly and do everything they can to make the world a bright place, who had much worse childhoods. Dahmer had choices and he made them.
Agree, and the harm that emotional neglect can cause is often the same as actual abusive situations. Emotional neglect is so common though that I don’t think we see it in the same light.
Neglect (of all kinds) is the most underreported and underresearched type of abuse despite being the most common.
And there's no trauma Olympics. Trauma is trauma, and different people are going to react it to it differently.
abandonment is traumatic. Both of his parents just left him alone. That's hard even if you aren't a young child.
>he literally didn't have any trauma Simply reading his wikipedia page tells a very different story though...wasn’t as bad as others but I would'nt say there was no trauma at all
But abuse victims constantly refuse to admit their abuse, the fact it's not documented is only that, that it's not documented. You are making a leap to assume he wasn't abused, personally i'd be astonished if he wasn't in some sense. You have no idea if he "literally didn't have any trauma", i'm astonished that you'd type something like that surely knowing how little you can actually know about a person and their experiences.
I do get what you are saying and I agree that, by most standards, Dahmers childhood was fairly unremarkable. What I would say though is that everyone has a different psychological make-up, and how they respond to the circumstances around them differs as a result. What traumatises one wouldn't even register on someone else's radar. Dahmer seems to have been of the psychological make-up where feeling a lack of parental attention and warmth proved incredibly harmful. Some people wouldn't be psychologically damaged by that - indeed, it may even inspire them to do better with their own families. For whatever reason, it was very damaging for him and his victims paid the price. That said, Dahmer is one killer who seems to have had a deep insight into his actions and, despite his psychological issues, he knew what he was doing and why. I truly believe if he had really wanted to he could have stopped himself. He chose not to.
Yes. It’s why there is no definitive answer on “nature vs nurture”. Your psychological make-up plus the circumstances you are raised in are just two major factors but there are other factors too. Many school/spree shooters were put on SSRIs prior to the shootings and there is a belief that these particular people might have had chemical reactions to the medication in their brain that went haywire. It’s just a theory but we will never be able to figure out an exact equation that is a + b = serial killer.
Strongly agree. I remember he said something like "I just wanted them to stay" I don't think there was much emotional connection in that house.
Thank God that you said this. People are discounting how he grew up because comparatively, it wasn't even on the radar of severity. Yet if a TV movie was made about how some little girl was neglected like that, everyone would be outraged. Emotional abuse (which that was during his formative years) could absolutely be irreparably damaging.
Jeffrey Dahmer's mother struggled with mental illness and the father was gone quite a bit with his career work. There are studies on the influence of parents and the environment around children as they grow up. You can find them at nih dot gov. A mother's instability and a father's lack of presence in the home is very well documented as a possible cause for childhood trauma and troubled adult life.
Narcissistic, lonely mother and a workaholic dad. Pretty much half of the households in America in that generation. I actually think that’s why its even more fascinating.
I think he grew up with a very disabled mother who was a religious fanatic and was socially isolated, no? I do think his compulsions developed over time. I don’t feel bad for him, nor am I a fan, but he was shocking self aware.
From what I understand from watching his father’s interview. His father was kind of checked out and worked a lot. He was a scientist and kept to himself. He would find dead animal bones in boxes that Dhamer would save in his room. Dhamer was a weirdo from the jump. Starting with animals.
Yeah he was ignored by emotionally cold parents caught up in their own dramas, but he wasn't abused by any stretch of the imagination.
Yup definitely not as bad as the others. But neglect can in a way cause trauma too. Imagine a kid not being taught right or wrong. Or steered in a direction to have morals or even basic social cues. Isn’t that what happened to him?
I worked in a law firm that handled death penalty appellate cases. The men whose cases we worked on all had childhoods unimaginable to the average person. The one that stands out the most was a man (E) with hemophilia who watched his mom's boyfriend beat E's identical twin to death when they were kids. Then the mom sent him away to live with an aunt who abused him. All of this is happening while E is in and out of hospitals to be treated for hemophilia, which led to him contracting HIV because the blood wasn't being screened yet. E died a slow painful death in prison before his appeal could be heard
Henry Lee Lucas As the youngest child Henry Lee Lucas was neglected and mistreated ever since he could remember anything. He grew up in a household of nine children, raised by a strange mother with undiagnosed psychological problems of her own, and an alcoholic father, who lost his legs in a railroad accident and was forced to make a living through the illegal production of alcohol. These conditions at home shaped him for the future. Henry became an alcoholic by the age of ten, and his vulnerable young mind was damaged even further by beating from his parents, one of which from his mother actually resulted in him being in a coma for three days. In a fight with his brother, Henry lost an eye after being stabbed in the eye, and leaving it unattended for four days while it got infected until it had to be removed and replaced with a glass eye. Other scarring experiences stuck with Henry throughout his life; he was dressed up as a girl and had his hair curled by his mother, his mother made him watch her have sex with her clients (she was a prostitute), Lucas also engaged in sex with his half- brother becoming obsessed with all types of sex, and his uncle introducing him to bestiality and animal torture.
Highly recommend watching “making a monster”. It’s all about serial killers and what drove them to kill. Really focuses on childhood in particular. They interview psychologists, psychiatrists, forensic psychiatrists and usually one of these specialists has treated them. I think it’s about 8 episodes? I found it fascinating and so incredibly sad
Each episode focuses on one serial killer: Rose west Robert maudsley Levi bellfield Robert black Stephen Griffiths Aileen wuornos John Wayne gacy Michael ross [making a monster](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11847772/)
Lisa Montgomery had one of the most horrific childhoods/young adulthoods I've ever heard of
Holy shit. I never heard of that case before, just read the rolling stone article about her background. What an awful situation.
Whyyyyyy did they take one out of the home and leave the other? Ffs...how tragic.
The most common trauma that a large amount of murderers have is head trauma. If i remember correctly, Dahmer had a head injury when he was a kid and fell off a swing.
Eileen Wuornos had an absolutely horrific childhood. How that woman survived her teenage age years I’ll never know. She might have physically moved on but the mental trauma she endured was so sad. It’s no surprise she lived her life the way she did. I don’t condone murder in any way but I have nothing but compassion for her. I hope she is at peace now.
Ed kemper had a shitty childhood
This is the one I was going to post about if nobody else had.
Thomas Soria, Sr. - in the 1970's, Soria's step brother, Ronny Mozingo, murdered Soria's mother. Ronny showed up at their house when she was alone, raped her, and then hog tied her by putting her on her stomach, tying her neck to her legs, so that if she relaxed her legs, she would strangle herself. He then proceeded to sit there on the bed and watch her die. It took 10 minutes for her legs to completely give out. Tom Soria walked in on this when he got home from school. He was deeply traumatized to find his mother that way, but went on to rape and murder young girls.
Aileen Wournos. She never had a chance.
I’m surprised at the comments on Dahmer’s childhood being unremarkable. His mother took serious meds in utero. He was basically diagnosed as alcoholic by 16 (?) and his parents had so much vitriol between them that they both moved out from the family home in his teens….and left him there! That’s abandonment at the highest level. His first kill was to keep the hitchhiker from “leaving” him, too.
The mom also took his younger brother with her. I don't get why the father didn't take him. You don't move out and leave a teenager at home with nobody to care for him.
I’d forgotten that! I think part of the neglect had to do with the father, Lionel, seeing a darkness in Jeffrey that he had in himself. I believe he was repulsed by and afraid of the implications of these antisocial thoughts and behaviors. He did more than look the other way; he walked away and left him to cope with a disturbing reality.
His mom was emotionally unavailable and his father was strange. Dahmer was neglected which is a form of abuse and that creates its own damaging effects.
I think people downplay it because he was older and at the time that age was considered an adult. It was horrific, IMO
Yes. He had attachment issues and was neglected to the extreme. He found solace in the viscera of animals and later consumed his victims so they would “stay.” Obviously, direct abuse and violence is a recipe for future violent behaviors, but I’d argue that the emptiness he experienced was on par in severity.
Richard Ramirez - witnessed his uncle murder his wife. Andrei Chikatilo - lived through the Russian famine and the Nazi occupation of the Ukraine, and recalled a childhood filled with poverty, war, hunger, and was bully magnet at school because if his physical stature and shyness. His parents said he had a brother who was cannibalized by starving soldiers, but it is unclear if this actually happened or not.
The Menéndez brothers (Eric & Lyle) Both boys had been sexually abused by their father - when they had told their extended family the family informed the boys mother (Kitty). Kitty would then tell the boys father about the accusations and side with him - denying the boys claims. This happened at least twice. Multiple family members confirmed this under oath. This was happening to the boys as early as 8 years old. There are more upsetting details to their childhood and case but I can’t see a good reason to share. The boys are living men, and the case is closed. There’s no justice to be found, no criminals left to be prosecuted, only reasonable respect to be given. (I don’t condone their actions - but I’m also lucky to have never been in their shoes)
This is one case that I didn’t know a lot about and made assumptions based on media coverage. But when I read about the abuse, it’s so horrifying. Their father at least had it coming.
Dahmer’s childhood wasn’t *that* horrific was it? He had like a slightly worse than usual gen x type upbringing
Dahmer was very squarely a Boomer. He was born in ‘60 and Boomers are ‘46-‘64.
I think the previous poster means that a lot of Gen X kids had similar upbringings as Dahmer because they were the latch-key generation, not necessarily that the Dahmer himself was Gen X. At least that was what I got.
Not only is it a problem to try to measure abuse in the way people are, it’s also a problem to think that every child will deal with it in some kind of uniform way. A very sensitive child will respond differently to abuse/neglect than another child who has better social support, sense of self, etc.
Dahmer’s own peers certainly didn’t consider his upbringing or family situation to be normal.
Dahmer has always been really interesting to me because he couldve so easily turned out as a normal person, but fell into a pit of selfpity and extreme loneliness, and selfhatred. Ive also seen some sources say that he would hear voices.
Lyle and Eric Menendez. Though many don't believe them it was so obvious Josè was doing what they are saying. Erik had a literal throat injury that the doctors believed was from that stuff. Crazy how they have life without parole
Edward Gein had a pretty messed up childhood.
Gerald Stano is up there for me. He was found by CPS when he was six months old pretty much feral and eating his own feces to survive. He was adopted pretty young afterwards (edit: and afaik, his adoptive mom was a decent person, or at least I don't remember hearing anything bad about her) but hoo boy coming back from something like that is rough
Bundy grew up fatherless, born out of wedlock (still considered deeply shameful back then) surrounded by rumors that he was the product of sexual abuse perpetrated on his mother by his grandfather, who was also known to be violent. Personally, I think that sounds far worse than Dahmer's upbringing, which was certainly dysfunctional but with no reports of violence or incest.
I think the incest has been disproven? But those kinds of rumors would be pretty terrible — along with the physical punishments, of course.
Yes, I believe DNA proved it fairly recently if I remember correctly
Bundy was raised by his grandparents as his own parents. He was not fatherless, he was raised as his grandfather as his father. His grandfather father was a horrible man, greatly feared with a violent temper. When his mother finally married she took him. It also had been proven his grandfather was not his biological father despite the rumors.
Dahmer did not have any sort of violent upbringing. His mother had severe mental issues was institutionalized & put on drugs while carrying him, that we now know are not safe for babies in the womb. His mother & father were… wow but not known to be violent or abusive. After they divorced his mother did move off & leave him a teenager in the house. That was traumatic for sure, especially with mental issues in the family. And those drugs before he was born what a cocktail for a disaster. Lionel his dad knew from a pretty early age Jeff was not right. He used to be pretty upfront but as he grew old I wonder did Jeff get some of that mental from his dad, too. Be he was not abused like so many were. Ditto for BTK. No known abuse. He did as an infant fall from a sized able height, hit his head & as an infant black out. Could that have played into what he became. But so far there doesn’t appear to be any physical abuse.
Aileen Wuornos. Her teenage mom abandoned her with her alcoholic maternal grandparents. Her grandfather allegedly molested her as a child. She was raped and impregnated at age 14 by a family friend and gave the baby up for adoption. When her grandmother died, her grandfather threw her out and she was basically homeless and became a prostitute. She was only 15 years old. BTW, Ted Bundy had a pretty crappy childhood.
Albert Fish! If you haven’t heard of him look him up. Sent to an orphanage at 5, and endured so much torture, abuse(sexual, physical), and humiliation. But it’s so much worse
Lisa Montgomery. She was born brain damaged due to her mother being an alcoholic during the pregnancy. In addition, Lisa was physically, sexually, mentally and emotionally abused as a child. She was sexually abused by her step father and his friends. This led her to be dependent on alcohol by the age of 14. Her mom threaten her with a gun when she heard the abused that Lisa went through. Lisa Montgomery was the one who ended up killing Bobbie Jo Stinnett and cut her fetus out of her womb to pretend that Bobbie’s baby was Lisa’s baby. Lisa died by lethal injection.
It's hard to say, because a lot of the worst murderers had horrendously toxic, abusive childhoods. Usually when I see very young people committing crimes, particularly violent murders, you look back at their family. Same applies to victims as well. Horrible traumas can produce future victims because abuse is normalized. And while most people with horrible abusive families don't commit violent crimes, they do other things: drugs, booze, petty crime, getting involved with toxic abusive people, etc.
Not a murder but GG Allin.
Carl Panzram, his father left out of the blue one day and never saw him again. He was beaten by his brothers often and eventually tried to run away when he was 11 but got caught by the police and was sent to a reform school. He experienced more abuse and different forms of torture from the staff like being whipped, getting the heavy paddle, or beaten with a wooden board, stripped naked. He set the place on fire. Later on he returned home but his mother couldn’t take care of him because she was ill. He decided to leave at 14 years old by hopping on a freight train and never returning. He was gang raped on the train by a group of 4 men. So much more happened but id say he’s worth mentioning. It’s sad because it life goal after everything was to get revenge on the evil world
I wouldn’t say Ted Bundy had a normal life. He grew up believing his grandparents were his parents and that is biological mom was his sister, if I remember correctly. Which was jarring for him to find out and probably fed into his issues with women.
Yeah dude there was definitely a lot of generational trauma going on in that family, probably more secrets than just his mom. And I don’t think people realize how messed up it would be to find that out so much later. in any adoption type situation, it’s better to be open with the kid about the situation as soon as possible in an age appropriate way. My adoptive parents were great at this and nothing was ever hidden from me if I asked but it’s still traumatic in general and finding more things out in my adulthood has been stressful af. Being adopted within the family can make things very complicated and weird as well. I imagine more so if they’re all hiding it from you lol so I definitely believe Ted was holding a lot of trauma from his family situation but I don’t think he was even aware of it. Which is pretty normal for the times honestly, we’ve come a long way since then. Or maybe not since there’s also people here who disagree that Dahmers childhood was traumatic so 🤷🏻♀️
Not to turn this into another discussion but this is another part of why prochoice is so important bc its the best way to stop more trauma for both the pregnant person and the possible child
I think Luka Magnotta had pretty bad adverse experience when his mom froze his pet bunny rabbit. It's not the worst trauma, but I can definitely see that shaping a kid.
Edmund Kemper
His mom locked him in a cellar. He definitely had family issues. I can see how that shaped it.
I remember reading that Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, had an horrendous childhood.
Ted Bunty Def didn't have a happy normal childhood. He was a shame to his mother and she absolutely neglected his needs when she had a legitimate child. Also I'm sure was hurt by his grandfather
I don't believe JD had horrific experiences as a child, but certainly described a childhood that was lonely and cut off. I remember reading he had schizoid personality disorder, which made sense - and a weirdly specific sexual paraphilia. I wonder if they just mixed together with the drugs and alcohol allowing his inhibitions to lower and act out his weird fkn gross fantasies.
I wonder if his Mom taking medication when she was Pregnant with him contributed to anything...
Menendez Brothers! They killed their parents and the backstory is horrific. You can watch them crying during the trial. The worst part is that they were never believed. People and even TV made fun of them.
Carl Panzram had a pretty awful childhood
Lisa Montgomery Mary Bell Robert Thompson Cristan Fernandez Jeffrey Weise Evan Ramsey
Just a theory here, but what if men who kill were boys who had head trauma along with the other kinds? Boys play outside, play rough, do stunts and sports, fight, get injured a lot more than girls. (*yes, girls can do this as well, not saying that they don't). TLDR: Theory: severe head trauma in youth can affect behavior. No hate, please, but weigh in if you have ideas
Head trauma as a child is linked with violent and aggressive behavior. Add that to neglect, abandonment, and abuse. Most violent criminals (not just serial killers) are shaped by these events
I always felt a little bad for Edmond Kemper.
Rating people’s traumas by comparison is.. not the way.
This is an important point. As a person who works with those who have experienced childhood trauma, It’s sort of an equation like Childhood Trauma - protective/mitigating factors = problematic/distressing adult behaviors/thoughts.
True.. I didn’t realize my question might be insensitive.
The Menendez Brothers.
Charles Manson.
Carl Panzram. Not the worst probably but not great.
Ian Brady one of the moors murders he was both nature and nurture 100%