Zodiac Speaking: Into the Mind

¶ … Zodiac Speaking": Into the Mind of a Serial Killer by Michael D. Kelleher and David Van Nuys, it is apparent that most serial killers enjoy the fact they are being noticed for their criminal behavior. They treat their criminal behavior as if it was something to be proud of since they gain certain popularity for it. In other words, they love the attention and if they were not notice, it would anger them. The Zodiac sent taunting letters to the press to throw in their fact that no one could catch him, which made him, feel he was smarter than him. The more that the press took interest in his letters, the more his ego grew. From there, it is apparent that after profiling serial killers including the Zodiac, these criminals feed off the attention they get for their criminal behavior, which fulfills their desire to be recognized for what they stand for.

The Zodiac

Van Nuys claims that Zodiac had a multiple personality disorder that was caused by a childhood trauma. From there, he further believed that possibly he was sexually abused and had a dominant father. When this occurs, serial killers want the attention that lacked as a child, which goes back to the idea that even negative attention is good. While this theory is considered to profile serial killers, it confirms way the Zodiac and other murders seek the attention of the press and public.

By looking at many and varied cases, it is evident that virtually all serial killers come from dysfunctional backgrounds involving sexual or physical abuse, drugs or alcoholism and their related problems. Many traits that seem to be universal in all these serial killers, though in varied amounts, include disorganised thinking, bipolar mode disorders, a feeling of resentment towards society brought on by their own failings, sexual frustrations, an inability to be social or socially accepted, over bearing parents and a wild imagination that tends to drag them into a fantasy world. In a chart of serial killer - childhood development characteristics - created by Ressler, Burgers and Douglas (1990), the three most frequently reported behaviors included day dreaming, compulsive masturbation, and isolation" (Evaluating a psychological profile of a serial killer).

In this book, the author continued in his theory that the normal well adjusted personality was not aware of what the Zodiac personality was doing and vice versa. If the Zodia was alive, he would be looking back on his crimes now and may have been horrified by them. Van Nuys claims that possibly the good personality might have won over the Zodiac personality. However, it could be possibly Zodiac had committed suicide or was dead as a result of age. This book does not really come up with any good suspects although that has been done before with other books and failed to yield results. The suspects in Graysmith's book Zodiac" (This Is the Zodiac Speaking": Into the Mind of a Serial Killer).

Along with that, according to former FBI profiler John Douglas, many serial killers are motivated by a "desire to create and sustain their own mythology," which puts them into the spotlight for the moment. Douglas states that one of the most complicated in which the geography of a series of murders seemed to play a part, was that of the Zodiac killer (Profiling and Geography). Furthermore, in a study of 300 serial killers, it was found that 2.3% had turned themselves in, one way or another. However, this does not include those who might have made mistakes as a subconscious way to reveal themselves, but only those who initiated police awareness of them. There are many interpretations of their intent, and even as to their actual guilt, but it's nevertheless an error to say they never do it (the Myth).

From the evidence in this paper, it is clear that if a child is left alone, or forced to live in isolation, their minds become the object of their company, which begins the daydreams and the fantasy world (Ressler, Douglas and Burgess, 1990). Isolation tends to breed feelings of inadequacy in some way or other in all serial killers. These feelings run deeper than the normal neurotic feelings of not being good enough. Along with that, these early life attachments which are known as 'bonding', set up a map by which the child will in later life react to others.

In such cases, the children do not learn how to interact properly within their society, and at best, turn into mirror images of their isolators. A prime example of this can be seen in the case of Ed Kemper, whose mother condemned him to the basement of their home at the tender age of ten in fear that he would molest his younger sister (though he had not given his mother any reason to think this). Confused and angry as to why he was suffering this punishment, he turned to his fantasies, which may have started out as 'normal', but with the continued isolation they quickly became his dominant world" (Evaluating a psychological profile of a serial killer).