Chapter 10 Chapter 7 Dark Center

Logically, one might ask: Why would a felon be willing to cooperate with an FBI law enforcement agent?We also had doubts about this at the beginning of the project.However, the vast majority of felons we have approached over the years do agree to speak with us, and they do so for several reasons. Some people are genuinely bewildered by their crimes, and feel that collaborating in a psychological research project is a way of making partial apology while also learning more about themselves.I think Ed Kemper falls into that category.As I pointed out, there are people who are police fans and law enforcement fans who simply enjoy being close to the police and FBI agents.Some thought there might be some benefit in cooperating with the "competent authorities", but we never made any promises in exchange.Others felt left out and wanted attention and a break from their boring lives, and our visits played into their hands.Still others simply welcome the opportunity to relive their murder fantasies in narratively vivid detail.

No matter how much these people have to say, we are willing to listen, but we are mainly interested in a few basic questions.We outlined this in an article in the September 1980 issue of the FBI Enforcement Bulletin, explaining the purpose of the study. 1.What causes a person to become a sex offender?What are the warning signs? 2.What factors helped to motivate or inhibit him from committing a crime? 3.What responses or contingency strategies should victims in premeditated cases adopt to avoid victimization to various types of sex offenders? 4.What are the implications for sex offender risk, prognosis, management, and treatment patterns?

We realized that for this project to be worthwhile, we had to be fully prepared to be able to filter what each criminal told us on the spot.Because if you're sane and smart, like many of these guys are, you're going to find a weakness in him and exploit it.By their very nature, most serial killers are brilliant manipulators.He can pretend to be emotionally unstable if it would help him.If remorse would help him, he would be able to appear remorseful.But no matter what they thought was the best course of action, I found that the people who were willing to talk to us were all alike.They had nothing else to think about, so they spent a lot of time thinking about themselves and their crimes, and being able to tell me the minutiae.My task is to have enough information about them and their crimes in advance to determine whether they are telling the truth, because they have also had enough time to make up another story, so that they are more sympathetic and worthy of sympathy than the file reveals. innocent.

In many of the early interviews, after hearing the criminal's story, I would always turn to Bob Ressler, or anyone close to me, and ask, "Is he going to jail for a rash conviction? There are reasonable answers to any questions. I don’t know if they really caught the right guy.” So, the first thing we did when we got back to Quantico was to review the records and contact the local police for the details of the case. dossier, to make sure that no terrible miscarriage of justice occurred. Growing up in Chicago, Bob Ressler was both shocked and intrigued by the murder of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan.The little girl was brutally murdered after being robbed from her home.Her body was stomped into pieces and thrown into a sewer in Evanston, where it was later found.A young man named William Helens was finally arrested and confessed. At the same time, he also admitted that he had sneaked into an apartment building to burglarize and killed two women because the situation got out of control.When he killed Frances Brown, he used her lipstick to scribble on the wall:

Helens blamed the murder on George Merman (presumably "merman" is short for "killer"), a man he claimed lived deep within him.Bob had always believed that the Helens case might have been one of the original motivators for his decision to dedicate himself to law enforcement. After the Offender Personality Research Project was funded and launched, Bob and I traveled to Statesville Prison in Joliet, Illinois, to interview Helens.He has served time in prison since his 1946 conviction, remaining a model inmate and becoming the first person in the state to complete college behind bars.He is continuing his graduate studies.

When we interviewed him, Helens denied any involvement in the crimes, arguing he had been wrongfully jailed.No matter what questions we asked him, he had only one answer, insisting that he had an alibi and wasn't even near the murder scene.His words were convincing, and I feared that this might be another major wrongful case, so once I got back to Quantico, I went through all the case files.In addition to the confession and other convincing evidence, I found that Helens's faint fingerprints were also collected from the scene of the Helens case.However, Helens has lived alone in the cell for so long, constantly thinking, looking for answers to all the questions. If they tested him with a polygraph at this stage, he would probably pass the test without a hitch.

Richard Speck is serving a repeated life sentence for the 1966 murder of eight nursing school students in a South Chicago suburban housing complex.He made it clear that he did not want to lump himself in with the other murderers we studied. "I don't want to be on a list with them," he told me. "Those guys are nuts. I'm not a serial killer." He doesn't deny his crimes.He just wanted us to know that he wasn't one of them. On one key level, Speck is right.He is not a serial murderer. Serial murderers commit crimes frequently, and certain emotions tend to flare up periodically, or there is a cooling-off period between several crimes.I class him as a mass murderer, a person who kills more than two people in the same act.In Speck's case, his motive for breaking into the building was theft, to find a way to get some money out of town.When 23-year-old Corazon Amurao came to answer the door, he flashed a pistol and a knife and forced his way into the room, claiming he was just going to tie her up with five roommates for money.He herded them all into a bedroom.Over the next hour, three other roommates returned from appointments or library studies.Once they were under his control, Speck apparently changed his mind and went on a rampage of rape, strangulation, stabbing and slashing.Only Amulao, curled up in the corner in horror, survived the catastrophe.Speck missed her.

After he left, she stepped onto the balcony and shouted for help.She told police that the killer had the words "Born to Rape" tattooed on his left forearm.A week later, when Speck came to a local hospital for a clumsy suicide attempt, the tattoo on his arm was recognized. Due to Speck's heinous methods of committing crimes, the medical and psychological circles have made various speculations about him.It was initially claimed that Speck had a genetic imbalance with an extra positive (Y) chromosome, making him more likely to behave aggressively and antisocially.Such fashionable analyzes are regularly ephemeral.More than a hundred years ago, a behaviorist used phrenology, that is, through the study of the shape of the skull, to predict a person's personality and intelligence level.A recurring positive spike pattern at 14 Hz and 16 Hz in EEG scanner readings has recently been considered evidence of severe personality disorder.The courts are still debating the xYY chromosome, but the indisputable fact is that vast numbers of men have this genetic makeup and show no signs of unusual aggression or antisocial behavior.Richard Speck underwent a thorough examination and found that his genetic makeup was completely normal, with no extra Y chromosome at all.

Speck didn't want to talk to us, and later died in prison of a heart attack.We contacted the warden before interviewing him, which we do not often do.He agreed to let us in, but didn't think it was a good idea to let Speck know in advance that we were coming for an interview.When we arrived, we agreed with him.He was yelling at the top of his lungs from a pen.He was put in a pen to give us a glimpse of his cell, while the other prisoners shouted frantically in sympathy.The warden wants us to see Speck's collection of pornography, but Speck angrily protests the invasion of his privacy.Prisoners resent any such thorough search.Their cells are the only places left with a similar right to privacy.As we walked through three floors of cells at the Joliet Jail, some windows were broken, birds were flying near the ceiling, and the warden warned us not to step aside, lest the inmates spill their shit on it. on us.

Realizing that we were not going to get anywhere, I whispered to the warden that we might as well walk down the corridor and not stop at Speck's cell.According to the currently prevailing criminal interview guidelines, we may not suddenly appear in front of him without prior notice.In fact, the entire study of criminal personality would be extremely difficult to conduct today. Unlike Kemper or Helens, Speck isn't a model prisoner at all.He once made a crude miniature still and hid it in the back of a fake drawer on the wooden desk of the prison block warden.It produces almost no alcohol, but emits a smell of alcohol, which is enough to make the guards frustrated because they can't find the source of the smell.Another time he found a wounded sparrow flying in through a broken window, and he nursed it back to health.When the sparrow was able to stand up, he tied a string between the feet and let it stand on his shoulders.A guard told him that pets are not allowed in the cell.

"Can't I keep it?" Speck asked, before going to an electric fan that was on and stuffing the bird inside. The guard was frightened for a moment, and said, "I thought you liked that little bird." "I do like it," Speck replied, "but if I can't have it, nobody wants to have it." Bob Ressler and I met him in a visiting room at the Joliet Prison, accompanied by a prison warden, akin to a high school counselor.Speck, like Manson, chose the top end of the conference table, sitting on top of a sideboard so he could sit taller than us.I told Speck straight to the point what our purpose was, but he wouldn't talk to us and just kept blaming the "fucking FBI" for wanting to search his cell. The first thing I try to do when I look at these guys, when I sit in a prison conference room and watch them across the table, is to imagine what they say and do when they commit a crime.I had gone through all the files on the case beforehand, so I knew what each of them had done and could do, and all I had to do was project that onto the man sitting facing me. Any police-style interrogation is a confession, with each side trying to lure the other into speaking his intentions.And we must first evaluate the interviewee before we can consider how to approach him.Expressing anger or making moral judgments doesn't help. ("What, you perverted brute! Did you eat an arm?") You have to be sure what to say to hit him.With some people, like Kemper, you can be straight and matter-of-fact, and as long as you show him that you have all the facts about the crime, they won't try to fool you.I've learned to be more aggressive with guys like Richard Speck. We sat in the conference room, and Speck pretended to be indifferent, so I turned to the supervisor.He is a cheerful, gregarious man with experience in defusing hostility, qualities we expect from hostage negotiators.I talked about Speck's case as if he wasn't there. "You know what your guy did? He killed eight women. Some of them were pretty. He took the lives of eight of us beautiful chicks all by himself. Do you think it's fair? ?” It's clear that Bob isn't comfortable with this approach.He didn't want to be reduced to the level of the murderer, and mocking the dead made him sick.Of course, I agree with him, but in this case, I think that's the only way I can do it. The supervisor answered me in the same way, and we both asked and answered like an oboe.If we weren't actually talking about murder victims, we'd be like high school boys in a locker room, but the tone of the conversation had gone from childish to grotesque. Speck listened for a while, then shook his head and giggled, "You guys are so fucking crazy. You mustn't be that different from me." With this beginning, I turned to him. "How the hell did you fuck eight women at once? What did you have for breakfast?" He looked at us like we were a couple of goofy hicks. "I didn't rape all of them. Those rumors are exaggerated. I only raped one of them." "The one on the couch?" "yes." It all sounds gross and disgusting, but it revealed something to me.First, despite his hostility and aggression, Speck doesn't have the self-awareness of a manly man.He knew that he had no ability to control all the women at the same time.He's an opportunist: he only rapes one guy for a thrill.Judging from the photos of the crime scene, the victim he chose to rape was the one lying face down on the sofa.In his eyes, she had been reduced to an impersonal object.He doesn't have to have any human contact with her.We can also see that he is not a thoughtful and organized person.He hadn't given much thought to how a fairly simple and successful robbery had turned into such a massacre.He admitted that killing the women wasn't out of bestiality, but so they wouldn't be able to recognize him.As the young student nurses returned one by one, he shut one in the bedroom and the other in the closet, as if he were putting horses in a pen.He had no idea how to deal with the situation. Interestingly, he also claimed that the wound that landed him in the hospital and eventually led to his arrest was not from a suicide attempt, but from a bar fight.He may not understand the significance of such an explanation.He's telling us that he wants us to see him as a "born rebel" man, not a pathetic loser whose only alternative is suicide. As I listened, I mulled over all this information.It revealed something for me not just about Speck, but about this type of crime.In other words, when I encounter similar cases in the future, I will have more insight into such inescapable people.Of course, this is also the main purpose of this research project. In processing the research data, I have tried to move away from the jargon and arcane jargon of pedantic psychology in favor of straightforward concepts that would be easier for law enforcement officers to use.Telling a local policeman that he is looking for a paranoid schizophrenic may be academically interesting, but it does not provide him with information useful in catching the perpetrator.A key question we asked was: Did the perpetrators plan or act blindly?Or is it a hybrid?People like Speck begin to show us the behavior of a murderer who acts blindly. Speck told me that his early life was rocky.I could sense that the only time we touched a nerve with him was when we asked about his family.By the time he was 20, he had been arrested nearly forty times.He married a 15-year-old girl and raised a child.Five years later, he left her in anger and pain.He told us that it never occurred to him to kill her.He did kill several other women, including a hostess at a sleazy bar, for rebuffing his advances.Months before killing the nurses, he also robbed and assaulted a 65-year-old woman.Typically, the brutal rape of an old woman is the perpetration of a young man, perhaps even a teenager, who is new to the world, lacks experience and confidence.Speck was 26 at the time of the robbery.In this equation, the older the perpetrator is, the less confident he is and the less involved he is in the world.That's really my impression of Richard Speck.Although in his twenties, his level of behavior, even by criminal standards, was late adolescence. Before we left, the warden wanted us to see one more thing.In Joliet, as in other prisons, a psychology experiment is under way to see whether pastel colors make people less aggressive.A large number of academic theories affirm the relationship between color and aggression.The experimenters even brought former police weightlifting champions into a room with walls painted pink or yellow, and found that they lifted no more weight than before. The warden led us to a cell at the end of the prison block and said: "Rose paint should make violent murderers less aggressive. If they are put in a room like this, they should become calm and submissive." .Look at the walls of this house, Douglas, and tell me what you find." "I don't see much paint on the walls," I said. He replied, "Yeah, exactly. See, these guys don't like the colors. They peel off the paint and swallow it." Jerry Brudos has a shoe fetish.If things just stay at this step, there won't be any big troubles.But due to a number of factors, including his mother's domineering nature and his own impulsive personality, the fetish went from somewhat bizarre to deadly. Jerome Henry Brudos was born in South Dakota in 1939 and grew up in California.As a five-year-old boy, he found a pair of shiny high heels at a local junkyard.When he took it home and tried it on, his mother saw it and was very angry and asked him to throw away the high heels.But he put the shoes away until his mother found out, burned them, and punished him for it.By the time he was 16, he was living in Oregon, regularly sneaking into neighbors' homes to steal women's shoes and later women's underwear, hoarding them and trying them on.The next year, he was arrested for molesting a girl by coaxing her into his car in an attempt to see her naked.He was treated at Salem State Hospital for several months before being diagnosed as non-dangerous.After graduating from high school, he served a period of military service in the Army before being discharged due to psychological problems.He continued his old habit of breaking into houses, stealing women's shoes and lingerie, and strangling the mistresses when he came across them.Soon after, during a burglary, he had sex with a young woman, whom he married out of a sense of duty.He went to vocational school and became an electrician technician. Six years later, in 1968, Brudos, the father of two, was still abusive, attacking women at night and looting monuments.One day, a 19-year-old girl named Linda Slawson knocked on the wrong door when she had an appointment to sell encyclopedias, and he answered.Not wanting to miss this opportunity, he dragged her into the basement, beat her with a stick, and strangled her to death.After she died, he took off her clothes and put on her all kinds of clothes from his collection.He chopped off her left foot, stuffed it into his treasured high-heeled shoe, stashed it safely in a refrigerator, and sank the body into the Willamette River, along with a battered car's teleporter.In the following months, he killed innocent people indiscriminately three times.Several female college students pointed out that he had used similar tricks to approach them and asked for a date. Later, the police laid an ambush at the date place and arrested him.Finally, when it became clear that the defense of insanity was untenable, he had to bow his head and plead guilty. Bob Ressler and I went to Oregon State Prison in Salem to interview him.He has a round face, stocky build, polite and cooperative.But when we asked about the specifics of the crime, he claimed to have lost his memory of things he might have done because of a hypoglycemic episode. "You know what, John, I have hypoglycemia, and once it hits, I walk off the roof without knowing what's going on." Interestingly enough, when Brudos confessed to the police, he remembered it well, providing vivid details of each crime, including where the bodies and evidence could be found.He also inadvertently involved himself in it.He once hung the body of one of his victims on hooks in the garage, dressed her in his favorite clothes and shoes, and then placed a mirror on the ground beneath her to see how she would dress .In the process of taking pictures, he also took pictures of himself without knowing it. Although Brudos claimed to have lost his memory due to hypoglycemic episodes, he showed the characteristics of a well-planned murderer.This is related to his early fantasies.As a teenager on the family farm, he fantasized about catching girls in tunnels and forcing them to obey his will.Once, he managed to lure a girl into a barn and make her undress for his photograph.We found that this type of behavior continued into his adulthood, but as a teenager he was too naive and only wanted to take nude photos of his victims.After the barn photo session, he locked the girl in the corncob barn, and returned shortly thereafter in a different outfit, with a different hairstyle, as his twin brother, Ed.He released the terrified girl, explaining to her that Jerry was undergoing intensive treatment, and begged her not to tell anyone, lest he get into trouble and suffer another "unjustifiable wrong." We see clearly in Jerome Brudos that, as his activities escalated in the textbook manner, so did his phantasies.This discovery was far more important than anything he could possibly tell us to our face.Although the Kemper and the Brudos differ greatly in purpose and modus operandi, we find in both men, as in many others, the progression from one crime to the next, and from one crime to another. Levels up to another criminal level, they're all obsessed with detail and constantly "improving".Kemper's chosen victims were all beautiful college girls who, in his eyes, were associated with his mother.The less sophisticated Brudos is more content with the casual encounter victim.Yet their fascination with the details of the crime is the same, and it dominates both men's lives. As an adult, Brudos forces his wife, Darcy, to wear his fetish collection of clothing for his photo-taking ritual.His wife, an orthodox, conservative woman, was uncomfortable with such behavior, but she feared her husband.He fancied the idea of ​​building a suite dedicated to sadism, yet had to be content with his garage.There is a locked refrigerator in the garage, which he uses to store his cherished body parts.Whenever Darcy wanted to cook meat, she had to tell Jerry what she needed and he would give it to her.She often complains to friends that it would be easier if she could just open the fridge and make a selection herself.However, despite all the inconveniences, she never thought that this matter was very strange and she should go to the police.If she really thought about it, she would not dare to call the police because of fear. Brudos is almost a classic example of a murderer, starting with a harmless fetish and escalating it from hoarding found shoes to his sister's clothes to possessing other women.At first he just steals clothes from the clothesline, then he secretly follows a woman in high heels, breaks into an empty room, and then becomes more and more daring, daring to face the mistress of the house.In the beginning, he would be satisfied as long as he was dressed in women's clothes.Later, the stimulation he wanted to seek became more and more intense.In the process of interacting with girls, he will ask girls to agree to let him take nude photos.Later, when some girls refused to undress him, he threatened her with a knife.It wasn't until a girl happened to provoke him on an accidental occasion that he started to kill.Once he killed someone and felt satisfied, he would commit crimes again and again and become more and more out of control, each time the method of dismembering the body became more heinous. I don't mean to suggest that every man who is seduced by stilettos, or itch at the thought of a black lacy bra or panties, is doomed to sin.If so, most of us would go to jail.Still, as we've seen with Jerry Brudos, this fetish derangement can degenerate and "depend on the situation."Allow me to illustrate with an example. According to reports not long ago, the principal of an elementary school not far from my home had a morbid penchant for the feet of his students.He would play games with them, he would scratch the soles of their feet and their toes to see how long they could last.If they persist for a certain period of time, he will reward them with money.When some children go to the mall to buy things and can't tell where the money came from, the parents of the students notice that this is not normal.Many segments of the community voiced outrage after the principal was fired by school district authorities.He is handsome, maintains a normal and stable relationship with his girlfriend, and is well received by students and parents.The teachers at the school thought he had been framed.Even if he had a morbid penchant for toes, it was an essentially harmless thing.He never abused his students, never tried to make them undress.He's not the kind of guy who goes out and abducts children to satisfy his perverted appetites. I agree with this view.In this respect, he is no danger to the local community.I met him once.He is friendly and humane.But let me assume that during a similar play session, a little girl reacted violently, screaming, or threatening to report him.He might kill the little girl out of fear for a simple reason: he doesn't know how else to get the situation under control.When the Superintendent of Education contacted my department for comment, I told him I thought he was doing the right thing in firing that individual. About the same time, I was invited to the University of Virginia, because several female undergraduates were thrown to the ground and their clogs were stolen in the chaos.Fortunately, no one was seriously injured, and both local police and university campus police regarded the incident as a hoax.I met with the local police, as well as with the university administration, and told them what I had been told about Brudos and the others.By the time I left, I had succeeded in my mission of intimidating them.Official attitudes have since changed dramatically.I can tell you with relief that nothing more serious happened. As I look back at Jerry Brudos's criminal progression, I have to ask myself: Would a proper understanding of and intervention in the progression at any stage in the first place have prevented the malignity from being stillborn? In Ed Kemper, I saw a serial murderer led astray by a frustrated childhood relationship.In the case of Jerry Brudos, I found the situation to be far more complicated.Apparently, he developed a fetish at an early age, already obsessed with high heels he found at a junkyard.Part of his fascination, though, was that he had never seen anything like it.They were nothing like the shoes his mother wore.Later, when she reacted with yelling and disapproval, the shoes were like forbidden fruit to him.Before long he was stealing the teacher's shoes.But when she found out that the shoes had been stolen, he was surprised by her reaction.Instead of blaming him, she was curious to know why he did this.In this way, his behavior received different feedbacks from adult women, and some kind of innate impulse was gradually transformed into an evil and more deadly force. What if the dangers of his evolution had been recognized and fruitful measures had been taken to deal with his emotional problems?By the time he killed the first time, it was too late.But can it be interrupted at any stage of his continuous evolution?Through my research and subsequent case practice, I am very pessimistic about whether most sexually motivated murderers will ever show even a modicum of reformation.If any effort is to have any hope of being effective, it must be in the embryonic stage, before the transition from fantasy to reality. When my sister Allen was a teenager, my mother used to say that she could learn a lot about a boy who came back with Allen just by asking him what he thought of his mother.If he loves and respects his mother, he will love the other women in his life.If he sees his mother as a whore or a slut, chances are he will see other women that way in the future. My experience proved that my mother's observations were quite correct.Ed Kemper carves out a path of destruction in Santa Cruz, California, only to finally have the guts to kill the woman he truly hates.Monte Rissell raped and murdered five women in Alexandria, Virginia as a teenager.He told us that if he had been allowed to live with his father instead of his mother when his parents' marriage broke up due to a serious feud, he thinks he would be a lawyer today, not a prisoner in Richmond Jail Prisoners serving life sentences.We interviewed him in this prison. From Monte Ralph Rissel we were able to piece together more pieces of the puzzle.Monte was seven years old when his parents divorced, the youngest of three children.His mother took them uprooted and moved to California.Married a second time in California, she spent most of her time alone with her new husband, leaving behind three young children with little parenting.Monte got into trouble at an early age: scribbling obscenities on school walls, then taking drugs, and later shooting his cousin with an air gun over an argument.He claims his stepfather gave him the air rifle.After he shot someone impulsively, his stepfather smashed the air gun and beat him repeatedly with the barrel. When Mount was 12, his mother's second marriage broke up and the family moved to Virginia.Monte told us he believes he and his sister were responsible for the breakdown of the marriage.Since then, his crimes have escalated: driving without a license, theft, car theft, and even rape. The process of his becoming a murderer is very thought-provoking.While still in high school, he was convicted and placed on probation, and as a condition of his probation, he received treatment from a psychiatrist.During this time he received a letter from his girlfriend.She was one grade higher than him in middle school and was studying in a university in another city.She informed Monte in the letter that their relationship was over.He immediately drove the car all the way to the university, only to find that she was staying with her new boyfriend. Instead of taking any public action to vent his displeasure at the man who had caused the situation, Monte drove back to Alexandria to drink beer and weed.He parked his car in the parking lot in front of the apartment building and sat in it for hours. At about two or three in the morning, he was still sitting in the car.Just then another car appeared.The driver was a young woman.On a whim, Rissel was determined to redeem the loss he had just suffered.He walked up to the woman's car, pointed a pistol at her, and coerced her to follow him to a hideout near the apartment building. Rissel was calm, thoughtful, and accurate as he recounted his actions to Ressler and me.I checked his IQ beforehand and it was above 120.I didn't hear a lot of remorse from his tone, only those very few murderers who would turn themselves in or commit suicide would have remorse, mainly remorse for being captured or going to jail.He doesn't try to minimize his crimes, though, and I do feel like he's giving us an accurate account.I saw a bit of tricks in his narrative. This event follows a triggering event or occurrence which we call a stressor.We see this pattern emerge over and over again.Anything can be a trigger-sensitive stimulus.不同的事情对我们每个人构成了困扰。但是显而易见，两大常见的刺激是失去工作和失去妻子或女友。 (我这里指的是女性，因为如我所发现的，几乎所有的杀人犯都是男性，其理由我会在后面加以推测。) 由于对蒙特·里塞尔这样的人进行过研究，我们渐渐意识到，这些紧张性刺激构成了系列谋杀的重要动力，当我们在某一犯罪现场看见某些情况时，往往可以毫不费力地推断出该案中的紧张性刺激究竟是什么。在贾德·雷经办的阿拉斯加谋杀案中(我已在第四章中提及)，一位妇女及其两个年幼的女儿被人杀害，案发的时机和细节引导贾德做出推测，作案者已经失去了女朋友以及他的饭碗。作案者确实遭到了这样的双重打击。事实上，他的女友已经一脚把他蹬掉，投靠了他的老板；而老板随即将他开除，免得他碍手碍脚。 于是，蒙特·里塞尔在见到女友跟一位大学生在一起的当天晚上便第一次犯下了谋杀罪。这次犯罪本身是非常重要的。而我便可以从考虑它究竟是如何发生的以及为什么会发生中得到更多的信息。 原来，里塞尔的受害者碰巧是一个风尘女子，这具有双层意义：她对于同陌生人发生性关系并不像普通人那样感到恐惧；虽然受到了恐吓，她很可能具有相当强的求生本能。因此当他把她带到空无一人之处，显然是要持枪威胁图谋强暴时，她试图要缓解一下局面，撩起了裙子，询问袭击者想要她摆出什么姿势。 “她问过我想采用什么方式。”他告诉我们说。 她的举动非但未能让他变得温和和敏感起来，反倒大大激怒了他。“这个婊子好像要控制局面。”她假装到达性高潮以取悦他，但这样做反而坏了事。如果她能“享受”这次强暴，这倒增强了他的感觉，即女人都是妓女。她变得“非个性化”了，他很容易地就想到要杀掉她。 不过他确实给另一个受害者放了一条生路，当时她告诉他，她正在照料身患癌症的父亲。里塞尔的哥哥曾患过癌症，就这样他认同了这位女子。在他的眼里，她是个性化的，这与那位妓女正好相反，或者与理查德·斯佩克攻击过的那位手被反绑、脸朝下趴在沙发上的年轻的学生护士也截然相反。 这就是为什么很难对强奸者件提供通用的应对忠告的原因。这取决于强奸者的个性和犯罪动机如何，无论是顺从配合，还是说服他放弃强暴的念头，都可能是最佳的行动方案，但这也可能会雪上加霜。对所谓的“权力恢复型强奸者”，采取反抗或搏斗的做法可能会使他就此罢休；对所谓的“愤怒刺激型强奸者”进行反抗则可能会让受害者搭上一条性命，除非受害者足够强壮或者可以迅速逃出魔爪。因为强奸者是性无能者就想方设法让他获得欢愉未必就是上上策。这类犯罪的动因是愤怒、敌视，以及展示威力。性只是一种顺带行为。 里塞尔对从停车场劫持的那名女子施暴以后，怒气并未消退，拿不定主意该怎样处置受害者。在此关头，她干了一件我们许多人会以为合情合理的事情：设法逃跑。这下子更叫里塞尔认为是她、而不是他在控制局面。我们在《美国精神病学期刊》上发表过一篇研究论文，引用了里塞尔的原话：“她撒腿就跑下沟壑。我一把抓住了她，反扭她的手臂使其动弹不得。她的身材比我要高大。我掐住她的脖子……她踉跄了几步……我们一起滚下了山坡，落入水中。我抓住她的头猛撞石头，又将她的头按入水中。” 我们了解到，在分析罪犯时，受害者的行为与作案者的行为具有同等的重要性。她是一个高风险的受害者，还是一个低风险的受害者？她都说了些什么或做了些什么？她的言行是惹火了作案者，还是使他收敛？他们的遭遇究竟是怎么回事？ 里塞尔的受害者是就近选择的，住在他的公寓楼里或者附近。他一旦开了杀戒，这一顾忌便不复存在。他意识到，他可以做，可以享受，可以逃脱惩罚。如果我们当初就被请来办案并对作案者做侧写，会预计到他的某些经历——除了谋杀以外的某些暴力犯罪——而事实上他确实有过此类经历。非常坦率地讲，我们可能会搞错的是他的年龄，起码在一开始时是这样。里塞尔首次杀人时才19岁。我们预计作案者会在二十四五岁到二十八九岁之间。 不过里塞尔一案显示，年龄在我们办案中是一个相对概念。1989年间，我的科员格雷格·麦克拉里被召去参与侦破纽约州罗切斯特发生的一起令人困惑的谋杀妓女系列案。格雷格与林德·约翰逊警长和一支一流的警方专案小组密切配合，提供了一份详细的侧写，拟定了一套策略，最终将阿瑟·肖克罗斯缉拿归案，绳之以法。我们事后复查侧写时，发现格雷格几乎精确地确认了凶手：种族、个性、工作类型、家庭生活、车型、嗜好、对该地区的熟悉程度、与警察的关系。除了年龄之外，几乎项项被他言中。格雷格推测，此人的年龄在三十岁上下，在谋杀方面达到了驾轻就熟的水准。实际上，肖克罗斯的年龄为45岁。后来查明，他曾因谋害两名儿童(和妓女和老人一样，儿童是易受伤害的目标)而人狱服刑长达15年，这一点实质上致使他的成长比在正常情况下慢了好几拍。假释几个月后，他重操旧业。 阿瑟·肖克罗斯从事谋杀时正处在假释期，蒙特·里塞尔的情况也是一样。他像埃德·肯珀那样能够让精神病医生相信，他的病情已有好转。而实际上他正在残杀无辜。可以说这是那则老生常谈的笑话的令人恶心的翻版。笑话是这样说的：需要多少名精神病医生才能更换一只灯泡？答案是只需要一名，不过只有在灯泡自己想要更换时才行。精神病医生以及心理健康咨询人员都习惯于根据案犯自我报告中的一面之辞来跟踪案犯的康复进展，而这是以病人自己想要变好作为假定的。结果一再证明，要想愚弄众多精神病医生实在是再容易不过的事情。大多数优秀的精神病医生会认为，惟有以往的暴力记录才是预测暴力的较为可靠的指标。我希望我们对罪犯个性的研究以及后来的办案实践能让从事心理健康研究的人士意识到，就罪犯行为而言，依靠自我报告是有其局限陛的。就其本性而言，系列杀人犯或者强奸犯是具有操纵欲和自恋癖的，并且全然以自我为中心。他会告诉一位假释官员或者监狱的精神病医生任何他或她想要听到的东西，任何若想出狱或游荡街头所必须讲的东西。 在里塞尔对我们描述后来的杀人案的过程中，我看到了一种稳定的渐进发展的趋势。他被第二个受害者连珠炮似的发问惹火了。“她想要了解，我为什么要这样做？我为什么挑中了她？我难道没有女朋友吗？我遇到了什么问题？我打算怎么样？” 她在枪口的威胁下开着车，如同前一位受害者那样，她企图逃出魔爪。在此关头，他意识到非杀掉她不可，于是用刀连续猛扎她的胸部。 等到第三次杀人时，一切都显得挺容易。他吸取了前两次杀人的教训，不能容忍受害者跟他交谈，他不得不让她处于非个性化状态。“我当时在想……我已经杀了两个人。不妨再干掉这一个。” 在渐进发展的阶段，他放走了那位照料身患癌症父亲的女子。可是在最后两次作案时，他的意图已经非常确定。他溺死了一人，捅死了另一人，据他自己估计大约捅了50至100下。 就像几乎所有其他案犯那样，里塞尔向我们揭示出，早在强奸案或者谋杀案实际发生前很久，幻想就已存在。我们问过他，那些念头都是从哪里得来的。结果发现其来源不一，不过据他说，来源之一是阅读有关戴维·贝科威茨的报道。 戴维·贝科威茨最初被称为“0.44口径杀手”，后来他在纽约市处于恐怖气氛笼罩下时投书报纸，被称为“萨姆之子”。他具备了更多的行刺者个性，而非典型的系列杀人犯个性。在差不多一年时间里，从1976年7月到1977年7月，前后有六名年轻男女被杀害，受伤的人更多，他们都是将车子停放在恋人小径上，又都是坐在车子里被大火力手枪击毙或击伤的。如同某些杀人犯一样，贝科威茨是被领养的，他一直到进陆军服兵役时才知道这层关系。他原先希望被派往越南，结果却到了韩国，在那里与一个妓女发生了首次性关系，并因此染上了淋病。退役回到纽约后，他开始寻找生身母亲，后来发现她跟女儿，即他的妹妹，住在长岛的长滩。让他大为惊讶和失望的是，她们根本不想与他有任何来往。他为人一向害羞，缺乏安全感，容易动怒，这时已成长为潜在的杀手。他在陆军部队里学会了射击。他前往得克萨斯州，购买了一枝0.44口径的手枪，这个大火力武器使他自觉更加强大有力。他来到纽约郊外的垃圾场瞄准小目标进行练习，直练到枪法精湛才止。此时，这个白天职位卑微的邮局雇员到了晚间便展开了捕猎。 我们在阿提卡州立监狱对贝科威茨做了访谈。他因作下六起命案被分别判以25年到无期不等的徒刑。他曾经认过罪，不过后来又翻供，否认了他的罪行。1979年，他在狱中遭人袭击，险些丢了性命，当时有人从背后猛割他的喉咙。伤口共缝了56针，袭击者根本无从辨认。于是我们事先不经通知就出现在他的面前，不想再让他身陷险境。在典狱长的配合下，我们提前填写了大部分书面问卷，因此是有备而来的。 为了这次特别会面，我随行携带了一些直观教具。我曾经提过我父亲在纽约从事印刷工作，担任过长岛地区印刷工会的领导人。他为我提供了许多小报，上面有长篇的关于“萨姆之子”的杰作的报道。 我拿起纽约的《每日新闻报》，递给桌子对面的他，说：“戴维，100年以后没有人还会记得鲍勃·雷斯勒或者约翰·道格拉斯，可是人们不会忘记'萨姆之子'。事实上，眼下在堪萨斯州的威奇托就有一个案子，有个家伙杀害了五六个女人，自称是BTK扼杀者。BTK指的是绑架、折磨、致死。你晓得的嘛，他发出了不少信件，信中还提起了你。他大侃什么戴维·贝科威茨，什么'萨姆之子'。他想以你为榜样，因为你具有这种力量。假如他往此地监狱写信给你，我是不会感到意外的。” 贝科威茨并非是我认为的那种有性格魅力的家伙。他总是在寻觅些许的被人认可感或者个人成就感。他生就一对明亮的蓝眼睛，老是在试图分辨别人是不是真的对他感兴趣，抑或在取笑他。当他听完我的话时，两眼一亮。 “如今你永远没有机会出庭作证了，”我继续说，“因此公众对你的了解就是，你是个狗娘养的混蛋。不过从这些访谈中，我们知道你一定还有另外一面，敏感的一面，受你的生活背景影响的一面。我们希望你能告诉我们。” 他在感情上是不大外露的，但他对我们讲话时几乎不带犹豫。他承认起初曾在布鲁克林区和昆斯区一带纵火超过两千起，详情都记载在日记里。这便是他具备类似行刺者个性的一个方面：一个孤独者，醉心于这种过分的写日记的习惯。还有一个方面是，他不想与被害人发生任何肉体接触。他不是强奸犯，不是恋物狂。他不会寻找纪念品。他所接受的任何性方面的指控均来自枪杀行为本身。 他的纵火主要属于骚扰行为，例如在垃圾桶里或者在废弃的建筑物里放火。 贝科威茨像许多纵火犯一样，观看熊熊烈火时会发生手淫行为，其后在消防队前来救火时还会如此。纵火行为与“杀人三合一”中的其他两个特征是相吻合的，即尿床和虐待小动物。 我往往把深入监狱访谈看做是去淘金。你得到的大部分信息都会是一钱不值的小圆石，不过要是能淘获一块真正的天然金块，所有努力就是很值得的。访谈戴维·贝科威茨的情况肯定就是如此。 令我们非常、非常感兴趣的是，当他在恋人小径一带偷偷跟踪猎物时，并不是出现在驾驶座的一侧，即十有八九为男性坐的一侧，它对他构成了更大的威胁，而是绕到乘客座的一侧。这一点告诉我们，当他以典型的警察姿势对准车子开火时，他的满腔仇恨和怒火都是冲着女性发作的。发射多颗子弹，就像捅数刀一样，表明了他的愤怒程度。男人仅仅是在一个错误的时间出现在一个错误的地点而已。说不定在攻击者和受害者之间根本没有过目光接触。一切都是隔着一段距离进行的。他压根不必使她个性化就可以拥有他幻想中的女人。 同样有趣的是，我们淘获的另一块天然金块已成为我们对系列杀人犯的整体认识的一部分。贝科威茨告诉我们他总是夜间外出捕获猎物。他要是碰不上偶然送上门的受害者，即在一个错误时间出现在一个错误地点的受害者，就会回到从前得过手的地区。他会重返案发现场(许多其他作案者也会重返弃尸地点)以及墓地，象征性地在泥地上翻滚几下，脑海里一遍遍地重现那种幻想。 其他系列杀人犯之所以要对作案过程进行拍照或制作录像，也正是出于这一原因。他们在受害者死去，尸体被处理掉后仍想重温那种刺激感，继续上演那出幻想剧，并再三加以重复。贝科威茨并不需要珠宝首饰，或者内衣裤，或者肢体，或者任何其他纪念品。他告诉我们，旧地重游对他来说就足够了。过后他便回到家，进行手淫，重温那场幻想。 我们将利用这一发现，使其发挥出极大的效力。执法界人士总是推测作案者会重返案发现场，可就是无法证实或解释他们这样做的确切原因。从贝科威茨这样的案犯身上，我们发现这种推测是正确的，虽然并不总是出于我们可能会怀疑的原因。悔恨肯定是原因之一。不过正如贝科威茨向我们揭示的，可能还会有其他原因。你一旦理解为什么某一类型的罪犯会重返现场，就可以着手制订相应的对策。 “萨姆之子”这个名字是从他写给约瑟夫·博雷利警长的一封信中得来的，博雷利后来升任纽约市警察局的探长。亚历山大·埃索和瓦伦蒂娜·苏瑞安尼在布朗克斯区被害后，有人在他们的汽车附近发现了这封信。两名受害者像其他人一样都是近距离中弹身亡的。信是这样写的： 你们把我称为仇恨女人的人，我为此深感痛心。我不是这样的人。但是我是个怪物。我是“萨姆之子”。我是一个小顽童。 萨姆爸爸喝醉酒以后，就会变得十分卑鄙。他殴打自己的家人。有时他把我绑在房子后面。还有的时候，他把我锁进车库。萨姆喜欢饮血。 “出去杀人。”萨姆爸爸命令道。 我们的房子背后长眠着一些人。大多是年轻入——被强暴和屠宰——血液被吸干——现在仅存的是白骨。 萨姆老爹也把我锁进阁楼。我无法外出，但是可以从阁楼窗户朝外望去，看看世人的活动。 我感觉自己好像是个局外人。我与所有人都无法相互理解——规定给我的节目就是杀人。 不过要想阻止我，你们非得杀了我不可。全体警察请注意：先得把我击毙——一开枪就要击毙我，否则就不要挡我的道，不然你们就死定了！ 萨姆老爹现在年事已高。他需要吸点血来维持青春。他的心脏病发作次数过多。“哎，我的儿子，我很难受，感觉很痛。” 我最最挂念的是我那位美丽的公主。她正在我们的盥洗室里休息。不过我很快会见到她。 我是个“怪物”——是《圣经》中的鬼王别西卡——是圆滚滚的巨兽。 我酷爱捕猎，潜行于街头寻觅猎物——好吃的肉食。昆斯区的女人是最漂亮的。我一定是她们饮用的水。我生来就是捕猎的。这是我的生活。替老爹搞血。 博雷利先生，长官，我不想再杀人了。不，长官，不想再杀了。可是我非杀不可呀，“荣耀您的父亲。” 我想向世界求爱。我爱世人。我不属于这个世界。请把我送回到人形兽那里。 这个跳梁小丑已经成为全国性的知名人物。一百多名警探加入了代号欧米茄的专案组。这类充斥着疯言谵语的信件源源不断，其中一些寄给了报刊以及新闻记者，例如专栏作家吉米·布雷斯林。整座城市陷于一片恐慌之中。他告诉我们，他上邮局时，听到别人在议论“萨姆之子”，却浑然不知他正与他们同在一室，体验到了一种真真切切的刺激感。 下一次袭击发生在昆斯区的贝赛德，不过那对男女大难不死。五天之后，布鲁克林区的一对夫妇就没有那么幸运了。斯塔西·莫斯科维茨当场毙命。罗伯特·维奥兰特幸免于难，但因伤而双目失明。 “萨姆之子”在最后一个杀人之夜，因把他那辆福特牌银河车停放得过于靠近消防栓而终于落人法网。该地的一位目击者记得当时有个警察开出了一张罚款单，经过一番顺藤摸瓜，警察最后查到了戴维·贝科威茨头上。警察出现在他面前时，他简单说了旬：“好吧，你们逮住我了。” 贝科威茨被捕后解释说，所谓“萨姆”指的是他的邻居萨姆·卡尔，他豢养的那条名叫哈维的黑色纽芬兰猎犬显然就是命令戴维杀人的寿命高达3，000岁的魔鬼。在某个阶段，他曾经用0.22口径手枪射杀过那条猎犬，只是它幸存了下来。他立即就被精神病学界许多专家判定为类偏狂型精神分裂症患者，他的不同信件也被他们做出了种种诠释。第一封信中的“美丽公主”显然指的是其中一位受害者，唐娜·劳里埃，萨姆曾经决定等她死后就占有她的灵魂。 在我看来，这些信件的最重要之处，比任何内容都更重要之处，在于他变换笔迹的方式。在第一封信中，字迹工整有序，随后就越写越糟，直至字迹几乎无法辨认。拼写错误越来越常见。好像有两个不同的人在写信。我告诉了他我的发现。他甚至都没有意识到这一点。要是我在一发现他字迹越写越潦草之际就对他进行侧写，便会认定他这人脆弱，处在易出差错和小过失不断的年龄，比如把车子停放在消防栓前面，这些将有助于警方捉拿他。那一薄弱环节将成为采取某些前摄策略的良机。 贝科威茨之所以能对我们畅所欲言，我相信是因为我们对此案做了广泛深人的调研。在访谈刚开始时，我们就切入要害地谈起了那条所谓3，000岁的猎犬指使他作案这一话题。精神病学界已经接受了这种福音一般的说法，认为它解释了他的作案动机。可我知道，这套说法在他被捕之前其实并不存在。这只是他想到的一条退路。因此当他喋喋不休地大谈什么猎犬时，我只是简单说道：“嘿，戴维，停止你的胡说八道吧。这件事与猎犬根本沾不上边。” 他点头大笑，承认我说得没错。我们曾经拜读过好几份研究这类信件的长篇心理学论文。其中一份拿他与爱德华·阿尔比的剧作《动物园的故事》中那位名叫杰里的人物进行了比较。另一份试图通过逐字逐句的分析探讨他精神病的病因。可是，戴维把他们统统给愚弄了，引得他们做出了与实情风马牛不相及的解释。 事情其实很简单：戴维·贝科威茨对他母亲以及生活中碰到的其他女人对待他的方式感到愤怒，在她们身边他有一种欠缺感。他想拥有她们的这一幻想演变为一种致命的现实。对我们而言，重要的是那些细节。 由于鲍勃·雷斯勒巧妙地使用了全国司法研究院的研究经费，而安·伯吉斯又整理汇编出了访谈资料，截止1983年，我们已经完成了一项针对36名案犯的详尽研究。我们还从118名他们的受害者身上收集了资料，这些受害者大部分是妇女。 从这项研究中诞生了一个体系，它有助于更好地理解暴力凶犯并对其进行分类。我们头一次真正能够把罪犯的心理活动同他在犯罪现场留下的罪证联系在一起分析。反过来，它又帮助我们更有效地捕获他们。这一切解答了一些有关精神失常以及“什么样的人竟会干出这种事情”等的问题。 1988年，我们把研究结论扩充，写成一部专著，题为《性欲杀人罪：模式及动机》。该书由列克星敦出版社出版，迄今该书已印刷了7次。但是，不管我们获得了多少知识，正如我们在结束章节中所承认的，“此项研究所提出的问题要远远超出它所做出的解答。” 在探寻暴力凶犯的心路历程方面还有很多东西有待发掘。系列杀人犯根据定义是“成功的”杀人犯，他们从自身经历中总结经验教训，不断长进。我们只有确保我们不断长进的速度要比他们还快。

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Notes: .