Why do we love serial killers?
That question forms the premise of criminologist Scott Bonn’s 2014 book and a speaking tour coming to the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, Sept. 12.
Bonn spent the first two decades of his professional career at NBC in news media marketing and was always struck by the public’s fascination with gruesome stories.
“It was there [at NBC] that I saw that that old journalistic adage, ‘if it bleeds, it leads,’ really applies,” said Bonn in an interview for WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
High-profile murders which took place at the dawn of the 24-hour cable news cycle—the O.J. Simpson trial; the Menendez brothers, who were convicted for killing their parents; and the murder of Gianni Versace outside his home, for example—became “larger than life,” said Bonn.
“What I noticed, is that in many cases, it was the perpetrator who often eclipsed the story and became the star,” he said.
The 1990s also saw a new wave of true crime newsmagazines, which often dramatized murder investigations for a television audience. Dateline premiered in 1992, following the lead of precursors like America’s Most Wanted and 48 Hours. Fictional series like NBC’s Law & Order franchise, first seen in 1990, further presented “ripped from the headlines” serial stories that remain popular today. Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill from the 1991 psychological thriller The Silence of the Lambs were based, in part, on real people, the latter an amalgam of Ted Bundy and Gary Heidnik and Ed Gein (who was also fictionalized in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho).
Still obsessed
Bonn changed careers in 2001, pursuing his passion for criminology and completing a Ph.D.
“It was when I was teaching at Drew University in New Jersey that I noticed that I noticed that my students were rivetted by serial killers,” Bonn said.
Given his dual experiences in criminology and the media, Bonn’s approach has been not only to understand motivating factors of serial killers, but also the fascination (and occasionally obsession) the public has for them. Experts point to serial killers’ lack of empathy as part of their mystique.
“We’re absorbed by what would compel them to do these terrible things to complete strangers,” Bonn said.
After what some experts characterize as the serial killer’s “heyday” in the 1970s and ‘80s, improved profiling and investigative techniques—plus game-changing DNA testing technology introduced in 1986—resulted in a steep decline in serial murders. But the public’s appetite for serial killers has not wavered (most recently seen in a smash hit Netflix series on Jeffrey Dahmer and successful fictional series like Dexter and The Fall).
And because the majority of highly publicized serial murders and sexual assaults are committed against women, seemingly at random, women comprise the vast majority of the true crime audience, in part as a means of protecting themselves.
“We like our monsters to be identifiable,” said Bonn. “But it just doesn’t work that way.”
Bonn points to Ted Bundy as a classic example of a predatory psychopath who was able to seamlessly blend into society. Serial killers often lead double lives, able to compartmentalize their murderous urges and leading a quasi-normal life including a job and a family. This chameleon-like existence is what Bonn refers to as a “cooling off period” between killings, until the urge to kill strikes again.
Lessons learned
“Serial killers are and have always been extremely rare,” Bonn said, though they get an outsized share of attention in news and entertainment media. While the motivations and intensions of mass shooters are vastly different from serial killers, journalists have aimed to learn from the past when covering a phenomenon that is on the rise, yet remains rare compared to other types of violent crime. Many media outlets, for example, focus their coverage of mass shootings on the victim and avoid showing images of the shooter or amplifying a shooter’s reasons for carrying out their crime.
“A serial killer, contrary to mythology, does not want to get caught,” Bonn said. “Killing is the greatest thrill of their life. They’re addicted to it. The opposite is true of mass murderers. They tend to be fatalistic individuals. They tend to be individuals who want to make a statement—want to go out in a blaze of glory. And more than half of them die at the scene of the crime.”
Similarly, Bonn encourages journalists, media and true crime junkies to focus on the damage caused when feeding their appetite for gruesome criminal behavior.
“Too often, it’s the perpetrator who becomes the star—the celebrity monster,” he said, noting the trauma inflicted on the killers’ and victims’ families every time a true crime docuseries glamorizes the killer.
“Ted Bundy had 36 victims,” Bonn said. “Name one.”
Dr. Scott Bonn: Why We Love Serial Killers takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, 600 N. East St., Bloomington. Tickets are $26-$49 at 309-434-2777 and artsblooming.org.
