Portrait of a psychopathic killer

Ian Stephen, the man who inspired the Cracker TV series, looks at the possible driving forces behind a murderer This past fortnight has seen unfold in the west of Scotland a most horrific crime, which would not have seemed out of place in TV dramas such as "Taggart" and "Cracker".

A range of hypotheses emerged, ranging from the possibility of a gangland punishment to the possibility of it being the work of a sadistic psychopathic killer who was playing some sick power games. As the investigation continued, the latter theory emerged as the correct one.

Evidence would suggest that the majority of these sadistic offenders are young, white and male whose pattern of violent crimes increases in intensity, usually with the first murder occurring in their 20s or early 30s. The majority come from broken homes with weak or absent fathers and dominant females present. They have often been deprived and/or abused sexually or physically in childhood.

Such an offender may be intelligent but an underachiever and he blames others for his failure. He longs to be important and noticed. There is a suggestion that there may be some neurological impairment which could be the result of head injury. He is highly likely to be a failure with woman. There is a lack of moral development with no remorse or concept of having done wrong being evident.

The sadistic serial offender is often driven by an intense obsessive-compulsive quality. The need to carry out their particular compulsion, such as the need to find the appropriate victim, is followed by the seeking out phase, the attracting of the victim, then the trapping of the individual, then the carrying out of the act, which could be a sexual act per se or a murder with the same motivation. This can produce a high, elated all powerful phase. The ritual which follows has particular meaning to the individual - in some cases it can be anger at themselves for carrying out the disgusting act and the destruction of the victim, literally converting them to nothing human, to deal with the pseudo remorse for what they have done. A depressive phase may follow before the fantasising and the compulsion begin again.

These would be the characteristics of the person being sought for the present crime. A white male in his late 20s or early 30s, seen by neighbours as an isolated, strange person, sees a vulnerable young man suffering from a night out and pulls him in. He may have had a habit of doing this without the consequences of that night. What happened after that until the trunk is found is as yet unknown as also is how the two days were spent between the young man's disappearance to the finding of the limbs. Was there a sexual component? Was the dismemberment part of a ritual of a sadistic fantasy or was it a cold, clinical act to get rid of the body?

Anxieties will be high until this individual is caught and there will be fears that once having gone down this path, the killer will become locked in the obsessive-compulsive cycle of the serial killer. The public, however, have to be patient and recognise this is a real life tragedy and not a well-constructed TV drama with the villain being trapped by a sudden, clever twist by the hero. A great deal of hard work may yet have to be done by those to find the sadistic psychopathic perpetrator of this crime.

Copyright 1999
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