Serial Killers - Philosophy for Everyone

Being and Killing

S. Waller, Fritz Allhoff, S. Waller

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781444341409
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Serial Killers - Philosophy for Everyone investigates our profound intrigue with mass-murderers. Exploring existential, ethical and political questions through an examination of real and fictional serial killers, philosophy comes alive via an exploration of grisly death.

• Presents new philosophical theories about serial killing, and relates new research in cognitive science to the minds of serial killers
• Includes a philosophical look at real serial killers such as Ian Brady, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and the Zodiac killer, as well as fictional serial killers such as Dexter and Hannibal Lecter
• Offers a new phenomenological examination of the writings of the Zodiac Killer
• Contains an account of the disappearance of one of Ted Bundy's victims submitted by the organization Families and Friends of Missing Persons and Violent Crime Victims
• Integrates the insights of philosophers, academics, crime writers and police officers

PART I

I THINK THEREFORE I KILL

The Philosophical Musings
of Serial Killers

ANDREW M. WINTERS

CHAPTER 1

MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL OF ALL

A Philosophical Gaze into the Writings of the Zodiac Killer

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche¹

Who is the Zodiac Killer?

Killers are not always caught. For those who remember December 1968, you might recall getting ready for a holiday party, looking forward to the end of a semester, or thinking about what you would accomplish in the year that would bring us Woodstock and a moon landing. For those who lived in Northern California during that time, you most likely did not think that December would be the beginning of an 11-month haunting. For in that month, a killer, who would later be called Zodiac, was preparing himself to begin collecting slaves for the afterlife. Those of us who do not remember December 1968, or who did not live in Northern California at that time, are probably familiar with the image of Zodiac wearing a black-hooded executioner outfit adorned with the marksman symbol that has become his logo. So, although Zodiac has not been caught, most of us have already met him.

Zodiac’s murders and letters have become the subject of multiple films, books, song lyrics, and websites. For example, the Zodiac Killer’s slayings have served as foundations to many films since the 1970s, including Dirty Harry. Of the many books written about Zodiac, Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac has been one of the most impressive accounts of Zodiac’s horrific deeds. Graysmith was a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle at the time Zodiac first struck, thereby giving him access to Zodiac’s letters as they arrived. The Zodiac Killer has also found his way into the underground music scene with bands such as Macabre, Balzac, and Machine Head using Zodiac’s letters and killings as inspiration for such lyrics as “The best part of it is that when I die I will be reborn in paradise / And those I have killed will become my slaves.”² The discussion boards on www.zodiackiller.com³ further indicate Zodiac’s popularity.

What is it then about a person who claims to have killed 37 people (only seven have been confirmed) that makes him so intriguing? Are we, at our core, all murderers who find comfort in the demise of our fellow species? I don’t believe this is the case, but I do believe that there is something interesting about us humans insofar as we are drawn to the macabre. This is made evident by the ways in which many murderers such as Bundy, Dahmer, and Gacy have reached near-celebrity status. They have even become the topic of philosophical discussion, as this very volume illustrates. Perhaps we are attracted by things which exhibit the power to unfetter themselves from societal norms. If anything will give us a clue as to why we are drawn to such abominable acts as those conducted by murderers, it will be the letters, paintings, and impressions left by them.

Zodiac is no exception here. His letters to the press show his desire to be recognized, and his taunts to the police further demonstrate his cockiness. By looking at a small sample of Zodiac’s writings and his ciphers (of which three of the four have not been translated), we can gain entry into the world of a murderer, and perhaps gain further access to the reasons why we are drawn to such a killer.

Peek-A-Boo: You Are Doomed!

At first glance, such an investigation would seem answerable by the works of psychology. It seems plausible that by looking into the psychological background of each of the individuals who are drawn to the macabre, and whatever overlapping features we find, those will likely be the key features of the macabre-interest. But this doesn’t seem to account for the overwhelming interest in the macabre. Horror films make their way to the screen each Halloween, entire genres of music dedicate themselves to images of the grotesque, and the horror novel has yet to see its end. So a psychological account of our “interest” seems hardly sufficient. In other words, a psychological account can tell us something about the individuals who are drawn to the macabre, but it doesn’t give us a complete picture as to why the macabre has such a strong following.

So if psychology is inadequate for the task of identifying the underlying tenets of macabre fanaticism, then what method will suffice? I propose that we adapt a phenomenological method for better understanding the impact macabre artifacts have upon us to then better understand why we are drawn to such objects. To briefly summarize, phenomenology is the philosophical study of phenomena – that is, appearances, or how things seem to us. Phenomenologists study how things look, feel, sound, smell, and taste; they explore how the world appears to us. Phenomenology concerns itself with experiences as they’re being experienced by the person experiencing them – from the first person perspective. A phenomenological analysis of emotions, for example, involves an account of how emotions are experienced by a person as she experiences them.

Take, for instance, the emotion of fear, which is appropriate for the subject of this essay. When a person experiences fear she may experience a sense of fleeting, as if the world disappears except for the cause of the fear. She may find herself only experiencing her body as an object for a threat to be directed at. For this reason she feels stripped of any ability to make decisions insofar as she only sees herself as an object exposed to the threat imposed by the other.

Think of a time when you truly experienced fear. Perhaps you were a child who heard a strange noise at your window, or maybe you were a parent who lost your child in a mall. For the child, the only thing that existed was the noise at the window and the feeling that whatever was causing the noise wanted to harm you. One of your parents may have come into your room and tried to comfort you. But the way that your parent might have comforted you was by turning on the light and showing you what was causing the noise. Maybe it was rain or a branch hitting the window, and you came to understand that neither rain nor a branch has the intent of harming you. So you began to feel safe. But up until the moment of understanding that it was only rain or a branch causing the noise, you did not experience yourself as a person in your home. Instead, your home seemed to have disappeared and you could only think about the noise at the window and whether or not the cause of the noise would harm you.

For the parent who has lost a child in a shopping mall, the place where you lost the child seemed to disappear. You could only focus on the idea that your child was in danger, and you desperately tried to think of ways to rescue your child. Throughout this process, the stores within the mall no longer appeared as places to enjoy the day. The stores, instead, seemed to transform into dark hideaways for strangers to harbor children. Each patron became a stranger capable of stealing children, and more importantly was capable of having taken your child. The mall and its patrons remain as threats to you until you see that your child is safe. If you don’t see your child again, then the world will have forever changed for you.

The phenomenological approach is in stark contrast to what contemporary philosophers take to be an analytic approach. When applying the analytic method to an emotion such as fear, the emotion is analyzed from the third person perspective by attempting to understand the objective features of fear that others would be able to observe. The emotion fear would first be understood as a concept to which a definition is ascribed. By formulating a definition of fear, the philosopher is then able to provide a framework for understanding what fear is in light of the events that evoke fear. The aim of providing an analysis of the concept of fear is to then understand how fear functions in the world beyond our experiences. Analytic philosophers might go on to identify the emotional state of fear with chemical reactions occurring within the brain, and so they might discuss a neurophysiological account, discussing the chemical processes that transpire when a person experiences fear.

By approaching fear using these methods, we are able to do many things, such as provide medications for overly fearful people, and shape reactions to fear into responses that can intelligently protect us if we are in danger. These approaches, however, fall short of providing a complete picture of what it is like to experience fear from the perspective of the person experiencing fear. By obtaining a complete picture of what it is like to experience fear we can better understand our attraction to macabre figures such as the Zodiac Killer.

The phenomenological approach, however, is not a novel approach to experiences. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) provides a similar analysis. In his book Being and Nothingness Sartre considers what it is like to experience being looked at by another person. For Sartre, the way that we see ourselves is commonly determined by the way that others interpret us. For example, if we are warmly welcomed by friends in a café, we see ourselves as a person who is not a threat and, perhaps, is even enjoyable. On the other hand, if we enter a café and people scream “Oh my God!” while pointing at us in horror, we would not feel comfortable and may even begin to question what is wrong with us – thereby scrutinizing ourselves as a potential threat, or at least as someone who is not welcomed.

Sartre, however, points out that eyes alone do not determine how we experience a look from another person. The look may be experienced even when eyes are not present. For example, if we take an evening walk and a light appears in the window of a house, we no longer feel alone in the night. Instead, we may come to feel that the appearance of the light is similar to the opening of someone’s eye. This is analogous to experiencing the waking of a person – at one moment the person was asleep and unaware of our actions, and suddenly she becomes awake and aware of our presence. When the person was asleep we experience her as an object of our perception, and we experience ourselves as someone who perceives the person as someone who is asleep. But we are turned into the object of her perception when she awakens; even if she has not yet opened her eyes, we know that she could turn and see us and we experience ourselves as an object – as something potentially watched. In a similar fashion, when the light is turned on in the window of the house that we pass by, we experience ourselves as someone who is seen because we can be seen, even if no one looks out at us. Sounds are also capable of producing the experience of being seen. When sitting in a park, the snap of a twig from behind us may give us the feeling that a person is there. Since a person is someone capable of seeing us, we then experience ourselves as something that is seen.

These occurrences of experiencing ourselves as a thing which is seen allow us to experience ourselves as others perceive us. Not only do these incidents allow us to realize that we are visual objects, but we are also presented with the opportunity to realize that we are bodies. A body is an object that is physical insofar as it occupies space, and along with being physical comes the opportunity to be physically altered. Among the ways in which a body, such as ours, may be physically altered includes the possibility of being physically harmed. From this discovery it follows that to experience ourselves as things which are seen is to experience ourselves as things which are vulnerable to another person.

To be vulnerable is to have our options limited by the person, or the idea of a person, that causes the experience of being seen. This is not to say that we are no longer free to make any choice, but instead, the choices that we are able to make are restricted by whatever produces the experience of being seen. If we are sitting in a park and we hear the snap of a twig from behind us, we are no longer free to do anything we wish. Unseen, we might do wickedly private things, make socially unacceptable gestures, express vulgarities and more, with no self-awareness or self-condemnation. However, just because a noise has occurred, it does not necessarily mean that a person is there to see us, or that we are threatened. The sound could have been produced by a bird gathering a twig. We do not know if it was a bird or a person who broke the twig. Because we do not know, Sartre suggests we still experience ourselves as someone who is seen because there remains the lingering possibility that a person did produce the sound.

Other people and the idea of other people aren’t the only factors in determining which choices are available to us; many of them are determined by what Sartre calls our facticity. Facticity is the way the world is and the way that we actually are in the world that determines how our choices will appear to us. Some other components of our facticity are the language, culture, and environment within which we are born. For example, a person who is born into a modern culture that has English as its dominant language will find that her available choices are radically different than a person who is born in a tribal culture with a different language.

So what does being seen and facticity have to do with the Zodiac Killer? First, Zodiac was an actual threat. He is confirmed to have killed seven people and has claimed responsibility for the deaths of 30 others. For those people living in the Vallejo area during the late 1960s, a sound behind you not only meant that there was possibly a person behind you. There was the added possibility that there was a person behind you and that person was the Zodiac Killer. Second, Zodiac has not been caught and remains unidentified. So there is the more important possibility that even those who you do see and are seen by are potentially the Zodiac Killer. So, like the sounds in the park and the light in the window, Zodiac remains unseen, yet he has given clues to how he sees us. Through his letters we have come to realize that we are in danger and that while Zodiac remains free, it is a permanent feature of the world that we are in danger. By analogy, it seems that Zodiac’s letters are like the crackling of a bush from behind us – revealing to us that we are bodies which are susceptible to the dangers that he introduces into the world. We are seen by him, and through his letters we understand that we are seen no longer as persons living in the world, but are transformed into objects for him to collect. It is this transformation t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Halftitle page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Meditations on Murder, or What is so Philosophical about Serial Killers?
• PART I I THINK THEREFORE I KILL: The Philosophical Musings of Serial Killers
• PART II CAN YOU BLAME THEM? ETHICS, EVIL, AND SERIAL KILLING
• PART III DANGEROUS INFATUATIONS: The Public Fascination with Serial Killers
• PART IV A EULOGY FOR EMOTION: The Lack of Empathy and the Urge to Kill
• PART V CREEPY COGNITION: Talking and Thinking about Serial Killers
• PART VI PSYCHO-OLOGY: Killer Mindsets and Meditations on Murder
• A Solemn Afterword: A Message from the Victims Network
• A Timeline of Serial Killers
• Notes on Contributors