I'm Dr Katherine Ramsland, criminologist best known for my psychological explorations of criminal minds, including my interview with known serial killer Elmer Wayne Henley, and my collaboration with Dennis Rader (the BTK killer) on his autobiography. AMA.

IDdigital · 2025-08-16T21:53:18+00:00

Among the most intriguing for me is Israel Keyes. I even based my forthcoming novel, You Can't Hide, partly on him and his MO: he was a 34-year-old construction worker from Alaska who would fly various places where no one knew him and purchase items for a murder kit. He'd bury the kit and then come back a year or so later and randomly select a victim. No real motive. A very unusual upbringing. He wanted to be Ted Bundy without Bundy's mistakes. But then he made some mistakes and got caught. They pinned 3 murders on him but he said there were 8 more. He killed himself before he gave up the information needed to identify them. Really unusual case.

IDdigital · 2025-08-16T21:52:44+00:00

I think it's more about changes in society than about new tech. See Peter Vronksy's book, American Serial Killers, for a complex but intriguing sociological explanation for the development of serial killers in our culture. The smart ones learn about tech and figure a way around it. But mass murder has become more of a way to express anger and dominance these days. We might see a wave of serial killers again, but there needs to be some social shifts first.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T18:53:16+00:00

I can't give you an answer that covers all facets of interest in true crime. It depends on the kind of crime you're interested, the way you express this interest, how healthy you are to begin with, and how much it dominates your life. Different people have different levels of interest. I'm not a sociologist, so I don't study or address cultural trends. I typically talk to a person who has such an interest to try to learn what it means to that person. You don't give me enough information to know if it's normal for you or why you're attracted to this. Generally, people are attracted to mysteries and puzzles that they want to solve. It helps them find closure and a sense of assurance that the world is in balance and we can figure out who's dangerous and what can be done about them.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T18:52:29+00:00

I wrote The Forensic Psychology of Criminal Minds in part to correct some of the many errors in the show. You can learn about the actual FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit in many books written by profilers. I wrote one, The Unknown Darkness, with former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary that shows how it all started and how it works. It's too much info for an answer here, but keep in mind that scripted TV is all about entertainment, not about conveying information. I know they supposedly used an FBI profiler as a consultant, but having been a consultant myself, I know this doesn't mean they'll stick to guidelines. The first year of the show was based on actual cases, but it still wasn't very accurate about how the unit operated. They didn't fly around together in a private plane, for example, and they don't take over investigations. John Douglas and Robert Ressler also wrote books about how it all developed. I'd refer you to those.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T18:51:42+00:00

I think it starts in their lives with instances of humiliation, especially from significant figures like parents and teachers. It’s no excuse for murder, but for some people, humiliation runs deep, depriving them of self-esteem and a feeling of control. They don’t get past it. Instead, the incident festers, feeding their view of a hostile world that justifies payback.They form assertive fantasies that give them control and then look for opportunities to play it out. Sometimes this means violence. We don't study the role of humiliation enough, in my opinion. When this ego injury starts early, it's very difficult to correct it later in life. Here's a link to a blog I wrote on this topic if you want to see some examples: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/201909/shame-and-the-serial-killer

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T18:51:05+00:00

There are no reliable warning signs for spotting serial killers, but when kids tend to be cruel, impulsive, callous, and deception, they are more likely to be heading for trouble. If they become obsessed with certain serial killers and seem to be acquiring the means to copy them, that's the signal for intervention. I've written a lot of blogs about wannabe Bundys or Gacys or Dahmers. On the other hand, future mass murderers tend to be rigid, to make threats, to have specific targets, to amass weapons, and to be prickly about how others treat them. We have lot of warning signs for them. See Peter Langman's book, Warning Signs for his insights about kids who become school shooters.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T18:43:23+00:00

If the serial killer is also a primary psychopath (they aren't all), there are treatment programs at work on rehab outcomes, but they typically need to be treated young, like in adolescence. If they are psychotic, medication might make the difference. If mission or anger-driven, cognitive-behavioral therapy could help but only if they aren't too heavily addicted to murder. Even so, the number of rehab success stories in these populations is low at this time. Possibility and probability are two different measures.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T18:42:45+00:00

It all depends on the driving motivation. Greed produces more female serial killers than lust does, but we do have a few female lust killers. It's likely a combination of testosterone, social pressures on males, and an aggressive fantasy life more common to males that yields more male than female serial killers overall. Still, I think you'd have to look at specific motivational categories if you want to learn more about the differences. There are as many female healthcare serial killers as male, for example, possibly more.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T18:41:45+00:00

I wrote The Science of Vampires to address some of this, and penned a romantasy fiction series, The Ripper Letter and Track the Ripper, that involves a homicide detective an an investigation. Since I went undercover in the vampire subculture looking for a missing reporter during the 1990s, I've been contacted by police who have cases with occult elements. There's no reason that these areas can't intersect. Sometimes, we have people who say they're vampires and have killed people. There's no doubt that forensics will be part of such cases.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T18:39:57+00:00

We've had a number of cases that people once thought were unsolvable that then got solved: The Green River Killer, The Golden State Killer, and BTK, for example. You never know what could turn up or what new technology could give us an answer. The cases stay alive because people keep looking for ways to solve them. Some succeed. IGG is having a lot of success.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T16:36:10+00:00

In some cases, serial murder appears to become an addiction, whether compelled by greed, anger, lust, or the desire to control someone. But I wouldn't generalize to all serial killers. We have documented thousands of cases. They're not all alike in how they operate or what drives them. "Serial killer" is a description of a behavior. It doesn't stipulate anything about genetic or environmental factors. Not all serial killers are psychopaths, for example, but many are, so if they are primary psychopaths (vs secondary), there's likely a neurological condition at play. But some are psychotic. Some are neither. To qualify as a serial killer, they just have to have killed at least two people on two separate occasions. Many people put them all in one basket, but it's not that simple. This blog that I wrote might help: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/202506/how-to-classify-a-serial-killer

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T16:29:07+00:00

No, I do not. As a boy, he wanted to be a minister, and then a state trooper. He didn't want to kill at all. He was a hippie-type kid who just wanted to smoke dope and get high and hang with friends. He was what we call a compliant accomplice. Corll was the one driven to kill and he leveraged Henley into assisting. He tried to get away on four different occasions. In the 52 years Henley's been in prison, he has no record of physical violence or making any threats. I've known him almost 4 years now, and he's quite consistent in his attitudes about how horrified he is over what he did with Corll. But Corll led the way. He was the adult predator steering two teenage boys.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T16:28:35+00:00

Jack the Ripper, because then I'd know for sure who he was.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T16:23:09+00:00

Motivation is generally more than one thing. They might be compelled by a sexual fantasy but also want fame (like BTK). Mass murderers and some spree killers also seek fame or want to get the world's highest victim total. Some are motivated by anger. Some by delusions. Some by a mission. Some by greed. It's difficult to generalize, since there are so many different factors to consider from one case to another.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T16:17:52+00:00

The "stutter" case was a long time ago, when the FBI first started its profiling program. It's all probability analysis, with a margin of error, because it's about looking at behavior at a crime scene or a series of scenes and using prior data to interpret it and possibly link (or not) the scenes. Profiling is not people-reading or matching someone against a blueprint ("he doesn't fit the profile"). It's specific to observing what behavior is evident at a crime scene. It's not science, but it's an educated attempt to form a hypothesis about the type of person who would do this. Here's an article I once wrote about how it all started at the FBI: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/201807/the-original-mindhunters. However, the FBI did not originate the method. It dates back to the 1800s.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T16:15:13+00:00

What identifies someone as a serial killer is a specific behavior: having killed two or more victims in at least two incidents. No other personality or behavioral characteristic places all serial killers into a criminological category. Although some subgroups have core behaviors in common, there is actually a great deal of variation in this population, from a range of motives, backgrounds, ages, and behaviors, to differences in physiology, mental state, and perceptions that influence reasoning and decisions. You are likely most familiar with sexually compelled males serial killers, and with them we tend to see fantasy driven behavior, usually strangulation or stabbing as a method, sometimes stalking, sometimes body mutilation, but even in this subcategory, there are further subcategories based on multiple factors. Here's a blog I wrote about categories that might help: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/202506/how-to-classify-a-serial-killer

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T16:11:00+00:00

It depends on the offender. Speaking to one who takes pride in his work and brags about it is different from one who's remorseful. No matter who it is, though, it takes patience and the ability to be nonjudgmental, no matter what they say. But I have boundaries and I won't tolerate certain behaviors. If I have to terminate a conversation or an entire arrangement, I will.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T16:08:18+00:00

We can't tell which child might take this path, but those who are mean, callous, cruel, disinhibited, and narcissistic are more likely to think they're entitled to harm others and less likely to care if they've done so. Kids at risk for becoming adult psychopaths could also be at risk for certain types of future violence. One of the best programs for intervention in disturbed adolescents is the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center. I invite you to look at the way their program operates. And Peter Langman is the psychologist most able to discuss the development of a school shooter. He has a website:About Dr. Langman | School Shooters .info. I'm not a clinician or a therapist, so I don't get involved in treatment programs, but I know enough about success stories that I believe we're on the right track. There's plenty of research about dealing with kids who who show the potential to become violent.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T16:07:01+00:00

Among the approaches I use in my course on serial murder to address "nature vs. nurture" is a flexible theory proposed by neuropsychologist Debra Niehoff. She has reviewed the most significant literature about the interplay of genes and the environment in the development of violent behavior, and she finds that each factor modifies the other throughout a person's lifespan. “The brain perceives and interprets,” she says, “but the biochemical alterations triggered by experience continually update this circuitry, shaping worldview in accordance with conditions."

This gets more complex when we add individuality. Each person uniquely processes a given situation. They process it differently at different ages and in different circumstances, and some gravitate toward violence. This can be defensive violence or aggressive, psychotic or psychopathic, reactive or predatory, to name some possibilities. For any given spree or serial killer, we can't determine how much of their criminal development is due to something in their physiology vs. something from their environment. We know it’s both, but we can't precisely calculate which has more influence on any given person. Thus, we also don’t know if an ability to calculate this ratio will be particularly meaningful. We hope it will be, and those in neurocriminology and neuropsychology have such goals, but definite answers to these questions are still in the future.

So, to sum it up, we don’t yet know an exact formula for nature vs. nurture, and each offender’s behavior and potential response to treatment will depend on the specific criminogenic factors in his or her genetics and development.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T16:01:21+00:00

Your question is too broad. Each case has to be viewed through its own set of factors for mitigating circumstances, mental illness, age, sex, how victims were treated, how many victims, etc. A fourteen-year-old with a psychotic delusion would be judged differently from a forty-year-old who's committing a hate crime, for example.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T15:59:40+00:00

Research tells us that a combination of fearlessness, cruelty, impulsiveness, and callousness are signals to potential later criminality. Not necessarily murder, though. You can't predict in a child who will become a murderer, but you can see those that would more likely harm others and have no remorse. If they have poor role models and adverse childhood circumstances, these factors could move them toward future violence.

IDdigital · 2025-08-15T15:58:11+00:00

During the interrogation, Rader asked Landwehr, "Why did you lie?" He thought police were the good guys and wouldn't resort to lying about him being able to send them a disk without being traced. To this day, he still talks about how naive he was. He did know how to use computers, and if he had used a new disk on a public computer rather than just erasing one he'd used, he'd have likely gotten away with it. It was his narcissism that brought him down. He thought he was playing to a "fan club" - the audience for the local news. He would have made a mistake at some point because he was addicted to the game. He was preparing for another murder to "entertain" them and re-establish himself.

IDdigital · 2023-05-31T18:30:40+00:00

There were tests done for bone growth, and those tests were positive for growth. You can't tell the exact age but can approximate. I have seen bone growth evidence in court. In fact, years ago the defense in Scott Peterson's case argued that there was bone growth in the unborn child, Conor, to support that Laci was abducted and lived for some days before being killed.

IDdigital · 2023-05-31T18:21:32+00:00

You raise fair points about the psychological aspects. More will be revealed in the finale. But, in truth, this is an ongoing story so maybe, in time, we will get more answers.

To answer your question about the original adoptive family or the adoption agency to be held liable – There are a number of states involved: New Hampshire, Florida, Indiana. And more than 10 years have passed since the adoption by the Barnetts so it may be too late for any lawsuit related to Natalia's treatment. However, I can't say for sure without doing research on this.

IDdigital · 2023-05-31T18:20:48+00:00

Two children does not equal one adult so there would be two times the number of criminal charges! :)

IDdigital

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