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    My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers
    My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers
    My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers

    Written by Helen Morrison

    Narrated by Helen Morrison

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Dr. Helen Morrison has profiled more than eighty serial killers around the world. What she has learned about them will shatter every assumption you've ever had about the most notorious killers known to man.

    Dr. Helen Morrison, a leading expert on serial killers, has spent as many as four hundred hours alone with depraved murderers. In My Life Among the Serial Killers, Dr. Morrison relates how she profiled Richard Otto Macek, who chewed on his victims' body parts, stalked Dr. Morrison, then believed she was his wife. She conducted the last interview with Ed Gein, the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. John Wayne Gacy, the clown-obsessed killer of young men, sent her crazed Christmas cards, and gave her his paintings as presents. Dr. Morrison has received letters from killers, read their diaries and journals, evaluated crime scenes, testified at their trials, and studied photos of the gruesome carnage. She has interviewed the families of the victims, and the spouses and parents of the killers.

    Through it all, Dr. Morrison's goal has been to discover the reasons why serial killers are compelled to murder, how they choose their victims, and what we can do to prevent their crimes in the future. Her provocative conclusions will stun you.

    Read by Helen Morrison

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMay 4, 2004
    ISBN9780060764159
    Author

    Helen Morrison

    Helen Morrison, M.D., is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology for general psychiatry as well as child and adolescent psychiatry. She is also a certified forensic psychiatrist. She is the editor or coauthor of four academic books, as well as the author or coauthor of more than 125 published articles in her field. Dr. Morrison has worked with both national and international law enforcement, and has made presentations in more than fifteen countries. She lives in Chicago with her husband and children.

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    Reviews for My Life Among the Serial Killers

    3.5/5

    206 ratings20 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a mixed bag. Some appreciate the interesting and gripping content, as well as the well-written style. However, there are negative reviews that criticize the sensationalized nature of the book and question the author's scientific accuracy and credibility. Some readers find the author unlikable and feel that she contradicts established knowledge on the topic. While the book has its merits, it falls short in providing groundbreaking insights or new information. Overall, the book is interesting but flawed in its execution.

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      While the book is interesting and the authors hypotheses has merit there are mistakes in her telling of Rose Wests story. She makes numerous mistakes in her assessment of Rose which begs the question as to what other mistakes she has made. I wonder if her mistakes are due to her contact with Rose. Has she been manipulated by Rose? Or does she depict Rose as she does to fit her ideas regarding female partners in serial killer duos? She makes many mistakes regarding the West case.
      Fred did not kill the daughter of his first wife. He was in jail when Rose killed the child however he did later bury the body. While Rose may have initially been a submissive partner in the crimes, several surviving victims described her as the dominant partner. She was definitely not the person portrayed in this book . She also knew about the death of her daughter Heather and knew she was buried under the patio. This was why she was so upset when police came to pull it up and why she called Fred to tell him. The whole family made comments about Heather being under the patio and this is what drew police attention. Rose was a sadistic Lesbian who took great joy in inflicting pain and was in no way the passive partner ,seeking to please Fred, that this book depicts her as. She was a willing partner in the crimes and knew all about them. It is likely she smothered many of the women herself while Fred disposed of the bodies. She was involved in raping her stepdaughter at age eight. This was not done under duress to please Fred as the victim herself described. This book completely minimises her involvement and fails to grasp who Rose West is.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Not a very good book at all. The author spent the first couple chapters just talking about how great she is, and she also made references throughout the book. The whole time I felt like she was trying to justif as to why she has worked with serial killers.
      She also comes off as unbelievable in her research and she seems to contradict too much of what others have found to be true with these killers.
      Basically, to me she came off as unlikable and I will not be reading any other books of hers if she has them.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      My Life Among the Serial Killers wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped. In fact, a lot of it was dull, particularly the final two chapters, and it was a book that was hard to get into, and I wasn't sure at first whether I would read it all the way through. I did, however, although I admit to some skimming over the boring technical details of those final two chapters. Helen Morrison is a psychiatrist who studies the behaviour of serial killers. Based in Chicago, she is probably best known for her study of John Wayne Gacy, and has spent decades trying to understand what makes serial killers behave the way that they do. I don't envy her this work. I could not deal with the nearness of (mostly) men who kill and torture numerous people. I don't know what I think about her theory (I am not going to mention it for fear of spoiling someone else's read) about why serial killers kill, or about why they behave the way they do. Not a great book. Interesting to the die-hard true crime fan, but not enough to keep me reading - I kept putting the book down to do something else, which says a lot about how I felt about reading it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Unscientific and misinformed. the author presented a questionable, unscientific and ego based assessment that contradicts the existing, scientifically sound data. Much of her account seems like childish conjecture.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Don’t bother with this one.

      I expected this to be an insightful and compelling look into a topic I find both unsettling and interesting but alas every theory the author posits remains unsupported by evidence as well as scientific research.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Unscientific. After her theories felt rather strange to me I googled what experts on the topic think about her: Well, this book is not worth listening to at all if you are actually interested in the _true_ part of true crime and scientific information, because the author makes many mistakes and her hypothesis on serial killers isn't supported by most of other experts.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      For the most part, I enjoyed the book, though I’m not entirely sure that I agree with her theories.
    • 4/5
      The book was very interesting and would’ve liked to have heard more.
    • 4/5
      While I enjoyed (so to speak) the first-hand accounts of Morrison's dealings with various serial killers, I thought that she perhaps worked too hard to push her thesis regarding the genetic origin of serial killing. Though her point is well-taken, that not all serial killers share some of the characteristics (such as the Macdonald triad) that some researchers, and the popular media, claim, I find it difficult to believe that the effect of environment and upbringing has no effect whatsoever on a serial killer's behavior. While not all serial killers have an identical history, it seems that all of those she profiles did have some sort of negative or abusive background. Though I'm definitely a layperson, I thought Dr. Morrison oversold her point. The first-hand accounts of her interviews with these disturbed individuals was far more compelling than her scientific analysis.
    • 5/5
      this was one of the most interesting books I have heard or read.
    • 3/5
      Had high hopes for this one based on the synopsis. The author claims to really dive into the serial killer psyche and offer something deep and informative to the reader. I must admit, I haven’t learned anything groundbreaking or new after listening. Well written otherwise.
    • 4/5
      It was written by a doctor, so an objective description of the killers. Though it would have benefited more from description of all else that doctor had researched on this topic. Title far too sensationalised.
    • 5/5
      Really interesting, griping, and full of true facts about the mystery of the serial killer's mind. Well written.
    • 2/5
      She’s a psychiatrist who works as a profiler and claims to have interviewed 80 serial killers. A lot of it feels like bullshit, like how she talked to Ed Gein, but has nothing new to add about him. She says she had a correspondence with UK accessory to murder Rose West, but sorry, she doesn’t have permission to share any of the content. True crime name dropping?
      Her own theories seem like personal opinion - she thinks serial killers aren’t psychopaths but are stuck at an infant level of emotional development, and she says there are no female serial killers, which is demonstrably false. The only interesting parts were descriptions of a few cases I wasn’t aware of.
      Though I’ll admit my jaw dropped at the fact that Rose West, in prison for life, became engaged to the bass player from Slade, a glam band I like. Turns out it was Slade II, a later lineup of new musicians, and they fired him “for the good name of the band”.
    • 2/5
      Hm. An interesting theme (naturally!) and Dr. Morrison goes through quite many cases, a couple of which I didn't know that much about. At first the approach felt scientific and convincing, but the further it went the less convincing it became. At the very end where Dr. Morrison first says that serial murder is basically all in the genes and that's that, and then wants to do PET scans and all other kind of scans to serial murderers' brains to really understand what's going on. I really don't think it's that simple. Towards the end she claims that serial murders are not able to complete lengthy written psychological tests (more that twelve hours is a long time for anyone, I don't think you need to do that at one go) because they are not able to even focus on having a discussion for that long. I mean, come on. That's just bullshit. My attention started to scatter towards the end, when I realised that instead of telling a narrative she was baiscally just listing different murderers. The point really was beyond me at that point.

      To conclude, anyone who carries a piece of a serial killer's brain around is not someone who can jugde others for keeping murder trophies. There. That was 5+ hours of my life wasted.
    • 4/5
      Fans of true crime who haven't already explored the case studies included in this book will find Morrison's work informative and engrossing. But the work falls short in providing adequate documentation to bolster the author's controversial assertion that nature (neurological disorder or disorders) solely determines who will become a serial killer. Morrison acknowledges several times toward the end of the work that there are "more questions than answers." Even though the last third of the book focuses (almost to a fault) on the scientific/psychiatric aspects, the case that Morrison presents to bolster her hypothesis seems a bit flimsy.
    • 2/5
      Oh, where do I begin with this piece of work. I am fascinated by killers, specifically serial killers, and how their minds work. I thought this book would give me grand insight. To a degree it did, but with it came a very opinionated view disguised as a scientific conclusion.

      It has been a while since I read this, but I will do my best to describe my biggest gripes with the book.

      For starters, the author goes on about how she has to keep her personal life a secret so her patients (the serial killers) can't use it to manipulate her. However, in the book she will describe random moments with her children and husband in detail I would think her paranoid to say should one of her patients get ahold of the book. This is what I care about the least.

      She has many moments where she makes a statement that just doesn't seem right compared to all the evidence. One statement, which is brought up many times against this book, is how she believes John Wayne Gacy would have still killed in front of a police officer. This was said in his defense as he could not help himself and wasn't in touch with reality enough to know consequences (again this is roughly speaking from my memory), when several times he did show that he did indeed know and avoided getting caught. She seems to ignore valuable details to support her theories.

      Along with that, with the backlash of her defense of Gacy, she claimed it was because she was a female in her field and it was a boys club. She seems so out of touch with how her theories stack up against what we know and the evidence that she will say about anything to keep from admitting she may be wrong. From reading her book, I got a constant condescending tone and it was frustrating. And as long as we are on the topic of being a woman, she claims there are no female serial killers. She backs this up with an incorrect definition of a serial killer that pretty much allows her to selectively push out many people who qualify. Why? I suspect it's because they do not fit her theories. As a woman, I find this behavior peeving and likely maybe part of the reason some people do not take women in the field seriously.

      Another issue I have is she claims serial killers are never addicted to substances and are never sexually motivated. Ted Bundy (I believe I have the right guy) alone is enough to disprove this. I could attempt to go into more detail about why she believes this to be true, but I no longer have the book with me. Should I get it again, I will update this review to cover it more thoroughly.

      I could go on and on about my gripes with the author herself. Her claim that she has interviewed around 80 serial killers is questionable (and said to be impossible by some) and has been a hot topic for some time now. She overall, in the book, reeks of "praise me because I'm amazing!". I honestly got more about her than I recall of the serial killers. It was disappointing. From her disturbing controversial opinions to her general attitude, this book was a mess.

      I truly did want to love it, but I just couldn't with the lack of professionalism amongst what I have listed above.
    • 4/5
      I have a morbid fascination with serial killers, and a newfound appreciation for true crime, so of course I was going to give this book a try. And here is where I'm torn. The author's psychological explanation for why serial killers kill is that they are addicted to killing, they are impulsive and incapable of controlling their actions once they are pushed too far, and they have the emotional maturity of a young infant. Ie. their killing sprees are impulsive rather than premeditated. That's a pretty hard claim to justify, and a claim that had me raising my eyebrow in certain parts.

      But on the other hand, the visceral details of these murders are truly shocking and gut-wrenching, and that was why I picked up the book in the first place. The big names (John Wayne Gacy, Gary Ridgeway, etc.) had the most pull for me, but even the unfamiliar criminals had me enthralled and disgusted. At any rate, it certainly has me clamoring to learn more about true crime and serial murders.

      So I suppose that determining whether or not a reader will like this book comes down to their interests: if they're interested in the details of serial murderers, they'll probably find a wealth of fascinating information in here. If they're interested in a strong psychological analysis of the criminals' motives, they might be better off choosing a different title.

      I'm giving this book four stars because of my personal reaction to it. But will it be the book for every fan of true crime? Not likely.

      Readalikes:

      If you're interested in learning more about some of the people mentioned in the book, you might try Green River, Running Red (Ann Rule), The Stranger Beside Me (Ann Rule), or John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster (Sam Amirante).

      If you're interested in the idea of psychological profiling, you might try How to Make a Serial Killer (Christopher Berry-Dee), The Measure of Madness (Cheryl Paradis), or Whoever Fights Monsters (Robert K. Ressler).
    • 1/5
      This is a brazen attempt to cash in on the misery of others. Helen Morrison is not much better than the internet ghouls that fawn over killers. Morrison offers a theory that murderers are born not made, but has no evidence to support her thesis. Most of the book recounts the events of various serial killers. How they killed, in graphic detail, how they were caught, where are they now. There is next to nothing new here. Read wikipedia about each killer and you get 90% of this book.
      Of course she interjects herself into each story with the following format:
      · Description of where she was when she found out she could meet killer.
      · What the killer looked like when she met him
      · The questions she asked ‘Why did you do it?”
      · Huge unfounded theoretical leap to finish it off

      Morrison demonstrates the worst side of psychology, the idea that theoretical concepts like the Id, Superego, etc, are solid proven facts and can be used to explain the actions of madmen. She also shamelessly inserts lurid details for pure sensationalism. John Wayne Gacy’s Mother revealed some strange, embarrassing parenting techniques. Even though “Dr”. Morrison is sure the details had nothing to do with Gacy becoming a killer, and that Mrs. Gacy seemed mortified, and denied the statements later, she includes a detailed account in her book.
      It is impossible to respect this writer as a scientist. She claims to want to understand, to predict to save people, but those statements don’t stand up to examination. In reality she has achieved her, far less noble, goal of becoming famous.
    • 3/5
      This was a very interesting book, but I don't think that much of the author's theory. She believes a genetic, neurological problem causes serial murder and environment, upbringing, etc., has nothing to do with it. In order to get her theory to work she used a very narrow, arbitrary definition of a serial killer. If Ed Gein was a serial killer, why wasn't Elizabeth Bathory? This book is good to read for all the information it contains about certain serial murderers, including some relatively obscure ones, but I don't think it's the answer to everything.