It is known as serial killer to that individual who has murdered three or more people in a period of time greater than a month, leaving a dead time between one murder and the other and whose main motivation when killing is found in the psychological satisfaction that the act provides of kill.
Person who has murdered more than three people in a time greater than one month
A variety of psychological urges can lead to the killing of the serial killer or serial killer, as it is also known, especially the sexual obsessions and excessive power intentions.
Modus operandi and sick profiles
The methodology, that is, the modus operandi that a murderer of this type follows is usually always the same, because the crimes are more or less carried out under the same conditions and the chosen targets share characteristics, including profession, sex, age, etc. race.
It is a recurring fact that most serial killers present unhealthy background, that is, they themselves were victims of abuse during their childhood.
The question of murderous fantasy is a characteristic of these criminals because they generally fantasize from children and adolescence, with murders, they like to read about crimes and then they end up applying all these questions to their real crimes.
There are three signs that if a child coexists, they will warn us that we are facing a future serial killer: pyromania (starting fires just out of emotion), cruelty towards animals (they kill animals such as dogs and cats in front of their friends to impress them and purely delight) and enuresis (persistence of uncontrolled urination, even and beyond having reached the age at which it should be controlled).
For example, if what leads to killing an individual and then turning him into a serial murderer are the repeated abuse that he has suffered as a child by his mother, they will make him choose women who share common characteristics with their mother as the main victims of their misdeeds.
While the concept was installed in the seventies of the last century by the FBI Special Agent Robert ResslerIn fact, the concept had already been used since the 1930s.
It is necessary to clarify that the serial killer should not be confused with other types of murderers with which it is commonly related, such as the mass murderer (that individual who kills a large number of people in a short period of time) and the lightning killer (who commits multiple murders in a relatively short period of time and in various places).
Hard to catch
In most cases, catching a serial killer is not an easy task for investigators since they are usually quite organized criminals who try not to leave any loose ends on their actions, or because they tend to use some distractions to entertain who investigate them.
When the police confirm that they are pursuing a serial murderer, they usually engage psychiatric professionals in the investigation who will allow them to draw a profile of the murderer from the evidence found in each of the cases.
In many cases, this profile makes it possible to find the murderer or also prevent an attack.
As they are murderers who present severe mental problems, it may be that justice confines them to perpetual confinement in a mental institution once they are caught.
Criminals who catch the public
On the other hand, serial killers are a type of criminal who arouses considerable interest among ordinary people as a result of their sadistic crimes, their personalities, the ability they show to evade the police and continue to accumulate victims.
This situation has generated that many of them transcend to fame and become media figures, whose stories are also represented in books, movies, comics, among others.
The cinema is one of the media that has most reflected the stories of serial killers, either adapting cases from real life or creating murderers of this class that later become very popular. Many of these productions have achieved phenomenal success with the public.
One of the most emblematic and successful cases is that of The Silence of the Innocents, a piece starring the acting duo Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in which the latter embodies the role of the serial killer Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist who practiced cannibalism with the victims he murdered.
Foster plays an FBI agent who approaches Lecter to help her catch another serial killer.
The story shows how Lecter's ductile and perverse personality manages in many cases to dominate the young agent.
The story would capture such a predilection from the public that it had sequels and prequels.
