Now that the D.C. area sniper has finally been caught,
people are dismayed at how "ordinary" he seems. Yet we
can't imagine ourselves doing something like that, so is
there anything basically different about the brains of serial
killers?
Some answers come from a scientific study of Joel Rifkin,
who strangled 17 prostitutes in four years. After New York
police caught him in 1994, he said he had no idea why he
did it, and if he was ever set free, he?s not sure he wouldn?t
do it again. "It was just something that happened and,
you
know, I had no plans to repeat it," he said. "Am I just evil?
Am I brain-damaged? I mean, these are questions I want
answered."
Adrian Raine and Monte Buchsbaum have done brain scans
of 25 convicted murderers and found that many of the killers
have abnormalities in the frontal lobes of their brains.
"In the normal person the frontal lobe is one of the most
highly active areas of the brain," says Buchsbaum, pointing
at an image on his computer. "In this individual, who carried
out a murder, we can see that the frontal lobe is quite
inactive."
The frontal lobes are involved in planning, organizing, and
impulse control. "The frontal lobes are the part of the brain
that puts a brake on impulses and drives," says Dr. Jonathan
Pincus. "It's the part of the brain that allows us to say, 'Don't
do that! Don't say that! It's not appropriate! There are going
to be consequences!'" Pincus has examined brain scans of
more than 100 killers, and says Rifkin?s is typical, "His
frontal lobes were very, very seriously damaged."
But brain deficiency alone is not enough to make a person
violent. Science recognizes 3 childhood traits of every person
who grows up to be a child abuser or serial killer, called the
Unholy Trinity: They torture animals, set fires and wet the
bed (indicating poor self control). Also, they have all been
abused themselves. If a person who was badly abused has
frontal lobe deficiency, which can be caused by violent abuse
during childhood, Pincus says, "then you have a very
dangerous combination of impulses and drives that cannot
be easily controlled by the damaged frontal lobes."
Note: In our Oct. 22 news story, ?How to Be an Eyewitness,?
we quoted Gregg McCrary, a former FBI profiler, who said
that in a serial murder case he was working on, eyewitnesses
reported seeing two men in a beige Camaro. When the case
was resolved, investigators found the suspects were actually
a man and a woman traveling in a gold Nissan. This
happened in the sniper case: the widely-reported white van
had nothing to do with the snipers, who were traveling (and
shooting from) a beat-up dark-colored jalopy.
Can a switching calendars change the way we live? Jose
Arguilles, who has spent years living by the ancient Mayan
calendar, says it can and explains why in ?Time &
Technosphere,?click here.
For more information, click here.
