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Why are people fascinated by serial killers? The plethora of books, movies, and television documentaries about them attests to the public's obsession with these human killing machines. Yet compared with the number of spouses who kill their partners or drunken drivers who commit vehicular homicide, there are relatively few serial killers. The FBI estimates that at any given time between 200 and 500 serial killers are at large, and that they kill 3,500 people a year.
My hunch is that people are fascinated by serial killers because of their perceived resemblance to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As with Dr. Jekyll, most serial killers appear outwardly quite ordinary, like your neighbor or mine, living normal, everyday lives in which, just as we do, they fill the car with gasoline, hold down a job, and pay taxes. From behind this veneer of ordinariness their Mr. Hyde personality, representative of the darkest aspect of humanity, jumps out to torture and kill victims - and to transfix us.
Prime examples uphold the stereotype. John Wayne Gacy was a building-construction contractor, twice married, active in community projects, and a member of civic organizations. In 1967 he was voted the Jaycee's Outstanding Member. Joining the Jolly Joker Club, he created the character of Pogo the Clown and, costumed as Pogo, went into hospitals to cheer up sick children. In 1978, Gacy was director of the Polish Constitution Day Parade in Chicago, and during the festivities he was photographed with First Lady Rosalyn Carter. But as Gacy himself once said, "A clown can get away with murder," and he did, raping, sodomizing, torturing, and strangling to death thirty-three young men over the course of more than a decade.
Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy's mother considered him an ideal son. His political friends were convinced that he was on a fast track to one day becoming a governor or a senator. Dashingly handsome, intelligent, and witty, Bundy was a romantic dream come true for many women. Some described him as an attentive, tender lover who sent flowers and penned love poems. A photo shows Bundy immersed in happy domesticity, opening a bottle of wine as he sits with a girlfriend. At the moment the photo was taken, Bundy had already abducted and...