I Kill, Therefore I Am: The Expressive/Transformative Process of Violence

Lee Mellor

A Thesis
In
the Individualized Program

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy (Individualized Program)
at Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

July 2018
©Lee Mellor, 2018
 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES

This is to certify that the thesis prepared

By: Lee Mellor

Entitled: I Kill, Therefore I Am: The Expressive Transformative Theory of Violence

and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy (Individualized program (INDI))

complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to
originality and quality.

Signed by the final examining committee:

Chair
Dr. Charles Reiss

External Examiner
Dr. Marina Sorochinski

External to
Program
Dr. Greg Nielsen

Examiner
Dr. Eric Hickey

Examiner
Dr. Amy Swiffen

Examiner
Dr. Vivek Venkatesh

Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Jean-Roch Laurence

Approved by
Dr. Rachel Berger, Graduate Program Director

December 5, 2018
Dr. Paula Wood-Adams, Dean
School of Graduate Studies
 Abstract

I Kill, Therefore I Am: The Expressive/Transformative Process of Violence

Lee Mellor, Ph.D.

Concordia University, 2018

Before the late-Industrial age, a minority of murderers posed their victims’ corpses to convey a
message. With the rise of mass media, such offenders also began sending verbal communications
to journalists and the authorities. Unsurprisingly, the 21st century has seen alienated killers
promote their violent actions and homicidal identities through online communications: from
VLOGs to manifestos, even videos depicting murder and corpse mutilation. Though the
decentralization of media has provided an easily-accessible platform for violent offenders, such
communications also afford law enforcement the opportunity to better understand the make-up of
such criminals. To this end, qualitative research was conducted on a sample of 10 such offenders.
The results revealed that they suffer from a chronically volatile self-concept with resulting
negative-emotionality owing to deficient childhood socialization and strains related to sexuality,
gender, and vocation. As the psychologist, Higgins, and sociologist, Mead, have shown that our
self-concept arises and is negotiated through communication, these homicidal expressions
provide the killer with a tenable identity, temporarily or permanently eliminating their emotional
turmoil. Far from mere attention-seeking, these killers are desperately striving for a self. Their
malaise is exacerbated by our increasingly anomic and isolating society—the mid-stages of
Baudrillard's 'hyperreality'—where the 'real' and 'unreal' are becoming indistinguishable.
Together, these observations form the bedrock of the expressive/transformative process of
violence (ETV). By highlighting the link between semiotics and psychology in the context of our
media-saturated society, ETV provides a methodology for interpreting homicidal
communications, allowing law enforcement and mental health professionals to strengthen
criminal profiles, link crimes, aid in pre- and post-homicidal risk assessment, and devise clinical
treatment strategies.

iii
 Acknowledgements

First and foremost, my thanks must go to Concordia University as an institution. Whether

it was completing my undergraduate degree in History or this latest doctoral melange of
psychology, sociology, criminology, semiotics, and anthropology, Concordia has always
supported my efforts and treated me fairly. I Kill, Therefore I Am: The
Expressive/Transformative Process of Violence would never have come into existence if Dr.
Brad Nelson, former Chair of the INDI program, had not believed in my potential. The same can
be said of my doctoral supervisor, Dr. Jean-Roch Laurence, who referred me to the program and
graciously mentored me over the course of my studies. Dr. Laurence has been a wise and
generous professor, allowing me the freedom to chart my own course in the study of atypical
homicide while tactfully correcting me when I began steering toward the sandbanks. I am
similarly thankful to Dr. Amy Swiffen for bombarding me with an abundance of readings in
sociological theory, effectively teaching me the fundamentals of an entire academic discipline in
only a few years. Dr. Swiffen was instrumental in recommending me for my first two teaching
positions, actively encouraged me obtain a SSHRC grant, and sacrificed a great deal of her spare
time to help me with developing the early and mid-stages of this dissertation. Her enthusiasm for
my vision played a big part in making it a reality. As a global expert on the topic of multicide,
sex crimes, and paraphilia, it was an incredible honour to work with Dr. Eric Hickey who keenly
spotted my ability to dive to the bottom of the proverbial abyss and admonished me to explore its
darkest depths. Dr. Hickey also generously collaborated with me on my first academic
publication Understanding Necrophilia: A Global Multidisciplinary Approach, which was
completed in addition to my doctoral studies, and provided me with an outlet to articulate my
observations on sexual homicide. In doing so, not only was I able to lay some foundational
theories regarding necrophilia-spectrum behavior and mutilation, but also to discover uncharted
territory which was unaccounted for by paraphilic acts—namely, the topic of this dissertation.
Finally, Dr. Vivek Venkatesh was instrumental in introducing me to the field of semiotics, which
is an indispensable component of I Kill, Therefore I Am. I would like to thank Dr. Venkatesh for
collaborating with me on the academic chapter ‘Killing For Slenderman: The Emergence of a
Digital Gospel’, as many of the insights I gained during that meditation on delusion and myth
resurfaced here. Whether it was Dr. Laurence, Dr. Swiffen, Dr. Hickey, or Dr. Venkatesh, each

iv
member of my committee was proactive in encouraging and reassuring me that bright things
awaited at the end of this process. This helped keep my spirits up immeasurably and was
something I did not openly seek.
During the five years I spent at Concordia, Darlene Dubiel, the INDI program
coordinator, was unfailingly pleasant and helpful, from admissions through grant applications to
these final stages of my dissertation. Darlene, you made this experience a thoroughly positive
one, guiding me through the bureaucratic labyrinth like a smiling Daedalus. I also extend my
thanks to the various INDI program directors after Dr. Nelson— Dr. Ketra Schmitt, Dr. Charles
Reiss, and Dr. Sandra Chang-Kredl—all of whom assisted me in one way or another, and aided
in securing funding for my work.
Fortunately, I received indispensable guidance from a number of academics outside of
my doctoral committee including Dr. Marcel Danesi who introduced me to the field of forensic
semiotics, Dr. Marc LaFrance who provided literature on gender theories of masculinity, and my
long-time friend Dr. Michael A. Arntfield with whom I have collaborated endlessly and whose
theory of literary criminology compliments my own work. Thanks also to the author and
criminal profiler Anthony Meoli, whose frank and honest recollections of the Rolling crime
scenes were priceless in establishing how maximized abjection can affect even hardened
investigators; along with Detective Superintendent Albert Patrick for taking the time to speak to
me about his encounters with Colin Ireland, and Detective Cloyd Steiger of Seattle Homicide for
assuring me that my investigative recommendations in the Ireland case were pragmatically and
financially realistic.
Finally, those who consistently loved and supported me through the dark, darker, and not
so dark times are most worthy of acknowledgement; of those, my parents, Phil and Lynn Mellor,
are true titans. I hope this doctorate makes you proud (and the dissertation doesn’t put you to
sleep). To conclude, I would be remiss not to highlight the earthy wisdom of my aunt Dot, who
gave me a kick in the backside and told me to stop sulking and find a way to publish my first
book Cold North Killers. There is a direct link from that much-needed splash of psychological
ice-water in 2011 and the theory I proudly present to the world today. In one way or another and
to different degrees, you’ve all brought me here, and for that I have pure gratitude.

v
 Table of Contents

List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………….viii
List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………ix
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1
1. Theory and Method…………………………………………………………………....15
1.0 Introduction………………………………………………………………......15
1.1 Why Symbolic Interactionism?........................................................................18
1.2 The Development of the Self Through Communication..................................23
1.3 Self-Discrepancy Theory..................................................................................29
1.4 General Strain Theory and the Self..................................................................35
1.5 Face-Work and the Communication Theory of Identity...................................39
1.6 Communication Dysfunction and Mental Illness.............................................43
1.7 Conclusion........................................................................................................46
Endnotes………………………………………………………………………….47
2. Media, Masculinity, Cultural Goals, and Talismans......................................................51
2.0 Introduction......................................................................................................51
2.1 The USA, UK, and Canada in the Information Age.........................................53
2.2 Hyporeality and Hyperreality...........................................................................54
2.3 Is Religion Hyperreal?......................................................................................57
2.4 The Hyporeal and Hyperreal Other..................................................................60
2.5 Hyperreal Masculinity......................................................................................63
2.6 Fame, Fortune, and Epistemosis.......................................................................67
2.7 Talismans and Avatars......................................................................................72
2.8 Conclusion.........................................................................................................75
Endnotes…………………………………………………………………………..77
3. Transformation: From Compromised to Uncompromising.............................................80
3.0 Introduction.......................................................................................................80
3.1 Previous Interpretations of ETV: Consistencies and Divergences....................82
3.2 The Expressive/Transformative Progression of Self.........................................85
3.3 Victim/Expression Typology.............................................................................89

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 3.4 Mark David Chapman........................................................................................92
3.5 David Berkowitz................................................................................................119
3.6 Danny Rolling....................................................................................................142
3.7 Colin Ireland......................................................................................................167
3.8 Luka Magnotta...................................................................................................180
3.9 Daniel Gonzalez.................................................................................................208
3.10 Anthony Arkwright..........................................................................................218
3.11 Transformation: Findings.................................................................................230
3.12 The Transformative Triangle…………………………………………………242
3.13 Conclusion........................................................................................................247
Endnotes……………………………………………………………………………249
4. Expression: Victim as Canvas, Victim as Soapbox, and Costumes.................................268
4.0 Introduction........................................................................................................268
4.1 Mark David Chapman: Semiotic Breadcrumbs................................................270
4.2 Necrornopositophilia, ETV, or Staging?..........................................................275
4.3 Abjection: Disturbing the Order.......................................................................277
4.4 Increasing Abjection..........................................................................................287
4.5 Decoding the Message.......................................................................................291
4.6 Victim-as-Soapbox Introduction........................................................................303
4.7 David Berkowitz: Victim-as-soapbox – Written................................................307
4.8 Colin Ireland: Victim-as-canvas/soapbox.........................................................347
4.9 Luka Magnotta: Victim-as-canvas/soapbox......................................................362

4.10 Gonzalez, Arkwright, Holmes, and Cho: Victim-as-soapbox/Costume...........368

4.11 Conclusion........................................................................................................373
Endnotes…………………………………………………………………………...375
5. Conclusion.......................................................................................................................381
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………..…..388
Appendix A……………………………………………………………………………….422
Appendix B…………………………………………………………………………….....423

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 List of Tables

Table 1: Self-state Representations Resulting from Self-Domains and...............................31

Standpoints on Self
Table 2: Mark Chapman Victimology................................................................................. 104
Table 3: Mark Chapman: Selves and Strain........................................................................ 115
Table 4: David Berkowitz Victimology...............................................................................127
Table 5: David Berkowitz: Selves and Strain......................................................................139
Table 6: Danny Rolling Victimology..................................................................................152
Table 7: Danny Rolling: Selves and Strain..........................................................................163
Table 8: Colin Ireland Victimology.....................................................................................171
Table 9: Colin Ireland: Selves and Strains...........................................................................178
Table 10: Luka Magnotta Victimology................................................................................192
Table 11: Luka Magnotta: Selves and Strain.......................................................................205
Table 12: Daniel Gonzalez Victimology.............................................................................212
Table 13: Daniel Gonzalez: Selves and Strain.....................................................................215
Table 14: Popular Common Attributes of Freddy Krueger.................................................218
and Jason Voorhees
Table 15: Anthony Arkwright Victimology........................................................................223
Table 16: Anthony Arkwright: Selves and Strain...............................................................229
Table 17: General Strain in a Sample of 10 ETV offenders, part 1....................................232
Table 18: General Strain in a Sample of 10 ETV offenders, part 2....................................232
Table 19: Metaphorical Referents/Underlying Concepts....................................................272
Table 20: James Holmes Victimology……………………………………………………432
Table 21: James Holmes: Selves and Strain………………………………………………442
Table 22: Elliot Rodger Victimology……………………………………………………..457
Table 23: Elliot Rodger: Selves and Strain……………………………………………….472
Table 24: Seung-Hui Cho Victimology…………………………………………………..480-481
Table 25: Decoding Cho's Communications……………………………………………..482
Table 26: Seung-Hui Cho: Selves and Strain…………………………………………….489

viii
 List of Figures

Figure 1: Developmental Changes in Children's Ability to Represent.....................……... 25

Self-Other Contingencies
Figure 2: Cultural Goals, Strain, and Emotionality..................................................……... 37
Figure 3: An internet meme, as the term is now most commonly used............................... 73
Figure 4: The Expressive/Transformative Progression of Self……………………………86
Figure 5: Victimology and ETV.......................................................................................... 91
Figure 6: The Transformative Triangle............................................................................... 243
Figure 7: A photograph taken by Dahmer depicting the necrornopositophilic................... 276
posing of a victim accompanied by necromutilophilic decapitation.
Figure 8: Gell’s Art Nexus………………………………………………………………...281
Figure 9: From Agent to Patient: David's Napoleon Crosses the Alps……………………… 282
Figure 10: Harper’s Agent to Patient Via Corpse………………………………………… 283
Figure 11: Harper’s Patient to Patient Via Corpse ………………………………………. 283
Figure 12: Killer as Agent to Corpse Viewers as Patient ………………………………... 285
Figure 13: Abstraction of Killer as Agent to Corpse Viewers as Patient ………………... 285
Figure 14: Berkowitz Letters to Captain Borrelli................................................................ 308
Figure 15: Last page of Berkowitz Letter to Breslin........................................................... 318
Figure 16: Berkowitz's (First) Second Letter to Craig Glassman, June 1977……………. 339
Figures 17-19: James Holmes Poses With Weapons……………………………………...370
Figures 20-23: Seung-Hui Cho Posing With Weapons and in Eric&Dylan! Regalia……. 372
Figures 24-25: Cho's costume is similar in style to the Columbine gunmen’s…… ……... 373
Figure 26: The Symbol of Ultraception…………………………………………………... 430
Figure 27: Photograph Holmes doctored to include attractive female and posted online…436

ix
 Introduction

I Kill, Therefore I Am explains the expressive/transformative process of violence (ETV)

as outlined in Chapters 1 and 2, and applied in Chapter 3 and 4. My data is primarily the killers'
own words, but also comments about their personalities by friends, mental health professionals,
attorneys, and law enforcement officers with whom they interacted. There are direct quotes taken
from the autobiographies and manifestos of the murderers, as well as books and articles by
authors who have conversed with them. Documentaries in which the offender and other relevant
parties were interviewed also proved useful. This approach has been taken in Leyton's Hunting
Humans: Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer, Katz's The Seductions of Crime, and Hickey's
Serial Murderers and their Victims with excellent results.
As a general comment on theory, this dissertation is steeped in the sociological theories
of symbolic interactionism and its fraternal twin dramaturgical theory. It is underpinned by a
scientifically validated theory of social psychology largely derived from symbolic
interactionism—E. Tory Higgins's Self-Discrepancy Theory—and augmented by Agnew's
General Strain Theory and Jung & Hecht's eponymous Communication Theory of Identity.
These theories intersect by examining three common factors:
1) the self and its aspects,
2) which are formed and reformed through communication, and
3) affect the emotions and mental cohesion of the individual.
Concepts of social conformity and deviance, particularly how the offender views himself and his
victims, will be employed throughout, and informed by the works of Steven Egger1 in The
United States, David Wilson2 in The United Kingdom, and Elliott Leyton3 in Canada. When the
issue of masculinity arose, I was directed toward the gender theory of R.W. Connell4 as
reconceptualized by Christine Beasley.5 My application of this theory is particularly narrow. I
neither accept nor reject the concept that gender identities are tied to institutions and global
power structures, because this aspect is irrelevant to the immediate investigative aims of my
research. Subsequently, I have not read widely enough in the voluminous academic literature
arguing for this position to reach an informed and well-reasoned conclusion. Instead, I look at
how popular conceptions of gender roles and relations between and within genders (e.g.,
differing depictions and performances of masculinity and femininity) influence a person's sense

1
of who they are compared to others. Naturally, the role of the media as a form of communication
and purveyor of gender norms must also be explored. For this, I turned to a more tempered
interpretation of Baudrillard's hyperreality to provide situational context, along with a slew of
findings on gender and media by numerous researchers.
This dissertation uses theories drawn from a number of different fields (i.e., psychology,
sociology, criminology, communications, and semiotics), to propose a specific process of
violence (ETV) that may apply to a diversity of violent offenders. These include, but are not
limited to, single-incident murderers (i.e., those who commit single, double, and triple
homicides), rampage killers of all stripes, and serial murderers. These offenders may have any
number of additional motives, such as profit or sexual gratification, which might stand
completely apart from or intersect with ETV. When discussing “serial killers” or “school
shooters”, I may be referring to the (i) serial killer or school shooter as simply a category of
criminal, or (ii) as a media promulgated social identity, whether on the daily news or in a
fictionalized form such as The Silence of the Lambs. I will demarcate between these two
concepts by simply writing ‘serial killer’ or 'school shooter' in the first instance and
‘serialkiller!’ or 'schoolshooter!' in the second to reflect the two-dimensional hyperbole.
The concept of criminal signature as articulated by Keppel & Birnes, informs the
practical aspect of this dissertation. It should be noted that the nature of an offender's signature
was used as the primary criteria for selecting offenders for the study—that is, I looked for
signatures that were not driven by paraphilia, but instead communicated an aspect of the
offender's views toward himself and/or the victim. These generally fell into three categories:
1) posing a human body to shock and convey contempt for the victim and/or the parties
that encounter the corpse: police, whoever else happens to find the body, or, in the case of Luka
Magnotta, an audience on the Internet;
2) costumes or masks—always of a symbolic nature—which the offender wears during
the commission of their crimes, and
3) written or video communications in which the offender explains themselves, their
relation to others, and sometimes their personal philosophies. These may have been released to
the public before, amidst, or after the murder(s). The content of these messages was interpreted
using semiotics, which is theoretically compatible with symbolic interactionism, as both stem
from the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce. Semiotics was selected primarily for its depth

2
and practicality.
Finally, I conclude with several important caveats. I am not arguing that
expressive/transformative behaviour causes violence, rather that expressive/transformative
violence is a distinct strategy, chosen willingly by the perpetratora, to resolve the negative-
emotionality associated with having an ego-dystonic self or aspects of the self. Nor do I propose
that communication is the only factor involved in the interpretation, negotiation, consolidation,
and disintegration of the self. I recognize the strong influence of genetic, neurological, and
hormonal factors in violent behaviour, but as these determinants are not visible at a crime scene,
they are of little use here. Their omission should not be interpreted as a denial of their existence
or minimization of their impact. Ultimately, I concur with former FBI profiler Jim Clemente's
articulation of the bio-psycho-social model: “genetics loads the gun. Your personality and
psychology aims it. And your experiences pull the trigger.”6 In I Kill, Therefore I Am, we are
dealing with what can be observed without medical testing or technological enquiry: this is
academic detective work. The expressive/transformative model may be expanded upon or refined
later to greater incorporate biological factors—in fact, I encourage it. ETV is not yet firmly
rooted in science although this is theoretically possible in the future with the addition and
analysis of more offenders—a further 60 at least— according to the methodology proposed later
in this dissertation.
It is also worth pointing out that, though some of the building blocks of ETV can be also
found in previous theories of violence, particularly Levin & Madfis’s Cumulative Strain Theory7
and Canter & Young’s Criminal Narratives8, there are significant theoretical and methodological
differences. While Levin & Madfis also note the role of strain, as conceptualized by Agnew9, in
mass shootings, Cumulative Strain Theory (CST) differs from the expressive/transformative
process in at least six ways. Firstly, where CST has been conceptualized as applying solely to
mass killers, chronic and acute strains were found in all 10 of our offenders, including serial
killers and single-incident murderers. In fact, the offenders suffering from the highest number of
strains were Colin Ireland and Danny Rolling, both serial murderers in their late-Thirties.
Secondly, ETV sees strains as largely embedded, and thus subsumed, by the offender’s self
(within the self-concept and the self-guides): a point that CST barely recognizes, let alone

a
As much as one can freely choose. Recent discoveries in neuroscience seem to hint that free will is illusory, and
that human choice is completely deterministic. For a succinct and convincing argument see Sam Harris’s Free Will.

3
emphasizes. One could hypothetically remove the concept of strain from my dissertation
altogether, and the motive to commit acts of violence would still be accounted for by the
dejection-related emotions resulting from actual/own:ideal/own discrepancies. This failure to
look at the salience of identity is likely what led Levin & Madfis to prematurely conclude their
analysis of Seung-Hui Cho’s photographic self-portraits by stating that “Cho was desperate to
make his fellow students take notice of him. On the afternoon of April 16, 2007, in the midst of
his killing spree, Cho took a break long enough to get to the post office and mail photos of
himself to NBC News. These photos depicted Cho as a dangerous and powerful person holding
guns and knives in a threatening posture”10. At no point do they mention the self or identity, or
its relation to the communication in this process. Perhaps this is why they err in asserting that
Cho sent photographs to NBC News in order to be simply “noticed”11 by students on his own
campus. As ETV repeatedly emphasizes, such homicidal expressions have a far greater function
than mere attention-seeking. Fourth, CST proposes a rigid sequence of five stages leading to the
perpetration of the homicide: (1) chronic strain, (2) uncontrolled strain, (3) acute strain, (4) the
planning stage, (5) massacre.12 In CST, a mass shooter is regularly victimized by his family
and/or peers (the chronic strain stage) before failing to “develop any meaningful social
relationships”13 in the uncontrolled strain stage. While ETV acknowledges that victimization
may certainly result in an asocial or antisocial self on some occasions, it presents a more nuanced
look at this relationship between the child’s failure to socialize and victimization. In many
instances, the inability to communicate effectively with other children clearly precedes (and may
even cause) bullying and exclusion, as was undoubtedly the case with Daniel Gonzalez, James
Holmes, Elliot Rodger, and Seung-Hui Cho, all of whom came from reasonably good homes. In
ETV, these aspects of chronic strain and uncontrolled strain may be seen as occurring
simultaneously as the self and identity arise and are negotiated through the child’s interactions
with others. The case of James Holmes featured in this dissertation also challenges the notion
that acute strain precedes the planning stage. So, while CST may bear some superficial
resemblance to ETV, they differ significantly in these five ways.b A sixth divergence between
ETV and CST is the absence of personal narrative and its semiotic manifestations from the latter
theory.
Like ETV, Canter’s theory of Criminal Narratives wisely focuses on the offender’s

b
Moreover, ETV is far more theoretically robust, nuanced, and inclusive than CST.

4
storylike concept of his life and deeds. However, it too is completely devoid of the media-borne
semiotic component I present in Chapters 2 and 4. Hence, it offers no comment on how this
‘story’ is situated temporally; geographically; and shaped by the ubiquity, content, and form of
contemporaneous media. After stating that “the complexities of [criminal narrative] processes
can be drawn from open-ended interviews in which people are asked to describe their own
understanding of a crime in which they have been involved and to put it into the context of their
life in general”14 Canter & Youngs assert that “open-ended responses are extremely difficult to
work with systematically and are challenging to develop into distilled themes.”15 Instead, they
employs an alternate methodology, specifically, drawing upon quantitative data from a
questionnaire that is both reductionist and possesses the capacity to potentially lead a subject’s
answers. From this data they create a four-theme typology of narratives based upon a convenient
misrepresentation of the literary theories of Northrop Frye who proposed there were
fundamentally only four stories: comedy, tragedy, irony, and romance. As I detail in Chapter 1,
this approach stands in stark opposition to the natural, qualitative approach of ETV.
A third caveat: I do not take everything these offenders are saying at face-value. Any
research which relies on human testimony is destined to run into outright lies, self-deceptions,
and half-truths, particularly when the subjects are socially insecure criminals. There is simply no
way to avoid this complication. In some instances, I consider and logically assess conflicting
information to form an interpretation of what must be (or is likely) true. Luka Magnotta is as
unlikely to admit his homosexuality to us as Colin Ireland would have confessed to his
bisexuality. Yet, a careful examination of the words and known actions of these men along with
the accounts of those acquainted with them provides ample evidence of their sexual orientations.
Likewise, Danny Rolling and David Berkowitz cloak the motivations for their crimes in the
occult and demonology whenever it suits them, which is more often than not. However, it is in
their rare moments of candor or when they let their guard down and admit their true motives to
which I have paid the most attention. With this pre-amble out of the way, let us go now, you and
I, into the proverbial inferno. I will begin by briefly introducing the 10 offenders in this sample,
and the sources I relied upon to analyze them.

Mark David Chapman (New York City, USA: 1980)

On the evening of December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman (b. May 10, 1955) fired four

5
hollow points into the back of rock star John Lennon with a Charter Arms .38 special revolver.
The former Beatle, who was returning home to the Dakota Building in Manhattan after a late-
night recording session, was rushed to hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. In the meantime,
Chapman, who had been disarmed by doorman Jose Pedermo, waited quietly to be arrested while
reading a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Once in custody, he variously claimed to have
murdered Lennon because he was a 'phony', to promote The Catcher in the Rye, and because
Chapman believed that immediately after the shooting, Chapman would transform into the
novel's protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Back at his hotel room, police found a number of items
ranging from Todd Rundgren records to The Wizard of Oz assembled in a peculiar display. In the
summer of 1981, Mark David Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree-murder and was
sentenced to 20-years-to-life, which he is currently serving at Wende Correctional Facility in
upstate New York.
Of all the killers in this study, Chapman had the second most abundant and diverse
sources available for analysis. He gave interviews to People magazine in 1987 and Frontline in
1988; to his biographer Jack Jones for Let Me Take You Down, to Barbara Walters for 20/20, and
Larry King on Larry King Live—all in 1992; and more recently to Barbara Walters on The View,
and for CNN's 2015 Special Report: Killing John Lennon. In each of these sources, Chapman
clearly and repeatedly states his reasons for killing Lennon, though not without contradiction, as
well as describing his life before and after the murder. Observations and stories about Chapman
from those who knew or interacted with him also emerged from these sources and various
newspaper articles.

David Berkowitz (New York City, USA, 1976-1977)

Armed with a .44 Bulldog revolver, adoptee David Berkowitz (b. June 1, 1953) prowled
the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn searching for attractive young women or couples to murder.
Between July 29, 1976–July 31, 1977 he killed five women and one male, wounding six others.
Prior to this, Berkowitz had unsuccessfully attempted to stab Christine Foreman to death. He was
also a serial arsonist. Berkowitz's modus operandi typically involved shooting into parked cars,
though sometimes he would surprise pedestrians on the street. Following the double-homicide of
Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani, Berkowitz left a note addressed to NYPD Chief Joseph
Borrelli referring to himself as the sobriquets 'Monster', 'Beelzebub', 'Chubby Behemouth', 'The

6
“Son of Sam', and 'Mr. Monster'. Thirty-three days later, Berkowitz mailed another letter to
Daily News reporter Jimmy Breslin.
Upon being caught, Berkowitz claimed his neighbour Sam Carr was a 6,000-year-old
demon who had commanded him to kill using Carr's black Labrador retriever, Harvey, as a
mouth-piece. Despite disagreement in the psychiatric community as to whether Berkowitz was
criminally responsible, on May 8, 1978, he pleaded guilty to six counts of second-degree murder
and six attempted second-degree murders. Subsequently, he was sentenced to six consecutive 25-
to-life terms, which combined with his other convictions, add up to 365 years imprisonment.
Soon after, Berkowitz admitted the demonic Sam Carr story was a hoax, before changing his tale
once more in 1993 to imply that he did not act alone. Berkowitz now claims he was a member of
a Satanic cult known as the Process Church, and that Carr's sons, John and Michael, were
involved in the killings. No evidence has been found to corroborate this assertion and Berkowitz
remains imprisoned in Shawangunk Correctional Facility.
The most robust resource of David Berkowitz quotes is Confessions of the Son of Sam
which draws from 50 hours of personal interviews and more than 400 written correspondences
with his psychiatrist Dr. David Abrahamsen. The author, Abrahamsen, also interviews
Berkowitz’s family, childhood teachers, and associates, and examines his school, army, and
court records. Berkowitz's own prison interviews and journal Son of Hope, writings on his
website ariseandshine.org, television interviews with the 700 Club and Larry King, were
substantially useful. George Carpozi Jr's Son of Sam, and Lawrence Klausner's book of the same
name were also indispensable. Though I reject the Satanic-panic conspiracy in Maury Terry's
The Ultimate Evil, the book did recount some official interviews with Berkowitz that had not
been documented elsewhere.

Danny Rolling (Louisiana & Florida, USA: 1989-1990)

Beaten and berated throughout his childhood by his unloving policeman father, Danny
Harold Rolling (b. May 26, 1954) grew up a lonely and traumatized child in Shreveport,
Louisiana. He developed numerous paraphilia including voyeurism, picquerism, and
necromutilophilia; along with possible biastophilia, sexual sadism, and necrornopositophilia.
After spending most of the 1980s incarcerated for bank robbery, the paroled rapist
committed a triple-homicide in Shreveport in 1989. Seven months later, a violent altercation

7
resulted in Rolling shooting his father non-fatally in the face, then fleeing to Florida. Arriving in
the university town of Gainesville, Rolling murdered one male and four female students between
August 24-27, 1990. With the exception of his hated father, Rolling's male victims were all
incidental—eliminated to remove a witness or barrier to his intended targets—attractive females
aged 17-24. The primary motive for these opposite-sex murders seems to have been violent
paraphilia and resentment against women possessing similar physical characteristics. Rolling's
signatures included elaborate mutilation and arranging his female victims' bodies in shocking
poses.
Arrested on separate criminal charges soon after leaving Gainesville, Rolling was linked
by DNA to eight homicides. Despite attempts to attribute his murders to demonic-possession,
Rolling elicited little sympathy, and was executed by lethal injection on October 25, 2006.
Danny Rolling was a fairly public figure, giving numerous television interviews. He also
co-authored an autobiography with Sondra London, The Making of a Serial Killer: The Real
Story of the Gainesville Student Murders in the Killer's Own Words, which is informative despite
Rolling’s pathological lying. I also drew from two true crime books containing interviews with
police and family members—Mary Ryzuk’s The Gainesville Ripper and Philpin & Donnelly's
Beyond Murder—albeit cautiously. Finally, my colleague at the American Investigative Society
of Cold Cases, Anthony Meoli M.A., who interviewed Rolling and reviewed his case files, was
of great assistance in providing his observations and insights regarding the crime scenes.

Colin Ireland (London, UK; 1993)

From March 8 to June 12, 1993, manual labourer and ex-convict Colin Ireland (b. March
16, 1954) tortured, robbed, and murdered five homosexual men in London, England. A highly
organized killer, Ireland's modus operandi was to trawl for victims at The Coleherne, a gay pub
in West London. Homosexual men would often meet at the Coleherne for one-night stands,
advertising their sexual tastes (BDSM, 'top' or 'bottom' etc.) via their symbolic choices of
clothing. Ireland would look for a submissive or 'bottom' partner, acquaint himself, and
accompany them back to their apartment under the auspices of engaging in sadomasochistic sex.
Having convinced his victims to let him tie them up, Ireland then whipped, beat, and burned
them; forced them to reveal their ATM PIN numbers, and finally murdered them. In some cases,
he elaborately posed the bodies after death. Throughout the series, Ireland frequently called

8
police agencies, media outlets, and charities to direct them to the crime scenes, and chastised the
authorities for failing to link the victims.
When police released a still from CCTV footage to the public showing Ireland leaving a
subway station with his final victim, Ireland approached the police and acknowledged that he
was the suspect in the photograph, but denied involvement in the murder. Eventually, he
volunteered a confession, pleaded guilty, and was incarcerated. In 2012, he died of complications
resulting from a prison-yard hip injury.
Data for Colin Ireland was primarily drawn from five separate sources. The first is an
extensive chapter on Ireland in Anna Gekowski's Murder By Numbers, in which the author, a
forensic psychologist, reprints her lengthy correspondence by mail with the killer. Having
spoken with Dr. Gekowski over the telephone in September 2014, I have been assured that the
transcripts in her book are not only accurate, but also account for the bulk of her correspondence
with the late Mr. Ireland.
That same autumn I spoke in person with retired Detective Superintendent Albert Patrick
of the London Metropolitan Police who was involved in the Ireland investigation, and have
subsequently used many of his statements about the offender and the case. In instances where
there was uncertainty regarding his recollection of events, DSUP Patrick graciously looked into
any outstanding questions on my behalf, and responded at a later date.
Finally, three television documentaries 'Serial Killer on Camera' from ITV's Real Crime,
'Colin Ireland' from Crimes That Shook Britain, and 'Resolution to Kill: Colin Ireland' from
Robbie Coltrane's Critical Evidence were particularly helpful as they featured footage from
Ireland's confession, along with numerous interviews with law enforcement officers who
investigated the case, Ireland's ex-wife, and friend.

Luka Magnotta (Montreal, Canada: 2012)

Born Eric Clinton Kirk Newman, the eldest of three children, in Scarborough Ontario,
Luka Rocco Magnotta (b. July 24, 1982) was homeschooled by his germophobic, controlling
mother while his schizophrenic father toiled at a Toronto warehouse. When alcohol and
mounting bills devastated the marriage, Magnotta and his siblings went to live with his maternal
grandmother in Lindsay. Unable to fit in with his peers and abused by multiple parties, Magnotta
dropped out and drifted into Toronto's gay scene. Over the next dozen years, he paid the bills

9
either by prostituting himself or relying on an older man to finance him.
Having continually failed in his goals to become a famous model and reality TV star,
Magnotta found attention and existential meaning by filming himself murdering kittens and
uploading the footage online, before graduating to humans. In the summer of 2012, he posted '1
lunatic 1 icepick'—a lengthy video clip depicting his mutilation and sexual degradation of a male
victim's corpse—on the Internet. After mailing the man's body parts in packages to a public
school and the headquarters of major political parties, Magnotta fled to Europe. He was
apprehended at a Berlin Internet cafe several days later while reading about himself online. On
December 23, 2014, he was convicted of first-degree murder and is currently imprisoned at
Archambault prison in Quebec.
Thanks to Magnotta's fame seeking cyber exhibitionism there are no shortage of
documents and videos featuring him on the Internet. Among the videos were his auditions for the
Reality TV shows Plastic Makes Perfect and Cover Guy, a television appearance he made on The
Naked News, and numerous home recordings uploaded to YouTube. I watched and transcribed
each of these videos.
I also obtained and examined a lengthy forensic psychiatric report on Magnotta prepared
by Dr. Joel Watts on February 18, 2014, detailing Magnotta's psychiatric (family and personal),
educational, occupational, romantic, sexual, past medical, and legal history. Dr. Watts would go
on to testify that Magnotta was NGRI for the defense at his trial. Despite the ostensible greater
value of a psychiatric report, I approached this document with some caution, as Magnotta was
ultimately found to be criminally responsible for the murder of Jun Lin—a position which I find
fairly obvious given the depth of his planning and past history of malingering.
Two documentaries on Magnotta, Sex, Fame & Murder: The Luka Magnotta Story and
The Fifth Estate's Hunting Magnotta featured a wealth of interviews with various figures
surrounding Magnotta's life. I also reviewed a 48 minute and 37 second long video interview
with his ex-girlfriend, Barbi Swallows—raw footage from the Sex, Fame & Murder
documentary—which included additional information. When necessary, I consulted newspaper
and magazine articles. Finally, I watched the '1 lunatic 1 icepick' a number of times in order to
determine its symbolic content and analyze the veracity of what was implied in the video.

10
Daniel Gonzalez (South of England, UK: 2004)
The son of an absentee Spanish father and English mother, after high school, Daniel
Gonzalez (b. 1980) whiled away his days downing narcotic cocktails, playing video games, and
watching horror movies in his mom's house. Bored, unemployed, and enamoured with violent
fantasy, he decided to see what it would be like to be 'Freddy Krueger', and paradoxically donned
a hockey mask reminiscent of Jason from the slasher movie Friday the 13th. From September 15-
17, 2004, Gonzalez roamed around Hilsea, Tottenham, Hornsey, and High Gate knifing elderly
and middle-aged citizens in their homes and on the streets. By the end of his rampage, four lay
dead, with two others injured. Arrested on September 17, Gonzalez was hand six life sentences
in 2006 and was given the designation 'never to be released.' Following several failed suicide
attempts at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, Gonzalez succeeded in taking his own life on
August 9, 2007, slashing his wrists with a broken CD case.
The vast majority of the data on Daniel Gonzalez was taken from quotes revealed at his
trial as chronicled by Court News UK, a private company that sends employees to attend high
profile court cases in the London-area and document the proceedings. Using a 24-hour
membership I was able to access several days’ worth of court reports through their website on
this relatively unknown British spree killer. I also drew upon British and Irish newspaper articles.

Anthony Arkwright (South Yorkshire, UK: 1987)

Anthony Arkwright (b. 1968) grew up the middle child of five in Wath, South Yorkshire,
and was abandoned by his mother at the age of four. Tormented by the other school children for
being 'inbred' (he wasn't), Arkwright grew to be an antisocial misfit, in and out of state children's
homes for petty crimes. Upon losing his job at a Mexborough scrapyard, on August 26, 1988,
Arkwright went to his grandfather's allotment and fatally bludgeoned him with an axe and lump
hammer, concealing his body in the shed. He then proceeded to his grandfather's house to steal
his life savings and a pocket watch. There, Arkwright is believed to have murdered elderly
housekeeper, Elsa Konradaite, with an axe. Later that night, Arkwright stripped naked, donned a
devil mask, and crept into the home of neighbour Raymond Ford, stabbing him to death, and
inflicting horrendous mutilations on his corpse. On Sunday August 28, he did the same to
wheelchair-bound neighbour Marcus Law, thrusting his crutch into the victim's wounds and
stuffing his nose and ears with cigarettes.

11
 Law's mother found her son's body the next day, and Arkwright, having blatantly
incriminated himself, was arrested for his murder. After playing elaborate mind games with the
police, he was soon linked to the other slayings and charged. Convicted of the murders of his
grandfather, Ford, and Law, in 1990 Arkwright was given a whole life tariff. He remains
imprisoned to this day, having never spoken publicly about the murders.
Admittedly, my research on Arkwright is the weakest in this study. I submitted a request
to speak to an investigator on the case, but the invitation was not accepted. Due to the low-
profile nature of the case, and the lack of video footage of Arkwright, I have been forced to rely
on (i) The direct testimony of Arkwright’s acquaintances and the police and journalist who
worked on the case, all drawn from the television true crime documentary When Life Means Life,
(ii) the book of the same name by researcher Nick Appleyard, an informative popular
publication, (iii) newspaper coverage of the case. Through these sources, I am confident that I
was willing to assemble a reliable portrait of Arkwright, and approximate the
expressive/transformative process in his criminal narrative.

James Holmes (Colorado, USA: 2012)

James Eagan Holmes (b. December 13, 1987) was raised a highly introverted and
intelligent child in California. Believing he was suffering from psychosis, Holmes decided to
enroll in an undergraduate neuroscience program at University of California, Riverside to fix his
'broken brain.' He graduated in 2010 with an outstanding 3.949 GPA and continued his studies in
neuroscience at a doctorate level at the University of Colorado in Aurora. Following a break-up
with his girlfriend and a sharp decline in his academic performance, Holmes began plotting mass
murder, claiming he instantaneously transferred suicidal thoughts to homicidal ones. Holmes
dyed his hair bright red and posed for photographs with weapons, sometimes wearing black
contact lenses, which he posted online. On July 19, 2012, he mailed a copy of his diary to his
psychiatrist at the university and select photographs to the New York Times.
Hours later, shielded by body armour and brandishing an AR-15 and pump-action
shotgun, Holmes burst into a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises at the Century 16
theatre and fired into the audience, killing 12 and wounding 70 others. He promptly left the
cinema, and lingered outside until he was arrested. On August 24, 2014, Holmes was convicted
on 12 counts of murder and received the equivalent in life sentences plus 3,318 years.

12
 I reviewed and transcribed 22 hours of video footage in which James Holmes was
interviewed by psychiatrist Dr. William Reid and looked at Holmes’s diary which corresponded
with the subject matter they discussed. Like most of the 21st century murderers in this study,
Holmes left a digital footprint in the form of dating website profiles. Though not as diverse as the
sources on Chapman or Rodger, his was the third largest corpus I examined.

Elliot Rodger (Isla Vista, USA: 2014)

Other than his parents' divorce, Elliot Rodger (b. July 24, 1991), the son of a filmmaker,
was born into a life of relative privilege. Growing up in California, where he attended private
schools, his social life was severely hindered by his shyness. Though obsessed with social class,
status, and his petit physique, the embittered Rodger was particularly fixated with his inability to
establish romantic relationships with attractive young women. A closeted racist who was
uncomfortably half-Asian, Rodger believed it was unfair for 'inferior' non-Caucasian men to date
white women, and concluded that the latter must be biologically flawed for choosing interracial
relationships. He enrolled at the University of Santa Barbara in Isla Vista, where his frustrations
grew, and around 2014, began posting video-blogs on YouTube describing his life of loneliness,
and asking 'girls' why they weren't attracted by his 'sophistication' and material wealth.
Rodger's rage soon reached a boiling point, and on May 23, 2014, he murdered his two
Asian roommates and their friend using a knife. Immediately after, he uploaded the video “Elliot
Rodger's Retribution” to YouTube in which he confessed his virginity and swore revenge against
sexually active men and women, stating he would drive to 'the hottest sorority house' on campus
and massacre everyone inside. However, upon actually attempting to do so, nobody answered the
door. Frustrated, Rodger began shooting random people on campus, then got in his car and drove
around Isla Vista in a killing spree. After claiming six lives in total and wounding fourteen
others, Rodger was wounded in a shootout with law enforcement and crashed his vehicle. He
committed suicide by way of gunshot to the head.
The Elliot Rodger case had the most plentiful and diverse sources in the sample. Rodger's
digital footprint was extensive, ranging from a series of video blog soliloquies, to his 137-page
biographical document My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger, and a legacy of
interactions on puahate.com and bodybuilding.com. Furthermore, his father spoke with Barbara
Walters for over 40 minutes in a 20/20 interview. Two of Rodger's acquaintances also recounted

13
their experiences with him to the Daily Mail and CNN, respectively.

Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia, USA: 2007)

A Korean immigrant who suffered from selective mutism, Seung-Hui Cho (b. January 18,
1984) struggled to fit in at school and expressed admiration for the Columbine gunmen. Despite
his clear mental and social problems, he graduate from high school and was accepted at Virginia
Tech. After years of frightening classmates, students in residence, and English department
faculty members with his peculiar behaviour, on April 16, 2007, Cho gunned down 49 staff and
students at Virginia Tech. Using a Glock 19 pistol and Walther P22, he amassed the highest
number of casualties in any school shooting—killing 32 and wounding 17 others—before taking
his own life. Cho mailed a video manifesto to NBC News stating his reasons for the rampage.
My main sources were the videotapes Cho mailed to MSNBC transcribed and compiled
in a four-page PDF document by Dr. Peter Langman, along with Liebert & Birnes's Suicidal
Mass Murderers: A Criminological Study of Why They Kill which contains copious information
on the killer's life, behaviour, and psychiatric history leading up to the Virginia Tech Massacre.
A nationally renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Liebert was granted access to primary sources in the
form of Cho's records. Finally, Dr. Langman's own book Why Kids Kill contained some valuable
primary and secondary source information. As the massacre was subject to a media frenzy
following the killings, I also relied on articles from the New York Times, Washington Post, Daily
Telegraph, and ABC News. Cho's short stories and plays provided particularly valuable insight.

Endnotes

1 Egger, 1998.
2 Wilson, 2009.
3 Leyton, 1985/1995.
4 Connell, 1987, 1995.
5 Beasley, 2008, 2009.
6 Hall, 2012, July 20.
7 Levin & Madfis, 2009.
8 Canter & Youngs, 2009.
9 Agnew, 1992.
10 Levin & Madfis, 2009, p. 1238.
11 Levin & Madfis, 2009, p. 1238.
12 Levin & Madfis, 2009.
13 Levin & Madfis, 2009, p. 1232.
14 Canter & Youngs, 2009, p. 126.
15 Canter & Youngs, 2009, p. 126.

14
 1. Theory and Method

“Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.” - Heraklitus

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I
became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” - Corinthians 13:11

1.0 Introduction
The expressive/transformative process of violence (ETV) attempts to link the observable
outer-world of the offender, particularly his communications and the contents of his crime scene,
with his inner sense/coherence of self, emotional state, and imagination. It is necessarily broad in
scope—and because its purpose is to interpret crimes and communications—focuses chiefly on
the role of signs (icons, indexes, symbols) in overlapping social and psychological spaces.
The formal hypothesis of ETV is that offenders
(a) are inadequately socialized due to a lack of effective or meaningful communication,
leading them to
(b) feel a profound crisis of self and suffer from strain, causing them to
(c) experience negative emotionality,
(d) which they decide to cure by ultimately transitioning into a new homicidal self,
(e) and that because self is a product of communication, such offenders intentionally or
unintentionally leave messages for us,
(f) which are signature behaviours comprised of signs, and reveal the motives and
characteristics of the perpetrator.
Points a-d are outlined in detail for all 10 offenders in the sample in Chapters 1 and 3, e-f in
Chapter 4.
As the history of warfare and capital punishment reveal, expressive/transformative
violence is by no means a new phenomenon. Rather, the ever-expanding presence of media in
our lives has simply increased its visibility, and perhaps as a result, its rate of occurrence. Nor is
ETV an exclusive category which exists separately from other types of violence (e.g., sexual,
domestic). To the contrary, each of the 10 offenders in this study followed the conventions of
their respective homicidal type.
A violent paraphilic streak runs through both the successful and would-be serial killers.
Danny Rolling’s voyeurism, picquerism, and mutilophilia are readily apparent in his murders.

15
FBI Agent John Douglas reports that David Berkowitz returned to his crime scenes to roll in the
dirt, later masturbating as he recalled the killings.1 Ostensibly, Luka Magnotta showed signs of
the necrophilia-spectrum behaviours necrosodomolagnia, sarxenthymiophilia, sexual
anthropophagy, and necromutilophilia, though the corresponding acts might have been simply to
increase shock value by maximizing abjection (see Chapters 3 & 4). Similarly, we have hints at
Colin Ireland’s sexual sadism, but cannot confirm it. Anthony Arkwright's extensive mutilations
may or may not be manifestations of paraphilia—there is no account of his comments on them.
Daniel Gonzalez described the experience of killing as “orgasmic”2 however it is difficult to
ascertain whether he was speaking literally or figuratively. In typical rampage killer fashion,
James Holmes, Elliot Rodger, and Seung-Hui Cho committed act-focused murders against
random victims, sometimes beginning with friends or acquaintances, and made no effort to cover
up their crimes. Mark David Chapman enacted a stereotypical American assassination-by-
firearm, a national tradition. Thus, expressive/transformative motives may play a primary,
secondary, or tertiary role in the commission of crimes. The examples discussed here pertain to
cases where the expressive/transformative aspect appears to be fairly central to the motive of the
killing, and perhaps as a result, highly visible. When appropriate, we will comment on
paraphilia, however it is not the focal point of this study, and will therefore be subject to relative
de-emphasis.
In a way, murder itself can be expressive/transformative even when it does not leave
discernible semiotic breadcrumbs. Serial killer Edmund Emil Kemper III acknowledged this,
saying “I just wanted the exaltation over the party. In other words, winning over death. They
were dead, and I was alive. That was the victory in my case.”3 On the surface, this type of
behaviour, in which the offender communicates symbols to himself as a process of self-creation
or reaffirming an existent self, is a form of self-signaling. However, where self-signaling is “an
action chosen partly to secure good news about one's traits or abilities, even when the action has
no causal impact on these traits and abilities”4, the phenomenon we are discussing here concerns
the creation of signs which confirm one's self-image, thereby helping to create or sustain it.
Henceforth, we will call such behaviour semiotic affirmations of self (SAOSc), and will mark
their occurrence in square brackets in the text: [SAOS]. As they are expressive/transformative
behaviours, SAOS also exist in overt and covert form. To Kemper, his victim's bodies were a

c
I recommend pronouncing this acronym Say-Oss (rhyming with chaos).

16
covert SAOS, representing his superiority over them by being “alive.”5 A covert SAOS can only
be identified through an offender's own words. For instance, we would not know that the bodies
signified this to Kemper if he hadn't told us. Though primarily driven to kill by necrophilic
sexual urges, Kemper also committed numerous covert acts of expressive/transformative
behaviour that were not SAOS. One example has him burying the head of a victim in his
backyard facing his tyrannical mother's bedroom window because she “always wanted people to
look up to her.”6 In another he attempted to flush his mother's larynx down the garbage disposal
because “she'd bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years.”7 Unlike Kemper's
covert expressive/transformative communications, this study focuses on ETV behaviours that are
overt for the simple reason that they are observable to witnesses and law enforcement. An overt
SAOS is a sign others can easily identify and interpret, because the offender wishes us to accept
their enacted identity as their new personal identity.d When Frank Spisak decided he wanted to
become Hitler, dressing in Nazi regalia and sporting a toothbrush moustache8, this SAOS was
overt. An example of an overt expressive/transformative act that was not a SAOS, at least to our
knowledge, is serial killer George Russell posing his last victim with a pillow over her head, legs
spread, and a rifle inserted into her vagina.9
Having established a basic understanding of what ETV is, the remainder of this chapter will
be devoted to explaining the sociological, psychological, semiotic, and communication theories
which form its foundation. The interplay between communication, signs, socially-held meanings,
and the development of the self was first articulated by the symbolic interactionists in the first
half of the 20th century. For this reason, the core tenets of symbolic interactionism, which
constitute the basic micro-material binding all other ETV-related theories together, will be
detailed first (1.1 Why Symbolic Interactionism?). Section 1.2 (The Development of the Self
Through Communication) focuses specifically on how the self—including self-concept, self-
guides, self-evaluation, and self-regulation—arises and is shaped by interaction throughout a
child's development and connected to negative emotionality. Here symbolic interactionism's
transformation into the scientifically-validated Self-Discrepancy Theory (SDT) is demonstrated
and supported by research from cognitive psychologists Jean Piaget and Robbie Case. Naturally,
we then move on to a detailed outline of Self-Discrepancy Theory (1.3) and how, despite the
assertions of Higgins, an offender may shift to a homicidal self-guide, then commit murder to

d
Granted, at other times it is merely a flippant statement or joke.

17
permanently or temporarily quash his negative-emotionality. Section 1.4 (General Strain Theory
and the Self) looks at how strains—incentives or disinhibitors to commit deviant and criminal
acts—emerge from and are embedded within the notions of the self which bely SDT. In section
1.5, Face-Work and the Communication Theory of Identity, the communication theory of
identity (CTI) is presented to augment SDT by showing how negative-emotionality can also
result from communication dysfunctions: the feeling that one is not being understood and/or
believed by other members of society. The writings of the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman
also reveal some of the theory's shortcomings, which will be subject to brief discussion. Finally,
the chapter concludes by examining the role that mental illness played in our 10-offender sample
is assessed in Section 1.6: Communication Dysfunction and Mental Illness. In this section,
mental illness is discussed as an impediment to effective communication resulting in an unstable
self, with a concentration on individual symptoms rather than constructs as whole.
Before proceeding, it is important to emphasize that the expressive/transformative process
of violence adds something refreshingly new and necessary to our understanding of homicide.
Despite the countless offender profiling methodologies, risk assessment tests, psychometric
tools, and clinical treatment strategies in use, there are none which systematically trace identity
signatures—offender communications directly related to violent acts which do not comprise
modus operandi and occur before, during, or after the violent event—back through the techno-
socio-cultural context in which they occur into the offender’s emotional life and personal
narrative of self. This is likely owing to two factors: (1) the strange failure to recognize and/or
study identity signatures as discreet entities, as has been done with paraphilic signatures, and (2)
the inherent interdisciplinary nature of such an endeavor in an academic climate which
encourages hyper-specialization at the graduate level over the continued need to broaden the
areas of one’s education. As the remainder of this dissertation will reveal, one must possess a
decent understanding of social, forensic, and abnormal psychology; sociology; criminology;
religion; anthropology; history; communication; and media to understand ETV to the extent that
it truly merits.

1.1 Why Symbolic Interactionism?

The primary theoretical basis of ETV is symbolic interactionism as formulated by the
American social behaviorist George Herbert Mead in his Mind, Self and Society. Interactionism

18
studies the construction of self, groups, society, and culture through symbolic expression. It has
been criticized for being too microscopic in focus, making it essentially a non-theory with no
practical application10. Such detractors have failed to grasp that these early works by Mead,
Herbert Blumer, and Erving Goffman—whose dramaturgical theory is essentially an expansion
and partial re-articulation of interactionism—laid a solid theoretical foundation upon which
further research and theory could be built. This dissertation will demonstrate its utility.
Furthermore, thanks to the efforts of Jung & Hecht, there is now quantitative data to support
interactionist claims that “identity is inherently communicative.”11
Admittedly, while symbolic interactionism is crucial in establishing the link between
communication, symbols, and notions of self, it trails behind semiotics regarding the
interpretation of signs, both individually and in relation to one another. Fortunately, the
disciplines have a common intellectual ancestor in Charles Sanders Peirce, the American
scientist, mathematician, and founder of philosophical Pragmatism.e Danesi has noted Peirce's
fascination with the criminal profiler C. Augustin Dupin—the fictional protagonist of Poe's The
Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, and The Purloined Letter—which led
Peirce to view detective work as the study of signs through a process he termed 'abduction.'12
This theoretical compatibility allows ETV to bridge the gap between the meaning of signs and
their use in communication to construct and negotiate human identity. ETV is therefore a
practical use of interpretivism—incorporating, augmenting, and informing positivist research,
rather than stalwartly opposing it.
This study of 10 ETV offenders began with the methodology championed by Herbert
Blumer in his Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Blumer advocates naturalistic,
qualitative research, in which the theoretical model used to analyze the data should solidify
during the research process, rather than preceding it, because “[I]t is important to recognize that
the means used to get the data depend on the nature of the data to be sought.”13 Blumer believed
that, despite its increasingly popular use in social science, the standard procedures of adhering to
scientific protocol, engaging in replication, testing hypotheses, and using operational procedure,

e
There are several tenets of pragmatist epistemology which I strongly disagree with, specifically the notion that
there is no reality outside of human interpretation. Fortunately, this has no bearing on my implementation of
symbolic interactionism or semiotics in the context of this dissertation.

19
do not, in actuality, lead to empirical validation. Instead, more often than not, they lead to social
scientists skewing or selecting data to fit their pre-existing model.

Very simply put, the only way to get this assurance is to go directly to the empirical
social world—to see through meticulous examination of it whether one's premises or root
images of it, one's questions and problems posed for it, the data one chooses out of it, the
concepts through which one sees and analyzes it, and the interpretations one applies to it
are actually borne out.14

Blumer advocates the social scientist immersing himself in the actual, authentic social
experience of the people he is studying, allowing what he observes to give rise to theory, rather
than beginning with theory and seeking to process data that is subsequently collected. He argues
that most social scientists explore the social lives of groups or individuals with whom they have
little familiarity, inevitably and naturally bringing preconceived stereotypes of these individuals
and their behaviour to their research endeavours.15 This is both understandable and unavoidable.
He encourages the researcher to test and revise their presuppositions in accordance with the
reality they encounter, rather than adhering dogmatically to a pre-established theoretical model.
We followed this methodology closely, selecting violent offenders who communicate as the
sample to be studied, then stepping into their experiences to see what emerged. A symbolic
interactionist's two modes of inquiry are exploration and inspection. Exploration is a

flexible procedure in which the scholar shifts from one to another line of inquiry, adopts
new points of observation as his study progresses, moves in new directions previously
unthought-of of, and changes his recognition of what are relevant data as he acquires
more information and better understanding... The flexibility of exploratory procedure
does not mean that there is no direction to the inquiry; it means that the focus is originally
broad but becomes progressively sharpened as the inquiry proceeds.16


Acceptable methods of exploration include “direct observation, interviewing of people, listening
to their conversations, securing life-history accounts, using letters and diaries, consulting public
records, arranging for group discussions, and making counts of an item if this appears
worthwhile.”17 Inspection entails “an intensive focused examination of the empirical content of
whatever analytical elements are used for the purposes of analysis, and the same kind of
examination of the empirical nature of the relations between such elements.”18 Blumer defines
analytical elements as “[W]hatever general or categorical items are employed as the key items in

20
the analysis”19 which “may refer to processes, organization, relations, networks of relations,
states of being, elements of personal organization, and happenings.”20 These analytical elements
may be broad or narrow, and Blumer advocates scrutinizing them in multitudinous ways from a
variety of perspectives. In the same way that we pick up a material object, regard it, turn it
around in our hand to inspect all sides, look inside it, underneath it, and form conclusions about
every aspect of it (and thus the object as a whole), we should also do the same with “any one of
the elements used in the theoretical analysis of a given area or aspect of empirical social life.”21
These include—but are not limited to— relationships, processes, and 'social objects.' Only when
one fully understands the nature of the analytical element, can one incorporate it into a theory.
Relaying the advice of Charles Darwin, Blumer recommends noting all observations that 1)
challenge one's working conceptions, and 2) are odd and interesting, even if seemingly
irrelevant.
Given the impossibility of involving oneself in an offender's social experience before he
or she is apprehended, and the difficulty in obtaining prison interviews at a graduate level, the
research presented here relies primarily on the offenders' biographies and autobiographies,
interviews (written and recorded in audio and/or video) with the offender or those who knew
him, and their correspondences for data. These all fall within Blumer's accepted sources for
exploration.
Before proceeding, there are several schisms in symbolic interactionism which should be
briefly addressed. Stryker—arguably the leading symbolic interactionist scholar of the so-called
Indiana school—has criticized Blumer's recommended methodology on the grounds that it (1)
dismisses any research or behavioural predictions grounded in a priori theory, (2) rejects the
validity of research methods that set up constraints on how issues are formulated or attacked
(such as experimentation and survey research), and (3) deems any data rendered into
mathematical or statistical attempts to understand the sociological process useless as numerical
data lacks the focus on 'meaning' that defines sociological phenomena.22 “Thus along with
denying the possibility of explanatory sociological theory, Blumer severely restricts the
legitimate range of investigatory (data gathering) techniques as well as analytic methods.”23
Having revisited the passages in Blumer's work which Stryker refers to in his criticism, it
is apparent that Stryker is misunderstanding Blumer's argument. Blumer is by no means
dismissing mathematical/statistical/quantitative approaches to sociology/social psychology

21
altogether, rather, he is arguing against the increasingly popular notion that it this the only
acceptable protocol in the social sciences. He points to Charles Darwin, whose theory of
evolution grew first out of 'exploring' and 'inspecting' the fauna of the Galapagos Islands and
contemplating it. Darwin did not put together a complex theoretical model before arriving on the
islands which he subsequently used to test the phenomena he encountered. This would have been
foolhardy, as Darwin was not even aware of what he would discover on the island. Instead, he
observed and considered the phenomena, which subsequently gave rise to the theory of
evolution. Blumer states this is also an acceptable and advisable approach to understanding the
social experience—particularly for the symbolic interactionist—and at no point claims that
statistical, mathematical, and quantitative methods should be foregone entirely. He does reject a
priori theoretical models, but only if these are inflexible. Indeed, following the exploration and
inspection stages of this research—pouring over the documents for each of the 10 offenders—the
quantitatively-validated Self-Discrepancy Theory (1.3) and Communication Theory of Identity
(1.5) emerged as applicable theories to the analytical elements we encountered.
Similarly, there has been much debate in the field of symbolic interactionism regarding
the degree to which the individual's self is static or dynamic from situation to situation. Viktor
Gecas notes that Mead’s 'social behaviorism' has split into two major camps: the psychological
(social psychology) and sociological (symbolic interactionism), each with their own problematic
biases.24 Psychologists tend to look for internal causation, focusing on how self-concepts—“the
overarching view that a person has of himself or herself as a physical, social, moral, or spiritual
being”25—translate into behaviour, while sociologists attempt to identify the prototypes for self-
concept within social interaction. Recognizing the rather obvious fact that internal and external
influences are frequently occurring and interacting at the same time, ETV incorporates both
social psychological and symbolic interactionist approaches. Thus, Erich Goode's assertion that
“specialists in crime, often referred to as criminologists, tend to focus on behavior (almost never
beliefs, and never physical conditions) that generate formal sanctioning”26 does not apply to this
criminological study.
Complicating matters further, symbolic interactionism has broadly split into the 'Chicago
school' of processual interactionists, and the structural interactionists known as the 'Iowa school'
and led by Manfred Kuhn.27 However, once academic partisanship is abandoned, it becomes
clear that both the processual and structuralist symbolic interactionist worldviews are true, with

22
the mutual exception that they refuse to acknowledge this fact. Processual and structuralist
interaction intersect through the formation of social narratives by both groups and individuals. In
order to define any social situation, participants must necessarily draw upon semiotic meanings
which reside in the social structure. One example which is particularly applicable to the 21st
century is the person who endeavors to appear virtuous by never offending anyonef, even though
members of the human race have opposing values. In order for the person to change themselves
to adapt to different social structures, they must be acquainted with the norms of that structure,
meaning the structure must have a culture which is somewhat static and knowable.
Having established why symbolic interactionism is theoretically and methodologically
best suited to the study of ETV, along with addressing some of the rifts within the theory itself,
we will now explain the relationship between the social, emotional, and conceptual self and its
relation to communication, thereby laying a framework for us to study the 10 offenders in this
sample.

1.2 The Development of the Self Through Communication

Symbolic interactionism explores how communication occurs through the exchange of
symbols—which Peirce’s semiotics rightfully broadens to signs (icons, indexes, and symbols)—
and functions to formulate and re-formulate the subjective meaning of phenomena. Crucially,
communication gives rise to the self, which Mead proposes “has a character which is different
from the physiological proper,”28 distinct from consciousness or sentience. This ability to be both
subject and object gives birth to the self and arises through interaction with others. When a child
engages in organized games, for instance, he learns to mentally adopt the role of the other
participants so that he may anticipate their reactions, and thus compete more effectively. Once
the individual realizes that every other person he encounters is regarding him in the same
manner, he becomes an object to himself. He has now, through communication, developed a self.
Blumer clarifies that “nothing esoteric is meant by this expression. It means merely that a human
being can be an object of his own action.”29 The self is organized into two sub-facets: the 'I'
(subject) and 'Me' (object). The I is the individual's self-determination of his “function and

f
A disdainful cheater strategy. Victor Hugo put it best in his essay Villemain: “You have enemies? Why, it is the
story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around
everything that shines...”

23
privilege”30, and remains hidden. It reacts to the Me which is “...the organized set of attitudes of
others which one himself assumes.”31 Essentially, the Me is the I's window into the world of the
generalized otherg—“the organized community or social group which gives to the individual his
unity of self.”32 As the self arises through communication, it is also reshaped in this manner over
the course of the individual's lifetime. Hence the term expressive/transformative. We are made
and remade through communication, interpretation, and experience the resulting emotional
effect.
Drawing chiefly from the developmental cognitive psychology of Jean Piaget and Robbie
Case, E. Tory Higgins cites a wealth of psychological research validating this notion of the self.33
He divides its development into roughly five levels, each related to a different age of childhood:
Early-sensorimotor (level 1), late-sensorimotor/early-interrelational (level 2), late-
interrelational/early-dimensional (level 3), late-dimensional/early-vectorial (level 4), and late-
vectorial (level 5).34
During the early-sensorimotor level, which begins at birth and lasts until approximately
1½ years of age, the infant becomes able to understand how two incidences are related ('R1' in
Figure 1). Higgins gives the example of a child noting how their mother responds ('Other
Response Y' in Figure 1) to the child's own behaviour ('Self Feature X' in Figure 1), allowing
them to express and perceive signsh which triggers an emotional experience. It is at this earliest
level that a child can “experience four basic emotionally significant psychological situations...”35
all of which may be actual or anticipated: the presence or absence of positive outcomes (e.g., the
child is nurtured or the child is neglected), and the presence or absence of negative outcomes
(e.g., the child is subjected to pain or removed from pain). As the infant can now anticipate
experiencing an absence of positive outcomes or presence of negative outcomes, this makes them
susceptible to anxiety.36 As we shall see later, this newfound ability to experience an absence of
positive outcomes, in particular, paves the road for expressive/transformative violence.

g
Recent research in symbolic interactionism has revealed that individuals do not always take the perspective of
society-at-large (i.e. the generalized other) when making decisions. See Chapter 2.
h
Higgins uses the term 'signals', but as we seek to incorporate semiotics into ETV, when the occasion arises we will
use semiotic nomenclature.

24
Figure 1. Developmental Changes in Children's Ability to Represent Self-Other Contingencies
Note. Reprinted from “Continuities and discontinuities in self-regulatory and self-evaluative
processes: A developmental theory relating self and affect” by E.T. Higgins, 1989, Journal Of
Personality, 57(2), 407-444, 1989 by E.T. Higgins. Reproduced with permission from Higgins.

The late-sensorimotor/early-interrelational development level follows soon after,

between the ages of 18 months and two years of age. Here, the child learns symbolic

25
representationi and to utilize a scheme which represents one object's relation to another37, in
order to attain a “represented and specified goal pertaining to two other objects.”38 This allows
the infant to deliberately formulate a plan to “obtain a particular kind of relationship”39, thus they
are now able to comprehend their current state as discrepant from a hypothetical one.40 Quite
simply, a child comes to understand that displaying a given sign ('Self Feature X' in Figure 1) to
another person, will result in a particular response ('Other Response Y' in Figure 1) which in turn
will result in one of the four psychological situations ('Self Psychological Situation Z' in Figure
1). The transition from the sensorimotor to the late-sensorimotor/early-interrelational level is
marked by early behaviour associated with imitation, play, and language.41
Between the ages of four and a half to six years, the child enters the late-
interrelational/early-dimensional third level of development42, where he continues to imitate,
converse, and play; the latter term now encompassing the specific symbolic interactionist
concept in which a child assumes multiple imaginary roles in a single event (e.g., a gunslinger
who fires a killing shot followed immediately by his victim who dramatically clutches his
imagined wound and falls dead). Mead saw this behaviour as crucial in the formation of the
self43, while Mellor has posited that it allows violent paraphilic offenders to engage in auto-erotic
activities were they take on the role of both victim and perpetrator.44 Predictably, this is the level
at which a child's ability to see himself as an object to himself45, giving rise to the Me. By
extension, the self forms.
In keeping with Piaget, Higgins views the transition from the absence of role and/or
perspective-taking to its presence as demonstrative of a movement from egocentric toward
nonegocentric thought. At this stage, the child's ability to infer the thoughts of others improves
dramatically. Using his previous actions, the actions of others, or imagined preferable
alternatives as a measuring stick, he is now able to describe and emotionally respond to his state
and actions as a “'success' or a 'failure,' as 'good' or 'bad'...”46 The child may also use information
located temporally outside his immediate situation to judge his or another's actions within the
immediate situation. The sum total of these expanded social abilities is that the child may now
use self-regulation—the ability to control their actions and thus tailor their persona

i
In their essay on symbolic representation, Huttenlocher & Higgins (1978) begin by noting that the earlier sign
system established by Peirce has yet to be introduced into psychological theory, specifically “models of the
representation of conceptual information in long-term memory” (p. 99). Consider this the first step.

26
situationally—and self-evaluation, to display signs they infer another person (a specific or
generalized other) will find desirable in them. The child does this by taking the other's
standpoint, becoming an object-to-himself, in order to conform to the standard of the other.
Stated another way, the child understands that, as displayed on Figure 1 “the relation between
self-feature X and other-response Y is understood to be mediated by the relation between self-
feature X and the other's standpoint on self-feature X.”47 The process of understanding self-other
contingencies has become more complex, but the outcome—experiencing self psychological
description Z—remains the same. Perhaps most importantly, the child now realizes that not all
people respond the same way to self-feature X, and that a discrepancy between his behaviour and
the behaviour another person wishes him to have is the connection to the self psychological
situation. Children at level 3 “can now monitor, plan, and evaluate themselves in terms of
congruencies and discrepancies from internally represented standards or guides that others hold
for them.”48 As this period draws to an end, children are increasingly interested in trying to
match the standard they believe others hold for them. Social approval becomes ascendantj over
the direct consequences of the child's actions, providing motivation for both self-regulation and
self-evaluation which lead to the development of self-guides.49 Higgins puts it far more
eloquently: “For the first time, children can evaluate themselves by comparing their perceived
current state to an alternative valued state, an 'other' standpoint self-guide. And they are
motivated to do so in order to monitor their progress in self-regulation. Thus, self-evaluation
occurs in the service of self-regulation.”50 Though this level of socialization is necessary to
function as a social being, Higgins notes that comparing oneself to self-guides can result in more
emotional vulnerabilities. This hypothesis will be explored in much further depth in section 1.3.
At level 4, late-dimensional/early-vectorial development occurring between the ages of
nine and 11, children learn how to judge themselves and others based on disposition. This means
that dispositional attributes finally feature in their self-concepts as well as their concepts of
others. The primary factor in this development is the child's newly acquired ability to infer their
(or somebody else's) relative ability by comparing it to prior differences in outcomes, intent, and
effort. At this stage, the child recognizes the influence variables—opposing or compensating—
play in individual attempts at achievement, allowing them to compare a person's relative quality

j
An observation: the end of this level seems to correspond with the onset of Freud's 'latency phase' in which the
child becomes unconcerned with bodily pleasure and more on socializing.

27
in an attribute dimension in the context of certain circumstances, to another person's given a
different set of circumstances. So, for example, nine-year-old 'Jimmy' goes from knowing that he
is simply a faster runner than 'Timmy', to ascribing a portion of this superiority to the fact that
'Timmy' is two years younger. Again, as this inter- and intrapersonal awareness grows, so does
one's capacity for self-loathing: the realization that dispositional attributes reside within one's
person ('Self Feature X' relates to 'Self Trait X' in Figure 1), is accompanied by the crushing
realization that failure of the self-concept to meet the self-guide may actually be beyond one's
control. One may innately be a 'loser': “The self-evaluation process for a single self-feature could
now activate a child's general self-discrepancy system as a whole because of spreading activation
among interconnected elements in a unitized self-discrepancy system.”51 Accordingly, the child's
newfound ability to compare the totality of their self-attributes to the totality of another person's,
means that their peers may do the same to them ('Other Standpoint on Self Trait X' in Figure 1)
and find them wanting ('Other Response Y' in Figure 1). Authentic self-discrepancies may now
enter the child's experience, resulting in negative emotionality ('Self Psychological Situation Z'
in Figure 1). Worse, even in the absence of a recent discrepant activity, simply being reminded
of a discrepancy between the self-concept and self-guide can now provoke an emotional
response.52
The final level of development Higgins discusses, level 5 late vectorial development,
occurs between the ages of 13 and 16. Here, the capacity to interrelate alternate views on the
same object or occurrence arises, which Higgins proposes “can produce a new form of
'egocentrism' in which children construe that others' viewpoints are totally different from (and
potentially incompatible with) their own viewpoint...”53 The capacity to examine how higher-
order abstractions, particularly personalities and identities, relate to one another, is associated
with this level.
Through these five levels of development, the etiology of Self-Discrepancy Theory—in
which negative emotions such as depression, frustration, and anxiety emerge from gaps between
aspects of one's self-concept and self-guide—has been thoroughly outlined. Before proceeding to
the next section which focuses exclusively on SDT, it is necessary to reiterate that this process of
childhood development, self-concepts and self-guides, and the evaluation and judgment of others
occurs through ongoing communication through signs. We are made, re-made, and forge
ourselves through the observation and interpretation of signs (and constructs comprised of signs,

28
which themselves act as signs). The full importance of these symbolic interactionist
underpinnings may not be apparent until subsequent chapters, however, in the meantime they
should by no means be dismissed as obvious and inconsequential. In ETV, the 'devil' is quite
literally in the details. And that is where we ultimately find the hoof prints that lead to his door.

1.3 Self-Discrepancy Theory

As Self-Discrepancy Theory wasn't selected as a major theoretical component of ETV
from the outset, before delving too far into it, an account of how Higgins' theory came to form
such an integral part of ETV seems appropriate. During the process of exploring the primary
sources (à la Blumer), the first phenomenon discovered was that every offender announced the
birth of a new homicidal self. Often, this declaration was explicitly stated:
Chapman: “I would actually become Holden Caulfield.”54
Berkowitz: “I am the ‘Son of Sam.’”55
Rolling (in the third-person): “Danny disappeared in the mist of his tormented
thoughts…and a different person surfaced. It was the outlaw, still unnamed, who would
one day emerge as Ennad.”56
Ireland: “I think it is from four people that the FBI classify as [being a] serial [killer], so I
may stop now I have done five.”57
Magnotta (written on blog before murder): “Necrophilia serial killer Luka Magnotta.”58
Gonzalez: “I will be a serial killer. I mean it, I promise. I will be a serial killer”59
Rodger: “I will take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I
am, in truth, the superior one, the true alpha male.”60
Cho: “I am Ax Ishmael. I am the Anti-Terrorist of America.”61
In the remaining two cases, promotion of the homicidal self was marked by wearing demonic
costumes. Anthony Arkwright sported a devil mask during his murder of Raymond Ford; while
James Holmes dyed his hair bright red, wore black contact lenses, and posed with weapons
before perpetrating the Aurora Theatre Massacre in full body-armour.
Further examination of these 10 offenders' lives revealed they had failed in their attempts
to establish other selves in the years leading up to their murders. Like most human beings who
fail to live up to their own expectations, these selves were typically preceded and followed by
periods of depression and frustration. As hinted at in the previous section, this is consistent with

29
self-discrepancy theory. SDT posits that negative emotions result from the failure of the self-
concept—the person one believes oneself to be—to match the self-guide, which is their desired
self-state.62 These failures to obtain or maintain parity are referred to as 'self-discrepancies.'
Higgins termed the self-concept an actual self, and after reviewing the relevant literature,
found evidence for two kinds of actual selves: an 'own' and 'other'. “The kind of person an
individual believes he or she actually is”63 comprises the own self because it reflects one's self-
perception. Likewise, the other self refers to “the kind of person an individual believes that
others think he or she actually is. The 'others' can be either significant others or the generalized
other”64, as previously articulated by Mead.k A person has multiple 'others' (e.g., father, mother,
coach) who hold differing or competing views of who that person is and should be. The two
perspectives from which somebody measures their actual self—the “standpoints on the self”65—
form one cognitive dimension of self-state representation. Higgins defines a standpoint on the
self as “a point of view from which you can be judged that reflects a set of attitudes or
values...”66 and notes its origins in the symbolic interactionist tradition. Nevertheless, in Self-
Discrepancy Theory, only the standpoints of 'significant others' such as friends and family
members are considered—which functions satisfactorily for the present study—though there is
no reason it couldn't be expanded in the future to include the generalized other.67
The second cognitive dimension of self-state representation, “domains of the self”68,
denotes the nature of the self-guide; which can be actual (“your representation of the attributes
that someone... yourself or another... believes you actually [emphasis added] possess”69), ideal
(“your representation of the attributes that someone... yourself or another... would like you,
ideally [emphasis added], to possess... i.e., a representation of someone's hopes, aspirations, or
wishes for you...”70) or ought (“your representation of the attributes that someone...yourself or
another... believes you should or ought [emphasis added] to possess”71). Combining these three
domains of the self—actual, ideal, and ought—with the two standpoints on the self, own and
other, produces six self-state representations (see Table 1).72

k
Presumably, Athens' phantom community, phantom other, and Mellor's fandom community could also expand the
boundaries of self-discrepancy theory, though they have yet to be incorporated into quantitative testing.

30
 Table 1
Self-state Representations* Resulting from Self-Domains and Standpoints on Self
Self-Domain Standpoint on Self – Own Standpoint on Self - Other
Actual Actual/Own Actual/Other
Ideal Ideal/Own Ideal/Other
Ought Ought/Own Ought/Other
*Self-state representations are in italics.

A discrepancy between the actual/own and ideal/own selves, is represented as such:

actual/own:ideal/own. Actual/own:ideal/own discrepancies were the most common, or at least
the most visible, among our 10 offenders.
Rather than referring to a monolithic self—the person in total—the self-concept and self-
guide are comprised of numerous attributes. During the exploration process, aspects of sexuality,
gender, vocation, class, race, philosophy, and religion emerged as the most relevant. These
attributes are examined across our 10 offender sample in Chapter 3. One may experience no
discrepancy whatsoever in many attributes, while feeling intense discrepancies in others. For
example, 'John', a newly unemployed welfare-recipient, could hypothetically feel an
actual/own:ought/other discrepancy in his vocational attribute as a result of being reprimanded
for 'leeching off the system', while experiencing an actual/own:ideal/own class-related
discrepancy due to being forced to relocate from a gated community to a trailer park. Yet, he
may simultaneously experience no sexual, gender, racial, or religious attribute discrepancies
whatsoever. Higgins explains this by stating
... self-discrepancy theory assumes that the motivational or emotional effects of your
actual/own attributes, or self-concept, are determined by the significance to you of
possessing such attributes. And the significance is assumed to depend on the relation
between the self-concept and your self-guides, with different types of relations
representing different types of negative psychological situations...73

Unlike a multitude of other theories which merely propose that discomfort or negative
emotions arise from incongruent beliefs and/or self-concepts within a given individual74, SDT
uniquely predicts the kind of emotions associated with various discrepancies. This capability,
along with the theoretical ties to symbolic interactionism, make it an optimal basis for criminal
profiling. Higgins notes a wealth of psychological and psychiatric literature separating negative
emotionality into two clusters: dejection-related and agitation-related.75 Multiple quantitative

31
studies have indicated that actual/own:ideal/own discrepancies produce dejection-related
emotions such as depression, dissatisfaction, disappointment, sadness, and frustration.76 On the
other hand, actual/own:ought/other discrepancies result in feelings of resentment, fear, and being
threatened, while anxietyl and paranoia are associated with actual/own:ought/own
discrepancies.77 As a person may possess all, some (in various combinations), or no self-
discrepancies, the first two types of people are susceptible to several different emotional
vulnerabilities. This does not mean that these discrepancies are equally active at a given time, or
that the levels of negative-emotionality they produce are similar.78 Depending on which self-
discrepancy is most accessible in the moment, the corresponding negative emotion will
dominate.79
Higgins stresses the need to move “away from the simple first-generation question 'Is
there an effect?' to the second-generation question 'When is there an effect?”80 Higgins proposes
that the self-regulatory significance of the self-discrepancy is determined by four variables
relating to it: magnitude, accessibility, applicability and relevance, and importance.81 A person
will suffer negative emotionality more or less commensurate to the magnitude of a self-
discrepancy. For instance, 'Jimmy', a teenager who dreams of being a major league baseball
player will obviously become more depressed and frustrated when he strikes out than 'Timmy',
who has no such aspirations and would rather be at home playing video games. As our study will
reveal, each of our 10 offenders had large discrepancies—magnitude—in multiple areas of their
self.
Higgins also stressed that a self-discrepancy must be activated in order for the negative
emotion to be experienced, which shows the importance of accessibility. SDT has revealed that
individuals who have both actual:ideal and actual:ought discrepancies will experience emotions
if the actual:ought is primed, and dejection-related emotions if the actual:ideal is primed.
Priming, in which exposure to specific stimuli activates a reaction to other stimuli, makes a
discrepancy accessible. In other words, certain stimuli (e.g., acts, objects, experiences) remind

l
Self-discrepancy theory considers the possibility that not all individuals will have both ideal and ought self-guides.
Interestingly, there was no indication of a sincere ought self-guide among any of the psychopathic offenders in this
sample (Berkowitz, Ireland, Rolling, Magnotta, Gonzalez, and Arkwright). As actual/own:ought/other discrepancies
result in anxiety, perhaps this explains the lack of anxiety many researchers associate with psychopathy, as
emphasized in Hervey Cleckley's The Mask of Sanity. Guilt is also typically missing in those with high PCL-R
scores. Then again, a replication of Higgins's research by Tangney et al. (1998) indicated no relation between guilt
and any of the self-discrepancies whatsoever.

32
the subject of their self-discrepancy and trigger the corresponding emotion. When this occurred
in a lab setting, actual:ideal priming did not result in emotions, nor did actual:ought priming
result in dejection-related emotions.82 Continuing with our baseball metaphor, Jimmy is more
likely to become depressed or frustrated if an uncle teases him about the time he struck out,
rather than if this reminder had not occurred. Higgins specifies that “a variety of different
priming techniques can be used, from priming either ideal self-guides or ought self-guides as a
whole... to priming a specific ideal or ought attribute...”83 With this in mind, in Chapter 3, we
will identify 'triggers' preceding the transformations of offenders in this sample by inserting the
marker '[trigger]'. Theoretically, these should lead to the negative emotionality which gives rise
to new selves.
Thirdly, Higgins notes that the activation of self-discrepancies also depends on their
applicability and relevance in a given situation. This occurs with respect to negative events
which trigger self-discrepancy, but not positive events.84 Citing a study by Boldero & Francis85,
Higgins proposes that if self-discrepancy research is to be conducted on undergraduate students,
then any negative stimuli must be situated in an academic context in order for it to be relevant
(e.g., bad grades).86 As Jimmy's dejection is specifically related to his lousy baseball skills, for
example, trying to trigger it by showing him his poor grades on a spelling test may be a futile
pursuit.
Finally, the importance of a particular self-discrepancy to an individual is a large factor.
Higgins points out that if an actual:ought discrepancy (e.g., “I ought to get better grades because
I should do well in school”) is more important to a person than an actual:ideal discrepancy (e.g.,
“I want to get better grades because I aspire to be an honours student”), then agitation-related
emotions will be experienced rather than dejection-related.
As negative emotions arise from incongruent self-concepts and self-guides, “self-
discrepancy theory postulates that we are motivated to reach a condition where our self-concept
matches our personally relevant self-guides.”87 Pondering why people who experience profound
self-discrepancies do not simply change their self-guidesm, Higgins proposes that socialization
has embedded cultural expectations too deeply in the individual's intrapersonal structure.88

m
A seemingly unwarranted assumption given the radical transformations in religious, political, and national identity
of Maajid Nawaz, to name one of many examples. A formerly irreligious British youth turned Islamist turned liberal
democrat and humanist, Nawaz claims to have experienced significantly decreased guilt upon transitioning to a less
'ideological' Islamic identity.

33
Indeed, it is reasonable to assume that pursuing normative gender expectations and upwards class
mobility is unlikely to change significantly in the majority of individuals. We are literally
indoctrinated with these values from birth by familial, religious, political, and educational
institutions, all of which receive substantial reinforcement from the media. Yet, these core
ingredients (e.g., 'act like a man', 'be rich and famous') can be repackaged in different identity
recipes. As noted by Peter Langman in his Why Kids Kill, during a study of neo-Nazis,
psychologist Raphael Ezekiel found an overrepresentation of group members with frail
physiques and severe childhood illnesses (a gender-related attribute of the self).89 Langman,
analyzing Columbine High School gunman Eric Harris, interpreted his adoption of a White
Supremacist self as a “way of establishing a hard, tough masculinity”90 to compensate for his
sunken chest (pectus excavatum) and lack of athletic ability. Although hailing from a family of
military men and sportsmen, Harris had been excluded by the 'jocks' at Columbine who
represented an ideal masculinity at the school. As Higgins suggests, Harris did not create an
entirely new self-guide to resolve his depression—he continued to accept the normative demands
of what constitutes a 'real man' in American culture. Instead, he found an alternative self-guide
(schoolshooter!) which still incorporated hypermasculinityn, only this self-guide was one he
could actually attain. This actual/own:ideal/own gender self-discrepancy could thus be
negotiated through a different embodiment of self, without Harris ever needing to minimize,
critique, or dispel the notion of normative masculine gender. So, in a narrow sense, Higgins is
correct—people keep their identity ingredients—but more fundamentally, he is wrong, because
they may change the rest of the identity recipe. Contrary to Higgins' claims, this dissertation
empirically proves that ETV murderers pathologically change their self-guides in an attempt to
resolve their negative emotionality, eventually culminating in homicide and the rebirth of 'self-
as-killer.' Unlike Leyton, it is not our contention that this permanently reconciles the offender's
crisis of self.91 In fact, the relief from negative emotionality might only be momentary, a
handclap, or indeed, it might be a lifelong existential unification—the 10 cases here seem to
show that it generally falls somewhere between.
As the actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy overwhelmingly appears across our 10 offender
study, let us consider Higgins' overall summary that this discrepancy is “associated with

n
For now I will use this more familiar term, though Beaseley's sub-hegemonic masculinity, which will be introduced
in Chapter 2, is ultimately preferable.

34
dejection from perceived lack of effectiveness or self-fulfillment.”92 The dejected sufferer feels
both existentially impotent and hollow. The successful commission of murder resolves the first
problem by demonstrating the offender's competence, while the transcendent experience our
culture associates with taking a life fills his emptiness. He becomes 'one who has gone where
others fear to tread'. More to the point: ETV is a quick fix to an eternal problem. The need to rid
oneself of negative emotionality is a strong motivator, and the choice to do so through
criminality is by no means anomalous. There are additional motives to commit crime inherent in
SDT. By noting that dejection-related emotions stemming from actual/own:ideal/own
discrepancies are associated with the absence of positive outcomes, while actual/own:ought/own
and actual/own:ought/other discrepancies produce emotions resulting from the fear of negative
outcomes93, Higgins opens a second motivational door, leading to Robert Agnew's General
Strain Theory of deviance.

1.4 General Strain Theory and the Self

Implicit in self-discrepancy theory, though neither mentioned nor identified in Higgins's
writings or citations, is the sociologist Robert Agnew's concept of general strain theory (GST). 94
Following criticisms of the classic strain theories of Merton95, Cohen96, and Cloward &
Ohlin97—which dwelled solely on deviance resulting from the lack of institutionalized means to
achieve wealth and upwards class mobility—Agnew developed GST as a broader theory “written
at the social-psychological level: It focuses on the individual and his or her immediate social
environment.”98 In this way, it shares similarities with symbolic interactionism, and the two
theories are wholly compatible. Agnew stresses that one of the key points differentiating GST
from other criminological theories is that it “focuses explicitly on negative relationships with
others: relationships in which the individual is not treated as he or she wants to be treated.”99
This emphasis on interpersonal dealings is another way in which GST gels with interactionism.
Over the course of his career, Agnew has categorized many types of strain. His strain as the
“disjunction between aspirations and actual achievements”100, “strain as the disjunction between
expectations and actual achievements”101 and “strain as the disjunction between just/fair
outcomes and actual outcomes”102 are all associated with the aforementioned “absence of
positive outcomes”103 in Higgins' self-discrepancy theory.
Compatible with SDT's presence of negative outcomes104, “strain as the presentation of

35
negative stimuli”105, played a surprisingly small role in the lives of most of our 10 offenders,
with the notable exception of bullying.o The hypothesis that negative stimuli provokes
aggression is borne out by data.106 Of the four strategies Agnew lists for avoiding negative
stimuli, the two most relevant to ETV are drug-usep and either (i) exacting revenge on either the
source of the noxiousness or (ii) displacing this aggression onto a related person, group, or
object. Every offender in this sample took the latter approach.
Agnew further identifies three types of strain specifically inflicted (or perceived to be
inflicted) on the person by others: (1) removing or threatening to remove positively valued
stimuli, (2) inflicting or threatening to inflict negatively-valued stimuli, and (3) preventing the
attainment of positively-valued goals.107 This last strain is consistent with the failure of the
actual/own self-concept to match the ideal/own self-guide in self-discrepancy theory—a
phenomenon experienced by all 10 offenders in our sample (see Chapter 3). Intriguingly, Agnew
proposes that “strains increase the likelihood that individuals will experience a range of negative
emotions, including anger, frustration, jealousy, depression, and fear”108 which in turn may lead
to criminal activity. We have already established how actual/own:ideal/own discrepancies result
in depression, dissatisfaction, disappointment, sadness, and frustration.109 When these
discrepancies are associated with strain resulting from a failure to achieve positively-valued
goals, are anger and jealousy added to the psychological stew? Or do anger and aggression arise
from frustration110 as conceptualized by Dollard et al.111 as an unexpected blockage of goal
attainment which occurs externally?112
Agnew's two other strains in which positively valued stimuli is removed (e.g., the death
of David Berkowitz's adopted mother, James Holmes' break-up with his girlfriend), or threatened
to be removed, and negatively-valued stimuli is inflicted or threatened to be inflicted (e.g., the
physical and emotional abuse allegedly inflicted on Danny Rolling and Luka Magnotta), can
obviously take a devastating toll on a person's well-being. Yet, these strains have rarely been
evaluated from the perspective of affecting a person's self-concept, self-guide, or the relationship

o
Eighty percent of the sample—Chapman, Berkowitz, Ireland, Rolling, Magnotta, Arkwright, Rodger, and Cho—
endured verbal and/or physical bullying growing up. Rolling and Magnotta both grew up in abusive households,
though the former's was seemingly far more severe. Rolling was also imprisoned on multiple occasions, including a
long stint in solitary confinement in a cell that was allegedly flooded with raw sewage. Regarding this last point,
Agnew particularly stresses the impact of chronic foul odor, pollution, and restriction of personal space as strain.
p
Mark David Chapman, Danny Rolling, and Daniel Gonzalez all abused drugs and alcohol. There are conflicting
reports about Berkowitz and Magnotta's substance use.

36
between the two. If, for instance, we consider the symbolic interactionists' position that one's self
arises from and is shaped by social interaction113, schoolyard bullying is largely the infliction of
negative stimulus because it results in the victim's self being stigmatized by others.114 Thus, the
failure of the self-concept to match the self-guide can arguably result more from exposure to
noxious social judgments than simply failing to achieve positively-valued goals. In fact, abstract
goals such as self-worth are potentially impeded more by the beliefs of others than one's self.
Symbolic interactionists have addressed this with their concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy.115
Clearly, the same overlap which Agnew discussed earlier also applies here.

Figure 2. Cultural Goals, Strain, and Emotionality

Where strains are often seen as being related to tangible, material concerns (e.g., “I can't keep a
job which means I can't house myself”) they are compounded when interpreted as reflecting
aspects of the self-concept (e.g., “I am the kind of person who can't keep a job, and because I
can't house myself I'm a bum.”) In this example, the physical discomfort of being poor and
homeless is worsened by the person attributing this physically uncomfortable condition to a
failing of their inner self. Beyond transforming one's self-guide to a homicidal self-guide as
outlined in the previous section, Agnew lists a number of ways that crime can result from strain.
One way is the need for corrective action in which “crime may be used to reduce or escape from
strains, obtain revenge, and alleviate negative emotions...”116 Another is that certain strains are
comparatively difficult to manage within the confines of the law. In GST, strains are also

37
increasingly likely to result in crime when the person experiencing them views them as high in
magnitude (à la Self-Discrepancy Theory), has low self-control, and when the character of the
strain incentivizes coping through criminal means.117
Strains which are high in magnitude—“the extent to which [a strain] is disliked and
viewed as having a negative impact on one's life”118—have an increased chance of producing
negative emotions. The magnitude of a strain is calculated by considering its degree (high vs.
low), recency (now vs. then), duration (chronic vs. fleeting), and rate of recurrence (frequent vs.
infrequent).q Strains that are chronic and/or recurring increase the difficulty for an individual to
cope lawfully.119 By remaining in a state of perpetual dejection or agitation, whenever the
individual must contend with a new strain, it is experienced as much more overwhelming than it
is in actuality, provoking an exaggerated emotional response.120 Echoing Self-Discrepancy
Theory, Agnew proposes that the magnitude is further inflated when the strain threatens the
“core goals, needs, values, activities, and/or identities of the individual”121, specifically providing
the example of a person's masculine identityr.
Where low self-control can also result from biological factors such as damage to or
underdevelopment of the frontal lobe, Agnew, the sociologist, emphasizes the social control
theorists' focus on the individual's ties to society. One factor binding people to society is their
emotional connection to specific others: family members, friends, teachers, fellow employees
etc. Another is their feelings toward institutions—family, church, political affiliation, the
economy, school122, and the workplace123—to name but a few. An individual who has weak or
no emotional bonds has less to lose by committing a crime. To paraphrase a serial bank robber
who spent most of his adult life in the Canadian prison system: “[Habitual criminals] don't think
they have a future anyway.”124 Social control theorists refer to this as a 'stake in conformity'125:
the incentive a given person has to play by society's rules. Finally, Agnew notes that if an
individual does not believe it is wrong to commit a crime, he is less morally constrained. In
Chapter 3, such statements are marked with '[mj]' to highlight the ubiquity of moral justifications

q
For example, bullying involving physical violence (high degree) which is ongoing (chronic in duration), and just
occurred (as recently as 'now') is extremely high in magnitude.
r
As we will see, insecurity over one's gender is present, albeit to different degrees, in all 10 offenders in our sample.
s
In his excellent The Seductions of Crime, sociologist Jack Katz points out the moral underpinnings of violence, but
seems to relegate it to reactive homicides. The fact that moral justifications to commit murder were given by all 10
offenders in this sample demonstrates that they also frequently apply to pre-meditated and 'abnormal' acts of
violence as well.

38
in the commission of violence.126 A list of potential strains Agnew specifically mentions
includes:

Parental rejection. Supervision/discipline that is erratic, excessive, and/or harsh. Child

abuse and neglect. Negative secondary school experiences (e.g., low grades, negative
relations with teachers, the experience of school as boring and a waste of time). Abusive
peer relations (e.g., insults, threats, physical assaults). Work in the secondary labor
market (i.e., 'bad jobs' that pay little, have few benefits, little opportunity for
advancement, and unpleasant working conditions). Chronic unemployment. Marital
problems. The failure to achieve selected goals, including thrills/excitement, high levels
of autonomy, masculine status, and the desire for much money in a short period of time.
Criminal victimization. Residence in economically deprived communities. Homelessness.
Discrimination based on characteristics such as race/ethnicity or gender.127

As Chapter 3 will reveal, multiple different strains were found in the 10 offenders comprising
our sample.
In conclusion, General Strain Theory and Self-Discrepancy Theory are not only
complimentary but may actually be different ways of discussing the same phenomenon.

1.5 Face-Work and the Communication Theory of Identity

There are several important aspects of symbolic interaction which SDT does not
incorporate. One indispensable omission is Goffman's (technically 'dramaturgical') observation
that individuals and groups adjust the way they perform their identity in accordance with their
immediate social encounters.128 Goffman refers to this as face-work129 which begins with the
enacting of a line: “... a pattern of verbal and nonverbal acts by which [a person] expresses his
view of the situation and through this his evaluation of the participants, especially himself.”130
Even if a person refuses or neglects to take a line, other participants in the social encounter will
interpret his behaviour as if he had. As such, they will form conclusions about him based upon
their observations. In the social world, a refusal to perform is still a performance of sorts. A
second concept, face, consists of positively valued social attributes connected to a line which
others perceive a person has adopted. As face is defined in terms of positive value, it must be
carefully maintained, lest it be lost. Furthermore, because face is socially beneficial, its owner
becomes emotionally attached to it. When others communicate to an individual that his face has
exceeded his expectations of it, he will have a positive emotional response. If it falls short, the
emotional response will be negative, while feedback which meets his expectations has little

39
emotional impact.
In this way, Goffman's dramaturgical theory is nearly identical to symbolic
interactionism, though it focuses more on individual encounters than their sum total. According
to Goffman, being in face allows a person to feel secure and confident. More importantly, one
has to first be in face in order to maintain it. It is not uncommon for a person to unwittingly find
themselves without a line that meets the expectations of a social situation. Goffman refers to this
as being out of face and proposes that it can result in feeling ashamed for undermining the
collective definition of the situation. Similar emotions arise from being in wrong face which
occurs when newly acquired information casts doubt upon the authenticity of a previously
established face. In both situations, the person's emotional attachment to their face may result in
negative emotionality because their positive self-concept is suddenly under threat. The mental
and emotional discombobulation the person experiences in that moment may cause them to lose
their composure and be shamefaced. Goffman stresses that an integral part of interaction ritual is
“the combined effect of the rule of self-respect and the rule of considerateness”131 which
incentivizes a participant to maintain his own face along with those of others in the encounter.
Though Goffman perceived a connection between emotional responses and face long
before the development of self-discrepancy or general strain theory, attempts to quantitatively
confirm anything resembling interaction ritual fall short of encapsulating its full complexity. The
best effort has come in the form of The Communication Theory of Identity (CTI) which notes:

As early as Goffman's (1959) formative work, researchers have been interested in how
individuals 'perform' their selves. It seems almost obvious to say that one's self-concepts
are engaged when he/she interacts. However, it is less obvious that ascribed identities, the
identities others project on a person... are not only related to a person's self-images but
also to his/her social behavior.132

CTI concerns the relationship between four loci of identity: personal, enacted, relational, and
communal. One's personal identity is essentially his self-concept, while his enacted identity is the
identity he performs in social interactions—his line. Echoing Goffman, Jung & Hecht stress that
simply because enactments express one's identity, it does not mean they are somehow separate
from it.133 For these CTI pioneers, communication and identity are intertwined to the point of
being virtually synonymous. Next is relational identity, which is broken down into four levels,
though only the first is useful for our purposes. Termed ascribed relational identity, it is shaped

40
by one's understanding of how he is perceived by others in his life (comparable to Higgins' other,
but broader in scope).134 Finally, and similarly unrelated to our analysis, is communal identity
which deals with the definition of identity by groups and collectives.135
CTI delineates these four frames for quantitative analysis, but holds that, in practice, they
'interpenetrate', meaning a thorough analysis would involve examining multiple frames
simultaneously. This is because, according to Jung & Hecht, frames “are not really separate from
each other. One's personal identity is infused into one's enacted and relational identities...”136
Fortunately, our main concern is the relationships between personal and enacted identity, and
personal and ascribed relational identity, a topic which Jung & Hecht specifically explored.137
In CTI, negative-emotionality arises from problems related to three 'communication
outcomes': “communication satisfaction”138, “feeling understood”139, and “conversational
appropriateness and effectiveness”140. 'Communication satisfaction' is the missing piece of the
proverbial jigsaw connecting symbolic interactionism to SDT. It is an emotional reaction to
feedback we receive from others regarding our self-concept. Generally, if others reinforce our
own notions of who we are, we feel satisfied, while feedback which contradicts our self-concept
leaves us dissatisfied. Tying this to self-discrepancy theory, feedback disconfirming our self-
concept may cause us to see it as incongruent with our self-guide, resulting in discrepancy and
negative-emotionality. 'Feeling understood'—the idea that we are accurately and effectively
conveying information about ourselves to others—is similarly important because we rely on
appraisals of this information to self-evaluate. Finally, as touched upon in our discussion of
interaction ritual, there are unspoken social expectations tied to every conversation, a
phenomenon referred to in CTI as 'conversational appropriateness and effectiveness'. When
people respond to us in a way that does not confirm our self-concept, we may judge that we are
violating the expected norms of communication. In worst case scenarios, rather than dismissing
one or two incidents as gaffes, we come to see ourselves as somebody who is inherently
incapable of conforming to socially accepted standards of interaction (see the case of James
Holmes in Chapter 3).
Whether related to 'communication satisfaction', 'feeling understood', or 'conversational
appropriateness and effectiveness', negative communication outcomes result from gaps between
two or more frames of identity. As with self-discrepancies, the greater the gap the stronger
negative emotionality experienced. Accordingly, individuals are rationally motivated to reduce

41
or close the gaps altogether. In a study of 135 undergraduate communication students at an
American university, Jung & Hecht found substantial evidence that a personal-enacted identity
gap may lead to undesirable results in all three communication outcomes as well as producing a
personal-ascribed relational identity gap.141 The researchers also found that this personal-
ascribed relational identity gap does not cause any of the communication outcomes. Rather, the
results indicate that both a personal-enacted identity gap and the three communication outcomes
may precede a personal-ascribed relational identity gap. Taking this into consideration, Jung &
Hecht convincingly opine that a personal-ascribed relational identity gap is either directly or
circuitously (via communication outcomes), the result of a personal-enacted identity gap.142
Setting abstract conceptualization aside for a moment, the reasons for this become
obvious. A person who is unable to communicate his true nature (personal-enacted identity gap)
will inevitably be misjudged by others—this underpins communication dissatisfaction,
misunderstanding, and inappropriate/ineffective conversation—resulting in social feedback
which fails to support his self-concept (personal-ascribed relational identity gap). The notion
that a personal-ascribed relational identity gap could precede disconfirming feedback implies a
fundamental misunderstanding of the basic principles of symbolic interactionism. If our self-
concept/personal identity is formulated, maintained, altered, and shattered by how others react to
it—the Me reacting to the specific or generalized other—then the very idea is sequentially
flawed with respect to cause and effect.
There are, of course, other reasons why there may be gaps between somebody's personal
and enacted identities. Jung & Hecht list shyness, impression managementt, intimidation, and
dishonesty.143 Though they briefly acknowledge this last possibility, the authors do not openly
consider the challenges it proposes to their theory.144 In a case of willful deception, for which
their measurements and methods do not adequately account, a gap would arise not from one's
inability to competently enact his personal identity, but (i) from a failure to lie effectively, that
is, to convince others that one's enacted and personal identity are the same when they are not
(e.g., Luka Magnotta)—the equivalent of Goffman's being in wrong face—or (ii) due to
discomfort about having successfully masqueraded as something else (e.g., Mark David
Chapman). Unfortunately, due to the paucity of research on deception in CTI, at this point, these
speculations are supported only by introspection and reasoning.

t
A polite euphemism for a non-egregious deception.

42
 In Chapter 3, we will examine how personal-enacted identity gaps affected the psyches
of Mark David Chapman, Luka Magnotta, and James Holmes. First, given the prevalence of
mental illness among violent offenders, the interplay between psychological afflictions and
communication will now be briefly explored.

1.6 Communication Dysfunction and Mental Illness

As has been firmly established, communication between an offender and his intended
audience will necessarily occur through the use and interpretation of signs: somatic gestures,
facial expressions, verbal utterances, written passages, drawings, or objects which hold shared
cultural meanings. Using the inferior parlance of symbolic interactionism rather than semiotics,
Mead referred to these as significant symbols which an individual presents to others in order to
call out for a socially-held response. For example, when we hold a door open for somebody, we
generally expect this gesture to be verbally acknowledged with a 'thank you.' If the person we
hold the door open for does not acknowledge our kindness, a number of potential interpretations
of this breach of social convention may occur to us:
1. Does this person expect people to open the door for them?
2. Does this person expect people who look like me to open the door for them?
3. Is this person actually grateful, but so shy that they avoid communication with
strangers?
4. Does this person open the doors for other people? If so, do they expect verbal
acknowledgement of the gesture?
5. Is opening the door for people becoming an archaic social convention?
Whether signaling or interpreting, communication using signs is a constant ongoing part
of the social process which leads us to develop impressions of specific people, ourselves, groups,
and society as a whole. To recap, Goffman highlighted the importance of adopting a line which
meets the expectations of a given social encounter in order to avoid being out of face or being in
wrong face.145 However, by definition, somebody suffering from a severe mental illness or
personality disorder will experience chronic difficulties judging what the appropriate line is and
enacting it.
First, consider the potential for misinterpretation inherent in the use of signs, along with
the possibility of unintentional breaches of communication etiquette (Jung & Hecht's

43
'Conversational Appropriateness and Effectiveness') which frequently occur between healthy,
socially-functioning individuals. Then, take into account the serious mental illnesses attributed to
each of these 10 offenders. Mark Chapman was diagnosed as schizophrenic by five separate
psychiatrists and manic-depressive by a sixth.146 This first diagnosis was also given to James
Holmes147, Daniel Gonzalez148, Luka Magnotta149, and David Berkowitz150, while Elliot Rodger
was prescribed Risidone, an anti-psychotic treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.151
Holmes was also diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder152 and schizotypal personality
disorder153—frequently a precursor to psychosis.154 Similarly, Danny Rolling had been
“diagnosed as suffering from atypical psychosis”155
David Berkowitz, Colin Ireland, Danny Rolling, Luka Magnotta, Daniel Gonzalez,
Anthony Arkwright and Elliot Rodger all evidence(d) psychopathic traits, indicated by a score of
20+u on the Psychopathic Checklist Revised.156 Borderline Personality Disorder was diagnosed in
Mark David Chapman157, Danny Rolling158, and Luka Magnotta.159 Chapman and Magnotta were
also deemed to have Narcissistic Personality Disorder at one point160, an affliction which Rolling
also apparently showed symptoms of according to separate psychologists.161 Antisocial
personality disorder has also been attributed to Rolling162 and Magnotta163, though based on the
diagnostic criteria, Berkowitz, Ireland, Gonzalez, and Arkwright should also qualify. Magnotta
was diagnosed with Histrionic Personality Disorder164, while Rolling also displayed histrionic
traits.165 Obsessive compulsive166 and avoidant167 features were also detected in Rolling,
paranoid traits in Berkowitz168, and selective mutism in Seung-Hui Cho.169
By listing the offenders' diagnoses, we do not intend to directly explain their acts of
violence purely in terms of mental illness, although we acknowledge the likelihood of its
contribution to this complex processv. For our purposes, these diagnostic categories in
themselves are meaningless; rather, the associated symptoms that led the offenders to be
diagnosed as such illustrate impairments in their social functioning that, according to

u
Obviously, I was unable to conduct thorough file reviews or face-to-face interviews with any of these offenders.
However, there was more than enough information available on them among my sources to make a reasonable
approximation of whether or not they exceeded a score of 20 on the PCL-R. If this informal manner of distance
diagnosis is completely unacceptable to the reader, I recommend they dismiss my assessment and move on. It has
very little bearing on the rest of the dissertation.
v
A particularly egregious example of this reductionism is Cullen's Columbine, which minimizes the social aspects of
the April 20, 1999 Columbine High School massacre, to the point where they are essentially regarded as non-factors.
Instead, Cullen emphasizes Harris and Klebold's mental disorders. The vast majority of people with psychopathy,
schizophrenia, personality disorders, and manic depression do not commit murder. This is not a frivolous point.
Causation, particularly in social life, should never be reduced to a single variable.

44
expressive/transformative process, could result in a truncated or unstable self. These social
impediments include bizarre beliefs (schizophrenia170, schizoaffective171, and schizotypal
personality disorder172), deviant affect (psychopathy173, schizophrenia174, schizotypal personality
disorder175, schizoaffective disorder176), and empathy deficits (psychopathy177, narcissistic
personality disorder178, antisocial personality disorder179). It is hereby argued that each of these
social impediments will result in communication dysfunctions.
In sociology, 'bizarre beliefs' fall under the category of cognitive deviance—“holding
beliefs which are unconventional and non-normative, which, in some social circles, causes their
believers to be shunned, isolated, marginalized, rendered powerless, criticized, condemned, and
punished”180—and therefore those with 'bizarre beliefs' nearly always fail to meet Jung & Hecht's
'Conversational Appropriateness and Effectiveness.' Consider the pervasive avoidant reaction
most people give when a mentally ill person starts 'talking nonsense' to them on the street. Any
person who is routinely and rudely ignored by those they converse or attempt to converse with
will experience social isolation and other forms of negative feedback which ETV demonstrates
will shake their self-concept, manifesting in negative-emotionality.
'Deviant affect', which refers to either a flat or shallow affect, is essentially the difficulty
or inability to manifest a facial expression which is expected in a given social situation. For
example, Jeffrey Dahmer's flat affect while speaking about cannibalizing a corpse181 during an
NBC interview led many to doubt whether his professed remorse was genuine or not, because the
socially-expected facial expression when discussing something so terrible should reflect
embarrassment and/or shame. One can only wonder how Dahmer's affect influenced his social
development and inclusion before he committed his first murder. Deviant affect elicits negative
results in all three of Jung & Hecht's communication outcomes.
With their 'empathy deficits', psychopaths and individuals with narcissistic or antisocial
personality disorder, may struggle (in different ways and to different extents) to perceive or
meaningfully understand the subjective experiences of others. They will, whether unknowingly
or intentionally, miss important social cues during interactions, and commit faux-pas by speaking
out of turn or excessively. The histrionic's need to always be the centre of attention leaves him
similarly vulnerable to this.182 Discussing interaction ritual, Goffman writes of how participants
frequently allow an individual who has made a gaffe to 'save face', avoiding social confusion by
allowing each participant to temporarily accept each other’s lines. To do otherwise constitutes a

45
gaffe in itself. Fittingly, Goffman's observation that a “person who can witness another's
humiliation and unfeelingly retain a cool countenance himself is said in our society to be
'heartless...”183 reflects the 'empathy deficits' implicit in psychopathy, narcissism, and antisocial
personality disorder.
In summary, owing to the very nature of their symptoms, each of these mental illnesses
and disorders manifest in an impeded ability to take a line which prevents them from being out of
face or being in wrong face.184 Depending on the condition, this may happen sporadically (but
often enough to impact the offender) or in nearly every social encounter. ETV suggests that the
resulting feedback will potentially threaten the person's self-concept, eventually resulting in
negative-emotionality and the abandoning of the self-guide. Again, this is to say nothing of the
numerous non-communication-related effects that mental illnesses and disorders may contribute
to the commission of violence.
By integrating symbolic interactionism, semiotics, Self-Discrepancy Theory, General
Strain Theory, and the Communication Theory of Identity, ETV is the only academic lens
capable of analyzing the unique transformations of self in individual offenders as a
communicative process.

1.7 Conclusion
In this chapter we have elaborated on the fundamental structure and mechanisms of ETV;
their etiological paths through communication; and the role of self-discrepancy, strain, and
identity gaps in conjuring up negative emotionality and destabilizing or truncating the self. This
theoretical framework, incorporating elements of symbolic interactionism, semiotics, SDT, GST,
and CTI, reveals ample motivation for the drastic changes in an offender's identity which Leyton
first discussed in a cursory fashion more than 30 years ago.185 Where Chapter 1 has provided the
shape of ETV, Chapter 2—concentrating exclusively on cultural narratives of identity and the
ever-expanding role the media has in promulgating them—fills in the lines with colour and
detail. The importance of the media in this process was keenly acknowledged by Leyton in the
Eighties, minus the hyperbole and alarmism which commonly undermined such views during
that decade:

[These murderers] are all justifying their behaviour and drawing their ideas from a
dehumanizing mass culture that glorifies and legitimizes violence as an appropriate—

46
 even 'manly'—response to the frustrations and disappointments that are a normal part of
life. In such a cultural milieu, self-control remains untaught, even stigmatized as
submission and cowardice.186

The next chapter will prove Leyton's claim. We must also consider a second:

[B]oth serial and mass murderers are overwhelmed with a profound sense of alienation
and frustration from their feelings that no matter how fierce their ambitions may be... no
matter what they do, they could not achieve the place in society to which they aspired...
they have not, like Durkheim's contented man, accepted their station in life.187

Moving forward, the question of why so many young men living in the relative material
comfort of the first-world are profoundly unhappy and incomplete is addressed in light of the
unprecedented technological advancements, media-bombardment, and alienation of late-
capitalist, Anglophone societies.

Endnotes

1 Douglas & Olshaker, 1995, p. 140.

2 Stubley, n.d.
3 von Beroldingen, 1974, March.
4 Bodner & Prelec, 2002.
5 von Beroldingen, 1974, March.
6 Vronsky, 2004, p. 264.
7 Vronsky, 2004, p. 265.
8 Klaus, 2006, December 6.
9 Keppel & Birnes, 2009.
10 Gouldner, 1971.
11 Jung & Hecht, 2004, p. 270.
12 Danesi, 2014.
13 Blumer, 1969/1998, p. 25.
14 Blumer, 1969/1998, p. 32.
15 Blumer, 1969/1998.
16 Blumer, 1969/1998, p. 40.
17 Blumer, 1969/1998, p. 41.
18 Blumer, 1969/1998, p. 43.
19 Blumer, 1969/1998, pp. 43.
20 Blumer, 1969/1998, pp. 43-44.
21 Blumer, 1969/1988, p. 44.
22 Stryker, 1988.
23 Stryker, 1988, p. 36.
24 Gecas, 1982.
25 Sandstrom, Lively, Martin, & Fine, 2010, p. 131.
26 Goode, 2015.
27 Gecas, 1982.
28 Mead, 1934/1967, p. 135.
29 Blumer, 1969/1998, p. 12.
30 Mead, 1934/1967, p. 174.

47
31 Mead, 1934/1967, p. 175.
32 Mead, 1934/1967, p. 154.
33 Higgins, 1989a.
34 Higgins, 1989a.
35 Higgins, 1989a, p. 411.
36 Higgins, 1989a.
37 Huttenlocher & Higgins, 1978.
38 Higgins, 1989a, p. 412.
39 Higgins, 1989a, p. 413.
40 Higgins, 1989a.
41 Huttenlocher & Higgins, 1978.
42 Higgins, 1989a.
43 Mead, 1934/1967.
44 Mellor, 2016g.
45 Higgins, 1989b, p. 104.
46 Higgins, 1989a, p. 415.
47 Higgins, 1989a, p. 416.
48 Higgins, 1989a, p. 416.
49 Higgins, 1989a.
50 Higgins, 1989a, p. 417.
51 Higgins, 1989a, p. 419.
52 Higgins, 1989a.
53 Higgins, 1989a, pp. 419-420.
54 Jones, 1992, p. 23.
55 Klausner, 1981, pp. 141-142.
56 Rolling & London, 2011, p. 73.
57 Kirby, 1993, 21 December.
58 Brown, 2012, June 5.
59 Stubley, n.d.
60 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
61 Langman, 2014a, p. 4.
62 Higgins, 1987.
63 Higgins 1987, p. 320.
64 Higgins, 1987, p. 320.
65 Higgins, 1987, p. 321.
66 Higgins, 1987, p. 321.
67 Higgins, 1987.
68 Higgins, 1987, p. 320.
69 Higgins, 1987, p. 320.
70 Higgins, 1987, pp. 320-321.
71 Higgins, 1987, p. 321.
72 Higgins, 1987.
73 Higgins, 1987 p. 322.
74 Bandura & Walters, 1963; Erikson, 1950; Freud, 1917/1957, 1923/1961; Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951.
75 Higgins, 1987.
76 Higgins, 1987.
77 Higgins, 1987.
78 Higgins, 1987, p. 323.
79 Higgins, 1987, p. 329.
80 Higgins, 1999, p. 1313.
81 Higgins, 1999.
82 Higgins, 1999.
83 Higgins, 1999, p. 1315.
84 Higgins, 1999.
85 Boldero & Francis, 2000.
86 Higgins, 1999.

48
87 Higgins, 1987, p. 321.
88 Higgins, 1987.
89 Ezekiel, 1995; Langman, 2009.
90 Langman, 2009, p. 28.
91 Leyton, 1985/1995.
92 Higgins, 1987, p. 326.
93 Higgins, 1987.
94 Agnew, 1992, 2006.
95 Merton, 1938.
96 Cohen, 1955.
97 Cloward & Ohlin, 1960.
98 Agnew, 1992, p. 48.
99 Agnew, 1992, p. 48.
100 Agnew, 1992, p. 52.
101 Agnew, 1992, p. 52.
102 Agnew, 1992, p. 53.
103 Higgins, 1987.
104 Higgins, 1987.
105 Agnew, 2006.
106 Agnew, 1992.
107 Agnew, 1992.
108 Agnew, 2006.
109 Higgins, 1987.
110 Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939; Miller, Mowrer, Doob, & Dollard, 1941; Averill, 1982;
Berkowitz, 1969; Berkowitz, 1989; Goodenough, 1931; Worchel, 1974; Thompson & Kolstoe, 1973.
111 Dollard et al., 1939
112 Berkowitz, 1989.
113 Mead, 1934/1967, Blumer 1969/1998.
114 Mead, 1934/1967.
115 Holmes, Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2016.
116 Agnew, 2006, p. 206.
117 Agnew, 2006.
118 Agnew, 2006, p. 205.
119 Agnew, 2006.
120 Agnew, 2006.
121 Agnew, 2006, p. 205.
122 Holmes et al., 2016.
123 Agnew, 2006.
124 Raymond Lawinger, personal communication, late 2016.
125 Toby, 1957.
126 Katz, 1988; Athens, 1997.
127 Agnew, 2006, p. 206.
128 Goffman, 1959, 1963/1986, 1967/1982.
129 Goffman, 1967/1982.
130 Goffman, 1967/1982, p. 5.
131 Goffman, 1967/1982, p. 11.
132 Jung & Hecht, 2004, p. 265.
133 Jung & Hecht, 2004.
134 Jung & Hecth, 2004.
135 Jung & Hecht, 2004.
136 Jung & Hecht, 2004, p. 267.
137 Jung & Hecht, 2004.
138 Jung & Hecht, 2004, p. 270.
139 Jung & Hecht, 2004, p. 270.
140 Jung & Hecht, 2004, p. 271.
141 Jung & Hecht, 2004, p. 276.

49
142 Jung & Hecht, 2004.
143 Jung & Hecht, 2004.
144 Jung & Hecht, 2004.
145 Goffman, 1967/1982.
146 Jones, 1992.
147 Steffen & Ingold, 2016, April 22.
148 Stubley, n.d.
149 Watts, 2014, p. 24.
150 Klausner, 1981, Abrahamsen, 1985.
151 Sherwell, 2014, May 31.
152 Steffen & Ingold, 2016, April 22.
153 Steffen & Ingold, 2016, April 22.
154 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
155 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 384.
156 Hare, 2003.
157 Jones, 1992.
158 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 386, 389.
159 Watts, 2014, p. 39.
160 Jones, 1992; Montgomery, 2014, December 1.
161 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 386, 388.
162 Ryzuk, 1994.
163 Montgomery, 2014, December 1.
164 Montgomery, 2014, December 1.
165 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 386.
166 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 386.
167 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 388.
168 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 136.
169 Liebert & Birnes, 2011.
170 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
171 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
172 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
173 Hare, 2003.
174 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
175 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
176 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
177 Hare, 2003.
178 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
179 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
180 Goode, 2015, p. 228.
181 NBC News & Phillips, 1994.
182 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
183 Goffman, 1967/1982, p. 11.
184 Goffman, 1967/1982.
185 Leyton, 1985/1995.
186 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 291.
187 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 35.

50
 2. Media, Masculinity, Cultural Goals, and Talismans

“In the new-mediated ‘reality’ thoroughly awash in art-as-advertising and advertising-as-art,

acts of violence like those of Chapman... need to be studied as media-simulations, as
quintessentially mimetic arts.” - Joel Black, The Aesthetics of Murder

“From rock and rap music and videos, Hollywood action films, professional and college sports,
the culture produces a stream of images of violent, abusive men and promotes characteristics
such as dominance, power, and control as means of establishing or maintaining manhood.” -
Jackson Katz & Sut Jhally, The Boston Globe

“Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!” - Billy, Scream

2.0 Introduction
Having established a basic theoretical foundation for ETV in Chapter 1, we will now
enter the world of signs where the drama of murder is conceived, born, and broadcast. Following
a brief summary and contextualization of the history of mass media (2.1: The USA, UK, and
Canada in the Information Age), a theoretical and evidential corpus is presented to demonstrate
that we live in some approximation of Baudrillard's hyperreality (2.2: Hyperreality). This
accounts for the mimetic/anti-mimetic semiotic dialogue (intermimesis) from which our 10
offenders drew identity and meaning. The concept of hyporeality, the fictional world of myth and
religion preceding the Information Age, is then introduced (2.3: Is Religion Hyperreal?) in order
to explain contemporary religion's presence in both hypo and hyperreality. To varying extents,
religion facilitated or coloured the crimes of 50% of the offenders in our sample. Next, evidence
is presented showing that rather than taking the perspective of Mead's generalized other, certain
offenders turn to the purported value systems of supernatural entities—the hyporeal other (e.g.,
Jehovah, Allah)—or media-borne fictional characters (e.g., Holden Caulfield, Freddy Krueger),
the hyperreal other. These concepts are described in detail in 2.4: The Hyporeal and Hyperreal
Other, substantiated through case studies, and integrated into the expressive/transformative
framework.
Having established the inextricable connection between the hyperreal and Realityw, it is
argued that traditional notions of masculinity have been absorbed intermimetically into media

w
When capitalized, the term “Reality” refers to the physical and social world which would exist in the absence of
media.

51
discourse where they mutated into what is termed hyperreal masculinity (2.5: Hyperreal
Masculinity). Hyperreal masculinity has become an ideal gender associated with sub-hegemonic
masculinity to which many of the offenders in this sample aspire, both in their pre-homicidal and
homicidal selves. As hyperreal masculinity is conveyed through media, chiefly film and
television, and is often portrayed by male celebrities or pseudo-celebrities, it should come as no
surprise that expressive/transformative killers strive to appear in the media spotlight themselves.
They do so either by using murder as a mechanism to obtain cultural relevance (Mark David
Chapman, David Berkowitz, Colin Ireland, Danny Rolling, Daniel Gonzalez, Anthony
Arkwright) and/or by creating and disseminating media in which they are the 'star', either before,
during, or after the commission of a homicide (Luka Magnotta, James Holmes, Elliot Rodger,
Seung-Hui Cho). In 2.6: Fame, Fortune, and Epistemosis, it is argued that beyond the
interconnectedness of hyperreal masculinity and the media which propagates it, celebrity has
become a dominant cultural goal, on par with attaining wealth and upward class mobility. The
section concludes with a brief discussion of epistemosis—a psychosocial state ushered in by
hypo- and hyperreality—which leaves vast swaths of the public unable or unwilling to discern
what is true or Real.
Finally, we will examine the concept of narrative prototypes or talismans (2.7 Talismans
and Avatars), hyporeal or hyperreal memes1 and memeplexes2 which ETV offenders draw upon
to form their ideal/own selves. These include specific texts or corpusesx such as The Catcher in
the Rye, Holy Bible, and Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, while offender-influencing
characters in these texts—Holden Caulfield, Jesus Christ, Freddy Krueger—are called avatars.y
Like the literary genie in the lamp, avatars reside within talismans. Another less specific and
more generalized form of narrative prototype is the archetype: “the original pattern or model of
which all things of the same type are representations or copies.”3 All avatars are derived from
archetypes, though archetypes, being original cultural models, may exist independently of
specific characters. For instance, beyond being an avatar to ice-pick murderer Luka Magnotta,
Catherine Tramell, the fictional antagonist of Paul Verhoeven's 1992 film Basic Instinct, was

x
My use of the term texts and corpuses (collections of texts) also extends to films, television programs, video games
etc.
y
In the classic Hindu use of the term avatar refers to a metaphysical entity which manifests in a bodily form. Here it
means a media-borne entity which manifests in Reality when an offender uses it to construct a (typically homicidal)
self.

52
also an archetypal 'femme-fatale.'
In conclusion, this chapter establishes the origins and nature of hypo and hyperreality,
and demonstrates that the 10 ETV offenders in our sample drew upon hyperreal concepts of
masculinity in order to develop ideal/own self-guides, particularly in their homicidal
incarnations. For the purposes of this study, hypo and hyperreality should be understood as
semiotic structures absorbed intermimetically into the identities of expressive/transformative
offenders, and spit out in the form of posed bodies, letters and phone calls to police and media,
costumes, and numerous other identity signatures. These signatures are then subject to ETV
interpretative analysis. Though this semiotic phenomenon was observed by a post-structuralist,
Jean Baudrillard, it is fully compatible with symbolic interactionism. Any further associations
with post-structuralism end there.

2.1 The USA, UK, and Canada in the Information Age

An initial review of our 10 ETV case studies uncovered the pervading influence of media
on both (i) the technologies of communication utilized in the expression and (ii) the semiotic
components of self negotiated in these crimes. In the 21st century, we are increasingly socialized
through our near constant interaction with media. According to a study by Internet analyst Mary
Meeker, in 2014 Americans spent an average of 7.4 hours a day staring at screens: approximately
two and a half hours devoted to Smartphones, the same amount of time in front of a television,
an hour and 43 minutes on the computer, and 43 minutes of tablet-use.4 Any theory
encompassing symbolic interactionism which does not account for this social phenomenon is
incomplete.
Let us then situate these semiotic murders within the unprecedented historical and social
context of the Information Age. The past 600 years of human history have seen an exponential
increase in the abundance, prevalence, and use of media. It has been over 575 years since the
invention of the printing press5, films have been screened in public since 18956, there has been
roughly one hundred years of radio broadcasting7, television stations since 19288, and
approximately 15 years of Internet use by the majorityz of the British, American, and Canadian
population.9 Sixty-four per cent of American adults10, 72% of Brits between the ages of 16-6411,
and 67%12 of Canadians own Smartphones. The first murder to air on television was the 1963

z
In 2002, 61.59% of the population of Canada, 58.79% of the USA, and 56.48% of the UK were using the Internet.

53
assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. Eleven years later, newscaster Christine Chubbuck
proclaimed, “in keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in 'blood and guts',
and in living color, you are going to see another first—attempted suicide”13 before fatally
shooting herself through the head during a broadcast: another hallmark.
From a different perspective, today's elderly were never without radio and cinema. Most
baby boomers have always had television. Generation X and Y have overwhelmingly grown up
with computers and video games, watching these mediums transform immensely over short
periods. The last decade of the 20th century saw the presence of mass media in our lives become
interactive in the form of the World Wide Web. In the 21st century, the Internet's presence and
influence are now a constant, embodied on our person in the form of Smartphones. Perhaps most
jarring is the realization that late-Millennials and iGens have never not had Smartphones:
portable digital devices which enable their owners to summon all preceding types of media
whenever they wish and with minimal effort. This ubiquity, particularly when combined with
social networking sites, is increasingly fusing mankind and media into the same entity.
Referencing the French post-structuralist sociologist, semiotician, and philosopher, Jean
Baudrillard, Joel Black proposed “This is no longer simply a case of life imitating art but... of
life being indistinguishable from, or unimaginable without, art… in the far broader sense of
advertising and the commercial arts.”14 This bombardment of signs and narratives results in a
moral, existential, and epistemological anomieaa called hyperreality. In its original conception by
the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, anomie is a state of normlessness resulting from rapid
social change which may result in criminal or non-criminal deviance.15

2.2 Hyporeality and Hyperreality

Baudrillard's notion of hyperreality was first articulated in his highly influential
Simulacra and Simulation, published in French in 1981. In this treatise, Baudrillard sought to
map the intersection of media and Reality using semiotics—the study of communication by
interpreting signs—an approach which fortuitously accords with the symbolic interactionist

aa
As a post-structuralist, Baudrillard would likely reject my use of the structural-functionalist concept of anomie to
describe the malaise brought on by hyperreality. Nevertheless, anomie is (1) the result of rapid change, (2) causing
people to be alienated and morally confused (hyperreality adds a psychotic element—a confusion of what is real—to
the problem) , and (3) sometimes results in deviance. Once we have swept theoretical dogma aside, their
interconnection becomes obvious. They are linked through a semiotic order, even if their roots are in opposing
theoretical soil.

54
underpinnings of ETV.bb A key focus of Simulacra and Simulation and a hallmark of
hyperrealism are simulacra: signs that (1) either never had or (2) no longer have an original
prototype in Reality.16 An example of the first are fictional characters or places—in his Travels
in Hyperreality, the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco provides the classic examples of Mickey
Mouse and Disneyland.17 The second refers more to depictions of people who are now deceased
or places that have been destroyed. For example, at the 2012 Coachella music festival a
hologram of murdered rapper Tupac Shakur was projected to make it appear as if he were
performing alongside former collaborators Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.18 Baudrillard argues that
since the rise of the mass media, the social world has become a simulation comprised of
simulacracc: “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.”19
Emotionally unstable, solipsistic, and tenuous in his identity, the isolated individual's social
world is largely relegated to the media. Compelled to turn to simulation for semiotic structure
and narrative cohesion, his murders leave a hyperreal fingerprint.
The most overt manifestation of this in ETV is the hockey mask worn by spree killer
Daniel Gonzalez depicting the slasher-movie villain, Jason Voorhees. Jason is a third-order
simulacrum, a fictional character who never existed in Reality—that is, independent of the
media—and the rendering of his trademark hockey maskdd into physical form is anti-mimetic: a
case of life imitating art.20 Yet, Jason was little more than a copyee of Michael Myers, the
antagonist of John Carpenter's Halloween. And, as specifically stated in the film, Myers is a
variation of the bogeymanff archetype: the final simulacrum in this causal chain.
Though the debate as to whether the world is mimetic or anti-mimetic has raged for over a
millennium, this is obviously a bi-directional process; that is to say, the nature of the
contemporary human experience is intermimetic. We interact with hyperreality through

bb
Both semiotics and symbolic interactionism share a common ancestor in the writings of the 19 th century American
philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce.
cc
Simulacra are contrasted with representations which, either through similarity or convention, refer to Real objects:
a portrait of an extant Douglas fir tree, for example, whether painted in the realist or impressionist style.
dd
The hockey mask that personifies Jason was first worn by the character in Friday the Thirteenth Part III, meaning
that the most recognizable and iconic depiction of the character is itself a departure from the original character.
ee
Filmmakers John Carpenter and Victor Miller, who conceptualized Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees
respectively, both named their antagonists after people they knew. So, while these simulacra did not have an exact
existing prototype, it would be inaccurate to say that no mimesis—art imitating life—was involved in their creation.
ff
Both Myers and Voorhees act out the conventions of the bogeyman, murdering teenagers who engage in sexual
activity and substance use. They are literally 'getting' children who behave badly. In Killing For Slenderman, Mellor,
Venkatesh, Wallin, and Thomas look at the bogeyman as an archetype with a 'don't function.'

55
intermimesis, sending and receiving signs, crafting and negotiating our selves, society, views,
values, and media products through this same process. For Baudrillard, however, the line
between media depiction and Reality has become so indistinguishably blurred that the question
of mimesis vs. anti-mimesis is altogether meaningless. Joel Black proposes “it is no accident that
the decade of the presidency of a former movie actor and television host Ronald Reagangg
coincided with a hyperreal phase of mass culture when the media (literature, film, TV, and all the
other arts) came to mediate as never before the general public's sense of ‘reality.'”21
Actually, there is some indication that Baudrillard did not believe in Reality at all, only a
series of converging and conflicting interpretations.22 Our position is more moderate, rooted in
the Realist notion that “even if there were no human thought, even if there were no human
beings, whatever there is other than human thought (and what depends on that, causally or
logically) would still be just what it actually is.”23 Hyperreality, then, is a sort of delusion-
inducing mass social condition resulting from near constant, often subconscious, rapid
intermimesis, and manifesting socially (“You're like Kramer from Seinfeld”) and even physically
in landscapes such as the Las Vegas strip and Hollywood.24 There is still a Reality—Eugene
Thacker's the world-in-itself25— but it is increasingly difficult to discern. The recent
phenomenon of 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' under the Trump presidency, in which Media
Outlet A denounces Media Outlet B for reporting gross inaccuracies, while B accuses A of the
same thing, is a testament as to how dizzying the process of ascertaining any aspect of Reality
we have not experienced first-hand has become.26 .

Baudrillard presciently embodied this phenomenon at the beginning of the first chapter of
Simulacra and Simulation by offering a quote purporting to be from Ecclesiastes reading “The
simulacrum is never what hides the truth—it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The
simulacrum is true.”27 The passage is a fabrication, albeit a didactic one, cleverly echoing the
spirit of Nietzschean prose. For the matter of the passage's veracity is secondary; what is of
primary social importance is that readers who assume it to be true, act upon it as if it is true. By
attributing the quote to a Biblical text, Baudrillard cheekily frames religion within the same
question his Ecclesiastes deception has called forth. What prototype of God has ever existed in
Reality? Is God hyperreal?

And now the reality television star president, Donald Trump, ushered in by social media, with over 26 million
gg

Twitter followers at the time of this writing.

56
2.3 Is Religion Hyperreal?
Responding to Adam Possamai's designation of Jediism as one of many so-called
hyperreal religions,28 Markus Davidsen argues that all religions are hyperreal.29 He sees this as
strongly implied by Baudrillard's decision to use the Christian God to demonstrate the procession
of simulacra. In the western world, the truth of God's existence, as interpreted and relayed by the
Catholic church, was taken for granted by nearly the entire population from approximately 325
C.E. to 1517 C.E.hh Icons depicting God, Jesus, and other religious characters were considered to
be accurate earthly representations of these metaphysical figures which were central to the
worshipper's ritual enactment of faith. However, as Baudrillard notes, with the coming of the
Protestant reformationii, iconoclasts began destroying these graven images because, in
Baudrillard's semiotic interpretation, icons expunge divinity from man's conscience by situating
and defining divinity in the material world. Secretly, and perhaps subconsciously, fearing that
“God never existed, that only the simulacrum existed, even that God was never anything but his
own simulacrum”30 the iconoclastic Protestants sought to purge religious icons in order to
conceal that, rather than being profound representations, they were empty simulacra comprising
a self-referential, self-perpetuating metaphysical simulation.31
While Baudrillard restricted his analysis to the Christian Godjj, Davidsen correctly notes
that “all other religious notions referring to supernatural agents, worlds or processes are also
simulacra and all religions are per definition systems of simulacra.”32 In a sense, Davidsen is
right: ultimately religions, deities, and supernatural beings are simulacra, and this would seem to
constitute hyperreality. But, crucially, Baudrillard writes of hyperreality emerging with the
Information Age, and the spirit of his concept is of a ubiquitous and relentless barrage of
simulacra disseminated through media devices leading to simulation and what we will term
'disorientation-by-semiotic-deluge.' Outside of the news media, today's simulacra are usually
openly fictional, rarely purporting to embody any objective truth claims.kk Religion, on the other

hh
I acknowledge the intellectual and existential heroism of the Lollards in 14 th century England and Hussites in 15th
century Bohemia, but the challenge to Catholicism did not have any significant popular impact until the
transgressions of Martin Luther in the early-mid 1500s.
ii
The Reformation itself coincided with the invention of the printing press, a device which not only proliferated
dissident ideas, but is thought by many to have ushered in the mass media: see McLuhan (1962), Ahonen (2008).
jj
The promotion of atheism or agnosticism was never the purpose of Simulacra and Simulation, therefore
Baudrillard restricted his example to a single paranormal entity.
kk
One interesting exception is the so-called 'found footage' genre of film, including The Blair Witch Project and the
Paranormal Activity series. These fictional movies are intentionally shot in a crude manner to resemble 'home
movies', and presented as non-fiction video excerpts edited together to tell the (often supernatural) tale of the camera

57
hand, emerged millenniums earlier in the Stone Age, and was embodied in far fewer simulacra
(graven images, shrines, temples and churches, chapels in homes, pilgrimage sites, graveyards,
religious symbols): all of which supported a master truth claim. Though there was a relatively
paucity of simulacra, these simulacra evoked a greater verisimilitude, which could be called
'disorientation-by-semiotic-awe.' If contemporary simulacra result in an excess of 'reality'
(hyper), the simulacra of the pre-industrial period furnished a 'reality' that was 'less than' (hypo).
In their original incarnations, the various pagan religions, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam were all hyporeal because they preceded the empiricism of the Enlightenment. That said,
any attempt to determine the exact historical point where the hyporeal pre-mass media world
ended and the hyperreal began is futile. Certainly, hyporeality governed Durkheim's socio-
historical period of mechanical solidarity, in which collective beliefs and values were highly
homogenous.33 While the machine-replicated dissemination of fiction and news began with
Gutenburg's printing press in the 16th century, much of the hyporeal still endures to this day in
hyperreality, albeit more-often-than-not in an altered form. The Real, objective world-in-itself34
has always existed, but has only been perceived through the correct application of scientific
inquiry, arguably, if at all.
With the rise of the Information Age, religion in the western world has transformed from
hyporeal to hyperreal, particularly in the United States.ll As early as 1925, less than a decade
after the beginning of popular radio broadcasts35, American audiences from Staten Island to Los
Angeles were bemoaning the oversaturation of religious sermons and content on local radio.36 At
this point, the number of religious radio stations in America was at an all-time high of 71.37 By
the 1950s, religion had moved onto the small screen in the form of televangelism. According to
Gibney & Courtright38, the National Religious Broadcasters reported that there were 414
religious television stations in 1987, with Dan Nicholas estimating a monthly growth of two new
outlets in the United States. The same article cites estimates of more than $2.5 billion in annual
income from televangelism, with the more prominent ministries grossing between $100-200

operators and their companions. The genre simulates the haphazard and disorienting camera work of amateur video
for enhanced verisimilitude and to obfuscate the origins and nature of the horror. In the words of Dan O'Bannon,
screenwriter of the space horror Alien: “the unknown is the most frightening thing... make the audience squint, stare
and try to catch glimpses of the thing in the shadows.” This same principle may explain the collective fascination
and dread of killers on the loose.
ll
Our discussion of the history of hyperreal religion will be confined to the United States, partially for the sake of
brevity, but also because the four offenders in the sample who incorporated religion into their selves (in any
meaningful way) were all American.

58
million.39 Ostling approximated a regular religious television viewing audience of 13.3 million
during this same period.40
Nor has hyperreal Christianity stopped at radio and television: it has bled out into
geography. Where Walt Disney has Disneyland and Madame Tussaud has her eponymous wax
museum, fundamentalist Christian Ken Ham has created a 510 foot replica of Noah's Ark in
Kentucky41, and is similarly working on erecting a Tower of Babel in the bluegrass state.42 Ham
also owns the Creation Museum where guests proceed into the Time Tunnel to “be transported
back 6,000 years to the dawn of time as you begin your walk through biblical history.”43 Along
the way, the guest will “encounter a realistic Garden of Eden, animatronic Noah, Flood
dioramas, and... a fascinating insectarium, sculpted dinosaurs of all kinds in the Dino Den, a full-
size Allosaurus skeleton, and much more.”44 At Orlando's Holyland Experience, one can stroll
through a simulation of ancient Jerusalem, watch re-enactments of Christ's crucifixion, check out
a live Televangelical Studio, and eat a 'Goliath Burger'.45 Decades before, with the popularity of
rock music emerging among youth, Christian institutions were quick to co-opt the medium
(electric guitars, bass, and drums etc.), replacing the message with a religious one. Speaking on
his church ceremonies, the now-disgraced Pastor Ted Haggard once stated “lots of Americans
think of it as a rock concert.”46 Similarly, following their social failures within the counter-
culture, wannabe pop stars Mark David Chapman and Danny Rolling sought to perform their
music and establish new selves in religious communities.47
At this point, the reader may have noticed an ostensible theoretical contradiction: if the
hyporeal is comprised of unsubstantiated truth claims, while the hyperreal, with the exception of
the news media, is not, then how can religion transition into the hyperreal while still purporting
to explain Reality? Interestingly, like the iconoclasts of the 16th century, Gibney & Courtright48,
Postman49, and Fore50 all argued vociferously against religious television and radio on the basis
that it would depreciate the word of God. Their protestations are startlingly similar to their
Reformation predecessors. In his classic media study Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
demarcates between what we term hyporeal religion which supplies believers with 'truths' they
need, and the trend in hyperreal religion to give its couch potato congregation the 'truths' they
want:

Though it may be un-American to say it, not everything is televisible. Or to put it more
precisely, what is televised is transformed from what it was to something else, which may

59
 or may not preserve its former essence [emphasis added]. For the most part, television
preachers have not seriously addressed this matter. They have assumed that what had
formerly been done in a church or a tent, and face-to-face, can be done on television
without loss of meaning, without changing the quality of the religious experience.
Perhaps their failure to address the translation issue has its origin in the hubris
engendered by the dazzling number of people to whom television gives them access...
[Historically] there is no great religious leader—from the Buddha to Moses to Jesus to
Mohammed to Luther—who offered people what they want. Only what they need. But
television is not well suited to offering people what they need. It is 'user friendly.' It is too
easy to turn off. It is at its most alluring when it speaks the language of dynamic visual
imagery. It does not accommodate complex language or stringent demands. As a
consequence, what is preached on television is not anything like the Sermon on the Mount
[emphasis added]. Religious programs are filled with good cheer. They celebrate
affluence. Their featured players become celebrities. Though their messages are trivial,
the shows have high ratings, or rather, because their messages are trivial, the shows have
high ratings.51

Ironically, in a Darwinistic bid for survival, the doctrinal truth claims of the hyporeal have
mutated to fit the hyperreal environment. In Chapter 3, when we explore the concept of meta-
delusions, we will see how Mark David Chapman, David Berkowitz, and Danny Rolling all used
religion in a 'user friendly' fashion to furnish what they wanted—justification to murder—rather
than what they needed: divinely sanctioned restraint.

2.4 The Hyporeal and Hyperreal Other

Recent research in symbolic interactionism has revealed that the individual's Me does not
always take the perspective of society-at-large (i.e. the generalized other) when making
decisions.52 More often, it refers to specific sections of society which are useful in resolving a
particular problem. For instance, Athens found that when a criminal considers perpetrating a
violent act they refer to their phantom community—a conglomerate of “interlocutors from our
past whom we cognitively replicate and whose perspectives we carry with us mentally”53—rather
than the generalized other. Thus, norms regarding the acceptable level and application of
violence in the individual's phantom community depend on whether it is unmitigated, mitigated,
or nonviolent54, and provide him with a socially sanctioned response. In his examination of
crimes perpetrated by gangsta rappers, Mellor discussed how the conventions of violence
embedded in the genre lead these artists to consider whether they will lose face55 in front of their
audience (the fandom community) by not reacting with threats or violence to perceived slights.56

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Higgins similarly does not factor the generalized other into SDT, only 'significant others'.57
But what of people who are so invested in simulacra that they prioritize the imagined
perspectives of fictional charactersmm over 'significant others', the generalized other, phantom
community, or fandom community? The individual who turns to God, the Devil, Jesus, Kali,
angels, or demons in order to ascertain his course of action is considered to be taking the
perspective of the hyporeal other, while he who does the same with fictional media characters is
calling out to the hyperreal other. Though SDT only considers the opinions of 'significant others'
(e.g., close friends and family), there is an abundance of evidence showing that, among the
religious population, the imagined judgment of gods and demons may wield a much stronger
influence.
Certainly, there have been a multitude of historical figures who have made important
decisions based upon the perceived will of hyporeal characters. They are simply taking the
perspective of the hyporeal other; after all, 'God' is always watching, society is not. Facing the
real possibility of his own execution at the Diet of Worms in 1521, Martin Luther refused to
recant his 'heretical' views, famously stating “unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy
Scriptures or by evident reason... I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture,
which is my basis; my conscience is captive to the Word of God [emphasis added].”58 In their
Killing For Slender Man, Mellor, Venkatesh, Wallin, & Thomas provide examples of more
contemporary figures who committed acts of murder after appealing to the hyporeal other. These
include Yigal Amir who assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin “on orders from
God”59, abortionist murderer Reverend Paul Hill whose manifesto claimed that the “Moral
Law”60 of the Old and New Testament requires “the means necessary for defending the innocent
[unborn]”61 and that “this duty comes directly from God, and cannot be removed by any human
government”62, and Osama Bin Laden who announced he was “fighting so I can die a martyr and
go to heaven to meet God.”63 Later, Mellor & Venkatesh added India's Thuggee sect64—serial
murderers offering sacrifices to the Hindu goddess Kali—and African witchdoctors practicing
Muti magic65 to the ranks of homicidal hyporeality.66 This is to say nothing of the millions of

mm
An embarrassing admission: As a child I would routinely look to Strider in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the
Rings—a fictional character who captured my admiration—in order to determine what the appropriate action would
be in relevant situations. Upon discovering more extreme examples in Jay Martin's Who Am I This Time?:
Uncovering the Fictive Personality, I realized that, far from being anomalous, my experience was likely more
common than I anticipated. Hence, our exploration of this strange tendency here.

61
non-violent worshippers who have experienced guilt, anxiety, and shame resulting from their
perceived failure to match a self-guide supposedly outlined in religious texts by a higher power.
Psychoanalyst Jay Martin's Who Am I This Time?: Uncovering the Fictive Personality, on
the other hand, provides rarer case studies of individuals who have taken the position of the
hyperreal other. An airplane pilot modelled his self after The Lone Ranger, Captain Marvel, and
Superman; while one New York university graduate saw himself as comprised of Heathcliff,
Josef K, Huckleberry Finn, Jay Gatsby, and others67. Martin compares such individuals to Don
Quixotenn, the wannabe knight in Cervantes' eponymous novel.68 One can speculate that as far
back as the 17th century when Cervantes was writing, he observed people emulating fictional
characters or archetypes, and that these inspired the creation of the author's beloved 'man of La
Mancha.' Thus, the earliest threads of hyperreality may date to the mid-15th century, and the
dissemination of fictional stories via Gutenburg's printing press.
Joel Black demonstrated how hyperreality is seemingly colouring the personalities and
motives of modern killers in The Aesthetics of Murder. Travis Bickle, a fictional New York
cabbie who resolves his masculine alienation through vigilante violence in Martin Scorsese’s
Taxi Driver brought cohesion of identity to John Hinckley Jr.69 On March 30, 1981, Hinckley
was arrested for shooting President Ronald Reagan in a demonstration of love for actress Jodie
Foster, who portrayed Bickle's Lolita-in-distress in the film.70 The number of killer couples who
have acted out variations of the Natural Born Killers narrative is now nearing double digits71,
and there are numerous examples of murderers wearing Ghostfaceoo masks from the film
Scream.72 In this age of the hyperreal, t-shirts asking “What Would Walter White Do?” or “What
Would Tyrion Do?”pp parodying “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelets are arguably missing the
ironic quality that should make them humorous. Hyperreality has rendered them equally valid
questions. This symbolic interactionist building of the self through fiction or news entertainment
will inform the rest of this work, manifesting to different degrees in every case in the study. qq

nn
Here, Martin's comparison of his patients to a simulacrum—a fictional character—provides an excellent example
of how hyperreality has pervaded the life of even the author himself!
oo
The antagonist of the movie Scream and its sequels, who wears a cloak and mask vaguely resembling Edvard
Munch's painting of the same name.
pp
Walter White is the protagonist of the AMC television series Breaking Bad, while Tyrion Lannister is one of the
more popular male characters in HBO’s Game of Thrones.
qq
Consider the references to art, celebrity, and media (underlined) in the following murders:
Inspired by The Catcher in the Rye, Mark David Chapman gunned down John Lennon: international celebrity and

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2.5 Hyperreal Masculinity
By far the most influential media propagated images are near-unattainable depictions of
masculinity and femininity.73 As the offenders in this sample are male, our focus here will be on
the former, though the latter will be of some importance in Chapter 3 when we analyze certain
offenders' victims. In their 'Media and the make-believe worlds of children', Götz et al. found
traces of media influence in the daydreams of 74% of their sample of boys between eight and
ten-years-old in Germany, Israel, South Korea, and the United States.74 As television programing
targeting male children is dominated by violence, conflict, and competition, unsurprisingly boys'
fantasies are often associated with action settings, with their agency expressed through physical
combat.75
A wealth of quantitative research confirms the link between masculine gender role
discrepancy stress and the likelihood of severe violence in men.76 For instance, in a recent study
of 600 American males ranging in age from 18-50, Reidy et al. found that while men who
reported being 'high-conforming' in their gender role thereby experiencing 'low stress' were at the
highest risk for perpetrating violence, 'low-conforming/high stress' individuals were still 348%

leader of the pop rock sweethearts The Beatles.

Self-made serialkillers! David Berkowitz and Colin Ireland contacted the media through telephone calls
and letters in the midst of their killing spree. Ireland complained about the lack of attention his crimes were
receiving, while Berkowitz commented that he felt the extensive media coverage of his murders meant that the
public wanted him to kill.
Danny Rolling saw himself as a stereotypical American outlaw—“The Mystery Rider”—even recording a
country song by the same name. Once captured, he claimed to have committed his murders because he was
possessed by a demon called Gemini: the name of the supernatural serialkiller! in the film Exorcist III, which
Rolling had seen before his Gainesville killing spree. While incarcerated, Rolling penned and published an
autobiography to support this claim.
Obsessed with the Sharon Stone movie Basic Instinct, Luka Magnotta filmed himself stabbing his victim's
body with an icepick. After editing the footage to the beat of New Order’s “True Faith” from the American Psycho
soundtrack, he uploaded the video onto BestGore.com, titling his pseudo-snuff movie 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick.
Donning a hockey mask to resemble slasher film killer Jason Voorhees, Daniel Gonzalez went on a murder spree to
see what it would be like to be Freddy Krueger and a serialkiller! for a day. Interviewed later, he expressed his
excitement that his story would make the newspapers all over Britain. In a slight mutation of serialkiller!, Anthony
Arkwright wanted to be famous like Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper, two of the most notorious murderers
in the U.K.
Sporting bright red hair, black contract lenses, and body armour, James Holmes took several photographs
of himself brandishing weapons which he mailed to the New York Times. Shortly after, he stormed into the premier
of Batman film The Dark Knight Rises at the Century movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado and set off smoke pellets
before opening fire on the audience with an assault rifle and shotguns.
Elliot Rodger and Seung-Hui Cho recorded videos in which they vented their frustrations and reasons for
killing, then embarked on college shooting sprees. Like the copycat killer, Arkwright, Cho referenced Columbine
High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold—whose massacre of 13 people in 1999 was covered
relentlessly by the media for years—as martyrs for the same “cause”. Rodger parroted pseudo-Darwinian tropes
from the websites PUAhate.com and love-shy.com.

63
more likely to act violently than 'low-conforming' men who felt 'low stress' regarding their
gender role discrepancy.77 Furthermore, gender role discrepancy stress has been found to
correlate with negative emotionality in men.78 When discussing the expressive/transformative
murderers in the subsequent chapter, strain resulting from 'low-conforming/high stress' gender
role discrepancy will emerge as a common factor across the sample. Summarizing Reidy et al.'s
research for an online article, journalist Tom Jacobs equated the concept of high and low
conforming masculine gender roles with “two stereotypical images of masculinity: The hyper-
masculine alpha male, and the borderline effeminate guy who lives in fear that others view him
as unmanly”79 which “American pop culture has often contrasted”80 as “caricatured figures.”81
The existence and influence of these male caricatures in popular media—a trope which is not
necessarily relegated solely to the United States, but also exists in Britain, Canada, and Australia
(to name but a few)—lends further credence to the ubiquity of hyperreal intermimesis.
R.W. Connell was the first to meaningfully address this phenomenon with the concept of
hegemonic masculinity,82 in which sherr proposed that through “social forces”83 such as “mass
media content”84 certain males are represented as hegemonic: socially ascendant in the
hierarchical organization of life and culture.85 According to Connell, hegemonic masculinity is
“always constructed in relation to various subordinated masculinities as well as in relation to
women. The interplay between the different forms of masculinity is an important part of how a
patriarchalss social order works.”86 A subordinated masculinity is a stigmatized gender identity
which reduces the standing of men in the social order who are homosexual, suspected
homosexuals, or who do not otherwise meet the socially endorsed criteria for hegemonic
masculinity.87 These include so-called 'nerds'88, 'geeks', 'metrosexuals', and 'stoners', among
others. Connell noted that although the vast majority of men are not hegemonic in their
masculinity, they nevertheless enthusiastically endorse the concept.tt Hegemonic masculinity is

rr
I use the pronoun “she” as R.W. Connell sexually transitioned to a trans-woman, Raewyn Connell, in the first
decade of the 21st century. Though the research cited was before the author started identifying as 'Raewyn
Connell'—typically using the pen name 'R.W. Connell' and less frequently 'Bob' or 'Robert Connell' —having
explored Connell's personal webpage, I noted that she lists all of her previous publications under the name of
'Raewyn'.
ss
I wish to refrain from commenting on the issue of gender-based power relations at an institutional level, as I have
not read widely enough on the topic, and do not wish to make assumptions. Rather, as with Baudrillard, I restrict my
use of Connell's concepts to a semiotic and cultural level where their veracity is readily observable in both the media
and social life. These are the areas relevant to my analysis.
tt
A woefully under-researched topic is the role women play in supporting this construct. One example is the practice,
during the First World War, of British women giving white feathers to men who were not in military uniform. The

64
therefore not normal but normative—an elusive construct to which every male should aspire.
Connell emphasizes that hegemony is not established solely through violence or threat of
violence (ascendancy through force), however, it is certainly compatible. Gay-bashing and
specific instances of violence against women reflect and reinforce dominant patterns in culture.
State and institutional ideology is invoked to concentrate the legitimate use of violence and
coercion in the hands of certain individuals, particularly members of the police and military.89
In more recent years, Connell has advocated a re-examination of the concept of
hegemonic masculinity. Taking up the challenge, Beasley noted several major flaws rooted in the
unnecessary entanglement of masculinities that are legitimating (i.e., hegemonic) and power-
wielding (i.e., dominant).90 To illustrate her point she notes that an accountant may be extremely
powerful in some positions or instances but is hardly the idealized image of manliness which
many males wish to achieve and tacitly support. On the other hand, a physically strong,
uncompromising male is typically considered a 'real man' by a large percentage of the
population, even if he is completely bereft of any institutional power.91 Beasley has advocated
referring to this latter group as sub-hegemonic which for the purposes of this study is the most
applicable descriptor.
Low and mid-level military men, firemen, and police officers exist at a high tier among
sub-hegemonic masculinities. These roles have the legal authority to use violence legitimately
and take individuals into custody; they are traditional 'men in uniform' tied to the state and
presented as benevolent public servants—occupational manifestations of Joseph Campbell's
'Hero' archetype.92 In this way they have a modicum of dominance and abundant legitimacy, but
fall short of Connell's original concept of hegemonic masculinity. While some films, books, and
television programs portray these professions accurately, more often than not they become
caricatures of violent masculinity. Few would deny the cultural influence of Rambo the rogue
soldier or vigilante cops Harry Callahan and John McClane in the Dirty Harry and Die Hard
films. For decades, children have had more encounters with fictional police officers who
circumvent and solve problems through violence than with actual law enforcement officers. As
we will see, multiple murderers David Berkowitz, Colin Ireland, Danny Rolling, Luka Magnotta,
and Anthony Arkwright (50% of our sample) either aspired to be firemen, police officers, or

white feather symbolized cowardice and was intended to shame non-combatants. See:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/11/first-world-war-white-feather-cowardice

65
military men before settling on a murderous self. A sixth offender, James Holmes, incorporated
paramilitary elements into his homicidal self by wearing armour and employing tear gas during
his massacre, though admittedly, this may have been a purely practical decision.
Media narratives often place antisocial versions of sub-hegemonic masculinity—generally
derived from the Outlaw archetype—in opposition to 'men in uniform' in order to create dramatic
conflict. Though traditionally these Outlaws were antagonists, the theme of the 'anti-hero' has
grown in popularity since the Sixties. One example is the shift from the hero-vs.-villain trope of
the Classic Western, in which criminals were 'bad guys' brought to justice by the 'good guys' of
law enforcement, to the Revisionist Westerns of the mid-Sixties and early-Seventies, where
criminal anti-heroes challenged the corrupt and/or tyrannical authority of malevolent sheriffs,
businessmen, and their croniesuu. Serial killer Danny Rolling, who loved The Outlaw Josie Wales
and hated authority figures, mimicked the Outlaw anti-hero archetype, strategically
gerrymandering his self-guide to justify murdering attractive co-eds in a campaign of revenge
against society. Other examples provided of fictional or fictionalized sub-hegemonic masculine
characters in academic literature are Mick the knife-wielding survivalist from Crocodile
Dundee93, Fight Club founder Tyler Durden94, Wolverine95 the indestructible superhero in X-
Men, vigilante firefighter Gordon Brewer in Collateral Damage96, and the eponymous Rambo97,
to name but a handful of thousands of cinematic examples. More typically, actors who frequently
portray such characters are given as examples, including “Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne,
Sylvester Stallone, Steven Segal, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vin Diesel, Will Smith, Denzel
Washington”98, “Clint Eastwood”99, “Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Christian Bale and
Matt Damon”100. As these unattainable depictions of manliness in cinema have become
normative in our media-saturated world, many males are increasingly unable to conceive of an
ideal masculinity which is entirely separate from them. Such notions of manliness are thus better
described as hyperreal than sub-hegemonic: believable enough to masquerade as viable options,
yet impossible to realize in actuality. Here, we will use the term sub-hegemonic masculinity
when referring to legitimizing manly gender identities which are difficult to achieve, but not
unfathomable, and hyperreal masculinity to those variants which are simulacra. As hyperreal
masculinity is borne by the media, it is unsurprising that those who strive toward it demand to be

uu
A similar inversion happened with the serialkiller! archetype in the form of Showtime's eponymous Dexter: a
'moral' serialkiller! because he only preys on other murderers.

66
broadcast. Unfortunately, platforms for their banality have never been more abundant and
accessible, thanks to social media and reality television.

2.6 Fame, Fortune, and Epistemosis

In 1991, the same year in which Joel Black published The Aesthetics of Murder, the
Dutch program Nummer 28 first aired, giving rise to a new genre: reality TVvv. Debuting in 1997
and 2001 respectively, Survivor (Sweden) and Pop Idol (UK) paved the way for highly
successful American derivatives. Consistent with the cultural goals of western capitalism, the
prizes for 'winning' these televised contests are financial: Survivor offers $1,000,000 USD and a
vehicle from their sponsor, while American Idol opens doors to a successful music career,
awarding the victor with major recording and management contracts. In this way, the programs
did not deviate significantly from the materialistic rewards offered by traditional quiz shows.
However, the means of winning these programs—a popularity contest adjudicated by fellow
contestants or the viewing public—departed significantly, with skill or talent either completely
expunged or taking a distant secondary role.
This emphasis on popularity echoed the contemporaneous rise of social media. The
Internet has long been a digital schmooze, connecting people through message boards,
chatrooms, instant messaging programs, websites, and blogs. Then, in 2003101, Myspace
launched, providing a platform for customers to stream their music, post photographs, provide
biographical details, and become 'friends' with other users' profiles. In 2006 it was the most
frequented social media site in the world,102 soon becoming the vehicle for independent self-
promotion. Musical acts with a high number of 'friends' and song plays were offered record
contracts, while others such as Tila Tequila gained a degree of minor celebrity, paving the way
for a reality television career. Crucially, a Myspace profile could only display eight friends on its
front page, forcing the user to arrange them spatially according to their preferential rank. This
resulted in the semi-formalized social hierarchy of 75.9 million users by December 2008103,
many of whom were competing for attention on what, in retrospect, seems to have been the first
mass online popularity contest in human history.

vv
In Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard refers to what appears to be an earlier reality TV program, An American
Family, which aired in 1973, lasting one season. Though the show preceded Nummer 28, it was a disaster and hardly
marks the beginning of the reality TV genre.

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 Facebook, launching on February 4, 2004, usurped Myspace's throne in 2009. As of
September 2016, there were 1.71 billion active monthly Facebook users104—approximately one
quarter of the world's population. Where gaining social approval on Myspace occurred through
the selection and ranking of 'friends', Facebook members post thoughts and photographs which
instantly become visible on other members' feeds. One has the option to 'like' a post or
photograph by clicking a 'thumbs up' button, with Facebook keeping a running tally of 'likes'
which remain visible to other members. An individual may also write a comment in response to a
post or photograph which can in turn be 'liked' and commented upon by the original poster and
other members. A year after the arrival of Facebook, YouTube burst onto the scene, allowing
users to post, 'like' or 'dislike', and comment on videos; as well as 'liking' or 'disliking' and
replying to the comments themselves. The following year came Twitter, in which members send
140 character 'tweets' (messages) out to the world; 'like', repost, and comment on others' tweets;
and attempt to maximize one's 'followers' while minimizing the people one follows—a
transparent attempt at signaling social-worth by showing how disinterested one appears to be
with society compared to how interested others are with them. With 319 million active users
every month, Twitter has become a major source of breaking news, as demonstrated by the 40
million tweets sent on the day of the 2016 American presidential election.105 That same year, a
poll conducted by IKEA of 12,000 people in big cities found that 68% preferred communicating
over social media to face-to-face interactions, including with people in their own home.106
Depending on the medium, either 'significant others', the fandom community, and/or the
generalized other can provide feedback (or none whatsoever) to posts and photographs in real
time, affecting the emotional state of the user by confirming or disconfirming matches between
their self-concept and self-guides. The prevalence of suicides resulting from so-called 'cyber-
bullying'107 shows that such social media interactions are hardly frivolous—in fact, their
visibility to a wider audience and permanent documentation may actually worsen their impact. In
summary, the combined effect of social media and reality television has been to transform 21st
century media into something decidedly exhibitionist, voyeuristic, and (ironically) asocial; now
even the most unremarkable person can achieve fleeting stardom simply by doing something
provocative on camera or Twitter.108
Writing in 1938, the eminent sociologist Robert Merton inhabited an America that had
not yet seen celebrity culture transmitted constantly into the home through television. As such,

68
he defined the cultural goals of his time as wealth and elevated socioeconomic status. However,
with the ever-expanding prominence of mass media in the post-Second World War period,
individuals in Western societies began to increasingly shape their personal values, perceptions,
and aspirations based upon print, radio, cinema, television, and the Internet.109 Simultaneously,
mass media ushered in a culture which positioned celebrity at the height of an individual's
aspirations.110 Now, in this hyperreal ‘age of the celebrity’, a majority of children in developed
societies are listing 'fame' as their primary aspiration111, even when the option of “self-
acceptance”112 is presented. Notability has arguably become the dominant cultural goal in the
West, and perhaps beyond.113 This is consistent with the theories of the symbolic interactionists
who propose that our identities arise and are negotiated through communication.114 Certainly,
Westerners still covet wealth and upwards class mobility, but seek them through stardom. Along
with the aforementioned gender role strain, Chapter 3 will address the issue of strain resulting
from the inability to achieve fame, wealth, and upward social class mobility in our sample of
offenders.
Merton proposed that when a person cannot achieve the cultural goals through the
institutionalized means, they may adapt their behaviour by innovating (rejecting the
institutionalized means to achieve the cultural goals).115 Accordingly, homicidal offenders such
as Luka Magnotta—who unsuccessfully auditioned for several reality television programs—and
the socially-inept Elliot Rodger, whose stepmother was a reality television star, cast themselves
in video recordings before or during their homicides.116 Moral crusaders may protest the so-
called 'sensationalism' of such murders, but they are undeniably gossip-worthy. Spree killer
Daniel Gonzalez vocalized this uncomfortable truth himself, remarking “Good people are so
boring, aren't they. [sic] Bad people have all the fun. Good people don't do anything. They are
just boring.”117 Gonzalez's perspective is demonstrative of Black's proposal that the “relation of
the ethical and aesthetic domains to one another has been inverted in the twentieth century,
especially in its later phase. The social norm in post-industrial society and in postmodern culture
is no longer the ethical world of the real, but the aesthetic world of the hyperreal.”118 Having
spent more time interacting with horror films and video games than human beings, Gonzalez saw
'good people' as 'boring' because their perceived morality lacked the aesthetic qualities of
hyperreal violence. Recalling one of his murders, Gonzalez once tellingly boasted “‘I got that
old bitch proper, bloodbath, pouring out of her throat, boy, McFlurry!”119 In other words, he

69
became so excited by the aesthetics of arterial spray that he compared the sight to a frozen
dessert sold by the world's most prominent fast food chain. Like the religious fanatic who cannot
think outside the confines of hyporeality, Gonzalez's psyche was so ensconced in hyperreality
that it seemingly infiltrated nearly every thought or action. But where the religious fanatic,
though ultimately illogical, is at least coherent within his own closed dogmatic system, Gonzalez
spews an almost non-sensical hyperreal collage unified by a single theme: violence. How did he
arrive at such a place?
Returning to anomie, which we briefly touched upon in Section 2.1, Durkheim proposed
that during eras of rapid social change—and make no mistake, the Information Age is the most
heterogeneous and volatile period in human history—those caught in the maelstrom would not
know which attitudes and behaviours are expected of them anymore. On the surface, the fact that
the crime-rate in the Western world has been steadily falling since the 1990s seems to disprove
that we inhabit anomic societies. However, anomie is not uniquely linked to criminality, rather, it
gives rise to deviance in general. The coming of postmodernism coupled with hyperreality
further complicates matters by challenging and/or obscuring notions of not just what is normal,
but what is actually Real: a state we shall call epistemosisww. If anomie contributes to
antisociality and neurosis120, then, at its most severe, epistemosis results in delusion and chronic
confusion. One of the most demonstrative recent examples is the case of 28-year-old Edgar
Welchxx, arrested on December 4, 2016 after bursting into D.C. pizza parlour Comet Ping Pong
with an AR-15 to investigate reports that members of the Democratic Party were using the venue
to run a child sex-trafficking ring. The rumour started when Internet users began interpreting
phrases used in leaked e-mails by White House chief of staff John Podesta, as code-words for
child prostitution and pornography. Their observations were repeated by a number of alternative
online news websites, until 14% of the supporters of Presidential-candidate Donald Trump were
certain of its veracity, while another 32% reported being not sure either way.121 Though the
theory has been refuted by various law enforcement and news agencies, and Welch himself
admitted finding no sign of child sex trafficking on the property, the conspiracy theory remains

ww
From the Greek ἐπιστήμη, epistēmē, for 'knowledge' and ωσις, -ōsis, for 'abnormal condition.' Like anomie,
epistemosis should be seen as a social condition which affects the choices and rationale of the individual, rather than
anything born of the brain itself.
xx
I am not claiming that Welch was an expressive/transformative offender or socially isolated, only that he was
responding to the proposed state of epistemosis.

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popular to this day. Facing between 18 months and 10 years imprisonment, Welch continues to
believe in the sex trafficking allegations, stating only that “the intel on this wasn't 100
percent.”122 The frequent connection between hyperreality and epistemosis is further
demonstrated by a litany of questions online asking whether the undead character, Jason, from
the Friday the 13th series is 'real'. Eerily, statements uttered by numerous ETV offenders indicate
a similar immersion in hyperreal simulation. Dawson College gunman, Kimveer Gill, who
posted photographs of himself in a trench coat brandishing weapons online remarked “life is like
a video game.”123 This echoed Eric Harris’s videotaped statement that the Columbine High
massacre was “gonna be like fucking Doom, man.”124 After murdering and dismembering John
Altinger in Edmonton, Dexter killer Mark Twitchell wrote that the victim’s “…reaction was pure
Hollywood. The lurch forward with the grunt was dead on TV movie of the week.”125 Double-
murderer Rod Ferrell encouraged his girlfriend to “Look at the world like it's a movie theater
complex. You don't have to let Hollywood dictate what your reality is, you know. You can
decide what movie to walk into,”126 while, after throttling his girlfriend and posting a photograph
of her nude corpse on 4Chan, David Kalac typed “turns out, it’s way harder to strangle someone
to death than it looks on the movies.”127 Similarly, remarking on his victim’s intestines,
Twitchell almost sounded almost disappointed: “Human intestines just look like one long roll of
uncooked sausage as opposed to the gruesome mileage of stringy nastiness that they appear to be
on film.”128
An existential lubricant which often allows ETV offenders to transition in and out of the
homicidal self is meta-delusionyy—a type of conscious self-deception regarding the nature of the
universe. At some level of consciousness, the subject knows it is untrue, but chooses to believe it
nevertheless without experiencing cognitive dissonance. In the absence of proof, we hypothesize
that both hyporeality and hyperreality furnish this psychological phenomenon, which was
present in 50% (Chapman, Berkowitz, Rolling, Gonzalez, Holmes) of our sample, possibly as a
result or response to epistemosis. Consider the following statements:
Chapman: “I made a decision to be crazy [emphasis added], or schizophrenic... It's a choice
anybody can make...”129 and “if I had to be crazy to kill John Lennon, then I would be crazy. I

yy
In pen and paper roleplaying games, when a player directs his character to act upon knowledge the character could
not possibly know within the boundaries of the setting, this is called meta-gaming. This concept has been repurposed
here to describe willfully self-induced delusion.

71
would rip off my clothes and summon demons and pray to the devil... But through all of that, it
was me... I made the choice [emphasis added]—God forgive me—to kill another man.”130
Berkowitz: “I did not become subconsciously [emphasis added] deluded—hence, [this was not]
mental illness. Rather, I am very much aware of the fact that I really deluded myself. I did this on
purpose [emphasis added]... I was determined and in full agreement with myself that I must slay
a woman for revenge...”131
Rolling: “Nonetheless, Gemini is a real being from another dimension [emphasis added] that
coexists with our own—the nether world, where the fallen angels dwell. You see, I wanted
revenge. I wanted someone else to suffer the way I suffered. That's why Gemini became real to
me [emphasis added].”132
Holmes: “[My theory of Ultraception is]objective, but that's my subjective opinion.”133
When an isolated individual loses or fails to develop a stable sense of self, he turns to the
media for direction: media will always speak to him for as long as he desires, and never rejects
or abandons him. The alienated individual exercises complete control over the conversation,
vaguely resembling a kind of social necrophiliazz. Online he even has the ability to speak back
and be heard. Murderers are no exception. Lacking identity and an autobiographical concept
which he is able to tolerate, the inadequately socialized, alienated man reaches into hypo or
hyperreality and finds ready-made identities attached to social or fictional narratives to fill his
existential void: avatars and talismans.

2.7 Talismans and Avatars

We have already touched upon several instances of anti-mimesis in which violent
offenders crafted their homicidal selves from movie figures, including Daniel Gonzalez's
emulation of slasher villain Jason Voorhees and John Hinckley Jr.'s mimicry of vigilante Travis
Bickle. Though the cultural sources of these fictional characters are easily determined—the
cinematic classic Taxi Driver and the Friday the 13th franchise—the question of why Gonzalez
specifically chose Jason while Hinckley gravitated towards Bickle remains unanswered. This
section analyzes the factors affecting both the transmission and adoption of hypo- and hyperreal

zz
Mellor (2016d) observed that the most common motive for necrophilia is to have complete control over a human
form. A dead body is unable to deny access to sex or specific sexual acts, criticize sexual performance, or abandon a
sexual partner.

72
simulacra as talismans at a social and psychological level.
In his influential 1976 work The Selfish Gene, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins
first proposed the idea of the memeaaa—“a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.”134
The propagation of memes is comparable to genetic transmission, in that it is Darwinistic.bbb A
meme's success is tied to its ability to operate in a given socio-cultural environment. One good
example is the increased likelihood that a White Supremacist meme will spread in culturally
homogenous rural areas rather than ethnically diverse cities. While genes are transmitted through
sexual congress, memes pass from brain to brain through communication. For this reason,
Arntfield & Danesi contest Dawkins's claim that memes encode and transmit information,
pointing out that signs serve this purpose: a difficult point to dispute135 In common parlance, the
word meme is now used (almost exclusively) to refer to a humorous combination of text and
images that is shared online (see Figure 3 below).

Figure 3: An internet meme, as the term is now most commonly used.

Though such amusing frivolities certainly qualify as memes, Dawkins's original concept is far
more inclusive. Dawkins specifies that “If a single phrase... is sufficiently distinctive and
memorable to be abstracted from the context of the whole… then to that extent it deserves to be

aaa
On page 230 of their Murder in Plain English (2017), Arntfield & Danesi offer a clearer definition of meme as
“any cultural product or artifact (text, image, sound, idea, and so on) capable of being acquired and reproduced
massively throughout the cultural sphere.”
bbb
Dawkins notes that memes tend to mutate at a much faster rate than genes as they can be intentionally or
unintentionally altered by their hosts: the human brain.

73
called one meme [emphasis added].”136 Here, Dawkins is referring to a musical phrase from a
symphony, though the same could be said of a linguistic phrase. Nietzsche's declaration that
“God is dead”137, for instance, is more well-known and repeated than the surrounding sentences
which contextualize it, let alone the totality of The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
texts in which the phrase appears.ccc These larger texts and corpuses are what Dawkins refers to
as meme complexes, recently shortened to memeplexes.138 Beyond existing as cultural units in the
social world, it seems that specific memes and memeplexes adapt better to certain 'psychological
habitats' than others. For instance, research employing the Five Factor Model of Personality has
shown that political conservatism is linked to high levels of Conscientiousness, while liberalism
is associated with Openness to Experience.139 Similarly, the respective psychologies of our 10
ETV offenders incentivized them to adopt memes and memeplexes with particular qualities while
rejecting others. By viewing the transmission and encoding of signs as Darwinistic, Dawkins's
work fills a theoretical void in semiotics as to why certain signs and the ideas conveyed by them
proliferate more successfully than others. As our analysis of the 10 offender sample in Chapter 3
reveals, some memes and memeplexes are simply better suited to some psychologies than others
At this point, we turn to the concept of narrative prototypes—media-disseminated
memeplexes in the form of specific stories (The Catcher in the Rye, Basic Instinct, the Friday the
13th or Nightmare on Elm Street series, the Holy Bible) or archetypes (monster, serialkiller!,
outlaw, avenger, schoolshooter!)—which an offender uses to construct his self-guide. A more
aesthetically pleasing synonym for narrative prototype, and one that will be used in its place, is
talismanddd. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a “talisman” as: “1: an object held to act as
a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune 2: something producing apparently magical or
miraculous effects.”140 In ETV, the held object is a cultural one, and the evil it averts is the
negative emotionality of the offender. Furthermore, a talisman transfixes those who possess it,
contains a mysterious power, and can be worn and removed, much like an identity. The term
avatar refers to specific fictional characters (e.g., Holden Caulfield, Travis Bickle) or hyperreal
caricatures of non-fictional people (e.g., Jack the Ripper, The Columbine High shooters) which

ccc
Perhaps this is why so many people lacking any understanding of Nietzsche rush to condemn or celebrate him
based upon isolated quotes. His phrases are so replicable that they paradoxically work to the detriment of his
philosophical ideas.
ddd
I credit my friend Clayton Strang with coining the term talisman while responding to my explanation of narrative
prototypes.

74
an offender either adopts whole or piecemeal to furnish his homicidal self. Generally, avatars are
memes residing within specific narrative talismans (which are necessarily memeplexes). By
attempting to assassinate a political figure and becoming infatuated with Jodie Foster, John
Hinckley Jr. adopted two components of the Travis Bickle avatar from the Taxi Driver cinematic
talisman. Hinckley also incorporated elements from The Catcher in the Rye into his homicidal
self. Similarly, all 10 offenders in our sample drew from multiple talismans or avatars, fusing
two or more disparate narratives into one, vaguely reminiscent of Jay Martin's patients in section
2.4. This is consistent with research by Götz et al. who found an identical phenomenon in male
childreneee such as one boy who daydreamed of a self which incorporated the powers of three
superheroes.141
A talisman is rarely esoteric: generalities about or aspects of the Holy Bible or the
serialkiller! are familiar to most people in Western society. Certainly, the majority of the
population will only have a passing understanding of the core concepts (e.g., Jesus was the son
of God who was crucified for mankind's sins and was born on Christmas; serialkillers! are
‘crazy’ men who are unable to stop killing peoplefff). Fewer still possess a richer understanding
of these talismans, such as individuals who read about Christianity or true crime as a hobby,
while theologians and criminologists occupy the extreme end of this spectrum. A significant sub-
section of society are acquainted with (if not well versed in) the slasher film franchises Friday
the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, while The Catcher in the Rye continues to be read, with
a little help from Mark David Chapman's homicidal promotion. Indeed, it is the transmissibility
of these cultural products that makes them accessible to offenders as potential talismans or
avatars in the first place. Furthermore, the shared cultural meanings of signs—'archaic hockey
mask signifies Jason Voorhees'—enables communication between the perpetrator and the rest of
society.142

2.8 Conclusion
If the components of ETV introduced in Chapter 1 provide the skeleton which holds the
theory together, the organs which bring it alive, and the glands to secrete emotional motivation,

eee
The full relevance of this will become apparent in the next chapter when the prevalence of immaturity in our 10
offenders comes to the forefront.
fff
Just because concepts about the talisman are widely held, it does not mean that they are necessarily accurate. In
fact, whether these concepts are 'true' or not is of absolutely no importance here at all.

75
then Chapter 2 has given it a face, flesh, and vocal cords. In this chapter, we charted the
development and prevalence of media technologies from Gutenburg's printing press in 1440 to
21st century social networking websites, noting how communication with these mediums has
progressed from passive recipience to online interaction. This unprecedented growth of
communication technologies has been accompanied by an onslaught of simulacra, resulting in an
anomic state of hyperreality. Surrounded by simulation and countless news media organizations
broadcasting vastly conflicting reports, modern man is subject to epistemosis: the inability to
distinguish fact from fiction, often leading to intellectual capitulation and an unwillingness to
even bother trying. Where, in the pre-Industrial era, our ability to know what was Real was
hindered by a lack of heterogeneity (hyporeality), there is now such an overabundance of
information and simulacra (hyperreality) that we struggle not only to separate fact from fiction,
but to know the difference between fact and fiction in the first place.
As our self-concepts and self-guides are shaped by communication, the role that media
plays in molding our aspirations through depictions of gender and celebrity obsession has been
an area of particular focus. Specifically, sub-hegemonic and hyperreal masculinity have been
directly linked to violence in men who either conform or wish to conform to these standards. As
these masculinities are embedded in media-propagated talismans and avatars, ETV offenders
frequently draw from them to construct their homicidal selves. By committing acts of violence,
the expressive/transformative offender now declares himself worthy of media attention also,
which the media confirms by covering his story. He is now a widely disseminated sign himself,
perhaps a talisman or avatar like JacktheRipper!, PeterSutcliffe!,or Eric&Dylan!. With his
death, the sign's original referent is removed, and he becomes a simulacrum: truly hyperreal. He
continues to exist as a two-dimensional caricature in the simulation among fictional characters
such as Holden Caulfield, Catherine Tramell, Detective Vince Magnotta, Freddy Krueger, Jason
Voorhees, and the Joker—all of whom we will encounter soon. Perhaps someday another
dejected loner will look into the pantheon, seize his character, and hang it as a talisman onto a
homicidal self-guide, one violent narrative blending into another.
Into this malaise came Mark David Chapman, David Berkowitz, Colin Ireland, Danny
Rolling, Luka Magnotta, Daniel Gonzalez, Anthony Arkwright, James Holmes, Elliot Rodger,
and Seung-Hui Cho. Between them, they would kill over 60 people, wounding approximately
110 more. All 10 committed crimes involving media idols, fictional characters, or archetypes

76
transmitted to them through literature, cinema, music, the Internet, television programs, or news
media. Each drew from this hyperreality to construct their homicidal self. Chapter 3 will
combine the theoretical elements from both previous chapters to illustrate how and why this
occurred in these men, as well as highlighting additional commonalities between them.

Endnotes

1 Dawkins, 1976/2006.
2 Dawkins, 1976/2006.
3 “Archetype [Def 1]”, n.d.
4 Yahoo Tech, 2014, May 29.
5 Febvre & Martin, 1997.
6 Streible, 2008.
7 deForest, 1950.
8 “TV History”, n.d.
9 “International Telecommunications Union”, n.d.
10 Smith, 2015, April 1.
11 Styles, 2013, June 23.
12 CBC News, 2015, October 27.
13 No author, 1977, August 1, p. 3A.
14 Black, 1991, p. 138.
15 Durkheim, 1897/1951.
16 Baudrillard, 1981/1994.
17 Eco, 1986.
18 Ngak, 2012, November 9.
19 Baudrillard, 1981/1994, p. 1.
20 Wilde, 1889.
21 Black, 1991, p. 138.
22 Baudrillard, 1981/1994.
23 Alston, 1979, p. 779.
24 Eco, 1986.
25 Thacker, 2011.
26 Wineburg & McGrew, 2016, November 1.
27 Baudrillard, 1981/1994, p. 1.
28 Possamai, 2005.
29 Davidsen, 2013.
30 Baudrillard, 1981/1994, p. 4.
31 Baudrillard, 1981/1994.
32 Davidsen, 2013, p. 382.
33 Durkheim, 1933/2012.
34 Thacker, 2011.
35 deForest, 1950.
36 No author, 1925, March.
37 Gibney & Courtright, 1990.
38 Gibney & Courtright, 1990.
39 Gibney & Courtright, 1990.
40 Ostling, 1986, February 17.
41 Buss, 2016, July 5.
42 Buss, 2016, July 5.
43 “Creation Museum”, n.d.
44 “Creation Museum”, n.d.

77
45 “Holy Land Experience”, n.d.
46 Clements, Kidd, & Barnes, 2006.
47 Jones, 1992; London & Rolling, 2011; Ryzuk, 1994.
48 Gibney & Courtright, 1990.
49 Postman, 1986/2006.
50 Fore, 1987.
51 Postman, 1986/2006, p. 118 & 121.
52 Athens, 1997.
53 Mellor, 2016b, p. 44.
54 Athens, 1997, p. 139.
55 Goffman, 1967/1982.
56 Mellor, 2016b.
57 Higgins, 1987.
58 Coffman, 2008, August 8.
59 Mellor, Venkatesh, Wallin & Thomas, 2016, p. 183.
60 Mellor, Venkatesh, Wallin & Thomas, 2016, p. 182.
61 Mellor, Venkatesh, Wallin & Thomas, 2016, p. 182.
62 Mellor, Venkatesh, Wallin & Thomas, 2016, p. 182.
63 Mellor, Venkatesh, Wallin & Thomas, 2016, p. 184.
64 Sleeman, 1933.
65 Labuschagne, 2004.
66 Mellor & Venkatesh, 2016.
67 Martin, 1988.
68 Martin, 1988.
69 Black, 1991.
70 Black, 1991.
71 Brooks, 2002, December 20; Cullen, 2009; No author, 2001, March 13; No author, 1994, November 4;
Sennott, 1995, March 20.
72 No author, 2002, June 9.
73 Goffman, 1976/1987.
74 Götz, Lemish Aidman, Moon, 2005.
75 Götz et al., 2005.
76 Chartier & Arnold 1985; Cournoyer, 1994; Hayes & Mahalik, 2000; Reidy, Berke, Gentile, & Zeichner, 2014.
77 Reidy, Berke, Gentile, & Zeichner, 2016.
78 Cournoyer, 1994; Davis, 1987; Good & Mintz, 1990; Mahalik & Cournoyer, 2000; Sharpe & Heppner, 1991;
Shepard, 2002.
79 Jacobs, 2015, August 24.
80 Jacobs, 2015, August 24.
81 Jacobs, 2015, August 24.
82 Connell, 1987.
83 Connell, 1987, p. 184.
84 Connell, 1987, p. 184.
85 Connell, 1987, p. 184.
86 Connell, 1987, p. 183.
87 Connell, 1995.
88 Kendall, 2000.
89 Connell, 1987.
90 Beasley, 2008.
91 Beasley, 2008.
92 Campbell, 1949/2008.
93 Beasley, 2009.
94 Buchbinder, 2013.
95 Miczo, 2016.
96 Messner, 2010.
97 Messner, 2010; Bruzzi, 2013.
98 Crawley, Foley, & Shehan, 2008, p. 47.

78
99 Charlebois, 2011, p. 23.
100 Kareithi, 2014, p. 27.
101 Gillette, 2011, June 22.
102 Davila, Foster, He, & Shimizu, 2015.
103 Gillette, 2011, June 22.
104 Su & Chao, 2017.
105 Isaac & Ember, 2016, November 8.
106 Sass, 2016, June 21.
107 Ramsay, 2013, June 19.
108 Stefanone, Lackaff & Rosen, 2010.
109 Dominick, 1984; McGee & Frueh, 1980.
110 McCraken, 1989.
111 Uhls & Greenfield, 2011; Kershaw, 2014, February 17; The Pew Research Center, 2007, January 9.
112 Uhls & Greenfield, 2011.
113 Braudy, 1986; Parnaby & Sacco, 2004.
114 Mead, 1934/1967; Blumer, 1969/1998; Jung & Hecht, 2004.
115 Merton, 1938.
116 Watts, 2014; Rodger, 2014.
117 C.M., 2006, March 16.
118 Black, 1991, p. 138.
119 Stubley, n.d.
120 Durkheim, 1897/1951.
121 Jensen, 2016, December 9.
122 Goldman, 2016, Dec 7.
123 Peritz, El Akkad, & Ha, 2006, September 15.
124 Langman, 2014b, p. 4.
125 Lillebuen, 2012, location 4363-4364.
126 Jones, 2000, p. 136.
127 Goldstein & Molinet, 2014, November 6.
128 Lillebuen, 2012, location 4394-4396.
129 Jones, 1992, p. 203.
130 Jones, 1992, p. 213.
131 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 93.
132 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 93.
133 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
134 Dawkins, 1976/2006, p. 192.
135 Arntfield & Danesi, 2017.
136 Dawkins, 1976/2006, p. 195.
137 Nietzsche, 1969, p. 41.
138 Dawkins, 1976/2006.
139 Carney, Jost, Gosling, & Potter, 2008; Hirsh, DeYoung, Xu, & Peterson, 2010; Sibley, Osborne, & Duckitt,
2012; Xu, Mar, & Peterson, 2013.
140 Talisman [Def. 1 & 2], n.d.
141 Götz et al., 2005.
142 Mead, 1934/1967.

79
 3. Transformation: From Compromised to Uncompromising

“What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all
exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the
existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be
anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.” - Jean-Paul Sartre,
Existentialism and Humanism

“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important” - T.S.
Eliot

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?” - Langston Hughes, Harlem

3.0 Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how SDT, CTI, our variant of hegemonic
masculinity theory, and talismans drawn from hyperreality combine to explain the 10 offenders'
actions by applying them to case studies. As the transformation of the offender's self over the
course of his life is our primary focus, this chapter is necessarily descriptive—admittedly, far
more than a typical academic treatise. This decision has been a conscious one. Divorcing the
analysis from its biographical context renders a low-resolution picture at best, and at worst, utter
incomprehensibleness. For instance, if we were to discuss Mark David Chapman's shift from the
Hippie to the Good Christian without explaining the interpersonal incidents which led to his
adoption and rejection of these selves, then the symbolic interactive nuances of ETV would be
lost.
In 3.1 Previous Interpretations of ETV: Consistencies and Divergences, we begin by
looking at how expressive behaviour such as posing bodies, communicating with the media, and

80
wearing symbolic attire has traditionally been regarded by law enforcement and mental health
professionals. We argue that such phenomena have been egregiously under-explored, either
because the communication has been deemed 'simple' and 'obvious', or at the opposite extreme,
dismissed for being impenetrably esoteric. It is proposed here that because selves are formed and
negotiated through communication, these expressions depict the offender's transformation from
what he was to what he has become. The section concludes with statements by the late 'Moors
Murderer' Ian Brady demonstrating how this experience reflects a complex, but nevertheless
interpretable transformation of self.
Section 3.2 (The Expressive/Transformative Progression of Self) utilizes a diagram
(Figure 4) to map the ETV process from the consolidation of the actual/own self and its
constituent traits through various 'emergent' ideal/own selves to the homicidal ideal/own.
Consistent with SDT, the periods between selves are usually marked by crises in which the
offender experiences negative emotionality, which he may deal with by retreating into media
and/or psychosis, or by realizing a new self. Once a homicidal self has developed, the offender
either remains happily reconciled in this self, commits suicide, or transitions to a Penitent
Christian self to adapt to condemnation and incarceration. It also expands on the concept of
meta-delusion, so that we may observe its presence in the subsequent case studies.
Section 3.3 (Victim/Expression Typology) introduces a four-way typology of ETV
offenders based upon the symbolic/non-symbolic property of the victim(s) and whether their
killer communicated through posing the victim (victim-as-canvas); or used a victim-as-soapbox
strategy by sending written/oral communications, or adorning a costume/mask.
The first case we examine using ETV is Section 3.4 Mark David Chapman. Here CTI is
applied to explain Chapman's seemingly strange claim that he was a child masquerading as an
adult. In Section 3.5 David Berkowitz, Connell's concept of emphasized femininity is introduced,
along with theories regarding the effects of adoption on the stability and experience of self, and
adaptive preference formation, as well as ideas from gender studies that address masculinity as
an ongoing performance supported by ceremonial boasting of sexual conquests. Section 3.6
Danny Rolling looks at an offender who demarcates between two personalities, 'Ennad' the rapist
and robber and 'Gemini' the murderer. In a similar vein, rather than taking this offender at his
word, evidence is presented to show that this is likely a false dichotomy. Mellor's assertion that
weapons collecting leads to an increase in the Athens' notion of violent self-image is also

81
introduced. The first offender in our sample to aspire to be a serialkiller! in its purest form is
discussed in Section 3.7 (Colin Ireland). Here, the offender's victimology, statements, and
signature behaviours are conjunctively analyzed to assess whether his claims of heterosexuality
and motives are truthful. Beyond expanding on nearly all of the concepts introduced in the
preceding four cases, Section 3.8 Luka Magnotta incorporates gender theory regarding cultural
notions of race and sexuality. The case is also remarkable for the sheer number of talismans and
avatars adopted by the offender, and their expression in a series of increasingly abhorrent
criminal acts. The complexity of the Magnotta case is followed by two brief sections (3.9 Daniel
Gonzalez and 3.10 Anthony Arkwright) in which the offender dons a 'monster mask.' Various
methodologies to determine the semiotic properties of these monsters and why they specifically
appealed to that particular offender are utilized. Due to spatial concerns, three case studies in this
qualitative sample— those of the Millennial student mass murderers, James Holmes, Elliot
Rodger, and Seung-Hui Cho—can be found in the Appendices. Any observations gleaned from
those cases have been incorporated into our findings, summarized at the end of this chapter.
During the course of these case studies, two dozen commonalities emerged, each of
which are highlighted and discussed in Section 3.11: Transformation: Findings. This leads us to
Section 3.12: The Transformative Triangle an evaluation of how ETV socially and emotionally
transforms individuals at the primary (transformation of the perpetrator), secondary
(transformation of the victim), and tertiary (transformation of those who witness the crime
scene) levels. Our Conclusion (Section 3.13) offers a summary of the chapter, its implications,
and elucidates the semiotic relation to what we will encounter in Chapter 4: Expression.

3.1 Previous Interpretations of ETV: Consistencies and Divergences

Communications with the authorities and media have been intrinsically linked to multiple
murderers since Jack the Ripper—generally (and incorrectly) considered history's first serial
killer. Despite intense debate over the veracity of letters purporting to be from the Ripper, there
has been a surprising lack of serious focus on the semiotic content of these communications.
Recently, Arntfield & Danesi1 broke this ground in their Murder in Plain English, but this is only
the beginning. As atypical homicides in the United States have largely been the province of the
FBI, this task has generally fallen upon their Behavioral Analysis Unit (formerly Behavioral
Sciences Unit). Unfortunately, their understanding of this phenomenon remains rather shallow.

82
Certainly, the late FBI profiler and BSU pioneer, Robert Ressler, hit the nail on the head when he
claimed that London’s 'Gay Slayer'—later identified as Colin Ireland (3.7)—was “a person who
is trying to conquer their inadequacies by doing something important.”2 This overcoming of
negative emotionality through violence is one the tenets of expressive/transformative process.
Unfortunately, Ressler then added the reductionist conclusion that “Challenging the police—
setting up scenarios where they're the center of manhunts—communicating with the media, is
just nothing more than attention-seeking [emphasis added] at a very, very bizarre level.”3 As we
will see, such communications are much more than attention-seeking, they are a negotiation of
the perpetrator's self and identity. If Ireland was desperate for attention, it is because human
beings rely on feedback from others to understand themselves as social entities.
Mental-health professionals have similarly failed to fill this void. Worse, having
examined Seung Hui-Cho’s video communications, one eminent American psychiatrist
concluded that “these videos do not help us understand Cho. They distort him. He was meek. He
was quiet. This is a PR tape of him trying to turn himself into a Quentin Tarantino character.”4
This assessment is coloured by the erroneous assumption that human identity is static.ggg Far
from it, in fact, the fundamentalists of symbolic interactionism see the self as being in constant
flux. Like the Heraklitean river, the self only appears to be the same because we label and thus
define it—in this case with the name 'Cho'—yet all the while, different water passes through its
hollow form: perceptions, interpretations, ideas, emotions. Contrary to the eminent psychiatrist’s
claims, the very fact that Cho, who suffered from selective mutism and who was at the extremes
of asociality, should suddenly barrage the world with a cluster bomb of lengthy communications,
enriches our understanding of him immensely. And while the implication is that Cho is
impression managing, as is the case with most social interactions, this does not take into
consideration the reality that Cho actually did transform himself into something vaguely
resemblinghhh a “Quentin Tarantino character.”5 The Cho who placed a gun to his own head as
the police closed in on him was not the same Cho who had existed up until that day. In the
typical adaptive process of the expressive/transformative mass murderer, he opted to
permanently and irreversibly bridge the gap between his old actual/own and new homicidal
ideal/own by pulling the trigger, and expelling his consciousness into oblivion, unobservable to

ggg
Personality, as measured by the Five Factor Model, is relatively unchanging, but this is separate from identity.
hhh
In actuality, he was adopting the Eric&Dylan! talisman.

83
him, but tangible to us in the form of skull shards, blood, and grey matter. With his suicide, Cho
sealed off the possibility of ever returning to his quiet, meek self. If one listens with the poet’s
ear rather than the scientist's—for Cho spoke in metaphors and similes, much like 'crazy' Charles
Manson—it is clear that personal transformation was the prime motive for his actions.
Too often, social scientists neglect to discuss this 'Dostoevsky element' of homicide;
namely, the fact that killing—at least the first time—is an existential commitment, not only to
moral transgression but to possessing the stigmatized or discreditable identity of ‘murderer.’6 In
his The Gates of Janus, the late ‘Moors Murderer’ Ian Brady noted that “In extinguishing
someone’s life [the killer] is also committing his own.”7

The first killing experience will not only hold the strongest element of existential novelty,
but also the greatest amount of danger and trepidation conjured by the unknown… You
could, in many instances, describe the experience as an affective state of shock. He is,
after all, storming pell-mell the defensive social conditioning, as well as declaring war on
all organized regulatory forces of society.8

Even for a classic psychopath like Brady9, committing murder was far from a psychological walk
in the park: “In another very significant sense, [a murderer] is killing his long-accepted self [the
actual/own] as well as the victim, and simultaneously giving birth to a new persona [the
homicidal ideal/own], decisively cutting the umbilical connection between himself and ordinary
mankind [the generalized other].”10 This illustrates the expressive/transformative process in a
nutshell: person #1 murders person #2, consciously or subconsciously expressing semiotic
messages before, during, or after the crime. The transformation of person #2 into a corpse with
specific semiotic associations communicates the identity of person #1 to himself and an
audience. Often this will include person #1’s attitude towards person #2, and even the audience.
This expression and transformation dialectic is necessarily a social act.11
Returning briefly to Cho, the moral crusade of the aforementioned psychiatrist, with his
admonishments to “stop showing the video now”12 by somehow taking “it off the Internet”13
because it is a “social catastrophe”14, obscures the video's importance in understanding the
offender. By donning the helm of chivalry, the white knight's vision is blinded by its visor. For
this reason, we have chosen to view these case studies through an amoral lens, though true moral
objectivity is admittedly difficult given the nature of the crimes. Let us now endeavor to do the
opposite of dismissing Cho's attempts “to turn himself into a Quentin Tarantino character.”15 Let

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us plunge into his statements, and those of other murderers, and understand him in the hopes that
future 'social catastrophes' can be prevented, rather than merely expunged from the Internet (an
impossibility). The following section explains the transformative process of ETV in order for us
to observe its occurrence in the forthcoming case studies.

3.2 The Expressive/Transformative Progression of Self

The transformation which occurs in ETV is essentially a reiteration of Higgins's Self-
Discrepancy Theory as outlined in Chapter 1, with minor alterations. Primarily, Higgins
questioned why people do not change their self-guides in order to reduce the negative
emotionality resulting from actual:ideal and actual:ought discrepancies. This statement is
baffling. Honest self-reflection along with reading less than a handful of biographies makes it
obvious that many people do change their self-guides—the legions of Westerners who strive to
be famous entertainers and athletes in their younger years, reinventing themselves when success
eludes them, is readily observable.iii However, the number of ideal or ought selves attempted by
a given individual varies. For this reason, Figure 4 encompasses all subsequent ideal or ought
selves into a single box entitled 'emergent selves' which may range from as little as one to over a
dozen. In our study, following the realization of the homicidal self, our 10 offenders either
committed suicide immediately (obliterating the self), remained consolidated in their homicidal
self (closing of actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy), or fell into a period of negative emotionality
out of which they crafted a penitent self. Specifically, in this study, this was a Penitent
Christian self. In the case of Daniel Gonzalez, the homicidal self endured for a lengthy period
before lapsing into a crisis which ended in suicide. The nine stages of ETV are further elaborated
below.

At this very moment, for example, I am striving toward an Unencumbered Public Criminologist (ideal/own)
iii

after clawing myself out of the dejection and frustration brought about by my failure to realize the Lyrically
Masterful Pro Singer-Songwriter (ideal/own). Let's see how it works out.

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Figure 4. The Expressive/Transformative Progression of Self
1. Actual/Own Self
As a child, the offender is inadequately socialized, leading him to develop an ego-dystonic self-
concept. Often he views himself as a 'child in a man's body'jjj, alienated and unable to function in
the adult world. Though he strives to overcome this actual/own self by transitioning to an
ideal/own self, he invariably fails in his attempts, leading him to return to this actual/own self.
This actual/own self is comprised of sexuality, gender, religious and/or philosophical, social
class, vocational, and racial components. Notability—the degree to which one is known in the
greater world and represented in the media—is also an important aspect, however, as 90% of the
offenderskkk were of no note whatsoever before their homicides, a lack of notability is assumed in
these cases rather than supported by evidence. In each case, at least two of these components is
strongly ego-dystonic or results in strain residing in the very structure of the offender's being. In

See: Chapman, Ireland, Rolling, Gonzalez; and possibly Berkowitz, Magnotta, Arkwright, Rodger, and Cho.
jjj
kkk
Magnotta secured a fleeting moment in the Canadian media by spreading and denying rumours of his romantic
involvement with Canadian serial killer Karla Homolka.

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our 10 offender study, this phase is encapsulated in the first sub-section—3.X.0lll Failed
socialization and formation and realization of the actual/own self.

2. Ideal/Own Self
The ideal/own self is the person the offender initially aspires to become, embodying ego-syntonic
alternatives to replace the ego-dystonic aspects of the actual/own self, and similarly weakening
or resolving inherent strains. This first ideal/self is described at the beginning of 3.X.1 Pre-
Homicidal Ideal/Selves and Negative Emotionality.

3. Crisis
When the offender is unable to resolve his actual/own:ideal/own self-discrepancies or strains, he
experiences negative emotionality such as depression, frustration, anger, and suicidal ideation.
He may seek refuge from his torment by retreating into drugs and alcohol, media (especially
video games), meta-delusion, or true psychosis. During such periods he will effectively remove
himself from society. Eventually, he will formulate a new ideal/own, though in rare instances he
may return to a former self-guide, which alleviates his negative emotionality by providing him
with renewed purpose. These pre-homicidal crises are outlined within sub-sections 3.X.0 Failed
socialization and formation and realization of the actual/own self and 3.X.1 Pre-Homicidal
Ideal/Selves and Negative Emotionality. Specifically, dejection-related emotions are underlined
so that the reader's attention is easily drawn to them.

4. Emergent Selves
Falling under 3.X.1 Pre-Homicidal Ideal/Selves and Negative Emotionality, this refers to any
additional ideal/own or ought/own selves arising after the first ideal/own. The process is
identical; however, in those rare instances when an ought/own appears, the associated negative
emotionality is agitation-related—anxiety or paranoia—rather than dejection-related, and
italicized to make it stand out. The offender will adopt any number of emergent selves before
plunging into a final crisis. Out of this crisis, the homicidal ideal/own is born.

lll
Where X refers to the number of the particular case study.

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5. Homicidal Ideal/Own Self
The homicidal ideal/own appears when an individual opts to establish a self that (i) is easily
achievable, (ii) invariably attracts media attention thus mandating acknowledgment by the
generalized other which crystalizes the self through consensus, (iii) allows him temporary or
permanent catharsis through one or more acts of violence, and (iv) becomes his master status:
“the status that is considered the most significant in a person's social identity.”16 Like previous
ideal/owns it is designed to relieve ego-dystonia and strain. In every case it reduces strain related
to notability, and almost always entails an attempt to transition from ego-dystonic subordinated
masculinity to ego-syntonic sub-hegemonic masculinity or hyperreal masculinity. The homicidal
ideal/own self is discussed in 3.X.2 Renegotiated Homicidal Ideal/Own.

6. Reconciled Self
The first of three possible outcomes found under 3.X.4 Post-Arrest Self and Identity, the
reconciled self is a permanent narrowing of self-discrepancy and strain-reduction resulting from
the transformation into the homicidal ideal/own. As the offender's problems have been rectified
to his satisfaction, he remains mostly consolidated in this self during his incarceration, and may
bask in his notoriety as a murderer for the rest of his days.

7. Suicide (the obliteration of self)

This second outcome is most frequently chosen by rampage killers. Unwilling to face the
consequences of their actions and/or suspecting that their homicidal ideal/own will inevitably
collapse leaving them in a state of dejection once more, they opt to eliminate all possibility of
this occurring by committing suicide.

8. Crisis
This stage is identical to the crisis discussed earlier, only it occurs after the realization of the
homicidal ideal/own. Unlike the self that is reconciled through the commission of murder,
significant strain and/or ego-dystonia reappears immediately, days, or even years after the
killing(s). Theoretically, it is possible for an offender to remain imprisoned in this hellish state,
which he may try to escape by committing suicide (7). Only one offender in this sample took that
option. More often, they erect a penitent self.

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9. Penitent Self
The penitent self is the third option and arises from a period of crisis following the homicidal
self. With varying degrees of sincerity and self-reflection, an offender disavows his violent
actions and homicidal self, and announces to the world that he has devoted the rest of his life to
penance. As we will see, this strategy is not without its benefits. All three offenders in this
sample claim(ed) to have found salvation in Christianity—the metaphysical 'get out of Hell free'
card.
Let us now turn away from the offender to his victims, for they semiotically define him
largely to the same extent that he has defined them.

3.3 Victim/Expression Typology

The type of person an offender chooses as his victim, and the manner in which he uses
their death to send a message to the authorities and/or media is arguably one of the key
differentiators between ETV killers. For this reason, a simple typology of
expressive/transformative behaviours—focusing on how the meaning ascribed to the victim by
the perpetrator (symbolic or non-symbolic) interacts with the manner in which the perpetrator
uses the victim to express himself (victim-as-soapbox or victim-as-canvas)—is provided below
(see Figure 5). When the victim is symbolic, some aspect of their identity shapes their killer’s
motivation. Social attitudes and labelling of the victim exist in a kind of cultural well-spring,
informed by daily social interaction, but also increasingly in the media—where day to day social
interaction is distorted in biased or inaccurate news reports or reified by tropes and cultural
messages in film and television. David Berkowitz, Danny Rolling, and Elliot Rodger all killed
'the pretty girl': that is a conventionally attractive middle-class woman in her late-teens and
early-twenties. Mark David Chapman shot dead one of the 20th century's most beloved artistic
icons. We will call this killing up: the murderer destroys what he covets, and those who have
greater perceived social worth than him.
Adversely, society concurrently stigmatizes the homosexual victims of Colin Ireland and
Luka Magnottammm, and the emotionally and physically disabled men butchered by Anthony
Arkwright. Gay men have been tarnished in the western world since at least the onset of

mmm
The fact that Magnotta's victim was a Chinese homosexual may be of even more significance, as will be
discussed.

89
Christianity. Homophobia has manifested itself violently through social institutions from the
jailing of Oscar Wilde in England to mass imprisonment and murder under the Nazi regime.17
Even today, anti-gay sentiment is literally preached from the pulpit. Likewise, the physically and
mentally ill are looked down upon as useless, sponging off social assistance, physically
disgusting, and in the latter case, potentially dangerous. Drawing from this same cultural
reservoir, the killer destroys what he considers weak, vile, or immoral. In such cases, he is killing
down, because the value of his victims, as perceived by large segments of society, is negative.
Due to their status as deviants, homosexual and disabled men are to varying degrees what Egger
terms “less dead.”18 In every case of killing down in this sample, the victim's stigma reflected an
undesirable aspect of the killer's self—perhaps a repudiation. The murders of Chinese men
committed by half-Singaporean Elliot Rodger exemplifies this. Racism against East Asians in the
United States has existed to varying degrees since their appearance on the continent in the 19th
century including incidences of mass murder.19
Given the history of misogyny, it could be argued that the murder of women is killing
down, and, indeed, in many homicide cases it is. However, in this sample, Berkowitz, Rolling,
and Rodger were reacting to perceived rejection by attractive members of the opposite sex. They
were destroying a person of value who they could not possess—a person of higher standing than
them in the social hierarchy. In doing so, they may have created or co-opted misogynist ideology
to rationalize their actions, but we should not let their self-deceptions similarly deceive us. Even
Mark David Chapman attached the label of 'phony' to John Lennon in order to justify killing the
celebrity he could never become. The case of David Berkowitz will introduce us to the theory of
'sour grapes' to help shed some light on this matter.
A non-symbolic victim represents little or nothing to the offender and is generally not pre-
selected, but chosen opportunistically. The starkest example of this is James Holmes' statement
that his victims were a “conglomerate mass… I didn't like single them out as individuals… [To
me they were] not real people. It was just amorphous people.”20 Typically, they are victims of a
generalized misanthropy and/or notches on a killer's belt. Nevertheless, their non-symbolic status
gives us just as much insight into the killer's motives as symbolic victims.
When an offender selects his victim-as-soapbox, he uses their murder or anticipated
murder as a podium from which he can communicate written and/or verbal messages, sometimes
even communicating by dressing in symbolic costume. He allegorically stands on their dead

90
bodies to announce his new self—often adopting a moniker (e.g., 'The Son of Sam') or wearing a
mask signifying a character (e.g., 'The Devil', 'Jason Voorhees') who he emulates or identifies
with. In the event of victim-as-canvas murder, the victim's body is posed (potentially involving
mutilation) and sometimes surrounded or adorned with other signs so that the corpse itself
communicates a message beyond that of simply being a murder victim. An example is the 1979
murder of Francine Elveson in which, amongst numerous acts of paraphilic violence perpetrated
on the body, the words “Fuck You” had been scrawled on her stomach.21 The killer had also
defecated beside the victim's corpse and covered it with her clothing.22 If the perpetrator had
instead left an envelope filled with feces on the police chief’s doorstep with the words “Fuck
You” scrawled on it, this would be a case of victim-as-soapbox. Some victim-as-canvas killers
such as Colin Ireland also communicate by letter or phone, but for the purposes of this typology,
their victim-as-canvas behaviour takes precedence because it appears to be rarer than victim-as-
soapbox. Thus, Ireland falls into Type 2 of the typology of expressive/transformative offenders
figure depicted below. Regardless of whether the offender treats his victim(s) as a soapbox or
canvas, they are always ultimately a vehicle23 to his homicidal self.

Figure 5. Victimology and ETV

The state of a victim being symbolic or non-symbolic will be discussed in the following 10 case
studies. Each will examine the offender's actual self, ideal and ought selves, and homicidal

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ideal/own. It will then expand upon the victimology discussed in this section, before moving on
to the offender's self, post-arrest or post-spree (in the case of a suicidal rampage killer). Finally,
where it is applicable, the sexual/gender, religious/philosophical, class, vocational, and
racial/ethnic aspects of an offender's self are examined individually. In our concluding thoughts,
each of these selves and aspects of the self are considered in relation and conjunction with each
other to provide an overall summary of motive and behaviour as part of the transformational
process. A final caveat: the reader must always keep in mind that such transformations are
negotiated through communication, which is the displaying and interpretation of signs. The
importance of this will become abundantly clear in Chapter 4 when we trace the offender's
expressions back to transformations in his self.

3.4 Mark Chapman: ‘Child Nobody’ to ‘The Catcher’

Talismans: The Catcher in the Rye, John Lennon, Holy Bible; Type: 1
3.4.0 Mark David Chapman - Failed socialization and formation and realization of the
actual/own self
There was a time in childhood when Mark David Chapman had been reasonably happy:
“For a certain number of years, my very early years, I felt like a normal kid.”24 This narrative of
kindergarten contentment will echo through many of the cases in this study, as will the
phenomenon of bullying and expulsion from the social order: “Then these instances started
occurring, mostly in school or when I tried to interact with other kids. I started to feel alienated.
Other kids teased me, and I didn’t seem to be able to defend myself against them.”25 In a nation
where success in competitive sports is essentially a cultural goal (associated with masculinity
and celebrity)26, Chapman deviated from normative notions of masculinity27 because he “wasn’t
very athletic,”28 which made him a target for bullying. His persecutors branded him with a
stigmatizing label associated with the female sex and subordinated masculinity: “’Pussy.’ That's
what they called me. ‘Pussy.’”29
Feeling rejected from the social order, Chapman was isolated: “I didn’t have a solid
background of a group, because I didn’t have a group mentality, wasn’t one of the guys
[emphasis added], you know.”30 Chapman retreated into a world of fantasy for comfort—
imagining himself as “Mark the King of the Little People”31—with the ensuing lack of human
interaction stunting the growth of his self.32 It is possible that Chapman’s early asociality led to

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an inability to accurately interpret or express communicative gestures. Chapman recalls a
childhood incident in which he sincerely remarked to a friend “oh, isn't that too bad”33 after
seeing a dead cat. The friend misinterpreted the tone of his comment as flippant and verbally
reprimanded him. A friend in Hawaii would comment on the adult Chapman's communication
dysfunctions: “I told him he was so sensitive that he wasn't always accurate in what he thought
he was picking up from other people, especially the people closest to him.”34 In CTI, a lack of
communication satisfaction and feeling understood leads to negative emotionality.35
By late pubescence, Chapman had begun to see himself as “a nothing, really a nobody” 36
and a “little kid”37 who existed in a world of fantasy. Chapman uses the words 'child' and
'nothing/nobody' interchangeably, essentially referring to the same concept. Childhood is a
culturally designated formative stage during which one’s sense of self and purpose is supposed to
develop into a consolidated adult. If one fails in this process, one simultaneously remains a 'child'
which is tantamount to 'nothing' or 'nobody', as one has failed to become 'somebody.' Taking this
into consideration, Chapman’s actual/own is henceforth dubbed The Child Nobody. Children
may turn to make-believe to seek agency in a society where they are “completely excluded from
participating in any political, social, or familial act of any consequence.”38 In Chapman's case, he
envisioned a kingdom of 'little people' living inside his walls. They worshipped him, and he
exercised a god-like power over them. When he was angry he would press imaginary buttons and
cause explosions and other disasters to befall them.39 These fantasies not only made him feel like
'somebody' but a person of tremendous power and significance, evidencing a latent desire for
notability. After a brief sojourn, this fantasy-world would reappear in Chapman's adulthood
when he was at his weakest [retreatism].
To understand aspects of Chapman's actual/own which are unaccounted for by SDT, we
turn to CTI. Though Mark David Chapman felt as if his personal identity was that of a child,
upon entering puberty he could no longer overtly project this image and began enacting his
“phony adult”40 identity in order to move through the social order. Thus, this enacted identity
was mostly impression management. Entering high school, Chapman was hypersensitive to the
concept of authenticity in both himself and other people. In subsequent interviews, he repeatedly
demarcated between his personal identity41 of a 'child' and his 'phony adult' enacted identity.42
Chapman describes the 'phony adult' as “all surface anyways. It was a front. It couldn't handle
anything… I wasn’t real to myself. I was just a… conglomerate of adult mannerisms and jobs,

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but [with] a child's heart.”43 This statement raises interesting questions about the concept of
maturity itself: if a person mimics the conversation and affect of his peers and is employed, he
has, to the surface viewer, become mature (even if he is not). 'Maturity', in the colloquial sense,
may simply be a sustained process of face-work.44
Jung & Hecht found that large gaps between an individual’s personal identity and
enacted identity lead to poor communication satisfaction which results in negative emotionality45
(henceforth underlined in this text): “My child was always conflicting with my fake adult...”46
causing Chapman to be “just a hulk of hurt and rejection...”47 Furthermore, as the person is
portraying a different identity than they actually believe they possess, they feel that others are
misunderstanding them, because people are responding to their more observable enacted identity
rather than their personal identity. We find evidence for this in Chapman's pre-suicidal thoughts:
“I don’t understand. Nobody can help me understand.”48 This seems to explain why despite being
adored by the children at the YMCA where he was employed, highly respected for his work by
his colleagues, and being married to an exceedingly loyal and loving wife, Chapman remained
discontented. The children, his colleagues, and his wife were all responding positively to
Chapman’s enacted identity—the 'phony adult'—leading him to feel misunderstood. Chapman
himself comments on this: “The child” [personal identity] is “so specially linked to the phony
adult [enacted identity] that I was, the phony adult that the child had created, something had to
happen. An explosion had to happen.”49 This explosion was the result of seven years of pent-up
negative emotionality in a man who was not even 'real to myself.'

3.4.1 Mark David Chapman: Pre-Homicidal Ideal/Own Selves and Negative Emotionality
Lacking a sense of self that was acceptable to him, Chapman began emulating his
associates. Specifically, he refers to one Michael McFarland who “would become my first true
alter ego”50 and “told me later to read The Catcher in the Rye.”51 The first ideal/own Chapman
developed that was not directly derivative of his associates—the Hippie—arose when he was a
high school freshman. He describes how this resulted in an “instant release”52 from the burdens
of lacking an acceptable social identity: “immediately, I went from being a nerd to being a
hippie, from being a nobody [emphasis added] to being a somebody [emphasis added].”53 This
new self also resulted in increased opportunities for Chapman to socialize: “The main reason I
became a hippie was that it gave me my first chance in life to be a group player, a part of

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something.”54 The need to belong to a group is fundamental to the human condition with research
showing that a failure to do so can itself result in negative emotionality.55
The Hippie was an appealing self for Chapman to aspire to: not only would he close his
actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy, but also narrow the identity gap between the 'child' (personal
identity) and 'phony adult' (enacted identity) by adopting a hybrid child-adult identity. Hippie
culture is inherently childish, consisting of self-proclaimed 'flower children' who often hold
simplistic and idealistic worldviews, are pre-occupied with inner experience, and emphasize
personal freedom and creativity over maintaining employment and conventionally mature
conduct.nnn Media often portrayed the hippie counter-culture as virtuous and revolutionary
through its promotion of celebrity artists such as The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Aldous
Huxley, Ken Kesey, and Thomas Wolfe, and public academics like Dr. Timothy Leary.
Ostensibly associated with an ethos of free love and ego-liberation, hippies stood in direct
opposition to both hegemonic masculinity (i.e. the Johnson and Nixon administrations) and sub-
hegemonic masculinity (e.g., soldiers returning home from Vietnam, policemen). While 'nerds'—
as Chapman identified his previous self—accept their subordinated masculinity, male hippies
were only viewed as subordinated by certain segments of American society: a society which they
had “dropped out”56 of in order to form communities with alternate value systems.
Understandably, Chapman believed transitioning to his Hippie self was a kind of social
elevation.
Of special importance here was the endorsement of the hippie lifestyle by the most
popular rock band in the world, The Beatles, and particularly by their leader, John Lennon.
Speaking of Lennon’s influence in this regard, Chapman would explain, “John Lennon was real
[emphasis added] and he was a hero. He was the hero of my childhood.”57 Moreover, by the time
Chapman was 14, the Beatles “were into long hair, meditation, and drugs. The Beatles were into
things that fit my life perfectly.”58 Having begun using pot, LSD, and inhalants, Chapman
frequently stayed out till dawn listening to rock music.
A number of personally-symbolic incidents prevented Chapman from fully realizing his

nnn
It may be misinterpreted here that I am condemning the hippie lifestyle by denouncing it as childish. On the
contrary, when I use the words 'childish' and 'mature' specifically here I am drawing upon the socially held meanings
and interpretations of these terms. Children possess many admirable qualities that adults do not, and I often find
more vitality and intriguing ideas circulating in the counter-culture than I do mainstream society. This does not
change the social fact that most people do not share my opinion and look down upon childishness and hippie values.

95
Hippie ideal/own, resulting in him experiencing increased discrepancy between The Child
Nobody he wished to leave and the Hippie he wished to become. First, he was arrested for
vagrancy—the police correctly suspected he was high but could not find drugs on his person—
and he was held at a nearby juvenile home until his tearful father came to pick him up. On
another occasion he ran away to Miami and instructed the cab driver to “take me where the
freaks are.”59 With only $30 to his name, he met up with two older hippies on Miami beach.
They spent the next four days bumming around, conducting shoplifting raids in the city to
finance a trip to a music festival. When a policeman nearly caught Chapman for under aged
drinking, the older boys ditched him. He deciding to hitchhike to the music festival alone but
could not catch a ride and ended up walking 20 miles in flip flops in the Florida heat. Burnt and
exhausted, he stumbled upon a carnival where he found employment as a security guard.
Eventually, he was driven back to the suburbs of Miami by a hippie named Carlos. He stayed at
the family home, working for room and board, before earning enough money to fly back to
Georgia. After disappearing for two weeks he found his bedridden mother too distraught to
speak. As this gap between his Child Nobody actual/own and Hippie ideal/own—which he
described as a “somebody [emphasis added]… a part of something”—widened, he began to
experience the dejection-related emotions predicted by SDT. The final straw came in 1971,
when during a second visit to Florida, he partied with a hippie named Earl 'King of the Beach'
and his friends, who somehow picked his pocket [trigger]. “I remember, when I realized that my
buddies had gone through my wallet, feeling the lowest I had ever felt. I felt like nobody
[actual/own]. Like nothing [actual/own].”60 “It was the culmination of so many things at that
time and I started crying, desperately crying.”61 This incident marked a change from striving to
be the Hippie towards another prototypical identity of 1970s America.ooo
According to a close childhood friend, “When Mark was in the ninth and tenth grades, he
was doing drugs very heavily, then he went into this Good Christian [ideal/own] stage and his
whole identity changed. It was like he had to be the best Christian in the world.”62 This
transformation happened when Chapman was 15, and approximately one year before the release
of John Lennon’s 'Imagine'. He began to involve himself in the YMCA (Young Men's Christian
Association). Chapman’s inability to live up to the Hippie self advocated by Lennon, the “hero
of my childhood”63 provoked him to openly disavow and denigrate The Beatles and John Lennon

ooo
This exact same attempted change of self occurred in David Berkowitz as we will see in the second case study.

96
specifically. “I remember Mark said that the Lennon song ‘Imagine’ was a Communist song…
And that comment by Lennon, about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus, that really
pissed him off.”64 But, tellingly, Lennon's controversial remark about the Beatles being bigger
than Jesus Christ occurred in 1966 when Chapman was 11. Chapman’s first post-child identity
was the Hippie, and there is no record of him having expressed his disapproval of the comment
as Hippie or a child. In essence, Chapman sacrificed his John Lennon talisman to his Christ
talisman, as if to blame and punish Lennon for his own failures in the counterculture and return
to the mainstream. Here we see the beginnings of Chapman’s habit of projecting his own
inadequacies onto the John Lennon talisman. In expressive/transformative process, the
revaluation of a talisman from 'benevolent' to 'malevolent' is called burning the talisman, or for
those who prefer technical speech, reinterpretation of a prior narrative prototype. Ultimately his
reconciliation of self as a Good Christian was as precarious as his Hippie incarnation,
crumbling under the slightest social pressure:
There was a particular song I wanted to play really badly on my guitar, a song I had
written a few days before, a Christian song. I remember the meeting just was so jam-
packed with people talking, singing, praying, that I didn’t have time to play the song I
wanted to [trigger]. And I got frustrated…It was a small thing… But with me, it was a
catalyst for a growing lack of wanting to be close to the Lord [emphasis added] and I
stopped going to meetings… I more or less became what they call a lukewarm
Christian.65

Instead of focusing on 'the Lord', Chapman began relying on his work with the YMCA as
a means of socializing and establishing a third ideal/own: Captain Nemo, a lukewarm Christian
devoted to the YMCA and children. “The kids always called him Captain Nemo. That's what he
wanted them to call him,” said Tony Adams, the director of the YMCA program who had hired
Chapman. “Mark was a pied piper with kids. I just could never say enough good about the Mark
Chapman that I knew for those five or six years in Georgia… If there was anybody that didn’t
like Mark I don't know who it was. The Mark Chapman I knew was just an outstanding
person.”66 As a result of his benevolent works with the YMCA, Chapman met his first girlfriend,
Jessica, had steady employment, and was paid a $200/week salary (adjusted for inflation that's
$880/week in 2016) to settle Vietnamese child refugees at Fort Chaffee where he met President
Gerald Ford.67 A tile engraved with his nickname 'Nemo' was placed in Chapman's honour above
an indoor swimming pool, and he travelled to Beirut as part of the international program. He

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became engaged to Jessica, a devout Christian who was attending Covenant College, a
fundamentalist university. After finishing his assignment at Fort Chaffee, Chapman enrolled at
Covenant College, too.

That was my identity… When I was Captain Nemo, I did good things and everybody
loved me. I remember the year I was at the camp's closing ceremonies with my [YMCA]
kids and they were giving the award for ‘counselor of the year.’ I heard them call my
name, ‘Captain Nemo,’ and I couldn’t believe it. The kids were all cheering and shouting,
‘Ne-mo, Ne-mo! Ne- mo!' Those were the greatest days of my life. I was Nemo
[complete reduction of actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy] and everyone in camp loved
me… I had been a somebody [emphasis added].68

If we consider the Captain Nemo ideal/own, it is predicated on two important criteria: 1)

Captain Nemo is a Christian, even if lukewarm, and emerged as Chapman’s self through the
Young Men’s Christian Association, 2) Captain Nemo is special, considered an important and
exemplary member of society, and widely loved among both the counsellors at the YMCA and
children—in Chapman’s words a 'somebody.' These components would ultimately be Captain
Nemo's downfall. While staying at Fort Chaffee Chapman claims to have woke to find a female
counsellor lying naked beside him in bed and given in to temptation. Afterwards, he felt intense
guilt about having cheated on Jessica. Contemplating the negative emotionality that drove him to
later make a serious attempt at suicide and to murder John Lennon, Chapman asked:

Where did it start? Where did these depressions, these suicidal thoughts come from?…
With total clarity, I saw that all this began with my breakdown at Covenant College and
proceeded up to that night of December 8, 1980. I realized why I got depressed at
Covenant College… I had had sex and I had repressed the guilt from that and never told
Jessica. I don’t ever remember dealing with guilt from that.69

This infidelity widened the gap between his actual/own The Child Nobody and the Christian
role model aspects of his Captain Nemo ideal/own resulting in negative emotionality.
Chapman's disrupted emotional state acted as a catalyst for a series of additional challenges: he
struggled in his academic pursuits compared to younger students and began to feel inferior to
them. This inverted the second tenet of the Captain Nemo ideal/own—being special and
exemplary—which widened the gap even further. According to Chapman:

[At Covenant College] I felt like a nobody [actual/own]... When I went to college I was

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 just like everybody else and had to study like everybody else… I wasn’t in charge of
anything [emphasis added]… I was just like everybody else—a nobody. And when I had
to face that truth, my insides fell in on myself. I fell down a dark hole.70

Managing to struggle through the school year, Chapman sought to rid himself of his negative
emotionality by returning as a YMCA camp counsellor to narrow the gap between The Child
Nobody [actual/own] and Captain Nemo [ideal/own]. “I was coming back out of my depression
because I was back in my element and I had some authority [emphasis added]. I was maybe
feeling like a somebody [ideal/own ].”71 However, his self-conceptualization was toppled when
a female camp counsellor disobeyed his instruction to take a group of girls canoeing as was
scheduled. “She snapped back at me, ‘Well who do you think you are? God or something?’”72
[trigger] Already stretched thin, the thread connecting The Child Nobody to Captain Nemo
broke inside Chapman, and he watched the closest thing he ever had to a realistic pre-homicidal
self drift away.
And I believe that was the final blow to me after resurrecting [Captain Nemo] out of that
depression at college and coming back to camp… I was in a mass of confusion, and hurt,
and anger and everything. And I said I was quitting. I couldn’t take it anymore. I told him
about the incident… And then, when my YMCA identity fell apart, when I was stripped
of that is when the clouds really started getting dark and I started slipping into an abyss
that ended in murder, of someone I didn't even know… I didn’t have an identity. I had
splintered into atoms, into total nothingness.73

Chapman flew to Hawaii where he made a failed yet sincere attempt to kill himself. “I
wasn't frightened when I made the decision. I wasn't angry or upset. I felt strangely at peace
about everything. My mind felt very clear again.”74 Believing he had survived because God
wanted him to live, Chapman walked to a mental-health centre in downtown Honolulu and was
admitted that evening. Psychiatrists who assessed him following his failed suicide attempt
observed that he was “extremely depressed and states that he does not see any purpose in
living.”75
After his recovery in the summer of 1977, Chapman began working as a caretaker at the
hospital. In 1978, he travelled to Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, India, Iran, Israel,
Switzerland, and the British Isles. Upon his return to Hawaii he began dating his travel agent,
Gloria Abe, a Japanese-American woman five years his senior. By June 2, 1979, they were
married. Having escaped death due to the perceived will of God, Chapman tried to build a more
traditional life for himself, making a half-hearted effort at becoming a Providing Patriarch

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(ought/own). Eventually he switched from janitorial work to a solitary position at the hospital
print shop.
Then I was stuck, all alone, in this printing room, smelling chemicals, going crazy with
the noise, the boredom. I was taken away from my element of being happy and being
sociable because of my own strict 'should do's'—should do this and should be that
[ought/own]— because I was married. I already was starting to cave in at that point. The
pressures from marriage, which I should have been responsible for, and which I was in a
lot of ways—but I started caving in. I started to feel desperation in me and the job wasn't
helping any... Never feeling that I had a good day.76

After being fired from the hospital for arguing with a nurse, on December 26, 1979, Chapman
became a security guard at an apartment complex. He retreated further into solitude: “It was bad,
the wrong thing to do, removing myself from all my roots. I stopped going to church. Just
becoming more and more isolationist… I began drinking heavy, becoming very unhappy and
dissatisfied with my life.”77 As SDT links dejection-related emotions with actual/own:ideal/own
discrepancies, clearly Chapman still harboured aspirations for himself that had slowly become
more powerful than his Providing Patriarch ought/own. Based on his previous and subsequent
actions, fame was probably the strongest component of this latent ideal/own.
During the period in which Chapman was employed as a security guard, the gap between
The Child Nobody and the fame-seeking ideal/own had developed into a yawning canyon:
“Why was I a security guard? Because I thought I was a nothing [The Child Nobody
actual/own], and that was the only thing I could handle.”78 Describing his emotional state
leading up to the Lennon assassination, Chapman said “I was just always feeling bad.”79 It was at
this point that he began drinking heavily [retreatism] which caused him to gain a lot of weight,
and having fantasies in which he spoke to the Little People again [retreatism].80
As soon as he had paid down his debts, on October 23, 1980, Chapman quit his job as a
security guard, signing out as 'John Lennon.' He decided “I could just stay at home and cook and
clean and have dinner ready for Gloria when she got home. You know, be like John Lennon was,
kind of like a househusband.”81 In his spare time, Chapman retreated to the Honolulu Public
library, a place of order where he sought refuge from being “so confused and discontent and
angry and hurting...”82 “I was in a lot of pain. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't realize it
was that serious. I was headed down a deep, dark alley and I was running out of doors real
quick... I was walking around lonely and hurting, in a fantasy world.”83

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 Chapman's half-hearted attempts to salvage some measure of self-respect during this
period were confined to purchasing a custom blue t-shirt with the words 'I'M UNIQUE. I THINK
FOR MYSELF' on the back even though “I didn't have that done because I believed that I was
unique... But it illustrates, in some way, the tremendous pressures and tugs and pulls—the
'Should-be's' and the 'Why-am-I-nots' and the 'Helps' that I never said.”84 After borrowing the
book John Lennon: One Day at a Time from the library, a new ideal/own began to formulate in
Chapman’s disturbed mind. Reading about Lennon’s life in New York City, Chapman
remembers:
Thinking that there was a successful man [Lennon] who had the world on a chain. And
there I was not even a link of that chain. Just a person who had no personality
[actual/own]. A walking void who had given a great deal of my time and thoughts and
energy into what John Lennon had said and had sung about and had done—and had told
all of us to do—in the sixties and early seventies, when I was growing up, when I was
first trying to make sense out of a world that was so painful and hurtful and sad. I thought
I loved reality and I didn't want the world to be the way it was [emphasis added]… I
checked out the book [John Lennon: One Day At a Time] and brought it home to my wife
and pointed out the pictures to her, pictures of him smiling on the roof of the sumptuous
Dakota building: the decadent bastard, the phony bastard, who had lied to children, who
had used his music to mislead a generation of people who desperately needed to believe
in love and a world at war that desperately needed to believe in peace. He told us to
imagine no possessions, and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms
and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed his lies and bought the
records and built a big part of our lives around his music.85

At another point, upon reading an article on John and Yoko in a magazine, Chapman recalls

[A]ccording to this article, he said, himself, that the thing about the bed-ins for peace, the
concerts for peace, and the whole promotional packages that he and Yoko had done—he
said in his own quote that those things were essentially put-ons, that they were phony,
they were fake, and that they were a way of getting publicity… It was not the reporter’s
own language. And I remember that that was a confirmation for me that Lennon was a
phony.86 [trigger]

Chapman's religious devotion combined with his hypocritical obsession with authenticity led him
to an obsessive hatred of Lennon. Specifically, he despised Lennon’s song 'God' from the 1970
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album. “I would listen to this music and I would get angry at
him, for saying that he didn’t believe in God, that he just believed in him and Yoko, and that he
didn’t believe in The Beatles.”87 He also saw Lennon’s “terrible inconsistencies”88 as “mirroring
my own inconsistencies and my own pain and my own guilt at not having accomplished

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anything.”89 Thus, Chapman's hatred for Lennon ostensibly grew out of (i) Lennon’s perceived
public rejection of God, (ii) Lennon's unintentional mirroring of Chapman's own 'phoniness', and
(iii) the fact that Chapman perceived himself as “Mr. Nobody”90 while John Lennon was “the
biggest Somebody [emphasis added] on earth.”91 One day Chapman took the acclaimed Beatles
album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from his wife's record collection.
As soon as I saw his picture on that album… I knew - that I was going to kill him… I
remember saying in my mind: ‘What if I killed him?’ I thought of the repercussions that
would occur around the world. I felt, not in an ego way, or a prideful way at all, but I felt
that perhaps my identity would be found in the killing of John Lennon. And there was a
certain peace about that. [emphasis added]92

Chapman's biographer, Jack Jones, who interviewed the killer for hundreds of hours remarked
that, at this point, Chapman regained control of his feelings93: his plans of assassination served to
create a new homicidal ideal/own to which he could aspire.

3.4.2 Mark David Chapman: Renegotiated Homicidal Ideal/Own

Around this same period, Chapman purchased JD Salinger’s classic coming-of-age novel
The Catcher in the Rye and found himself profoundly identifying with the protagonist. Like
Chapman, 16-year-old Holden Caulfield views the adult world as being full of phonies, and in a
particularly poignant scene from which the title is derived, envisions himself in a field of
towering rye. Children are racing through the tall leaves unknowingly headed for the edge of a
cliff, and Caulfield wishes to catch as many of them as possible before they fall over, making
him 'The Catcher in the Rye.' The cliff edge is a metaphor for adulthood, and Caulfield seeks to
prevent the children from losing their innocence and becoming phonies. Unsurprisingly,
Chapman began to strongly identify with the Holden Caulfield avatar from the The Catcher in
the Rye talisman.

[I]n the second [copy of The Catcher in the Rye], the extra one that I had bought for
myself in case something happened to the other one, I had written 'From Holden
Caulfield to Holden Caulfield.' Of course, I knew that I was Mark David Chapman when
I wrote that. But I was acting out in a minor way. I was saying, 'What if this were so?' But
it was more than that. I had not totally felt that I was Holden Caulfield when I wrote that.
But it was like a badge, it was like a pledge... A statement of 'Here is my identity, here is
what my pain is [emphasis added] if it can be reduced to ink and paper.'94 [SAOS]

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In another instance, Chapman attempted to legally change his name to 'Holden Caulfield'.'95
[SAOS].
Given Chapman’s focus on authenticity and his child-masquerading-as-adult self-
concept, it is unsurprising that The Catcher in the Rye became the talisman which begat his new
homicidal ideal/own: The Catcher. “[I]t was during that time that I read the book about Lennon
and read the Catcher then it just all melted into one, Holden and John Lennon.”96
By the time Chapman arrived in New York to assassinate Lennon he believed that after
the murder he “would become Holden Caulfield. Not that I would become crazy. That I would
actually become Holden Caulfield.”97 Chapman began emulating Caulfield's actions in The
Catcher in the Rye, to the point of asking a police officer in Central Park “Do you know where
the ducks go in the winter?”98: an exact scene from the novel and another SAOS. He also
entertained another scenario in which after the assassination, he would “curl into a fetal position
and sink forever into a coma in which he could still see and hear, but from which the world could
never rouse him and into which it could never intrude.”99 At 10:50 p.m. on December 8, 1980,
Mark David Chapman fatally shot John Lennon four times in the back with hollow point bullets
fired from a .38 Special outside Lennon’s residence at the Dakota Building in New York City.
It became so paradoxically a search for identity [emphasis added] yet a search for
destruction at the same time. I just felt like a big nobody [actual/own] and that was so
attractive to me, to go out and do this horrible act that would make me become
somebody [ideal/own - The Catcher]. I couldn’t control it. There was something in me
that desperately wanted to be filled. I was stretched to the limit and I had no personality
[emphasis added] and everything was going so wrong there was no way to avoid going
down that hole once I made that decision.100

Chapman noted that the enacted identity “the adult”101 took action and “planned it out
perfectly, precisely”102 while the personal identity “the child”103 was the driving will who
“turned to Satan for the power to pull the trigger…”104 In a kind of hyperreal psycho-stew,
Chapman drew from the Holy Bibleppp and The Catcher in the Rye talismans to physically
destroy John Lennon, a talisman he had already burned in his mind.

This use of Christian theology to facilitate Lennon's murder will be explored in Section 3.4.6
ppp

Religious/Philosophical aspects.

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3.4.3 Mark David Chapman: Victimology

Table 2
Mark Chapman Victimology
Victim Age Race Gender Profession Date Where
Name Murdered
John 40 White Male Celebrity December Outside his apartment
Lennon pop star 8, 1980 building, The Dakota, in
Manhattan

Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon primarily because “I was an acute nobody
[emphasis added]. I had to usurp someone else’s importance, someone else's success. I was 'Mr.
Nobody' until I killed the biggest Somebody [emphasis added] on earth.”105 Boon provides
Chapman as a textbook example of psychological cannibalism106, a claim reflected in Chapman's
own words: “John Lennon fell into a very deep hole. A hole that was so deep inside of me that I
thought by killing him I would acquire his fame.”107 Unbeknownst to many, Lennon was not the
only celebrity Chapman considered killing. His hit list included Hawaiian governor George
Ariyoshi, talk show host Johnny Carson, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis, Beatles
bassist Paul McCartney, actor George C. Scott, and actress Elizabeth Taylor. Chapman claimed
that he thought about murdering Onassis because of “What she did to John F. Kennedy, whom I
admired greatly. She disgraced him after that incident in Dallas, with Aristotle Onassis”108 [mj]
and Elizabeth Taylor because of “her personality... I despise people who flaunt themselves
[mj].”109 Yet the moral salience of his homicidal motivations is nullified by Carson and Ariyoshi,
who he contemplated murdering simply because they were “popular”110 even adding “actually I
kind of like Johnny Carson.”111 Similarly, Chapman admitted “I like [George C. Scott]. He's
great.”112 Paul McCartney had only evaded his crosshairs because “I found out Lennon was more
accessible”113 This information is vital in untangling Chapman's motives as, logically, it follows
that the motivation to commit a celebrity-homicide pre-dated the search for moral justification.
Unintentionally dehumanizing his victim, Chapman spoke of Lennon as an “It”114—
essentially a media facsimile of a person: “It’s important to understand how nobodies see
celebrities… These people aren’t real [emphasis added]. They don’t flush the toilet. They don’t
have bad days. They’re on TV. They’re on albums.”115 The media's two-dimensional
celebrification of Lennon allowed Chapman to think of him as the “toy that [The Child Nobody]
had played with years ago. It had once been his hero… He said, ‘Look! Look what one of my

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toys has become!’ and he threw a tantrum.”116 This does not necessarily mean that Chapman lied
about believing Lennon was a phony. However, Lennon's 'phoniness' allowed Chapman to
rationalize killing him, while minimizing his primary motive: the pathetic pursuit of fame.
Phoniness is what Goffman refers to as a “blemish of the individual character”117 and a
discreditable identity, which Chapman believed had been fully exposed and discredited with the
revelations of Lennon's opulent lifestyle.118 Thus Chapman's murder of the deviant 'phony'
Lennon was, in his world schema, a moral act [mj]. In Goffman's words:
Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social
characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will treat and value him in an
appropriate way. Connected with this principle is a second, namely than an individual
who implicitly or explicitly signifies that he has certain social characteristics ought to be
in fact what he claims he is.119
As we will see, Berkowitz, Ireland, Arkwright, Rodger, and Cho also provided varying degrees
of moral justification for murdering 'deviants.' In his classic Seductions of Crime, Katz noted that
many homicides are a kind of deformed enforcement of common morality, although Katz's
examples were of reactive homicides. This study reveals that acts of instrumental violence are no
exception. Paradoxically, Chapman was acutely aware that Lennon’s “terrible inconsistencies”120
mirrored his “own inconsistencies and my own pain and my own guilt at not having
accomplished anything.”121 The homicide would thus serve to exterminate two false identities—
John Lennon 'the phony', and the fake Chapman by reconciling his personal identity with his
enacted identity and his actual/own and ideal/own—or in Chapman’s words: “There was no fake
adult anymore. He was used and buried. He had disintegrated. He turned to dust. He was
gone.”122
If serial killers frequently prey on Egger’s “less dead”123, we might refer to John Lennon
as 'more dead' as his passing was mourned globally by millions, even culminating in the suicides
of three fans who did not know him personally.124 Beyond being celebrities, Ariyoshi, Carson,
Onassis, McCartney, and Scott all shared this quality of being potentially 'more dead.' Chapman
was not just killing up, he was aiming at celebrity gods atop the mass media Olympus.

3.4.4 Mark David Chapman: Post-Arrest Self and Identity

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 At this point, one of two transformative scenarios occurred—an ego-syntonic
consolidation of self or an ego-dystonic loss of self followed by a psychotic break—it is difficult
to ascertain which narrative is true. In the ego-dystonic scenario, Chapman claims that after
shooting John Lennon the actual/own:ideal/own transformation he expected did not occur:
...afterwards it was like the film strip broke [emphasis added]. I fell in upon myself. I like
went into a state of shock... And I was stunned. I didn't know what to do.qqq I took The
Catcher in the Rye out of my pocket. I paced, I tried to read it. I just couldn't wait... till
those police got there. I was just devastated.”125 To his astonishment, Chapman did not
transform into The Catcher ideal/own or anything at all: “There was nothing that felt
like I was within a womb; nothing that felt like I was Holden Caulfield
[actual/own:ideal/own]. I felt more of a panic...126

Following this failure to transform, the Child Nobody actual/own experienced dejection-related
emotions. Chapman was taken to the police station where he gave a statement confessing to
Lennon's murder and briefly alluding to his connection with Holden Caulfield. “I remember a lot
of pain and a lot of confusion at what I had done when I dictated the statement.”127 Psychiatrist
Naomi Goldstein who examined him immediately after the killing recorded: “an insatiable need
for attention and recognition... grandiose visions of himself... mood fluctuations… anger…
paranoid tendencies… suicidal thinking, rage, confusion and agitation about himself.”128
Similarly, biographer Jack Jones explains that Chapman was “depressed”129 in the weeks
following his arrest. Goldstein found no evidence of psychosis.
In early 1981, Chapman's lawyer gave him a copy of The Catcher in the Rye to read.
Pouring over the lines from his prison cell, Chapman states he felt it was a different book from
the one he had previously read. He “made a list of fifty total coincidences, things that were pretty
frightening because there was no way that they could have been planned, no way that I could
have set them up. It was like the whole killing was set up by destiny, just something that was
meant to be.”130 Convinced that he was on a mystical mission, Chapman “realized, in that
instant, that John Lennon had been killed to promote the reading of The Catcher in the Rye... In
that moment, I was on my feet and I came up off my bunk in the grip of a total, psychotic
euphoria.”131 He was reinvigorated by “knowing that there was a reason beyond myself for what
I had done [mj].”132rrr In this scenario, Chapman “became a savior”133, a notion reciprocated

qqq
Chapman had originally fantasized that, upon the police's arrival, he would shout “'I am Holden Caulfield, the
catcher in the rye of the present generation!' Then he would hold up the book and refuse to say another word.”
(Gaines, 1987, February 23).
rrr
Intriguingly, Chapman claims that this was the only time he feels he lapsed into “a psychotic episode... always

106
through the actions of corrections officers, who allegedly brought him “copies of the novel by
the boxful. Doctors, too, the psychologists... I signed [copies of the novel] to make them keep
them, so that they would never throw the books away... They would give the copies to their
friends, and I knew it would increase the value of the books.”134 Chapman concedes “I know it's
hard to believe there were no thoughts of celebrity when I was autographing those copies of the
book, but there wasn't. I simply wanted to make the book as special as possible.”135 By his own
admission, Chapman “would sign my name and write 'The Catcher in the Rye' [SAOS] at the
bottom of it.”136 Now, Chapman realized that he did not literally have to transform into Holden
Caulfield in order to spread his avatar's message. He, Mark David Chapman, could become The
Catcher (homicidal ideal/own), saving youth from entering the phony adult world by using his
notoriety to advertise the book.
The alternate scenario holds that Chapman's actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy was
bridged immediately upon murdering John Lennon. While Chapman claims he was in a state of
affective shock following the murder, Manhattan District Attorney Kim Hogrefe has a more
cynical interpretation of Chapman's actions: “He stood there and he waited... because he wanted
to be arrested because what's the point of committing a celebrity murder if your name isn't
associated with it?”137 Immediately after being handcuffed and placed into the patrol car,
Chapman's status as a 'somebody' was confirmed when one of the excited officers exclaimed
“This is history man!... This is history!”138 Chapman reportedly smiled and responded, “I am the
Catcher in the Rye [ideal/own].”139 This seems to contradict his claims of 'confusion' and
'devastation.' In this scenario, where Chapman “found my identity. But I had lost my life.”140 his
signing and distribution of copies of The Catcher in the Rye were communications that cemented
him as The Catcher. Every book he gave that was received gratefully by the generalized other,
bound him to this new homicidal ideal/own. His advocacy of the book, rather than being borne of
sheer psychosis as he claims, was an act of self-promotion. After reading the Lennon bio,
Chapman had “wished someone would write a book about me.”141 Now he was both the
protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye's pages and its real-life manifestation: “I was going to use
my trial... to promote the reading of that book. I didn't care about being at the trial. I wanted the
book to be at the trial [emphasis added].”142 “I dealt with [the negative emotions] by becoming

until then I had freedom of choice... But what happened... in my cell on Riker's Island that was a choice that was
made by somebody or something else” (Jones, 1992, p. 213).

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something other than a person. It was on the book now... It didn't matter whether I was alive or
dead... the book... would live long after us all and be read by millions of people...”143
Regardless of whether Chapman briefly succeeded or failed at reconciling his
actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy, during this time
wherever I went, from my cell to Bellevue to the courtroom, I took the book with me. In
court, I made sure that I was always holding it in my hand so everyone would see it as I
walked in and out... I held it crosswise so court reporters could see it, holding it very still
so the newspaper and TV artists could sketch it [emphasis added].”144 “I had planned to
read from the book the whole time during my trial and I was going to jump up at random
moments and shout, 'Read The Catcher in the Rye! I am The Catcher in the Rye
[homicidal ideal/own]!'145

Yet, by pleading guilty to second-degree murder on June 22, 1981, Chapman ruined his chance
to effectively promote The Catcher in the Rye. Though he claims not to know why, he now
attributes this decision to divine intervention.
Once he was permanently behind bars, Chapman claims to have become conflicted about
becoming The Catcher, recounting how an “officer asked me for my autograph, and I just said
‘that’s wrong to do that.’”146
I’m sure there was a part in me that enjoyed the attention, but there was a greater part of
me that revolted against being an ‘It.’ I had become the thing that I thought I had killed: I
became an ‘It.’ I had treated people like they were Its and then suddenly I became an It to
everybody in the world.147

Chapman’s use of the term “It” refers to the two-dimensional media image of Lennon as
talisman. With grim irony, Chapman's newfound fame turned him into a talisman for future
celebrity assassins John Hinckley Jr and Robert Bardo.148
To escape negative emotions [retreatism], Chapman allowed himself to slip back into
being Holden Caulfield whenever life became too painful, quashing his depression by closing the
gap between the actual/own (The Child Nobody) and the ideal/own (The Catcher). “It was an
option I always had, to once again become The Catcher in the Rye… that psychotic comfort of
being a fictional character.”149 Chapman claims that he made a willful decision to break free of
this opium of meta-delusion:
I finally said that I would not allow myself to be Holden Caulfield [The Catcher]. You
don’t know how hard it was for me to do that. Nobody will ever know how hard it was
for me to do that. Even now, after all these years, I feel my blood stir just thinking about
Holden Caulfield. I guess it's like a drug addict. To me, slipping into the mind of Holden
Caulfield was as comforting as a needle full of heroin to an addict. You can’t imagine

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 what it was like.150

Ultimately, becoming The Catcher did not quash Chapman's negative emotionality, nor
has his new Penitent Christian self. By his own admission: “I recognize that I still struggle with
not wanting to deal with all of my feelings of rejection, anger, rage, jealousy the whole assorted
cornucopia of hurts.”151 Rather, each ideal/own provides temporary respite for the man whose
mother told him he would be somebody important. “The child would finally get what he wanted:
not celebrity, but purpose. An important purpose... [T]his child would become a star in his own
movie [emphasis added]. One of the rare children who was destined to become what he had
idolized years before.”152 As author Jack Jones points out, by murdering John Lennon, Chapman
actually did obtain a measure of celebrity. He has received letters of both condemnation and
support from around the globe. One communication from a convict in the UK read: “You’ve
done something that you will always be remembered for, killing John Lennon. To tell the truth,
I'd like a status like that but I don't think I'd have the bottle to do it.”153 Chapman claims to find
these letters deplorable and has repeatedly expressed remorse for the slaying. Still married to his
devoted wife, he now presents himself as the Penitent Christian. Whether this is his new
actual/own, yet another ideal/own, an ought/own, or merely an enacted identity, as of 2014
Chapman continues to unsuccessfully apply for parole.

3.4.5 Mark David Chapman: Sexual/Gender Aspects

Though Mark Chapman’s sexuality and gender do not seem to have been directly
involved with his motives for killing John Lennon, he suffered from a chronic crisis of sexual
identity. Specifically, Chapman’s sexuality is defined by fear and guilt, overlapping significantly
with his Christian beliefs (1.6). In the days leading up to the Lennon murder, Chapman decided
to order a call-girl to his New York City hotel room—emulating his literary avatar, Holden
Caulfield. Once she arrived, he was delighted to see that she was wearing a green dress: the same
colour as the escort's clothing in The Catcher in the Rye. Following the Caulfield avatar's script,
Chapman did not participate in sexual acts with the prostitute. Instead he massaged her, and then
paid her $190 and kissed her goodbye. As he massaged her, he whispered “a real man [emphasis
added] doesn't have to use a woman. He can give.”154 This concept of the real man will re-
emerge in different guises across the cases in our study. More likely, Chapman was attempting to
circumvent confronting his 'unmanly' erotophobia by repackaging it as a progressive, and thus

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superior, masculinity.
Regarding his gender identity, Chapman the 'pussy'—a subordinated masculinity—was
concomitantly uneasy in his masculine relational identity, that is his identity as perceived by
other people, speculating that
Maybe my problem was I kind of sounded feminine. About a year ago I played my voice
in a tape recorder and I thought that was what it was.... One time about a year ago in a
store I was just trying to make up my mind what to get, you know, and this salesgirl, she
says, 'You're just like a woman—can't make up your mind.' You get somebody saying
something like that and it just crushes me.... I just felt like I wasn't worth anything.155

Unable to repair his wife's stereo turntable—a responsibility traditionally associated with the
masculine sphere of domestic life—Chapman flew into a rage and smashed it to pieces with a
hammer as she looked on in shock.156 Perhaps most interesting is how reluctant this infamous
murderer was to resort to violence against men who directly challenged his masculinity: “[T]hese
two fellows were coming up the stairs and talking too loud. I started yelling at them, telling them
to be quiet... later, he started whistling at my wife as he would go by our apartment. I just wanted
to jump out and grab him. But I didn't. I just got all frightened inside.”157 Yet Chapman was
routinely abusive to his wife158, his subordinated masculinity all-too comfortable in physically
and psychologically dominating a submissive female. Chapman voluntarily admits that he is a
“coward”159 who lost every fight he was ever in because “I could never hit anyone in the face...
even years later, when I killed [John Lennon]—I had to shoot him in the back.”160 By
committing a celebrity murder, he may have believed that he could refute this element of his
gender identity to himself and to the world. In this regard, he clearly failed.

3.4.6 Mark David Chapman: Religious/Philosophical Aspects

Chapman’s religiosity has already been discussed at great length during our examination
of his fervent Good Christian and lukewarm-Christian Captain Nemo ideal/selves, as well as
the post-incarceration Penitent Christian. Rather than covering the same ground, this section
will examine the 'darker' half of Chapman's faith: his brief flirtation with the Devil.
Endemic to the Holy Bible talisman and its Jehovah and Christ avatars, is the Devil
avatar (aka Satan, Lucifer). Just as Chapman sided with the 'benevolent' Christ during his pro-
social Captain Nemo phase, upon accepting his homicidal self he allied with the 'malevolent'
Satan character of the mythology. “God had been my anchor, but I cut the anchor line...”161 On

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his invoking of Satanic power, Chapman remarked “I would sit up all night and play Beatles
records, speeding them up, slowing them down, interjecting my own words. I would strip naked
gritting my teeth and summoning the devil and wild things into my mind. I was sending out
telegrams to Satan: 'Give me the opportunity to kill John Lennon.'”162 The content of Chapman's
Satanic prayers was “Hear me, Satan... Accept these pearls of my evil and my rage. Accept these
things from deep within me. In return... give me the power... to kill John Lennon. Give me the
power of darkness. Give me the power of death…”163 This strange ritualistic behaviour was
confirmed by Chapman's wife who awoke in the middle of the night to hear him chanting “The
phony must die says the Catcher in the Rye”164 in a strange voice, along with phrases such as
“the Catcher in the Rye is coming for you”165, “imagine that it's over”166, “don't believe in John
Lennon”167, and “imagine John Lennon is dead, oh yeah, yeah, yeah”168 These last two
incantations evidence the sacrifice of the John Lennon talisman to the Christ talisman; an
inversion of Lennon's lyrics “I don't believe in Jesus”169 from the song 'God' and “imagine there's
no heaven”170 from 'Imagine'.
It is tempting to dismiss these actions as mere symptoms of schizophrenia; indeed,
activities such as changing the speed of the musicsss do seem to indicate genuine psychosis.
However, the full picture begins with the social indoctrination and sanctioning of the Christian
delusional interpretive framework171 over the course of Chapman's life, his antagonism toward
John Lennon in his early teens, and his lifelong conviction that he was a 'nobody.' Each of these
elements was in place well before psychosis reared its head. Furthermore, if Chapman was heard
chanting “Hear me, Lord... Accept these pearls of my goodness and love. Accept these things
from deep within me. In return... give me the power... to help John Lennon. Give me the power
of light. Give me the power of life.” it would have been accepted as a normal, vanilla prayer—
although chanting all night certainly indicates a kind of religious mania. The purpose here is not
to take potshots at religion but to illustrate that Chapman draws from the Holy Bible talisman in
multitudinous ways. He is a devotee of Christ if it serves his purposes—when he requires a
socially acceptable self (e.g., rebounding from social rejection, endearing himself to a woman,
applying for parole)—but he easily switched allegiance to the antagonist of the mythology when
he needed to transition to a homicidal ideal/own. The Christian ideology does not guide

sss
I once knew a schizophrenic who played Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night album a few dozen RPMs faster
than the original recording, insisting that it “sounded better” that way.

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Chapman, rather he shapes it to conform to his existential needs at any particular moment.ttt
Rather than being an unwitting victim of psychosis, the meta-delusional Chapman “made a
decision to be crazy, or schizophrenic... It's a choice anybody can make. When I try, I'm still able
to put myself back into that 'thing' that I was.”172 David Berkowitz makes nearly identical claims
regarding his “demonology”173 in the next case study. For Chapman and Berkowitz, temporary
religious 'madness' was a means to an end “[I]f I had to be crazy to kill John Lennon, then I
would be crazy. I would rip off my clothes and summon demons and pray to the devil and if that
was being crazy, then I was crazy. But through all of that, it was me…I made the choice…to kill
another man.”174
It would be remiss to ignore how the premises underlying Chapman's meta-delusion have
been sanctioned by American society. During the Good Christian/Captain Nemo phases of his
life, Chapman and his girlfriend Jessica attended religious group meetings involving supposed
acts of “laying on of hands, miraculous healing, speaking in tongues, the gift of prophecy and the
deliverance from demons.”175 According to Chapman, “At times I would be on my back and five
or six people would be laying on hands... At other times there would be manifestations of
demonic power. I remember one man barking like a dog and then assuming a karate position....
We talked about demons more than we did about Jesus.”176 Though it is disingenuous to attribute
Chapman's homicidal impulses purely to the influence of charismatic Christianity—millions
engage in such practices every year and do not perpetrate acts of violence—those aspects of
Chapman's faith which justified ('Lennon said The Beatles are bigger than Jesus'), facilitated
('Hear me Satan…'), or excused ('God forgives me') the murder were drawn from superstitious
cultural beliefs and rituals purporting to be real and accepted as such by Chapman's phantom
community and large portions of the generalized other. With 68% of Americans believing the
Devil is real177 it socially constructs a 'truth'uuu—a narrative about the nature of reality—which
acts upon human beings. This gave rise to the delusional interpretive framework178 Chapman
utilized leading up to and following the killing.

In fact, it is so contradictory, it is routinely used this way. For example, the Old Testament advocates 'an eye for
ttt

an eye' while the new says to 'turn the other cheek.' These admonishments stand in direct opposition to each other. If
one needs to justify being vengeful he can quote the former, while a coward or pacifist can quote the latter.
uuu
Almost certainly not the truth, as validated by empirical scientific inquiry. Rather, the 'truth' in quotation marks I
refer to here is something that is not Real, but acts as if it is, because it is widely held to be. For instance, the
existence of Santa Claus is not the truth, but because children believe it to be so, the myth affects reality by
prompting them to leave milk and cookies for him every December 24th.

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3.4.7 Mark David Chapman: Class Aspects
Having assassinated a wealthy celebrity—a “decadent bastard... with millions of dollars
and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me”179—Chapman presented
yet another paradox when he claimed that “Living it up means identity… Identity means
security, warmth, and all those human things… I wasn't a murderer, but I had to have an
identity.”180 Following this logic of 'opulence-is-tantamount-to-identity', he purchased a suit and
top coat for his trip to New York City where he “went to front row [Broadway] plays... $40
carriage rides. Taxis all over, limos all over the place. First class flights. Filet mignon at the
Waldorf.”181 According to District Attorney Kim Hogrefe, “He had gotten front row tickets for
George C. Scott’s one man show at the time. And he claimed that he was going to take his gun
out there in the middle of the show, stand up, and shoot into the body of George C. Scott. He
wasn't able to buy the bullets for the gun.”182 One wonders what justification he would have
given for killing an actor he admitted was 'great.'
Prior to New York, Chapman had run up a fortune in debt renting a Lincoln Continental
and driving his wife and recently-divorced mother out for weekend excursions at expensive
Hawaiian hotels and restaurants. “I ran up debts renting fancy cars and staying in fancy hotels
where people would think I was somebody [emphasis added]—because inside I knew that I was a
nobody [emphasis added]. 'Captain Nemo'—Captain Nobody, who had nothing, not even a job at
that point.”183 This class-consciousness, entwined with his need for notability, likely comprised
the latent aspects of Chapman's ideal self which precipitated his plunge into depression in
Hawaii. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of class-consciousness in Chapman's background
before that point—the Hippie, Good Christian, and Captain Nemo ideal/owns all theoretically
eschewed the importance of materialism. For this reason, a competent analysis as to why
Chapman believed “living it up means identity”184 is difficult. One potential scenario is that
Chapman's obsession with notoriety was broader, entailing an obsession with celebrity which
also encompassed opulence. This celebrity worship would have been instilled in him by
immersion in hyperreal simulation from a young age.

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3.4.8 Mark David Chapman: Vocational Aspects
During his 25 years of freedom, Mark David Chapman transitioned from a YMCA
counsellor to a custodian to a print shop operator and finally a security guard. He routinely quit
stable jobs seemingly on impulse, and like the majority of offenders in this study, was
unemployed in the months leading up to the Lennon killing. Although he enjoyed working as a
custodian, once he was engaged to Gloria, Chapman the Providing Patriarch switched
professions, becoming a print shop operator because “I felt like I had to do better... wanting to
get ahead, feeling I had to have a more important job and be more responsible if I was getting
married.”185 Fired from the print shop and 'reduced' to a security guard, Chapman attempted to
compensate by becoming an art dealer. Having no experience of such a specialized profession he
was predictably conned into buying “Salvador Dali's gold plaque for $5000”186 by an
unscrupulous art gallery who cooked their books. Though Chapman later successfully sued the
gallery and used the $5000 to buy an original Norman Rockwell, he soon gave up on the art
world. Eventually, he became a house-husband.

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Concluding Thoughts: Mark David Chapman

Table 3

Mark Chapman: Selves and Strain

Actual/Own Ideal/Own Homicidal Self Post-Arrest Self

Sexuality Sexual Christianity used to N/A Resolved.
Frustration renegotiate social Incarcerated.
(Erotophobia) interpretation of Retreatism.
sex. Retreatism.
Gender Subordinated. Counter-culture or Act of murder Christianity used to
Gender-role Christianity used to challenges notions renegotiate role of
strain ('nerd', renegotiate role of that he is a coward masculinity. No
'pussy', masculinity. No or a 'pussy'. gender-role strain.
househusband). gender-role strain. Less gender-role
Cowardly. strain.
Religion/Philosophy Theistic Strong influence Appeals to Devil Penitent Christian
Class Middle-class 'Living it up means Destruction of a Resolved.
Mertonian Strain. identity' symbol of Incarcerated.
affluence. Retreatism
Vocation Menial. Captain Nemo: N/A Resolved.
Unstable. 'everyone in camp Incarcerated.
loved me… I had Retreatism.
been a somebody'
Race Ego-syntonic. N/A N/A N/A
Non-racist.
Notability Ego-dystonic. Ego-syntonic. Ego-syntonic. Ego-syntonic. Media
Mertonian strain. 'Important' 'Captain Killed the 'biggest
circus. Public
Nemo' someone.' performance of
penitence.
Like many baby-boomers, Mark David Chapman was raised in a world where television
and radio broadcasts resounded through his family home—the earliest stages of Baudrillard's
hyperreality. In this Zeitgeist, celebrities such as The Beatles, Elizabeth Taylor, and George C.
Scott were a ubiquitous presence, embodying the ultimate realization of post-war American
cultural goals: wealth and fame. Chapman fantasized about becoming one of these media-borne
deities, slowly forming the belief that he was a special person who was destined for 'greatness'.

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His highly-religious mother, routinely physically abused by her husband, sought refuge in Mark's
love to the point where she idolized her son. She reinforced his grandiose notions, though neither
seemed to give much thought to exactly what skill or accomplishment Mark would actually
become 'great' for:
I was always destined for greatness, and I don’t mean in an ego sense, I mean in a real,
rational sense. I told my mother this ten years ago, and she told me I was. She agreed
with me, and I said, ‘I don't know if it’s I’m going to be a great actor or a great
musicianvvv [emphasis added] or what.’187

With the most important figure in his life confirming his own self-important prophecy, finding
'greatness' became the driving force in Mark's life. This close bond between mother and son,
along with the emotional absence of the father, also meant that he was exposed almost
exclusively to femininity. Predictably, upon entering school, Mark was immediately associated
with subordinated masculinity by his peers and pushed to the social margins. The cowardly
'nobody', psychologically and physically unable to project himself farther up the social hierarchy,
instead retreated back into media, fantasy, and his mother's arms. This either led to or
exacerbated his failed socialization, which, in turn, stunted his psycho-social growth so that he
remained at the developmental level of a child or adolescent.
As Chapman seems to have identified his subordinated masculinity as the factor which
led to his exclusion, upon entering his teenage years he pursued ideal selves which either
repackaged subordinated masculinity as virtuous or downplayed the importance of (sub-)
hegemonic masculinity altogether: the Hippie, Good Christian, and Captain Nemo. Although
this avoidance strategy should have worked in theory, Chapman still remained infantile and
unable to socially navigate through post-pubescent society. It is no coincidence that his greatest
success was in managing children for the YMCA as the beloved 'Captain Nemo.' However, if he
was challenged by a peer, Chapman's actual/own:ideal/own discrepancies were activated,
plunging him into emotional turmoil. Whenever this occurred, he would partially or thoroughly
renounce the related ideal/own self and the subculture to which it belonged. This pattern
continued into his Twenties when it became obvious that he could not function in 'ordinary'
society, let alone transcend regular people to achieve his promised 'greatness.' Upon realizing
this, Chapman abandoned all self-guides and attempted suicide. When he was unsuccessful, he

vvv
Before the rise of the mass media, an actor or musician was hardly something to aspire to, and was rarely known
outside small social circles, let alone associated with greatness. Granted, there are a few historical exceptions.

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interpreted this as proof that God had wanted him to remain alive, and concomitantly, for a
reason. Chapman's subsequent marriage and attempt to be the Providing Patriarch had little to
do with love—his treatment and devaluation of his wife makes this clear— rather, it was an
earnest attempt to live a 'normal' life. Yet, the promise of fame and riches still lingered in his
psyche, and the underwhelming drudgery of menial labour was a constant reminder of this. This
is evidenced by his extravagant spending on luxuries during this period: a futile effort to mimic
the celebrity lifestyle he so coveted.
Collapsing into despair once more, this time Chapman emerged with a plan to realize the
prophecy of his own 'greatness.' By murdering one who had already achieved it, he could bypass
the perilous waters of socializing, and obtain instant fame. At the same time, Chapman was
paradoxically obsessed with morality, and thus any assassination plot needed to cast him in the
role of 'hero' and his target as 'villain.'188 Lennon's hypocritical advocacy of a less materialistic,
more spiritual pacifist lifestyle—the superiority of subordinated masculinity over all other
variations—not only allowed Chapman to stigmatize him as a 'phony', but also to blame him for
Chapman's legacy of failure as a hippie, charitable Christian, and house-husband. In his
homicidal fantasies, Chapman would leave his Hawaiian paradise, descend into the chaos of pre-
Giuliani New York and slay the corrupting force 'Lennon', restoring innocence to the world.
Through this process, he would overcome his own cowardly subordinated masculinity—and
emerge transformed as The Catcherwww—the heroic savior of a generation. This classic Hero
narrative, brilliantly articulated in Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces, has
existed across cultures since the dawn of man, first reflected in hyporeal mythologies, then
crossing over to the mass-produced books, movies, and television shows of the Information
Age.189 The fact that Chapman's fantasies mirrored the narrative so precisely is not only a
testament to its pervasiveness, but also to his complete immersion in hyperreal simulation.
Accordingly, he donned The Catcher in the Rye talisman, and either sought to literally become
or emulate the Holden Caulfield simulacrum, whose alienation he identified with so profoundly.
In destroying a symbolic representation of opulence in John Lennon, Chapman also
eliminated any possibility of elevating his own social class or accumulating wealth. No longer
would this married man have to “do better”190, “get ahead”191, “have a more important job”192, or

www
As Chapter 4 will reveal, Chapman's homicidal expressions all explicitly and semiotically mark his attempt to
leave behind The Child Nobody and become The Catcher.

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“be more responsible”193. Instead, he became a ward of the state—fed, and left alone to read and
writexxx—the eternal child gladly liberated from the independence that so tormented him. His
subordinated masculinity and erotophobia was negligible in prison. Protective custody shielded
him from the threat of aggressive men, and there were few if any women to remind him of his
inadequacies. This prospect of sexual isolation was not unwelcome. Chapman “had never
especially enjoyed the act of intercourse... something about the wet, warm feeling of entering a
woman's body... had always frightened him... He could count the number of times... that he had
engaged in the act of coitus, even with his wife.”194 In short, prison conveniently excused this 25-
year-old child from having to live up to the conventional demands of manhood.
For all of his years of religious devotion, the Holy Bible talisman neither prevented
Chapman from attempting suicide or committing homicide. As Postman warned, hyperreal
religion allowed Chapman to select whichever metaphysical truth he wanted on any given
occasion. When he wished to fit in with the Christian community he was celibate, opposed both
abortion and euthanasia as 'murder'195, sang hymns, helped hundreds of people, and prayed to
God or Christ. But the minute the community or a member of the community did not respond to
him in the way he expected, he reduced the role of Christianity in his life, as if to punish his
creator (burning the talisman). Indeed, when he needed to psych himself up to murder John
Lennon he prayed to Jehovah's enemy, Satan, to grant him the strength. Then, after experiencing
guilt and hopelessness while incarcerated, he switched back to worshipping God/Christ because
he offered the prospect of hope and forgiveness. All things considered, Chapman always used the
Holy Bible talisman to combat his negative emotionality and facilitate a new self, regardless of
that self's morality. The holy text was like a hammer, used to build homes for the poor one
moment and to viciously bludgeon a man in the next—an instrument of Chapman's will, rather
than the other way around.
The death of John Lennon continues to be viewed as a tragedy by millions. The second
tragedy of this story is that in his 25 years before murdering Lennon, Mark David Chapman had
accomplished a great deal: becoming the heroic 'Captain Nemo' to the children he worked with,
helping refugees, marrying a faithful and supportive wife, and travelling the world from Japan to
Dublin. As a self-avowed Christian, this should have fulfilled him.

xxx
During a hospital visit, Chapman once told a therapist that he wanted to be in prison so he could rest and read
(Jones, 1992).

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 Though the assassination of John Lennon occurred in 1980, there is something prescient
in Chapman's belief that he would achieve extreme fame, although he could not specify what it
was that he would be famous for. Like the talentless reality TV star who humiliates himself in
front of a global audience just for a chance to be “known for his well-knowness”196, Chapman
would permanently discredit his character with the master stigma of being a murderer to have his
15 minutes in the spotlight. The grating reality, of course, is that in order to understand men like
him, we must continue to discuss them. Besides his numerous television interviews and
biography, in the years since the murder, Chapman has been portrayed in song (e.g., 'I Just Shot
John Lennon' by The Cranberries) and most notably by acclaimed actor Jared Leto in the 2007
film Chapter 27. Raised in a world of simulation, this 'media junkie' has himself become
hyperreal.

3.5 David Berkowitz: ‘Reject’ to ‘Son of Sam’

Talismans: Holy Bible, Rosemary's Baby, True Crime novels; Type: 1

3.5.0 David Berkowitz: Failed socialization and formation and realization of the actual/own
self
Born Richard David Falco on June 1, 1953, the future 'Son of Sam' was adopted three
days later by Nathaniel and Pearl Berkowitz, a childless Jewish couple, and renamed 'David
Berkowitz'. Berkowitz grew up in the Bronx, and was much closer to Pearl, as Nate worked long
hours every day at his hardware store. Sometime between the ages of three and six (late-
interrelational/early-dimensional), Nate and Pearl explained to David that he was adopted,
telling him (falsely) that his natural mother had died when he was born.197 According to Nate,
“The reason why we told David so early was to protect him from the other children, if they
should say to him he was adopted without his knowing it. He accepted it.”198 However,
Berkowitz claims he was “surprised, confused”199 about the revelation. “I had a deep desire to
know my natural family... I always believed [my biological mother] had died, and I felt guilty
torn apart... I thought I was responsible for her death.”200 We will unpack this shortly.
Berkowitz attended Shore Haven elementary and Columbus High School, earning poor
grades and spending his classes being disruptive and daydreaming.201 Numerous individuals who
knew him as a child have described him acting out and bullying other children. When Berkowitz
later referred to himself as a “Little Brat”202 in his 1977 letter to Captain Joseph Borrelli, he may

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very well have been alluding to his boyhood tantrums. Another possibility is that, like Chapman
and several other offenders in this study, he perceived that he had never truly matured.
Speculation aside, we will not dwell on Berkowitz's childhood misconduct any further, for as
Leyton sensibly pointed out, this behaviour “is interesting, but all it offers us is one variation of a
type of child with which every neighbourhood is cursed...”203 Interestingly, an adult neighbour,
who frequently involved Berkowitz in outdoor excursions and sports with his son, said
Berkowitz was a “normal, good child.”204 Yet, despite his perceived athletic ability he was
reluctant to try out for Little League because “he was afraid of becoming a failure in front of
people.”205 When Berkowitz eventually did, the neighbour claims he was the best player on the
team. Berkowitz's insecurity in comparing himself to and/or competing against other people is
also evidenced in his attitudes towards his paternal cousins:
They excelled in everything. They had physical good looks. They had good marks in
school, and their schools really were good... I had an acne condition when I was young
and I was fat. I had it until I was 18. I had difficulty getting together with girls. My
cousins were popular – tall, slim, they had a lot of girlfriends.206

Berkowitz's self-conceptualization as socially inadequate may have initially stemmed from his
relationship with his parents: “I wanted to have praise. Praise for heroism. Instead I got
criticized... I could never meet their standards.”207 Regardless of the roots of Berkowitz's social
inadequacy, it is a perception of him shared by others. A woman who encountered him in a
Florida bar described him as “a quiet listener, who would timidly attempt to join animated
conversation. He'd interject a few comments, with his bemused smile, then quickly be cut out of
the group as an odd duck. Then he'd retreat and try to strike up a conversation with others.”208
After interviewing him in Attica prison, FBI agent John Douglas wrote of Berkowitz as “not
what I would call a charismatic guy, and he was always searching for some bit of recognition or
personal achievement. He had bright blue eyes that were always trying to pick out if someone
was generally interested, or laughing at him.”209 Here we see a repetition of the communication
dysfunctions exhibited by Mark David Chapman in the previous case study. Berkowitz
acknowledged this inability to bond with others, despite his desire to do so: “I was never able to
relate to people. I was always a loner.”210 Unable to see himself through the eyes of others, be
they the Floridian bar customer or John Douglas, Berkowitz was left to guess the causes of his
social alienation. As his deficiencies were subtle (e.g., 'a bemused smile' and 'eyes that were
always trying to pick out if someone was generally interested'), it is understandable why he

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would be baffled as to the reasons for his rejection. Raised in a culture which encourages
supernatural interpretations of unexplained phenomena, he reasoned: “There is a force to [sic]
turn other people away from me. Somebody wants me destroyed, makes people dislike me and
makes girls be not attracted to me in any way. If I had close friends or girlfriends, I would be
able to resist the force. I would be able to resist, if I had people.”211 Here we can see the depth of
his religious belief and perhaps the seeds of his resulting demonology (more in 3.5.6).
Berkowitz's actual/own is that of the Reject: rebuffed by his biological parents and
women, losing his adopted mother Pearl to cancer in his early teens, and finally abandoned when
his one-surviving parent, Nathan, remarried and relocated to Florida.

3.5.1 David Berkowitz: Pre-homicidal Original Ideal/Selves and Negative Emotionality

David Berkowitz writes that “ever since I was a small child, my life seemed to be filled
with torment… During this period of my life I was also plagued with bouts of severe
depression.”212 Even in pre-pubescence he experienced suicidal ideation:
Sometimes I spent time sitting on a window ledge with my legs dangling over the side.
We lived on the 6th floor of an old apartment building. When my dad saw me doing this
he would yell at me to get back inside. I also felt powerful urges to step in front of
moving cars or throw myself in front of subway trains. At times those urges were so
strong that my body actually trembled.213

A recent review of the academic literature on adoption, identity, and self-esteem by Horstman et
al. provides valuable insights into Berkowitz's childhood depression. Firstly, adoptees who view
their adoptive identity as a highly salient characteristic generally regard it as the 'organizing
theme' of the self, and become preoccupied with it, expending an inordinate amount of personal
energy.214 Secondly, a strong understanding by the adoptee of the circumstances associated with
his or her adoption is linked to higher self-esteem and lower levels of depression. Less
information has inverse results accompanied by identity-related confusion.215 This level of
understanding is tied to another important factor: openness and frequency of communication, or
“conversation orientation”216, within the family about the adoption.217 Berkowitz who “had a
deep desire to know my natural family”218 was clearly an individual with high adoptive identity
salience. Furthermore, his father's assertion that David “accepted”219 the revelation of his
adoption compared to the offender's own claims that he was “surprised, confused”220 strongly
indicates the matter was not sufficiently discussed in the household (i.e., low conversation

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orientation). Predictably, the young Berkowitz experienced what Horstman et al. call “feelings of
isolation and low levels of trust in adoptive parents... as well as low levels of positive affect
about adoption and self-esteem...”221 His attitude towards his self became associated with loss222,
hence Reject: “I always believed [my biological mother] had died, and I felt guilty torn apart... I
thought I was responsible for her death.”223 His torment only deepened when his adopted mother,
Pearl, died of cancer when Berkowitz was only 13 (late vectorial development). “For the most
part, my mother was my source of stability. With her now gone, however, my life quickly went
downhill. I was filled with anger at the loss of my mom. I felt hopeless and my periods of
depression were more intense than ever.”224
Berkowitz's biographer, Lawrence Klausner, summarized Berkowitz's attempts to reduce
the negative emotionality resulting from the discrepancy between his actual and ideal selves by
creating a false macho persona: “His response, both to rejection and to a shaky sense of self,
began with bravado. He boasted of achievements, strength, and sexual conquests that did not
exist.”225 Prohaska & Gailey keenly observe that “men participate in activities that adhere to the
hegemonic ideal so that other men will recognize their masculinity... Men fear rejection by other
menyyy, and the only way to avoid this rejection is to participate in normative masculine
behaviors... Thus, real manhood is only achieved when ‘real men’ acknowledge and approve of
other men's accomplishments.”226 Standard ways to seek such approval is to convince other men
that one is a 'winner', physically and emotionally tough, and sexually successful. As Berkowitz
met none of these criteria, his enacted identity was deceitful in a manner so incredulous it
resulted in communication gaps with his personal identity and ascribed relational identity.
According to CTI, this would have contributed to his negative-emotionality.
Ultimately, if Berkowitz’s new persona was to be believed by himself and others, he
would eventually have to live up to it. Around the age of 17, he moved to Co-op City but the
girls there “didn't find me attractive. I began to hate girls and wanted to join the army.”227 In the
interim he enrolled in the “auxiliary police, and fire departments; I wanted to make a dramatic
rescue, to be a hero.”228 Unsurprisingly, the first ideal/own to emerge as an adult was that of the
American Fighting Patriot, who, contrary to the widespread counter-cultural condemnation of

yyy
Unfortunately, this text overlooks the rather obvious fact that women also police men's masculinity and that men
seek female approval in roughly equal measure because it enables sexual access. For an example, see the
behaviour of Elliot Rodger's stepmother in Appendix II.

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the war in Vietnam, was “fanatically patriotic”229 expressed his support for the conflict, and
enthusiastically enlisted. He “wanted some adventure.... wanted experience of life... wanted to
serve the country...”230 and hoped to “die for a cause”231. Sent to South Korea in 1972 rather than
Vietnam, Berkowitz's enthusiasm for military life quickly waned: “I got there in the unit and I
was really, you know, just out of training. I was gung-ho. Almost straight. But later in Korea, it
varied. The Army had a way of making you a nobody [emphasis added]. You know. Impossible.
I felt like I was going to make a revolt against them.”232 The sense of respect and camaraderie he
expected was undermined by constant criticism: “Everybody is down on you. Old lifers, you just
can't please them. Petty stuff... The Koreans hated you and the army lifers hassled you
constantly.”233 [trigger] When the discrepancy widened between Berkowitz's Reject actual/own
and his American Fighting Patriot ideal/own, dejection-related emotions followed. Later, he
would describe Korea as “nothing but a bad dream”234, noting “I joined the Army, in a sense, to
start a new life and get away from my problems. But even in the service I had trouble
coping...”235 He self-medicated with marijuana and LSD to “find a way to temporarily escape
this lousy life” and “straighten out my distorted messed up mind...”236 Interestingly, like his
sexual conquests, many doubt Berkowitz's claims to have experimented with drugs at all.
Accordingly, Berkowitz's ideal/own took a 180 degree turn and became a Hippie,
refusing to carry a gun and writing to his friend Iris “I don't play anymore conservative patriotic
scenes. I woke up. This world is all fucked up (thanks Nixon). We've got to have some peace.
The only thing on my mind is Drugs, Music, Pollution, Poverty, Peace and Love... I despise
religion...”237 Yet within less than 10 months of his declaration, Berkowitz was reassigned to Fort
Knox in Kentucky. There, the Hippie ideal/own mutated fully into a Good Christian, and he
began searching for a kind of religion at Fort Knox... There was an emptiness there, you
know, with God. The meaning of life. I used to read a lot. Soul-searching, you know?
They had guys in the barracks, like really Christian. They used to go to church all the
time. One of them, John Almond, used to ask if I wanted to go along. One day I did. I
went to church. The service was really uplifting. Men, women, children, singing, holding
hands. I never felt anything like that before in my life... I finally converted... I went
through the thing. They wanted to dunk you in water. Yeah, I went through it because
you're supposed to, if you want to get in there. You know. Join. I didn't want to lose my
Jewishness [actual/own]. But again, I wanted to be with these people [ideal/own].238

Once more, for a suspiciously short period of time, Berkowitz threw himself headfirst into this
new ideal/own, listening “to religious broadcasts constantly—seven days a week. I read dozens

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of religious books... I spent my days telling my peers and superior officers of the need to be
'saved' and the tragic increase in sexual immorality and permissiveness of our day.”239
Ominously, Berkowitz would later remark “All the sermons were about demons... sin, hell,
damnation, etc... They had a bad effect on my mind... I was enthralled with the doctrine of the
Apocalypse—the end of the world and the ever-lasting punishment of sinners. 'Hell' fascinates
me.”240 However, “towards the end of my tour at Fort Knox, I began to lose interest in Christian
stuff. I could never stay with anything too long.”241 With a discrepancy forming between his
actual/own and Good Christian ideal/own, Berkowitz now felt “guilty for having let himself be
baptized, and angry at those who had persuaded him to take such a step... he had now become
more guilty and depressed.”242
According to Klausner, Berkowitz “wanted to be good-looking, popular, successful,
romantic, and loved by young women. He was none of these except in fantasies.”243 These
aspirations all relate to the sexual/gender aspects of his self, which are reflected in his three
ideal/selves: Conservative (American Fighting Patriot) to Liberal (Hippie) back to
Conservative (Good Christian). Each mark a failed attempt to belong to a stereotypical pre-
defined segment of American society. Like Mark David Chapman sporting his “I'M UNIQUE. I
THINK FOR MYSELF” t-shirt, Berkowitz, who proudly proclaimed “I'm an individual
again”244, was, in reality, wholly conventional in his views. The American Fighting Patriot was
a grab for sub-hegemonic masculinity, while the Hippie and Good Christian offered alternative
'peaceful and non-materialistic' alternative masculinities—the illusion that Berkowitz had chosen
a subordinated masculinity as some kind of moral decision, rather than being born into it. Again,
the parallels to Chapman are remarkable.
Returning to New York from Fort Knox, he eventually settled into an apartment at 35
Pine Street in Yonkers, New York and found employment in a series of menial positions.
Berkowitz said that he “just wanted to live a nice happy life. I wanted friends, a good job, a
future, maybe an education.”245 “I was at a vulnerable time, getting out of the army, and all my
friends that I knew before I went in the army had all gotten moved on, gotten married, so I was
kind of like the odd man out. And I was just lonely and searching for my place in the world and
fell into a lot of hard times.”246 He began tracking down his biological parents, dreaming of
finally having a “perfect family—a blissful family—a perfect relationship.”247 He joined the
Adoptee's Liberty Movement Association (ALMA) and at the first meeting “told them I would

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like to look up my natural father... My mother, I said, had died at my birth... They then explained
that they laughed because every adoptee is told the same story. Later on I confronted my
(adoptive) father about it, and he acknowledged the falseness of the story.”248 His attempts at
establishing a Normal Family Man ideal/own, were complicated when he “tried to go out with
some of the girls in Co-Op City. They didn’t find me attractive.”249 and he “began to hate
girls.”250 A second blow came upon learning that his biological mother, rather than dying, had
given him up for adoption “for her benefit, not mine”251 because Berkowitz surmised he “was
not good enough [actual/own]”252. This led him to feel increasingly “bothered and tormented.”253
“Here I was, never wanting to be born in the first place... miserable, unhappy, maladjusted,
plagued with Death fantasies and suicidal hopes [strong actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy], only
to find out that I was unwanted, an accident after all.”254 Considering his existing, long-standing
adoption-related issues, Berkowitz was sent psychologically reeling. Rather than resigning
himself to an existence as a Reject (actual/own), approximately five months after a
disappointing meeting with his biological mother [trigger], Berkowitz took a month's leave from
work in November 1975 and began to lay the foundation for his homicidal ideal/own.

3.5.2 David Berkowitz: Renegotiated Homicidal ideal/own

At some point that same year, Berkowitz had started reading “about murderers, among
them Nathan Leopold and the notorious mass murderer Richard Speck”255 saying after his 1977
capture “I like to read about murders and murderers—it's a recent interest of mine—a little over
two years.”256 There is no evidence that either offender served as a talisman for Berkowitz, as
their victims, methods, and motives differed greatly. Still, through his true crime readings, he
was learning that he could gain an identity through the commission of murder. Here The Son of
Samzzz homicidal ideal/own was formed: a specific roaming “monster”257 variation on the
serialkiller!aaaa talisman.258 Berkowitz made his first attempt to kill a woman on Christmas Eve.
Cruising the streets of Co-Op City with a hunting knife, at about 10:45 p.m. he spotted Michelle
Foreman, a “young girl”259. He hurried towards her and stabbed her repeatedly in the back.
Recalling the attack, Berkowitz later said “I stabbed her, she looked at me. I stabbed her again....

zzz
Berkowitz's homicidal expressions all served to announce his transformation into the monstrous Son of Sam.
This will be explored in great detail in Chapter 4.
aaaa
Though the term 'serial killer' was not in common use in 1977, the concept existed in the public imagination.
Hence, we use serialkiller! in the sensationalized media sense, not as a specific category of criminal.

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It wasn't like the moviesbbbb [emphasis added] when the stabbed person falls down and is
killed.”260 Out of his element, he fled.
Having decided upon a less personal, more effective way of killing, Berkowitz obtained a
.44 Bulldog pistol from an ex-army buddy in Texas. Berkowitz would go on to murder six young
New Yorkers and wound seven more using this powerful handgun—nearly always shooting them
while they sat in parked cars—from July 29, 1976–July 31, 1977. Following the double-
homicide of Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani on April 17, 1977, Berkowitz left a
handwritten note for the police near the crime scene referring to himself as 'the Son of Sam', a
'Little Brat', and signing it 'Mr. Monster'. The Son of Sam [ideal/own] moniker was released to
the press, and with its alliteration and cryptic reference to a second sinister figure, quickly
replaced the former media-coined '.44 caliber killer' sobriquet. Mayor Abraham Beame later
admitted “I knew the press was going to have a field day. Son of Sam. I even liked the name and
that in itself is terrifying. I knew it would stick...would become his trademark.”261 For the first
time in his life, Berkowitz's ideal/own had been accepted and validated by the generalized other.
He believed that at “the point in which the papers began to pick up vibes and information that
something big was happening on the street”262 that “it was good to [commit murder], necessary
to do it, and that the public wanted me to do it. The latter part I believe until this day. I believe
that many were rooting for me.”263 Abrahamsen notes “The murderer's crimes, as a matter of
fact, had been reported on the front page of the Vatican’s L'Osservatore Romano, the Hebrew
newspaper Maariv, and the Soviet Izvestia.”264 By perpetrating the most blasé form of serial
murder in a metropolis, Berkowitz had become international news.
Following the shooting of Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante in Brooklyn, Berkowitz
returned to his car to find he had received a parking ticket.
I knew that the police would eventually come around. I've always known that it was a
standard procedure for the police to check for traffic violations given out in the
neighborhood of a crime scene. Also, license plate numbers of all cars parked within a
large radius of a crime are also noted and eventually checked. This is usually done within
several hours after a crime. Uniform policemen go up and down nearby streets recording
the plate numbers and the model of all cars in the vicinity. So I knew that they would be
coming. It was just a matter of time. But it did surprise me that it took almost two
weeks.265

bbbb
Once again, the expectation that murder in Reality would resemble its cinematic depiction is proof of
Baudrillard's simulation.

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Arrested outside his Bronx apartment on August 10, 1977, a smiling Berkowitz reportedly
remarked “You finally got me. What took you so long?”266 We might well ask him in return why
he waited around to be arrested, though the answer is shamefully obvious: “I was glad in a way
that they caught me.”267 Like Mark Chapman, at long last David Berkowitz had an identity to
parade before the entire world. The discrepancy between his actual/own and ideal/own selves
was gone, at least for a while.

3.5.3 David Berkowitz: Victimology

Table 4
David Berkowitz Victimology
Victim Name Age Race Gender Date Murdered Where
Michelle Foreman Teen White Female December 24, 1975/survived Bronx, outdoors
Donna Lauria 18 White Female July 29, 1976/died Bronx, parked car
Jody Valenti 19 White Female July 29, 1976/survived Bronx, parked car
Carl Denaro 20 White Male October 23, 1976/survived Queens, parked car
Rosemary Keenan 18 White Female October 23, 1976/survived Queens, parked car
Donna Demasi 16 White Female November 27, 1976/survived Queens
Joanne Lomino 18 White Female November 27, 1976/survived Queens
Christine Freund 26 White Female January 30, 1977/died Queens
John Diel 30 White Male January 30, 1977/survived Queens
Virginia Voskerichian 19 White Female March 8, 1977/died Queens
Alexander Esau 20 White Male April 17, 1977/died Bronx
Valentina Suriani 18 White Female April 17, 1977/died Bronx
Sal Lupo 20 White Male June 26, 1977/survived Queens
Judy Placido 17 White Female June 26, 1977/survived Queens
Stacy Moskowitz 20 White Female July 31, 1977/died Brooklyn
Robert Violante 20 White Female July 31, 1977/survived Brooklyn

Berkowitz's victims were symbolic: he targeted “pretty” 268 young women—almost always

brunettes—and their male lovers. More than half of his attacks took place in Queens because
“there are a lot of pretty women [emphasis added] there. It seemed to me that Forest Hills was

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where the prettiest ones [emphasis added] were”269, speculating that it “must be the water they
drink.”270 He rationalized his crimes by expressing contempt for the perceived societal privilege
of his victims, stating [mj] “everybody mourns more for pretty girls, more than ugly. Pretty girls
get more attention in life. Guys lay down their lives for them... I mean some pretty girls at
eighteen lived three times over, with all the attention they got. If a pretty one dies, what the hell.
She had a good time.”271 The implication is that Berkowitz felt that comparatively he had not
received even a fraction of this attention, and had hardly 'lived' at all, let alone 'three times over.'
Paradoxically, Berkowitz also explained that “I loved them, I want to love them.”272 In
one breath he protested their perceived privilege, while in another he admitted that, if given the
chance, he would gladly have joined in worshipping them. As Leyton observed of multiple
murderers 30 years ago, “these killers are no radicals: they have enthusiastically embraced the
established order only to discover that it offers them no place they can endure.”273 Berkowitz
exemplifies the adage that love rejected equals hatred rather than indifference. Similar
sentiments regarding attractive women will appear in the cases of Danny Rolling and Elliot
Rodger.
Berkowitz situates the relationship of his victims to himself and society within hegemonic
masculinity, and its accomplice emphasized femininity. Emphasized femininity complies “with
this subordination [of women] and is oriented to accommodating the interests and desires of
men.”274 It does so by:
the display of sociability rather than technical competence, fragility in mating scenes,
compliance with men's desire for titillation and ego-stroking in office relationships,
acceptance of marriage and childcare as a response to a labour market that discriminates
against women. At the mass level these are organized around themes of sexual receptivity
in relation to younger women and motherhood in relation to older women.275

As Berkowitz did not stalk his victims, the degree and character of emphasized femininity in their
lives was confined to his interpretation of them in the moments before he inflicted violence upon
them. His repeated references to them as “pretty”276—a descriptor largely agreed upon by those
who have publicly commented on their physical appearance277—along with the fact that 55% of
Berkowitz’s female victims and 100% of his male victims were in parked cars together at night,
is significant. In the short time he observed them, Berkowitz interpreted his female victims as
being emphasized in their femininity, which placed them in the most socially desirable category
of woman. Like Mark David Chapman, Berkowitz destroyed a representation of something

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unattainable: where Chapman struck out against fame and fortune, Berkowitz obliterated the
sexual objects he coveted.

3.5.4 David Berkowitz: Post-Arrest Self

Immediately after Berkowitz's arrest, Detective John Falotico reportedly asked him “now
that I've got you... who have I got?” “You know,” Berkowitz replied. When Falotico responded
that he did not, a smiling Berkowitz said “Sam.” [homicidal ideal/own] In the squad car, a
detective found ammunition on Berkowitz's person.
I then asked him, ‘Are they .44’s? He smiled and nodded yes…Chief Keenan looked at
Berkowitz and asked, ‘What is your name?’ Berkowitz looked around at all the faces and
smiling said, “I'M SON OF SAM.’ [homicidal ideal/own] No one said anything and at
this time I asked Berkowitz did he know who he was speaking to. He looked and smiled
and said, ‘you’re Det. Keenan’ at which time Insp. Dowd said, ‘It’s Chief Keenan.’278

Berkowitz, the social outcast, was basking in the attention. Abrahamsen observed that he “was so
controlled and so eager to find out the latest news about himself that he even asked one detective
if he would be getting the day's newspapers.”279 He proudly received a visitation from the mayor
of New York280: happily consolidated in his homicidal self.
By shooting 16 people, the Reject had successfully transformed into the socially relevant
Son of Sam and reveled in his celebrity status:
All the others were my little puppets. People to be manipulated. They bent forward when
I wanted them to, they talked about the subjects that I wanted to speak of... So, in a sense,
they were extensions of me [emphasis added], to be picked up and placed back down on
the ground when I was finished with them.281

Despite initial psychiatric assessments indicating that Berkowitz was mentally unfit to stand trial,
Dr. David Abrahamsen found otherwise, eventually prompting several other psychiatrists to
reverse their own decisions. Berkowitz finally entered a guilty plea, and on June 12, 1978, was
sentenced to 365 years behind bars at Attica Correctional Facility.
Once incarcerated, Berkowitz began to drift from his Son of Sam self: “when I first came
to prison, I was very suicidal. And I saw no hope in living. I was disgusted with my life. I was
angry at a lot of people. I felt betrayed, confused, [trigger] and I saw no hope. So there were
some times when I did try to commit suicide.”282 Though he attempts to frame his dejection-
related emotions in moral terms, the man who once admitted to Abrahamsen “I only like
[excitement]... when I cause it myself... because it attracted attention to me... I wanted to be the

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center of attention. I love the limelight”283 was no longer having his homicidal ideal/own
reinforced on a daily basis by a media firestorm. By the time of his imprisonment national
attention had already turned to serialkillers! John Wayne Gacy in Chicago and the Hillside
Stranglers on the west coast. Sliding back towards the Reject, Berkowitz needed to reinvent
himself once more.
Ten years into my prison sentence and feeling despondent and without hope, another
inmate came up to me one day as I was walking the prison yard on a cold winter's night.
He introduced himself and began to tell me that Jesus Christ loved me and wanted to
forgive me... He gave me a Gideon's Pocket Testament and asked me to read the Psalms...
One night, I was reading Psalm 34. I came upon the 6th verse, which says, 'this poor man
cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him from all his troubles'. It was at that
moment, in 1987, that I began to pour out my heart to God. Everything seemed to hit me
at once. The guilt from what I did... the disgust at what I had become... late that night in
my cold cell, I got down on my knees and I began to cry out to Jesus Christ...284

Today Berkowitz has successfully approached a new ideal/own 'The Son of Hope', a
Penitent Christian: “now I have discovered that Christ is my answer and my hope. He broke the
chains of mental confusion and depression that had me bound.”285 Once again his actual/own and
ideal/own discrepancy narrowed, and “a peace flooded over me. I did not understand what was
happening. But in my heart I just knew that my life, somehow, was going to be different.”286
Under the 'purpose' section of his website ariseandshine.org, Berkowitz states “The purpose of
this Website is to bring glory and honor to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”287 before
concluding with a telling final paragraph:
As the apostle Paul said in the Scriptures, that before his salvation experience, he was the
'chief' of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). Likewise, David Berkowitz was one of the worst
sinners of his day. But if God can forgive David and heal his mind and soul [emphasis
added], He will do the same for anyone else. As it says in the Bible, 'For whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13).'288

Despite Berkowitz's so-called apologycccc, his continued propagation of a lie that he was part of a
Satanic cult shows he has not taken responsibility for his crimes in any meaningful sense. Rather,
by transforming into the Penitent Christian he has renegotiated his ascribed relational identity
in numerous religious communities—after all, it is in their mutual interest to demonstrate that
faith in God can reform “the worst sinners.”289 Conveniently, this shift of self lets Berkowitz, by

This string of hackneyed sentiments is available for your reading pleasure at http://www.ariseandshine.org/my-
cccc

apology.html

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symbolically vocalizing his submission to and communion with 'God' (SAOS - the effortless
utterance of signs), sidestep personal accountability by issuing statements of regret and claiming
that he has now been saved and transformed by a metaphysical entity. Religious groups give him
their attention— “they accept you. They crowd around...”290—as they had once done at Fort
Knox. Their acknowledgment of his claims strengthens his transformation from the Son of Sam
into the Penitent Christian.
At the same time, far from retreating into an ascetic life of prayer, the Penitent Christian
piggybacks off the Son of Sam's notoriety, hamming it up while enjoying positive reinforcement
from his fellow believers.
[T]he Lord has opened ways for me to share with millions via TV programs such as
Inside Edition in 1993 and A & E Investigative Reporter in 1997, what He has done in
my life as well as to warn others about the dangers of getting involved in the occult. I
have also shared my testimony on several Christian TV programs such as the 700 Club in
1997, the Coral Ridge Hour (Dr. James Kennedy), and on Larry King Live in 1999.291

For all intents and purposes, a serial killer has reinvented himself as a televangelist. Saved, he is
now a purveyor of hyperreal Christianity.

3.5.5 David Berkowitz: Sexual/Gender Aspects

With the exception of some transitory episodes of truthfulness, Berkowitz has attempted
to cloak his homicidal motivation in occult mystique. Given how pathetic and banal his actual
motives were, one can hardly blame him. Berkowitz's violence against emphasized femininity
was an attempt to renegotiate his subordinated masculine gender identity to a hyperreal one.
Connell notes that “Terror is used as a means of drawing boundaries... Violence can become a
way of claiming or asserting masculinity in group struggles.”292 That Berkowitz's masculinity
was subordinated is a reality of which he and others were acutely aware. Lawrence Klausner
described Berkowitz as a “drab, soft-faced man.”293 His psychiatrist, Dr. David Abrahamsen
associated him with stereotypically feminine traits— “[h]e was shy, dependent, submissive,
intuitive, passive, flirtatious, and seductive. His movements were gracious and swift, his voice
light”294—even accusing Berkowitz of “having possible homosexual leanings.”dddd295

dddd
This is an instance of psychoanalysis gone awry. No evidence has been provided that Berkowitz was sexually
attracted to males. Nevertheless, the fact that an esteemed mental health professional—the only one keen enough to
see through Berkowitz's elaborate psychotic malingering— interpreted his soft demeanor as being associated with
homosexuality is informative. It demonstrates the social milieu of mid-20th century America that shaped Berkowitz's

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Abrahamsen's claim that “In order to cover up his own passivity, [Berkowitz] often felt the need
to act and speak in a ‘manly’ fashion...”296 is seen in the killer's attempts to renegotiate his
subordinated masculinity to a sub-hegemonic one by joining “The Army, auxiliary police, and
fire departments; I wanted to make a dramatic rescue, to be a hero.”297
Berkowitz asserts that he “kept away from girls because to stay with them was ‘sissy
stuff’”298 explaining that in the 1950s and 1960s “you had to be masculine, a strong guy, like
James Dean.”299 In reality, he was likely using this as an excuse to compensate for his trepidation
around women. He avoided what he coveted until he could only do so by eliminating it.
Abrahamsen notes that when Berkowitz “was nine years old he had tried to start, among the
boys, a ‘hate group’ against the girls”300, hypothesizing that “he secretly denounced women in
order to show that he was just ‘one of the guys.’”301 Among the reasons Berkowitz gave for
being afraid of women were “I didn't think I could satisfy them”302 and “if [I was] enticed by the
female, it may be dangerous. All women are deceitful because I myself was fooled.”303 In other
words, his social and sexual inadequacies led him to fear the very thing he desired.
He recounted that during high school “I didn’t have a date. I met some girls. I wanted to.
They [emphasis added] were shy…”304 Furthermore, he claimed to have “joined the Army… in
order to lose my virginity.”305 Though the details of his story waver between oral and vaginal
sex, he says that “The first time I had sex… was in Korea… a month before I left Korea I didn't
have any sex because I didn't want to get sick…”306 “There were prostitutes in the village. If you
wanted. It only cost a couple of dollars. But you had to stay clean. It was important to me. You
could only go so far with them... We had so much money. The women wanted so little. We really
partied.”307 However, one soldier recalls that “whenever barracks banter about sex came up,
David would back off.”308 Upon returning to New York City, Berkowitz once again “tried to go
out with some of the girls in Co-Op City. They didn't find me attractive. They had no sexual
interest in me even though they were sexually experienced.”309 Insecure about his life of sexual
failure, Berkowitz had told his lawyer “[Mark] Heller that I had sex with girls many times. This
wasn't true. I was just showing off, bragging... I never had those girls that I wrote I did. I made
that up to impress Heller because he wasn’t much older than me.”310 Similarly, he had boasted to
Abrahamsen “that he had ‘lost his virginity’ at 16 when he had oral sex with a girl…” only to
later admit that “I never had oral sex with [name withheld] from Co-op City. I only said it… in

self and identity in the first place.

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order to make myself look big and experienced in the way of love.”311 Predictably, there are
widespread doubts that Berkowitz has ever had sexual relations with a female at all. His bragging
reflects Prohaska & Gailey's assertion that he was trying to shore up his masculinity through the
approval of other men, and is compatible with Abrahamsen's observation that “In order to cover
up his own passivity, [Berkowitz] often felt the need to act and speak in a ‘manly’ fashion...”312
With his constant desire for women conflicting with his gynophobia, Berkowitz would
have experienced marked cognitive dissonance313 manifesting in tension and frustration. Elster
argues that cognitive dissonance can be avoided by adaptive preference formation—known
colloquially as 'sour grapes'—in which a desired but unattainable object is devalued in order to
reduce frustration.314 Hence, Berkowitz “began to hate girls, I alwayseeee hated them.”315 His
attitudes towards women were therefore reactions to internal and external constraints. This
manifested in Berkowitz annihilating the evasive objects of his desire by gunning them down.
Berkowitz himself has said “pretty girl[s]”316 were “a threat to me, to my masculinity...”317,
presumably because their unavailability reminded him of its subordinated nature.
In keeping with the cognitive dissonance hypothesis, after committing his first murder
(Donna Lauria) Berkowitz claims “I was literally singing to myself on the way home… The
tension, the desire to kill a woman, had built up in me to such explosive proportions that when I
finally pulled the trigger, all the pressures, all the tensions, hatred, had just vanished, dissipated,
but only for a short time.”318 The murders served the double-purpose of eliminating threats to his
masculinity while simultaneously reinforcing it through violence, and narrowing his
actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy.
The 'Son of Sam' murders themselves were not paraphilic; that is, Berkowitz does not
seem to have gained sexual satisfaction through committing them. “When I fantasize myself
having sex with a woman, it's never violent… My violent fantasies are miles apart from my
heterosexual fantasies.”319 However, after murdering them, he often daydreamed “of sexual
intercourse with some of his victims.”320 There is good reason for this. Berkowitz's primary
transformation from the subordinated Reject into the hyperreal Son of Sam by reducing the
'dangerous' woman of emphasized femininity into a lifeless object (secondary transformation –
see Chapter 4) allowed him to feel sufficient control over them to fantasize and dream about
having relationships with their spirits. Berkowitz “felt a mystical attachment to [Donna Lauria]

eeee
This self-contradicting statement is evidence itself of adaptive preference formation.

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that I can't explain.”321 As part of his meta-delusional system he claimed that “Sam promised her
to me. That's Donna... Donna Lauria... He didn't give her to me... I don't know why. Maybe he
would eventually?... I figured in the end [Sam] would give her to me.”322 Similarly, according to
Dr. Abrahamsen, Berkowitz “had also sought out and lingered over the graves of young women
who were complete strangers to him.”323 Here his sexuality seems to intersect with his constant
but malleable religious beliefs. The idea that there may be romantic or sexual congress between
the souls of the deceased and living humans is less rare than one would think, having a historical
precedent in ancient China324 and marking the fifth spiritual/magical allure of necrophilia.325 Not
only was Berkowitz unable to establish relationships with women of emphasized femininity in
the material world, he also made no attempt to rape or abduct them. It would be foolish to think
this was a moral decision. All of the evidence presented above, from his empty boasting about
false sexual trysts to his stated concerns that he was unable to satisfy a female indicate that, even
more so than the erotophobic Chapman he was terrified of actual sexual contact with a woman.
Instead, he substituted violence for courtship, existentially binding himself to his victim by
becoming the most important man in her life: her killer. He then projected this 'relationship' into
a fantasy spiritual world where he could imagine himself engaged in romantic and sexual acts
with her without the risk of personal failure, while experiencing pleasure through
masturbation.326
Berkowitz had a history of uttering superficial moral protestations about pre-marital sex,
from spending his “days telling my peers and superior officers of... the tragic increase in sexual
immorality and permissiveness of our day”327 to justifying the murder of Esau and Suriani by
saying “if they did have their clothing off, and were engaged in sex, then I would be somewhat
justified in killing them. Sex outside of marriage is a heinous sin [mj].”328 This could be another
example of adaptive preference formation using the Bible as a talisman, but it also may have
been an aspect of Berkowitz's deceptive enacted identity, allowing him to mask his erotophobia
while justifying his sexless lifestyle to other men (and perhaps himself) in a face-saving
enterprise: “What I expressed verbally against the girls, they were whores and it was sinful to
have sex, it wasn't what I felt. Strange, I felt hypocritical, but I couldn't help it... I was anxious
that people should have a good impression of me.”329 Again his enacted identity is one of
impression management. As will be illustrated in the next section, like Chapman, Berkowitz

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shaped his religiosity so that it would be favourable to him.

3.5.6 David Berkowitz: Religious/Philosophical Aspects

Continuing along this line of inquiry, let us consider the mutual interest between
Berkowitz and religious and mental health groups in sustaining his demonology. For those of
faith, the homicidal descent of the Son of Sam was accepted as spiritual coup (possession)
involving real devils, while many within the psychiatric community held that it was a
neurological misfiring (psychosis) with hallucinatory characters. In his latest video interview
with Storyteller Ministries, Berkowitz covers both bases by proclaiming he was driven by
demonic possession and schizophrenia; in other words, he was completely non-responsible.330
He had both a spiritual ('I was possessed') and psychiatric ('I'm nuts') advantage which assured
him attention and moral exculpation from both of these monumental American institutions.
Berkowitz bragged to Dr. Abrahamsen that “all I had to do was slide ‘Sam Carr’ and the
‘demons [sic] into the conversation and I'd have [the psychiatrist] bending over his chair in my
direction. Why he'd practically be wiping the tears from my eyes and comforting me, in a sense,
'don't fret, don't cry, you're a sick, sick boy.'”331 Metaphysical truth was never the issue; rather it
was useful for David Berkowitz to transform into the demon-driven 'Son of Sam.' This American
cultural sanctioning of spiritual truth enabled Berkowitz to craft a self that could retreat into
transient, religious meta-delusion: “I really think I used this religious 'kick' to escape reality...”332
“I did not become subconsciously [emphasis added] deluded—hence, [this was not] mental
illness. Rather, I am very much aware of the fact that I really deluded myself. I did this on
purpose [emphasis added]... I was determined and in full agreement with myself that I must slay
a woman for revenge...”333 If true, there is merit in Abrahamsen's assertions that Berkowitz “had
to identify and give his unruly emotions names, and so he called them demons.”334 Among the
names of the many demons scrawled in his letters and on his walls were “Mr. Williams”335,
“Papa Sam”336, “John 'Wheaties'”337, and “the Wicked King.”338 When it was advantageous to
rely on other aspects of his Christian religious identity, Berkowitz did so without compunction.
Having already admitted the demonic-possession hoax, in a May 17, 1979 interview with
Abrahamsen he now justified the Esau/Suriani double-homicide by incredulously claiming that
“they were embracing... but I can't remember if they had their clothes off or not. If they did have
their clothing off, and were engaged in sex, then I would be somewhat justified in killing them.

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Sex outside of marriage is a heinous sin.”339 This same cultural climate begat Mark David
Chapman who prayed to Satan for the strength to kill John Lennon and become Holden
Caulfield, while dehumanizing Lennon as a 'phony' who asked his audience to imagine a world
without religion.
Berkowitz's suspicious flexibility with his faith has a biographical precedent. As an
adoptee into a Hebrew family, Berkowitz “never felt Jewish. Whether I was in a synagogue or
not—whether it was a holiday or not—I never felt Jewish... No I never felt Jewish at my Bar
Mitzvah. I tried to fast on Yom Kippur without success. I fasted for about one hour.”340
Furthermore, Berkowitz was stigmatized for his parents' religious beliefs by “those Catholic
kids”341 in the Bronx who “were always passing nasty remarks about Jews.”342 “When I was a
kid, I often got picked on for being Jewish. There were plenty of fights between me and the
Italian guys, but they were the aggressive ones. And as a result, as a child I was very ashamed of
being Jewish.”343 Confronted by social exclusion, Berkowitz did what he always did: rather than
standing by his principles, he shifted his identity: “To be with the crowd, I had to rebel against
my own Jewishness... I rejected my Judaism because of all the ridicule I faced in school.”344
Ever eager to join in, he “felt proud to hang around with the Gentile boys. When I hung out and
played ball with the non-Jews this caused my grandparents to get upset. My adoptive father's
mother was always putting the Gentiles down. But I continued to befriend them and reject
Judaism.”345
In the military, Berkowitz the Hippie wrote “I despise religion”346 before his faith took a
sudden dramatic turn and “me and Jesus talked, ya know, the usual story”347 paving the way for
his Good Christian ideal/own. Writing to his adopted father, Nathaniel, he stated:

I just can't explain my ideas and philosophies to you. You wouldn't understand. It's all too
deep. I feel like a saint sometimes. I guess I'm kind of one. Dad, believing in God is
wonderful. It's very hard for me, Dad. The lifers don't understand me. I'm just not army
stuff anymore... I'm sorry that I can't live up to your expectations. I'm sorry that I'm nothing
in society, that is I feel sorry for you because you can't see my point.348

After being discharged from the military, Berkowitz “began searching for a kind of religion at
Fort Knox.”349 Later he would remark “My involvement with Christianity while stationed at Fort
Knox has had a tremendous impact on my life and thoughts. More than most people realize.
There isn't a waking moment that goes by that I’m not thinking of God and the devil, good and

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evil, heaven and hell, and my usual sexual fantasies.”350 In joining the religious community at
Fort Knox he found a measure of temporary social inclusion within their ranks “It was a very
warm feeling standing there. They accept you. They crowd around...”351 Indeed, Berkowitz used
religion as a way of feeling special. Even after the murders, he still sees himself as “one of the
‘elected’ and ‘chosen.’ I always hope to be the first one to go to heaven, one of the first fruits. I
do feel more important to God than other people. This is probably why I am alive today because,
despite my anger towards God, he still loves me the most.”352
Before his conversion to the Penitent Christian, Berkowitz stated

I hate God, and I don't like him because of all the things he did. I blame him for taking
my mother. I hate him for taking both my grandmothers. They both died. I hate him for
making me, my life. I was always dissatisfied with life, and I wanted to die. I always felt
that if God had any sense he would have taken my miserable life a long time ago. I never
asked God to let me live—I never wanted to live. I believe God is everywhere. I believe
that God exists, but I think he is a liar. He has disappointed me. I almost believe in God,
in his existence, in his power and in heaven and hell, but not in his powers of justice, love
and mercy as it is quoted in the Bible. It is hard to express it.353

He also expressed that he couldn't “love anyone who holds me in check with fear. The Bible
talks about fear and hell and eternal damnation; it has caused me untold mental pain and
misery.”354 For Berkowitz, 'God', apparently, functions as something to blame in one instance,
and to dissolve blame in another: a complete talismanic mask for Berkowitz's overwhelming
social inadequacies and violence. The sexual/gender and religious/philosophical aspects of
Berkowitz's self fed into one another to create the demon-driven hyperreal masculine Son of
Sam ideal/own: “The demons were turning me into a soldier. A soldier can't stop everytime he
shoots someone and weep... In the United States Army you can't stop to feel grief. You
desensitize yourself.”355 Berkowitz never shot anyone in the army, in fact, he refused to carry a
gun. More than being religiously flexible, his ideological system suited his immediate needs.

3.5.7 David Berkowitz: Class Aspects

In his classic Hunting Humans: Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer, Leyton devoted
an entire chapter to Berkowitz which laid the foundation for this study and made many similar
discoveries. Based upon statements such as “Queens was special to me—very special. But this I
can't explain. Shooting someone in Queens was an obsession”356, Leyton argued that Berkowitz

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chose this borough because it was lower-middle-class and family-oriented. As Berkowitz was
always on the cusp of working and lower-middle-class (Leyton erroneously proposed that most
modern multiple murderers kill roughly one social class segment above them) and was defined
by family instability, the residents of Queens represented everything he hopelessly aspired to
have and become.357 When Berkowitz failed to follow through with plans to murder in middle-
class Huntington and upper-class Southampton, Leyton proposed this was because he was
uneasy killing too high above his station. This interpretation is certainly possible, but barring
additional commentary by the killer himself, impossible to prove. In his documented statements,
Berkowitz barely refers to class in any direct sense at all. For this reason, beyond reiterating
Leyton's theory, there will be no additional commentary on class aspects in this analysis.

3.5.8 David Berkowitz: Vocational Aspects

Berkowitz's first paid job was with the United States Army. Specifically, he served as a
military radio operator and custodian in Korea before his reassignment to Fort Knox in January
1973. There he worked as a clerk-typist.358 Following his honorable discharge on June 24, 1974,
Berkowitz moved back to New York City. Over the next three years he worked as a cab driver,
security guard, air-conditioning installer for Wolf and Munier, and for the Bronx postal service,
before quitting this final position several weeks before his arrest. He also enrolled in Bronx
Community College, attending sporadically. Though he was more adjusted in his work than the
irritable Chapman, Berkowitz's sporadic employment pattern mirrored that of Lennon's assassin.
Other than the army, Berkowitz makes no comment on his various occupational positions. His
co-workers barely remember him as a taxi driver, and at Wolf and Munier, the foreman
commented “I had no trouble with David but he was just a body at a plant, not much of a worker.
He didn't do good with toolsffff [subordinated masculinity]. He was sometimes depressed and
would break into tears.”359 This is the direct opposite of the Son of Sam who would emerge later
smiling to the press and police, and who referred to his murders as “work”360: his true calling.

ffff
Recall Chapman's rage at his inability to fix his wife's stereo.

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Concluding thoughts: David Berkowitz

Table 5
David Berkowitz: Selves and Strain
Actual/Own Ideal/Own Homicidal Self Post-Arrest
Self
Sexuality Sexual frustration (social Christianity used to Destruction of object of Resolved.
incompetence and renegotiate social desire, belief he romantically Incarcerated.
gynophobia). interpretation of sex. possesses some victims on Retreatism.
Retreatism. metaphysical level.
Gender Subordinated. Sub-hegemonic Hyperreal masculine violence Christianity
Gender-role strain masculinity. destroying emphasized used to
('feminine', 'soft') American Fighting femininities. No gender-role renegotiate
Hero. No gender- strain role of
role strain. masculinity.
No gender-
role strain.
Religion/ Theistic Strong influence Appeals to demons Penitent
Philosophy Christian
Class Lower-middle-class. N/A Leyton argues he was Resolved.
murdering victims one class Incarcerated.
wrung higher than him. Retreatism.
Vocation Menial. Unstable. Soldier. Employed in menial work, Resolved.
but views murder as his true Incarcerated.
career. ‘I love my work' Retreatism.
'you will see my handiwork
at the next job.'
Race Ego-syntonic. Non-racist. N/A N/A N/A
Notability Ego-dystonic. Ego-syntonic. 'Die Ego-syntonic. Writes letters Ego-syntonic.
Mertonian strain. for a cause.' 'Hero.' to newspapers. Struggles not Media circus.
to tell people. Public
performance
of penitence.

Fundamentally unstable in his self due to his high adoptive identity salience, as a child,
Berkowitz's entrance into the social world was predictably unsuccessful. His
expressive/transformative journey mirrored Mark David Chapman's in many ways. Both were
young men of subordinated masculinity growing up in the 1960s and entering their Twenties in
the America of the 1970s. They created demonologies to justify and enable their murders and
shot symbolic victims in New York City. Berkowitz and Chapman would fluctuate from

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countercultural posers to fervent Christians whose devotion to Jesus would later go tepid before
they exploded into murder. Now they both grow old in prison, settled snuggly into their Penitent
Christian selves.
Nevertheless, they differ in many important ways. Berkowitz was an arsonist and serial
killer. He was also a native New Yorker and bachelor who had served in the armed forces.
Chapman was a celebrity assassin, entranced by three specific talismans—The Catcher in the
Rye, John Lennon, and Christianity—believing he would literally turn into the avatar Holden
Caulfield. Berkowitz chose the more general Monster as talisman. There are many reasons to
believe Berkowitz genuinely saw his homicidal self as an archetypal Monster.361 Consider the
first three definitions of 'monster' given in the Oxford Dictionary of English: “1. A large, ugly,
and frightening imaginary creature... 1.1 An inhumanly cruel or wicked person... 1.2 A rude or
badly behaved person, typically a child. [emphasis added] 'he's only a year old, but already he is
a little monster.'”362 Certainly, it could be a coincidence that Berkowitz wrote the declarations “I
am a monster. I am the ‘Son of Sam.’ I am a little ‘brat’”363 so close together sequentially. Or
perhaps not.
From the mythological trolls and ogres of Western mythology to Shelley's Frankenstein,
the archetypal Monster is indeed hideous in appearance. Berkowitz referred to himself as “the
Chubby Behemouth”364, while others similarly criticized the way he looked and presented
himself. Often cast out by society—Berkowitz's isolation has been strongly established—the
Monster lives on the margins of civilization, emerging from its isolation to wreak havoc on the
populace (often at night; or exclusively, in the case of vampires). In her literary analysis of
Gothic English novels, Christina Schneider writes:

Monstrous bodies represent the strangeness of others and thus help to structure the self
and the group the self belongs to. Accordingly, they are used to draw boundaries between
the 'I' and the 'not I'. Furthermore, monsters cross geographical, physical, and
psychological barriers and transgress moral norms, making them visible by their
excessive deviation. Goetsch states that the monster 'dwells at the gates of difference' and
polices the border between inside and outside, known and unknown...365

This description certainly fits Berkowitz, whose communications to police and journalists (see
Chapter 4) are coloured with fragmented esoteric references (e.g., “Papa Sam is old now. He
needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart attacks. 'Ugh, me hoot, it

140
hurts, sonny boy.'”366) and unabashedly revel in the mystery that is his identity. There are also
numerous high-profile monsters whose conception and parentage, like Berkowitz's, is deviant
and marked by abandonment (e.g., the Minotaur of Crete, Frankenstein's Monster). From human-
animal hybrids such as the aforementioned Minotaur to outright beasts like the dragon or the
Xenomorph from Ridley Scott's Alien, Monsters are frequently represented as having animal-like
characteristics. Addressing Dr. Abrahamsen, Berkowitz once tellingly wrote “I guess you see me
as I really am—an animal and unhuman.”367 In fictional narratives, Monsters often abduct
beautiful women who are later saved by the (typically male) Hero archetype—which is
compatible with the cultural notion of sub-hegemonic masculinity—after he outwits or slays the
Monster.368 The Aarne-Thompson classification of folktales numbers this folktype tale 300, and
refers to it as “Princess and Dragon.”369 Berkowitz was enamoured with the Hero archetype370,
seeking to embody it in his teenage and early-adult years by becoming an auxiliary policeman,
volunteer fireman, and finally joining the military. During his years in the army he would pen
letters to his only female friend—who likely occupied something of a 'princess' role in his
fantasies—as if boasting of his 'heroic' exploits. But ultimately, Berkowitz failed to achieve his
American Fighting Patriot self and the associated sub-hegemonic masculinity/Hero
archetype.371 His lack of success with women evidenced this in his personal narrative. So, filled
with alienated rage, he renegotiated his self to occupy the antagonist in the story—the Monster—
who he more closely resembled. No longer would Berkowitz seek to win the admiration of the
princess by becoming the Hero archetype372; rather, he would simply leave his isolation to go
“prowling the streets looking for fair game—tasty meat”373 to devour, like the monsters who
often consume fair maidens and princesses in folktype tale 300. In the increasingly hyperreal age
of celebrity, at least Berkowitz remained a character in the American story, one in which the
police played the part of the archetypal Hero.374 His alternative was to keep returning to “a series
of rotten jobs, to a rotten social life and a horrifying feeling of becoming an old bachelor or a
dirty old man. I had no woman in my life … I felt like worthless shit.”375 It is here that we can
draw a strong demarcation between Berkowitz and Chapman: Berkowitz plays the role of
antagonist in his tale, while Chapman perversely saw himself as Herogggg.376 This dichotomy
resonates through many of the forthcoming cases in this study.

Where Chapman ended his expressive/transformative progression by enacting the 'Hero' (Campbell, 1949/2008),
gggg

Berkowitz began with it, abandoned it, and recast himself as its foil.

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 A child born into the age of mass media, Berkowitz would have been inundated with
literary, cinematic, and televised versions of folktype tale 300 and its associated archetypes,
which he used to frame his life. Besides his devouring of true crime novels—evidence that even
the most mundane person can become worthy of a paperback biography if their transgressions
are highly visible and dastardly enough—Berkowitz also admitted to being obsessed with
Rosemary's Baby377 the 1968 Roman Polanski film set in a New York apartment complexhhhh in
which a pregnant woman believes she has been raped by the Devil and is carrying his seed. iiii
Berkowitz, who claimed “When I was growing up I watched countless horror and satanic [sic]
movies”378 would have been in his early teens at the time of the film's release. Though highly
speculative, one might infer that Berkowitz, the child conceived in sin, came to see himself as
like Rosemary's baby—'son of Rosemary' = 'son of Sam': “There is no doubt in my mind... that a
demon has been living in me since birth.”379 This would certainly help explain the complex
demonology he constructed around himself.
During the Son of Sam murders the term 'serial killer' had not yet come into popular use.
An interesting point to ponder is whether Berkowitz would have stuck to the archetype as his
talisman if he had this more specific term to use.

3.6 Danny Rolling: 'Sensitive Boy Nobody Loved' to 'Mystery Rider'

Talismans: The Outlaw Josie Wales, Holy Bible, Exorcist III; Type: 2
3.6.0 Danny Rolling: Failed socialization and formation and realization of the actual/own
self
Like Chapman and Berkowitz, Danny Rolling experienced problems socializing from a
young age. Labelled “Sasquatch”380, “'Bigfoot”381, and “Bald head”382 by his peers, he was
excluded at school and experienced severe physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his
policeman father, James Harold Rolling. According to Rolling's autobiography, penned with
girlfriend Sondra London, and often written in the third person:

Danny felt outside the norm and his childhood reflected such. It came at him from all

hhhh
Eerily, the building used in the film was The Dakota Building where 12 year later John Lennon would be shot
dead. Polanski's wife and friends were slaughtered a year after the movie debuted by The Manson Family in yet
another expressive/transformative murder.
iiii
Like Berkowitz himself, the film is subject to multiple interpretations: either the protagonist truly was the victim
of a Satanic cult and gave birth to the anti-Christ, or she was delusional.

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 directions—home, school, the neighbors. He grew up fighting tooth and toenail emotions
he couldn't control without a confidant. He couldn't take the peer rejection at school
[emphasis added] and the lack of love at home. They were at it almost every other day,
and we're talking knockdown drag-out fights. James Harold beat Danny, beat [Danny's
brother] Kevin, beat [Danny's mother] Claudia, beat the dog. Danny wanted to die, to run
away from the entire scene.383

Where Mark Chapman retreated into his kingdom of the Little People when his father battered
his mother, Rolling similarly fled into an imaginary world to avoid the wrath of an authoritarian
patriarch:
As a child, my dad made me feel inadequate and odd [emphasis added]. I grew up turning
my mind off to what was happening around me, because I was forced to endure painful
experiences I could not tolerate. The stress never let up. In order to survive, I distanced
myself from the suffering and sought a fantasy world to escape to [retreatism].384

Higgins' contention that agitation-related emotions stem from actual/own:ought/other or

actual/own:ought/own discrepancies—Rolling's internalization of his father's criticism—is
consistent with the findings of one psychologist who wrote: “[Rolling] is highly anxious with a
great deal of insecurity and a great deal of apprehension as to what lies ahead of him. There was
a good deal of tension, stress, and anxiety indicated throughout the entire testing...”385 As we
have seen, Agnew also links “strain as the presentation of negative stimuli”386 with aggression.387
The full ramifications of this will emerge toward the end of this case study.
Rolling often remarked that he was a “kidjjjj in a man's body”388, an opinion which his
mother agreed with: “I don't think that Danny ever got past the level of fifteen… his
conversation is more mature, but every once in a while he'll go back to that little fifteen-year-old
that I know so well.”389 This view was reaffirmed by clinical psychologist Dr. Harry Krop who
testified that “Danny functions at a level of an immature teenager.”390 Dr. Betty McMahon, a
clinical psychologist with a background in forensic assessment, also stated “he is extremely
immature... distractible in the way a child is.”391 Claudia Rolling reported that Danny “was
always trying to get rid of that person that his daddy made him believe he was
[ideal/own:actual/other]… I could say 'Danny, I love you,'… And he would say, 'Why? What is
there in me for anybody to love?' [actual/own] And he still does that.”392 These familiar themes

Commenting on his time in prison, Rolling stated this was a common characteristic of criminals: “Most convicts
jjjj

are extremely immature and throw temper tantrums if they don't get their way... Most convicts are not what they
seem. They are little children in men's bodies and that is what makes them really dangerous” (London & Rolling,
2011, p. 176).

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of early social isolation and becoming stuck at a juvenile level of development constituted a
large part of Danny Rolling's actual/own self.
Rolling described the 'Danny' [actual/own] part of his personality as “good
natured…sensitive…impressionable…kind…loving…easygoing…religious…caring…intelligent
…talented…troubled…tormented”.393 The vast majority of these traits strongly contrast with the
selves that arose later to compensate for his fragility. Echoing Chapman who believed he was
“too sensitive for this world”394, Rolling wrote “Danny was sensitive to the point of pain. It
seemed as though little Danny could feel the thoughts of others and all too often those thoughts
spoke loudly in terms of rejection.”395 As we have hypothesized in Chapter 1 and observed in the
cases of Chapman and Berkowitz, mental illness results in communication dysfunctions which
truncate the self. Having been diagnosed on separate occasions with “atypical psychosis”396,
“borderline personality disorder”397, and anti-social personality disorder398 along with evidencing
narcissistic399, histrionic400, obsessive compulsive401, and avoidant402 traits, Rolling was arguably
susceptible to all three social impediments: bizarre beliefs, deviant affect, and empathy deficits.
Accordingly, Dr. McMahon described him as “an individual who is likely to hold a number of
mistaken beliefs. By that I mean there are times when he is likely to misperceive what is going on
around him [emphasis added] and then hold that misperception and it becomes a belief for
him...”403 Taking the totality of these elements into consideration, Rolling's actual/own self is
best characterized as The Sensitive Boy Nobody Loved.
Perhaps as a result of his truncated development and personality disorders, Rolling could
only “interact in a superficial way...”404 and was always “playing a role, [though] not
intentionally...”405 showing “whatever emotions he feels are appropriate at the time. They are
simply what he has learned to do in a social situation.”406 As predicted by CTI, we see an
example of poor communication satisfaction and feelings of being misunderstood stemming
ultimately from a gap between the personal and enacted identity, which in turn affects the
ascribed relational identity. This would have compounded his negative-emotionality.

3.6.1 Danny Rolling: Pre-Homicidal Original Ideal/Selves and Negative Emotionality

Danny Rolling is unique among the offenders in this sample in that he claimed to have
“had multiple personalities at a very young age. I would go off to myself and just change over. It
was a defense, the only way I could deal with the pain and confusion in my life”.407 He explained

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this process as resulting from the fact that his father “would not let me just be Danny. I was
never good enough for him [actual/own:ought/other]”408 This paternal rejection led to Rolling's
first ideal/own: the Macho American Soldier. When Rolling was 17-years-old he came home
drunk, leading to an argument with his father. Furious, James violently wrestled Danny to the
floor and handcuffed him. James arranged for two of his fellow officers from the Shreveport
Police to arrest Danny and confine him in a jail for juvenile delinquents. After fighting with the
other inmates, Danny was sent to The Hole (solitary confinement): “I remember how hurt and
betrayed I felt. I couldn't deal with the confinement. I was bitter and confused. I mean, if you
can't trust your own father, who can you trust?”409 Upon his release two weeks later, he
demanded that his father sign the papers to allow him to enlist in the military.
On June 28, 1971, the 17-year-old Rolling started basic training at Texas's Lackland Air Force
Base. He served as a Security Policeman until substance abuse led to his general discharge on
honorable conditions in 1973.410
Returning to live with his grandfather in Shreveport, the 19-year-old Rolling began
attending United Pentecostal Church where he was baptized. He drove the Sunday School Bus,
sang hymns, passed out Christian pamphlets, and played guitar at nursing homes. One day
Rolling claims to have prayed to God to send him a wife. Soon after, he met Omatha Halko and
the two married four months later in September 1974. Having failed to achieve the Macho
American Soldier ideal/own, The Sensitive Boy Nobody Loved (actual/own) now followed a
similar path as David Berkowitz, striving toward a Good Christian Husband ideal/own. Rolling
writes of having “a sincere desire to succeed at his marriage and his faith.”411 Within a year he
had fathered a baby girl, Kiley. Rolling would come to view these as “the best years of his
life.”412 Unfortunately, the union was a troubled one.kkkk Ryzuk writes that Rolling suffered from
erectile dysfunction413, though Danny denied it and Omatha has never commented publicly on
the matter. Rolling, on the other hand, claimed Omatha was sexually frigid which drove him to
window-peeping to find relief414, and that she had had an affair with her “high school sweetheart,
John Lummus.”415 At Rolling's subsequent trial, Omatha testified that the couple had discussed
Danny's voyeurism because she wanted to understand it, that he continued to disappear at night,
struck her once giving her a black eye, used marijuana secretly, and was work-shy.416 She denied
having been romantically involved with John Lummus, her “friend for years”417, until after she

kkkk
During this time, Rolling claims to have been visited by a demon, which will be explored further in section 4.5.

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left Danny in 1977 (for more see section 3.6.4). Danny and Omatha divorced later that same
year.
According to Claudia Rolling “Danny took his divorce very hard.”418 He penned a line in
a song asking “Without you… what shall I do?… Wake up and weep. Into depression seep…”419
In his autobiography, Rolling describes himself as “deeply wounded, dejected, angry, confused
and depressed.”420 He wrote “in the misery and resentment of being served his divorce papers, he
committed his first rape”421 which was “a direct result of [this] rejection.”422 On the night after
being served his papers [trigger], Rolling broke into the home of a brunette college student—the
same victim profile he would target during his future homicides—and sexually assaulted her,
taking out “all my frustration and pain on her”423 while “visions of Omatha ran through his
mind.”424 With this incident, Rolling began moving towards his homicidal ideal/own self:
Mystery Rider.

3.6.2 Danny Rolling: Renegotiated Homicidal ideal/own

The tag Mystery Rider comes from Rolling's eponymous song featuring the lyrics
“Mystery rider, what's your name? You're a killer [emphasis added], a drifter gone insane...”425
The song draws from the archetype of the lone wandering outlaw. In his country ballads, Danny
romanticized American gunslingers, singing “I'll become an outlaw like Jesse James I'll rob and
steal till a bullet with my namellll sets my weary soul free.”426 Less frequently, Rolling used the
more political (but still very southern) “rebel gone mad”427 in place of “drifter gone insane”428—
with 'rebel' and 'outlaw' both referring to those who challenge pre-established institutional,
dominance hierarchies. Rolling divided this criminal Mystery Rider ideal/own into two separate
personalities: Ennad and Gemini. “The outlaw Ennad developed as a rebellious soul against the
harsh realities of my childhood. He loves the thrill of it all…”429 Phonetically, Ennad is 'Danny'
pronounced backwards, and fittingly, this ideal/own is the inverse of who Danny, The Sensitive
Boy Nobody Loved [actual/own] believed he really was.
ENNAD: Strong…self-willed…courageous…bold…daring. He can be as dangerous as a
tiger, but he does have a conscience. Even though he has an explosive temper, he does not
enjoy hurting people. He is an outlaw [emphasis added] for sure. And if you get in his
way, look out! It’s payday. Ennad might rape you…but he would not want your blood.430

llll
At his subsequent trial, Rolling's mother would verify her son's desire for suicide-by-cop, saying he committed
robberies because “he thought that somebody would blow him away.” (Ryzuk, 1994, p. 425)

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In the preface to his autobiography, Rolling's lover Sondra London explains: “because the Danny
[The Sensitive Boy Nobody Loved actual/own] side of him would always be immature and
inadequate in many ways, the Ennad [Mystery Rider ideal/own] side developed into all that
Danny could never be. Ennad is daring, sexually aggressive—a thrill-seeking scofflaw and a
stand-up convict”.431 Rolling provided a mathematical equation to describe the factors that gave
rise to Ennad [Mystery Rider ideal/own], and the nature of Ennad’s crimes: “Rejection +
Depression x Rage x Lust—Counseling—Support = B&E + Rape”432. While Rolling claims to
be ego-syntonic with Ennad, the 'demon' Gemini personality purportedly “dismays and frightens
him.’”433 Gemini's homicidal equation is “Dementia + Possession x Revenge = Murder.”434
GEMINI: Darkest night…evil…destructive…powerful…your wildest nightmare…come
to haunt your dreams with screams…demon…grim reaper…murderer…bloodthirsty…
psychotic…terrible. Gemini came from all the hatred, all the pain, everything sick and
insane that had happened.435

Later in his autobiography, Rolling clarifies that “Gemini prefers knives and machetes; Ennad
loves guns”436, and that Ennad was responsible for property crimes.437 This seems to indicate that
the demarcation between the Ennad ideal/own and Gemini is a superficial one, with the latter
being the most extreme antisocial expression of the former. Rolling's attribution of sexual
homicide to possession by Gemini could serve several different functions:
1) Rolling might have concocted Gemini to distance himself from the murders, whether as a
legal and/or social strategy, or because he felt ego-dystonic about the killings.mmmm It is notable
that shortly before commencing his homicidal spree, Rolling viewed the film Exorcist III—
featuring a fictional serial killer possessed by a malevolent entity called 'Gemini'—in a
Gainesville cinema. Yet, as Rolling had committed the Shreveport triple-homicide a year earlier,
which he would have attributed to Gemini who is “destructive…grim reaper…murderer…
bloodthirsty…”438, unlike Ennad who “would not want your blood”439, then either it was an
incredulous coincidence that both Rolling’s 'real' demons and Exorcist III’s fictional demons
were called 'Gemini', or Rolling opportunistically borrowed the film character.
2) Mellor et al. note that religious socialization may lead to a delusional interpretive framework
of phenomena which sanctions supernatural causality as legitimate.440 Therefore, Rolling might

mmmm
Prison inmates who spoke with Rolling and a criminologist who interviewed him have remarked that Rolling
was proud of the killings, so ego-dystonicity is unlikely.

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have genuinely interpreted mental disorders such as dissociation, psychosis, paraphilic disorder,
or homicidal compulsion as demonic possession. Upon viewing Exorcist III, he decided to name
his own 'real' demon Gemini (which is Rolling's astrological sign).
3) Through the same process of utilizing meta-delusion as Chapman and Berkowitz, Rolling was
able to redeem himself—at least among certain members of the Christian communitynnnn—by
playing to the American belief in demons, as well as developing a post-arrest ideal/own self.
The false dichotomy between Ennad and Gemini is best illustrated by a slip-up in
Rolling's autobiography. While preparing to commit a sexual assault, Ennad who “might rape
you…but he would not want your blood”441 hears the voice of Gemini urging “Dannnnneeeee...
Take off your socks... Put them on your hands... Mask your identity...”442 Yet this rape occurred
in 1974, 12-14 years before Gemini allegedly “exploded in his mind”443 while Rolling
languished in Parchman Prison (see below).444 Furthermore, Rolling stated that Gemini was the
murderous personality, while Ennad was the rapist: hardly the situation described above.445 For
this reason, Ennad and Gemini are represented here as gradients of violence in Rolling's
renegotiated homicidal ideal/own: Mystery Rider.
Rolling is the second of five offenders in this study (Berkowitz, Arkwright, Holmes, Cho)
who is known to have collected weapons. He describes a
9mm automatic handgun… a beautiful weapon. 45-cal. Colt auto …extremely powerful
close range. .38-cal. revolver …very accurate and reliable. .22-cal. Ruger auto… also
accurate and reliable. .308-cal rifle with Leupold variable scope… BINGO! KNIVES:
Ka-Bar Marine Fighting Knife…deadly, sharp and huge. STAFF: Ancient Chinese Kung
-Fu weapon. STARS: Shuriken or throwing stars. All these weapons I have owned at one
time or another in the course of my life [emphasis added].446

In a qualitative study of 47 male and 11 female prisoners incarcerated for substantially violent
offenses, Lonnie Athens found that violent self-image precedes violent acts.447 Mellor has argued
that collecting weapons may contribute to the construction of a violent self-image in some
individuals.448 Individually and in their totality, they are SAOS, with the self being one of
violence. Rolling's own statements seem to reinforce this notion: “I became very relevant
[emphasis added], you might say. I was an expert with these weapons.”449 Beginning in 1975,

nnnn
Once again, there were no shortage of delusional individuals or charlatans who happily legitimized Rolling's
claims of demonic possession. The oxymoronic Deliverance from Evil Spirits: A Practical Manual by MacNutt and
Johnson provides us with one example.

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Rolling racked up a number of fist fights, domestic assaults, death threats, armed robberies, and
rapes, finally culminating in a series of sexual homicides. By this time, Rolling's Mystery Rider
ideal/own self, comprising both the outlaw drifter Ennad and bloodthirsty 'demon' Gemini, was
undoubtedly ultraviolent and susceptible to all four of Athens's lines of interpretation: defensive,
frustrative, malefic, and frustrative-malefic .450 Interestingly, none of them seem to perfectly fit
Rolling's motives for his five homicides of intended victims (attractive young white women),
though the closest is frustrative in which “the perpetrator indicates to himself that the victim's
gestures mean either... that the victim is resisting or will resist the specific course of action that
the perpetrator seeks to carry out...”451 then “by assuming an attitude of his generalized other...
indicates to himself that he ought to respond violently toward the victim...”452 If Rolling saw
attractive young white women as a general group that would forever reject him as a worthy
partner, then in his ultraviolent rationale, this frustration entitled him to rape, murder, and
humiliate them.
Owing to his criminality, Rolling the Mystery Rider spent virtually the entire Eighties
incarcerated. Having committed a series of burglaries in Alabama and Louisiana, he was first
arrested on May 31, 1979 in Georgia after robbing a Winn Dixie supermarket at gunpoint.
Rolling admitted to his prior robberies and spent the next five years serving prison sentences
punctuated by failed escape attempts in Georgia and Alabama. Released on June 7, 1984, Rolling
returned to his parents' home in Shreveport once more. By 1985 he was back to his old ways,
wandering the United States and eventually robbing a Kroger supermarket on July 22. The next
day he stole a car but was arrested by law enforcement by morning and sentenced to four years in
Jackson County Jail. Once more he tried to escape, swimming the Snake River, but was re-
apprehended in Texas six days later after a brief foray into Mexico. He was returned to
Mississippi, only this time he was incarcerated in the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary aka
Parchman Farm. To punish him for his escape attempt, he was placed in solitary confinement for
a period of 240 days where Rolling claimed to have been stored in a 'hot box', deprived of fresh
air, and beaten by prison guards.453 Soon after leaving solitary confinement, Rolling said an
official
... had him moved again—to the worst cell in Parchman Prison—a rat-infested roach
hotel that flooded out two or three times a week… raw gray-brown sewage seeped in
through the floor and belched from the drain up the hall. The sludge would creep down
the hall and bubble through the floor, filling the cell with filth. It was the most horrid

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 smell imaginable... Filled with the will for revenge for the way he had been treated, for
years all the prisoner had to live on was his hatred for the system and the society that put
him there... He snapped. And now when he talked to himself, new and striking voices
talked back. He didn't call them. He came into being because he was incomplete. Pushed
beyond his endurance to cope, Ennad or Jesse [James] became real to him, and Gemini
exploded into his mind. And a plan, or a scheme if you will, began to form... Ahhh! Ahhh!
One soul for every year! They'd better not ever let me out of here!454

Released from Jackson County Jail on July 18, 1988 under the condition that he return to
Louisiana, the 32-year-old Rolling moved back into his parents' Shreveport home once more. On
November 6, 1989, Rolling broke into the home of “petite brunette”455, Julie Grissom, 24, and
her 55-year-old father, William, in Shreveport. After murdering William and his eight-year-old
grandson, Sean, Rolling raped Julie, stabbed her to death, and left her body in a sexually-
degrading pose.456 He evaded detection for this grisly triple-homicide only to shoot his abusive
father in the stomach and face during a domestic altercation on March 18, 1990. James Rolling
would survive the attack. That same night, Danny fled east, committing numerous robberies and
burglaries along the way.
Arriving in the college community of Gainesville, Florida in mid-August, Rolling set up
camp in the woods outside town. On August 23 he spotted freshmen Christina Powell and Sonja
Larson—also attractive petite brunettes—at Walmart and followed them home to their
Williamsburg Village apartment, noting where they lived. In the evening, immediately before
Rolling embarked on his Gainesville killing spree he recorded a message to his family on audio
tape. He lamented his social alienation and isolation, proclaiming “I don't know what people
think anymore. All I know is that I'm just one man alone in this world facing the whole world by
himself.”457 Like every murderer in this sample, Rolling was announcing his severance from
society, shirking responsibility by claiming that it was “not the road I really wanted... But it is
the road that is before me right now, and I will walk it like a man [emphasis added].”458 At 3
a.m., Rolling broke into Sonja and Christina's residence where they lay sleeping. Spotting
Christina passed out on the living room couch, he crept up the stairs to Sonja's bedroom, covered
her mouth with duct tape, and stabbed her to death. Heading back downstairs, he bound
Christina, forced her to fellate him and raped her, before plunging the knife five times into her
torso. He posed Sonja's body with her legs splayed and engaged in post-mortem vaginal sex with
Christina's corpse before excising her nipples and positioning her body similarly. 459

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 The next night—August 25, 1990—Rolling forcibly entered the home of 18-year-old
Christa Hoyt, a part-time Alachua County Sheriff's records clerk. He had chosen her as a
potential victim after peeking through her window several nights earlier. Rolling waited until
Christa arrived home between 10-11 p.m., subduing her with a chokehold and binding her with
duct tape. He dragged her onto her waterbed where he raped her before stabbing her to death.
Rolling then sliced Christa's torso open, excised her nipples, and decapitated her, placing her
nipples nearby and propping her head with drinking coasters on a bookshelf so that it was
immediately visible upon entering the apartment. He then positioned her naked body in a sitting
position on the bed.
Finally, after window peeping on 23-year-old Tracy Paules, Rolling broke into the
apartment she shared with football player, Manuel Taboada, also 23, at 3 a.m. on August 27.
While Paules showered, he crept into Taboada's room and stabbed the younger man to death as
he slept. When Paules hurried from the bathroom to confront the commotion, Rolling raped and
fatally stabbed her. He posed her body in the hallway, legs spread in the same manner he had
posed Christina Powell.
Later that day, Rolling held up a First Union Bank a half mile from Christa Hoyt's
apartment. As he made his escape he removed his ski mask, inadvertently allowing witnesses to
see his face. The next day he was spotted by police and fled on foot into the trees. Though the
officers failed to apprehend him, they stumbled across his campsite and the equipment he used in
the robbery. Although its importance would not become clear until later, they also recovered a
tape recorder and cassette containing the audio recordings Rolling had made for his family.
On August 30, Rolling stole a 1978 Buick Regal and headed south. Two days later he burgled a
home in Tampa leaving fingerprint evidence. Having acquired a .38 revolver, three days later he
robbed a Save-N-Pack and was nearly arrested by responding policemen after a dramatic escape
on foot across the highway. Breaking into another Tampa home on September 6, he stole the
keys to a silver Mustang and drove north to Ocala. There, on September 8, he was arrested after
robbing a grocery store. Despite his stated desire to “rob and steal till a bullet with my name sets
my weary soul free”460, Mystery Rider Danny Rolling fell to his knees and surrendered.

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3.6.3 Danny Rolling: Victimology
Table 6

Danny Rolling Victimology

Victim's Name Age Race Gender Profession Date Murdered Where

William 55 White Male AT&T employee November 4, Their home in
Grissom 1989/died Shreveport
Julie 24 White Female Student/model November 4, Their home in
Grissom 1989/died Shreveport
Sean 8 White Male None November 4, Their home in
Grissom 1989/died Shreveport
James 59 White Male Police Officer May 18, His home in
Rolling 1990/survived Shreveport
Sonja 18 White Female Student August 24, 1990/died Their apartment
Larson in Gainesville
Christina 17 White Female Student August 24, 1990/died Their apartment
Powell in Gainesville
Christa 18 White Female Sheriff's department August 25, 1990/died Her apartment in
Hoyt records clerk/student Gainesville
Manuel 23 Hispanic Male Student/Bartender August 27, 1990/died Their apartment
Taboada in Gainesville
Tracey 23 Hispanic Female Student August 27, 1990/died Their apartment
Paules in Gainesville

In his autobiography (co-written with Sondra London), Rolling wrote that he could have
gone anywhere in Florida but “Gemini wanted it to be Gainesville. The only reason I can think of
would be the obvious—because Gainesville is a college town filled with beautiful girls
[emphasis added].”461 Here we have echoes of Berkowitz's pursuit of outward emphasized
femininity.
Rolling's female victims were all petite brunettes between the ages of 17-24.462 That he
intentionally targeted “beautiful girls” 463 with these physical characteristics is near certain; he
stalked all five prior to their murders.464 Paul Fuqua, an inmate at the same correctional facility
as Rolling, said Rolling told him “The reason I sliced them up is because they were too pretty for
anybody and I can't stand that. I made it so they weren't so pretty anymore.”465 The reliability of
this statement should be treated with some suspicion (i) in light of the litany of false claims made

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about inmates by fellow inmates, and (ii) the broken-telephone effect—perhaps Rolling did say
he mutilated young women so 'they weren't so pretty anymore', but the 'too pretty for anybody'
addition (or any section of it) may have been a misremembering by Fuqua.
Recalling Rolling's autobiographical claim that “visions of Omatha ran through his
mind”466 while he raped his first victim—also a brunette—along with Mary Ryzuk's description
of Omatha as “pretty, dark-hairedoooo, petite with a long neck...”467 and Rolling's own
recollection of her “long waist-length auburn hair that held deep, rich colors of red and gold
amongst the shiny black and brown”468, it seems likely he was raping, murdering, and mutilating
his ex-wife over and over. According to Ryzuk, “It was impossible not to notice the distinct
similarities between O'Mather [sic] and the girls who had been selected for murder, in particular,
the startling resemblance to Christa Hoytpppp... the girl he had decapitated.”469 However, it is also
possible that Rolling's sexual preferences were simply for young, dark-haired women: a
description that fit both his ex-wife and victims. Ryzuk has asserted that Danny's mother,
Claudia Rolling, was also similar in appearance.470 It is possible his “deeply ambivalent
feelings”471 toward Claudia, stemming from her mollycoddling and a failure to protect him from
paternal abuse, led Danny to fantasize about harming her. Dr. McMahon testified “he's angry at
his father but he's absolutely enraged at his mother, despite all his love for her. That is the one
thing he's not in touch with at all. He begged her not to go back—repeatedly. She always went
back.”472
In The Making of a Serial Killer, Rolling addressed Ryzuk's claims:
She repeatedly calls my mom a brunette, because that fits her theory about the murders,
but Claudia is and has always been a redhead... I have never been resentful of my mom. I
loved her with all my heart... I have never blamed my mom for my dad's attitude, or for
the problems in my life... Nor did I feel she failed me in any form or fashion.473

Whatever the case may be, with their consistent physical attributes, there was clearly a symbolic
quality to the female victims. With the exception of Rolling's hated father, his male victims
ranged in age from eight to 55 and were incidental—they happened to be at the wrong place at

oooo
I came across a Facebook profile photograph of Omatha during my research for this paper. Although it has been
22 years since the publication of Ryzuk's The Gainesville Ripper she fits this description.
pppp
As we will explore in Chapter 4, there were numerous indications in Hoyt's apartment that she worked for the
county sheriff. Given his lifelong history of suffering at the hands of the police (beginning with his father), it is
entirely possible that Rolling decapitated and eviscerated Hoyt because she was law enforcement. Or perhaps her
physical resemblance to Omatha combined with her occupation is what fueled Danny's anger to this extent.

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the wrong time.
Rolling repeatedly explained that he had murdered “eight souls for every year I was
abused by the prison system... and Gemini became the catalyst.”474 [mj]
Lucifer told me eight souls for every year I'd done in prison. When I got out of Parchman
prison, that was eight years that I'd spent in prison, different prisons in the South. I've
been convicted of five murders here in Florida. And then, well, you know, there's been,
you know, talk that there were three others in Shreveport. And I'm sure you're aware of
that. That adds up to how many?”475

By killing he sought “revenge against society—revenge for a lousy childhood, revenge for a
failed marriage, revenge for years of abuse by the prison system.”476 If his abusive policeman
father, James Rolling, represented the criminal justice system and his “lousy childhood”477, and
his victims were surrogates for his mother or Omatha with whom he had a “failed marriage”478,
then Rolling's post-Parchman violence was directed at symbolic victims. Though it is difficult to
imagine a serial killer with Rolling's violent paraphilias stopping of his own volition, inmate
Bobby Lewis, speaking to investigators on behalf of Rolling, said that after Rolling killed his
eighth victim “he was through. He decided to quit what he was doing. That was to be the last
victim.”479 Rolling did leave town almost immediately after the murder of Tracy Paules, though
is botched bank robbery may have been the catalyst.

3.6.4 Danny Rolling: Post-arrest ideal/own

In January 1991, Gainesville Police finally listened to the audio cassette at Rolling's
campsite and began connecting the dots. By the 25th they had linked him through DNA to the
Gainesville student murders. A match to the Grissom slayings in Shreveport came on February
10. Between August 29-October 18, Rolling pled guilty to multiple counts of burglary and armed
robbery across Florida and was handed multiple life sentences.
Incarcerated at Florida State Prison, Rolling struck up a friendship with another inmate,
Bobby Lewis. When Lewis showed Rolling a copy of his screenplay edited by Sondra London,
Rolling asked him to put them in touch. After exchanging a number of passionate letters
beginning in June 1992, London and Rolling became engaged. They began to collaborate on
Rolling's autobiography The Making of a Serial Killer: The Real Story of the Gainesville Student
Murders in the Killer's Own Words. Rolling contacted investigators from Gainesville on January
31, 1993, and offered a confession. The catch was that Bobby Lewis would answer questions for

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the investigators and Rolling would provide corrections if he was wrong. Rolling and Lewis met
with the investigators that same day. Over the course of three hours, Lewis confirmed Rolling
was responsible for the homicides and attributed the motive to Gemini [mj] and a desire to take
revenge on society.qqqq
In 1994, as his trial for the Gainesville homicides approached, Rolling informed his
defense attorney that despite the likelihood of receiving the death penalty, he wished to “confess
my sins to God and man... I want to stop running... I want to do the right thing... I don't want to
show those pictures to anyone.”480 He entered guilty pleas on all five counts of murder in
Gainesville. On March 24, 1994, Danny Rolling was convicted of the first-degree murders of
Sonja Larson, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt, Manuel Taboada, and Tracy Paules. Five days
later he confessed to the murder of the Grissom family in Shreveport. Danny Rolling was
sentenced to death on April 20.
As with his other stints in prison, Rolling experienced dejection-related emotions as his
phase as the wandering homicidal Mystery Rider homicidal ideal/own abruptly came to an end:
“It brings tears to my eyes. I'm a caged bird that longs to fly again…”481 “And depression?
Mercy! You ought to try on one of these bottomless pits I fall into for size. It's like my heart just
keeps sinking and sinking beyond my grasp.”482 Ryzuk, who attended his trial, wrote that
“Rolling on the one hand seemed to enjoy the special attention he received as a 'celebrity' killer,
and on the other apparently resented the negatives his status gave him.”483 Seemingly, the
negatives got the better of him.
Like Chapman and Berkowitz, his last known ideal/own was that of The Penitent
Christian, who proclaimed “In pleading guilty, a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Now even
my prayers feel more sincere. Regardless of what people think, I know in my heart that my Lord
God has forgiven me [emphasis added].”484 Nothing lifts the spirits like the promise of paradise.
In his final years, Rolling spent a great deal of time warning the world of the dangers of
malevolent supernatural entities (à la Berkowitz): “There are demonic spirits roaming this world
in search of an open door to a soul to possess. If you open the door to these forces, they will
enter and influence your mind, even dominate you to do things you never thought or dreamed of
doing... I am here today to bear witness that Evil walks among us.”485 Assured by scripture that

qqqq
Soon after, Lewis and Rolling would have a bitter falling out—an interesting turn of events, but hardly relevant
here.

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God would forgive him, he turned to proselytizing: “I feel it my duty to warn you. Search the
deep corners of your heart. We will all face our destiny soon, but you still have a choice as to
which fate befalls you. CHOOSE JESUS CHRIST NOW...”486 Even after admitting to some of
the worst transgressions possible, the multiple murderer is able to turn the tables and moralize by
appealing to the expectations of the hyperreal other.
Daniel Harold Rolling was executed by lethal injection on October 25, 2006.

3.6.5 Danny Rolling: Sexual/Gender Aspects

Like Chapman and Berkowitz 'the brat', Rolling was chronically unsatisfied with his 'little
boy' subordinated masculinity and spent a life pursuing 'manly' sub-hegemonic masculinity. The
first incarnation of his sub-hegemonic aspirations came in the form of the state-sanctioned
Macho American Soldier. Ever eager to win his father's approval, Rolling attempted to enlist in
the Navy; James Harold Rolling had served as a Navy man and somehow Danny had formed the
false impression that his father was “the most decorated veteran of the Korean War... when in
fact James Harold had only received awards for length of service, a recommendation for
commendation, and an honorable discharge.”487 Instead, Danny ended up in the Air Force and
was discharged for drug use before he could be deployed: “I got busted just a couple of weeks
before I was scheduled to take my 30 days' leave before I went to Vietnam. I wanted to go
because I thought I could finally make my dad proud of me.”488 Again, we see Prohaska &
Gailey's contention that many men do not feel secure in their masculinity unless it is confirmed
by 'real men.'
Rolling moved from one talisman of sub-hegemonic masculinity embedded in “fantasy
action heroes”489—the military man as depicted in “violent ‘adventure’ movies such as the
Rambo series”490—to the Mystery Rider of the mythologized Wild West, first portrayed by
Clint Eastwood in spaghetti western films. Eastwood's characters departed significantly from
those played by earlier cinematic gunslingers such as John Wayne, in that he took on the role of
archetypal anti-heroes—usually outlaws. In 1973, the year Danny was discharged from the
military, the Eastwood-directed High Plains Drifter was released. The film’s protagonist is an
unnamed stranger who wanders into a frontier mining town for a drink. When aggressive locals
follow him from the saloon to the barbershop, he kills them quickly and effortlessly with his
revolver. Walking away from the scene of the triple-homicide, an attractive female bumps into

156
him in the street, knocking his cigar from his mouth. He reacts by forcibly dragging her into a
nearby stable and raping her. The scene ends with the strong implication that she was sexually
satisfied by the rape. This parallels a dubious account by Rolling that in 1984 he broke into a
house intent on raping a woman, only to discover that she wished to have consensual sex with
him.491 Rolling revealed his affinity for Clint Eastwood westerns in his own words:
Cowboy Rolling's [emphasis added] earliest role model was James Cagney in Public
Enemy No. 1. But his all time favorite movie is 'The Outlaw Josie [sic] Wales,' starring
Clint Eastwood… He don't take no shit. You spit on his boot, he drills you nice and
proper between the peepers. A man of actionrrrr and very few words.492

The 'outlaw drifter' talisman served to repackage Rolling's 'mundane childishness' into 'cool anti-
authoritarianism', elevating him in his own mind from subordinated to sub-hegemonic. His
inability to effectively socialize now became manly individualism. His psychopathic aimlessness
was similarly recast as a lone wolf's wanderlust:
A drifter is driven, like the wind. You hear the sound it makes, then as suddenly as it
comes… it’s gone. A drifter can’t stay put in one place long enough to set roots, because
something keeps tugging at him, pulling him over the next hill into the next town or city.
Like a tumbleweed, when the wind blows, a drifter’s gotta go!493

Rolling's ego-dystonic gender and sexuality were clearly a salient source of strain and played a
crucial role in his killings. Speaking of his sex life in his autobiography, Rolling revealed a series
of disappointments, beginning with his first sexual encounter with an unhygienic woman, and
including his wife Omatha’s alleged frigidity494 (according to Ryzuk, the sexual problems in the
marriage resulted from Rolling's reported impotence495). He also claims to have undergone a
varicocele operation after a man punched him in the testicles at a roller rink.496 Moreover,
Rolling was an admitted497 and diagnosed498 paraphile—by far the most severe case in our 10
offender sample—with sexual desires including picquerism, necromutilophilia, voyeurism,
biastophilia, a strong probability of sexual sadism, as well as potential necrornopositophilia.
Contesting Ryzuk's claims that he harboured erotophonophilic proclivities as a teenager, Rolling
stated: “She has no idea how I felt at that time. My heart did not house murder until I was rotting
in that sewage-filled prison cell at Parchman. True enough, I did masturbate and have violent
fantasies at the time, but it was rape—not murder—that filled these moments. There's a big
difference.”499 While having no qualms about discussing his fondness for rape, Rolling was

rrrr
This exact descriptor will later be used by James Holmes to describe James Bond.

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strangely prudish about a number of other alleged sexual acts. He fiercely denied accusations500
of experiencing sexual abuse as a child501, bisexuality502, attempted child molestation503,
suffering from inhibited orgasm and erectile dysfunction504, using dental instruments and mirrors
in a sexual tryst with an African-American prostitute505, sodomizing victim Tracy Paules506,
asking a student from England if she would engage in anal sex with him507, and for being
obsessed with the cleanliness of the female body.508 Yet, he proactively disclosed engaging in
rape and post-mortem vaginal intercourse with one of his victims.509 What are we to make of
this? The first possibility is that denying lesser sexual transgressions and admitting to worse
lends credibility to his claims. Another attributes his denial of being sexually abused, bisexual,
and sexually dysfunctional as a way of reducing the discrepancy between the subordinated and
sub-hegemonic dimensions of his masculinity. Finally, Rolling's strong Christian identity (see the
following section) may account for his dismissal of the sodomy and bisexuality claims. Rather
than condemning rape, the Bible gives examples in which it is permitted (Deuteronomy 22:28-
29; Deuteronomy 21:10-14; Judges 5:30; Exodus 21:7-11), considered virtuous (Genesis 19:8;
Judges 21:10-24; Numbers 31:7-18; Deuteronomy 20:10-14), and even facilitated by God
himself (2 Samuel 12:11-14; Zechariah 14:1-2).

3.6.6 Danny Rolling: Religious/Philosophical Aspects

As Rolling's devout religiosity has been largely been covered already, this section will be
relatively brief. Along with Chapman and Berkowitz, Rolling's Christian identity strongly
defined him. According to his mother Claudia’s testimony at his trial “Danny can quote almost
the whole Bible.”510 And like the previous two offenders, he turned to the antagonist in the
Christian belief system—the Devil—before and during his homicides (the Mystery Rider
homicidal ideal/own), shifting his allegiances back to God following his arrest (the Penitent
Christian ideal/own). According to Rolling's own chronology, his first encounter with a demon
occurred “on a still warm July night”511 when a sleepless Danny “tossed and turned, and gazed
out the window into the illuminated street out front.”512

Suddenly! A cold violent wind blasted through the opened window, raising the ceiling-to-
floor olive-colored curtains over a startled Danny... Paralyzed with fear, he stared wide-
eyed out the window as things flew around the room. Then...there...outside the
window...it came creeping down from the roof—a Shadow of Evil, demonic energy
personified. It slipped under the window and poured into the room, slithered up the wall

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 and gathered in the corner of the ceiling. The freezing wind howled as the Visitor from
the underworld hovering above the bedded Rollings began to watch, to call, and to reach
for Danny's soul. He could feel its evil power. The hair on his arms and neck stood up as
he watched the demon watching him... Danny could only moan and look astonished at the
thing hovering above him. It could change shapes... The thing held no light. It looked like
if you put your hand into it, your hand would go somewhere and you would never see it
again. There in his bed, Danny struggled to gain release from the spell... as he overcame
his fear and willed himself to speak three names. The first name was a whisper forced
from a forged will, the second, a triumph—and the third, a victory:
'Jesus...Jesus...JESUS! After he shouted the Holy Name the third time, the dark demon
immediately dashed out the window into the night.513

On another occasion Rolling recalls sleeping in his car near a graveyard and waking to find the
ghost of a “tall, dark man wearing a wide-brim Quaker black hat, a knee-length coat, and gray
slacks. He had no face, only darkness filled his ragged clothes”514 walking nearby. Rolling was a
member of a Pentecostal Church in which worshippers believe their bodies are possessed by
spirits, giving rise to the glossolalic practice of 'speaking in tongues'. Inherent in this belief
system is Mellor et al.'s delusional interpretive framework, as previously discussed. In reference
to his paranormal experiences, Rolling briefly spoke of the link between epistemosis and both
hyporeal and hyperreal simulacra in this process:
Those who haven't seen or experienced [the paranormal], just can't comprehend it.
Reality and fantasy, these are opposites to be certain. Still, why do we choose to entangle
the two? TV is a prime example of escape into a world totally unlike our own. But when
the real and the unreal collide, the result can only be confusion [emphasis added].515

As seen in the Chapman and Berkowitz cases, when social or individual concepts of Reality are
malleable, hyperreal meta-delusions become possible: “The murders were like being in a movie
– a horror movie. Gemini the puppet master was pulling the strings and I was the possessed
leading actor.”516 Rolling clearly had no regard for knowledge, logic, or scientifically-established
truths, believing “The day we chose to become wise, we became fools [emphasis added]. Since
the first man Adam and the first woman Eve, we have rejected the counsel of God and chosen
rather to lean upon our own understanding, and there has been nothing but death and confusion
ever since.”517 Unsurprisingly, the man who rejects logic and wisdom—embracing ignorance by
definition—can easily dive or fall into useful meta-delusion:
Gemini is a real being from another dimension that coexists with our own—the nether
world, where the fallen angels dwell. You see, I wanted revenge [emphasis added]. I
wanted someone else to suffer the way I suffered. That's why Gemini became real to me
[emphasis added]. Gemini lusts for revenge against God Almighty's righteous judgments

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 against him, and since he can't touch the Creator God, he goes after the next best thing—
the creation of God, mankind.518

Nevertheless, there was nothing fraudulent about Rolling's Christian faith. Around the time of
the Grissom murders, Reverend Mike Hudspeth remembers Rolling showing up at the church at
night to pray. It was located within easy walking distance from the Grissom residence.519
Rolling's last words immediately prior to his 2006 execution by lethal injection, “None greater
than thee, oh Lord”520, came in the form of a hymn.

3.6.7 Danny Rolling: Class Aspects

It is difficult to ascertain the role social class factored into Rolling's homicides, as he did
not explicitly refer to it in any of his known writings or statements. There is some evidence that
the lower-middle-class blue-collar Rollingssss was aware of his background, and attempted to
transcend it by attending the aptly-named Superior Bar and Grill, which according to Ryzuk was
“located on busy Line Avenue in one of the [Shreveport's] upscale neighborhoods”521 where it
attracted “professionals who crowded the bar every night for after-work margaritas and a free
Mexican buffet.”522 Rolling's autobiography describes it as “his favorite watering hole... a trendy
hangout for Shreveport's upper class [emphasis added] where every Thursday through Saturday
evening, big spenders and beautiful women piled in…”523 He provided one account in which he
attempted to pass as a 'big spender' himself:
He splashed on his favorite aftershave, and dressed himself in virgin white from head to
toe. Gazing in the mirror, his reflection portrayed him so: Small gold chain about his neck
White cotton Bugle Boy shirt Gold watch on his left wrist Black silver buckled leather
belt White cotton Bugle Boy pants Patchwork python snakehide Acme boots... he dug into
his pocket, pulled out his keys, and opened the door to his favorite chariot. That car! That
beautiful car! All that chrome trimming a cool-black 1960 Chevy Belaire two-door
hardtop, with the legendary 283 under the hood... Everywhere he went in that car, people
would smile, wave, and give the thumbs-up...524

Rolling describes lurking outside “in the dark, watching the people inside, how he wanted to fit
in! But somehow...he never quite did.”525 This admission is eerily similar to his habit of peeping
through the windows of his middle-class victims. Certainly, we might speculate that Rolling was

ssss
Ryzuk describes the location of his family's residence as a “quiet middle-class neighborhood known as Sunset
Acres” (Ryzuk, 1994, p. 77). However, according to definitions given by Gilbert (2002) and Thompson &
Hickey (2005), along with my own personal observations regarding speech patterns and habits, it is clear the
Rollings were lower-middle-class at best. Philpin & Donnelly refer to it as 'blue collar.'

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killing up due to his social class, as Ryzuk has, but ultimately there is no evidence to support this
claim. For our purposes, it will remain a sexual/gender matter.

3.6.8 Danny Rolling: Vocational Aspects

A crucial part of Rolling’s actual/own concept was his inability to maintain
employment526, a phenomenon which pervades the offenders in this sample. After Rolling was
discharged from the Air Force, Philpin & Donnelly write that he “found a succession of low-
paying jobs”527 or as Ryzuk describes it, he was “fired from a few menial jobs.”528 Following his
marriage to Omatha, he worked for Louisiana Paper at a loading dock, and at a bakery.529
Though there is no account of his time in these jobs, at some point in the marriage, Rolling began
working for the Water Department. One day he apparentlytttt refused to get out of bed and go to
work, prompting Omatha to call his parents for help. James reportedlyuuuu responded by barging
into the house, ripping the bedsheets off his naked son, pouncing on him, and putting a knife to
his throat. Regardless, Rolling clearly did not survive his time at the Water Department, as
months later he was working as a waiter at a Mexican restaurant.530
Between 1979 and 1988, Rolling was more-or-less continually incarcerated. Upon being
released back to Shreveport he struggled to find employment. Virtually repeating the cruel words
that his father had used to label him, Rolling told his mother “I'm useless. I'm not worth
anything. I can't even get a job.”531 At one point he penned a country and western song entitled
“I Need a Job” which he planned to sing outside Standard Oil in an attempt to gain their
sympathies: “I need a job today/and I ain’t going to go away/Until I hear you say/'you’re hired.'/
I’ll work till I drop/ ain’t never gonna stop/ And I don’t ever want to hear you say 'you’re
fired.'”532 Though he did not find employment at Standard Oil, within a period of approximately
a year, Rolling managed to obtain and promptly lose work as a baker at the Western Sizzlin'
Steak House, a labourer at Wal-Mart, a cashier at a Circle K, a cook at Pancho's Mexican Buffet,
a salesman at a telephone solicitation company, an apprentice to an electrician, an employee at
Midas Muffler, and finally at Bowman Diesel.533 There is even some indication he self-

tttt
Rolling contested this assertion, saying that it was his day off.
uuuu
This account is confirmed by Danny and Claudia Rolling, and appears in Ryzuk (1994), Philpin & Donnelly
(1994), and London & Rolling (2011). However, when asked about the incident while under oath in court,
Omatha denied ever witnessing it. Rolling claimed she was lying, as it would have been impossible for her not to
see.

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sabotaged a publishing deal for a number of country songs he had written.534
Violence was often associated with negative-experiences on the job. On Saturday,
November 4, 1989, Rolling was fired from Poncho's Mexican Buffet [trigger] for failing to show
up for work three days in a rowvvvv. He responded by threatening to murder the manager and
cook. That same date, Rolling invaded the home of the Grissom family in Southern Hills,
brutally killing Julie, Tom, and Sean.535 Six months later, when his boss at Bowman Diesel
playfully ribbed him about some shoddy work he had done, Rolling threatened to attack him with
a shovel. Within days of losing his job [trigger], Rolling shot his father in the stomach and face.

3.6.9 Concluding Thoughts: Danny Rolling

Raised in a house dominated by a tyrannical patriarch who beat and berated him since
infancy, Danny Rolling's social development stagnated at the level of 'immature teenager.' His
father was both a Korean-war veteran and a copwwww—positions associated with sub-hegemonic
masculinity—and Rolling, the childish outcast, was subordinated in his masculinity, spending a
lifetime striving for sub-hegemony.xxxx Perhaps as a reaction to his strict upbringing, he
habitually resisted authority, making his forays into institutionalized sub-hegemonic masculinity
an impossibility. Rolling's failure in the Air Force—an attempt to endear himself to his father by
effectively copying him—is the strongest testament to this. However, his overall relationship
with law enforcement is more crucial in understanding his criminality. Physically abused by his
policeman father who routinely proclaimed “I am the law”536, Rolling naturally developed
animosity toward law enforcement from an early age. All subsequent authority merely followed.
And as Mark Chapman defined himself by murdering an internationally-known celebrity, an
identity he wished to possess but never couldyyyy, Rolling the failed air force Security Police

vvvv
Rolling disputed the reasons for his termination: “That is just not the way it happened. I was the best damn
worker they had. But the manager at that time had a grudge against me because I was dating all the waitresses and
none of them liked him... I guess he resented their flirting with me Anyway, after work one day, as I always did, I
checked the shift roster twice before leaving and I was scheduled to be off for the next two days... Apparently, my
boss changed the roster sometime after I left work,and didn't or couldn't contact me about the new schedule. That's
why I blew my stack on being fired, because it came as a complete surprise, and without a job, I'd lose my
apartment. Which I did. I came to work thinking everything was fine—until the manager said, 'You're fired.'”
(London & Rolling, 2011, p. 103).
wwww
Rolling's grandfather was also a reserve deputy sheriff for Muscogee County in Georgia .
xxxx
To be fair, during the Eighties, Rolling was forced to embody sub-hegemonic masculinity in order to survive in
prison. His deficits were not in his capacity to be physically 'tough', but his emotional and social maturity.
yyyy
Shock-rocker Marilyn Manson embodied this duality of American celebrity in his stage name: the famous
'beautiful' person (e.g., Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon) and the unremarkbble nobody who becomes infamous for

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 Table 7

Danny Rolling: Selves and Strain

Actual/Own Ideal/Own Homicidal Self Post-Arrest Self

Sexuality Sexual Sexually normal. Rape and Resolved.
Frustration destruction of Incarcerated.
(paraphilic); object of desire. Retreatism.
Unsatisfactory Pleasure from
experiences enacting of violent
paraphilia.
Gender Subordinate. Sub-hegemonic. Sub-hegemonic. Christianity used to
Gender-role (failed soldier). 'Outlaw' Masculine renegotiate role of
Strain (''kid in a No gender-role violence masculinity. No
man's body'') strain. destroying gender-role strain.
emphasized
femininity. No
gender-role strain.
Religion/Philosophy Theistic Strong influence Appeals to Devil Penitent Christian
Class Lower-middle- Middle or upper- The abnegation of Resolved.
class. middle class. class through life Incarcerated.
as a drifter. Retreatism.
Vocation Menial. Employed. An Outlaw lives Resolved.
Unstable. off the avails of Incarcerated.
crime. Retreatism.
Race Ego-syntonic. N/A N/A N/A
Notability Ego-dystonic. N/A N/A Ego-syntonic.
Mertonian strain. Media circus. Public
performance of
penitence.

officer537 turned against law enforcement (two of his 1990 victims were employed by police
services), becoming their opposing archetype, the equally sub-hegemonic outlaw Mystery
Rider: “Clint Eastwood… He don't take no shit. You spit on his boot, he drills you nice and
proper between the peepers. A man of action and very few words.”538 As Rolling's crimes
escalated in frequency and severity, naturally, so did the frequency and severity of his negative

murdering somebody famous (e.g., Charles Manson, Mark Chapman).

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encounters with law enforcement.
Unwilling to accept the legitimacy of government-sanctioned authority, Rolling's self-
guide was, to quote Yeats, “turning and turning in the widening gyre”539, increasingly detached
from society and its institutions until he became a murderer: “Things fall apart, the center cannot
hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”540 Or in Rolling's words: “The further I have
plunged from the mainstream, the lonelier I have become. It started long ago as a child, with that
deep-down feeling of being the Outsider, the odd man out in the game of life. The pain, the anger
and the violence still haunt me.”541 This spiraling away from society eventually begat a
manifestation of rage which culminated in Rolling realizing his full violent potential: the
archetypal wandering outlaw transgressing an internal boundary to become the homicidal drifter
of slasher-film lore.zzzz Like Yeats' “rough beast”542 from the same poem, with its “gaze blank
and pitiless as the sun”543 slouching “toward Bethlehem to be born”544, the “Devil... I just call
him GEMINI... became real [emphasis added]” to Rolling at Parchman Prison.545 When
Rolling's subjective experiences pushed him to the brink of personal apocalypse, Gemini “was
summoned...”546 for Rolling's final battle against the world: “So now we come to why I crossed
that bloody bottom line even before Gainesville. That would be revenge against society—
revenge for a lousy childhood, revenge for a failed marriage, revenge for years of abuse by the
prison system.”547
Of the four strategies Agnew lists for avoiding negative stimuli, the most relevant to ETV
are drug-useaaaaa and either (i) exacting revenge on either the source of the noxiousness or (ii)
displacing this aggression onto a related person, group, or object. This latter strategy was briefly
discussed in regard to Rolling forming a frustrative line of interpretation of the perceived actions
of young attractive women. According to a fellow inmate, Rolling wished to terrorize the
communities he targeted, perhaps American society as a whole.548 This was made clear by his
willingness to murder men, women, and children alike: a kind of equal opportunity murderer.
Still, his intended victims were young attractive women with brown hair and a petite stature—
women who physically resembled his ex-wife—and to a lesser extent, police department

zzzz
Rolling was a longtime fan of The Doors, arguably the first 'dark' psychedelic band. As noted by Philpin &
Donnelly (1994), frontman Jim Morrison, also the rebellious son of a navy man, sang “Father? Yes, son? I want to
kill you” on 'The End', “motel, money, murder, madness” on 'L.A. Woman', and “there's a killer on the road” in
'Riders on the Storm'.
aaaaa
Mark David Chapman, Danny Rolling, and Daniel Gonzalez all abused drugs and alcohol. There are conflicting
reports about Berkowitz and Magnotta's substance use.

164
employees (his father, Christa Hoyt).
Whether Rolling genuinely hallucinated, fabricated, or misinterpreted the nature of the
paranormal entities he encountered, there is no denying that, like the demonologies of Chapman
and Berkowitz, Gemini was a suspiciously useful imagining for Rolling. By attributing his
homicidal compulsion to demonic possession, Rolling (i) rationalized his tumultuous emotions
leading to the killings; (ii) reduced his personal culpability; (iii) created doubt surrounding his
sanity, and by extension, the justification for his execution; and (iv) paved the way for a post-
arrest ideal/own.
In retrospect, Danny the drifter had no anchor to moor him to society—the social control
theorists' stake in conformity.549 His parental home was chronically dysfunctional, he was unable
to sustain a romantic relationship, and fared even worse in his failed attempts at employment.
The ability to use one's competence to provide for oneself (vocational aspects) and success with
women (sexuality aspects) are both linked to normative masculine gender identity. So, beyond
having nothing to lose, Rolling would have also experienced intense gender-role strain at the
most rudimentary level, amplified by the fact that he ultimately aspired to sub-hegemonic
masculinity. When we take into account the fact that Rolling's divorce triggered his first rape,
losing his job at Pancho's triggered his first murders, and the chronological proximity between
his termination from Bowman Diesel and the shooting of his father, it becomes apparent that
gender-role strain was the key factor nudging Rolling toward violence.
Born a year earlier than Chapman and a year later than Berkowitz, Rolling was raised in
this same first-stage of hyperreal simulation in which the television and radio were ever-present,
films easily accessible, and video games and the Internet a complete non-factor. Cast out of
society from his youngest years and told he would end up in jail by his policeman father, it is
understandable why Rolling would profoundly relate to the characters in Outlaw Country music
and revisionist Western films—both genres blossoming in the early-to-mid-Seventies when
Rolling was a teenager and young adult. Learning of the infamous American bank-robber Jesse
James through both mediums, Rolling saw elements of his actual/own and homicidal ideal/own
selves mirrored in the hyperreal rendering of this historical character. A creative and naturally
artistically talented individual who expressed himself through song writing and illustration,
Rolling's pre-amble to 'Ode to Jesse' on the cassette he recorded evidences this: “Well, I guess
this song depicts the way my life really is. In a way Jesse James and myself, we're both having to

165
live the same life, the life of an outlaw—even though I really don't believe in Jesse's heart it was
what he wanted. So maybe I was really writing this song about myself.”550 Not only did the
Outlaw archetype provide sub-hegemonic masculinity and the possibility of notoriety, but as an
outlaw survives through crime, it provided Rolling with an alternative to the employment he
could not maintain. Most importantly, the archetypal Outlaw fights the perceived injustices in
his world, trespassing the laws that protect them without a second thought. Rolling, the man who
called himself 'cowboy', gutted Christa Hoyt like a buck, then cut off her head Indian-hunter
style, and displayed it to the authorities.bbbbb The injustice: resembling the object of Rolling's
torment.
Like his hero Jesse James, who Rolling sang “chose a life of crime”551, according to
fellow inmate Bobby Lewis, Rolling said “he wanted to be a superstar of crime…”552,
immortalized in film and song. In fact, by penning the semi-autobiographical 'Mystery Rider',
which former Rolling-correspondent and psychologist Tony Meoli referred to as “a favorite of
Rolling music aficionados”553, he may have taken a step in the right direction toward his own
goal. Not only has the haphazardly-recorded song been uploaded to YouTube where it may exist
as an accessible cultural product forevermore, it has also been covered by numerous amateur
musiciansccccc and uploaded. In 2010, an indie film about Rolling's reign of terror The Gainesville
Ripper was released, with Rolling portrayed by actor Zachary Memos. Though not as infamous
as Chapman or Berkowitz, Rolling has been immortalized as a hyperreal simulacrum. Recently,
it has been confirmed that the screenwriter of the critically-acclaimed blockbuster slasher-film
Scream was directly inspired by a program he saw on Rolling.554 If it is not obvious by now, old
media (e.g., The Outlaw Josie Wales) and murderers (e.g., Jesse James) are talismans to killers
who inspire new media (e.g., The Gainesville Ripper, Scream), a causal chain which could
theoretically continue into perpetuity. To quote prosecutor Rodney Smith:
“These are legendary murders. These aren't just murders you hear about and read about. These
are murders you never forget. But Danny got his wish. He is the superstar of crime...”555 Though
Rolling denied wanting homicidal celebrity, calling Bobby Lewis a liar, in the long-term it
doesn't matter. He has it.

bbbbb
The serial killer in Exorcist III, which Rolling watched after the Grissom-family murder (no decapitation) but
before the Hoyt murder (decapitation), beheaded his victims.
ccccc
The version by Forest of Nine is actually a strong performance and recording, demonstrating Rolling's
songwriting talent. This view is generally affirmed in the comments section.

166
 The case of Danny Harold Rolling is of particular interest because violent paraphilia was
the offender's primary motivation, while expressive/transformative elements were a secondary,
yet primal and purposeful, motive. Rolling's sexual desire to stab and mutilate blended with his
propensity to terrify through maximizing abjection (see Chapter 4). In the next case we will also
examine a probable paraphile, a sexual sadist, who cast himself as a decidedly modern variation
of the Outlaw archetype: the serialkiller!

3.7 Colin Ireland: ‘Lost Middle-Aged Nobody’ to ‘Perfect Serialkiller!’

Talismans: serialkiller!, FBI Crime Classification Manual, Whoever Fights Monsters; Type: 2
3.7.0 Colin Ireland: Failed socialization and formation and realization of the actual/own
self
Colin John Ireland was born out of wedlock to a 17-year-old shop assistant on March 16,
1954. He spent his early years living with his maternal grandparents, uncle, and young mother in
Dartford, England, before moving with his mother to Sidcup at age six (late-
interrelational/early-dimensional development). Financially overburdened, the Irelands were
compelled to stay briefly at a homeless shelter before moving back to Dartford for three months.
Colin's mother soon married, but their hardship continued, and they were constantly relocating to
escape debt. In 1964, 10-year-old (late-dimensional/early-vectorial development) Colin was
placed temporarily in foster care when his mother gave birth to a second boy and his parents
could not afford to keep them both. In all, he moved homes nine times before the age of 12.
Like Mark David Chapman and David Berkowitz, Colin Ireland described his actual/own
as essentially that of a perpetual outsider who was “not a mixer”556, “often at the edge of
things”557, and who, as a boy, would spend “more time on the side line waiting to be picked”558
than actually participating in social activities. He attributed much of this to his experience with
the educational system and having to continually relocate from one school to the next: once
attending six in five years559: “I would not say I enjoyed school. It was a chore. As to why not, I
would say I was not given a chance. My primary education was a mess, unstructured is too nice a
term. Disjointed an understatement.”560
Bullied because his clothes didn't fit, the impoverished Ireland arrived late to class to
avoid being teased, and was regularly caned for his tardiness. Reflecting on this, he would later
remark “the punishment for lateness, repeated lateness, was the cane and I'm surprised that I

167
grew up to be a sadist and not a masochist.”561 He also admitted that he was “immature and
tended to seek out immature associates.”562
When Ireland was 12, his first step-father was replaced by a second. The family's
financial lot improved and in 1965 they settled into a home in Sheerness for a period of five
years. Colin began attending Sheerness Secondary School, but failed to adjust.
My secondary education was, I feel, hampered by my not going through primary
education – with the boys. My start was also delayed, I walked into a class of boys who
were half way through a class. They had been together for some time, several weeks at
least. My 'new boy' status was duplicated. It went down hill from there.563

As Ireland grew, he was in and out of schools for troubled youths, borstals, and prisons;
typically for property crimes. Much of Ireland's activities during this time are unknown, and his
aspirations are indiscernible. Ireland describes it as his
lost period. Common with those who suffer from psychopathy... The fictional account is
in the book The Catcher in the Rye [emphasis added]. The true account was the year
Hitler disappeared when he was in Vienna... My own 'lost period' (my term) lasted a lot
longer. In between custodial periods a lot of the seventies are a blur. I spent my time
detached and wondering.564

His criminal habits continued to see him in and out of the British prison system
throughout the Eighties. During this period, he had a number of failed relationships with women,
including two marriages.565 As Ireland wandered aimlessly from job to job, prison to prison, he
began to perceive himself as a Lost Middle-Age Nobody (actual/own).

3.7.1 Colin Ireland: Pre-homicidal Ideal/Selves and Negative Emotionality

Colin Ireland's original ideal/own was that of the Macho Hero. His second-wife, Janet
Young, remembers that when she first saw him in 1989 “he was dressed in camouflage although
he has never actually been a soldier.”566 Donning his combat fatigues, Ireland would head out to
the Dartford Moors or Essex Marches for outdoor survivalist camping trips. A psychological
assessment of Ireland in custody noted “Very strong interest in survivalism. Important to self
image.”567 According to Janet Young: “He did like to see himself as a survivalist and he had all
the gear: the water purification tablets, and all that kind of thing with him. And he'd go out on the
moors, and he was gonna go all night and catch a rabbit… But actually, he wasn't very good at it
and he always came home for his tea.”568 Worse, Ireland reportedly earned the nickname

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'Chicken Colin' due to his habit of sneaking into town on survivalist weekends to eat fried
chicken.569 He attempted to enlist in the French Foreign Legion and was rejected, worked as a
bouncer, and supposedly did a short stint as a volunteer fireman570. Ultimately, he did not remain
in any of these positions. Detective Superintendent Albert Patrick, who witnessed Ireland being
interviewed at length about his life and crimes, said “I think he was in his own comfort zone
when he was out in the wilds walking. I think he'd have loved to join the French Foreign
Legion.”571
When Ireland failed both in his pursuit of manly vocations, he found work as deputy
manager of a homeless shelter—a position which he described as the only job he ever loved—
but was fired [trigger] and soon found himself breaking up wooden pallets for a living.572 As
1993 drew near, the discrepancy between Ireland's actual/own the Lost Middle-Age Nobody
and Macho Hero ideal/own became pronounced, and he experienced dejection-related emotions:
“If you look at Ireland he was going through a depression... You talk to the people he lived with.
I think he got depressed because he got the sack from the job he was working at.”573 Ireland's
friend who managed the homeless shelter said that upon being fired he “was very upset,
disappointed, angry.”574 In the months before embarking on his murder series, he added that
Ireland was “troubled” and “frustrated”575. “He was living in a bed sit. He was very unhappy,
lost is a good word. That would sum it up. He was lost. I personally felt quite sorry for him at the
time.”576 Others close to him said that Ireland felt that that he had never accomplished anything
in life.577 These sentiments correspond with the dejection-related emotions of feeling ineffective
and discouraged.578 The manager of the homeless shelter, who remained in touch with Ireland,
claimed Ireland “didn't know what to do with his life.”579 Unfortunately, he would soon commit
to an extreme idea.

3.7.2 Colin Ireland: Renegotiated Homicidal ideal/own

When Ireland failed to become his original Macho Hero ideal/own, he created a
renegotiated homicidal ideal/own to expunge his dejection-related emotions. Having read the
FBI's Crime Classification Manual, Ireland came away with the false impression that the criteria
for becoming a Perfect Serial Killer—his renegotiated homicidal ideal/own—was to murder a
minimum of four victims.ddddd Ireland telephoned The Sun and revealed that his New Year's

ddddd
The actual number of victims to qualify as a serial killer according to the Crime Classification Manual is three.

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resolution for 1993 was “to kill a homosexual.”580 Thus, by fatally asphyxiating Peter Walker,
Christopher Dunn, Perry Bradley III, and Andrew Collier, Ireland became consolidated in his
new Perfect Serial Killer self.
After murdering his fifth victim, Emanuel Spiteri, on Tuesday June 15 Ireland telephoned
the Arbour Square Police in East London and reportedly said “I have read a lot of books on serial
killers. I think it is from four people that the FBI classify as serial, so I may stop now I have done
five. I just wanted to see if it could be done. I will probably never reoffend again.”581 Prosecutor
John Nutting would later confirm this at Ireland's trial, stating “Indeed, it would seem this
defendant set out to be a serial killer. He told others that in order to be classified, he knew he
would have to commit at least four murders.”582
Both Ireland's friend and Detective Superintendent Patrick made separate claims that
Ireland had spoken to them about wanting “to be famous.”583 Through highly-calculated
homicide, Ireland accomplished something that would bring him a degree of what Leyton refers
to as “international celebrity”584 if apprehended. Alternatively, if he got away with it, he could
take personal pride in knowing that he belonged to an exclusive club of evasive serial killers
alongside Jack the Ripper and The Zodiac.
After his first murder, Ireland would comment on his transformation from Lost Middle-
Age Nobody (actual/own) to Perfect Serial Killereeeee (ideal/own):
I looked at myself in the mirror. Then I walked down the road and thought that anyone
who looked at my face would be able to see I had just murdered somebody. I thought
they must be able to tell by just looking at me. I remembered losing my virginity and I
remembered the same feeling. You're always buzzing.585

Eventually, CCTV cameras at Charing Cross train station captured footage of Ireland and
his fifth victim walking together on the night of June 12. On June 24, the London Metropolitan
Police released a still from the CCTV footage, an E-Fit (Electronic Facial Identification
Technique) composite of the killer's face, and his physical description to the general public.
Ireland showed up at the police station on July 19 with an affidavit from his solicitor
explaining that he was the man in the photograph. He admitted being with the victim on the night
of the murder, but denied having killed him. Instead, Ireland explained that he had arrived at the

Many of Ireland's homicidal expressions sought to establish himself as The Perfect Serial Killer, but made no
eeeee

reference to the Lost Middle-Age Nobody self he was abandoning. Perhaps even more so, they focused on the
deviant identity of his victims. See Chapter 4.

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victim's apartment to find a third male present. When they tried to coax Ireland into a threesome,
he politely refused and left. Unbeknownst to Ireland, who had meticulously cleaned each crime
scene, he had left a fingerprint on his fourth victim's window ledge: a single mistake that would
lead to his arrest. On July 21, 1993, he was officially charged with the murder of Andrew
Collier, followed two days later by that of Emanuel Spiteri.

3.7.3 Colin Ireland: Victimology

Colin Ireland's five victims were lower-middle to upper-middle-class homosexual males
who frequented The Coleherne pub on Brompton Road in West London. Four were sexual
masochists who advertised their inclinations by wearing a coloured handkerchief in their back
right pockets.586 According to Paul Burston, a journalist in the LGBT community and former
Galop (Gay London Policing Group) volunteer, “The Coleherne back then was the destination
venue for gay leathermen in London. The windows were blacked out so you couldn’t see
inside… You did sometimes see sex on the premises.”587
Table 8
Colin Ireland Victimology
Age Race Gender Profession Date Murdered Where
Peter Walker 45 White Male Assistant theatre March 8, Victim's apartment in
director/choreographer 1993/died Battersea
Christopher 37 White Male Librarian May 28, Victim's apartment in
Dunn 1993/died Wealdstone
Perry 35 White Male Businessman June 4, 1993/died Victim's apartment in
Bradley Kensington
Andrew 33 White Male Warden at sheltered June 7, 1993/died Victim's apartment in
Collier Dalston housing
complex
Emanuel 41 White Male Chef June 12, Victim's apartment in
Spiteri 1993/died Catford

Ireland has given contradictory accounts regarding his feelings towards gay men.
Initially, he claimed that he had no animosity towards homosexuals whatsoever, only victimizing
them because they were easy targets. In one of the telephone communications made to a
Battersea police constable during his killing series, when asked why he chose homosexuals,

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Ireland replied that they “keep their mouths shut and don't tell police things. They're respectable,
and that I don't like them...”588 Later, he would revise his story once more, saying that he only
disliked “extreme male deviants”589 [mj]. In a communication with Gekowski, he explained “My
anger is not triggered by the behaviour of the conventional gay man, it's triggered by male
deviancy. I do not regard the two as the same. The men I preyed on were deviants who happened
to be gay.”590 He had hinted at this in a police interview: “I felt that if I was approached by one
of the group that tended to trigger feelings in me – masochistic men [emphasis added] – I felt
there was a likelihood I would kill.”591 However, according to a detective involved in the
investigation, victim Perry Bradley III was neither into sadomasochism or bondage.
Nevertheless, Ireland convinced him it was the only way that he [Ireland] could be sexually
gratified.”592 Bradley agreed to let Ireland tie him up.
If Ireland was only driven to kill “extreme male deviants”593 why had he agreed to
accompany Bradley home from the Coleherne? Moreover, after being informed by Bradley that
he was not the type of person Ireland reportedly wanted to victimize, why did Ireland murder
him anyways? He could have simply left, citing Bradley's disinterest in S&M as an excuse.
Similarly revealing is Ireland's claim that “two of my victims were known to have used rent
boys”594—facts that he could not have learned until after murdering them. When Ireland made
his call to Brandon Malinsky at The Sun and stated “It was my New Year's resolution to kill a
homosexual”595 he did not qualify this with any other descriptor.
The manager of the homeless shelter revealed that Ireland “did have some rather narrow
opinions of certain sections of society. He was homophobic. He made it quite clear that he didn't
agree with homosexuality. He didn't like the gay community at all.”596 Albert Patrick made a
similar observation: “He definitely had a dislike, but I don't think we ever got to the real truth of
it... I think it was from being a bouncer on the door of clubs in London. He just didn't like
them—simple as that.”597 Not quite. Higgins notes that as we judge ourselves in relation to a self-
guide, we also judge others by that same self-guide and may experience negative emotions as a
result. As Ireland's self-guide was sub-hegemonic in its masculinity, the subordinated status of
his victims may have provoked intense resentment, criticism, and hatred in him.598

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3.7.4 Colin Ireland: Post-Arrest Self
Whether Colin Ireland would have re-offended or not is an eternal mystery. When his
fingerprints were matched to those found on his fourth victim's window, he was promptly
charged for the last two killings. Under questioning, “he never opened his mouth for three days.
Just looked straight into the camera.”599 Unlike Chapman and Berkowitz who readily confessed
to their murders, police perceived that Ireland was playing a game of cat and mouse with them.
Then, after nearly a month of stonewalling interviewers while on remand, on August 19 Ireland
suddenly informed prison officials “I'm the gay slayer [ideal/own]. I want to confess.”600 He
offered the following statement:
I think there is a side to my personality that can only be controlled by my being restricted
to a prison regime. I think long-term prison establishments are humane and they take
good care of you. I feel I'm okay within this restricted environment. But I feel there are
certain sides of my character – especially within the group that I was targeting – that
means I may offend again. I want to remove that possibility. I feel there is a certain side
of my character – not all of it by any means – but I'm probably sixty to seventy per cent
quite a reasonable human being most of the time. However, there is a side of my
character that is quite cold and calculating. I feel that because of the confession I am
about to make that I face an extensive prison sentence and that will restrict me. That will
stop me harming other people. When my case comes to trial any judge worth his salt is
going to find me guilty and he will imprison me and by doing so allow me not to offend
again for some time. That's all I really wanted to say.601

Once incarcerated, Ireland continued to play the part of serialkiller!, taking a page from
the book of Henry Lee Lucas and offering to confess to additional homicides if certain
conditions were met. According to Detective Albert Patrick, “He ran us a wild goose chase. He
said he'd killed other victims around the country...”602 but then later admitted “he had made the
whole thing up and that it was a matter of mind games between him and the police, and there
were no bodies.”603 This trend will reappear later, in the case of another Englishman who went
from failed survivalist to serialkiller!, Anthony Arkwright.

3.7.5 Colin Ireland: Sexual/Gender Aspects

Any discussion of Colin Ireland’s sexual/gender aspects must necessarily begin with
same-sex encounters. In his communication with Gekowski, Ireland described five separate

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incidentsfffff from his childhood where he was either propositioned or he saw other boys being
groomed or taken home by male “pedophiles.”ggggg The incidents are recounted here:
I, a very lonely and vulnerable boy, went to the caravan as he had told me he might give
me the necklace if I did. I half thought he might offer me a job, I also, to a point, knew his
intention in that I knew it might be unpleasant. I wanted that gift. In the caravan the man
pulled down my trousers, beneath them I was wearing shorts. I saw it at the time as
'bottling out' but did not allow him to remove the shorts and never received the gift.604
On my way home I stopped to use the toilet. I was sat in a cubicle when a man (late
teens/early twenties) looked over the dividing wall and offered me seven shillings and six
pence… It's difficult for me to come to terms with but I may have considered his offer. I
was very young and very poor and also inquisitive, but when I came out he had gone...
The man was not gay, he was a pedophile. So was the first.605

On another occasion while watching a film at the cinema, a man had been going from
child to child offering them ice-creams and drinks. I reported this man to the only 'official
figure' I knew, a probation officer named Mr Bridges. The man was a local optician and I
am still uncomfortable in the company of male opticians.606

A man who worked for a second-hand shop… befriended me and later made it known
that for sexual services he would give me money, I declined.607

I became involved in the 'Playland'hhhhh scene. You may or may not have heard of
Playland, it was an amusement arcade where paedophiles would pick up young runaways.
Again, I was on the edge of things, I was never abused though many of my friends were,
often exchanging their bodies not for money, but just for a bed for the night.608

Ireland denied ever having been molested, much in the same way he denied experiencing
sexual arousal from torturing his victims. He would say of his encounters with the pedophiles, “I
was just a child. How many more [children] did they approach? They just saw my vulnerability
and attempted to abuse that, though I was never abused.”609
The sexual/gender aspects of Ireland's actual/own drove his ideal/own to target
homosexual males. There is ample evidence that Ireland was sexually attracted to women. He
had twice married as well as having a live-in relationship with women, and was fired from the
homeless shelter because “there had been some allegations during that time of inappropriate

The same number as his victims before he decided to stop killing, though this is likely a coincidence.
fffff
ggggg
The label has been placed in quotation marks because Ireland personally used it to describe these individuals. In
reality, he would not be able to know if the men were pedophiles or not, because not all child molesters are disposed
to pedophilia, in the strict paraphilic sense.
hhhhh
The 'Dirty Dozen'—a sexually sadistic and murderous British pedophile ring led by ‘Hissing’ Sid Cooke—was
known to regularly procure victims, often rent boys, from Playland in the Seventies and Eighties.

174
touching of some of the female members of staff.”610 Despite repeated questioning by police as
to whether he was sexually attracted to men, Ireland always categorically maintained his
heterosexuality. In fact, he pre-emptively emphasized in his confession that he was not
homosexual or bisexual, had never been naked or engaged in sexual activities with his victims at
any point, and did not derive sexual pleasure from the murders611. Yet behavioural analysis
suggests otherwise. Ireland spent hours whipping and beating nude or near-nude men, burning
their genitals with a lighter, and singing their pubic hair to see how it would smell612. Why this
level of intimacy in the violence, and focus on the genital region? Numerous studies have linked
sexually sadistic arousal to brutality inflicted on erogenous zones.613 Moreover, for a man who
touted himself as a heterosexual who disliked “extreme male deviants”614, Ireland habitually
placed himself in the heart of the gay community, working as a bouncer at a gay bar615 and
prowling as a serial killer616. He spent enough time at The Coleherne to learn the nuances of
queer culture, passing seamlessly among the homosexual patrons during the height of his killing
spree617. Ireland's admission that, as a boy, when propositioned by a male in a public washroom
he “may have considered his offer”618 because he “was very young and very poor and also
inquisitive”619 is particularly curious.
If Ireland had harboured sexual thoughts about other men, this would have conflicted
strongly with his macho self-concept. This, in turn, would have led to communication
dissatisfaction between his personal identity (encompassing bisexual tendencies) and his sub-
hegemonic masculine enacted identity620, as well as cognitive dissonance. Ireland told police that
the “group that tended to trigger feelings”621 in him were “masochistic men.”622 Though it has
been established that Ireland was generally homophobic, there is good reason to believe that
masochistic gay men inflamed him the most. The symbolic associations of masochism are
submission, effeminacy, and sexual deviance: qualities associated with subordinated masculinity
and contrasting with Ireland's ideal/own image of assertive sub-hegemonic masculinity. Like
Berkowitz, this resolved the desire/repulsion paradox belying his cognitive dissonance, with
Ireland self-communicating a lack of sexual interest in males through violent acts, opting to
destroy rather than fornicate with them. If Ireland was a sexual sadist and becoming aroused by
torturing his victims, he could nevertheless cling to the notion that he destroyed rather than
loved, dishing out pain rather than giving pleasure. This narrowed the gap between the confused
sexual identity of his actual/own and his sub-hegemonic ideal/own's macho heteronormative

175
sexual identity. Dallas Drake's analysis of violence in the gay community discusses two cases in
which a man who did not identify as homo- or bisexual fornicated with a gay man, experienced
profound cognitive dissonance as a result, angrily murdered the same-sex partner to resolve the
cognitive dissonance, and then staged the crime scene to resemble a hate crime, incorporating
communications such as “fags will die”623 and “KKK Forever!”624 into these deceptions. This
certainly makes the Ireland scenario, in which consensual intercourse or petting was substituted
for sexually sadistic, non-coital pleasure followed by a terse 'I just don't like homosexuals'
explanation, highly believable.

3.7.6 Colin Ireland: Religious/Philosophical Aspects

Ireland was raised Mormon; a peculiar religion for the United Kingdom as it forbids both the
drinking of tea and ale. Homosexual activity is prohibited in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints. Though Ireland made no recorded statements as to his metaphysical beliefs (or lack
of them), the roots of his homophobia may contain vestiges of Mormon doctrine. However, his
use of the term “extreme male deviants”625 indicates this is more to sexual and gender aspects.

3.7.7 Colin Ireland: Class Aspects

Colin Ireland grew up in poverty and was bullied and mocked because his school uniform
was always too small.626 When he was 16 (late vectorial development) he took revenge on a
bully who had ridiculed his poverty by incinerating the boy’s clothing627—clearly a symbolic act.
In one of his many phone calls to the police and media (see Chapter 4), Ireland stated that he
killed gay men because “they're respectable and that I don’t like them.”628 At first this seems like
a contradiction: generally, we do not consider those we dislike 'respectable.' Yet, if one interprets
the term to mean 'respectable' in the sense that Ireland's victims lived lower-middle to upper-
middle-class lifestyles in expensive London—a kind of polite, cosmopolitan homosexuality
(Walker was a theatre director, Dunn a librarian, and Bradley an international businessman)—
then the statement begins to make sense. After a murder, Ireland, who was living at a homeless
shelter at the time, would stay overnight in his victims' apartments, eating their food and
watching television. It could be argued that this chronically impoverished working-class criminal
was topping up his homicidal compulsion with a momentary enjoyment of bourgeois comforts.

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3.7.8 Colin Ireland: Vocational Aspects
Ireland's first documented job was at a fairground when he was 11-years-old (late-
dimensional/early-vectorial). Before the Nineties, in the brief periods of his life in which he was
not incarcerated or unemployed, Ireland worked as a bouncer, chef's assistant, and volunteer
firefighter but always promptly quit or was fired. After leaving his second wife and stealing a
substantial sum of money from her, he travelled to Southend-on-Sea.629 There he used the alias
'Colin Williams' to apply for unemployment benefits and lived as a homeless man before the
Department of Health and Social Security arranged accommodation for him.630 He went on to
gain and lose his favourite job as deputy manager of a homeless shelter and was reduced to what
he considered demeaning manual labour. Ireland's dissatisfaction with his vocational aspects was
reconciled when after the death of his fourth victim, he became his ideal/own, the Perfect Serial
Killer. Not only did Ireland see serial murder as a kind of career, but he even informed police
that he robbed his victims “to reimburse himself for the costs of the last murder and to re-equip
himself for the next.”631 By the time he murdered Emanuel Spiteri, Ireland claimed that “It
wasn't my primary motivation to kill him. It was more finance, money really.”632

Concluding Thoughts: Colin Ireland

Colin Ireland's childhood was marked by chronic instability, moving from place to place,
and in and out of his destitute mother's care. Ever the 'new kid', he was denied the opportunity to
bond with his peers and bullied. Though he did not emphasize it as much as Chapman and
Rolling, Ireland's admitted 'immaturity' seems to have resulted from failed socialization—it is
difficult to imagine how an impoverished foster child who changed schools more than once
annually could have been adequately socialized. Where Chapman, Berkowitz and Rolling were
geographically stable in their childhoods, and pathologically aspired to new selves to complete
their lives, Ireland does not seem to have sought any long-term goals until his Thirties. Lacking
money, education, or direction he simply continued his nomadic pattern of aimless drifting, and
was in-and-out of prison for property crimes.

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 Table 9
Colin Ireland: Selves and Strain
Actual/Own Ideal/Own Homicidal Self Post-Arrest Self
Sexuality Sexual Frustration Sexual 'normalcy.' Destruction of object of Resolved.
(ego-dystonic Married twice during this desire. Sexually sadistic Incarcerated.
bisexuality) period. Ego-syntonic. pleasure. Ego-syntonic. Retreatism.
Gender Subordinated. Sub-hegemonic. Wannabe Sub-hegemonic. Reconciled.
No gender-role strain soldier/ survivalist, gay Personification of
('little runt' 'Chicken club bouncer, volunteer masculine violence
Colin') fireman. No gender-role destroying subordinated
strain. masculinities. No gender-
role strain.
Religion/ N/A N/A N/A N/A
Philosophy
Class Working-class. N/A N/A N/A
Vocation Menial. Unstable. Heroic soldier. Uses murders to finance Resolved.
future murders. Incarcerated.
Retreatism.
Race N/A N/A N/A N/A
Notability Ego-dystonic. N/A Ego-syntonic. Telephones Ego-syntonic.
Mertonian strain. police and media. Media circus.
Reconciled.

Socially-isolated, poor children who are lacking in confidence are often preyed upon by
child molesters because (i) their families are disempowered, (ii) they are starved for attention,
(iii) they lack the emotional strength to speak out, and (iv) can more easily be persuaded to
participate in sex acts in exchange for the promise of money or material possessions. Ireland was
not only one of these children, but seemed to have a strange obsession with 'pedophiles',
recounting five incidents from his childhood that were near misses. Although he may have been
naturally bisexual or bicurious, in light of the nature of his future murders we should strongly
consider that Ireland was taken advantage of sexually by a man on one or more occasions. In his
naivety, he may have even enjoyed some or all of the acts, not knowing that both child molesters,
their victims, and gay/bisexual men are all stigmatized to some extent in British society.
Learning this would have caused Ireland to be suddenly ashamed of his sexual interest in men
(and past sexual experiences)—a discreditable identity633 to be hidden at all costs—and, despite
his claims to the contrary, to conflate same-sex 'pedophiles' with homosexual males in general.

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There may still be some truth to his contention that 'extreme male deviants' provoked his ire
more than most gay men. Perhaps Ireland was the 'submissive' or 'bottom' when he was molested
in childhood, and his murders of 'submissives' was an attempt to symbolically repudiate that part
of himself (as Chapman 'the phony' shot Lennon 'the phony'). Another possibility is that he
murdered 'bottoms' because his molester(s) were also 'bottoms.' However, this is hypothetical
and only part of the equation. Ireland's desire to become The Perfect Serial Killer comprises the
rest.
Retrospectively, Ireland's ambition to become a serialkiller! and nothing more seems dull
and unimaginative compared to Chapman's disturbingly specific Holden Caulfield avatar,
Berkowitz's spooky classic Monster archetype, and Rolling's southern-flavoured wandering
Outlaw talisman and archetype. But if there was ever a time in history to simply be a serialkiller!
it was the early Nineties. The term 'serial killer' had increasingly entered common parlance
during the 1980s, largely owing to the FBI's publicizing of its Behavioral Sciences Unit along
with the unprecedented spike in multiple murders during that decade. In the summer of 1991, the
revelation that Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer had been slaying, butchering, cannibalizing, and raping the
dead bodies of gay men for decades, collecting their body parts in his Milwaukee apartment,
dominated international news. Seemingly overnight, Dahmer's notoriety came to rival that of
canonical Seventies killers such as Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, shocking a violence-
inured public out of their complacency. Following Dahmer's arrest came his highly publicized
1992 trial, along with a flood of interviews, true crime books, and documentaries about the
case—even a comic book. Concurrent with the Dahmer case, blockbuster thriller The Silence of
the Lambs was released in February 1991, winning Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best
Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 64th Academy Awards in March 1992. That the
first man to openly declare he was committing murders for the very sake of being a serialkiller!
did so in 1993 is no coincidence. Ireland, along with the rest of the developed world, was
mainlining media, wallowing alienated in hyperreal simulation. Feeling he had accomplished
nothing in life, and full of sexually sadistic hatred, he concluded that a serialkiller! was
something to legitimately be. After all, the media certainly implied it, whether consciously or
not.
The serialkiller! talisman is essentially a two-dimensional, sensationalized variation on
the older same archetype which gave narrative to the lost and angry Rolling. The primary

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difference is that, while Rolling's cowboy-tinged Mystery Rider is tough and “don't take no shit.
You spit on his boot, he drills you nice and proper between the peepers”634, the Perfect Serial
Killer is more insidious: dangerous because of his intelligence, meticulousness, and invisibility.
Ireland not only turned to media for an identity—reading the FBI's Crime Classification
Manual in order to ensure he met the criteria— but also studied televised police procedurals to
become a more efficient murderer. While discussing his habit of wiping his fingerprints from
flashlight batteries, Ireland revealed, “I had got that idea after watching The Bill... you know you
ought to ban that programme... it gave me lots of ideas [emphasis added].”635
As we have seen, the Perfect Serial Killer homicidal ideal/own provided Ireland with an
outlet for his homophobia and sadism, narrowed the discrepancy between his subordinated
masculinity and sub-hegemonic self-guide, and ensured him some level of purpose and notoriety.
Its role in furnishing this unemployed ex-con with an ego-syntonic vocation should not be
understated. Beyond the theft of his victims' money which he used to “reimburse himself for the
costs of the last murder and re-equip himself for the next”636, killing also gave Ireland something
to do, moreover, it was something that this otherwise unremarkable man was exceptionally good
at. Considering all of this next to Ireland already being accustomed to incarceration, it is no
wonder he lived out the rest of his days reconciled in his homicidal self. The next offender to
adorn the talisman of serialkiller! would experience a similar outcome.

3.8 Luka Magnotta: 'Ugly Useless Faggotiiiii' to 'Dangerous Elusive Paraphilic Killer'

Talismans: Basic Instinct, serialkillers!, Ripper (video game), Marilyn Monroe, American
Psycho, Catch Me If You Can; Avatars: Catherine Tramell; Type: 2

3.8.0 Luka Magnotta: Failed socialization and the formation and realization of the
actual/own
Luka Rocco Magnotta was born Eric Clinton Kirk Newman in 1982 in Scarborough,
Ontario. His father, Donald Newman was 17 at the time of the pregnancy, while his mother,
Anna Yourkin, was 16.637 Originally living with Donald's parents, the couple married as soon as
they were legally eligible, and moved into a home in the small town of Bethany near
Peterborough. They had two other children, a son, Conrad, who was 10 months younger than

iiiii
The word 'faggot' was used by the offender to describe himself and is also the word used to label him by
numerous others he came into contact with.

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Eric, and a daughter, Melissa, five years his junior.638 Donald Newman worked at a warehouse in
downtown Toronto while Anna 'homeschooled' the children. Commenting on Magnotta's
childhood many years later, his father said “He did not [have friends]; he was isolated. No
schooling, no friends of any kind.”639 Of his ex-wife's homeschooling, he commented “If I may
say so, she didn’t do a very good job.”640 Rather than educating her children, his father alleges
she sought “total control over them.”641 Magnotta would later tell psychiatrist Dr. Joel Watts that
Anna Yourkin was obsessed with cleaning and sanitation, forced him to wear diapers at the age
of six, locked the children outside, allowed his pet rabbits to freeze to death in winter, and bound
his brother, Conrad, to a chair if he misbehaved.642
When Donald was fired for being drunk on the job in the early Nineties, the Newmans
lost their house and were forced to move back in with Donald's parents in Scarborough.643 In
1993, 11-year-old Eric began attending school for the first time at Charlottetown Junior as a 6th
grader. According to his father, it was the first time he had interacted with kids his own age.
Unsurprisingly, the undersocialized Eric was bullied by other children.644 In an interview with
Dr. Watts, Magnotta said that they “tortured me”645 calling him “'gay' and 'faggot'”646, roughing
up his hair, physically assaulting him, and labelling him “a baby”647 when he cried. In the early
years, Eric's younger brother Conrad “would stick up for him at school when other kids teased
him because he looked 'like a girl'”648, but “as they got older, he and his brother were less close
and his brother did not stick up for him as much, even though he was bigger and less
intimidated.”649 Eric was formally assessed as having “significant difficulties with spoken and
written language [emphasis added], math skills, confidence and social interactions [emphasis
added]...”650 So, like Chapman, Berkowitz, Rolling, and Ireland, the boy who would become
'Luka Magnotta' was another immature outcast with marked communication dysfunctions; one
who tried to buy respite by giving his tormenters chewing gum. He claimed the only children
who would interact with him were “three disabled wheelchair kids.”651 This statement was
supported by a former Grade 7 classmate who noted that Eric only associated with socially
awkward children or kids suffering from cerebral palsy.652 According to Watts, the classmate
described Eric as a “'sad little kid' who was small, immature and 'odd' for his age... 'almost too
odd to be a target'”653, although he was certainly bullied. Like many of the younger offender
offenders in this sample, Eric “did not speak much [and] was shy... he seemed to be

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'uncomfortable around emotions.'”654 With the possible exception of Mark Chapman, Eric
differed from the other offenders by preferring the platonic company of girls.
Around 1994, amidst a torrent of alcohol abuse and mental illness, the Newmans'
marriage fell apart, and Eric and his siblings went to live with his maternal grandparents in rural
Lindsay, Ontario. Reports of Eric's relationship with his grandmother, Phyllis Yourkin, are
conflicting. According to Watts:
Mr. Magnotta described his grandmother as having doted on him and having preferred
him to his other siblings (his sister and father later confirmed this)... During his
childhood and early adulthood, he would call his grandmother on a daily basis and came
to feel that his grandmother was a mother figure to him. He felt like his mother was more
like a big sister. At times, Mr. Magnotta stated that his grandmother had in fact raised
him. She would often dress him in her clothes. Mr. Magnotta said that he went
everywhere with his grandmother and slept with her when he was younger.655

On the other hand, an anonymous source 'Greta'jjjjj, described by the Toronto Sun as a close
family member, claimed, “This family from the head down is very dysfunctional... The essence
of this whole story is parenting or the lack of... [Phyllis Yourkin] tries to be the typical matriarch
of the family. She is very domineering, controlling and if you have a submissive personality
[emphasis added], she will beat you up and do what she wants.”656 When Phyllis and her
husband Walter were divorced, the Newman children moved back to Toronto to live with Anna
and her new boyfriend, Leo Belander, in an apartment. Donald claims that Belander—who
Magnotta would later label a “monster”657—also “called [Eric] a faggot, he beat him up and he
treated him terribly.”658
In 1995, a psychological evaluation revealed that although Eric Newman's IQ was
average, he was “underfunctioning by at least two academic years and had language
dysfunction”659, had a poor self-image, and was extremely sensitive to criticism. Here again we
see the link between poor socialization, communication dysfunctions, and maturity. For the
aforementioned reasons, Eric was placed in a special education program. He began in Grade 9,
and remained in it throughout high school, showing improvement in all areas except spoken
language and math.
By the age of 16 (late vectorial), Eric could no longer stand Leo's abuse, and moved back
in with his grandmother, Phyllis. While in Lindsay, Eric attended grades 10 and 11 at I.E.

jjjjj
A pseudonym.

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Weldon Secondary School. Magnotta told Watts that during high school “he was still shy, often
cried and was picked on by peers and teachers alike. He was scared to talk in front of the class
because when laughed at [sic] and often felt humiliated... He felt like a fly on the wall.”660
Replicating the isolated environment he had experienced as a pre-pubescent, “his grandmother
would not permit him to socialize... after school.”661 This social isolation would continue into his
adulthood, with his former partner, Barbie Swallows, revealing in an interview for CBC's The
Fifth Estate that Magnotta “lived his life mainly online on the Internet...[retreatism] I guess most
people found him weird so he felt left out. You know, isolated.”662 Later we will see similar
retreats into the 'digital opium' of media in the cases of Daniel Gonzalez, James Holmes, and
Elliot Rodger. After quitting high school at the age of 17, Eric obtained and lost five jobs within
approximately a year before becoming dependent on social services (see Section 5.8 Vocational
Aspects). Whether his family and peers had correctly guessed his sexual preferences, or if this is
another instance of self-fulfilling prophecy663, during his high school years Magnotta began to
realize that he was a homosexual: “I was a teenager and I was very shy and I was very confused.
I didn't know what to think and there was nobody around for me to talk to. So then I was
thinking in my head 'you know what, is everybody else feeling this way or is it just me?... See I
didn't know.”664 Watts writes of a period later in life in which Eric/Magnotta “felt useless,
abandoned, and a disappointment to his grandmother for not being straight. He would tell
himself, 'I am a useless faggot.'”665 Used in a non-pejorative sense, Ugly Useless Faggot best
denotes his actual/own: “He often felt ugly and inadequate since he was a young boy.”666 During
this period, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.667 However, Eric had looked into the
hyperreal world of movies and magazines and found something to aspire to:
Mr. Magnotta recalled that when he was in high school, he began to become very
interested in Marilyn Monroe after discovering a book about her in the library and
completing a book report about her. He began to strongly identify with her and he
watched all of her movies. When I asked why he identified with her so much, he said that
he felt they had much in common, for example she had been abused and 'she is sexual.'
She posed in many magazines, as he did later on. When he was younger he felt quite ugly
and when imagining himself being beautiful like her, he felt better
[actual/own:ideal/own]... He added, 'When I think of Marilyn, it calms me down. I
wanted people to understand and love me.' Mr. Magnotta said that his family would talk
about her and his uncle had a picture of her.668

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Magnotta had learned his lesson: fame, beauty, and sex brought love and acceptance—the two
things he had been missing all of his life. Upon this premise, he erected his first ideal/own self.

3.8.1 Luka Magnotta: Pre-Homicidal Original Ideal/Selves and Negative Emotionality

A closeted homosexual high school drop out in Lindsay, Ontario, in 2001 Eric Newman
was suffering from “depression.”669 Upon moving to Toronto in 2002, the Ugly Useless Faggot
(actual/own) aspired to become The Sexually-Liberated Celebrity (ideal/own). Around this
time, he began working as a stripper and escort. Though he would come and go from Toronto
over the next 10 years, Eric Newman/Luka Magnotta continued to make the bulk of his income
from prostitution and disability payments. He repackaged his homosexuality as “bisexuality”670
telling documentarians
I like to sleep with both men and women, obviously. And I feel comfortable completely
with both. And it's like fifty-fifty for me. Actually it's a bit more, it's like sixty percent men
and forty percent [women]... I tend to have a lot of male partners and a lot of people
assume that, you know, I'm gay because I have a lot of male partners. And when I tell
them... 'I see a lot of women partners' and they don't believe me, they say 'well, usually,
you know, we just see you with a lot of guys' you're automatically just gay... They don't
believe that. They think I'm just doing it as an act... cos I'm struggling with myself. But I
know in my self what I am and I know that I'm bisexual.671

In retrospect, these 'people' were right to doubt Eric's claims of bisexuality. Though he told
Watts that as a young man “he believed that he was bisexual”672, later in the report he said he had
lied “about his sexual orientation when younger. He wanted people to think he was bisexual and
not completely gay due to negative attitudes he experienced from of [sic] his family regarding
his sexuality.”673 Aside from the undeniable stigma attached to homosexuality, there may have
been another factor. In the 21st century, homosexuality has become too familiar to make a person
truly stand out as unique. Eric likely realized that a more pansexual philosophy would mark him
as noteworthy—at various times he claimed incest occurred with numerous family members, and
to have had sex with dead animals. In 2003, Eric told his psychiatrist “I'm going to be a celebrity,
a superstar.”674 Furthermore, as we have seen, despite his presentation as a sexual libertine
[enacted identity], Eric was deeply conflicted about his homosexuality. Though it would take
until the late-2000s for him to come out to his allegedly homophobic family675, he had starred in
his first gay porn film: Street Bait 996: Luka as early as 2003. The Sexually-Liberated
Celebrity starred in his second pornographic film, Son of Poseidon in 2004. While living with a

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Greek family in Toronto, he defrauded a mentally-handicapped 21-year-old woman—a crime for
which he was convicted the following year. He received a nine-month conditional sentence and
served a year's probation. In 2005, Eric continued the pursuit of the Sexually-Liberated
Celebrity ideal/own, posing for Issue 260 of the gay pin-up magazine Fab Boy under his old
escort name 'Jimmy': “a 22-year-old soccer fan born in Russia...”676 He also starred in three more
gay pornographic films: His First Huge Cock: Luka, His First Huge Cock: Jimmy, and
badpuppy.com:Luka.
Eric met “transsexual”677 Barbie Swallows in January 2006, and they began dating. Though
they were only together for four months, Barbie has become one of the go-to sources for
information on the future murderer. Noting his obsession with becoming the Sexually-Liberated
Celebrity, she stated “he said he wanted to be famous one day. I mean, that was his dream... He
was just really into himself... He would always beg me [to be] taking pictures of him with his
digital camera.”678 Barbie recalls a time when “I knocked down a picture frame of himself, and
he freaked out on me.”679 Commenting on photographs taken of him from this period, Magnotta
later stated “I think they look hot [ideal/own].”680 Thus, we may interpret Magnotta's picture as a
SAOS, and his reaction to Barbie dishonouring it as activating his actual/own:ideal/own
discrepancy [trigger]. Similarly, “when I would ask him about his past he looked sad
[accessibility activates actual/own:ideal/own discrepancies]. He didn't want to talk about it. He
just said he wasn't ready yet.”681 Barbie claims that after moving in with Magnotta for three
weeks, they broke up.
In 2006, Eric Newman starred in another pornographic film, Adorable. That same year, he
began undergoing a series of substantial changes seemingly inspired by the Marilyn Monroe
talisman. Firstly, he changed his name to 'Luka Rocco Magnotta', partially to escape the criminal
stigma associated with his birth name, but also because Norma Jeane Mortenson had “changed
her name to Marilyn Monroe and he had changed his name as well.”682 He also underwent
cosmetic surgery, because Monroe “had done so and [Magnotta] believed this would help him
forget about the past and incite people to like him.”683 Specifically, he had “a hair transplant
and...'Juvaderm' [sic] injections in his face...”684 These changes accompanied a broadening of his
aspirations. According to Swallows, “He wanted to be the most famous male model/escort in the
world... He was definitely very obsessed with the whole celebrity lifestyle. The whole
Hollywood, you know, thing.”685 One of Magnotta's former sugar daddies described Magnotta's

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mannerisms as emulating a Sexually-Liberated Celebrity: “He walked as if he was on a stage
or a ramp for modeling clothes. He walked a very special way and was always watching his
posture.”686 Another anonymous male associate stated that Magnotta even “had ideas to go into
the movies, and you know, be a model.”687
Yet outside of low-budget porn flicks, the only screen time Magnotta would get was in
2007. First he appeared on The Naked News, where using the 'Jimmy' alias, he candidly
discussed his life as an escort: “I was a stripper first... being up on stage, it was hard hiding that
profession [emphasis added]... People who I would know would walk into the club and see me
naked... So [a fellow stripper] said 'why don't you get into something more discrete and keep
your anonymity? Be an escort?'”688 This statement gives rise to the question: if Magnotta quit
stripping because he wanted privacy, why would he proactively appear on television to disclose
that he was a prostitute? Barbie Swallows has already provided us with this answer; the man who
was driven to be the “most famous male model/escort in the world”689 quit stripping because he
“just didn't like orders. Like he didn't like people telling him what to do. He liked to work for
himself.”690 In short, Magnotta was lying again.kkkkk
When further media attention did not follow, in the fall of 2007 Magnotta started a rumour
on the Internet that he was dating the infamous female Canadian serial killer Karla Homolka. To
accompany the deception he created a video montage which seemed to depict him in Homolka's
company—in actuality, it was his similarly petite, blond mother, Anna Yourkin.691 This allowed
him to then appear in the news media to deny the claims, a strategy that Greta asserted was his
typical m.o.: “He will create a conflict, then he will take himself out and he will deny the content
of the story, which he in fact started.”692 After being contacted by Toronto Sun reporter Joe
Warmington, Magnotta strode into the newspaper offices dressed like a super model, and before
the cameras, dramatically announced: “I'm about to have a nervous breakdown here. My
reputation is completely ruined. I just want... to set the record straight that me and her have
absolutely no connection.”693 Barbie Swallows offers a plausible explanation:
when I heard about him dating her, I knew that he fabricated that story. Because when
you're obsessed with someone, then you'll do anything to get your name close to that
person. And unfortunately he succeeded with that, but we all know that he never dated
Karla Homolka.... He wanted to have a bigger name so he thought that by using their
names with his name he'd be a somebody.694

kkkkk
Magnotta is by far the most deceitful offender in our sample.

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This drastic attempt for public attention by Magnotta may have resulted from his failed audition
for the OUT TV reality television show Cover Guy—the prize was a contract to pose as an
underwear model [ideal/own]—as well as him filing for bankruptcy earlier that year. It is also
notable that Magnotta had fixated on another attractive, highly-sexual blonde, only this one was
an infamous murderer.
In February 2008, Magnotta attempted another venture into the world of reality TV. During
his audition for Plastic Makes Perfect, he revealed that he disliked his physical appearance
[actual/own] and wished to improve it with cosmetic surgery [ideal/own]. He liedlllll that he had
undergone numerous procedures: “I've had my eyes done here because they used to have dark
circles underneath my eyes… I’ve had my nose done. I’ve had two hair transplants…”695 In
reality, he had only a single hair transplant and Juvaderm injections. Despite the fact that people
were supposedly telling him “you look good, you look fine”696, Magnotta admitted “I don't
believe them. I just think they're saying that.”697 Though he felt it was “very nice”698 of people to
say this, Magnotta dismissed their reassurances by explaining that “still, I don't like the way I
am.”699 When asked how important his looks were to him, he explained that for him “number
one is looks. Number two would have to be intelligence and I don't know what the rest are. All I
care about is number one, basically.”700 Later he would tie all of these notions of self together by
saying that “if I don't have my looks then I don't have any life. My looks and my body are my
life.”701 Magnotta explained that additional cosmetic surgery would give him “more self-
esteem”702 and make him “feel amazing”703 about himself [narrowing of actual/own:ideal/own],
noting that “it's very important for people to have high self-esteem and feel good about
themselves.”704 This implies that four years before murdering Jun Lin, Magnotta had low self-
esteem and did not feel good about himself. Aged 25 at the time of the audition, Magnotta said
that prior to his first round of plastic surgery “I was good looking and it was starting to fade. I
was starting to get very self-conscious about that. I could not dealmmmmm with having my looks
go.”705 If what Magnotta said in February 2008 was true, we can only speculate as to how he felt
about his looks (=life) in the days and weeks preceding the May 2012 homicide, as he grew

“Mr. Magnotta admitted that he exaggerated the extent of his cosmetic surgeries in video auditions for a reality
lllll

TV show” (Watts, 2014, p. 22).

mmmmm
Note Magnotta's use of the phrase “could not deal” to refer to his personal crisis. This is similar to Daniel
Gonzalez saying that he “couldn't handle” the reality of what his life had become anymore.

187
nearer to his landmark 30th birthday (July 24). As physical attractiveness is intrinsically linked to
success as a model, a reality of which Magnotta was exceedingly aware, there would
undoubtedly be an ever-widening discrepancy between his Ugly Useless Faggot actual/own and
Sexually-Liberated Celebrity ideal/own. Yet, as distasteful as it is to say, Magnotta was not a
quitter. In the words of Barbie Swallows: “He was very goal-oriented. He was the type of person
that when he has a plan he'll do it... He told me that one day he was going to become famous.”706
When Magnotta realized he could no longer seek fame purely through his physical appearance,
he began to devise another plan.

3.8.2 Luka Magnotta: Renegotiated Homicidal ideal/own

Around 2010, a second ideal/own began to emerge: the Dangerous Elusive Paraphilic
Killer. Motivated more by a pathological need for attention (=self) than genuine hatred of a
specific social group, Magnotta first approached this ideal/own by filming himself killing kittens
and uploading the videos online. In the autumn of 2010, he posted a link to the infamous '3 guys
1 hammer' videonnnnn on Facebook. The name would serve as an inspiration for several of his
own killing videos. As Christmas 2010 approached, Magnotta began anonymously promoting a
video called '1 boy 2 kittens' on Internet message boards. The video finally appeared online on
December 21 and depicted the murder of two kittens by vacuum-sealing them in a plastic bag.
One of the people who viewed the video was Ryan Boyle, a former American soldier.
Later stating “I don't think I've ever had a reaction like that to something like that before that was
so intense because... it wasn't normal”707, Boyle started a Facebook group 'Find the Kitten
Vaccuumer' where animal lovers and web sleuths compiled their time, talents, and resources to
find the perpetrator. It would soon have more than 4000 volunteer members. Four days later they
received an anonymous email, subsequently discovered to be from Magnotta, which stated “The
name of the kitten vaccuumer you're looking for is Luka Magnotta. He was born in Russia, lives
in Los Angeles, and has lived in several different countries. The apartment in the video is located
in West Hollywood. Hope this helps. I'm 100% serious.”708 Given Magnotta's self-created online
omniscience, finding images of him was an easy task, however determining his exact location
was more difficult. Eventually, one image was linked via digital information embedded in the

nnnnn
Leaked cell phone footage from two Ukrainian serial killers which depicts them bludgeoning a man with a
hammer and mutilating his abdomen with a screwdriver.

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file to Toronto, and in February 2011, the civilian investigators informed Toronto law
enforcement. The police were unable to locate Magnotta, as he had no fixed address. In
November and December 2011, two more videos depicting kitten-killing were posted online.
When British journalist Alex West of The Sun discovered the latest kitten-killing videos
in November, he began working with PETA and the web sleuths to identify the perpetrator. By
now multiple pieces of evidence had surfaced linking Magnotta to the crimes and were circulated
among his pursuers. As luck would have it, Magnotta had already flown to London and rented a
room at a Wembley pub. On December 5, two days after The Sun had published an article about
the 'Python Christmas' video, Magnotta unexpectedly walked into the offices of the newspaper to
deny his involvement, asking West “Why are you looking for me?”709 Several days later, West
drove to Magnotta's room in Wembley for an ambush interview. Even when directly confronted
with the evidence, Magnotta declared his innocence: “People frame me... they're pretending to be
me. Isn't that obvious?”710 This is nearly identical to his Homolka tactic, with the exception that,
in this case, Magnotta really had killed the kittens. Several days later, an anonymous email
arrived in West's inbox reading:
Well, I have to say goodbye for now, but don't worry, in the near future you will hearing
from me again. This time, however, the victims won't be small animals. I will send you a
copy of the new video I'm going to be making. You see, killing is different than
smoking... with smoking you can actually quit... Once you kill, and taste blood, it's
impossible to stop. The urges [are] just too strong not to continue... You know the fun
part of all this is watching millions of people get angry and frustrated because they can't
catch me. That's why I love this. I love the risk factor. It's fun watching people work so
hard gathering all the evidence. Then not being able to name me or catch me. You see, I
always win [emphasis added]. I always hold the trump card, and I will continue to make
more movies... next time you hear from me, it will be in a movie I'm producing that will
have some humans in it not just pussies [emphasis added].711

By December, PETA was offering a £2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the
kitten-killer. In the meantime, Magnotta learned and published personal details of the animal
rights activists who were pursuing him. Using the handle 'uonlywish500', he also posted the
opening animation from the film Catch Me If You Can712—which chronicles the five year
manhunt for legendary con man and counterfeiter Frank Abagnale Jr. (who also employed
numerous aliases)—on their webpage.713 This may indicate talismanic influence. In April 2012,
Magnotta made a montage video of himself urging people to “please join our Facebook page to
find this dangerous serial killer” [emphasis added].714 At the end of the video, the narrator

189
warned “do not approach Luka Magnotta. He is a dangerous psychopath.”715 A month earlier, he
had posted an entry on his blog 'Necrophilia Serial Killer Luka Magnotta' discussing how lonely
it is to be a 'necrophiliac'716 and plagiarizing vast sections of text from an essay on the morality
of necrophilia by undergraduate Sarah McKearn.717 In another blog post he briefly talked about
the benefits of cannibalism.718 By this time Magnotta had moved to 5270 Décarie Boulevard, Apt
208, in Montreal. He began posting on various online forums asking “Does anybody know where
I can watch the 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick video? I've been trying to find it for weeks...”719 On May 24,
Magnotta made a post on the consumer awareness website ripoffreport.com with the headline
“Luka Magnotta Bisexual Male Model and Porn Actor Luka Magnotta Male Model Luka
Magnotta Male Model New York, New York”720 and reading
Luka Magnotta is an extremely dangerous and sick psychopath, he is incapable of feeling
remorse and only thinks about how situations benefit himself. He is a sadistic,
manipulative psychopath [homicidal ideal/own] with an IQ of 145 which makes him even
more dangerous... Psychopaths can appear very charming and look beautiful, but beware,
they are cunning and highly maniacal... Luka Magnotta, is a retired male model and
former bisexual porn star [former ideal/own]. He is of Russian/Italian decent [sic] born in
Canada... Luka Magnotta is also known for dating female serial killer Karla Homolka
who murdered three girls with her husband Paul Bernardo, yet he denies these
allegations... Magnotta was accused in 2010 of severe animal killing and torturing many
animals in sick sadistic ways. First he allegedly took two baby kittens on Christmas eve,
put them in a vacuum bag and sucked all the air out, playing Christmas music while his
friends filmed. It is believed he sells these films on the black market for big bucks. Then
he took another cat, taped it to a poll and drowned it in a bath tub. If that is not bad
enough he had sex with their dead bodies [emphasis added]. In 2011 he took another
cat and fed it to his 16ft long Albino Python. He has outraged animal lovers the world
over. Here is a list of news articles on his many crimes...721

The following day, Magnotta posted his '1 lunatic 1 icepick' video online depicting his elaborate
mutilation and sexual abuse of a (then unidentified) East Asian male's corpse. He mailed the
victim's body parts to the headquarters of the Canadian Conservative and Liberal parties, along
with a school in British Columbia. After disposing of the remaining parts, Magnotta caught a
flight to Paris and began making his way across Europe to Berlin. When police finally
discovered the identity of the perpetrator and entered Magnotta's abandoned, blood-soaked
apartment they found the following message scrawled on his wall: “IF YOU DONt [sic] like the
Reflection. DONt look in the Mirror. I DONt Care.”722
Magnotta's apparently unhealthy interest in serial murderers is well-documented. It is
believed he selected his last name from Detective Vince Magnotta—a fictional detective

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portrayed by actor Christopher Walken in the 1996ooooo computer game Ripper. In Ripper, a
serial killer terrorizes New York City by butchering victims and sending letters to the media.
Magnotta did both.723 One of the four possible endings reveals Detective Vince Magnotta to be
the offender.724 Another alias, “Kirk Trammel”, relates to fictional femme fatale Catherine
Tramellppppp—the seductive ice pick wielding antagonist of the 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct.
Like Monroe and Homolka, she is an attractive blonde portrayed by Sharon Stone. According to
former partner Barbie Swallows, Magnotta “took me to see the movie Basic Instinct Part 2. He
was dying to see that movie… But he said that he... didn't like the movie that much. He said it
wasn't that good. He said the first one was better…”725 Again, Magnotta's murder of Jun Lin had
several commonalities with the slayings depicted in the film. Most obviously, Magnotta recorded
the crime, titling it '1 lunatic 1 icepick. Though he had used a screwdriver to stab Lin's corpse, he
painted its black handle silver so that it resembled an icepick.726 Prior to the Lin murder,
Magnotta had sent British journalist Alex West an email containing a paraphrased quote from the
film: “You see, killing is different than smoking... with smoking you can actually quit.qqqqq Once
you kill, and taste blood, its [sic] impossible to stop...”727 The name of the person purporting to
have sent the email was 'John Kilbride', the second known victim of Britain's 'Moors Murderers',
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Brady and Hindley had recorded the pleas of victim Leslie Ann
Downey on an audio tape which began with the Christmas carol 'The Little Drummer Boy.' The
same song had been playing in the background of one of Magnotta's kitten-killing videos.
Barbie Swallows also confirms “He had obsessions with those two serial killers, Paul
Bernardo and Karla Homolka. He would talk about them obsessively: his face would glow... He
kept talking about Karla Homolka, almost like he was, you know, infatuated by her.”728 It is
important to note that, once again, Magnotta identified with a female serial killer (Tramell,
Hindley, Homolka): a unique phenomenon among our sample. This is particularly interesting in
light of his feminine-leaning gender identity (Section 3.8.5):
Mr. Magnotta initially said that he would only cross-dress when escorting, but then added
that he would do so at the request of [his boyfriend] who bought him lingerie. He also
bought wigs for his escorting work... At the age of 16, he would try on his grandmother’s

ooooo
Magnotta would have been 13 or 14 at the time of the game's release.
ppppp
During post-arrest psychiatric interviews, Magnotta would claim he was coerced into committing acts of
violence by a person named 'Manny Lopez' who followed him from city to city. Dr. Watts believed that this was
a sign of psychosis, leading him to declare Magnotta NGRI (Watts, 2014). Catherine Tramell's fiancee in Basic
Instinct was named 'Manny Lopez'.
qqqqq
In Basic Instinct, the exact line uttered by Catherine Tramell is “Killing isn't like smoking. You can quit.”

191
 bras and started using mascara on his eyelashes... When he was a little boy, he played
with Barbie dolls and liked his grandmother’s clothes, never wanted to leave her side and
felt like he wanted to be a girl.729

Three days before his arrest, Magnotta sent an e-mail to his sister, Melissa Newman,
asking her “How does it feel to be the sister of a murderer [homicidal ideal/own]?”730 Like the
false dichotomy between 'Ennad' and 'Gemini' in Rolling's self, Magnotta's progression from
'kitten-killer' to “necrophiliac serial killer”731 is more of a broadening of his Dangerous Elusive
Paraphilic Killer [now homicidal] ideal/own than separate selves.

3.8.3 Luka Magnotta: Victimology

Table 10
Luka Magnotta Victimology
Victim's Age Race Gender Profession Date Where
Name Murdered
Jun Lin 33 East Asian Male Student/store May 24, Magnotta's
clerk 2012/died apartment in
Montreal

On the surface, it appears that Magnotta's targeting of Jun Lin, a 33-year-old Chinese
undergraduate enrolled at Concordia University's faculty of engineering and computer science,
was merely opportunistic. Until the night of the slaying, the two men had not met in person, and
Magnotta has never commented publicly on his victim. When Jun Lin's murder was first revealed
to the world, newspapers reported that Chinese citizens were interpreting it as a hate crime—a
seemingly non-sensical theory given the sexual nature of the killing, along with the absence of
any direct Sinophobic connotations. We maintain that, in all likelihood, Jun Lin was simply a
victim of opportunity.
However, given that every other offender in this sample, with the exception of Mark
David Chapman, used homicide to transition from their perceived subordinated masculinity to a
sub-hegemonic or hyperreal (with sub-hegemonic elements) one, there is a convoluted but viable
alternative that must be explored. As a 'femme' or 'bottom' homosexual occupying one of the
lowest rungs in the masculine hierarchy, the only masculinities more subordinated than his own
are arguably the transgendered, and the gay East Asian male. A large body of Queer literature,
both academic and non-academic, elaborates on both the feminization of gay East Asians in the

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LGBTQ+ community and in American pornographic films. In his A View From the Bottom,
Nguyen Tan Hoang, the most prolific author on the subject discusses “the widespread
assumption in gay Western male subculture that Asian men possess a propensity for the bottom
position in gay anal sex. Such an attitude derives from the view of Asian men as feminized and
less masculine than men of other races.”732 Earlier in his career, Hoang built upon the
observations of Richard Fung, who authored the influential article 'Looking for My Penis: The
Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn.' Referring to Fung, Hoang brings to light the pervasive
western cultural trend of viewing black men as occupying extreme hypersexuality on the male
virility gradient, contrasted with East Asians who are regarded as basically asexual.733 This is
supported in the discourse by armchair quantifications of primary (e.g., average penis size) and
secondary (e.g., triangular body form) sexual characteristics, along with prevalence of sexual
activities, and cultural attitudes toward sex.734 As with many of the controversial theories related
to race and I.Q., in this cultural narrative Caucasians occupy a comfortable and convenient
middle-ground between 'the brutish savage' and 'overcivilized castrate'735, positioning Magnotta
in a more masculine (or less feminine) category of subordinated masculinity than his Chinese
victim. This is important because Magnotta “admitted [to Dr. Joel Watts] that in most of his
relationships he tended to be 'submissive' and sometimes fantasized and engaged in sexual
activities where his sexual partner would humiliate him.”736 His transgender girlfriend, Barbie
Swallows, frequently complained that Magnotta was not “giving me sex”737 and that when he did
“the first half during sex was quite good but... he kept losing his erection so he just asked me to
finish him off with oral sex and then he fell asleep.”738 Ironically, Barbie's surgically-obtained
female anatomical parts were probably partially responsible for the homosexual Magnotta's lack
of sexual interest. Watts reported that Magnotta “would often fantasize about other guys during
sex with girls and would have difficulty having an erection.”739 As his relationship with Barbie,
whose transgender expression aspires to reflect emphasized femininity, inevitably positioned
Magnotta in the fixed role of 'top' this would have conflicted with his submissive sexual
preferences. Magnotta was a preferential 'bottom' in homosexual sex—a man who identified with
emphasized femininity—and it is thus possible that he faced psychological obstacles to being the
'top' during his sexual desecration of Jun Lin's body. Following this line of inquiry, he may have
sought a victim who was visibly male but lower in the ranks of subordinated masculinity than

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himself. Gender theorists would argue that homosexual East Asian males occupy this cultural
position.
Reviewing the relevant historical literature, Hoang proposes that this feminization of East
Asians in North American culture resulted from laws necessitating that one had to be a white
male to be an American citizen until 1870, when African-American men were finally granted
this status. Caucasian women received it 49 years later in 1919, while East Asian males had to
wait until a series of legislative changes from 1943-1952 to become naturalized citizens.740
Hoang argues that “U.S. citizenship originally confers the status of maleness, of masculinity,
predicated by whiteness. Since Asian laborers were excluded from this subject-citizen status
formulated as masculine and white, they were seen as 'emasculated' and 'feminized.'”741 This
emasculation was compounded by earlier immigration laws which prohibited Chinese male
immigrants from importing their wives, along with legislation stripping citizenship from any
Caucasian woman who married an East Asian man, as he was a non-citizen. These laws
segregated East Asian men in 'bachelor societies', and once the demand for railroad workers
declined, they were left to occupy jobs that were considered 'woman's work': cooking, serving,
and laundering.742 When combining these arguments with honest reflection on popular racial
discourses, the idea that gay East Asians occupy one of the lowest tiers of subordinated
masculinity is a tenable claim. And though Hoang has used American history to make his case,
(1) many of the same historical practices existed in some form in Canada, and (2) American
culture is transmitted into the minds of Canadians by way of the mass media, along with its
tropes and ideologies.
Did Magnotta murder a victim of opportunity or one of a more subordinated masculinity?
Barring a statement on the issue from Magnotta himself, we can only speculate, and thus we will
continue with the premise that his victim was non-symbolic. However, the alternate explanation
explored here is certainly worthy of consideration.

3.8.4 Luka Magnotta: Post-arrest ideal/own

Magnotta was apprehended in an Internet cafe in Berlin on June 4, 2012, while looking at
news articles about himself online. According to arresting officer Marc Liege, after Liege
“became a little bit more intensive...” toward Magnotta, Magnotta “…said 'okay, you got me.'”
743
The whole drive to the police station he didn't say a word. He was just smiling [emphasis

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added]…”744 Extradited to Canada on June 18, Magnotta eventually pled guilty to all charges but
claimed he was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity. The jury did not agree, and on
December 23, 2014, he was found guilty of first-degree murder and handed a life sentence with a
minimum of 25 years before he could apply for parole.745
Since his incarceration at Archambault Institution, Magnotta seems happily reconciled in
his homicidal self. A prolific writer of letters to 'friends' and fans, he is “so excited to be
finishing [secondary] school”746 and as the doors at Archambault Prison are “open 90% of the
time... I feel like I'm in a university setting.”747 Considering his future, he muses “I’m not sure
what I want to take Post Secondary. There are so many options.”748 Magnotta is permitted to
wear his own items of clothing “provided they are approved by the institutional head”749 and
photographs show him wearing designer sunglasses and a Versace shirt while hobnobbing with
sex offenders. Freed from the responsibility of living as an independent adult, the eternal child
now enjoys playtime courtesy of the state: “I went outside and played in the snow today and
made a little snowman. lol. I know it's juvenile but it's still fun. Same with snowball fights.
hahaha. Thankfully we have hot chocolate here.”750 When he's not decorating his cell with his art
and posters of Marilyn Monroe, he enjoys “pizza party night[s]”751 with his fellow inmates, and
jamming to “Celine Dion’s album and a lot of others”752 on his “stereo”753 or the “portable for
when I suntan outside.”754 Sometimes he is allowed to have friends over to play: “I really hope
you’ll be able to make it in July to the little cottage here... I’ll go shopping for the food and
movies. We have movie channels and movie night here so I can get any title.”755 He is also
allowed to go to the “convenience store here that is open every day that sells everything you can
imagine.”756
Though the prison food “is really, really good and they serve a lot. The Italian is the best.
I also love the ice cream”757, Magnotta remains concerned with maintaining his physical
appearance and claims to be on a diet and exercise regimen:
I’m really enjoy playing hockey and tennis and I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’m looking
forward to next month when the volleyball nets outside will be put up. I’ve always been
an amazing player. We have a nice gym here too for exercising. It's really important to
getting the results I want. I spent 2 hours playing sports, one hour exercising and at night
I go outside for a walk in the garden. The lilacs are my favourite.758

However, he is not without his complaints: “So, all this chocolate for Valentine’s Day is ruining
my diet. lol. These f—–g a——s said they would add Ferrero Rocher and they didn’t. They just

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want all their choices on the canteen. Some people are so f—–g selfish it piss’s [sic] me off.”759
Magnotta is even less pleased with the institution's mental health professionals, and remains
devoted to a small group who assessed or treated him before he was convicted.
The best psychiatrist I ever had was Dr. Renée’ Roy at RDP (Rivière-des-Prairies
Detention Centre). She was phenomenal and I miss her. Dr. (Marie-Frédérique) Allard
and Dr. (Joel) Watts were also wonderful and so was Dr. (Thomas) Barth from Germany.
Very professional and kind, intelligent and informed unlike a few others who will remain
nameless.760

Incidentally, all of the psychiatrists on Magnotta's “very professional and kind, intelligent, and
informed”761 list either operated in a purely clinical capacity or testified for the defense in his
trial.762
No longer afforded the luxury of refusing to take orders, he works seven days a week in
the prison's kitchen. As his current situation means he can never be left without food and shelter,
he lambasts the guards as “imbeciles”763 and “mostly all trash or retards.”764 He complains that
“the staff and doctors here have an extremely unhealthy obsession with my personal life…
everyone wants to know minute sexual details. F—–g losers I just tell them to check the Internet
and everything is on there, stop asking me.”765 Indeed, what else is there to know? Eric Newman,
outcast and failed model, is now a Dangerous Elusive Paraphilic Killer [homicidal ideal/own].
His sexual violence is accessible online via the '1 lunatic 1 icepick' video, likely until the end of
civilization. Unfortunately for Magnotta, when we “check the Internet”766 it becomes clear that
what he presents as “everything”767 about his sexuality—essentially that he is a homosexual
necrophilia-spectrum cannibal à la Jeffrey Dahmer—is far from the “everything... on there”768
elucidated by critical, dispassionate analysis of the video footage. In actuality, there is good
reason to believe that Magnotta is neither a necrophile or an anthropophagist. Rather, he is an
impostor and consummate wannabe (see the following section).

3.8.5 Luka Magnotta: Sexual/Gender Aspects

More than any other offender in this study, Luka Magnotta seems to have suffered the
most strain due to his sexuality. Though Magnotta attempted to cement his ideal selves and
celebrity in his sexual desirability, prowess, and transgressiveness, there is ample evidence to
suggest all three qualities were distorted to different extents, whether through fabrication or
confusion. Let us begin by challenging the depth of the transgressive quality, particularly the

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notion that Magnotta was a necrophilia-spectrum paraphile. To the untrained (or
discombobulated) eye, Magnotta's supposed necrophilic proclivities seem indisputable; after all,
there is video footage of him mutilating, and (apparently) sodomizing and eating pieces of Jun
Lin's corpse. However, one should approach a case of exhibitionist 'necrophilia' with extreme
caution. Other than Magnotta, there is no known case anywhere in the academic literature of a
necrophile recording and deliberately releasing his sexual defilement of a corpse for public
consumption.769 On the contrary, necrophiles are generally extremely private people.770 With this
in mind, all 10 minutes and 38 seconds of the '1 lunatic 1 icepick' video were viewed frame-by-
frame, and though Magnotta's pelvis is clearly thrusting against the victim's buttocks at no point
do we see the shaft of Magnotta’s penis entering the anus. A casual perusal of pornographic
films, both amateur and professional, should make the reader incredibly suspicious as to this
omission—was Magnotta literally just going through the motions? Similarly, Magnotta can be
seen carving a portion of flesh out of the victim's buttocks, skewering it on a fork, and displaying
it for the camera. Yet at no point do we see him place it in his mouth, let alone devour it.
Admittedly, the video ends with several seconds of footage depicting Magnotta masturbating
with the victim’s arm. This constitutes proof of post-mortem sexual activities (PPSAs) lasting
less than 10 seconds, but it is insufficient to show that Magnotta was genuinely sexually aroused
by the act. Firstly, we do not know how Magnotta obtained an erection (e.g., non-tactile arousal,
masturbation, erectile dysfunction medicationrrrrr) or when (e.g., during mutilation or hours later).
It is entirely possible that he used tactile stimulation, possibly in combination with erectile
dysfunction medication, to become erect independently of the corpse—just long enough to film
the sequence.sssss With this in mind, it is noteworthy that his partialist post-mortem sex acts
(PPSAs) were incredibly brief and that we do not see him ejaculate (or have evidence that this
occurred at all). When this 'lack of what one would expect to see' is considered in toto, the
likelihood that Magnotta's paraphilicttttt manifestations were actually an elaborate performance
moves from possible to probable. Furthermore, when questioned by Dr. Watts about the “content

rrrrr
According to Watts, Magnotta had been repeatedly prescribed ED medication.
sssss
As we have seen, Magnotta admitted to fantasizing about men while having sex with women, though he would
eventually lose his erection. Could he not also have used a similar technique for a narrow window of time on a
disembodied arm?
ttttt
In actuality, the only paraphilia Magnotta admitted having to Watts was an arousal to “'scat' because 'it makes
me feel closer to people'” (Watts, 2014, p. 21) There is a chance he may also be masochistic, as he “admitted that
in most of his relationships he tended to be 'submissive' and sometimes fantasized and engaged in sexual
activities where his sexual partner would humiliate him” (Watts, 2014, p. 21).

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of his sexual fantasies... he responded negatively when asked about having voyeuristic,
exhibitionistic, pedophilic, sadistic or necrophilic fantasies.”771 A necrophile, by definition, has
necrophilic fantasies.
There is precedent for disbelieving Magnotta's claims to have been a necrophile and
cannibal. Magnotta frequently described himself as “bisexual”772, lying in his Plastic Makes
Perfect audition that he participated in heterosexual sex with female co-stars.773 Though he
continued to bill himself as “bisexual”774 up until the day before the killing, there is no concrete
evidence that Magnotta ever had a sexual encounter with a non-trans-woman, with the exception
of his mentally-challenged female fraud victim. When asked about this by Watts, Magnotta
explained “that he was trying to act normal, felt confused and did not want the son of the family
he was staying with to think he was gay.uuuuu He said he wanted to like having sex with her but
did not.”775 All of his known pornographic films have exclusively featured Magnotta in same-sex
scenes, and unsurprisingly, all of his escort clients seem to have been men.
Magnotta's admissions that “he wanted people to think he was bisexual and not
completely gay due to negative attitudes he experienced from of [sic] his family regarding his
sexuality”776 and his feelings of “disappointment to his grandmother for not being straight”777
denote an actual/own:ought/other discrepancy. When Magnotta would use mascara and
concealer to improve his appearance “His grandmother and grandfather would give him 'dirty
looks'...”778 Even less overtly effeminate activities would provoke familial condemnation:
Mr. Magnotta admitted that he was quite feminine and that his grandmother sometimes
commented, 'You hold a glass like a faggot.' She would sometime hide hairspray or throw
out hair mousse when he was about 12 years old because according to her, Mr. Magnotta
used 'more than a girl.' Mr. Magnotta said that he believed his grandfather hated gay
people 'more than anything.' His family did not like how he dressed. He was sometimes
made fun of because of his effeminate tone of voice, his hair, and the way he crossed his
legs.779

Growing up in an environment where he was routinely called 'fag' by his peers and raised in a
family who “would make fun of effeminate gay men and often made homophobic comments and
slurs”780 Magnotta was justifiably severely deterred about disclosing his homosexuality. When

uuuuu
Even though Magnotta portrayed himself as bisexual superstar, in reality he remained a socially isolated and
solitary figure. According to Barbie Swallows: “He wasn't really into the gay scene like in the gay community.
Like he wasn't into going to the gay community and going to clubs. He said he's 'been there, done that' but it just
wasn't his thing anymore” (Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, n.d.).

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he finally came out to his family (with the exception of his grandmother), Watts reports “this was
a very stressful [actual/own:ought/other] experience for him.”781 Magnotta's brother, Conrad,
“'told people I was gay before I was ready'”782, a claim corroborated by their sister.
Concerning his gender, Magnotta identified as male, though he performed his masculinity
in an observably feminine manner. Asked “if he had ever wondered whether or not he was the
right gender”783 Magnotta admitted to Dr. Joel Watts that “this [question] had preoccupied him
in the past. When he was a little boy, he played with Barbie dolls and liked his grandmother's
clothes, never wanted to leave her side and felt like he wanted to be a girl... he often felt
confused...”784 This gender disorientation may have resulted from when “his mom would dress
him at times in female clothing when he was younger.”785 From the age of approximately 10 “he
would put on make-up and dress up in his mother’s clothing when she was not aware of this... At
the age of 16, he would try on his grandmother’s bras and started using mascara on his
eyelashes.”786 Magnotta confessed that, on occasion in the past, he was sexually aroused by
cross-dressing.787 Upon the request of an escort client or sugar daddy, he would also wear
articles of female clothing such as wigs and lingerie.788 Magnotta clarified to Dr. Watts that he
had never considered sex reassignment surgery. When asked about his mental illnesses,
Magnotta provided an answer that appears psychotic on the surface, but when interpreted without
the biasing foreknowledge of his paranoid schizophrenia, appears no stranger than any
relationship between self-guide and talisman in this sample:
Mr. Magnotta explained feeling that Marilyn Monroe’s soul was inside of him at times,
'because she had lot of sex; when I dress up as her, sometimes I feel like she is making me
more beautiful [emphasis added], I have a connection with her because of her childhood,
I love her so much.' He would feel that she was doing things that he was doing. He
wanted very much to in fact be her. His feeling of having Marilyn Monroe’s soul inside
of him comes and goes. He went to Hollywood in 2008, kissed her star on a sidewalk and
visited her crypt a few times causing him to feel particularly close to her.'”789

Monroe was obviously a talisman which influenced Magnotta's Sexually-Liberated Celebrity

ideal/own, transforming from 'blond bombshell' to 'blond femme fatale' trope as he transitioned
to the Dangerous Elusive Paraphilic Killer.
Magnotta's confusion over his gender identity is intrinsically linked with his self-
perceived physical attractiveness. According to Watts, the diminutive Eric “often felt ugly and
inadequate since he was a young boy.”790 In high school “he had lots of acne and would use
concealer to hide this”791 but he also “had never liked his body and people often commented

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about his skinniness [actual/own:ideal/other]. Sometimes he was even rejected by clients
because of this.”792 Having obfuscated his homosexuality by claiming bisexuality as an aspect of
the Sexually-Liberated Celebrity, Magnotta tried to turn his 'ugliness' into “beauty and
perfection”793 because “he wanted to be liked.”794 Unfortunately, his biology got in the way of
his determination as he “tried to gain weight over the years without success.”795 Strangely, even
though he exuded 'femme', Magnotta planned “on doing muscle implants in my pecs and my
arms…”796 in order to become the Sexually-Liberated Celebrity. When he failed in his Plastic
Makes Perfect audition, these surgeries became a financial impossibility.

3.8.6 Luka Magnotta: Racial/Ethnic Aspects

Though born in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto, Luka Magnotta often falsely presented
himself as being “of Russian/Italian heritage”797, listing his birthplace on white supremacist
Stormfront's message board as Tolyatti, Russia.798 At other times he claimed the same ethnic
descent but said he was born in Canada. 'Luka Magnotta' is his Italian alias, while another,
“Vladimir Romanov”799, is as stereotypically Russian as 'John Smith' is English. Magnotta gives
little further comment on his fake heritages; still, there are two associations worthy of exploring.
The first is the association between both nations and organized crime. Among his litany of online
deceptions are claims or innuendos that Magnotta has allies in the Russian mafia. In 2010, a
choppy, low-quality video entitled “Luka Magnotta Russian Mafia”800 was uploaded to YouTube
by user Scarface3030vvvvv—almost certainly a Magnotta proxy account as it only features content
related to him—which seems to depict Magnotta in a late-night altercation with the description
“WTF??? Why does Luka hang around the Mafia and serial killers?”801 This corresponds
roughly with the time that Magnotta began referring to himself as 'dangerous' and a 'psychopath'
online. Thus, the most probable interpretation is that Magnotta wished to associate himself with
the Russian mob, and more generally Russiawwwww, in order to appear dark, threatening, and
exotic (enacted identity). The motivation to pass as Italian may be similarly related to Cosa
Nostra, Camorra, 'Ndrangheta, and/or Italian fascism. There is evidence, albeit spurious, for the
latter. In September 2011, responding under the name 'arcangel9' to a thread “Your opinion

'Scarface' was the nickname of Italian-American mobster Al Capone, though it may also refer to the eponymous
vvvvv

movie starring Al Pacino as Cuban-American drug tsar, Tony Montana.

wwwww
Magnotta also frequently marketed himself as a Russian escort.

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about Benito Mussolini”802, Magnotta replied “I think his policys [sic] were very interesting and
he was a very courageous individual.”803 More likely (or synonymously), the association
between Italy and high culture, particularly Milan's fashion scene, attracted Magnotta's
admiration. For instance, in his Cover Guy audition, he attempted to excuse his slender physique
by claiming that he had recently returned from Italy where they had informed him they prefer
skinny male models.804
This half-Russian/half-Italian identity remained fairly static for Magnotta over the course
of his adult life. Moreover, with the possible exception of Elliot Rodger, he is the most racist
ETV offender in our example. Employing the username 'arcangel9' in September 2011,
somebody who was almost certainly Magnotta wrote the following on Stormfront's message
board:
I want to make it clear, someone can be racist, and still be a great person. I dont [sic]
want to kill other races. I just dont [sic] want to associate, communicate or live near any
other races. I have the right not to like other races, I am not advocating violence, this is
my point of view and if anyone doesnt [sic] like it **** off. Not everyone is going to or
has to like you!805

The racial group Magnotta posted most frequently about were “BLACK PEOPLE”806:

THE TRUTH IS SOMETHING A LOT OF PEOPLE PRETEND DOESNT [sic] EXIST -

PRETENDING BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T TRYING TO TAKE OVER OUR
BEAUTIFUL COUNTRIES, COUNTRIES BUILT BY WHITE EUROPEANS - THEN
AFTER WE BUILD EVERYTHING, THEY COME IN, LIKE PARASITES AND
CONSUME EVERYTHING WE HAVE MADE BEAUTIFUL - OH, BUT LETS [sic]
PRETEND ITS [sic] NOT HAPPENING!”807

He also provided statistics, likely made up or plagiarized word-for-word, showing the correlation
between absentee fathers, bastardy, and African-Americans:
About 27% of White children do not live with their biological father, 35% of Hispanic
children and 66% of Black children… About 80% of African American [sic] can expect
to spend ‘a significant’ portion of their childhood living without their biological father…
In 2000, among White mothers about 27% of all births were out-of-wedlock, among
Hispanic mothers about 43% and Black mothers about 70%…808

Previously, under the username 'reddragon1'xxxxx, he posted anti-Semitic views:

xxxxx
Red Dragon is a novel by Silence of the Lambs author Thomas Harris about a serial murderer who kills in order
to transform himself into a powerful being.

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 Jesus Christ I wish theses [sic] Jews would just get lost... stay in Israel and give the
Palestinians back their land. Instead they hide behind the U.S., because they know that
without the US , [sic] the rest of the middle east would destroy them in a second. In my
opinion they are a bunch of disgusting pussys [sic] who wine [sic] and cry. Every jew
[sic] I have ever known thinks their **** doesn't stink and they are a million times better
then [sic] the rest of the world.809

Under the same username, Magnotta quoted white nationalist remarks from his own website:
“blacks get their own countries, Chinese get their own countries … however if white people want
their own countries then we are denied that right.”810
Like the males who compensated for their physical shortcomings by adopting neo-Nazi
identities in studies by Ezekiel and Langman811 (see Chapter 1), Magnotta may have adopted a
similar strategy in response to his “skinniness”812 and/or effeminate mannerisms. Though he was
clearly somewhat racist—at least he acted that way—we must obviously question a man who
fabricated a relationship with Karla Homolka and possibly necrophilic and cannibalistic
predilections for attention. As evidence suggests, there is a strong likelihood that Magnotta
posted incendiary racist comments as part of his 'privately fabricate then publicly deny' self-
promotional strategy. For example, posing as a Magnotta-fan on the Stormfront message board,
in May 2011, Magnotta posted the following screed:
Male model Luka Magnotta has been forced to leave North America and relocate to
Russia for his views on White Supremacy... Luka Magnotta has been accused of horrible
and false crimes in order to silence him. Recently individuals claimed they had a vide
[sic] of him killing two cats on the internet. In reality it was a big hoax, that was started to
slander his name… Luka Magnotta was apparently forced to leave North America for a
more safer life in Russia. After mentally ill ethnic groups sent him death threats
[emphasis added] and got animal activists on their side to threaten his life… Do you
actually believe in thirty years, when we become minorities that the ethnics wont [sic] try
and get rid of us all? They are planning on slowly taking over our countries and then we
will be enslaved by them. Watch and see. The governments are too much of cowards to
freeze immigration. I for one wish Mr. Magnotta a lot [sic] of luck in life.813

Given his earlier and later provocations, the notion that Magnotta was primarily motivated by a
desire for media attention so he could publicly defend his 'celebrity' reputation (i.e., self-
promotion) rather than simply expressing racist rage seems likely.

3.8.7 Luka Magnotta: Class Aspects

Raised in a financially disadvantaged nuclear family, upon entering public school “other

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kids would laugh at [Magnotta's] clothing. His parents did not have much money and bought
clothing at Value Village.”814 Likely reacting to this, when Magnotta was able to afford clothing
of his own, he splurged on expensive brand name attire. As low social economic status was
associated with 'Eric Newman' the Ugly Useless Faggot (actual/own), 'Luka Magnotta' had to
embody visible affluence to transition to the Sexually-Liberated Celebrity ideal/own.
Accordingly, Barbie Swallows describes Magnotta as “a generous guy but he was trying too hard
to impress people...”815 mentioning an incident in which “he gave his whole pack of smokes to
the parking lot guy so he was trying to show off in front of me...”816 Even while admitting to
prostituting himself on The Naked News, Magnotta clarified “It's really high-end, high-class
clientele who I cater to... I've travelled all over the world... I get to meet… really influential
people... Doing a lot of high-end things [emphasis added]... And make a lot of money.”817 Watts
reports that Magnotta's mother was mocked for her poverty by her boyfriend, Leo. By sending
money to his mother, Magnotta was not only able to transcend the financial situation of the Ugly
Useless Faggot, but also push back against his abuser. In 2005, Magnotta took Anna to the
Bahamas: her first international trip.818

3.8.8 Luka Magnotta: Vocational Aspects

According to Magnotta's self-reported job history to Dr. Joel Watts, he began working
after dropping out of high school at 17-years of age. His first job was as a night-shift labourer on
an assembly line printing pamphlets, but he kept falling asleep, and only lasted a month. He
remained in his next position for just a week, as he lacked the physical strength to move
equipment from a warehouse. Magnotta's most successful stint of regular work was two months
at a deli, which was cut short when customers complained about how he made their sandwiches.
The 18-year-old was subsequently fired from a grocery store in under a month due to
incompetency and missing work. He faired only slightly better at The Great Canadian Bagel,
lasting just over a month. This inability to maintain consistent employment for more than three
months is reminiscent of Rolling.
Shortly after, he began subsisting off welfare, and owing to his mental health problems,
began collecting provincial disability payments around the age of 19. Upon moving to Toronto,
he had a number of short-lived 'under the table' jobs, and worked briefly as a stripper at for “a
short period of time, two to three weeks at the most. I remember he stormed out and told off the

203
manager. He just didn't like orders... He'd rather work for himself.”819 At this point, Magnotta
began working as an escort—a profession that, coupled with disability payments, would sustain
him until his arrest. Nevertheless, in March 2007, Magnotta filed for bankruptcy due to illness,
unemployment, and lack of sufficient income.
In the mid-2000s, Magnotta also attempted a career in pornography, starring in a handful
of low budget videos. Barbie Swallows recounts how, in 2006, he “mentioned to me that he
wanted to quit his escorting job and work as a police officer... he realized that he was going to
get old one day and you can't rely on your looks to make money and you have to get a real job,
you know, a career.”820 Her assertion is corroborated by Issue 260 of Fab in which Magnotta
posed as 'Jimmy' “a 22-year-old soccer fan born in Russian... who hopes to train to become a
police officer.”821 This makes him the fourth offender in this sample to consider a stereotypically
heroic masculine career; although Berkowitz, Ireland, and Rolling all actually served or
attempted to serve in the armed forces, or were auxiliary police/volunteer firemen.

Concluding Thoughts: Luka Magnotta

As if Luka Magnotta's homosexuality, gender-confusion, small stature, and learning
disabilities did not make childhood socialization difficult enough, his 'home-schooling' and
'isolation' from children his own age during the first 12 years of his development (early-
sensorimotor to late-dimensional/early-vectorial), condemned him. When he finally began
attending school he was ridiculed and ostracized: a clear message that he did not belong to the
social order at any level. In high school, his exclusion continued, although he was generally
ignored more than actively bullied. His grandmother's rule of prohibiting his congregation with
other teens meant that his childhood continued in near total isolation. Besides frequently
referring to himself as a 'boy' into his late-Twenties—perhaps more reflective of his fear of aging
and/or attempts to market himself to clients—there is no record of Magnotta stating he felt
immature or childish as Chapman, Ireland, and Rolling did. Yet his self is arguably the least
coalesced we have encountered thus far in this sample. His intense self-hatred is palpable: an
Ugly Useless Faggot actual/own. Needing to feel beautiful and loved, his idolization of the
Marilyn Monroe talisman led him to pursue a career as a model and porn star. Socially incapable
of keeping conventional jobs, Magnotta prostituted himself to make ends meet. He presented

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himself as a highly-liberated pansexual individual, whose career as an escort provided him
freedom, even celebrity—a male Heidi Fleiss. Yet, secretly, he suffered the traumas of rape,

Table 11
Luka Magnotta: Selves and Strain
Actual/Own Ideal/Own Homicidal Self Post-Arrest Self
Sexuality Ego-Dystonic Ego-Syntonic Ego-Syntonic Unknown. Has
submissive bisexuality dominant boyfriend in prison.
homosexuality homosexuality

Gender Subordinated. Subordinated, but Non-subordinated, Reconciled.

Homosexual proud and violent
femme. 'Faggot', flagrantly so. Less masculinity. Less
'baby.' gender-role strain. gender-role strain.
Confusion as to
male or female
gender.
Gender-role
strain.
Religion/ N/A Superficial N/A N/A
Philosophy flirtation with
Scientology.
Class Lower-middle- Upper class. N/A Resolved.
class. Incarcerated.
Retreatism.
Vocation Menial. Professional N/A Resolved.
Unstable. celebrity. Incarcerated.
Retreatism
Race Ego-syntonic. N/A Ego-syntonic N/A
'white supremacist'
Notability Ego-dystonic. Ego-syntonic. “he Ego-syntonic. Ego-syntonic.
Mertonian strain. said he wanted to 'I love this. I love Media circus.
be famous one the risk factor.'
day.' Catch Me If You
Can

abuse by clients, sexually transmitted diseases, and frequently participated in acts that he did not
enjoy.

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 Ultimately, his career in both modeling and pornography were utter failures. Having
entered adulthood in what could be considered the mid-stages of simulation (mass use of the
Internet, video games, and smartphones)—a world were completely mundane people actually did
achieve superstardom by constantly promoting themselves as glamorous idols—he followed this
new formula to celebrity with a dogged determination. His public life became a self-made
hyperreal collage of aliases, deceptive biographies, doctored pictures (using Photoshop to insert
himself into scenes across the globe), fake fans (he created approximately 700 false social media
accounts to 'like' his own pages), and publicity stunts (linking himself to Karla Homolka in order
to deny it). Even in the days leading up to the murder, Magnotta continued to perpetuate the
illusion that he was a successful model. In a short video posted on YouTube, Magnotta filmed
himself in a manner which made it appear that it was being done by another person. He then
delivered dialogue to bolster this illusion, conveying the false persona of being a hounded
celebrity. While reclining on his couch smoking a cigarette with Madonna's 'Las Isla Bonita'
playing in the background, Magnotta looks up with feigned disinterest at the camera and says
“what's up and hi to all my fans”822 before reacting with impatience to an imaginary person off
camera, with “I just did. What else do you want me to say?”823 Continuing with this deception, in
an online post he stated:
I have no 'obsession with the lime light' the reality is, I refuse to give interviews and I
have turned down countless interviewers and media requests to appear. I have had many
oppertunities [sic], the thing is, it just is not that important to me and it does not interest
me any longer. Having appeared in magazines/films years ago does not constitute an
unhealthy obsession with the limelight.824

Nearly his entire enacted identity was a fabrication. In keeping with CTI, this increased the gap
between his personal and enacted identities which in turn widened the gap between his personal
and ascribed relational identity, unleashing further negative emotionality. Despite his significant
if laughable efforts, he could not even secure a role in reality television show. As we have seen,
Chapman, Berkowitz, Rolling, and Ireland all attempted to deceive the public regarding their true
motives. Magnotta, who devoted his life to fame, did the same by pretending to already be
famous—in fact, “the prince of Canada['s]”825 'celebrity' was put forth as a reason why he was
being 'framed' for the kitten-killing videos. He constantly tried to convince others that he was
beyond seeking their approval posting “I care about a lot of things, what others think of me isn’t
one of them”826 and “the only people that matter to me are my family and a select few

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individuals I am privileged to call friends, everyone elses [sic] opinions of me do not count nor
do they matter and they hold no merit”827 online. In this way he reflected normative social
behavior in the digital age—the ‘successful’ Twitter user with thousands of followers and no
interest in following anyone back.
With his boyish looks fading and everything coming to no avail, Magnotta remained a
profoundly alienated individual with a truncated ego-dystonic self and arguably more negative-
emotionality than when his quest for fame began. It was here that, allegorically, he switched
from the Marilyn side of western celebrity to the Manson—emulating the hyperreal serialkillers!
Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct, Vince Magnotta from the video game Ripper, and
American Psycho's Patrick Bateman (the music employed in '1 lunatic 1 icepick' is from the
movie version starring Christian Bale). Now he created media that absolutely could not be
ignored: videos depicting the destruction of kittens, and finally, a human being. Unlike the serial
killers Berkowitz, Rolling, and Ireland who concealed their names from the world until their
arrest revealed them, Magnotta proactively released his to the groups investigating his kitten-
killing videos, albeit with some misinformation to misdirect them. Here he has more in common
with Chapman who committed murder then waited patiently to be arrested. Interestingly, while
the aforementioned three serial killers had all aspired to sub-hegemonic masculinity as an
ideal/own, the self-admittedly effeminate Chapman and Magnotta avoided it. They readily
internalized and agreed with their subordinated masculinity, and rather than futilely trying to
prove their toughness, focused on achieving a diluted form of hegemonic masculinityyyyyy: the
cultural goals of wealth and fame. That said, though Magnotta's masculinity remained
subordinated after the homicide, by being the 'top' or 'dominant' in his sexual activities with Lin's
corpse, his homicidal ideal/own would have been regarded as less subordinated than his 'bottom'
actual/own. The quintessential 21st century murderer, in cutting Jun Lin into six separate pieces,
Magnotta sought to assemble himself as serialkiller! He forged a patchwork quilt of talismanic
elements: straddling the victim and stabbing him with an icepick (Basic Instinct), sending
messages and dismembering the body (Ripper), and using New Order's 'True Faith' as the
soundtrack for his '1 lunatic 1 icepick' video (American Psycho). Furthermore, in 2014, hitherto
unseen footage of Magnotta auditioning for a documentary film in Toronto surfaced on

yyyyy
Perhaps a new term is needed for a wealthy celebrity entertainer who wields great cultural influence but has
little formal institutional power: neo-hegemonic?

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YouTube. He introduces himself by saying “Hi, my name is Luka and I don't live on the second
floor”828—a joking reference to the Suzanne Vega pop song 'Luka'. This 1987 hit features the
opening lyrics: “My name is Luka/I live on the second floor/I live upstairs from you/Yes I think
you've seen me before/If you hear something late at night/Some kind of trouble, some kind of
fight/Just don't ask me what it was...”829 Considering that Magnotta murdered Jun Lin in his
second floor Montreal apartment soon after moving in, alongside the numerous media
associations which coloured his life, the possibility arises that he imitated the song's lyrics by
design. Or perhaps the elaborate hyperreal jigsaw he rendered has left us apophenic, spotting
media references in meaningless coincidental data.
For this reason, among others, Magnotta embodies the Information Age—the line
between who he 'really' is and how he portrays himself is blurred to the point of being
indistinguishable, as is the line between what he actually did to Jun Lin and what was
represented on video. Even though this case study has provided multiple pieces of evidence
bringing Magnotta's supposed necrophilia and cannibalism into question, in this age of
simulation where Reality and fiction are either indistinguishable or irrelevant, he will always be
remembered as the necrophilic 'Canadian Cannibal.' Given his past, is it any wonder Magnotta
appears to be happily reconciled in his homicidal self? By his own warped standards, he has won
(or is he faking once more?)

3.9 Daniel Gonzalez: ‘Dependent Lonely Boy’ to ‘Slasher Hero serialkiller!’

Talismans: Friday the 13th series, Nightmare on Elm Street series, Halloween series, serialkiller!;
Avatars: Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger; Type: 3

3.9.0 Daniel Gonzalez: Failed socialization and the formation and realization of the
actual/own
With an IQ of 125830 Daniel Gonzalez was an intelligent child who did well in elementary
school. Around the age of 10 (late-dimensional/early-vectorial), he began laughing inexplicably
and engaging himself in conversation. His Spanish father returned to his native Marbella leaving
his mother to raise the problematic child alone. Gonzalez was taken to a child psychologist. By
the time he reached puberty, he had been expelled from Brooklands school for misbehaviour.
Gonzalez began abusing drugs at 14 (late vectorial), increasingly losing control. Amazingly, he
managed to obtain his GCSEs, but in 1997, the 17-year-old was charged and convicted for

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possessing an offensive weapon and institutionalized in a psychiatric facility. Over the next three
years he was repeatedly released and then readmitted to mental health hospitals, including
Broadmoor where according to Dr. Edward Petch “He would stare into space, grin and laugh to
himself for no apparent reason... He was unable to hold a coherent conversation. He wasn't
washing and was taking drugs.”831 During this period he was diagnosed with a personality
disorder, schizophrenia, and dysgraphia by different mental health practitioners.832
Stunted in his personal growth since 10, Gonzalez followed in the footsteps of Mark
David Chapman and Danny Rolling confessing that he was a “little boy” 833 who “couldn't handle
growing up to be a man.”834 After his arrest he lamented “I haven't had a job for four years, I
haven't had a girlfriend for ages.”835 Instead, he spent his days living at his mother's house
playing violent PlayStation games; abusing a buffet of substances including LSD, heroin, and
ketamine; and watching slasher films. Consistent with the communication dysfunctions we have
found in previous cases, Gonzalez's “grandmother complained he refused to talk to anyone apart
from ‘ranting and raving’ about being abused as a child.”836 His mother also spoke of how “at
nursery school [late-interrelational/early-dimensional] he had good speech and was good at
sums but lacked social skills and did not know how to play with other children.”837 Gonzalez's
actual/own is therefore best described as a Dependent Lonely Boy.
Though it is indisputable that Gonzalez was experiencing some degree of schizophrenia,
on multiple occasions he was formally assessed and no signs of psychosis were detected. In other
incidences, Dr. Petch explained that Gonzalez “admitted making up symptoms on occasions to
get into mental hospitals instead of prison.”838 A habitual felon, he was also convicted of theft,
burglary, robbery, and criminal damage.

3.9.1 Daniel Gonzalez: Pre-Homicidal Original Ideal/Selves and Negative Emotionality

There is no available documentation indicating that Daniel Gonzalez ever had an
ideal/own or ought/own before he decided to become a killer. As a self-described 'boy' who
couldn't handle growing into a man, and who spent most of his time wallowing in narcotics and
media [retreatism], it is doubtful Gonzalez harboured any long terms goals or obligations
whatsoever before his rampage. His mental illnesses and inability to grow up likely would have
prevented this, resulting in an actual/own (Dependent Lonely Boy): ideal/own (Self Sufficient
Man in a Relationship) discrepancy.

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 Theoretically, this explains his marked dejection-related emotions. In his confession to
the police, Gonzalez described his life before the murders as “very bad”839, “shit”840, and
“rubbish”841, and claimed to have been chronically “bored”842 and unable to “handle any
more”843. Dr. Philip Joseph, a psychiatrist who would assess Gonzalez, concurred saying that
“There was nothing left of his life”844. In criminological terms, his stake in conformity was non-
existent.

3.9.2 Daniel Gonzalez: Renegotiated Homicidal ideal/own

Daniel Gonzalez's homicidal urges surfaced in 1999, when his mother divulged that her
son “thought of killing people although he said there was no way he would do this.”845
Psychiatric records from this period note “He talks of having horrific images like a horror movie
in his own head. He attributes it to watching a lot of horror movies.”846 In a 2004 post-arrest
interview with police, Gonzalez would reiterate this connection to the slasher genre by saying “I
just thought about doing it, man -- what would it be like just to be maybe Freddy Krueger or
something like that, just for one day.”847 and compared his killings to those in John Carpenter's
1978 film Halloween.848 He also referred to the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street
movie franchise talismans.
Gonzalez donned a white hockey mask [SAOS], popularly associated with slasher film
character Jason Voorhees, and murdered Marie Harding. Returning home after cutting her throat
he wrote “I will be a serial killer. I mean it, I promise. I will be a serial killer”849 [SAOS] in his
diary. In doing so, he was adorning the serialkiller! talisman and Jason Voorhees avatar. As with
Colin Ireland who held himself to a highly organized homicidal standard, Gonzalez didn't want
to be just any old serial killer. When asked about an entry reading “so when the death toll
reaches 10 which is at one”850 in his diary, Gonzalez explained that he aimed to reach a double-
digit victim count. He also claimed killing made him feel “like a superhero.”851 Where Ireland
strived for professionalism (quality), Gonzalez was fixated on sheer numbers (quantity).
By wearing the mask and scribbling vows to himself, Gonzalez was making semiotic
affirmations of self (SAOS): his homicidal ideal/own approaching a Slasher Hero serialkiller!
fusion. Like fellow serialkiller! variants David Berkowitz, Colin Ireland, and Luka Magnotta,
Gonzalez also wanted his 15 minutes in the spotlight: “He told me he wanted to be famous and
notorious... He liked the idea of being all over the papers”852 said Dr. Philip Joseph, a

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psychiatrist who interviewed him at length. Gonzalez also shared Seung-Hui Cho's Eric&Dylan!
talisman making comparisons between himself and “those who participated in the Columbine
high school massacre.”853 As their murders bore no similarity to each other, Gonzalez likely
identified with the boys' misanthropic alienation.
In murder, the Dependent Lonely Boy who “wanted to kill people because I was bored
and I wanted to know what it felt like”854 was existentially reinvigorated proclaiming, “This is
something I live for [emphasis added]. Its [sic] a really good buzz, killing.”855 Following the
Harding slaying he wrote that the experience “felt really, really, really good”856 and was “one of
the best things I've done in my life.”857 One statement seems to indicate that the killings had
helped to negate his “shit”858 past existence: “I felt clean, orgasmic. I had washed all the crap out
of my life. I felt better”859 (narrowing of actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy). After the double
murder of Derek and Jean Robinson on September 16, Gonzalez was tracked on CCTV taking
the train to Tottenham Court Road Station where he was quickly arrested.
Like ex-con ETV offenders Danny Rolling, Colin Ireland, Luka Magnotta, and Anthony
Arkwright; Gonzalez, the habitual criminal, had strong animosity towards the police. A SAOS
note he wrote to himself read “You have to f***zzzzz up them Old Billaaaaaa”860 and “Old Bill.
Things I hate. All Old Bill. Anything I can do to kill or hurt Old Bill... I hate the Old Bill more
than anything I or anyone can imagine.”861 Strangely, he did not target police officers. A
plausible explanation is that he had no access to firearms and would have likely been subdued, as
British police are well-trained and accustomed to using non-lethal force to deal with violent
offenders. Moreover, a look at his victimology reveals that Gonzalez was hardly brave, at least
outside of his own fantasies.

3.9.3 Daniel Gonzalez: Victimology

Gonzalez's victim selection process has been described as “random”862 and less
helpfullybbbbbb, “apparently motiveless.”863 The gender of those attacked are approximately half-
male, half-female, and the fact that Gonzalez broke or pushed his way into the homes of the

zzzzz
The profanity is censored here as it is was also censored in the source material. I do not wish to guess
incorrectly or misquote the source.
aaaaaa
The 'Old Bill' is English slang for the police, deriving from King William IV who assembled the first modern
police force. Hence the name of Colin Ireland's favourite police procedural The Bill.
bbbbbb
Motiveless homicide does not exist. I welcome all debate.

211
Constantinous and Robinsons without prior stalking negates the possibility he was intentionally
targeting couples. There is nothing in his background to indicate any dislike of the middle-aged
and elderly, so he either attacked them randomly or exploited their relative physical fragility.

Table 12
Daniel Gonzalez Victimology
Name Age Race Gender Profession Date Murdered Where
Peter Hove 61 White Male ? September 15, 2004/survived Outside in Hillsea,
UK
Marie Harding 76 White Female Pensioner September 15, 2004/died Outside in Woking,
UK
Kevin Molloy 46 White Male Pub September 16, 2004/died Outside in
landlord Tottenham, UK
Koumis 59 White Male ? September 16, 2004/survived Victim's house in
Constantinou Hornsey, UK
Christella ? White Female ? September 16, 2004/survived Victim's house in
Constantinou Hornsey, UK
Derek 75 White Male Pensioner September 16, 2004/died Victim's house in
Robinson Highgate, UK
Jean Robinson 68 White Female Pensioner September 16, 2004/died Victim's house in
Highgate, UK

Gonzalez once remarked “Good people are so boring, aren’t they. [sic] Bad people have
all the fun. Good people don’t do anything. They are just boring.”864 [mj] 'Good people' may be
actually a childish label for non-celebrity civilians who are social and largely law-abiding, rather
than the lone violent 'heroes' of slasher movies or video games. If we accept Gonzalez's own
claim that horror movies inundated his mind with violence until he wanted to be like Freddy
Kruger, his comments seem to indicate that he saw his victims as being non-agents—extras in his
Chapmanesque personal movie. Their lives existed only to be cut down by 'bad people' who were
'interesting' like Gonzalez and the blade-wielding horror film maniacs he emulated. Later, we
will see a similar complete depersonalization of victims under fellow meta-delusional video
game obsessive James Holmes.
In his diary, Gonzalez repeatedly stated his desire to “get to London and kill some old bill

212
as soon as I can... as many old bill as I can as best I can.”865 Whether Gonzalez would have
followed through with his plan if he hadn't been caught will forever remain a mystery.

3.9.4 Daniel Gonzalez: Post-Arrest Self

Once in custody, Gonzalez's hatred of the police manifested almost immediately when he
punched a detective in the mouth. He continued to violently lash out against the 'Old Bill' during
his time in custody. On several occasions, it took six officers to restrain him. During his stay at
Belmarsh Prison, Gonzalez routinely tried to trick guards into believing he had fainted.
Initially, Gonzalez's dejection-related emotions seemed to disappear when he closed the
gap between his actual/own (Dependent Lonely Boy) and ideal/own (Slasher Hero
serialkiller!) through his acts of repeated homicide: “I felt clean, orgasmic. I had washed all the
crap out of my life. I felt better.”866. However, once admitted to Broadmoor psychiatric hospital,
Gonzalez made numerous suicide attempts, finally succeeding on August 9, 2007 by slashing his
wrists with a broken CD case. Due to the severity of his psychosis, it cannot be ascertained
whether this act was due to schizophrenia or a return of the dejection-related emotions which
seemed to have been initially quashed with his homicidal reconciliation of his actual/own and
ideal/own: the post-homicidal expressive/transformative crisis which usually is resolved through
adopting a penitent self.

3.9.5 Daniel Gonzalez: Sexual/Gender Aspects

Daniel Gonzalez, the 'little boy' who hadn't “had a girlfriend for ages”867, is a case of a
subordinated masculinity (actual/own) striving to become a hyperreal masculinity (homicidal
ideal/own). More monster than man, this homicidal ideal/own aspired to unfathomable breadths
and depths of violence in the spirit of the indestructible Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and
Michael Myers. These unrealistic expectations were likely the product of drug induced
psychosis.
There is no mention of Gonzalez being diagnosed as a paraphile, so his description of
feeling 'orgasmic' after the murders may or may not be literal. Paraphilic knife users typically
inflict more stab wounds on their victims868, and there is also a complete absence of mutilation
across Gonzalez's killing series. In this case, it seems that Gonzalez's lack of a girlfriend and

213
ability to live up to the traditional responsibilities of an adult male simply undermined his stake
in conformity.

3.9.6 Daniel Gonzalez: Religious/Philosophical Aspects

The only account of Gonzalez discussing anything spiritual relates to his bizarre
reincarnation-based delusions. In his diaries, police found numerous references to his belief that
he had been the pop star Michael Jackson in a past life, even though Jackson was still alive when
Gonzalez was born.cccccc Gonzalez wrote of his revulsion at Michael Jackson's alleged sexual
abuse of children in the third-person, referring to himself by his nickname 'Zippy': “Michael
Jackson is a sick fuck… Last Saturday and Sunday I found out I did the sickest thing possible in
a former life... what can I say, I'm sick... I'm speechless. What can Zippy do?... Zippy has to do it
all to prove he hates Michael Jackson.”869 Here we may have a fascinating example of a
psychotic experiencing ought/own and ought/other anxiety over an actual/own that never
existed! Another possibility is that Gonzalez, anticipating his eventual capture, staged aspects of
his journal entry to lay the groundwork for an insanity defense. Along with Dr. Petch's claims
that Gonzalez previously admitted malingering, he was also reportedly overheard using the
telephone to instruct his mother what to say to public officials.
According to Dr. Petch, Gonzalez actually “enjoyed believing mad things”870 and
“recognised that drugs had led him to have hallucinations which was the point of taking
them.”871 If true, this would place him somewhere in the proximity of Chapman, Berkowitz, and
Rolling's meta-delusionality. Gonzalez's readiness to use his psychiatric diagnoses to justify his
crimes is noteworthy. As he fled from the scene of his first attack, he mumbled “sorry, I'm a
schizophrenic, I can't help it”872 to one of his victims.

3.9.7 Daniel Gonzalez: Class Aspects

There are no references to Gonzalez's social class.

3.9.8 Daniel Gonzalez: Vocational Aspects

Similar absurdities have been stated by former-Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher and rapper Snoop Dogg, who
cccccc

claimed they were the reincarnations of John Lennon and Bob Marley, respectively.

214
 Immediately after the end of his killing spree, Gonzalez lamented to police “I haven't had
a job for four years.”873 His previous occupations were menial labour positions which he was
unable to keep for more than a few weeks at most. Throughout his life he remained completely
dependent on his mother, leading the press to label him “The Mummy's Boy Serial Killer.”874

Concluding Thoughts: Daniel Gonzalez

Table 13
Daniel Gonzalez: Selves and Strain

Actual/Own Ideal/Own Homicidal Self Post-Arrest Self

Sexuality Ego-dystonic. Ego-syntonic. Ego-syntonic Suicide.
Probable sexual Sexually active and replacement of sex
frustration has a girlfriend. with 'orgasmic'
stemming from violence; or
social perhaps sexually
incompetence. sadistic pleasure.
Gender Subordinated. Ego-syntonic. Hyperreal. Suicide.
Gender-role No gender-role Personification of
strain ('little boy' strain. Self- monstrous violence
'couldn't handle sufficient and destroying
growing up to be dating. indiscriminately.
a man.' No gender-role
strain.
Religion/Philosophy N/A N/A N/A N/A
Class Lower-middle- N/A N/A N/A
class.
Vocation Chronically Speculative, but it N/A Resolved.
unemployed. would be Incarcerated.
employed. Retreatism. Then
suicide.
Race N/A N/A N/A N/A
Notability Ego-dystonic. N/A Ego-syntonic. Ego-syntonic.
Mertonian strain. 'Mine’s a big Media circus. Then
f***** story and ego-dystonic.
will be on the full suicide.
front page.’
Struggling to socialize with others since nursery school, Daniel Gonzalez sank into
mental illness as he grew older, worsening an already problematic situation. Like Chapman,

215
Berkowitz, Rolling, and Ireland, he was another depressed nobody who perceived himself (and
was perceived by others) as a child who could not handle becoming a man. His impoverished sex
life, gender-role strain, and associated inability to maintain work are all related to this chronic
infantilization. Ultimately, he failed to measure up to (let alone surpass) the same 'boring' 'good
people' he derided. Though far from famous, the average British citizen at least has a social life
which gives him or her some situational relevance, and manages to adhere to the cultural norms
of adulthood.
As the Dependent Lonely Boy, was unable to socialize, let alone keep a job or a
girlfriend, he retreated into the chemically-abetted hyperreality of slasher films and violent video
games. Completely lacking control over his own life, he enjoyed experiencing power vicariously
through media. His homicidal fantasies—“he talks of having horrific images like a horror movie
in his own head”875—likely developed alongside his admiration for Freddy Krueger and Jason
Voorhees. Freddy and Jason are avatars that embody both the Monster archetype (à la
Berkowitz) and Outlaw archetype (à la Rolling, Ireland, Magnotta). They are outcasts who are
literally killed by a mobdddddd, only to return from the dead and terrorize society. Though far from
indestructible, they are resurrected at the beginning of every new film. The entirety of their
existence is devoted to killing. As beings without the need for food, shelter, sex, or
companionship (hyperreal masculinities) they lurk on the margins of society and consciousness,
relevant because of their capacity to destroy.
Taking these qualities into consideration, their appeal to Gonzalez becomes obvious. As a
dangerous criminal who roamed the streets naked, Gonzalez was treated as a monster by
virtually everyone but his mother, echoing the narrative of Friday the 13theeeeee. By dressing up as
Jason and becoming “Freddy Krueger or something like that, just for one day” 876 the “little
boy”877 temporarily transcended all of the unmet demands of manhood—sex, self-reliance,
emotional resilience, employment—and did “something I live for”878: indiscriminate killing.
Like the reality-bending Freddy Krueger, his murders occurred in a dream-like state brought on
by narcotics, in which he felt “like a superhero [hyperreal masculinity].”879 Then, as with Colin
Ireland and Luka Magnotta who also adorned the serialkiller! talisman, Gonzalez waited with

dddddd
The child-killing Freddy was burned alive by vigilantes while bullies chased the deformed Jason into Crystal
Lake where he drowned.
eeeeee
One is also reminded of the relationship between Grendel and his mother in the poem Beowulf.

216
anticipation for the headlines announcing his relevance-through-evil to the world: “Good
people... are just boring.”880 Operating in the early-mid phases of hyperreality, Gonzalez
reasoned correctly that homicide would bring him media attention: “Mine’s a big f***** story
and will be on the full front page.”881 According to Inspector Dave Cobb, Gonzalez wished to be
“remembered as a famous serial killer... But I hope he is forgottenffffff and that we only remember
his victims.”882 His aspirations to be a 'famous' serialkiller! adorning the front page of
newspapers extends beyond a simple wish for notoriety. At least in his final years as a free man,
Gonzalez spent more time watching movies and playing video games than he did in society. For
all intents and purposes, this utter nobody did not exist, even to himself, until he appeared in
media. Now all that remains is a single photograph of Gonzalez—a simulacrum buried in the
hyperreal landslide—yet, nevertheless, digitally immortalized on the Internet. Fortunately,
unlike Chapman, his esotericism in the annals of crime makes it highly unlikely than he will go
on to be a talisman for future killers. The problem with becoming Freddy or Jason, who almost
certainly will, is that these simulacra culturally subsume those who emulate them.
Beyond temporarily reconciling negative emotionality and strain, there is evidence that
Gonzalez may have adorned his Jason and Freddy avatars for other reasons. Studying the appeal
of 1038 movie monsters, Fischoff et al. found that Freddy Krueger ranked second in popularity
among those aged 25 and younger, while Jason Voorhees was ninth.883 Furthermore, the mean
age of those who chose Freddy and Jason as among their favourite movie monsters was 24.6 and
25.8 respectively884 (Gonzalez was 24 at the time of his killing spree). This study also concluded
that younger viewers also tended to prefer non-sympathetic ego-syntonic monsters who engaged
in extreme and graphic acts of violence. Fischoff et al. proposed that this youthful preference for
explicit slaughter motivated by sheer nihilism over quick, bloodless dispatch driven by
existential despair “may reflect altering value trends in popular culture.”885 Hypothetically, this
sea change could result from anomie brought on by an ever-deepening hyperreality.
The five attributes common to both Freddy and Jason that were favoured by the
respondents in the sample and of statistical significance were 'Monster is Pure Evil,' 'Like
Different Ways Monster Kills People,' 'Monster Kills Lots of People,' 'Monster Kills Deserving
Teenage Females,' and 'Monster Kills Deserving Teenage Males' (see Table 14).

ffffff
Eleven years later, the outcome has proved to be bittersweet: Gonzalez is at best a highly-esoteric killer, largely
lost to the public, as are his victims.

217
 Table 14
Popular Common Attributes of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees
Freddy Krueger Jason Voorhees
Monster is Pure Evil 2.54 2.5
Like Different Ways Monster Kills People 1.81 2.1
Monster Kills Lots of People 2.28 2.85
Kills Deserving Teenage Females 1.26 1.5
Kills Deserving Teenage Males 1.25 1.45

The murderous prolificacy of these characters almost certainly appealed to Gonzalez who “felt I
was on a mission to kill as many people as possible”886 wanting to murder “at least 10 people.”887
A diagnosed psychopath who was bored by good people, he also likely related to their 'pure evil.'
However, concerning killing in different ways and the murder of 'deserving' teenagers, Gonzalez
did not conform to these aspects of the narratives, instead stabbing middle-aged and elderly
citizens to death. Hollywood actor Ken Kirzinger, who portrayed Jason Voorhees in several
films, has described Jason as a “psychotic mama's boy [emphasis added] gone horribly
awry...”888 Given what we now know, the fact that the schizophrenic Gonzalez was saddled with
the moniker “The Mummy's Boy Serial Killer”889 after his arrest, should not be dismissed as
coincidence. Rather, it should be acknowledged for what it is: startling evidence of intermimesis.
The next offender in our study also donned a mask, fused the Monster and Outlaw archetypes
into a hyperreal masculinity, and targeted the old and infirm, albeit with an unprecedented level
of violent ferocity.

3.10 Anthony Arkwright: 'Odd Delinquent Inbred' to 'Famous Evil Ripper'

Talismans: jacktheripper!, petersutcliffe!, Holy Bible; Avatars: The Devil; Type: 2
3.10.0 Anthony Arkwright: Failed socialization and the formation and realization of the
actual/own

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 Anthony Arkwright was the third of five children born in South Yorkshire and abandoned
by their mother. According to his barrister, James Chadwin, Anthony Arkwright “has shown
signs of disturbance since his mother left him when he was four years old [late-
interrelational/early-dimensional].”890 Further complicating matters were (unfounded) rumours
that he was a product of incest between his mother and grandfather: a serious social stigma.
Steve Smith, Arkwright’s lawyer, stated “I think Tony had a lot of difficulty when he was a kid
at school, because, of course, these sorts of things leak, and kids are very very cruel.”891 Given
this shaky and confused upbringing, it is probable that the adoption-related issues discussed in
the Berkowitz case also affected Arkwright. Constant teasing by other children ensured
Arkwright was preoccupied with his questionable birth to the extent that it was an 'organizing
theme' of the self892 which research shows would have negatively affected his self-esteem and
resulted in depression.893 Growing up in the small South Yorkshire town of Wath, Anthony
Arkwright was, in the words of Detective Chief Inspector Michael Burdis “distinctive…a very
tall young man and just stood out in the community.”894 Neighbour Neil Hirst described
Arkwright as an “oddball”895 who “didn't get on with many people, and he never spoke to many
people,”896 an antisocial tendency corroborated by DCI Burdis's recollection of him as “well
known for falling out with local people and for his fractious relationships with the
neighbourhood.”897 Arkwright was expelled from school for habitual fighting, robbery, and
vandalism, and spent most of his early years in children's homes, borstals, and the care of local
charities.898 As a teen, Arkwright became a “well known petty criminal”899 with “numerous
convictions for burglary, theft, arson. He'd served a 30 month youth custody sentence.”900 In
August 1988, Arkwright was working at a scrapyard and living in a council flat in Wath: little
more than an Odd Delinquent Inbred (actual/own), with no real social life because, in the
words of DCI Burdis: “Arkwright could fall out with his very best friend… he was an individual
who was very volatile in his relationships.”901 Having spent all of his childhood teased by other
children, Arkwright seems to have become paranoid—evidence indicates he perceived slights in
harmless jokes—which would have given birth to numerous communication dysfunctions.

3.10.1 Anthony Arkwright: Pre-homicidal Ideal/Selves and Negative Emotionality

A limitation of studying Anthony Arkwright is the lack of a sufficient account of his
negative emotionality, though Neil Hirst’s statement that “deep down I think Tony Arkwright

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were a lonely lad in his own world”902 seems to indicate that some degree of negative
emotionality was present. Like Daniel Gonzalez, Arkwright was so young and inexperienced
when he embarked on his killing spree that the number of identifiable pre-homicidal ideal/selves
are minimal. His lawyer, Steve Smith said that “he was a hustler, or tried to be,”903 but this could
be more a component of Arkwright’s petty criminal behaviour, inherent in his actual/own, rather
than any attempt to recognize a 'conman' ideal/own.904 Interestingly, like fellow English serial
killer Colin Ireland, Arkwright’s only pre-homicidal ideal/own was the Macho Survivalist. It
has been reported that Arkwright wanted to be an SAS-type character, carrying a knife in his
boot and building camouflaged hideaways by the railroad tracks. He allegedly preferred to sleep
in these more than in his apartment during the summer months.905 On the night of Friday August
26, hours after Arkwright had committed his first murder, Neil Hirst and his cousin invited
Arkwright out to a nightclub, only to find “when I opened the door he were dressed in combat
gear. We just looked at each other, me and my cousin, and realized that this was just not
right.”906 They explained to Arkwright that he would not be granted entrance into the club
dressed in army apparel, and provided him with a change of clothes. However, upon arriving at
the nightclub, “Tony took to the dance floor and I've never seen anybody dance in the fashion
that he did. Tony were like military dancing, if you understand. Bumping into ladies, like. And I
knew things were going to escalate from then, that he were revving up for something.”907
Fortunately, he was ejected from the nightclub without incident. This 'military dancing' may have
been a SAOS; alternatively, he might have been also communicating his unconventional Macho
Survivalist ideal/own to the 'conforming masses' who danced in a 'normal' manner around him.
On first appearance, this overlap between the pre-homicidal Macho Survivalist self and
homicidal self, seems to be contradictory. Yet, violence is a common theme linking the two, in
fact, the Macho Survivalist ideal/own may be viewed as a kind of stepping-stone identity
between the Odd Delinquent Inbred and Arkwright's emerging homicidal self. For example,
Neil Hirst’s account that “once I went into Tony’s flat and I actually saw, like, loads of knives,
all different shapes and sizes, flick knives and all kinds”908 is applicable to both the Macho
Survivalist ideal/own and homicidal ideal/own. An important point of distinction is that
Arkwright did not wear the 'combat gear' associated with the Macho Survivalist self while
committing his crimes, rather he wore a different costume, depicting an archetypal Monster.909
As demonstrated in the nightclub incident, Arkwright, the stigmatized schoolboy, was no

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longer attempting to integrate into society whatsoever. Reflecting upon this, his lawyer Steve
Smith describes Arkwright's 'child of incest' deviant status as a strain that “may have created this
in-built turmoil [negative emotionality], this hatred of [his grandfather]. And it stores itself like a
cauldron [negative emotionality] until it rolls and burns over into violence. And I think in Tony's
case, it created a monster.”910 Arkwright had found a blueprint for the 'monster' during an earlier
period of incarceration, while reading books on Jack the Ripper and 'Yorkshire Ripper' Peter
Sutcliffe in the prison library.911

3.10.2 Anthony Arkwright: Renegotiated Homicidal ideal/own

Arkwright drew upon the talismans of canonical English serialkillers! associated with
mutilation to create his homicidal ideal/own912. Forensic psychologist Kerry Danes explains that
Arkwright had “told friends that one day he was going to be as infamous and notorious as Jack
the Ripper.”913 Wishing to cast himself in this mold, he transitioned from Macho Survivalist to
Famous Supernaturally Evil Ripper (homicidal ideal/own), though this happened so quickly
that vestiges of the former lingered in the latter. Specifically, he had realized the Ripper
component of this ideal/own on the afternoon of Friday August 26 by murdering his grandfather,
Stasys Puidokos, at his allotment in nearby Mexborough, burying an axe in his chest and then
smashing his head to pieces with a 14-pound hammer. Soon after, he almost certainly killed Elsa
Konradaite, his grandfather's housekeeper, while breaking into Puidokos's house to steal his life
savings along with a pocket watch. Then, he went out 'military dancing.' Returning from the
disco at approximately 3 a.m. on Saturday August 27, Arkwright broke into his neighbour
Raymond Ford’s flat, stabbing him anywhere between 250-500 times in every part of his body.
Arkwright then methodically disemboweled Ford’s corpse.
Four hours after the murder, Arkwright, who Raymond Ford had previously reported for
burgling his home, was taken into custody when a police search of his apartment revealed “very
large knives”914, a pocket watch, approximately £3000 in cash, and clothes soaking in his bath.
After a few hours of interrogation, Arkwright admitted to stealing from Ford and posted bail. PC
David Winter was tasked with taking a statement from Raymond Ford but was unable to contact
him. Arkwright advised Winter that Ford was out drinking, and generally tried to dissuade him
from finding the missing man. Once released from custody, in the early morning hours of
Sunday August 28, Arkwright broke into the bungalow of wheelchair-bound neighbour Marcus

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Law and murdered him in a similarly brutal fashion. When Law's eviscerated body was
discovered by his mother on Monday morning, Arkwright was arrested under suspicion of
murder.
As with Daniel Gonzalez, who also wore a talismanic mask, Anthony Arkwright
displayed abundant SAOS. According to DCI Michael Burdis, he confessed that while standing
over Elsa Konradaite with an axe “he was looking at this picture of whiteness, and he himself
was a picture of darkness.”915 Though Arkwright would admit to murdering his male victims,
Burdis noted “He wouldn't bring himself to say that he'd actually killed Elsa Konradaite, but he
did describe all the circumstance.”916 This inability to acknowledge his culpability in the
Konradaite murder, coupled with Arkwright's description of her as a “picture of whiteness”917
may indicate that he viewed his victim as a 'good' or 'benevolent' person, compared to his 'bad'
victims: 'incestuous' grandfather Puidokos, Ford the 'miserable, alcoholic snitch', and the
'cigarette-scrounging cripple' Law. Though not necessarily exclusive, another possibility is that
Arkwright was discussing Konradaite's pallid corpse (or perhaps she was 'white with fear').
Regardless of the true interpretation, what is important is that Arkwright looked upon Konradaite
as a brutalized opposing symbol which affirmed his brutalizing “picture of darkness”918
homicidal self.
In the Abrahamic religions, the Devil or a devil is similarly associated with darkness and
evil, and DCI Burdis reports that “one of the witnesses told us that he'd been scared by Tony
Arkwright when he visited his flat because Arkwright had been wearing a devil mask.”919
Dressing in a devil mask in private was also a SAOS which served to self-communicate the
'supernaturally evil' component of Arkwright's Famous Supernaturally Evil Ripper ideal/own.
Yet, when Arkwright murdered Raymond Ford he was wearing the same devil mask. Whether it
acted merely as a SAOS or served a dual purpose of terrifying Ford has never been specified (we
shall explore this more in Chapter 4).
As we have seen in the cases of fellow British serial murderers Colin Ireland and Daniel
Gonzalez, Arkwright also wanted to be acknowledged as a serialkiller! by the generalized
other—which made his capture a necessity—yet he did not wish to be a mediocre murderer.
Besides the unparalleled savagery of his attacks, he also took precautions by committing the
murder of Raymond Ford “whilst he was wearing his underpants so that he didn't leave any
forensic traces behind.”920 Knowing he would eventually be caught, Arkwright wished to amass

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as many victims in small town South Yorkshire as possible before that occurred, leaving them in
horrific fashion.

3.10.3 Anthony Arkwright: Victimology

Table 15
Anthony Arkwright Victimology

Victim's Name Age Race Gender Profession Date Victimized Where

Stasys Puidokos 68 White Male Pensioner August 26, 1988, died Grandad's allotment
Elsa Konradaite 72 White Female Housekeeper August 26, 1988, died Grandad's house
Raymond Ford 45 White Male Unemployed August 27, 1988, died Victim's home
Marcus Law 25 White Male Unemployed August 28, 1988, died Victim's home

Anthony Arkwright is unique among the offenders in this study as he only murdered
people he knew. Tellingly, he confessed to the Puidokos, Ford, and Law homicides, but not to
that of his grandfather’s housekeeper, Elsa Konradaite, whose murder technically remains
unsolved. This has been dealt with in the previous section.
Each of Arkwright’s confirmed victims was to some degree stigmatized in the
community, and were of subordinated masculinities. As has been demonstrated, Stasys Puidokos
was rumoured to have participated in incestuous intercourse with his daughter (Arkwright’s
mother), marking him as a sexual deviant921, regardless of the objective truth of the
situation.gggggg He was also elderly and hardly well-off. Raymond Ford was stigmatized for the
attitude and condition922 of being mildly mentally ill, permanently physically ill, and the deviant
behaviour923 of drinking heavily. The former 45-year-old teacher who DCI Burdis remembered
“had worked overseas, I think in Burma, for many years, and had contracted a rare disease, and
returned to the UK and lived on a pension”924 struggled with depression while swigging cheap
cans of cider in front of the television.925 Another neighbour, Marcus Law, had been left in a
physically disabled condition926, confined to a wheelchair after a motorcycle accident. The fact

gggggg
South Yorkshire police looked into these rumours and debunked them.

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that all three confirmed victims had been considered socially deviant [mj] is a common thread
uniting the crimes, and the posing of Marcus Law's body seems to indicate that, at least in this
case, it factored into Arkwright’s motivation (see Chapter 4).
However, Arkwright also had personal grudges against his victims. According to multiple
sources, he had become obsessed with the notion that his grandfather was his true father, a claim
that regardless of its truth, had saddled Arkwright with the label of ‘inbred’, a master status,
throughout his life. Neil Hirst, who was neighbours with Arkwright and two of his victims
explained that “[Arkwright] had a few words now and again with Marcus and Raymond. I could
hear him, so obviously he got in a bit of trouble with them, like, he weren’t getting on with them
two very well.”927 In the case of Raymond Ford, Arkwright had terrorized the man by
vandalizing his property and pushing feces through his mail slot.928 More recently he had burgled
Ford’s apartment, and according to DCI Burdis: “He stole a quite valuable antique clock and a
microwave oven. Raymond Ford reported the burglary and claimed that he thought that
Arkwright was the person responsible for it.”929 Concerning Marcus Law, Neil Hirst recalls:
The only time I knew that he got a real vengeance against Marcus was on the night that
we went out [to a nightclub], and it were just before we set off in the car. Marcus came in
front of my car as I was setting off, he were jokingly shouting at me, and I were telling
him to get out of the way. And he was just having a laugh with me, Marcus. And then
Tony said from the back of [the] car ‘I’m going to kill that bastard.’ Tony said it with
such adrenaline in his body that I thought ‘He means it this guy.’930

As will be expanded upon later in Chapter 4, Arkwright also resented Law because he was
always asking Arkwright for cigarettes.
The cases of Mark David Chapman, David Berkowitz, and Colin Ireland (and later Elliot
Rodger and Seung-Hui Cho) demonstrate a trend among ETV offenders' relationships to their
symbolic victims; namely, they murder those who remind them of their own inadequacies. One
might speculate that Arkwright's slaying of his grandfather eliminated the spectre of inbreeding
that haunted him throughout his life, while the socially-dependent and cash-strapped Ford and
Law reflected Arkwright's own living conditions and reliance on the state. As they lived in such
close proximity, this would have occurred on a regular basis. Arkwright's desire to become a
survivalist—that most rustic manifestation of sub-hegemonic manly independence—seems to
betray this insecurity.

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3.10.4 Anthony Arkwright: Post-Arrest ideal/own
Arkwright and fellow English survivalist-turned-serialkiller! Colin Ireland had numerous
commonalities. Through murder, both permanently closed the gap between their insignificant,
directionless actual/own and homicidal ideal/own, effectively achieving their existential goal and
ridding themselves of any negative emotionality related to their sense of self. Like Ireland,
Arkwright continued to revel in his new Famous Supernaturally Evil Ripper self long after he
had been captured. An unnamed senior detective who had worked the case summarized
Arkwright’s post-arrest behaviour: “From the day we brought him in for the Marcus Law murder
to the day he was jailed, Arkwright seemed genuinely proud of what he had done. He expected
everyone to revere him, to be fascinated by him.”931 Arkwright and Ireland also took mutual
delight in toying with the police. According to his lawyer, Steve Smith: “When he was taken out
of the cell into the interview room it was almost as if he'd preened himself. Almost as if he was
looking forward to being able to being centre stage if you like. Centre of attraction.”932 As with
Ireland, Arkwright began his symbolic face-off with the police by denying any involvement in
the murder of Marcus Law. Both the officers present and Arkwright's own lawyer perceived that
he was participating in a game, and enjoying it.933 In the words of Steve Smith: “It wasn't an
interview like I've ever seen before or since. This was a lad who played, toyed even, with the
police as if it didn't matter. That it was just this total and complete disregard for the plight that he
was in that fascinated me.”934 As the first day of questioning neared its end, a police officer
informed Arkwright's lawyer they had found another body. Steve Smith did not immediately
notify his client. Soon after, Arkwright began to play the part of a pseudo-Tarot reader.
According to DCI Burdis:
On the table was a pack of cards, and Arkwright [who] had become familiar with the
officers, picked up the pack of cards and said 'I can read the cards. I can tell you the
future'... Eventually he turned over the four of hearts and said 'one you've got—two,
three, four to come. And of course at that stage Arkwright didn’t know that we’d
discovered the body of Raymond Ford and that meant that three and four we still had to
discover.935

Here, Arkwright was not merely toying with the police, but enacting a hyperreal masculinity—a
dangerous devil-man with clairvoyant powers. When Smith informed Arkwright that the corpse
of a second murder victim had been found, Arkwright “laughed. Almost as if he knew. Almost as
if he'd been waiting for that moment and then the questions would begin again. He loved it. He

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absolutely loved it [narrowing of actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy].”936
The following day the bodies of Elsa Konradaite and Stasys Puidokos were discovered in
Mexborough. Arkwright was now formally linked to the murders due to Puidokos's pocket watch
being found in his possession. Nevertheless, even with strong evidence against him—as there
had been against Ireland, in the form of CCTV footage and a fingerprint—Arkwright continued
to deny his guilt. Eventually, after a week and a half of questioning, he confessed to the murder
of Marcus Law. Yet, still he drew out the process, turning it into a game of cat and mouse. DCI
Burdis recalled:
He sang a little song and asked me to name that tune. And I said, 'well it's strangers in the
night.' And he told me that I got it right. And he would talk to me. Very bizarre. In that
interview he then confessed to murdering his grandfather and Raymond Ford and
eventually as the interviews progressed he went on to confess—almost—to Elsa
Konradaite...937

Paralleling Ireland again, once Arkwright was behind bars he fabricated additional
victims, whether to be back in the “limelight”938 as some assert, to derive satisfaction from
manipulating the police, or some combination of the two. Explained theoretically, discrepancies
between the actual/own and homicidal ideal/own, no matter how slight, may occur in prison, and
leading police on a wild goose chase reaffirms the homicidal ideal/own thus eliminating them.
For instance, Appleyard claims Arkwright rubbed excrement all over the walls of his cell to
protest the “lack of respect and recognition”939 he was receiving in jail.
By his 1989 trial, Arkwright was clearly reveling in his Famous Supernaturally Evil
Ripper ideal/own: “The attention that he got from the press was incredible. Tony appeared with
his spiky hair combed back and a red bow tie I remember. And he loved it. He loved being centre
stage.”940 Journalist Anne Story noticed, “He never cowered in court. He looked quite
comfortable, as if he was kind of an onlooker.”941 Arkwright would eventually enter guilty pleas
and be convicted of the first-degree murders of Stasys Puidokos, Raymond Ford, and Marcus
Law.
Arkwright's was successful in closing his actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy, because he
made men of sub-hegemonic masculinity fear him, at least temporarily. In the words of his
interrogator, Detective Inspector Bob Meek:
He was six-foot-five. If he starts getting aggressive, it is difficult to deal with somebody
of that size. But more than his demeanor or presence, it was looking at him and thinking I

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 think he has killed... And it's that makes an interviewing officer look at an individual as
either intimidating or threatening [emphasis added] more than his physical presence in
the room.942

Moreover, his homicidal ideal/own actually made educated men consider the veracity of his
hyperreal masculinity. Commenting on how he felt as the murders were unfolding, Arkwright's
own lawyer, Steve Smith, remarked “What is this man? Is he a man? Is he a human being? What
is he?”943 To a lifelong nobody who wore a devil mask, claimed to see the future in a deck of
playing cards, and described himself as a “picture of darkness”944, this was exactly the kind of
social response he was calling out for.

3.10.5 Anthony Arkwright: Sexual/Gender Aspects

Like Danny Rolling, although Arkwright was large in stature, which projected an illusion
of sub-hegemony, he was also dependent, juvenile, and far from a ladies' man: a subordinated
masculinity. Following a now familiar ETV pattern, Arkwright first aspired to become a sub-
hegemonic Macho Survivalist—hardly a tenable self for a generally unemployed 'jack-of-no-
trades' in overpopulated Britain. This penchant for the unrealistic carried over to his Famous
Supernaturally Evil Ripper homicidal ideal/own which contains aspects of hyperreal
masculinity. Certainly, Arkwright was able to realize the 'ripper' element and even secured a
fleeting 'fame', but the nature of the 'supernatural evil' he embodied extended to the
metaphysical, including affectations of clairvoyance and a self-guide which included him as a
“picture of darkness.”945
There is almost no account of Anthony Arkwright’s sex life or romantic relationships,
and any resemblance his crimes have to the paraphilias of picquerism, mutilophilia or
necrornopositophilia can be explained by Arkwright's stated desire to emulate previous
mutilators: Jack the Ripper and 'The Yorkshire Ripper' Peter Sutcliffe.

3.10.6 Anthony Arkwright: Religious/Philosophical Aspects

There is no documentation of Arkwright’s religious beliefs or philosophies, we only
know that he sometimes wore a devil mask around the house and played Tarot-reader for the
police. His mask could represent an actual theistic worship of Satan, but far more likely served as
a SAOS, communicating that he was the powerful and dark Famous Supernaturally Evil

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Ripper to himself. Left behind, perhaps intentionally, at the Ford crime scene, it was later used
to link Arkwright to the crime: “We found this devil mask in Raymond Ford's flat and later on
during the course of interviews Arkwright admitted that he had worn this mask and that he had
committed the crime.”946 Likely, it had a dual function, as a SAOS and to confuse and terrify the
victim.
The same logic applies to Arkwright's fortune-telling: it was merely a theatrical way of
demonstrating to the police that Arkwright was, literally and figuratively, holding all of the
cards. He had the power of knowing the future because he had proactively created the
circumstances that would lead to it. Once again, it is possible that through meta-delusion
Arkwright convinced himself he was actually clairvoyant, but to our knowledge, he was simply
using the playing cards as a prop in his Famous Supernaturally Evil Ripper fantasy.

3.10.7 Anthony Arkwright: Class Aspects

The only element of class identity to arise in the Arkwright case was his victim selection.

3.10.8 Anthony Arkwright: Vocational Aspects

After many years of failed criminality and relying on Borstals and prisons to house him,
Arkwright worked in various menial positions for short period of times: a story that should be
familiar to the reader by now. In the words of his lawyer Steve Smith: “The system looked after
him. He was a regular.”947 On Friday August 26, he was fired from his job as a labourer at a
scrapyard948 [trigger] for poor attendance. He used his severance package to get drunk at the pub,
before murdering his grandfather, Stasys Puidokos, within less than 24 hours of the termination
of his employment.

Concluding Thoughts: Anthony Arkwright

Anthony Arkwright, whose psychological problems first began to manifest at the age of
four, is yet another example of an ETV killer whose social development was stunted. Like
Berkowitz, the confusion and stigma surrounding his birth consumed Arkwright, and predictably,
took a devastating toll.949 The fact that Arkwright's homicidal ideal/own manifested in the form
of a monster, the Devil—a hyperreal masculinity—is significant. To reiterate, the archetypal
Monster often is conceived in sin and resides outside the organized structure of society in the

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chaotic realm of the unknown. A classic representation of this is the underworld, repurposed as
Hell in the subsequent doctrines of the Abrahamic religions. Where Berkowitz holed himself up
in his darkened apartment scribbling demonic fantasy on the walls, Arkwright literally attempted
to remove himself from society, living in camouflaged hideaways on the outskirts of town.

Table 16
Anthony Arkwright: Selves and Strain

Actual/Own Ideal/Own Homicidal Self Post-Arrest Self

Sexuality N/A N/A N/A N/A

Gender Subordinated. Sub- Hyperreal. Reconciled.

Gender-role strain hegemonic. Personification of
(incest rumour) (wannabe monstrous violence
survivalist). No destroying
gender-role subordinated
strain. masculinities. No
gender-role strain.
Religion/Philosophy N/A N/A Wears Devil mask N/A
and acts as fortune-
teller.
Class Working-class. N/A N/A N/A
Vocation Chronically Self-reliant Murders other Resolved.
unemployed. survivalist. unemployed Incarcerated.
people. Retreatism.
Race N/A N/A N/A N/A
Notability Ego-dystonic. N/A Ego-syntonic. Ego-syntonic.
Mertonian strain. 'infamous and Media circus.
notorious' Reconciled.

This “oddball”950, believing his own conception to be taboo, sought refuge on the
physical margins of his world—the Monster narrative. Echoing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
tale, in which the creation turns upon its creator to punish him for making him monstrous,
Arkwright first murdered Stasys Puidokis, who he wrongly believed to be his incestuous
father.hhhhhh As well as being a Monster, the Devil is also the 'trickster' archetype, a trope which

hhhhhh
Though it is highly doubtful that Arkwright possessed enough insight to consciously design such a complex
symbolic narrative, it is worth mentioning that the Devil avatar also rebelled against his creator, God.

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Arkwright enacted in his tarot card games with the police: the archetypal Heroes of his story.951
A second talisman of Arkwright's was the serialkiller!, specifically 'ripper' subtypes such
as jacktheripper! and petersutcliffe! Troublingly, Arkwright studied these offenders in a prison
library before he employed them in the formulation of his homicidal ideal/own. Jack the Ripper
and 'Yorkshire Ripper' Peter Sutcliffe are two of the United Kingdom's most widely media
disseminated serialkillers!—the subject of movies, true crime novels, and newspaper articles; in
the case of the former, also a graphic novel, video games, and a board game. Whether Arkwright
was drawn to them because he already entertained mutilation fantasies or noted that their
respective homicidal methods to attaining fame and simply followed suit, is unknown to us.
What we do know is that he “told friends that one day he was going to be as infamous and
notorious as Jack the Ripper.”952 The influence of hyperreality on Arkwright's psyche is
pervasive.
When we contrast Arkwright's reliance on social security (actual/own) with his juvenile
hobby of building hideaways in an attempt to become a survivalist (ideal/own), his frustrated and
futile desire to achieve independence emerges as a major source of strain. Perhaps this
discrepancy, which feeds into both the masculine gender and vocational aspects of his selves, it
explains why he embarked on his murder spree immediately after being fired. Unable to escape
dependence because his social development was truncated, Arkwright sought to transcend the
dependence/independence dichotomy altogether by committing acts of moral transgression that
would force society to imprison him. He could now be given food and shelter against his will,
reconceptualizing himself as the ultimate rebellious individual, incarcerated for his uniqueness.
In becoming the Famous Supernaturally Evil Ripper (homicidal ideal/own), the utterly
powerless Odd Delinquent Inbred (actual/own) not only had power over his victims, but over
the minds and emotions of the policemen hunting him, at least for a moment in history. His
hatred and murder of the disabled Ford and Law can be viewed as a repudiation of those same
gender and vocational aspects of his ideal/own: weakness, reliance, and perpetual confinement to
a housing estate. When combined with the strain resulting from his need for notoriety, they
provide ample motivation for the commission of expressive/transformative murder.

3.11 Transformation: Findings

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 Over the course of this lengthy chapter, we have applied qualitative analysis to each of
the 10 offenders in our sample. Though, on occasion, we have been unable to find proof that an
offender experienced dejection-related emotions during actual/own:ideal/own discrepancies, the
process outlined in the expressive/transformative progression of self has been overwhelmingly
supported by our observations. Thus, in those rare instances when dejection-related emotions
were absent, a possible explanation is that they simply were not recounted by the offender or
documented. Of course, there could also be another explanatory factor: changing one’s self-
concept or self-guide need not necessarily always spring from despair. Until this point, our
approach has been primarily qualitative—we have attempted to understand each offender
individually at the psycho-social level so that we may retrace the origins of their expressions in
Chapter 4. Yet through this exercise we have also uncovered a number of startling
commonalities between the offenders, opening the door for future quantitative analysis. The
following 24 qualities were present in 50-100% of the sample.

1. Failure of socialization (100%)

Whether due to mental illness and/or sociological factors, every offender in this sample
experienced marked difficulties socializing from a young age.

2. Loner (100%)
Though they may have formed superficial friendships, each of the offenders in this
sample was ultimately a loner with tenuous connections to others at best. Certainly, nobody
would have referred to them as a 'close friend' or been privy to their innermost thoughts.

3. Strain (100%)
Whether related to gender, sexuality, class, vocation, or notability, all 10 offenders
experienced strain in multiple areas. As we will see, each offender possessed strains related to
their gender identity and notability, culminating in public or publicized acts of manly violence.
To recap Chapter 1, they also experienced the following specific strains as outlined in Tables 17
and 18 below, with James Holmes suffering from only a single strain while Danny Rolling and
Colin Ireland tied for the most at nine.

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Table 17
General Strain in a Sample of 10 ETV offenders, part 1
Name Parental Erratic, Child abuse Negative Abusive peer Work in Chronic Failure to achieve
rejection excessive, or and/or secondary- relations secondary Unemployment select goals
harsh neglect school labour
supervision experiences market
or discipline
Mark Chapman N Y N N Y Y N Y
David Berkowitz Y Y N Y Y Y N Y
Danny Rolling Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Colin Ireland Y N N Y Y Y Y Y
Luka Magnotta Y Y Y Y Y N Y Y
Daniel Gonzalez Y ? N Y N Y Y Y
Anthony Y ? Y Y Y Y Y Y
Arkwright
James Holmes N N N N N N N Y
Elliot Rodger N Y N Y Y N Y Y
Seung-Hui Cho N N N Y Y N Y Y

Table 18
General Strain in a Sample of 10 ETV offenders, part 2
Name Criminal Residence in Homelessness Discrimination Discrimination Total number of strains
Victimization economically deprived based on gender based on for this offender
community race/ethnicity

Mark Chapman Y N N N N 5
David Berkowitz N N N N Y 7
Danny Rolling Y N N N N 9
Colin Ireland Y Y Y N N 9
Luka Magnotta N N N N N 7
Daniel Gonzalez N N N N N 5
Anthony Arkwright N Y N N N 8
James Holmes N N N N N 1
Elliot Rodger N N N N N 5
Seung-Hui Cho N N N N N 4

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4. Negative Emotionality (100%)
As predicted by SDT and GST, negative emotionality arose from actual:ideal and
actual:ought discrepancies and the various types of strain experienced by the offenders in this
sample. Typically, these were dejection-related emotions, particularly depression, sadness, and
frustration.

5. Notoriety (100%)
Unsurprisingly, notoriety emerged as an explicitly coveted quality across our sample.
Mark David Chapman “killed the biggest Somebody on earth”953 in order to “usurp someone
else’s importance, someone else's success.”954 David Berkowitz smiled upon his arrest and asked
if the newspapers were coming so that he could read about himself. Danny Rolling bragged to
his fellow inmates that he wanted to become a “superstar of crime”955 Colin Ireland contacted
police and media to draw their attention to his murders and ultimately fulfill his ambition of
being a serialkiller! Luka Magnotta's fame seeking was pathological to the point of filming and
publicizing his crimes online, even associating them with his name. Daniel Gonzalez wanted to
be “remembered as a famous serial killer”956 boasting “mine’s a big f***** story and will be on
the full front page.”957 Anthony Arkwright “told friends that one day he was going to be as
infamous and notorious as Jack the Ripper”958, and “loved being centre stage”959 at his trial.
James Holmes sent his photographs to the New York Times before embarking on his massacre
because he “didn't think people would remember me for any other reason.”960, telling his
psychiatrist “at least I'm remembered as doing something.”961 Elliot Rodger, who “always
believed, I am destined for great things”962 posted his 'Retribution' VLOG and autobiography
online to accompany his Isla Vista killing spree. Similarly, Seung-Hui Cho sent a video to NBC
news in which he declared himself to be a neo-Moses who, through killing, would “spread the
sea and lead my people—the Weak, the Defenseless, and the Innocent Children of all ages that
you fucked and will always try to fuck—to eternal freedom”963

6. Guilty or NGRI Pleas (100% of n=8)

As their murders provided them with an ego-syntonic social identity, it is unsurprising

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that 50% of the sample (Chapman, Berkowitz, Rolling, Ireland, Arkwright) pleaded guilty while
another 30% (Magnotta, Gonzalez, Holmes) entered NGRI pleas964—the acceptance that one is
indeed a killer, but is technically 'not guilty' due to strong mitigating factors. The remaining 20%
(Rodger, Cho) committed suicide and could not be brought to trial. Among the first 40%, three
of the four offenders (Chapman, Berkowitz, Arkwright) initially built insanity defenses, only to
later enter guilty pleas.965 None of the NGRI defenses were successful.

7. Child-Like Self (60-90%)

Another probable bi-product of failed socialization is the prevalence of truncated social
and emotional maturity in seemingly every offender in the sample, with the possible exception of
Holmes. In the cases of Chapman, Rolling, Ireland, Magnotta, Gonzalez, and Cho (60%) this was
explicitly stated by the offender or diagnosed while they were children, while Berkowitz strongly
implied it (10%), and the habits of Anthony Arkwright and Elliot Rodger (20%) certainly lean
more towards childishness than maturity.

8. Gender Issues (100%)

Having an actual/own where one self-conceptualizes as a 'child'—anywhere from 60-90%
of our sample—is enough in itself to undermine the demand for self-reliance and emotional
stoicism inherent in normative masculinity. On top of this, 80% of the sample (Chapman,
Berkowitz, Rolling, Ireland, Magnotta, Arkwright, Rodger, and Cho) were relentlessly bullied in
school, a classic method of reducing somebody's standing in the masculine social hierarchy, with
labels related to subordinated masculinity such as 'pussy', 'nerd', and 'fag' applied to at least 30%
of themiiiiii (Chapman, Magnotta, Rodger). James Holmes self-identified as a 'nerd' though his
actions clearly indicate he experienced strong gender-role strain. Below we look at how
sexuality, lack of a romantic partner, and vocational instability all contribute to an ego-dystonic
gender identity.

9. Poor Relationship With Father Figure (90%)

Though we lack the necessary information to make a determination in the James Holmes

iiiiii
I strongly suspect these labels or variants were applied to more offenders in the sample and that the offenders
either never spoke of them or it was simply not documented.

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case, in all nine others the offenders either had a father figure who was completely or effectively
absent (Chapman, Berkowitz, Ireland, Magnotta, Gonzalez, Arkwright, Rodger, Cho) or highly
abusive (Rolling). Mark David Chapman claims his father was emotionally inaccessible and beat
his mother. Though David Berkowitz, Elliot Rodger, and Seung-Hui Cho's father figures may
have loved them, in all three cases these men were nearly completely preoccupied with their
work. Ireland, Gonzalez and Arkwright's biological fathers all abandoned them at a young age,
with Ireland also losing a stepfather whose name he had taken. Given the scale of the physical
and emotional abuse Danny Rolling endured at the hands of his father, he would almost certainly
have been better served if James Harold Rolling had also walked out on his wife and children.
Like Chapman's father, his physical presence did not necessarily mean that he was there for his
sons in any positive way.

10. Sexual Issues (90%)

Excluding Anthony Arkwright, for whom we lack the necessary information to make a
sound judgment, every offender had notable problems with the nature and/or success of their
sexuality. Mark David Chapman was admittedly erotophobic and intimidated by the prospect of
being inside a woman's vagina. Despite being married, he could count the number of times he
had sexual intercourse on his hands. Though displaying similarly erotophobic tendencies,
Berkowitz and Rodger were paradoxically obsessed with the absence of sex in their lives.
According to one source, Berkowitz would return to his crime scenes, roll in the dirt, and then go
home to masturbate while fantasizing about his victims. Both had imaginary sexual partners—
Berkowitz's victims and an otherwise non-descript 'hot-blonde' for Rodger. Danny Rolling was
an admitted paraphile who may have suffered from impotence while attempting to engage in
non-violent consensual sex, and Colin Ireland's murders contain bisexual and sadistic signature
elements. Luka Magnotta was a homosexual masquerading as a bisexual who was ashamed of
his predilection for men. Moreover, though he made his living as an escort and porn star,
Magnotta was unenthusiastic about sex and often allowed himself to be subjected to acts he
found painful and humiliating. James Holmes remained a virgin until well into his Twenties,
relying on prostitutes after his brief sexual relationship with Gargi Datta came to a sudden end.
Daniel Gonzalez and Seung-Hui Cho were totally sexually isolated, with the latter remaining a
virgin until his death.

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11. No Romantic Partner at Time of Murders (90%)
Only one of the 10 offenders, Mark David Chapman, was known to be in a steady
relationship—a relatively sexless and dysfunctional marriage—when he first committed murder.
Danny Rolling and Colin Ireland were both divorcees with sporadic sex lives, while James
Holmes had been dumped by his first and only girlfriend months before the massacre. Elliot
Rodger, Seung-Hui Cho, and (almost certainly) David Berkowitz (30%) were all virgins who
never dated, let alone had a partner. Luka Magnotta, though sexually active, had not been in
anything resembling a long-term relationship for six years prior to his killing of Jun Lin.
Similarly, Daniel Gonzalez complained that he hadn't “had a girlfriend for ages.”966 There are no
available records pertaining to Anthony Arkwright's relationships, which seems to indicate that
they were non-existent at the time of his killing spree. As normative masculinity entails the
ability to successfully and effortlessly achieve heterosexual relationships with attractive women,
this element would cause gender-role strain in anyone who aspired to a hegemonic, sub-
hegemonic, or hyperreal (with hegemonic or sub-hegemonic elements) masculinity. Therefore,
this quality can be subsumed by Gender Issues. Crucially, the lack of a romantic partner
undermines one's stake in conformity.

12. Unemployed/Dropped Out Before Murder(s) (80%)

Shortly before perpetrating their first murder, Danny Rolling, Colin Ireland, and Anthony
Arkwright were fired from menial positions, while a depressed Mark Chapman quit his job as a
security guard. Similarly, David Berkowitz took a month off work before making a failed
attempt to stab his first victim to death. James Holmes and Elliot Rodger both effectively
dropped out of college, while Daniel Gonzalez was permanently unemployed, relying on social
security. Though Magnotta also collected disability benefits, he continued to work as an escort
until his murder of Jun Lin, and Cho does not seem to have abandoned his studies in any formal
sense. They represent our two ostensible exceptions. A further 80% of the sample (Chapman,
Berkowitz, Rolling, Ireland, Magnotta, Gonzalez, Arkwright, and Rodger) showed a pattern of
unstable employment, moving from one unskilled job or college program to the next. As the
conventions of normative masculinity include stoic competence and self-reliance— traits which
none of these offenders exhibited—this quality also constitutes an aspect of gender-role strain.

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Understanding it in this context also negates the 'did not actually stop attending classes'
technicality which allowed Cho to escape inclusion here. It also shows how the credibility of
Magnotta's non-heteronormative sex work could also be ultimately reduced in the wider context
of Gender Issues. Once again, there is no stake in conformity when a person believes they are
incapable of even holding down a bad job.

13. Under 30 Years of Age (80%)

With the exception of the serial killers Danny Rolling and Colin Ireland who committed
their first known murders at the ages of 35 and 38 respectively, the remainder of the offenders
were under age 30 when they embarked on their homicidal careers. The youngest was Anthony
Arkwright, who began at age 21, while the average age of the offenders in our sample was 26.4.
The serial killers (Berkowitz, Rolling, Ireland) averaged 32 years, with 27 for the single-incident
murderers (Chapman, Magnotta), 23 for mass murderersjjjjjj (Holmes, Rodger, Cho), and 22.5 for
spree killers (Gonzalez, Arkwright). If we are to employ the current definition of serial murder
advocated by the FBI, which would encompass Gonzalez and Arkwright, the average age lowers
to 28.2 years.

14. Diagnosed or Suspected Psychosis (80%)

The prevalence of psychosis, typically related to delusion but occasionally including
hallucinations, in this sample was notably high. Keeping in mind that an offender is typically
assessed by numerous mental health professionals whose views are not always in accordance,
paranoid schizophrenia was diagnosed in Chapman967, Berkowitz968, Magnotta969, Gonzalez970,
and Holmes971, while psychiatrist John Liebert makes a convincing case that Cho was also a
schizophrenic.972 Having been prescribed the anti-psychotic Risidone, Elliot Rodger likely
suffered from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder973, which has psychotic features, while Danny
Rolling was found to have an “atypical psychosis.”974

15. Suicidal (80%)

Interestingly, all of the offenders diagnosed with psychosis by at least one mental health
professional were also suicidal. Chapman and Magnotta were both documented as having made

jjjjjj
Including bi-furcated variants.

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unsuccessful attempts years before their homicides, while Berkowitz and Rolling claim to have
experienced suicidal ideation at different points in their lives. Holmes incredulously purports to
have automatically channelled suicidal thoughts to homicidal ones so that he wouldn't have to
kill himself. Of those offenders in our sample who actually committed suicide (Gonzalez,
Rodger, Cho), the mass murderers did so at the end of their rampage while Gonzalez was finally
successful after making numerous attempts at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.

16. Symbolic Victims (70%)

The majority of ETV offenders—70% of our sample—targeted symbolic victims. Mark
David Chapman gunned down an internationally-known celebrity who he deemed a 'phony.'
Berkowitz and Rolling specifically murdered young women who outwardly represented
emphasized femininity, with Rodger and Cho making efforts to do the same, along with any other
young person they deemed 'hedonistic.' Half of Rodger's fatalities consisted of young Asian
males who were pre-emptively selected. Ireland's victims were all homosexual males. Although
he claimed only to have targeted submissives, whom he referred to as 'extreme male deviants',
Ireland's inclusion of Perry Bradley III, who did not care for BDSM, casts doubt upon the
specificity of his victimology. Anthony Arkwright murdered his grandfather, believing him to be
his incestuous father, before slaughtering two impoverished neighbours who suffered from
disabilities. As the notion that Luka Magnotta may have specifically chosen a homosexual Asian
victim due to race is purely speculative, it has not been included here.

17. Name Changes (70%)

Be they aliases, nicknames, monikers, or formal names registered with the government,
60% of our sample were in the habit of referring to themselves by something other than their
birth name. In the cases of Mark David Chapman, David Berkowitz, and Seung-Hui Cho, these
name changes related directly to their crimes. On his last day at work, Chapman signed out as his
future victim 'John Lennon' and soon began signing copies of The Catcher in the Rye as his
avatar 'Holden Caulfield.'975 Cho told fellow students his name was 'Question Mark', although in
his final homicidal communication he rebranded himself 'Ax Ishmael.' In his letters to the police
and media, Berkowitz, whose name had already been changed from 'Richard Falco' at birth,
referred to himself as the sobriquets 'Mr. Monster' and 'The Son of Sam.'976 Ireland also called

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himself 'The Gay Slayer' during a telephone call to the police. As a result of having two
stepfathers, he had changed his surname in childhood, then changed it back following his
mother's first divorce. Ireland also employed the alias 'Colin Williams.'977 Although legally
changing his name to 'Luka Magnotta', Eric Newman also went by 'Jimmy', 'Vladimir Romanov',
'Kirk Trammel', and 'Mattia Del Santo' to name a few. Danny Rolling phonetically inverted his
first name to 'Ennad' to describe his ideal/own, but also used the alias 'Michael Kennedy.'978
Daniel Gonzalez often spoke in the third person, referring to himself as 'Zippy.'979

18. Class Issues (70%)

Contrary to Leyton's conclusions that the modern multiple murder is primarily motivated
by class-related insecurity, there are but two examples here (Mark Chapman and Seung-Hui
Cho) and only the latter qualifies as a multiple murderer. Certainly, Luka Magnotta and Elliot
Rodger were embarrassingly class conscious—Rodger even hypocritically whined about 'rich
kids'— but neither actually murdered victims from a higher social class. Rolling and Ireland's
victimology, when paired with statements and incidents that seem to indicate some level of class
insecurity, do seem to contain socio-economic aspects, though far from decisive. So, while 70%
of the offenders did display some class related strain, the role that class played in their murders
varied from significant (Chapman, Cho) to moderate (Rolling, Ireland, Rodger, Arkwright) to
irrelevant (Magnotta). Particularly, Elliot Rodger's polemics reveal the major flaw in Leyton's
theory of multiple murder. For Leyton, the modern multiple murderer strikes out at members of a
social class that he wishes to join but feels excluded from. Yet Rodger, the British prep-school
educated son of a Hollywood film director, was a member of the upper-middle class, and
enjoyed a higher-class position than many of the middle class 'beautiful blond girls' he coveted.
Nevertheless, on numerous occasions he refers to the 'popular kids' which have always rejected
him. This is because social class is not tantamount to social inclusion in the late-20th and early-
21st centuries. The overriding factor in each of these 10 cases is that the offender occupied the
lowest strata of social inclusion. For whatever reasons, their personalities and/or affects did not
allow them to socialize effectively, an impairment which over time, loosened their bonds to
society as a whole. Another possible (and not necessarily exclusive) explanation is that they were
never bonded to society in the first place. This may have resulted from congenital brain
abnormalities or ineffective childhood socialization, which served to hinder the offender's

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attempts at bonding with their peers.

19. Hero Culture (50%)

To our knowledge, at least 50% of the sample were interested, albeit to different extents,
in what we will call 'hero culture': professions associated with uniforms and sub-hegemonic
masculinity. Berkowitz, Rolling, Ireland, and Arkwright all were enamoured with the military,
with the first two enrolling in the American army and air force, respectively, while Ireland was
rejected from the French Foreign Legion. Ireland and Arkwright also shared a fascination with
SAS-style survivalism. Berkowitz volunteered as an auxiliary cop, Rolling served a short stint as
a military policeman, and Magnotta publicly and privately expressed his interest in pursuing a
career in law enforcement. Finally, Berkowitz and Ireland—both arsonists—were volunteer
firefighters. While 50% may seem like a low number, when compared to the total number of
people in the American, British, and Canadian public who have served or attempted to serve in
one of these professions, it is abnormally high.

20. Weapons Collecting (50%)

Half of the offenders (Berkowitz, Rolling, Arkwright, Holmes, Cho) collected three or
more weapons, with all but Berkowitz making a public display of brandishing them before their
homicides. Rolling and Arkwright did so in front of their neighbours, while Holmes and Cho
sent photographs of themselves posing with weapons to the media. These weapons are theorized
to contribute to the offender's violent self-image, shoring up their homicidal ideal/own through
SAOS, although in the case of Rolling and Arkwright, this homicidal self may have also been
reinforced by their neighbours' reactions. Once again, it seems improbable that 50% of the
American or British public own three or more weapons at any given time, though American gun
culture may come closer to approximating this number.

21. Costume (50%)

It is likely no coincidence that four of the five offenders (Rolling, Arkwright, Holmes,
Cho) who collected weapons also wore costumes, masks, or otherwise altered their appearance to
portray a homicidal self. Gonzalez and Arkwright, with their Jason and Devil masks, were most
obvious, while Rolling, who described himself as moving “from shadow to shadow draped in

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Ninja black”980 could be dismissed as simply wearing effective camouflage if not for his
statements.kkkkkk James Homes dyed his hair bright red, wore black contact lenses, and sported a
ballistic helmet and gloves, bulletproof vest, and shin armour. He posed for various photographs
which he sent to the New York Times, and then stormed into the Aurora cinema with his red hair
and armour to commit a massacre. Fellow mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho dressed in an outfit
reminiscent of the Columbine High School shooters which he wore in his publicity photos and
during his killings. In one way or another, these are both expressions and SAOS. Chapter 4
explores them in greater detail. With the exception of Halloween, it is fairly safe to conclude that
the general public do not walk around sporting violent costume or uploading such images on the
Internet.

22. Christian Themes (50%)

Given that Christianity is the dominant religion in the west, the fact that 50% of the
offenders were strongly influenced by Christian themes makes sense. Chapman, Berkowitz, and
Rolling all fervently believed in the Holy Bible talisman and attended church of their own
volition. When they needed to commit murder they turned to the Satan avatar to embolden them
or rationalize their actions, and their post-arrest selves took the form of the Penitent Christian.
Likening himself to Moses and Jesus Christ—Biblical figures who suffered to redeem their
flock—Seung-Hui Cho declared a revolution of the oppressed and embarked on a 'self-
sacrificing' mass murder. Though there is no indication of whether or not Anthony Arkwright
identified as a Christian or read scripture, he adorned a devil mask during his murder of
Raymond Ford, and described himself as “a picture of darkness.”981 Certainly, the majority of
Americans (75%)982 are Christian, but this misses the point. All five of these offenders explicitly
stated Christian motives, meta-delusions, or invoked Christian imagery in direct relation to their
murder(s), in comparison with the majority of violent offenders who do not.

23. Meta-Delusion (50%)

Chapman, Berkowitz, and Rolling's religious beliefs allowed them to create
demonologies which they used to facilitate meta-delusion in the manner described above.

Elsewhere he compares himself to a “Ninja assassin [who] prowled the neighborhood” (London & Rolling,
kkkkkk

2011, p. 132.)

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Holmes, the agnostic scientist, was more innovative, crafting the theory of Ultraception to absorb
his victims' value and thereby prevent himself from committing suicide. According to his
psychiatrist, Daniel Gonzalez chose the excitement of surreality over Reality, recognizing “that
drugs had led him to have hallucinations which was the point of taking them”983 because he
“enjoyed believing mad things”984 Arntfield & Danesi have argued that motives for murder (e.g.,
strain and negative emotionality) emerge, pass through a “narrative mechanism”985 (e.g.,
talismans and avatars) and are then subject to “rationalization”986. Meta-delusionality seems to
play a pivotal role in the latter two stages of this homicidal process, and as the concept arose
specifically from observations of abnormal psychologies featured in this dissertation, one can
safely hypothesize that this is far higher percentage of meta-delusional people in the general
public.

24. Prior Criminal History (50%)

With the exception of David Berkowitz, who was never caught for the hundreds of fires
he set, the ETV offenders who were either serial killers or aspired to be all had prior criminal
histories. Danny Rolling served multiple prison sentences for armed robbery, while Colin
Ireland, Daniel Gonzalez, and Anthony Arkwright were also in and out of prison for a variety of
property crimes. Luka Magnotta was convicted of fraud in his early-Twenties. Berkowitz,
Ireland, and Arkwright were all arsonists. Widespread problems concerning the collection and
interpretation of data concerning criminal convictions in the United States and England make
this finding difficult to contextualize, although even the highest estimates do not implicate half
of the population.
Naturally, in future studies these findings should be compared to a sample from the non-
criminal population as well as violent criminals who do not exhibit expressive/transformative
behaviour in order to determine whether or not they are significant whatsoever.

3.12 The Transformative Triangle

In order to fully grasp the complexity of the expressive/transformative process, equal
consideration must be given to how semiotic communication between offender and victim (see 1
on Figure 6), victim and audience (see 2 on Figure 6), and audience and offender (see 3 on

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Figure 6) facilitate this transformation. The relations between these three types of transformation
are called expressive/transformative dynamics.

Figure 6. The Transformative Triangle

1. Primary-Secondary Dynamic
As Chapter 3 has shown, the offender must necessarily perpetrate acts of violence against
a victim in order to establish his homicidal self. This occurs through semiotic affirmations of self
(SAOS) in which the victim's corpse acts as a sign to the offender that he is now a killer: a kind
of intrapersonal communication. Recall 'Moors Murderer' Ian Brady's pronouncement that “in
another very significant sense, [a killer] is killing his long-accepted self as well as the victim, and
simultaneously giving birth to a new persona, decisively cutting the umbilical connection
between himself and ordinary mankind.”987 What the offender does to the victim, be it ante- peri-
or post-mortem, determines what kind of homicidal self he perceives himself to be. When
Detective Dave Reichert told 'Green River Killer' Gary Ridgway “you're a rapist” 988 the
prostitute slaying Ridgway replied “I'm not a rapist. I paid them for sex and I killed them” 989
claiming “it's robbery [not rape].”990 Ridgway prided himself on being the most prolific serial
killer in American history991 but did not wish to include the status of 'rapist' in his homicidal

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selfllllll, choosing to interpret having consensual sex with a prostitute without paying her as a
property crime instead. The Primary-Secondary dynamic also entails the transformation of the
victim's identity in the eyes of the killer. Necrophilic serial murderer Sean Gillis referred to the
weapon he used to fatally strangle his victims as “the Objectifier, because it would turn them
from a woman to the objectmmmmmm [emphasis added] that I would then deal with.”992 Similarly,
Edmund Kemper III “just wanted the exaltation over the party... They were [now] dead and I
was [still] alive”993: a SAOS which indicated his “victory.”994 Beyond the mere act of
transforming a victim into a corpse, the killer may project their own subjective views of the
victim's identity on or around the victim's body. British serial killer Joanna Dennehy dressed the
corpse of murdered lover Kevin Lee in a black-sequined dress, leaving his buttocks exposed.995
Lee had previously confided in a friend that Dennehy, who was known in her townhouse as “the
man woman”996, had “wanted to dress me up and rape me.”997 Clearly, Dennehy felt she was
more masculine than Lee and projected this symbolically onto him by feminizing him in a
SAOS—Dennehy as the masculine, Lee as the feminine.

2. Secondary-Tertiary Dynamic
A victim's identity is also transformed in the eyes of society by an offender's actions.
Perhaps the most telling example is that of Elizabeth Short whose entire existence was reduced
to the master status998 of 'murder victim' when she was famously slain in 1947, posed in
expressive/transformative fashion, and rechristened 'The Black Dahlia.' Today, many have heard
of the 'Black Dahlia' but fewer would recognize the name Beth Short. Canadian serial murderer
Russell Williams manipulated the secondary-tertiary dynamic when he left a message reading
“GO AHEAD. CALL THE POLICE. I WANT TO SHOW THE JUDGE YOU'RE [sic]
REALLY BIG DILDOS”999 on the computer screen of a woman whose home he had burgled.
The surviving victim would be either forced to keep quiet or reveal private details of her sex life
to the public, forever associating her identity with somebody who uses large phallic sex toys—
considered a stigma in some social circles.nnnnnn In such a case, the victim's stigmatized identity

What a killer explicitly expresses he is and is not, whether through language or other signs, is extremely helpful
llllll

in analyzing his behaviour, as will be seen in the coming pages.

mmmmmm
Readers who are familiar with my Thematic-Derivative Model of Sexual Progression will note that all
human beings, living or dead, are objects, as the self develops when a person is able to understand himself as an
object in the eyes of others.
nnnnnn
In a remarkable show of strength, the victim would calmly disclose this in an interview with the Canadian

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goes from being discreditable to discredited1000 because the attack reveals it to the generalized
other, with this revelation promulgated by the media. Female promiscuity, non-normative sexual
desires, hypocrisy, and invisible illnesses are just some of many stigmas which are commonly
revealed.
From the unfortunate party who discovers the body, to the policemen who process the
crime scene, to the general public who learn about the murder, the audience are also transformed.
The breadth and depth of this impact is typically related to the perceived social status and
culpability of the victims. Following the murder of John Lennon, there were candlelight vigils
and public displays of mourning across the globe, as well as several suicides.1001 The
assassination resulted in widespread changes to the level of security surrounding high-profile
celebrities and their accessibility to the general public. Following the mass murders of
'innocent'oooooo middle-class students and theatre-goers by Seung-Hui Cho, James Holmes, and
Elliot Rodger, there were multiple public gatherings to mourn the victims and memorial
structures or scholarships created to honour the fallen.1002 James Holmes perceived that the
Aurora murders he perpetrated “made the community more tightly-knit.”1003 As an aggregate,
such mass shootings have resulted in constant widespread fear among the American public of
being randomly gunned down, and have sparked heated debates over the issue of gun control.
They have tangibly transformed the psychology and political discourse of an entire nation. The
murders committed by David 'Son of Sam' Berkowitz and Danny Rolling terrorized local
communities, leading their residents to wonder if they would be the next victim. For example,
during the summer of 1977, many young women in New York City stopped going out at night or
dyed their hair blond because it was (wrongly) assumed that the 'Son of Sam' targeted women
with dark tresses.1004 Amidst the Gainesville murders committed by Danny Rolling, students fled
the college town in droves—some never to return—in order to avoid a similar fate.1005 Rolling's
attempts to “invoke terror”1006 were a roaring success. Along with numerous candlelight vigils
and scholarships, a memorial wall was erected at the university in honour of Rolling's five
Gainesville victims.1007 Two hundred people attended a memorial to Luka Magnotta victim Jun

Broadcasting Corporation's The Fifth Estate. Symbolic interactionists would see this as normalizing the stigma:
proactively revealing it and treating it as if it was not deviant whatsoever. By doing so, the victim attempts to negate
the power of the offender by refuting the validity or importance of the stigma.
oooooo
I do not place the word 'innocent' in quotation marks to be facetious, rather to acknowledge the fact that the
victims were perceived to be so by the general public regardless of the relative lack of meaningful information
about them.

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Lin in Montreal1008, and the university he attended raised $70,000 for his bereaved family.1009
However, more sinisterly, the video showing the desecration of his corpse continues to circulate
online, repelling and attracting web users across the globe, potentially forever. Colin Ireland
struck terror into the hearts of London's gay community during his 1993 spate of killings.
Though there has seemingly been no memorial for his five victims, the murders ultimately led to
improved relations between the LGBTQ+ community and British law enforcement.1010
In summary, the symbolic value of the victim to society has both positive and negative
functions. It can result in increased solidarity and progressive social change, yet also produces
local, nationwide, or global fear and distrust.

3. Tertiary-Primary Transformation
The Tertiary-Primary dynamic examines the way the resulting transformation of society
interacts with the killer or his 'legacy.' For example, the same memorial services and monuments
which honour the dead—the notion of 'lest we forget'—are inextricably linked to the killer in
popular memory. The victims literally become symbols of their killer. Informed members of the
general public simply cannot recall the names or faces of Sonja Larson, Christa Hoyt, Christina
Powell, Tracey Paules, or Manny Taboada without simultaneously conjuring up the name and/or
image of their killer Danny Rolling. This process is a subconscious one. Attempts to deny it,
though well-intentioned, are simply dishonest.
In the case of a killer who is still at large, widespread media coverage and public
discussion of the murder affirms the offender's homicidal self. David Berkowitz spoke of how
the excessive newspaper reporting of his murders led him to conclude “it was good to [kill],
necessary to do it, and that the public wanted me to do it. The latter part I believe until this day. I
believe that many were rooting for me.”1011 Conversely, a lack of press may result in the ETV
offender feeling that his homicidal identity has been repudiated. Having received very little
media coverage, Colin Ireland phoned the Kensington police approximately three months after
his first murder, asking “are you still interested in the death of Peter Walker? Why have you
stopped the investigation? Doesn't the death of a homosexual man mean anything?”1012 In
another example, within a week of his arrest for murdering three prostitutes in Bradford, self-
proclaimed 'Crossbow Cannibal' Stephen Griffiths was knocked out of the British newspapers by
Derek Bird who murdered 12 victims in a killing spree across Cumbria. When fellow prisoners

246
began chanting “you're not famous anymore”1013 Griffiths experienced an actual/own: homicidal
ideal/own discrepancy which caused him to plunge into depression and attempt suicide. This
phenomenon likely explains why many imprisoned serial and spree killers fabricate additional
victims—the renewed attention from police and media serves to keep them consolidated in their
homicidal self.
It is crucial to understand that primary, secondary, and tertiary transformations do not
exist in isolation, rather, they interact with each other in a social dialogue. Perry Bradley III and
Jun Lin were homosexual men who hailed from affluent families in socially conservative areas
(Texas and China). Accordingly, they concealed their homosexuality from their families and
large portions of the human race. By murdering these men in a way that publicly exposed their
homosexuality, their killers, Colin Ireland and Luka Magnotta, revealed Goffman's blemishes of
individual character. The relational sexual identities of Bradley and Lin were thus transformed
from semi-closeted, discreditable homosexuals into discredited known homosexuals!pppppp This
transformation was simultaneously secondary and tertiary, as these victims' personal loss of
privacy is inextricably bound to the public's knowledge of them.qqqqqq

3.13 Conclusion
Whether they are single-incident murderers, serial killers, mass murderers, or spree
killers, ETV offenders pass through a pattern of striving for one or more ideal selves only to fail
and descend into dejection-related emotionality. These ideal/owns usually involve the pursuit of
normalcy and/or (sub-) hegemonic masculinity accompanied by an overt or latent obsession with
achieving fame. In every known case, this ideal/own stands in stark contrast to the offender's
ego-dystonic self-concept. This process results, at least to some extent, from abnormal childhood
socialization. Whether ETV offenders suffer socially from a young age because of inherent
mental illnesses, or if these mental illnesses arise from poor childhood socialization and
alienation, is difficult to pinpoint—every offender in the sample was, at some point, diagnosed
with psychosis, a personality disorder, or both. Overwhelmingly, this failure of socialization
results in the offender experiencing truncated development which, to varying extents, leaves him

pppppp
I use the term homosexuals! because it denotes the culturally stereotyped identity of homosexuality in general,
emphasizing it as a categorical identity rather than a sexual preference.
qqqqqq
Magnotta spoke of the trauma of his brother telling other he was homosexual before Magnotta was officially
ready to 'come out.' Did he project this onto Jun Lin?

247
immature and unstable in his self. This state of permanent childishness then leads to chronic
problems fitting in with adult society—perhaps due to the offender's unstable sense of self and
the resulting emotional volatility—a dynamic which produces further destabilization, sabotages
the offender's gender identity, and creates pathological alienation.rrrrrr Hence, the rise of the
expressive/transformative process. ETV offenders' professional lives are either non-existent or
consist of hurtling aimlessly from one menial job to another over the course of weeks or months.
Their romantic lives follow a similar pattern. Besides depriving the offender of an identity and
basic human needs, the ensuing lack of any stake in conformity provides little inhibition for the
offender to commit criminal acts. Half the sample already had a history of interactions with the
criminal justice system before they murdered. When combined with their continued hopelessness
and negative emotionality, the offender often becomes suicidal.
At some point in their lives—26.6 years of age on average—ETV offenders opt to
permanently rid themselves of negative emotionality by attaining greater masculinity and
notability through the commission of murder and sending of related communications to the
police, media, and/or society as a whole. Though class-frustrations may occasionally colour their
victimology, more often than not, victims are selected symbolically based upon their perceived
higher or lower standing than the offender in a more fundamental social hierarchy. To conceive
of this merely in terms of social class is far too narrow: the case of Elliot Rodger proves that
economic privilege does not negate the devastating effects of alienation. Rather, the hierarchy we
speak of is one of social inclusion and general desirableness—something akin to the realities we
encounter when we first enter high school.
Many offenders will conceive and abide by a meta-delusional system to transition
between selves, particularly to and from the homicidal self. As the offender's homicidal self is a
desired ends—providing him, temporarily or permanently, with a stable self, a respite from
negative emotionality, and perhaps even catharsis, in the event that the offender goes to trial he
will plead guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity. This is presumably because he is satisfied
with his identity as a murderer and the prospect of physical removal from a society to which he
has never truly belonged. Throughout this process, the intermimetic influence of existing in
hyperreal simulation on the offender's selves is readily observable.

rrrrrr
Some of these problems may be partially influenced by the absence, whether physical or emotional, of a
positive father figure in the child's life.

248
 Having developed a low-resolution heuristic of an ETV offender over the course of
Chapter 3, the following chapter will focus on the semiotic content of their homicidal
expressions and how they result from this process of transformation, which to recap, is itself
negotiated through the communicative exchange of signs.

Endnotes

1 Arntfield & Danesi, 2017.

2 Lambert, 1993, July 12.
3 Lambert, 1993, July 12.
4 ABC News, 2007, April 19.
5 ABC News, 2007, April 19.
6 Goffman, 1963/1986.
7 Brady, 2001, p. 87.
8 Brady, 2001, p. 87.
9 Cowley, 2011.
10 Brady, 2001, p. 87.
11 Mead, 1934/1967; Goffman, 1959, 1963; Blumer, 1969/1998; Jung & Hecht, 2004.
12 ABC News, 2007, April 19.
13 ABC News, 2007, April 19.
14 ABC News, 2007, April 19.
15 ABC News, 2007, April 19.
16 Holmes et al., 2016, p. 6.
17 “Nazi Persecution of Homsexuals”, n.d.
18 Egger, 1998, pp. 74-75.
19 Johnson, 2011, March 10.
20 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
21 Douglas & Olshaker, 1995.
22 Douglas & Olshaker, 1995.
23 Canter & Youngs, 2009.
24 Jones, 1992, p. 94.
25 Jones, 1992, p. 94.
26 Merton, 1938.
27 Goffman, 1963/1986.
28 Jones, 1992, p. 94.
29 Jones, 1992, p. 94.
30 Jones, 1992, p. 94.
31 Jones, 1992, p. 99.
32 Mead, 1934/1967.
33 Jones, 1992, p. 93.
34 Jones, 1992, p. 150.
35 Jung & Hecht, 2004.
36 Jones, 1992, p. 94.
37 Jones, 1992, p. 42.
38 Mellor, Venkatesh, Wallin & Thomas, 2016, p. 175.
39 Jones, 1992.
40 Jones, 1992, p. 42.
41 Jung & Hecht, 2004; Goffman, 1959.
42 Jung & Hecht, 2004; Goffman, 1959.
43 Jones, 1992, pp. 42-43.
44 Goffman, 1967/1982.

249
45 Jung & Hecht, 2004.
46 Jones, 1992, p. 42.
47 Jones, 1992, p. 42.
48 Jones, 1992, p. 137.
49 Jones, 1992, p. 43.
50 Jones, 1992, p. 115.
51 Jones, 1992, p. 115.
52 Jones, 1992, p. 103.
53 Jones, 1992, p. 103.
54 Jones, 1992, p. 103.
55 Baumeister & Leary, 1995.
56 Leary, 1983, p. 253.
57 Jones, 1992, p. 42.
58 Jones, 1992, p. 102.
59 Jones, 1992, p. 109.
60 Jones, 1992, p. 116.
61 Jones, 1992, p. 116.
62 Jones, 1992, p. 117.
63 Jones, 1992, p. 42.
64 Jones, 1992, p. 117.
65 Jones, 1992, p. 119.
66 Jones, 1992, pp. 121-124.
67 Jones, 1992, p. 126.
68 Jones, 1992, p. 124, 131.
69 Jones, 1992, p. 131.
70 Jones, 1992, p. 131.
71 Jones, 1992, p. 131.
72 Jones, 1992, p. 132.
73 Jones, 1992, p. 132, 136.
74 Jones, 1992, p. 142.
75 Jones, 1992, p. 145.
76 Jones, 1992, p. 163.
77 Jones, 1992, pp. 164-165.
78 Jones, 1992, p. 131.
79 Jones, 1992, p. 166.
80 Jones, 1992.
81 Jones, 1992, p. 167.
82 Jones, 1992, p. 170.
83 Jones, 1992, pp. 167-168.
84 Jones, 1992, p. 174.
85 Jones, 1992, p. 177.
86 Jones, 1992, p. 178.
87 Jones, 1992, p. 179.
88 Jones, 1992, p. 180.
89 Jones, 1992, p. 180.
90 Jones, 1992, p. 250.
91 Jones, 1992, p. 250.
92 Jones, 1992, p. 180.
93 Jones, 1992.
94 Jones, 1992, p. 176.
95 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
96 Killing John Lennon, 2015, December 8.
97 Jones, 1992, p. 23.
98 Jones, 1992, p. 194.
99 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
100 Jones, 1992, p. 83.

250
101 Jones, 1992, p. 43.
102 Jones, 1992, p. 43.
103 Jones, 1992, p. 43.
104 Jones, 1992, p. 43.
105 Jones, 1992, p. 250.
106 Boon, 2016, p. 245.
107 Nancy Kubar, 2016, March 2.
108 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
109 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
110 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
111 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
112 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
113 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
114 Jones, 1992, p. 217.
115 Jones, 1992, p. 250.
116 Jones, 1992, p. 43.
117 Goffman, 1963/1986, p. 4.
118 Goffman, 1963/1986.
119 Goffman, 1959, p. 12.
120 Jones 1992, p. 180.
121 Jones, 1992, p. 180.
122 Jones, 1992, p. 49.
123 Egger, 1998, pp. 74-75.
124 Hampson & McShane, 1990, November 25.
125 Michael Pannoni, 2016, November 26.
126 Jones, 1992, p. 67.
127 Jones, 1992, p. 66.
128 Jones, 1992, p. 78.
129 Jones, 1992, p. 211.
130 Jones, 1992, p. 212.
131 Jones, 1992, p. 214.
132 Jones, 1992, p. 214.
133 Jones, 1992, p. 216.
134 Jones, 1992, p. 215.
135 Jones, 1992, p. 215.
136 Jones, 1992, p. 215.
137 Killing John Lennon, 2015, December 8.
138 Jones, 1992, p. 49.
139 Jones, 1992, p. 49.
140 Jones, 1992, p. 181.
141 Jones, 1992, p. 75.
142 Jones, 1992, p. 214.
143 Jones, 1992, p. 216.
144 Jones, 1992, pp. 215-216.
145 Jones, 1992, p. 215.
146 Killing John Lennon, 2015, December 8.
147 Jones, 1992, p. 217.
148 Black, 1991.
149 Jones, 1992, p. 219.
150 Jones, 1992, p. 219
151 Jones, 1992, p. 204.
152 Jones, 1992, p. 49.
153 Jones, 1992, p. 235.
154 Jones, 1992, p. 16.
155 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
156 Jones, 1992.

251
157 Jones, 1992, p. 164.
158 Jones, 1992; Killing John Lennon, 2015, December 8.
159 Jones, 1992, p. 95.
160 Jones, 1992, p. 95.
161 Jones, 1992, p. 203.
162 Jones, 1992, p. 189.
163 Jones, 1992, p. 183.
164 Jones, 1992, p. 189.
165 Jones, 1992, p. 189.
166 Jones, 1992, p. 189.
167 Jones, 1992, p. 189.
168 Jones, 1992, p. 189.
169 Lennon, 1970, track 10.
170 Lennon, 1971, track 1.
171 Mellor, Venkatesh, Wallin & Thomas, 2016.
172 Jones, 1992, p. 203.
173 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 159.
174 Jones, 1992, p. 213.
175 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
176 Gaines, 1987, February 23.
177 Robison, 2003, February 25.
178 Mellor, Venkatesh, Wallin & Thomas, 2016.
179 Jones, 1992, p. 177.
180 Jones, 1992, p. 190.
181 Killing John Lennon, 2015, December 8.
182 Killing John Lennon, 2015, December 8.
183 Jones, 1992, p. 173.
184 Jones, 1992, p. 190.
185 Jones, 1992, p. 163.
186 Jones, 1992, p. 165.
187 Jones, 1992, p. 247.
188 Campbell, 1949/2008.
189 Campbell, 1949/2008.
190 Jones, 1992, p. 163.
191 Jones, 1992, p. 163.
192 Jones, 1992, p. 163.
193 Jones, 1992, p. 163.
194 Jones, 1992, p. 17.
195 Jones, 1992.
196 Boorstein, 1961/2012, location 50.
197 Abrahamsen, 1985.
198 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 18.
199 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 18.
200 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 71.
201 Abrahamsen, 1985.
202 Klausner, 1981, p. 141.
203 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 176.
204 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 48.
205 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 48.
206 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 49.
207 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 49.
208 Klausner, 1981, p. 47.
209 Douglas & Olshaker, 1995, p. 139.
210 Klausner, 1981, p. 101.
211 Klausner, 1981, p. 46.
212 Arise and Shine, n.d.

252
213 Arise and Shine, n.d.
214 Horstman, Colaner, & Rittenour, 2016.
215 Horstman et al., 2016.
216 Horstman et al., 2016, p. 263.
217 Horstman et al., 2016.
218 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 71.
219 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 18.
220 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 18.
221 Horstman et al., 2016, p. 264.
222 Horstman et al., 2016.
223 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 71.
224 Arise and Shine, n.d.
225 Klausner, 1981, p. 2.
226 Prohaska & Gailey, 2010, p. 15.
227 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 60.
228 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 195.
229 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 61.
230 Klausner, 1981, p. 69.
231 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 61.
232 Klausner, 1981, p. 42.
233 Klausner, 1981, p. 73.
234 Klausner, 1981, p. 74.
235 Arise and Shine, n.d.
236 Conway & Siegelman, 2005 p. 214.
237 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 177.
238 Klausner, 1981, p. 77.
239 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 62.
240 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 62.
241 Klausner, 1981, p. 77.
242 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 63.
243 Klausner, 1981, p. 3.
244 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 178.
245 Klausner, 1981, p. 179.
246 Story Teller Ministries, 2016, October 25.
247 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 85.
248 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 71.
249 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 166.
250 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 166.
251 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 86.
252 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 86.
253 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 86.
254 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 83.
255 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 12.
256 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 12.
257 Klausner, 1981, p. 141.
258 Leyton, 1985/1995.
259 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 89.
260 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 90.
261 Klausner, 1981, p. 146.
262 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 103.
263 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 103.
264 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 12.
265 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 9.
266 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 119.
267 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 119.
268 Klausner, 1981, p. 118.

253
269 Klausner, 1981, p. 118.
270 Klausner, 1981, p. 142.
271 Klausner, 1981, p. 41.
272 Klausner, 1981, p. 142.
273 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 32.
274 Connell, 1987, p. 183.
275 Connell, 1987, p. 187.
276 Klausner, 1981, p. 41.
277 Abrahamsen, 1985; Klausner, 1981; Leyton, 1985/1995.
278 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 10.
279 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 11.
280 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 12.
281 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 157.
282 CNN Larry King Live Weekend, 2002, October 26.
283 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 195.
284 Arise and Shine, n.d.
285 Arise and Shine, n.d.
286 Arise and Shine, n.d.
287 Arise and Shine, n.d.
288 Arise and Shine, n.d.
289 Arise and Shine, n.d.
290 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 77.
291 Arise and Shine, n.d.
292 Connell, 1995, p. 83.
293 Klausner, 1981, p. 2.
294 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 183.
295 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 194.
296 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 183.
297 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 195.
298 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 169.
299 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 169.
300 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 194.
301 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 194.
302 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 169.
303 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 193.
304 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 167.
305 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 166.
306 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 167.
307 Klausner, 1981, pp. 70-71.
308 Klausner, 1981, p. 70.
309 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 168.
310 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 166.
311 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 166.
312 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 183.
313 Festinger, 1954.
314 Elster, 1983.
315 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 168.
316 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 168.
317 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 178.
318 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 174.
319 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 176.
320 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 182.
321 Klausner, 1981, p. 167.
322 Klausner, 1981, p. 142.
323 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 136.
324 Chan et al. 2016.

254
325 Mellor, 2016d.
326 Douglas & Olshaker, 1995.
327 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 62.
328 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 177.
329 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 188.
330 Story Teller Ministries, 2016, October 12.
331 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 191.
332 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 191.
333 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 93.
334 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 121.
335 Gibson, 2004.
336 Klausner, 1981, p. 141.
337 Klausner, 1981, p. 169.
338 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 152.
339 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 177.
340 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 57.
341 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 57.
342 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 57.
343 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 57.
344 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 57.
345 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 58.
346 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 177.
347 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 177.
348 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 64.
349 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 77.
350 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 191.
351 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 77.
352 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 173.
353 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 172.
354 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 172-173.
355 Klausner, 1981, p. 63.
356 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 92.
357 Leyton, 1985/1995.
358 Klausner, 1981.
359 Klausner, 1981, p. 57.
360 Carpozi, 1977, pp. 134-135; Klausner, 1981, pp. 166-167.
361 Campbell, 1949/2008.
362 Monster [Def. 1, 1.1., 1.2], n.d.
363 Klausner, 1981, p. 141.
364 Klausner, 1981, p. 141.
365 Schneider, 2015, p. 2.
366 Klausner, 1981, p. 141.
367 Fishman, n.d.
368 Campbell, 1949/2008.
369 Aarne & Thompson, 1961.
370 Campbell, 1949/2008.
371 Campbell, 1949/2008.
372 Campbell, 1949/2008.
373 Klausner, 1981, p. 141.
374 Campbell, 1949/2008.
375 Fishman, n.d.
376 Campbell, 1949/2008.
377 Arise and Shine, n.d.
378 Arise and Shine, n.d.
379 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 151.
380 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 31.

255
381 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 31.
382 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 32.
383 London & Rolling, 2011, pp. 32-33.
384 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 34.
385 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 387.
386 Agnew, 1992.
387 Agnew, 1992.
388 Leusner, 1991, November 16.
389 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 430.
390 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 386.
391 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 388.
392 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 33.
393 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 92.
394 Jones, 1992, p. 137.
395 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 32.
396 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 384.
397 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 386, 389.
398 Ryzuk, 1994.
399 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 386, 388.
400 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 386.
401 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 386.
402 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 388.
403 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 387.
404 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 388.
405 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 384.
406 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 384.
407 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 36.
408 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 92.
409 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 36.
410 Ryzuk, 1994.
411 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 48.
412 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 48.
413 Ryzuk, 1994.
414 London & Rolling, 2011.
415 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 52.
416 Ryzuk, 1994.
417 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 446.
418 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 54.
419 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 54.
420 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 137.
421 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 3.
422 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 54.
423 London & Rolling, 2011. p. 54.
424 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 55.
425 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994, p. 34.
426 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 56.
427 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 61.
428 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994, p. 34.
429 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 92.
430 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 92.
431 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 9.
432 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 58.
433 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 9.
434 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 58.
435 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 92.
436 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 101.

256
437 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 58.
438 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 92.
439 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 92.
440 Mellor et al., 2016.
441 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 92.
442 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 54.
443 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 91.
444 London & Rolling, 2011.
445 London & Rolling, 2011.
446 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 101.
447 Athens, 1997.
448 Mellor, 2016b.
449 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 101.
450 Athens, 1997.
451 Athens, 1997, p. 36.
452 Athens, 1997, p. 36.
453 London & Rolling, 2011.
454 London & Rolling, 2011, pp. 90-91.
455 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 103.
456 London & Rolling, 2011.
457 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 177.
458 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 177.
459 London & Rolling, 2011.
460 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 56.
461 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 137.
462 Ryzuk, 1994; Philpin & Donnelly, 1994; London & Rolling, 2011.
463 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 137.
464 Ryzuk, 1994.
465 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 343.
466 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 55.
467 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 382.
468 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 48.
469 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 382.
470 Ryzuk, 1994.
471 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 100.
472 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 389.
473 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 200.
474 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 137.
475 Nancy Grace, 2006, October 25.
476 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 137.
477 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 137.
478 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 137.
479 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 346.
480 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 351.
481 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 173.
482 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 184.
483 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 344.
484 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 166.
485 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 182.
486 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 181.
487 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 390.
488 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994, p. 244.
489 Crawley, Foley, & Shehan, 2008, p. 47.
490 Connell, 1995, p. 84.
491 London & Rolling, 2011.
492 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 70.

257
493 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 76.
494 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 48.
495 Ryzuk, 1994.
496 London & Rolling, 2011.
497 London & Rolling, 2011.
498 Ryzuk, 1994.
499 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 198.
500 London & Rolling, 2011.
501 London & Rolling, 2011.
502 London & Rolling, 2011.
503 London & Rolling, 2011.
504 Ryzuk, 1994; London & Rolling, 2011.
505 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994.
506 Ryzuk, 1994; London & Rolling, 2011.
507 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994; London & Rolling, 2011.
508 London & Rolling, 2011.
509 London & Rolling, 2011.
510 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 434.
511 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 48.
512 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 48.
513 London & Rolling, 2011, pp. 48-49.
514 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 50.
515 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 170.
516 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 171.
517 London & Rolling, 2011, pp. 174-175.
518 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 93.
519 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 103.
520 “Danny Harold Rolling”, n.d.
521 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 134.
522 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 134.
523 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 107.
524 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 107.
525 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 107.
526 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994; Ryzuk, 1994.
527 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994, p. 245.
528 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 87.
529 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994.
530 Ryzuk, 1994.
531 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 426.
532 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 70.
533 London & Rolling, 2011; Philpin & Donnelly, 1994; Ryzuk, 1994.
534 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994.
535 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994; Ryzuk, 1994.
536 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994, p. 235.
537 London & Rolling, 2011.
538 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 70.
539 Yeats, 1921/1975, p. 440.
540 Yeats, 1921/1975, p. 440.
541 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 90.
542 Yeats, 1921/1975, p. 441.
543 Yeats, 1921/1975, p. 441.
544 Yeats, 1921/1975, p. 441.
545 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 93.
546 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 170.
547 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 137.
548 Ryzuk, 1994.

258
549 Toby, 1957.
550 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 156.
551 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 156.
552 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 395.
553 Anthony Meoli, personal communication, July 20, 2016.
554 Smith, 2016, April 10.
555 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 395.
556 Gekowski, 2000, p. 275.
557 Gekowski, 2000, p. 275.
558 Gekowski, 2000, p. 275.
559 Davis, 2008.
560 Gekowski, 2000, p. 274.
561 Gekowski, 2000, p. 275.
562 Gekowski, 2000, p. 276.
563 Gekowski, 2000, p. 274.
564 Gekowski, 2000, p. 284.
565 Gekowski, 2000.
566 Joseph Green, 2015.
567 Britton, 1993.
568 Joseph Green, 2015.
569 Davis, 2008.
570 Ressler, 1997; Albert Patrick, Personal Communication, October 2, 2014.
571 Albert Patrick, personal communication, October 2, 2014.
572 Ressler & Schachtman, 1997.
573 Albert Patrick, personal communication, October 2, 2014.
574 Robbie Coltrane, 2016, Dec 13.
575 Ressler, 1997, p. 169.
576 Lee Salisbury, 2008, September 22.
577 Gekowski, 2000.
578 Higgins et al., 1987.
579 Ressler, 1997, p. 169.
580 Gekowski, 2000, p. 292.
581 Kirby, 1993, 21 December.
582 Gekowski, 2000, p. 303.
583 Gekowski, 2000, p. 304; Patrick, personal communication, October 2, 2014.
584 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 35.
585 Gekowski, 2000, p. 290.
586 Joseph Green, 2015.
587 Joseph Green, 2015.
588 Lee Salisbury, 2008, September 22.
589 Gekowski, 2000, p. 304.
590 Gekowski, 2000, p. 305.
591 Gekowski, 2000, p. 287.
592 Joseph Green, 2015.
593 Gekowski, 2000, p. 304.
594 Gekowski, 2000, p. 305.
595 Gekowski, 2000, pp. 291-292.
596 Joseph Green, 2015.
597 Albert Patrick, personal communication, October 2, 2014.
598 Higgins, 1987.
599 Albert Patrick, personal communication, October 2, 2014.
600 Gekowski, 2000, p. 302.
601 Gekowski, 2000, p. 303.
602 Albert Patrick, personal communication, October 2, 2014.
603 Albert Patrick, personal communication, October 2, 2014.
604 Gekowski, 2000, p. 280.

259
605 Gekowski, 2000, pp. 280-281.
606 Gekowski, 2000, p. 281.
607 Gekowski, 2000, p. 281.
608 Gekowski, 2000, p. 283.
609 Gekowski, 2000, p. 281.
610 Joseph Green, 2015.
611 Gekowski, 2000.
612 Albert Patrick, personal communication, October 2, 2014.
613 Mellor, 2016a.
614 Gekowski, 2000, p. 304.
615 Albert Patrick, personal communication, October 2, 2014.
616 Gekowski, 2000.
617 Goffman, 1959, 1963/1986.
618 Gekowski, 2000, p. 281.
619 Gekowski, 2000, p. 281.
620 Jung & Hecht, 2004.
621 Gekowski, 2000, p. 287.
622 Gekowski, 2000, p. 287.
623 Drake, 2016, p. 279.
624 Drake, 2016, p. 284.
625 Gekowski, 2000, p. 304.
626 Davis, 2008, p. 51.
627 Davis, 2008, p. 52.
628 Lee Salisbury, 2008, September 22.
629 Davis, 2008.
630 Davis, 2008.
631 Gekowski, 2000, p. 292.
632 Gekowski, 2000, p. 297.
633 Goffman, 1963/1986.
634 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 70.
635 Gekowski, 2000, p. 293.
636 Gekowski, 2000, p. 292.
637 Kelly, 2014, October 31.
638 Watts, 2014.
639 Kelly, 2014, October 31.
640 Woods, 2014, October 31.
641 Woods, 2014, October 31.
642 Watts, 2014.
643 Watts, 2014, p. 13.
644 CTVNews.ca Staff, 2014, October 31.
645 Watts, 2014, p. 14.
646 Watts, 2014, p. 14.
647 Watts, 2014, p. 14.
648 Watts, 2014, p. 14.
649 Watts, 2014, p. 14.
650 Watts, 2014, p. 16.
651 Watts, 2014, p. 14.
652 Watts, 2014.
653 Watts, 2014, p. 16.
654 Watts, 2014, p. 16.
655 Watts, 2014, p. 12.
656 Eagle, 2012, May 31.
657 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
658 Woods, 2014, October 31.
659 Watts, 2014, p. 16.
660 Watts, 2014, p. 15.

260
661 Watts, 2014, p. 15.
662 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
663 Holmes et al., 2016.
664 CityNews Toronto, 2014, October 1.
665 Watts, 2014, p. 24.
666 Watts, 2014, p. 22.
667 Watts, 2014.
668 Watts, 2014, p. 15.
669 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
670 CityNews Toronto, 2014, October 1.
671 CityNews Toronto, 2014, October 1.
672 Watts, 2014, p. 18.
673 Watts, 2014, p. 28.
674 Daly, 2014, December 15.
675 Watts, 2014.
676 Fong, 2005.
677 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, n.d.
678 CBS News, 2014, December 23.
679 No author, 2012, June 9.
680 xBlueBloodx, 2012, June 3.
681 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
682 Watts, 2014, p. 15.
683 Watts, 2014, p. 15.
684 Watts, 2014, p. 22.
685 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
686 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
687 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
688 thenightowl416, 2012, June 9.
689 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
690 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
691 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
692 Eagle, 2012, May 31.
693 Yuen, 2012, June 10.
694 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
695 Global News, 2012, June 7.
696 Global News, 2012, June 7.
697 Global News, 2012, June 7.
698 Global News, 2012, June 7.
699 Global News, 2012, June 7.
700 Global News, 2012, June 7.
701 Global News, 2012, June 7.
702 Global News, 2012, June 7.
703 Global News, 2012, June 7.
704 Global News, 2012, June 7.
705 Global News, 2012, June 7.
706 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, n.d.
707 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
708 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
709 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
710 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
711 Wells & West, 2012, May 31.
712 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
713 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
714 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
715 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
716 Magnotta, 2012a, March 16.

261
717 McKearn, 2008.
718 Magnotta, 2012b, March 16.
719 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
720 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
721 “Complaint Review: Luka Magnotta Bisexual Male Model and Porn Actor”, 2012, May 24.
722 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
723 Roberts, 2012, June 8.
724 Roberts, 2012, June 8.
725 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, n.d.
726 Shivji, 2014, November 13.
727 No author, 2012, June 2.
728 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
729 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
730 Daly, 2014, December 15.
731 Magnotta, 2012b, March 16.
732 Hoang, 2014, x.
733 Hoang, 2004.
734 Hoang, 2004.
735 Hoang, 2004; Rushton, 1995.
736 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
737 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, n.d.
738 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, n.d.
739 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
740 Hoang, 2004.
741 Hoang, 2004, p. 227.
742 Hoang, 2004.
743 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
744 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
745 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
746 No author, 2015, November 2.
747 No author, 2015, November 2.
748 No author, 2015, November 2.
749 No author, 2015, November 2.
750 No author, 2015, November 2.
751 No author, 2015, November 2.
752 No author, 2015, November 2.
753 No author, 2015, November 2.
754 No author, 2015, November 2.
755 No author, 2015, November 2.
756 No author, 2015, November 2.
757 No author, 2015, November 2.
758 No author, 2015, November 2.
759 No author, 2015, November 2.
760 No author, 2015, November 2.
761 No author, 2015, November 2.
762 Banerjee, 2014, November 4; Banerjee, 2014, November 7.
763 No author, 2015, November 2.
764 No author, 2015, November 2.
765 No author, 2015, November 2.
766 No author, 2015, November 2.
767 No author, 2015, November 2.
768 No author, 2015, November 2.
769 Aggrawal, 2011; Mellor, Aggrawal, & Hickey, 2016.
770 Mellor, 2016a.
771 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
772 CityNews Toronto, 2014, October 1.

262
773 Global News, 2012, June 7.
774 “Complaint Review: Luka Magnotta Bisexual Male Model and Porn Actor”, 2012, May 24.
775 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
776 Watts, 2014, p. 28.
777 Watts, 2014, p. 24.
778 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
779 Watts, 2014, pp. 20-21.
780 Watts, 2014, p. 20.
781 Watts, 2014, p. 20.
782 Watts, 2014, pp. 13-14.
783 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
784 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
785 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
786 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
787 Watts, 2014.
788 Watts, 2014.
789 Watts, 2014, pp. 24-25.
790 Watts, 2014, p. 22.
791 Watts, 2014, p. 21.
792 Watts, 2014, p. 22.
793 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
794 Watts, 2014, p. 22.
795 Watts, 2014, p. 22.
796 Global News, 2012, June 7.
797 Bell, 2012, June 1.
798 Bell, 2012, June 1.
799 Jones, 2012, June 20.
800 Scarface3030, 2010, September 2.
801 Scarface3030, 2010, September 2.
802 “Luka Magnotta. White Nationalist???”, 2012, June 2.
803 “Luka Magnotta. White Nationalist???”, 2012, June 2.
804 willowLarose, 2014, July 9.
805 “Luka Magnotta. White Nationalist???”, 2012, June 2.
806 “Luka Magnotta. White Nationalist???”, 2012, June 2.
807 “Luka Magnotta. White Nationalist???”, 2012, June 2.
808 “Luka Magnotta. White Nationalist???”, 2012, June 2.
809 “Luka Rocco Magnotta Mentioned on Stormfront One Year Before Body Parts Found in Mail and Before Being
Named a Suspect”, 2012, May 31.
810 “Luka Magnotta. White Nationalist???”, 2012, June 2.
811 Ezekiel, 1995; Langman, 2009.
812 Watts, 2014, p. 22.
813 “Luka Rocco Magnotta Mentioned on Stormfront One Year Before Body Parts Found in Mail and Before Being
Named a Suspect”, 2012, May 31.
814 Watts, 2014, p. 14.
815 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, n.d.
816 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, n.d.
817 thenightowl416, 2012, June 9.
818 Watts, 2014, p. 19.
819 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, 2014.
820 Hiltz, Shane, & Hiltz, n.d.
821 Fong, n.d.
822 Paul Robertson, 2012, August 22.
823 Paul Robertson, 2012, August 22.
824 “Complaint Review: Luka Magnotta Bisexual Male Model and Porn Actor”, 2012, May 24.
825 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
826 “Complaint Review: Luka Magnotta Bisexual Male Model and Porn Actor”, 2012, May 24.

263
827 “Complaint Review: Luka Magnotta Bisexual Male Model and Porn Actor”, 2012, May 24.
828 CityNews Toronto, 2014, October 1.
829 Vega, 1987, track a.
830 C.M., 2006, March 16.
831 C.M., 2006, March 16.
832 C.M., 2006, March 16.
833 Stubley, n.d.
834 Stubley, n.d.
835 Stubley, n.d.
836 C.M., 2006, March 16.
837 No author, 2006, March 17.
838 C.M., 2006, March 16.
839 Stubley, n.d.
840 Stubley, n.d.
841 Stubley, n.d.
842 Stubley, n.d.
843 Stubley, n.d.
844 Stubley, n.d.
845 C.M., 2006, March 16.
846 C.M., 2006, March 16.
847 No author, 2006, March 17.
848 No author, 2006, March 17.
849 Stubley, n.d.
850 No author, 2006, March 1.
851 C.M., 2006, March 16.
852 C.M., 2006, March 16.
853 C.M., 2006, March 16.
854 Stubley, n.d.
855 C.M., 2006, March 16.
856 Stubley, n.d.
857 Stubley, n.d.
858 Stubley, n.d.
859 Stubley, n.d.
860 C.M., 2006, November 3a.
861 C.M., 2006, November 3a.
862 C.M., 2006, November 3b.
863 C.M., 2006, November 3b.
864 C.M., 2006, March 16.
865 No author, 2006, March 1.
866 Stubley, n.d.
867 Stubley, n.d.
868 Keppel & Birnes, 2009.
869 Stubley, n.d.
870 C.M., 2006, March 16.
871 C.M., 2006, March 16.
872 Stubley, n.d.
873 Stubley, n.d.
874 Stubley, n.d.
875 C.M., 2006, March 16.
876 No author, 2006, March 17.
877 Stubley, n.d.
878 C.M., 2006, March 16.
879 C.M., 2006, March 16.
880 C.M., 2006, March 16.
881 Stubley, n.d.
882 No author, 2006, March 16.

264
883 Fischoff, Dimopoulos, Nguyen, & Gordon, 2005, p. 9.
884 Fischoff et al., 2005, p. 13.
885 Fischoff et al., 2005, p. 28.
886 No author, 2006, March 23.
887 No author, 2006, March 23.
888 Grove, 2005, pp. 221-222.
889 Stubley, n.d.
890 Appleyard, 2009, p. 217
891 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
892 Horstman et al., 2016.
893 Horstman et al., 2016.
894 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
895 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
896 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
897 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
898 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
899 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
900 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
901 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
902 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
903 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
904 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
905 Appleyard, 2009, p. 213.
906 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
907 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
908 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
909 Campbell, 1949/2008.
910 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
911 Appleyard, 2009.
912 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21; Appleyard, 2009.
913 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
914 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
915 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
916 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
917 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
918 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
919 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
920 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
921 Adler & Adler, 2009.
922 Adler & Adler, 2009.
923 Adler & Adler, 2009.
924 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
925 Appleyard, 2009.
926 Adler & Adler, 2009.
927 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
928 Appleyard, 2009.
929 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
930 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
931 Appleyard, 2009, p. 217.
932 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
933 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
934 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
935 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
936 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
937 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
938 Appleyard, 2009, p. 216.

265
939 Appleyard, 2009, p. 216.
940 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
941 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
942 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
943 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
944 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
945 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
946 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
947 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
948 Appleyard, 2009.
949 Horstman et al., 2016.
950 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
951 Campbell, 1949/2008.
952 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
953 Jones, 1992, p. 250.
954 Jones, 1992, p. 250.
955 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 395.
956 No author, 2006, March 16.
957 Stubley, n.d.
958 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
959 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
960 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
961 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
962 Rodger, 2014, p. 79.
963 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
964 Ryzuk, 1994; CTVNews.ca Staff, 2014, October 31; Stubley, n.d; Keneally, 2015, April 27.
965 Jones, 1992; Abrahamsen, 1985; Appleyard, 2009.
966 Stubley, n.d.
967 Jones, 1992.
968 Klausner, 1981, Abrahamsen, 1985.
969 Watts, 2014, p. 24.
970 Stubley, n.d.
971 Steffen & Ingold, 2016, April 22.
972 Liebert & Birnes, 2011.
973 Sherwell, 2014, May 31.
974 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 384.
975 Jones, 1992.
976 Abrahamsen, 1985.
977 Gekowski, 2000.
978 Ryzuk, 1994.
979 Stubley, n.d.
980 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 15.
981 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
982 Newport, 2015, December 24.
983 C.M., 2006, March 16.
984 C.M., 2006, March 16.
985 Arntfield & Danesi, 2017, p. 63.
986 Arntfield & Danesi, 2017, p. 63.
987 Brady, 2001, p. 87.
988 Rule, 2004, p. 422.
989 Rule, 2004, p. 422.
990 Rule, 2004, p. 422.
991 Mary Ellen O'Toole, personal communication, 2013.
992 Weller, 2014.
993 von Beroldingen, 1974, reprinted at http://www.truecrime.net/kemper/interview.htm.
994 von Beroldingen, 1974, reprinted at http://www.truecrime.net/kemper/interview.htm.

266
995 Morris, 2014, February 12.
996 Cawley, 2014, February 12.
997 Morris, 2014, February 12.
998 Holmes et al., 2016.
999 Appleby, 2011, pp. 145-46.
1000 Goffman, 1963/1986.
1001 Jones, 1992.
1002 No author, 2015, May 23; No author, 2014, May 26; No author, 2007, April 18; Breed, 2007, April 22.
1003 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 3).
1004 Klausner, 1981.
1005 Ryzuk, 1994.
1006 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 344.
1007 Schweers, 2015, August 22.
1008 Adamczyk, 2012, July 21.
1009 CBC News, 2012, July 20.
1010 Green, 2015, August 9.
1011 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 103.
1012 Gekowski, 2000, p. 297.
1013 Dixon, 2011, p. 196.

267
 4. Expression: Victim as Canvas, Victim as Soapbox, and Costumes

“Sometimes the individual will act in a thoroughly calculating manner, expressing himself in a
given way solely in order to give the kind of impression to others that is likely to evoke from them
a specific response he is concerned to obtain.” - Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life

“'Twas a grotesque replica carved from human flesh and bone, its sculptor the devil’s advocate”
- Danny Rolling and Sondra London, The Making of a Serial Killer

4.0 Introduction
In this chapter, links between the offender's personal transformation, his victimology, and
homicidal expressions are interpreted using Charles Peirce's theory of semiotics, Erving
Goffman's front stage and back stage social areas, Julia Kristeva's abjection, and Alfred Gell's
anthropological understanding of agency in art. We argue that by analyzing the semiotic content
and aesthetics of an offender's communications—perceivable to us as identity signatures—it is
possible to trace these signs back to aspects of the offender's actual/own and/or ideal/own selves.
This enables us to reasonably deduce his motives, and to both link and separate murders he is
suspected of committing. Section 4.1 (Mark David Chapman: Semiotic Breadcrumbs) provides
an example of the connection between expression and transformation as explained by the
perpetrator himself. It shows that, if investigators follow Colin Wilson's assertion that “alienation
craves to express itself, because its ultimate aim is to cease to be alienated”1 and attempt to
decipher homicidal communications rather than dismiss them as crazy, impenetrable, or
unimportant, it will usually work to the advantage of law enforcement. The best method to
interpret signs, which are used verbally or pictorially as language, is through Peircean semiotics,
which is outlined at the beginning of the section. With the rudiments of semiotics established, we
will then employ them to examine the victim-as-canvas homicides perpetrated by Danny Rolling,
Colin Ireland, Luka Magnotta, and Anthony Arkwright. However, first, necrornopositophilia—
the paraphilic desire to pose, clothe, and/or decorate a corpse2—and staging, in which elements
of a crime scene are altered to deceive investigators3 must be presented in order to demarcate
them from ETV posing, followed by techniques to distinguish them (4.2 Necrornopositophilia,
ETV, or Staging?). Next, Erving Goffman's dramaturgy and Kristeva's notion of abjection are
briefly articulated and incorporated (4.3 Abjection: Disturbing the Order) to explain the profound

268
social disruption that occurs when a corpse and/or its constituent parts enter the public realm.
Drawing from Gell's anthropological interpretation of art as utilized by Harper, it is argued that
dead bodies actually possess a type of agency, as they force people to react to them. Section 4.4,
'Increasing Abjection', explores this phenomenon further and illustrates how Danny Rolling,
Luka Magnotta, and Anthony Arkwright intentionally sought to maximize the psycho-social
disturbance of those who encountered their victims' bodies (tertiary transformation), whether
directly or indirectly. Next, we turn to the victim-as-canvas murders perpetrated by Danny
Rolling, Colin Ireland, Luka Magnotta, and Anthony Arkwright, in which signs are identified
and interpreted to decipher the killer's message and learn more about his identity and motives
(4.5 Decoding the Message). A specific method to do so is presented and utilized, before some
final comments on the findings of ETV posing.
Next, we look at victim-as-soapbox communications (4.6 Victim-as-soapbox
Introduction) in which the offender uses his new found relevance as a murderer to send
messages—verbal (whether oral or written) or pictorial—to the police, media, and other
institutions. Here, a preliminary method for breaking texts into individual passages to be
interpreted and, subsequently, synthesized into a greater corpus analysis, is presented and
demonstrated. This practical forensic adaptation of semiotics is then applied to David Berkowitz
(4.7). Having left a letter for police Captain Joseph Borelli at one crime scene, and sending a
subsequent letter to Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin, Berkowitz represents the purest
example of a victim-as-soapbox offender, also mailing strange and threatening letters to his
neighbours and former landlords. When combined with his public letters, these provided ample
clues that he was the homicidal 'Son of Sam'. Next, we use the same method on Colin Ireland
(4.8) and Luka Magnotta's (4.9) victim-as-soapbox communications, combining our conclusions
with an earlier victim-as-canvas corpus analysis to render a final judgment. Section 4.10
(Gonzalez, Arkwright, Holmes, and Cho: victim-as-soapbox/costume) looks at a significant
variation on victim-as-soapbox communications, briefly discussing the semiotic content of the
costumes these four offenders wore to mark their homicidal selves. The chapter concludes with a
review of the general findings of ETV expressions (4.11).

269
4.1 Mark David Chapman: Semiotic Breadcrumbs
This first section introduces the basics of forensic semiotics and demonstrates their
application in interpreting Mark David Chapman's expressive/transformative progression.
Whether oral, gestural, pictorial, or written, human beings inevitably communicate using signs:
“anything that stands for something else in some determinable way.”4 As our selves arise and are
negotiated through communication, these selves are thus inextricably linked to signs. For the
purpose of studying the offenders in this dissertation, our focus will be confined to three types of
signs—icons, indices, and symbols— concepts emerging from the Peircean school of semiotics
which shares symbolic interactionism's pragmatist roots.5
According to Danesi, the most useful sign in terms of interpreting ETV communications
is the symbol, which “stands for something in a culture-specific or conventional way.”6 A circle
with an arrow on top pointed in the one o'clock position [♂], for instance, is a symbol for
maleness. As symbols bear no resemblance or causal relation to what they signify, we cannot
know their meaning unless somebody interprets them for us on at least one occasion.ssssss
This is not the case with indices (the plural of index), where “the sign relates to the object
in terms of causation”7. Cancer of the prostate is an index of maleness because this disease can
only occur in a biological entity which is male. Thus, where symbols require an interpreter,
indices instead require an object. There are three sub-types of indices: designations, tracks, and
symptoms.8 Designations are perhaps the easiest to understand, as they are signs which
immediately signify the relevant object while nevertheless remaining distinct from it (e.g., a
proper name, a finger pointing at the object in question). The sound 'Mark Chapman', for
instance, is a designation which has an entirely different physical composition from the object it
signifies. Tracks are indices which are linked to the object by a causal relationship which has
already occurred. The stamps on Chapman's passport marking the countries he had visited are
examples of track indices. As with the cancer of the prostate example, symptoms are indices
which must necessarily co-occur with the same object, in this case they causally signify 'male
biology'. One might argue that John Lennon's bullet wounds were symptomatic of Mark

ssssss
This can create doubt as to whether a sign left a crime scene is a symbol or not. When 'Southside Strangler'
Timothy Spencer drew a figure-eight with nail polish on victim Diane Cho's hip, police recognized it as the
symbol for 'infinity' and it was interpreted as reflecting the killer's belief that he now possessed her forever
(Keppel & Birnes, 2009). Conversely, I once worked a cold case in which what appeared to be a sign was carved
into the corpse's flesh. As neither my colleagues or I had ever seen such a sign, we were unable to determine
whether it was a symbol intended to communicate a message or merely an index of the offender's piquerism.

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Chapman, as Chapman and only Chapman was their immediate cause.
Finally, an icon is a “sign that stands for something by resemblance”9, also coming in
three different varieties: diagram, image, and metaphor.10 Diagrams are related to corresponding
objects as explanatory models. For instance, Figures 5 and 6 both demonstrate and explain
expressive/transformative processes without bearing intense pictorial resemblance or exactitude
to the individuals undergoing them, much in the same way that signs representing mathematics
render abstract concepts tangible.11 Images are easier to comprehend: they are icons which bear a
sensory resemblance to the signified object, such as the skirtless figure on a restroom door or a
phallus to 'male biology'.'12 Lastly, icons can also be metaphors13: in the classic English poem
Beowulf the 'sea' is famously called the 'whale road'14—it is not actually a path, but it is the
closest thing whales have to one.
Over a hundred years after Charles Sanders Peirce compared the study of signs to the
investigative techniques of Poe's fictional detective C. Augustin Dupin15, the Italian-Canadian
semiotician and linguistic anthropologist Marcel Danesi established forensic semiotics as a
branch of criminology in his Signs of Crime.16 Danesi differentiates between first-order forensic
semiotics which focus on the decoding of “facial expressions, gesture, language, and so on... to
recognize deception and to identify perpetrators”17 and second-order forensic semiotics that
“help gauge the connection among crime, fictional depictions of it, and cultural definitions and
aspects of crime”18, with the latter representing much of what we discussed in the preceding two
chapters. Danesi also developed Lakoff & Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)19 into
Metaphor Analysis (MA)20, a practical technique for interpreting a text—“a composition of sorts
using specific kinds of signs and codes (such as a written letter or a mode of dress, and so on)
that implies a certain set of interpretations”21. In keeping with this definition, ETV applies
semiotic and logical analysis to letters, phone calls, costume, VLOGS, and crime scene tableaux
as texts. The aggregate of an offender's texts is called a corpus. Drawing from Berkowitz's letter
to journalist Jimmy Breslin, Danesi demonstrated CMT by analyzing passages of figurative
language known as Metaphorical Referents and deducing their Underlying Concept using the
following form:

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 Table 19
Metaphorical Referents/Underlying Concepts
Metaphorical Referent Underlying Concept
“gutters, dog manure”22 “my life is a sewage dump”23

Danesi contends that MA encompasses (1) searching a criminal text for metaphors, (2)
determining what themes appear consistently across the text and the larger corpus of texts (if
such a corpus exists), (3) and comparing the findings to a criminal profile to ensure there is no
discrepancy in their respective findings. In the following cases we pursue all three of Danesi's
avenues, along with scanning the texts and corpuses for internal contradictions or variances.
Besides metaphor, Danesi also advocates looking for metonymy and ironytttttt in offender
communications. Metonymy is the practice of using part of something to represent the whole
(e.g., 'We need your brains on this project') or a single example to represent the many (e.g., 'The
scientist is chiefly responsible for recent progress in the West'). In these instances, 'brains' refers
to the entire person and 'scientist' to the scientific community. According to the Oxford English
Dictionary, ironyuuuuuu is “the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally
signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect”24 Though we take a similar
approach to MA in this chapter, rather than restricting our analysis to metaphor, metonymy, and
irony, we interpret a variety of relevant signs and linguistic devices in criminal texts.
The potential to make correct inferences from signs related to the
expressive/transformative process is exemplified in the case of Mark David Chapman. As
previously mentioned, after murdering John Lennon, Chapman waited at the crime scene to be
arrested while reading a copy of The Catcher in the Rye which he had signed “from Holden
Caulfield to Holden Caulfield”25 (SAOS). In the police cruiser on the way to the station he also
reportedly declared “I am the Catcher in the Rye.”26 Back in Chapman's hotel room,
investigators found his passport (ostensibly a combination of a photographic icon-image and
indices-tracks in the form of travel stamps), a Holy Bible, a still from The Wizard of Oz showing
Dorothy kissing the cowardly lion (a symbol), an eight-track tape of Runt. The Ballad Todd
Rundgren the second album by the eponymous artist, photographs of Chapman with the

tttttt
Irony, in particular, arose as a common expression across many of the offenders in our sample.
uuuuuu
The most familiar example is Alanis Morissette's Top 40 hit 'Ironic' which lists numerous events the singer
deems 'ironic' (e.g., rain on the day of one's wedding) which are, in fact, not; the only irony being the
fundamental misunderstanding of the very topic the song is about.

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Vietnamese refugees he helped at Fort Chaffee (icons-images), and letters of commendation
(indices-tracks) related to this work “laid out on the dresser...”27—a text comprised of personal
and mass media signs. As a coherent message does not immediately leap out from this semiotic
corpus, it's easy to see how such phenomena may simply be viewed as the non-sensical acts of a
psychotic. In actuality, the items left at the hotel room signified Chapman's actual/own The
Child Nobody (The Wizard of Oz), as well as the former Good Christian (Holy Bible) and
Captain Nemo (commendation letters, photos of refugees) ideal/owns: everything that Chapman
had been. In short, ultimately, these signs were all indices or symbols of who he once was. The
Catcher in the Rye inscribed with Chapman's “from Holden Caulfield to Holden Caulfield, This
is my statement”28 self-dedication along with his “I am the Catcher in the Rye”29 utterance
represented what he had become after the slaying: The Catcher homicidal ideal/own. These acts
are literally the semiotic expression of his transformation. Chapman explicitly states this in his
1992 biography:
I somehow knew that this was it, this was the day. So I laid out on the dresser at the hotel
room… just a tableau of everything that was important in my life. So it would say, ‘Look,
this is me. Probably, this is the real me [actual self]. This is my past and I’m going, gone
to another place [emphasis added].’ I practiced what it was going to look like when
police officers came into the room. It was like I was going through a door and I knew I
was going to go through a door, the poet’s door, William Blake’s door, Jim Morrison’s
door.vvvvvv It was like I was going through a giant door. And I was. I was leaving my past.
I was leaving what I was, going into a future of uncertainty [emphasis added]. There were
tremendous feelings of Holden Caulfield and The Catcher in the Rye.30

This statement outlines the archetypal Hero's journey in which the protagonist (Chapman) leaves
his past life and descends “into a future of uncertainty”31 (i.e., chaos) to slay the corrupting
'phony' and return to society transformed as The Catcher.32 There is also historico-cultural
significance attached to Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren which is readily observable in the

vvvvvv
'William Blake's door' refers to the author's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in which Blake writes “If
the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed
himself up, till he sees all things thro' narow chinks of his cavern” (Blake, c. 1793). 'Jim Morrison's door'
references the name of the artist's band, The Doors, which is derived from Aldous Huxley's work The Doors of
Perception: the author's documentation and reflection on his first mescaline trip (Huxley, 1954). Huxley took his
title from Blake's poem. However, there is a second interpretation, which does not necessarily negate the first. In
the song 'The End', Morrison sings of a 'killer' who rises before dawn and looks through a door, followed by the
line “'Father?' 'Yes son?' 'I want to kill you. 'Mother, I want to [fuck you]'” (Morrison, Manzarek, Krieger, &
Densmore, 1967). It is noteworthy that both Chapman and Rolling were fans of The Doors, having both grown
up with abusive, emotionally distant fathers and codependent relationships with their mothers. Morrison's lyrics
explicitly referenced Freud's Oedipal Complex.

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album's title: resembling the 'The Ballad of John and Yoko' released by The Beatles as a single
two years earlier in 1969. Lennon and Rundgren had a highly publicized feud in 1973 beginning
with Rundgren's statement in Melody Maker that Lennon was seeking attention by pretending to
be a revolutionary and compared him to Richard Nixon.33 Lennon had countered with a seething
reply in the same magazine the following year.34
It is likely no coincidence that Chapman the 'pussy' chose a picture of Dorothy kissing the
cowardly lion to depict what he once was. The cowardly lion symbolizes Chapman's
subordinated masculinity, while the 'manly' act of killing was represented by his post-murder
verbal signs related to the Holden Caulfield avatar. Though Holden does not commit murder in
the novel, he is proactively involved in violent altercations and fantasizes about homicide.35
Without Chapman's statements, perhaps his tableau would appear to us only as a jumbled
mess of signs. Nevertheless, it is important not to dismiss it. By making such ostentatious
displays, Chapman is, intentionally or unintentionally, revealing his interests. As humans
typically wish to talk about the things they are interested in—The Wizard of Oz, Todd Rundgren,
Chapman's work with the Vietnamese refugees, the places he had visited logged on his passport,
the Holy Bible, and The Catcher in the Rye— each presents potential points of entry or segue
during interrogation. Knowledge of these signs enable law enforcement to pick the most suitable
candidate from their ranks to conduct the interview. Moreover, if the investigators are acquainted
with the fundamentals of ETV, they can immediately approximate his motive, and structure the
totality of their investigation accordingly. The same maxims apply to mental health professionals
preparing to interact with an offender. Fortunately, in this case, Chapman was more than
forthcoming.
Having outlined basic Peircean semiotics and established that accurate
expressive/transformative analysis of homicidal communications is both possible and useful at
multiple levels of inquiry, the remainder of this chapter is devoted to analyzing the victim-as-
canvas and victim-as-soapbox messages left by the remaining nine offenders. Sections 4.2-4.5
are mainly devoted to the former, while 4.6-4.10 look at the latter.

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4.2 Necrornopositophilia, ETV, or Staging?
More often than one might expectwwwwww, a murder victim’s body is posed—positioned,
altered, and/or decorated by the killer in order “(1) to shock the finder of the body or police
36
investigators, and (2) for the killer’s own pleasure.” Expressive/transformative process also
understands posing as a means of communication and identity negotiation. When contemplating
the possible significance of a posed body, the investigator should first determine whether the act
was expressive/transformative; necrornopositophilic, in which “sexual gratification [is] derived
from posing and/or decorating a corpse”37; or an incidence of staging.
Technically, a body which has been moved in order to stage a crime scene should not be
considered posed at all, as by definition, posing is a signature act.38 Staging, on the other hand, is
“a deliberate rearrangement of the crime scene to hide evidence or misdirect investigators”39 and
relates to the offender's modus operandi. This term has sometimes been expanded to include
incidences of posing40, though this is problematic as it results in a needless jingle fallacy, thus we
will avoid this folly here.41 One of the most notorious examples of staging is the massacre of the
MacDonald family at their home in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. At 3:42 a.m. on February 17,
1970, military police received a phone call from Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, a Group Surgeon with
the Green Berets, saying that he and his family had been attacked. Upon arriving at the
MacDonald residence, first responders found Dr. MacDonald: face bruised and bleeding from a
superficial torso-incision. The deceased bodies of his pregnant wife, Collette, and daughters,
Kimberly and Kristen, showed multiple stab wounds. Above the headboard of Collette's bed, the
word 'PIG' had been written in blood, echoing the Manson Family murders of the previous year.
Though Dr. MacDonald spun a terrifying tale of being attacked by four intruders chanting 'acid
is groovy, death to pigs', suspicion soon fell upon him, and he was convicted of the triple-
homicide in 1979. MacDonald's injuries and the crime scene message had been made by the
good doctor himself in order to deflect suspicion42: a common motive for staging. We only
mention staging here because it can be mistaken for posing. As identifying staging merits a
whole other volume in itselfxxxxxx we will not dwell on it any further, other than to say that it

wwwwww
At the time of this writing I have aided in the investigation of approximately 10 cold case homicides, four of
which clearly involved the posing of a victim's body.
xxxxxx
Dr. Laura Pettler's Crime Scene Staging Dynamics in Homicide Cases is particularly useful in this regard.

275
must always be considered as a possibility.
Unlike staging, necrornopositophilia is a signature behaviour, though it is paraphilic
rather than exclusively expressive/transformative (an identity signature). Examples of
necrornopositophiles are 'BTK Strangler' Dennis Rader who bound, positioned, and re-arranged
the clothing on his victims' corpses43; Jerry Brudos who dressed them in shoes and lingerie44; and
'Camden Ripper' Anthony Hardy who adorned their nude corpses with devil masksyyyyyy, 'Mr.
Happy'zzzzzz socks, and baseball caps.45 Typically, the necrornopositophilic offender has
previously fantasized about a living and/or dead victim posed in a tableau, encoding this image
into his sexual fantasyscape through orgasmic conditioning.46 Often, a more salient fetish or
paraphilia is incorporated into the tableau: shoe (retifism) and lingerie fetishes for Jerry Brudos,
and vincilagnia, the sexual attraction to binding, for Dennis Rader. As photographic evidence
found in Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment also indicates, necrornopositophilia can also be
accompanied by necromutilophilicaaaaaaa mutilation.

Figure 7. A photograph taken by Dahmer depicting the necrornopositophilic posing of a victim

accompanied by necromutilophilic decapitation.

Mellor has noted that “an important rule of thumb is that not all expressive/transformative
posing is sexualized, but acts of necrornopositophilia invariably encompass some degree of
expressive/transformative psychological reinforcement.”47 Stated another way, there are semiotic
and cultural meanings which predispose the offender to sexualize particular acts and
paraphernalia and not others. For instance, in the children's cartoon Dudley Do Right, images of

yyyyyy
As we have seen, Anthony Arkwright wore a Devil mask because he identified with the Monster/Trickster
archetype. Did Hardy see his female victims as Monsters and/or Tricksters?
zzzzzz
A character from the popular 'Mr. Men' children's books. Here the killer may be using irony to degrade his
victims.
aaaaaaa
Mutilophilia: “Sexual arousal from the act of mutilation itself, regardless if it is perpetrated on a living person
or a corpse.” (Mellor, 2016, p. 7)
Necromutilophilia: “Sexual arousal derived from the mutilation of corpses.” (Mellor, 2016, p. 7).

276
Nell Fenwick bound to railroad tracks emphasized the powerlessness of the attractive female and
her possession by the male antagonist, Snidely Whiplash—a dynamic which sexually aroused
Dennis Rader48—enabling his vincilagnia.
Though far from scientifically-validated, the following markers may indicate a
necrornopositophilic motivation for posing:
(1) semen on or around the corpse;
(2) evidence of sexual intercourse with the victim;
(3) evidence of other fetishes or paraphilia;
(4) evidence that photographs were taken; and
(5) most crucially, whether the body was left to be discovered in a pose (overt), or
whether such posing was covert and observable only to the offender (i.e., never meant to
be found in the posed state)
This emphasis on identifying sexual elements distinguishes necrornopositophilic acts from
purely expressive/transformative ones, which by definition, do not arouse the perpetrator.bbbbbbb
Certainly, sexually-charged signs and identities are often highlighted as stigmatizing features in
ETV murders, as the examples of Colin Ireland, Gertrude Baniszewski, and Stephen Farrow will
demonstrate, yet they do not necessarily serve to sexually gratify the offender.49
Having established how to discern expressive/transformative from necrornopositophilic
posing and staging, we will now expand ETV to account for how and why these acts transform
those who encounter the body, drawing from the transformative triangle and the work of Erving
Goffman, Alfred Gell, and Julia Kristeva.

4.3 Abjection: Disturbing the Order 


This first section on victim-as-canvas posing concentrates on the absolute fundamentals:
chiefly, the repercussions of leaving a corpse where no corpses are expected to be, and how this
serves to empower the offender and disrupt society.
In his classic The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman sees the physical space
of the social world as being divided into front stage and back stage areas.50 The public world is

Once again, necrornopositophilia occurs when expressive/transformative posing sexually stimulates the
bbbbbbb

offender. This means that, to an extent, we can analyze necrornopositophilic posing in the manner suggested in this
chapter, while giving salience to the paraphilic motivations of necrornopositophilia. Danny Rolling might exemplify
this.

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essentially a series of overlapping front stage performances. One example given, which is
particularly useful to us, is that of the funeral home. In the front stage of a funeral home, the
embalmed and formally attired cadaver is presented in a coffin. The undertaker communicates
the tone and subtly controls the proceedings. He leads the audience, in this case, the bereaved,
through a socially defined grieving ritual. Dressing in a formal manner, offering hackneyed
condolences, weeping, and the leaving of flowers are conventional signs communicated by the
bereaved in order to mutually define the social situation. By strictly adhering to the cultural
conventions of the visitation, the participants have greater communication satisfaction51 in a time
where discord is to be avoided at all costs. The geo-social space and ritual are all very real but
entail a rigidly defined performance. The back stage of a funeral home, on the other hand, is the
space where the staff members cease to perform, and adopt a more casual air. They may tell
jokes, discuss how the ceremony is going, and comment about the attendees. Crucially, the back
stage is also where the corpses are kept and embalmed. Goffman writes of how back stage areas
are used to conceal visceral, dirty work or acts—butchery in a restaurant kitchen, defecation in
the restrooms—and, in the funeral home, the preparation of corpses for the front stage
performance.52
Julia Kristeva'sccccccc influential Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection presents dead
bodies, butchered meat, and feces (among many other things) as examples of that which is
abject, a concept which simultaneously means a “jettisoned object”53, something that “cannot be
assimilated”54, and “what disturbs identity, systems, order.”55 Though the term has been
criticized for having too many disparate meanings, when analyzed through Goffman's lens, they
make sense as an aggregate.ddddddd In an ETV homicide investigation, the front stage area is the
primary crime scene where the offender poses the body and/or leaves a message, or a secondary
crime scene in which a written, telephone, or electronic communication from the offender is
received by another party (e.g., police, victim's family, media). With the exception of a funeral

ccccccc
Kristeva is also a semiotician, albeit one following in the Saussurean tradition (Cobley & Jansz, 2012).
Nevertheless, the aspects of her theory of abjection utilized in this dissertation are compatible with Peircean
semiotics.
ddddddd
Though I use Kristeva's terminology and acknowledge the existence of the abject, I do not agree with her
psychoanalytical interpretation as to precisely why something takes on the quality of becoming abject. Specifically, I
reject the notion that it stems from the blurring of 'subject' and 'object' and is tied to the notion of the biological
separation of mother and child. A far more credible explanation is that what is widely considered abject is tied to the
spread of noxious odours and disease (e.g., feces, corpses, vomit), compounded with a violation of established
cultural boundaries (Douglas 1966; Howarth, 2001). This likely serves an evolutionary purpose.

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home setting (and a handful of others), the presence of a corpse in the front stage world disturbs
the audience's definition of the social situation, and shakes their sense of order and identity. A
non-embalmed corpse cannot be assimilated into the rigidly hygienic front stage because it is a
back stage item, an abject which must be removed into some literal backroom as quickly as
possible.
If we consider the social disruption that occurs when a dead body enters the front stage
world, almost always unexpectedly, then we begin to understand the immediate power of an
offender leaving his victim's corpse in the open. The act itself disturbs order. Kristeva would
likely argue that the very division between front stage and back stage collapses entirely in this
moment, or at least blurs.56 Ultimately, whether this boundary is obliterated or trespassed is
mostly semantic; what matters for our purposes is that it profoundly and often permanently
upsets those who bear witness to it (tertiary transformation). Whether intentional or otherwise,
the offender has brought abjection into the world. It is telling that 90% of the ETV offenders in
this sample left victims' corpses in the same location where the murders occurred, while the
single exception (Luka Magnotta) went a step farther, mailing body parts to the headquarters of
Canadian political parties and a Vancouver school. ETV offenders typically do not hide their
victims' bodies, precisely because they wish to impose them upon us.
In their study of necrophilic themes in Death Metal—arguably one of the more abrasive
modern musical genres—Venkatesh et al. found that a number of Death Metal artists used
images of corpses and viscera to confront listeners with their own physical precariousness and
mortality.57 They argue that, in what Joel Black refers to elsewhere as the “aesthetic world of the
hyperreal”58 or Boorstein's “thicket of unreality”59, we have become desensitized to
representations of death, consuming them as cultural products in a hubristic attempt to overcome
the fear of our own mortality. Aside from the oft-cited statistic that the average American child
will have viewed 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on television—nearly all simulated
depictions—by the age of 1860, Venkatesh et al. note that forms of entertainment such as extreme
metal music and zombie films have moved away from the cultural periphery, becoming
increasingly commercialized and available.61 While we are literally bombarded with artistic
simulations of death and mutilation in media, our own tangible realities have never been more
sanitized. With this in mind, Black proposes that “the romantic artist-assassin has become the
postmodern performance artist… the contemporary performance artist often employs bold,

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aggressive means to penetrate the surrounding world of hyperreality in order to reveal the
‘[R]eal.’”62 When this analysis is considered alongside the findings of Death Metal ethnography,
the possibility arises that an expressive/transformative killer is, consciously or sub-consciously,
forcing the 'ugliness' of Reality into hyperreal simulation—a world which simultaneously
envelopes him yet offers him no tenable place—by way of creating abjection. He is interrupting
the performance in the most vulgar manner possible. Inured to media-simulated death imagery
and reassured by funeral home cosmetics63, the postmodern man deludes himself into thinking he
has conquered his innate terror of physical destruction. By forcing Real corpses and gore into his
experience, the expressive/transformative killer shatters this naive comfort and reawakens
humanity's latent existential horror, numbed by hyperreality. Being of necrophilous character,
and unable to overcome his own pathological fear of risk64, the ETV offender comes to envy
those who can accept uncertainty and resents them as “phonies”65 and “frauds”66 who inhabit a
“phony society.”67 Is it any wonder that he delights in dragging them unwillingly into his own
state of perpetual dread; into Reality “red in tooth and claw”68? This subsequent transformation
of the audience—the people who directly encounter the victim's corpse, view crime scene photos
or video, or even learn about it through news media—is tertiary, as it occurs sequentially after
that of the killer's transformation (primary) and the victim's (secondary transformation), before
feeding back into both primary and secondary transformation.
Corpses, and to an even greater extent body parts, being abject, intrinsically contain what
the late Alfred Gell referred to as agency—an innate propensity to act upon the viewer.69 This is
compatible with Kristeva’s definition of the abject as being so profoundly disturbing that we are
paradoxically drawn to it. As a social anthropologist, Gell rejected both the aesthetic and
semiotic analyses of art, employing an 'action-centred' approach which focuses on the “practical
mediatory role of art objects in the social process.”70 In Gell's theory, art objects do not directly
connect people, rather, they influence individual members of society at a personal level, with
social repercussions. This idea hinges upon the notion that art objects possess intrinsic agency—
the ability to cause events and influence human cognition—thereby affecting social relations.71
Art objects are thus agents “that which performs social action”72 as opposed to the thing “upon
which the agent acts”73, termed patients. Being non-sentient, art objects are classified as
“'secondary' agents... through which primary agentseeeeeee distribute their agency...”74 to

eeeeeee
Gell defines primary agents as “intentional beings” (Gell, 1998, Location 885) such as artists.

280
patients.75 Gell proposes that this occurs through abduction—a complicated concept present in
logic and semiotics—which, for our purposes, simply means a cognitive process which exercises
its agency by affecting the recipient's mind.76 To help demonstrate how agency and abduction
occur through artwork, Gell coined four terms which comprise an artistic nexus:
artist/originatorfffffff, index, prototype, and recipient. Masterfully, Gell demonstrated how, in a
given incident, any of these could be either agent or patient (see Figure 8), though for the
purpose of understanding ETV posing, the patient is always the recipient.

Figure 8: Gell’s Art Nexus

Note. Reprinted from Art & Agency by A. Gell, 1998. Reproduced with permission from
Clarendon Press.

fffffff
Gell used these terms interchangeably.

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 Most pivotal to his theory is the index, which both Gell and his foremost critic, Layton,
considered to be consistent with Peirce's concept, although Gell referred to the plural as indexes77
while Peirce preferred the more Latin indices.78 Acknowledging the index's inextricable place in
a causal sequence, Gell described them as “material entities which motivate abductive
inferences, cognitive interpretations, etc.”79 Prototypes are “entities held, by abduction, to be
represented in the index, often by virtue of visual resemblance, but not necessarily.”80 Gell
defined artists or originators as beings “whom are ascribed, by abduction, causal responsibility
for the existence and characteristics of the index”81 while recipients are “those in relation to
whom, by abduction, indexes are considered to exert agency, or who exert agency via the
index.”82 So, for example, the French artist Jacques-Louis David was awed by the Napoleonic
army triumphantly traversing the Great St. Bernard Pass in 1800 (prototype), rendering it into the
famous painting, Napoleon Crosses the Alps (index). When he revealed the painting to Napoleon
(recipient), the Emperor adored it (in Gell's terminology he was abducted by it), and commanded
that three more copies be painted.83 Being an index, Napoleon Crosses the Alps connects this
historic military expedition, Jacques-Louis David, and Napoleon causally. Figure 9 depicts how
the event's agency was transferred through the artist into the index to act upon the recipient in
the manner used by Gell (with the letter 'A' representing 'Agent' and 'P' representing 'Patient'):
[[[Prototype-A]→ Artist-A]→ Index-A]→ Recipient(s)-P
or
[[[Crossing the Great St. Bernard Pass-A]→ Jacques-Louis David-A]→ Napoleon Crosses the
Alps-A]→ Napoleon Bonaparte-P
Figure 9. From Agent to Patient: David's Napoleon Crosses the Alps
Controversially, Gell proposed that the agency of art objects exists outside cultural
convention.84 In the years since, Layton has dispelled this notion, noting that “cultural
conventions, such as the distinction between prestige and utilitarian goods, must be
understood”85 in order to grasp how “treasured items, and personal possessions can be exchanged
to create and maintain social obligations...”86 and that viewers of art objects must inevitably turn
to their culture and personal experiences to accurately perceive the artist's primary agency
through secondary agents.87 In short, this requires the semiotic analysis which Gell sought to

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avoid. As Gell's Art and Agency was published posthumously, Layton proposes that the late
anthropologist likely intended to address these problems.
Sheila Harper has convincingly argued that Gell's theoretical model of agency can also be
applied to corpses displayed at a funeral home. Having recorded the statements of mourners
abducted by embalmed bodies at American and British establishments, she found that many
attributed the corpse's resemblance to the living person and/or its agreeable appearance to the
mortician's skill.88 Conceptualizing the mortician as the artist, the “pre-deceased”89 as the
prototype, the embalmed “dead body”90 as the index, and the mourners as recipients, Harper was
able to formulate how the mourners abducted the agency of the mortician through the corpse:
[[[Mortician-A]→ Pre-deceased-A]→ Dead Body-A]→ Mourners-P91

Figure 10. Harper’s Agent to Patient Via Corpse

Note. Reprinted from “The Social Agency of Dead Bodies” by S. Harper, 2010, Mortality, 15(4),
314, 2010, by S. Harper. Reproduced with permission from S. Harper.

Harper also considered instances when mourners' statements indicated that this agency originated
from the pre-deceased, conceptualizing it accordingly:
[[[Pre-deceased-P]→ Mortician-A]→ Dead Body-A]→ Mourners-P92

Figure 11. Harper’s Patient to Patient Via Corpse

Note. Reprinted from “The Social Agency of Dead Bodies” by S. Harper, 2010, Mortality, 15(4),
314, 2010, by S. Harper. Reproduced with permission from S. Harper.

If a mortician can exercise agency through a dead body in order to abduct recipients, then
it logically follows that a murderer can do the same. When interpreting an ETV crime scene
using Gell's theory, the corpse is the G indexggggggg, the murderer is the originatorhhhhhhh, and the
recipients are those who stumble upon and/or process the crime sceneiiiiiii.93 The crucial
difference lies in the prototype and its relation to motivation. The mortician, whose task is to
make the G index resemble the pre-deceased as accurately as possible, will thus use the pre-
deceased as the prototype. He does so because his motivation is to abduct the recipients in a
manner which elicits a positive response (e.g., peacefulness, fondness, acceptance, closure). The

ggggggg
From this point on, Gellian indexes will be differentiated from Peircean indexes by adding a 'G': 'G Index'
hhhhhhh
I will use this term instead of 'artist'.
iiiiiii
As a crime scene can be conveyed through leaked photographs or verbal descriptions to the entire planet,
theoretically the entire human race can be recipients.

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expressive/transformative offender, on the other hand, has the opposite motivation: he seeks to
disrupt order, disgust, and terrify. In short, he wishes to exercise agency through abjection.
While leaving a victim's body in an unsanctioned front stage area is already abject, transforming
the G indexical corpse into something which bears no resemblance to the pre-deceased prototype
is even more abject. Worse, the murderer may intentionally decide to model the corpse index
after a prototype of abjection itself (e.g., a mass of intestines). Even for recipients who did not
know the victim in life, such a malicious use of agency threatens to traumatically abduct their
minds and emotions forevermore. Here, Gell's theory—augmented by those of Goffman and
Kristeva—comes to resemble the transformative triangle.
During primary transformation the corpse indices acted upon Rolling, Arkwright, and
Magnotta (the originators) by signifying the killers’ personal step toward their renegotiated
homicidal ideal/owns. Consistent with symbolic interactionist theory, primary transformation
also uses the corpse index as a vehicle for the killer's agency, shaping the perception of the
offender/originator in the eyes of the recipients by making them fear, hate and/or struggle to
understand him. In the same way that a painter's skill leads us to conclude that he is a genius (or,
at least, a 'real' or 'talented' artist), a murderer's ability to abduct us though abjection also affects
our concept of him. This is precisely why an ETV offender exercises agency in the first place.
Seeking to comprehend the unknown perpetrator of Anthony Arkwright's murders, Detective
Inspector Bob Meek recalled that the police force were asking themselves “What have we got?
What is this man? Is he a man? Is he a human being? We just didn't know what we were dealing
with.”94 Rolling and Magnotta provoked similar responses.
Secondary transformation (transformation of the victim) renders the victim unwhole,
dehumanizing them into abject G indexes (or G indexical abjects, if you prefer): “For all the
world you weren't looking at someone who'd been a human being. It didn’t look real. Didn't look
as though it was a human being on the floor in that state.”95 Though employing the same
mechanism, this is the opposite of the role of the undertaker (the originator) who seeks to soothe
the bereaved (his recipients) by making a corpse (his index) appear dignified and resembling the
person in life (the prototype).96 Rather, all three murderous originators drew from the cultural
prototype that disembodied pieces of a human being are abject, and replicated that prototype in
the form of G indexes to abduct whoever found them. In the case of Rolling and Arkwright, they
had no idea who was going to discover the body, but knew that eventually the police would need

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to see it. Through the use of digital media and the internet, Luka Magnotta ensured that
potentially the whole world (including this author) were recipients. This use of malicious agency
is outlined in the following formula:
[[[ETV killer-A]→ Abjection-A]→ Mutilated corpse-A]→ Those who view mutilated
corpse-P
Figure 12. Killer as Agent to Corpse Viewers as Patient

which is represented abstractly as

[[[Originator-A]→ Prototype-A]→ Index-A]→ Recipient(s)-P

Figure 13. Abstraction of Killer as Agent to Corpse Viewers as Patient

In conceptualizing the recipients as patients we refer to the tertiary transformation of
ETV—transformation of the audience/recipients—in which the index's abduction changes the
emotional state/stability, world concept, attitude toward the offender, attitude toward the victim,
and possibly even the identity of whoever views the crime scene. Unsurprisingly, this method is
very effective, as attested by the statements of those who witnessed it. One civilian who
encountered the body of Arkwright victim Marcus Law said:
I went into [the] room, like, and I saw Marcus disemboweled, laid on floor. It were
shocking [emphasis added]. Tony, from what I can make out, he must have slow tortured
Marcus. He done some bad shit to Marcus. It’s the most horrific thing that I've ever seen.
I've never been to a doctor about it, but I still have bad dreams about what I saw
[emphasis added].”97

Detective Michael Burdis referred to the Ford homicide as “a most grotesque attack”98 and the
Law crime scene as “pretty horrendous”99 adding that “very few officers had ever seen the sort of
injuries that Marcus Law had suffered.”100 Arkwright’s lawyer, Steve Smith, stated “I don’t think
I’ve ever dealt with a case which reached the depths of such human depravity.”101
This echoes American criminal profiler Anthony Meoli who stated that the Rolling crime
scene photographs were the most horrific he had ever come across.102
I examined the crime scene photos at the Alachua County Courthouse in 2009. I had
made a formal request from their records officer and viewed the two books which
included observatory exterior photos as well as the actual crime scene photos. There are
literally over 350 photos in these two books, all in color. My reaction to the photos was
one of shock [emphasis added]. While I had personally interviewed Danny in 2003, it was
hard to understand... the brutal nature of what was seen [emphasis added].103

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The same observations were made by one Robert Blecker, a specialist in capital punishment,
who “saw the crime scene photos for hours... It was horrifying [emphasis added]. He posed all
the bodied [sic] pornographically, each one.”104 Though he had not personally viewed the crime
scene photographs, journalist Jeff Weinsier claims he “talked to several people who have who
actually needed counseling after seeing the photos [emphasis added], very graphic photos, things
in your wildest minds that you couldn't even think of [emphasis added]...”105 After attending
Rolling's trial, author Mary Ryzuk wrote “The jurors were grim. Some looked revolted. Many
cried at the sight of the gruesome photos, heads in hands. One man appeared to be fighting tears
for the rest of the day.”106
Similarly, in an article for the Toronto Sun, a reporter who had attended the Luka
Magnotta trial described the '1 Lunatic 1 Icepick' video as “beyond disgusting. It is revolting and
sickening. And it took much self control not to leave the contents of an ill-considered lunch on
the courthouse floor [emphases added].”107 According to the Toronto Star, Denis Mainville of
the Montreal Police Service major crimes unit described the murder of Jun Lin as the “more [sic]
horrible case [emphasis added] he’s seen in his 29-year career. On a scale of one to 10, he said, 'I
would put it at a 10.'”108 Regarding the video, Mainville stated that “These are images that stay in
your head for a very long time.”109 Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey added that after
the parcel was opened by director of political operations Ms. Jenni Byrne, “it was such a horrible
odour I'm sure many of us will not forget it [emphases added].”110 Perhaps most severely affected
was Jun Lin's own mother who stated “The most unbearable pain for me is that the video got
posted on the Internet. People watched it over and over and over. It's like my son is being
murdered again and again... This heinous crime happened in Canada. It's made me reconsider
what kind of place this is.”111 The fact that a single expressive/transformative murder could
cause people to question the fundamental nature of a relatively safe society is a testament to the
power of a perfectly depraved sign to abduct the recipients.
Having looked at how Gell's theory of art, augmented by Kristeva and Goffman, explains
an ETV offender's capacity to primitively incite personal and social change, the following
sections will delve deeper into understanding expression through victim-as-canvas activities.
Specifically, through posing the body of his victim, the offender can (1) increase abjection, by
further violating or intentionally inverting social conventions as to how a corpse should be

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displayed in death, and/or (2) communicate a message to whoever beholds the tableau.jjjjjjj The
next section explores the first.

4.4 Increasing Abjection

Offenders will sometimes emphasize increasing abjection or communicating a message
in their posing, though these may occur in tandem. This section uses the established theoretical
framework to examine incidences in which ETV offenders have clearly increased abjection.
Danny Rolling claims that after murdering his third Gainesville woman, Christa Hoyt, he
returned to the crime scene an hour later to search for his lost wallet.112 Though Rolling had
already cut off Hoyt's nipples and eviscerated her, once back inside her apartment, he decided to
“leave them something to think about”113, further increasing abjection. After slicing off Hoyt's
head, he placed it on a shelf “so that anyone who came into that apartment... that would be the
first thing they'd see.”114 Rolling then propped Hoyt's headless corpse up in a sitting position on
her bed, later claiming it “resembled ‘The Thinker,’ [a statue] fashioned by Rodin, the famous
artist of the roaring twenties.”115 As the relevance of 'The Thinker' to the victim and perpetrator
is completely unclear, we must assume Rolling posed the body in this fashion for purely
aesthetic reasons, adding the artistic reference after the fact to create the false impression that he
was cultured. In actuality, his message was simple and carnal—'BOO!'—but the abjection was
extreme.
Contemplating this gruesome tableau, one wonders why Hoyt was rendered more abject
than Rolling's other victims. Let's begin by considering the sentence “leave them [recipients]
something to think about”116. Who, specifically, does 'them' refer to? Given Rolling's history of
animosity toward law enforcement and the fact that the only people mandated to 'think about' the
crime scene were the investigators themselves, 'them' is most likely the police. Furthermore, as
an employee of the Alachua Sheriff's Department, Hoyt was one of 'them'. According to several
sources, the victim's police hat and a photo of her in uniform were easily observable inside the
home—a place where Rolling had spent considerable time.117 The possibility thus arises that
Rolling maximized the abjection of Christa Hoyt as a double-exacting of “revenge”118; revenge
against the archetypal attractive brunette who had rejected him and the generalized 'police' who

Actually, one does not even have to visibly experience the tableau to receive this message. Written and oral
jjjjjjj

accounts of the scene convey the same message.

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had oppressed him since childhood. Through primary transformation, his self-concept was
enhanced to the extent that he rendered his victim abject through secondary transformation.
Knowing that her body would act as an index on recipients from law enforcement increased
Rolling's agency further. This will to power comprised a pivotal component of his Mystery
Rider ideal/self—the cold-hearted wandering Outlaw they should have killed while they had the
chance.
British serial killer Anthony Arkwright went even further, employing mutilation and
evisceration to increase the abjection at his crime scenes, creating hideous tableaux that fulfilled
his goal of haunting the minds of those who beheld them. According to DCI Michael Burdis,
“Raymond Ford had been savagely attacked. The whole of his intestines had been removed and
he'd suffered about 250 stab wounds. Two knives had been used and one of them had broken
inside and the other one was left in the… body cavity.”119 PC David Winter described the
charnel scene upon discovering the body of Raymond Ford as follows:
The television was on, and the heating was on. There was no lighting. So I made my way
through, into the corridor and there was all sorts of things on the floor. And there was
blood on the walls. And so then I opened the bedroom door, and I thought there was this
pile of clothes in the corner. And when I looked behind the corner you could see that
there was a body under it. And all the bits and pieces that was in the corridor in the
hallway, that was all his organs. He'd removed just about every organ in his body.120

The most extreme case of increasing abjection in our study is the murder and corpse
desecration of Jun Lin—perpetrated and recorded on video by Luka Magnotta and posted online
under the title '1 Lunatic 1 Icepick' at bestgore.com, so that it could reach a global audience. The
following description is based on the author's own observations while viewing '1 Lunatic 1
Icepick'.
In the 10 minute and 28 second video—set to the music of New Order's 1987 hit “True
Faith”kkkkkkk—Magnotta can be seen straddling a nude male who is bound and gagged, with his
face covered. Movement of the victim's legs indicates that he is still alive. The video then cuts to
Magnotta standing over the corpse of a second victimlllllll, Jun Lin, who like the first victim, is

kkkkkkk
This song is featured on the American Psycho soundtrack, although the lyrics contain a message which
seems to reflect personal transformation: “I feel so extraordinary/something's got a hold on me/I get this feeling
I'm in motion/a sudden sense of liberty/I don't care 'cause I'm not there/And I don't care if I'm here
tomorrow/Again and again I've taken too much/Of the things that cost you too much” (Gilbert, Hague, Hook,
Morris, & Sumner, 1987).
lllllll
It is not apparent by watching the highly edited video that the victims were different individuals in separate

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lying supine on the same bed. Using an icepick, Magnotta stabs Lin's torso and covered face
approximately 100 times.mmmmmmm The video then zooms in to show the cluster of wounds.
Magnotta removes the clothing covering Lin's visage, revealing his slashed throat. There are
several stab wounds to his eyeball. In the same shot, the camera pans down to the corpse's right
thigh which Magnotta proceeds to slash several times with a knife, before inflicting similar
injuries to Lin's right arm and left thigh. Next, '1 Lunatic 1 Icepick' transitions to a shot of Lin's
decapitated head in a cardboard box as Magnotta rolls it around playfully.
The following scene shows the victim's headless corpse now lying prone on the bed.
Brandishing the knife, Magnotta begins to saw through the right shoulder, creating a gaping
wound. He then carves several striations into the corpse's back. The video cuts to a point of view
shot in which Magnotta is using the victim's disembodied arm to caress Magnotta's own crotch.
The next cut shows the victim's headless body, now supine, with arms and legs dismembered at
the shoulder and mid-thigh as the camera explores the amputated wounds. Only the lower left leg
is still visible, though it is difficult to determine whether it remains joined, partially-joined, or
completely separated from the upper portion. The video then cuts to footage of the body in the
same physical condition, now lying prone, with a fully clothed Magnotta mounting it and
thrusting his pelvis repeatedly against the anus as if sodomizing it.
In the next edit, Magnotta carves a chunk of flesh from the victim's left buttock with
utensils, and then briefly displays it skewered on a fork. Magnotta steps out of frame and returns,
placing a black and white puppy near the bloody stump of the victim's left leg. The dog begins
licking the wound. The scene then jumps to Magnotta repeatedly thrusting a wine bottle into the
victim's mutilated anus. The final video sequence shows Magnotta lying on his back nude, using
the victim's severed arm to masturbate: a PPSA (partialist post-mortem sex act121). A series of
stills of Jun Lin's mutilated head and body conclude the video.
Following the creation of the video, Magnotta mailed a package containing the victim's
left foot to the headquarters of the Canadian Conservative Party in Ottawa, a parcel with the left
hand to the Liberal Party headquarters122, and two packages containing the right appendages to
St. George's School and False Creek Elementary School in Vancouver.123

incidents. This revelation only surfaced during Magnotta's trial and may add credence to the 'Chinese bottom' victim
hypothesis.
mmmmmmm
Some sources claim there were much fewer stab wounds. Having watched the video at least 10 times, I
recommend that you take my word for it.

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 Rolling, Arkwright, and Magnotta were originators of abject G indexes—the severed
head and mutilated body of Christa Hoyt, pieces of Raymond Ford in the form of internal organs,
and the dismembered hands and feet of Jun Lin. Each of these G indexes acted as agents upon
the recipients who beheld them, provoking a negative emotional reaction and perhaps even
trauma.
Rolling, Magnotta, and Arkwright also posed their victims in a manner which forced the
discovering party to reveal abjection—an act of ETV in which the killer temporarily conceals a
victim's corpse, or parts of a victim's corpse, either (i) to unexpectedly confront the discoverer
with something profoundly disturbing (shock), or (ii) to force the discoverer to unveil something
they already suspect will be profoundly disturbing (the psychological equivalent of pulling a
rusty nail from one's foot). Magnotta's mailing of packages containing body parts to
unsuspecting political parties and schools evidences the former, as does Rolling's placement of
Christa Hoyt's severed head in view of the front door. Similarly, nearly 30 years earlier, the
largely overlooked American serial killer William Dean Christensen stowed the head of victim
Sylvie Trudel in an oven in his Montreal apartment, then fled back to the United States, leaving
his landlords to make a gruesome discovery.124
In an example of the second type of revealing abjection, Anthony Arkwright arranged for
the discoverer of Raymond Ford to navigate a hallway strewn with internal organs in order to
reach a pile of clothes concealing Ford's body.125 As if the trail of blood and guts was not
harrowing enough, PC David Winter was obligated to follow it into the proverbial 7th circle of
Hell to unveil the victim's hollowed body. Writing of the unsolved Christine Jessop murder in his
award-winning Redrum: The Innocent, author Kirk Makin offered the following telling
description:
This was hardly a cunningly concealed body... The ripped shirt, the position of Christine's
legs and the location of the ripped pants and underpants indicated the poor thing had been
sexually assaulted on the spot... [T]he ball of clothing was chilling. There was little doubt
it would contain the little girl's head [emphasis added].126

The offender is thus able to make first responders knowingly inflict psychological harm on
themselves.
The Rolling, Arkwright, Magnotta, and Christensen cases are examples of effective
increasing abjection at a crime scene. The abduction occurs through pure horror, resulting in the

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recipients being intimidated, baffled, or terrified of the originator (murderer) and sickened by
and repelled by the G index (victim).

4.5 Decoding the Message

While the last two sections have dwelled almost exclusively on the use and role of
abjection in primary, secondary, and tertiary transformation, this section utilizes semiotic
analysis to decipher message-focused victim-as-canvas communications, allowing us to make
accurate inferences about the perpetrator. In each case, the offender's victimology—whether he is
killing up or killing down—is an indispensable component, as the people we encounter in day to
day life constitute signs themselves with various symbolic, indexical, and iconic associations.
With the exception of Christa Hoyt, Danny Rolling consistently left his victims in
message emphasis poses all-to-familiar to homicide detectives. Of the Larson-Powell double-
homicide, Tony Meoli says “Both bodies were posed... and placed in a way to humiliate them
further (legs spread apart).”127 Ryzuk gives a similar but more elaborate account of the posing of
Sonja Larson and Christina Powell:
[Rolling] posed Christina lewdly and slid one of her school notebooks under her head…
spread out on the living room floor, face up with her breastsnnnnnnn removed... [Sonja] had
on panties. He cut them off… He placed Sonja on top of the comforter on her bed… He
pulled her down to the end of the bed, placing her at the foot of the mattress. He left her
spread out, lying on her back with her legs bent at the knees and her feet on the floor
hanging over the side at a ninety degree angle.”128

Meoli and Ryzuk offer near identical descriptions of the posing of Tracy Paules. To quote Meoli:
“Danny... dragged [Tracy] out to the main hallway of the apartment... and he... [left] her posed
and legs spread.”129 According to Ryzuk: “[H]e dragged her body into the hallway between the
bathroom and living room, where he posed her in a lewd, spread-out position.”130 The most
detailed description of the posing of Julie Grissom's body in Shreveport is offered by Philpin and
Donnelly: “[Julie Grissom] was displayed on the bed. Her body was in the same position as
Sonja Larson's body—dragged down to the edge of the bed, legs bent over at the knees over the
edge, feet touching the floor, hair spread out like a fan.”131 In summary, in all but one of the
murders Rolling perpetrated on his female victims—the Hoyt grotesquery—he left them naked
from the waist down with their legs splayed. Although those who provided us with detailed

nnnnnnn
Every other source I consulted states that Powell's nipples, not her entire breasts, were excised.

291
descriptions of the crime scenes have ascribed motives to the posing (i.e., 'to humiliate them
further') along with judgment-laden adjectives (i.e., 'lewd'), it is necessary for us to consider
these posings minus their descriptors in order to determine their meanings.ooooooo The question
then is “what is conveyed by the sign of a woman with splayed legs?” First, it draws attention to
a specific, usually concealed, body part—the genitalia—over all other anatomical features. As a
sign, the vagina represents (i) a means of identifying its owner as a biological female (index or
icon), (ii) the locus of the owner's sexuality (index or symbol), (iii) an origin of urine, menstrual
blood, and other discharge (index), (iv) venereal disease (index), (v) an orifice from which a
newborn emerges (index), or (vi) an anatomical area which the norms of Western culture dictate
should be kept private/obfuscated (symbol). Obviously, there is no point in accentuating any of
these semiotic associations unless there is a relevant secondary idea attached to them. The vagina
as a sign of being female, for instance, may be accentuated to show that the offender murdered a
victim precisely because she was a woman, indicating misogyny. The case for this is strong
considering none of Rolling's three male victims were posed. Moreover, sexuality—particularly
female sexuality—has historically been associated with impurity, sin, moral decadence,
hedonism, and the like; a cultural stigma that survives in many forms today. Therefore, this
accentuation of the vagina may not be restricted to 'I killed a woman because I hate women' but
could also extend to (i) 'I raped and killed this woman, robbing her of her chastity' or (ii) 'I killed
this woman because I hate her for her sexual impurity', or (iii) 'this woman wields power over me
because I desire her sexually, therefore I raped and/or killed her to strip her of this power', or (iv)
'women are teases and temptresses so I killed this whore because I hate her for making me desire
her (and potentially luring me into sin).' Of course, the second, third, and fourth motives are by
no means mutually exclusive, and may be combined into (v) 'women, like and including this one,
are sexually impure teases and temptresses who wield power over me because I desire them
sexually (potentially luring me into sin), therefore I have raped and killed this woman to strip her
of this power and punish her.' As Rolling did not rape Sonja Larsen but posed her similarly, the
salience of sexual assault is unlikely to play a large role in this message. Instead, (vi) 'women,
like and including this one, are sexually impure teases and temptresses who wield power over me
because I desire them sexually (potentially luring me into sin), therefore I have killed this woman
to strip her of this power and punish her' is more likely, especially in light of inmate Paul Fuqua's

ooooooo
This does not necessarily indicate a refutation of their interpretations.

292
claim that Rolling said “The reason I sliced them up is because they were too pretty for anybody
and I can't stand that. I made it so they weren't so pretty anymore.”132 This would explain the
juxtaposition of emphasized genitals and intense abjection: the victim's sexual power is negated
because her attractiveness has been inverted.
Naturally, the vagina's indexical associations with urine, menstrual blood, and especially
venereal disease can also augment this narrative. According to scripture in the Abrahamic
religions, contact with menstrual blood renders a man impure (Leviticus 20:18, King James
Version). Venereal disease, on the other hand, saddles him with an embarrassing (sometimes
grotesque or fatal) contagion which may lead to conflicts with future sexual partners or outright
rejection if disclosed. Pertinently, Rolling remarked that his first sexual partner “was not very
clean, and it took a month to get the smell off him.”133 Thus, these additions can be easily added
into any combination of associations 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Comparatively, the association with child
birth does not necessarily lend itself to stigma, so in the absence of other evidence pointing to
this association, it should not be considered. Another possibility is that by revealing a
semiotically-laden private area to the public, the offender is stripping away the victim's 'disguise
of decency' to confront the world with her perceived impurity (whether moral or medical) and
power of seduction. So, when Meoli states that the offender sought “to humiliate them further”134
by spreading their legs, he is correctppppppp, but—with the exception of the 'robbery-of-privacy-
and-nothing-else' motive—this explanation limits the full scope of the cultural associations
which bely this degradation. The victim is degraded not just because her genitals have been
exposed, but because this anatomical exposure also draws attention to the stigma(s) associated
with them, whether real or perceived, revealing Goffman's “blemishes of individual
character.”135
As Rolling relegated his ETV communications to tableaux, we have only his victim-as-
canvas expressions alongside his paraphilic signatures and m.o. from which to formulate an
offender profile. Firstly, the offender is sexually-capable of raping multiple female victims yet he
displays their sexuality like a proverbial scarlet letter. This, combined with the consistency of his

It is impossible to actually humiliate a dead person. The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'humiliate' as
ppppppp

“Make (someone) feel ashamed and foolish by injuring their dignity and pride” (Humiliate [Def 1], n.d.). One
can not feel ashamed, foolish, or injured without being sentient. However, as the originator and/or recipients
may falsely believe that the soul, spirit, or consciousness of a victim endures after death to perceive their
corporeal degradation, then this motive certainly arises.

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intended victims' appearances—attractive petite brunettes—increases the probability that he was
once romantically-interested or involved with a female fitting this description: the victims are
icons of another woman. His criminal sophistication and disturbing tableaux hint that he has a
prior criminal record for break and enter, burglary, and/or sexual assault. Considering these
inferences in light of one another, a portrait of a lone, embittered heterosexual ex-con reeling
from a failed love life emerges. The expressive/transformative nature of his crimes supports this:
he is clearly striking out against the injustices inflicted on a former ideal or actual self while
announcing a 'criminal superstar' homicidal self. These features, combined with the high-risk
nature of his crimes, evidences a psychopathic personality. Unfortunately, as Rolling focused on
abjection and repeated the same pose, these are the only conclusions we can formulate about
him: hardly useful given his transient lifestyle.
In another example of message emphasis posing, Colin Ireland stuffed condoms into the
nose and mouth of his first victim's corpse, placed two teddy bearsqqqqqqq in a '69' position next to
the body, and covered the scene with a duvet.136 Here we are presented with a more complex
text, consisting of signs positioned in relation to one another, which must be analyzed and
interpreted. For the purposes of analysis, each act or object in the tableau will be numbered, and
when considered in relation to each other, will be joined by a “+” and underlined: e.g., 1+2. The
question we must answer first is how Ireland went about presenting his message and what that
message was intended to be. Beginning with the how, the acts should be noted individually: (1)
The covering with (2) a duvet, of (3) a homosexual male victim, with (4) condoms (5) inserted
into the victim's nose and mouth, and (6) teddy bears (7) placed in a '69' sexual position (8)
against his body.137
Typically the covering of a body serves (i) as either a ritualistic act of undoing, in which
the offender does not want to look at his victim's body and/or wishes to prevent others from
looking at what he has done138 or (ii) is intended to delay the discovery of the corpse, which
relates to m.o.rrrrrrr The Ireland case is unique because the accompanying derogatory acts (4+5,
6+7+8) indicate an absence of remorse. Though Ireland did not comment on the covering of the
body in this case, we can presume that his motivation was (1) either to shock whoever

qqqqqqq
William Dean Christensen also placed a plush toy on the body of Michelle Angiers: a Go-Go dancer he had
murdered in Scranton, Pennsylvania (Mellor, 2012). No further details have been published.
rrrrrrr
Though it is of little consequence in this case, other descriptions have stated that the plush toys were placed on
top of the duvet—where the sexualized teddy bears would also serve as indices, drawing attention to the corpse.

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discovered the corpse by forcing them to reveal abjection, (2) because he was somewhat
necrophobicsssssss, or (3) both. Ireland did not cover his subsequent victims. Some sources claim
that he (1) placed a doll (2) on top of the nude corpse of his third victim, Perry Bradley III.139
Ireland also symbolically posed fourth victim, Andrew Collier, by (1) pulling a condom over (2)
the tail of his murdered cat, and another (3) on Collier's penis, then (4) positioning the cat in a
'69' position on Collier's body with its tail in Collier's mouth and its mouth on Collier's penis.
Having parsed out and numbered the relevant signs, we must now establish a method for
correctly interpreting them.ttttttt First, when analyzing signs such as condoms, teddy bears, dolls,
and cats which are incorporated into a tableau, it is prudent to ascertain whether these objects
were brought to the crime scene by the offender, or if they were already there. In every one of
the Ireland murders they belonged to the victim. This indicates that the offender did not pre-
meditatively bring any sign to the crime scene, rather he used semiotic objects he found in the
victims' residences to communicate his message. On the surface, this seems simply indicative of
improvisation. In actuality, it is crucial to our interpretation of the meaning of certain objects.
For instance, teddy bears, dolls, and cats are generally associated with concepts such as
'innocence' or 'cuteness' and their arrangement in a '69' position could therefore be interpreted as
representing a perversion of innocence, or a likening of homosexuality to pedophilia. If Ireland
had brought these items to the crime scene, there would be a much stronger case for this as he
had pre-selected them specifically for their semiotic associations. Instead, they might have been
the only anthropomorphic objects in the victim's apartment, making the fact that they were teddy
bears, dolls, or cats incidental.uuuuuuu In any event, acts 4+5 and 6+7+8 in the Walker murder and
1+2+3+4+5 in Collier are all undeniably sexual. Given the manner and context in which they
were applied, they are symbols of the victim's perceived deviance as a homosexual, seeming to
link homosexuality to child molestation.
With this established, let us now consider Ireland's emphasis on homosexual deviance

sssssss
Regarding this second possibility, Ireland commented “I think that affected me mentally to quite a degree.
Sitting in with these bodies for sort of like five or six hours on some occasions. Watching them gradually sort of
get blue and blotchy and cold... I don't think I could cope with it to be honest. Deal with it too well” (Joseph
Green, 2015, August 9).
ttttttt
Of equal importance is the ability to determine those rare instances when we CANNOT interpret them, as a
failure to do so will result in the futile pursuit of a blind lead.
uuuuuuu
I suspect that in this particular case the teddy bears and dolls were chosen for their symbolic meanings,
regardless. This is due to Ireland's association of male homosexuality with child molestation as evidenced in Chapter
3.

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next to his m.o. and signature in order to complete the picture. If one's anger is “truly triggered
by male deviancy”140 we must ask the rather obvious question: why did Ireland actively immerse
himself in it? The most obvious answer is that he had some existential connection to it. His
multiple accounts of alleged near-misses with molestation is a screaming clue, one that is
revealed to us in the perversion of symbols of innocence. Now consider the burning of his
victims' testicles and pubic hair, the flagellation of nude men, and the intimate proximity of
strangling or suffocating them. These are all indices of sexual sadism.141 When placing Ireland's
identity signatures next to his paraphilic signatures in the context of his m.o. and victimology a
plausible answer emerges: Ireland may have been an ego-dystonic bisexual suffering from a
paraphilic disorder known as sexual sadism.142 Whether he became bisexual because he was
molested or was born bisexual and attributed the cause to sexual abuse is unknowable, at least at
this point. Thus, he probably linked the men who victimized him to extremely deviant male
homosexuality. By murdering these victims, Ireland may have been able to achieve sexual
gratification through intimacy with a man, while simultaneously destroying members of the
sexual group he perceived as responsible for his own molestation and his resulting bisexual
discreditable identity.143 Perhaps it goes even deeper: he murdered representations of male
homosexual submission and weakness—the shameful personification of Ireland himself as a
passive, sexually exploited child. In such ways, Ireland may have exercised his bisexuality
(associated with subordinated masculinity) while simultaneously refuting it with homophobic
violence. As he would have been either incapable of admitting this to himself or others, he shifts
the focus to the serialkiller! self—sub-hegemonic in its masculinity, and newsworthy (relevant).
Victimology also reveals that the victims Ireland left in a sexual pose, Walker and
Collier, had both been diagnosed HIV positive. Though Ireland admitted to posing the bodies
upon discovering medical papers, for some reason Collier bore the brunt of his anger: “I think
Collier was the only one I was angry with in a funny way. He was the only one I got cross with.
And you probably noticed that in the way the body was found. I felt real anger towards him.” 144
Ireland's reaction upon finding the documents was understandably absurd: “That annoyed me. I
was the killer [homicidal ideal/own] and he had AIDS [emphasis added]... he didn't tell me about
this, he didn't warn me [trigger] – could have been me in 5 years [emphasis added]... I went
fucking crazy.”145 SDT accounts for his reaction. 'Being able to kill the unsuspecting other',
'secrecy', and 'callousness' were all important aspects of Ireland's Perfect Serial Killer homicidal

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ideal/own, and the revelation that Collier was similarly using these tactics against him activated
an actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy resulting in furious frustration. To “increase”146 the “thrill
of killing”147, but also to leave indices of his own manly violence and re-establish Collier's sub-
hegemonic victimhood status, Ireland strangled his cat and positioned it on him in the '69' pose to
leave him “no dignity in death.”148 Indeed, this secondary transformation makes it extremely
difficult to think of the victim without mentally picturing him in a sexual pose with his cat.
Obviously, by leaving overt and complex expressive/transformative messages, Ireland
placed a great deal of importance in the tertiary transformation of the investigating officers. Like
every other victim-as-canvas offender (Rolling, Magnotta, Arkwright), this reflects his
documented interest in Hero Culture. Candidly detailing his motives for posing his victims,
Ireland explained:
I wanted to know how you would react when you came across the scene. You're not
thinking normally when you do something like this. But it was almost like a signature – to
almost let you know I'd been there. I was reaching that point – you know where you feel
you have to set up a stage each time.149

Exemplifying symbolic interactionism, Ireland used his 'Me' to call out for the reaction he
anticipated in the other, even acting out a scenario for himself: “I remember sort of with Walker
and with Collier standing by the bed and saying 'Well what do you think of this sergeant so-and-
so?' 'I don't know sir.' As if how you would react when you came in and saw it.”150 In a
remarkable example of literary criminology, Ireland, who admitted to watching police
procedurals and reading about serial killers, was emulating a trope associated with serialkillers!
but rarely seen in actual cases of serial homicide: creating an exotic tableau. Though Ireland
aspired to be the consummate and professional Perfect Serial Killer—cleaning up his crime
scenes and leaving almost no physical evidence whatsoever—he felt mandated to exhibit a
signature as a convention of the archetypal serialkiller! narrative he was enacting.vvvvvvv As the
self-cast antagonist, he saw it as his role to leave intriguing puzzles for the Hero protagonists to
ponder. Like the paraphilic offenders mentioned in Chapter 1 who assume both the role of
perpetrator and victim in their auto-erotic practices151, Ireland was taking the perspective of the
other in order to determine what their response would be.152 His expression might thus be said to

vvvvvvv
Ironically, Ireland had already left numerous signatures in the specific forms of torture he had inflicted upon
his victims, though he didn't seem to realize it.

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have a function, then, enjoining himself and law enforcement in opposing roles which
correspond to an archetypal narrative.
In summary, through the semiotic interpretation of these signature behaviours and
victimology, it is hypothetically possible to deduce that the offender is a homophobic bisexual or
homosexual (and thus ego-dystonic and almost certainly closeted) with a paraphilic disorder
known as sexual sadism. He does not meaningfully distinguish between homosexuals and same-
sex male child molesters, giving rise to the probability that he was sexually assaulted as a youth.
His malice, however, is more generalized as evidenced by his setting up of the Peter Walker
tableau to force someone to reveal abjection and his unnecessary attempt to set Emanuel Spiteri's
apartment on fire.153 Ireland himself confirmed this, stating “I think there is something in me
that's highly destructive, in some moods I would be quite happy to burn the world down.”154
Finally, his successful modus operandi of picking up men from the Coleherne under the pretense
of sexual interest indicates that the offender possessed the ability to pass unnoticed among the
gay community, even those involved in BDSM culture. In Section 4.8 (Colin Ireland: Victim-as-
canvas/soapbox), the findings of this victim-as-canvas analysis will be incorporated into our
analysis of his victim-as-soapbox behaviour to determine the full extent of what a competent
expressive/transformative analysis can yield.
The crimes of Luka Magnotta, though overwhelmingly focused on increasing abjection,
also use signs in a victim-as-canvas tableau to communicate the killer's message. As Ireland had
done with the teddy bears and cat, Luka Magnotta also employed a cute, cuddly sign—a
puppy—in his ETV video-posing of Jun Lin's body. After extensively mutilating the victim's
corpse (as detailed in the previous section), Magnotta placed the young canine near the bloody
stump of Lin's left leg where it began to lick the wound. In the previous videos Magnotta posted
online leading up to the murder, he had instead shown the deaths of kittens. The first of these
videos, '1 boy 2 kittens' which was posted on December 21, shows an unidentifiable human
figure petting two kittens as John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band's 'Happy Christmas (War is Over)'
plays in the background. The video then cuts to a shot of the figure placing both animals in a
large vacuum sealable plastic bag. He lingers over the bag with the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner
for several seconds before startling the kittens by turning it on. Placing the nozzle to the suction
valve, he zooms the camera in close on one entrapped kitten so that the viewer may watch as it
slowly suffocates to death. Another, entitled 'Bathtime LOL', shows a figure in sunglasses

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petting a kitten, then quickly transitions to a scene with the same kitten duct-taped to a broom
handle being drowned in a bath. 'Python Christmas', the second video, depicts a dark-haired
figure in a Santa Claus hat kissing and nuzzling a kitten, before cutting to a shot of the kitten
inside the same hat being lowered onto a bed where an Albino Burmese python awaits. The
kitten emerges from the hat and is devoured by the snake, while 'The Little Drummer Boy'
Christmas carol plays in the background. At some point in the video, the figure is seen similarly
petting the python as the hit pop song 'A Whole New World' from Disney's Aladdin plays in the
background. Consistent with this theme of 'cuteness', Magnotta also drew a heart-shaped symbol
on the package containing Jun Lin's foot.
Here, we return to the concepts of metaphor, irony, and metonymy which Danesi presents
as key to interpreting criminal texts.155 In the West, teddy bears, Santa Claus, cats, kittens,
puppies, hearts, and the aforementioned three songs are culturally associated with innocence,
warmth, and/or benevolence. Juxtaposing these symbols with abjection or sexualizing them
results in a kind of violent irony— “the expression of one’s meaning by using language that
normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect”156—a dark, sarcastic
humour residing in the posings of Colin Ireland and Luka Magnotta's victims, but not those of
Danny Rolling. The heart on the parcel that Magnotta sent to Conservative Party headquarters
was coloured black, a continuance of this symbolic inversion theme.157 The irony of contrasting
stereotypes of innocence, warmth, and benevolence with abjection enhances malicious
abduction, as attested to by 'Body Movin', one of the animal rights advocates who attempted to
track down the 'kitten killer': “There was something about the way he did this. He loved on these
cats. He pet them. He snuggled with them and then he murdered them [emphasis added]... this is
a vile human being and this needs to stop.”158 Perhaps this speaks to the widespread outrage
concerning child sexual abuse compared with the rape of adults—children are 'innocent' and
have not fully developed physically and mentally to where they are culturally 'supposed to' have
sex. The act completely inverts the symbolic association of the object.159
Though Anthony Arkwright's increased abjection and revealing abjection have already
been discussed, the murder of Marcus Law arguably places equal emphasis on semiotic meaning.
Law's corpse was “laid down behind his settee. His stomach had all been cut open, and his crutch
had been thrown through his stomach. And it was actually sticking out into the air.”160 Arkwright
had stuffed cigarettes into Marcus's nose, mouth, and ears so that, in the words of PC David

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Winter, ”His head just looked like a birthday cake.”161 Laid out in the ETV interpretive formula,
we have (1) a crutch (2) inserted into the body cavity of (3) a disabled man's corpse, with (4)
cigarettes (5) inserted into the victim's nose, mouth, and ears, and (6) increased abjection.
Once again, we begin with looking at which (if any) elements were brought to the crime
scene. Unfortunately, while the crutch belonged to the victim, there is no information in the
sources as to whether the cigarettes were Law's or Arkwright's (both men smoked). Such
information could easily be obtained by ascertaining the victim's preferred brand. If they were
Law's brand, then it is safe to presume that none of the signs used in the posing were brought to
the crime scene. This would be consistent with the other victim-as-canvas home invasion ETV
murders in this sample. On the other hand, if the brand was not Law's brand, then we have a
potentially significant clue—namely, we could know the type of cigarettes the perpetrator
smokes. In a small town such as Wath, with a population of just over 16,000, this could actually
lead police right to his door. Investigators need only inquire around local corner shops as to
which customers purchase that brand, compile a list, and then begin looking into suspects,
prioritized in accordance with a pre-established offender profile.
Now let us attempt to decode this tableau. The crutch is both a symbol and index of
disability. As it was thrust into Law's wound, this could simply be an additional cruelty
associated with increased abjection. The crutch could also act as a metonym of the victim's
'handicapped' master status: the stigma literally resides in the core of his being. Less obvious is
the insertion of the cigarettes into the nose and mouth. As the significance of the cigarettes is not
initially clear, the best procedure is to consider them as symbols, indexes, and icons in order to
produce a body of potential meanings. Cigarettes have numerous symbolic associations:
rebelliousness, delinquency, glamour, and even the potential symbolism of the specific
brandwwwwwww (e.g., 'Marlborough' conjures up images of cowboys and the Old West, 'Virginia
Slims' is associated with femininity). As icons, cigarettes only resemble themselves, therefore
this line of inquiry is not fruitful.xxxxxxx Indices link them causally to 'addiction', 'cancer' (and
other 'diseases'), 'stench', 'fire', 'smoke', and 'ash'.

wwwwwww
Though brand symbolism is worthy of consideration, I caution going too far down such rabbit holes. Thus
far, ETV murderers simply do not seem to display this level of esotericism.
xxxxxxx
Certainly we could argue that they vaguely resemble a stick of dynamite or a penis, but this is where
traditional psychoanalysis goes terribly awry. Even Freud may have been aware of this, allegedly stating
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” (Wheelis, 1950).

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 One common aspect tying cigarettes symbolically and indexically to both the crutch and
evisceration is the negative affect they have on the human heart and lungs (disease). A second is
the broader theme of 'dependence'—the dependence of the disabled person upon others, social
assistance, and the 'crutch'; and the dependence of the nicotine addict on cigarettes. Thus, if
Raymond Ford's empty cider cans and cigarettes had also been placed inside his wounds or
orifices, we might rightfully conclude that the offender is targeting 'weak' people for their
unhealthy substance addictions. However, the fact that Law was the only victim with addictive
substances incorporated into his posing seems to discourage this interpretation. Keep in mind,
the homophobic Ireland left sexualized signs associated with innocence and cuteness on every
victim who was HIV positive, while Rolling posed the bodies of 80% of his female victims with
their legs spread. This anomalous cigarette posing could indicate that, rather than making a
broader social statement about smoking, the message was specific to the character of Marcus
Law. This increases the likelihood that the offender knew him personally. Hence, when
interviewing friends, family, neighbours, and witnesses, the investigator should inquire as to the
manner in which Law used cigarettes, and his attitudes toward them. If they did so, they might
learn that Marcus Law was in the habit of bumming cigarettes. Indeed, Anthony Arkwright
would later explain that he posed Law in this fashion because the disabled man was always
asking him for cigarettes, which annoyed Arkwright.162
This section has proposed a rudimentary methodology for applying semiotic analysis to
message-focused victim-as-canvas murders, demonstrating the ability to form reasonable
conclusions about the offender and his motives whenever possible. As we have seen, the signs
utilized in victim-as-canvas crime scene behaviour often reveal or highlight stigmatized aspects
of a victim's identity.
Sexual impurity is perhaps the most common theme, reflected in Danny Rolling's posing
of his female victims with their legs spread. American serial killer Morris Frampton had a near
identical, if somewhat more exaggerated, signature.163 Likewise, after murdering a woman in her
home, American serial killer George Russell posed her with her legs splayed, and a rifle
protruding from her vagina. Previously, he had inserted a vibrator into the mouth of another
victim and tucked her copy of The Joy of Sex into her armpit.164 Gertrude Baniszewski carved 'I
am a prostitute and proud of it' into the abdomen of eventual murder victim Sylvia
Likens.165Colin Ireland sexually positioned toys and murdered house pets on or next to the

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bodies of his homosexual victims to emphasize their deviance. In another British victim-as-
canvas case with features that overlapped with Ireland's, serial killer Stephen Farrow found
evidence of closeted homosexuality inside his victim's residence. Farrow surrounded the corpse
with condom wrappers and homosexual pornography, and placed a calendar featuring semi-nude
males over his genital region.166 In this case, the victim was a Vicar, and the perpetrator an
ardent hater of Christians who claimed to have been molested by a clergyman as a child. This
semiotically taps into popular associations of Christian clerics with sexual abuse167
Health problems, including diseases and handicaps, also appear with some frequency.
Colin Ireland stuffed condoms into the mouths and nostrils of his first and fourth victims—the
only two in his five-victim series who Ireland learned were HIV positive. English spree-killer
Anthony Arkwright posed handicapped victim Marcus Law with a crutch jutting out of his body
to accentuate his stigmatized physical condition. Substance addictions and the impoverished
lifestyles associated with them have also appeared elsewhere in victim-as-canvas cases. Russia's
“Chessboard Killer” Alexander Pichushkin left empty vodka bottles jammed into the fractured
skulls of his alcoholic victims.168
To conclude, expressive/transformative posings
(i) are often sexually charged (Rolling's leg-spreading; Ireland and Farrow's symbolic
mocking of homosexuality)
(ii) frequently appeal to abjection (Rolling’s placement of the head on the shelf;
Magnotta's mutilation of Jun Lin; Arkwright’s dissections and scattering of internal
organs)
(iii) involve insertion of objects into orifices (cigarettes in the mouth, nose, and ears of
Marcus Law; vodka bottles into an alcoholic's shattered cranium; a vibrator in a dead
woman’s mouth, or a rifle in her vagina; sticking a crutch into a disabled man’s open
wound)
(iv) are completely improvised: almost no item was used in any of the posings that was
not already on the victim’s person or at the crime scene.
If we are to consider these four points together—sexual themes, overt grotesqueness (abjection),
the insertion of semiotic objects into the victim’s orifices, and the fact that the evidence seems to
show that these expressive posings were perpetrated on a whim—we can conclude the following
- they are fundamentally primal (e.g., hyper violence, sex, insertion)

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 - they tend to mock their victims, often by revealing their real or perceived deviance (e.g.,
homosexuality, promiscuity, physical handicap, dependence, hypocrisy)
- the offender wishes to communicate these signs to an audience to affect their emotions
and perceptions of the offender and/or victim
- they seek to disturb the semiotic order and organization of society, by destroying and/or
transcending social boundaries
In summary, these brutish assortments are generally not the highly organized, explicit messages
we have come to see in films like Se7en (in which the antagonist expressively transforms the
victim into representations of the Seven Deadly Sins). These victim-as-canvas ETV murderers
are not artists, they are confused children scrawling messages with a Freudesque crayon. They do
so because they cannot effectively communicate, and through their killings they demand that we
confer them unity of self and identity by acknowledging their existence. They slip on talismans
of identity like serialkiller! or outlaw! or more specific avatars of the same phenomenon such as
JacktheRipper! and JesseJames!
Our four victim-as-canvas murderers (Rolling, Ireland, Magnotta, Arkwright) had several
commonalities. They were all (i) psychopathic, (ii) previously convicted for property crimes, (iii)
unstable in their work and not formally employed at the time of their murders, (iv) single during
their murders, (v) bullied at school, (vi) interested in Hero Culture, and (vii) killed using close-
range weapons (edged-weapons for Rolling, Magnotta, and Arkwright;
strangulation/asphyxiation for Irelandyyyyyyy). Furthermore, both Rolling and Magnotta were
physically and emotionally abused during their childhood.
The next section looks at victim-as-soapbox ETV murderers along with victim-as-canvas
offenders who also enacted victim-as-soapbox style expressions.

4.6 Victim-as-Soapbox Introduction

Where the previous sections focused on victim-as-canvas ETV offenders who arranged
their crime scene(s) and/or victims' bodies to express themselves, this section concentrates on
offenders who transmit verbal (oral or written) communications before, during, and/or after a
crime has been committed. Given that this dissertation was authored in the hope of finding new

yyyyyyy
Of the remaining six ETV offenders, only Daniel Gonzalez did not use firearms.

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ways of investigating ETV murderers, not only risk assessmentzzzzzzz and as we have already
explored the communications of Holmes, Rodger, and Cho thoroughly in Chapter 3, these mass
murderers will be excluded from analysis until section 4.10 when we look at costume.
Thus far, our interpretation of criminal expressions have been confined to a semiotic
conceptualization of content analysis which has looked at the meaning and interplay of less than
a handful of signs in any given incident of posing. As the semiotic content of even a few short
sentences tends to produce a greater plurality of signs, the analyses of Berkowitz's corpus of
letters, Ireland's phone calls, and Magnotta's notes will prove far more laborious, particularly as
Ireland and Magnotta's victim-as-canvas texts must be considered next to their victim-as-soapbox
texts in order to assess the totality of their respective corpuses.
This transition to analyzing oral or written expressions does however have its benefits.
'BTK Strangler' Dennis Rader learned the hard way that digital documents are easily linked to a
suspect by way of metadata, including digital or digitized videos and photographs.169 In the case
of written notes or letters, such communications can be subject to forensic document
examinationaaaaaaaa. FDE can include checking the materials used to create the document such as
paper, ink, writing implements, stamps, ribbons, seals etc. to determine when and where they
were produced. This is especially effective when comparing it to similar materials in the
suspect's possession; for instance, forensic document examination is now capable of determining
whether a specific pen was used to create the document.170 Stamps, in particular, are an excellent
source of DNA, as it is contained in saliva. Naturally, there may also be fingerprint or 'invisible'
touch DNA evidence on the document. Indented writing—in which handwriting on a piece of
paper leaves traces of the text on paper beneath it171 (a particularly common phenomenon in
notepads or workbooks)—proved instrumental in the arrest of ETV serial killer Larry Gene Bell
in 1985.172
As there are no two people on the planet with the same handwriting, graphanalysis is
particularly useful in matching the perpetrator's penmanship to that found on a given letter or
note.173 Furthermore, though a suspect may successfully misrepresent his calligraphy as less-deft

zzzzzzz
Early identification of a homicidal ETV offender was theoretically possible in all three cases as they either
published online communications or wrote violent, artless stories in their classes. Though assessing pre-homicide
expressive/transformative communications to determine risk is beyond the scope of this work, it is clearly an
avenue which could be fruitful, and I strongly encourage further research in this direction.
aaaaaaaa
This discipline is more commonly known as Questioned Document Examination, but it sounds less
aesthetically pleasing.

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than it actually is, he is unable to exercise this deception by, improving it.174 There are two
methods of comparing a suspect's handwriting to that on a document. Collected writing
specimens are samples of the suspect's handwriting on documents which he authored before the
investigation, and have the advantage of preventing deception although they may not include key
words or passages which appear in the forensic document.175 Requested writing specimens, are
typically specific sentences written by a suspect at the behest of an investigator, allowing the
suspect to attempt to potentially falsify his handwriting but reproducing pivotal words and
sentences found in the forensic document.176
Forensic linguistics—which, problematically, is usually defined in “its broadest sense”177
as a discipline covering “all areas where law and language intersect”178—can also be applied to
both written and oral forensic texts. Relevant to assisting with an investigation is its ability to
“examine texts of all types for authorship [identification], authenticity, interpretation of meaning,
disputed language and other forensic processes.”179 We have not incorporated forensic linguistics
in our analyses of ETV expressions because it is not rooted in symbolic interactionism or
semiotics, and is thus theoretically incompatible with the expressive/transformative process.
Nevertheless, with its unique linguistic approach, such as studying lexical density (the percentage
of words “with content or meaning”180 in a text), mean sentence length (“the average number of
words per sentence in a given text...”181), mean word length (“The average number of letters or
characters per word in a text”182, and authorship attribution through “...the analysis of the
structures of the language”183, it may potentially reveal additional insights which this first
iteration of ETV expression analysis could miss.
Victim-as-soapbox communications over the telephone are also susceptible to
technologies such as the spectrogram which “is a visual recording of certain parameters of
sound, especially the amplitude and intensity of the voice at certain frequencies”184 capable of
scientifically matching a suspect's voice to a recording. Moreover, background noises in a phone
call can be used to identify or approximate the caller's location, speech patterns and accent can
be ascertained, and if the offender stays on the phone long enough his call can be traced.
Though these forensic techniques and technologies have resulted in the capture and
prosecution of numerous offenders, they have not always been successful. It is our hope that,
when used in tandem with an expressive/transformative analysis of victim-as-soapbox verbal
communications, the percentage of convictions will rise significantly. Regarding the

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methodology of analyzing a victim-as-soapbox text, for the sake of consistency and simplicity,
we have tried to replicate the victim-as-canvas methodology as closely as possible. To
demonstrate, we will use the first five sentences of a brief text sent to Windsor Police in the form
of a letter by Canadian serial killer Ron Sears in the 1940s:
Dear sirs (1) This is a challenge to you (2). 'I' (3, 4) will strike in the near future (4) I can
not disclose this to you of course.(5) My avenge [sic] (6, 7) of these people (6, 8) are [sic]
great (6, 7)...185
As can be observed above, the methodology of analyzing such a letter involves (i)
fragmenting the text (T) into relevant passages (P) ranging in length from single words to whole
paragraphs depending on their perceived significance, (ii) numbering the texts (e.g., T1, T2) and
underlining and numbering the passages at the end (e.g., P1, P2) then coding them (e.g., T1P1,
T1P2, T1P3, T1P4) to make them easily identifiablebbbbbbbb, (iii) analyzing the passages
individually and in light of each other. The end result is the following form:
T1P1. Dear sirs
[analysis of this passage here]
T1P2. This is a challenge to you
[analysis of this passage here]
T1P3. 'I'
[analysis of this passage here]
T1P4. 'I' will strike again in the near future
[analysis of this passage here]
T1P5. I can not disclose this to you of course.
[analysis of this passage here]
T1P6. My avenge [sic] of these people are [sic] great
[analysis of this passage here]
Meta-information: Sears' victims were later discovered to be closeted homosexual men.
T1P7. My avenge [sic]
are [sic] great
[analysis of this passage here]

The repetition of the number '3' here signals that, despite individual fragments (i.e., '4') of the passage being
bbbbbbbb

singled out, the passage nevertheless continues beyond them.

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T1P8. these people
[analysis of this passage here]
For the sake of this dissertation, where details about the text's author are inevitably known—
enabling us to study them in the first place—any post hoc knowledge pertaining to a passage is
termed meta-information and placed beneath the relevant entry (see T1P6). Obviously, as we
cannot possess knowledge of ETV offenders who have evaded detection, meta-information is not
applicable to unsolved cases. Passages with repeating themes such as T1P7, which addresses the
offender's spelling and grammatical errors, are numbered identically and stacked. Signs can be
specified as indices, symbols, or icons if the semiotician perceives value in doing so, but this is a
tool, not a requirement. Contradictory or implausible claims should also be interpreted using
reason to determine their veracity. When all texts have been analyzed, the passages and their
analyses are then interpreted as a greater corpus which allow us to make inferences about the
offender.
In this section we have reviewed the benefits of examining victim-as-soapbox
communications in their verbal forms and outlined a methodology for analyzing them. The
following three sections utilize this methodology to interpret the corpuses of texts authored by
David Berkowitz, Colin Ireland, and Luka Magnotta. With Ireland and Magnotta, the results of
their victim-as-soapbox corpus analysis will be interpreted next to their victim-as-canvas
analysis to render the highest-resolution offender profile possible.

4.7 David Berkowitz: Victim-as-soapbox – Written

Though David Berkowitz only penned two 'Son of Sam' letters—leaving the first for the
police and posting the second to the media—he also delivered nearly a dozen anonymous
harassing communications to his neighbours, Sam Carr and Craig Glassman, and former
landlords the Cassaras. Most of these latter communications have never been released to the
public, thus our corpus consists of the 'Son of Sam' letters and what has been publicized of the
harassing communiques. Chronologically, Berkowitz's first letter to Sam Carr preceded both of
his 'Son of Sam' letters. However, as the NYPD were tasked with dealing with the 'Son of Sam'
communications, while law enforcement in Yonkers and New Rochelle handled the harassment
case, Berkowitz's texts have been arranged here in the following order: April 17, 1977 to Captain
Joseph Borrelli, May 30, 1977 to James Breslin, April 10, 1977 to Sam Carr, April 19, 1977 to

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Sam Carr, June 6, 1977 to Sam Carr, June 9-10, 1977 to the Cassaras, June 7, 17 or 18, 1977 to
Craig Glassman. Our sole purpose in analyzing these seemingly unrelated personal letters is that
names and themes tie them to the 'Son of Sam' letters. In hindsight, it seems that Berkowitz was
intentionally trying to place himself on the police radar. With this in mind, we will employ the
methodology established in the previous section to analyze the texts and greater corpus.

Text Analysis: Letter 1

Figure 14. Berkowitz Letters to Captain Borrelli

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When: April 17, 1977.
To Whom: Joseph Borrelli, captain of the New York Police Department
Text:

Dear Captain Joseph Borrelli (1),

I am deeply hurt by your calling me (2) a wemon [sic] (3) hater. I am not (4). But I am a
monster (5). I am the ‘Son of Sam.’ (6) I am a little ‘brat’ (7). When father Sam (8) gets
drunk (9) he gets mean. He beats his family (10). Sometimes he ties me up (12) to the back
of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. (11) Sam loves to drink blood (9). ‘Go
out and kill’ commands father Sam (13). Behind our house some rest (14). Mostly young—
raped and slaughtered (15)—their blood drained—just bones now (16). Papa Sam keeps
me locked in the attic, too. I can't get out (11) but I look out the attic window and watch the
world go by. I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wave length then everybody else
(17)—programmed too [sic] kill (18). However, to stop me you must kill me. Attention all
police: Shoot me first—shoot to kill or else. Keep out of my way or you will die! (19) Papa
Sam is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart
attacks. Too many heart attacks. ‘Ugh, me hoot it hurts sonny boy.’ (20) I miss my pretty
princess most of all. She's resting in our ladies house but I'll see her soon (21). I am the
‘Monster’—‘Beelzebub’ (5)—the ‘Chubby Behemouth [sic] (22).’ I love to hunt. Prowling
the streets looking for fair game—tasty meat (9, 23). The wemon [sic] (3) of Queens are z
[sic] prettyist [sic] of all. I [sic] must be the water they drink. (24) I live for the hunt my
life (23). Blood for papa. Mr. Borrelli, sir, I dont want to kill anymore no sir, no more but I
must, ‘honour thy father.’ (25) I want to make love to the world. I love people. (26) I don't
belong on Earth. Return me to yahoos. (27) To the people of Queens, I love you. And I wa
[sic] want to wish all of you a happy Easter. May God bless you in this life and in the next
(28) and for now I say goodbye and goodnight. Police—Let me haunt you with these
words; I'll be back! I'll be back! To be interpreted [sic] as—bang, bang, bang, bank [sic],
bang—ugh!! (29)
Yours in murder (30)
Mr. Monster (5)186

T1P1. Dear Captain Joseph Borrelli

The letter begins by addressing 'Captain Joseph Borrelli': a designational index referring to a
policeman, and the head of Operation Omega targeting the offender. The author has therefore
directly addressed his rival and the police force by proxy. By utilizing this designational index,
the author has indicated his awareness of the person he is addressing and has specifically chosen
them. The use of the formal, respectful 'Dear' to open the letter has the appearance of being non-
antagonistic, along with acknowledgment of Borrelli's rank.

T1P2. I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater

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The author is either genuinely deeply hurt by being labelled misogynistic or is being sarcastic.
Meta-information: After his arrest, Berkowitz admitted to hating women, thus the second
possibility is much stronger.

T1P3. wemon
This particular misspelling of 'woman' to refer to adult females is notable for several reasons.
First, given that the author has correctly spelled 'Borrelli', 'Beelzebub', and 'Easter', it is difficult
to believe that he does not know how to spell a word as commonly used and important as
'woman.' This misspelling also closely resembles the word 'demon' which is significant given his
latter reference to 'Beelzebub' (T1P5). The writer is likely attempting to convey his belief that
women are fundamentally evil by intentionally spelling the word in this manner.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that he was striking out
against society and, more specifically women, for rejecting him.

T1P4. I am not
The author denies that he is a misogynist.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that he was striking out
against society and, more specifically women, for rejecting him. Hence, he is being deceptive.

T1P5. I am a monster
Mr. Monster
I am the ‘Monster’—‘Beelzebub’
The author reframes himself as the great menacing 'monster' archetype (see Chapter 3) rather
than a pithy misogynist. In folk tales across the globe, monsters frequently capture or devour
'princesses': attractive high-born women. This is reflected in the Ancient Greek myths in which
sea-monsters seek to devour the beautiful Princess Andromeda and Princess Hesione, only to be
saved by Perseus and Heracles, respectively. There are countless other examples across
numerous disparate cultures.

T1P6. I am the ‘Son of Sam.’

The author positions himself relationally as a son: he is an index of Sam, and Sam is an index of

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him. The 'Sam' described here is not given a last name or whereabouts. The alliteration in 'Son of
Sam' lends it an aesthetic power.
Meta-information: Sam Carr lived in Berkowitz's neighbourhood and received harassing letters
from him. Berkowitz claimed Carr was a 6,000-year-old demon who instructed him to kill. In a
1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was a hoax.

T1P7. I am a little ‘brat’

The author uses a word denoting a petulant child to describe himself. Following passage 6, this
seems to indicate the author thinks of himself as childish.
Meta-information: Berkowitz was described as problematic by many teachers and neighbours
who knew him as a child.

T1P8. father Sam

The 'Sam' mentioned here is not given a last name or whereabouts. Typically, we do not refer to
our mothers and fathers as 'Mother X' or 'Father X' when discussing them. Instead, we say 'my
mother/mom', 'my father/dad', or leave out the 'my' altogether so that it is 'mother', 'mom',
'father', or 'dad'. We only add names when we are referring to grandparents, uncles, aunts, and
cousins who must be distinguished from one another, (e.g., 'Uncle Tony). The author's strange
habit of calling his dad 'Father Sam' indicates either that (1) he is speaking of a spiritual father
(e.g., Father Samuel the priest) or (2) has an ulterior motive for continually dropping the name
'Sam'.
Meta-information: Sam Carr lived in Berkowitz's neighbourhood and received harassing letters
from him. Berkowitz claimed Carr was a 6,000-year-old demon who instructed him to kill. In a
1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted the Sam Carr angle was a hoax.

T1P9. father Sam gets drunk

Sam loves to drink blood.
tasty meat
There is an emphasis in the author's writing on ingesting things, particularly blood and meat.
Again, Berkowitz's ostensible dad is called 'father Sam' and even simply 'Sam' at one point (see
T1P8).

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Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was a
hoax. Berkowitz's psychiatrist, Dr. Abrahamsen, concluded he had an oral fixation.187

T1P10. When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family
The author is revealing that his purported 'father Sam' is a violent drunk. The reference to 'his
family' implies that there are more than two other family members, and that, if this is not a
'spiritual' family, the abuse is restricted to his wife, children, and any other wards.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was a
hoax.

T1P11. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the
garage.
Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic, too. I can't get out
The author expresses that he is restrained and confined to his home, though his language may be
metaphorical. He proposes that he lives in a house which he shares with his family, including a
garage and attic. This is the third occasion upon which he mention's his dad's name unnecessarily
and unconventionally: 'Papa Sam'.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was a
hoax. Berkowitz lived alone in a small apartment without house, garage, or attic.

T1P12. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house.

The notion that a human being who is given a firearm, instructed to kill (and does), and is
allowed to write confessional letters to the police naming his accomplice is tied up behind the
family home is incredulous. The only creature routinely tied up behind residences are dogs. This
bolsters the 'metaphorical language' hypothesis.
Meta-information: Berkowitz claimed Carr's black Labrador retriever, Harvey, was sending him
messages. On April 27, 1977, he shot and wounded Harvey. Previously, he had left apartments
because he could not stand the barking and howling of neighbourhood dogs at night.

T1P13. 'Go out and kill’ commands father Sam.

The author claims to drive around New York murdering people at the behest of his authoritarian

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father. Once again, that this same tyrannical figure would allow him to write these letters is
difficult to believe. This is the fifth time he has mentioned his father's name, but has never once
called him 'dad', 'my dad', 'father', 'my father', 'papa', or 'my papa'.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was a
hoax.

T1P14. Behind our house some rest.

The author claims that he shares a house and that more victims are buried behind it.
Meta-information: Berkowitz lived alone in a small apartment without house, garage, or attic. All
of his known victims remained at the scene of the shooting.

T1P15. Mostly young—raped and slaughtered

The author says that there are other victims who have been raped, though there was no evidence
of sexual assault at his known crime scenes.
Meta-information: No further victims have been linked to Berkowitz, and none of his victims
were subject to any form of sexual assault.

T1P16. their blood drained—just bones now.

The author claims that these young 'raped and slaughtered' victims have been reduced to bone
fragments.
Meta-information: None of Berkowitz's victims were skeletonized.

T1P17. I look out the attic window and watch the world go by. I feel like an outsider. I am
on a different wave length then everybody else
The author indicates that he is more of an observer than participant in society. He is relegated to
the social margins because he does not think and/or experience the world like other people.
Given what we know of ETV offenders, this is believable.
Meta-information: Berkowitz was socially isolated and unable to fit in.

T1P18. programmed too [sic] kill.

The author denies personal responsibility for the murders he committed. He implies that an

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external agent has invaded his mind and wired him to kill. It is worth noting that the misspelling
of the word 'to', though not totally unbelievable considering the various contexts in which it is
used, does not reappear in the next sentence (T1P19).

T1P19. To stop me you must kill me. Attention all police: Shoot me first—shoot to kill or
else. Keep out of my way or you will die!
The author warns law enforcement that they must shoot him if their paths intersect or he will do
the same to them. This indicates that he is proactively trying to facilitate suicide-by-cop which
hints at a past history of suicidal ideation. At the same time, he wishes to impress his capacity for
violence upon the police. This is the only moment in any of his communications when the author
threatens law enforcement, and it is only in service of ensuring his own death. He suggests that
he is unwilling or unable to stop killing of his own accord.
Meta-information: Berkowitz was plagued by suicidal ideation and claimed to be entertaining the
idea of perpetrating a mass murderer.

T1P20. Papa Sam is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too
many heart attacks. Too many heart attacks. ‘Ugh, me hoot it hurts sonny boy.’
The reader is informed that 'Papa Sam' (the sixth time his father's first name is used) is a
vampire-like creature whose advanced age has resulted in several withering heart attacks. Now,
only the blood of others can keep him from decay. Unless the blood of victims was somehow
methodically collected, preserved, screened for matching blood type, and transferred
intravenously into 'Papa Sam'—a near impossibility—there is no basis to suppose a medical
explanation for this. Rather, it makes the 'Sam' story even less believable, assuming one does not
actually believe in vampires. The sentence 'ugh, me hoot it hurts sonny boy' was interpreted as
signifying that 'Sam' possibly spoke with a Scots accent/dialect or that the killer was familiar
with it. Yet with the Scottish accent's famous rolling 'r' sounds and tendency to say 'mah' over
'me'cccccccc we should dismiss this strange quote as either a complete fabrication or the listener's
inability to translate his own father's accent phonetically. Its sudden appearance without the
necessary context hints that the author is more concerned with freely expressing himself than
comprehensibility.

cccccccc
An actual Scottish accent would be represented as “Ugh, mah hearrt it herrts, sonny boy.”

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T1P21. I miss my pretty princess most of all. She's resting in our ladies house but I'll see
her soon The author does not elaborate on who his 'pretty princess' is, but the reference to
'resting in our ladies house' seems to dispel the notion that he could be referring to a romantic
partner in a normal relationship. Princesses are often present in fairy tales, and are abducted by
monsters. Comparing this to passage T1P5, one can reasonably speculate that the author is
referring to one of his victims. The word 'rest' to denote 'death' in T1P14 adds further credence to
this.
Meta-information: Berkowitz was single at the time of his murders and did not have a 'ladies
house.'

T1P22. 'Chubby Behemouth.'

The author uses the term 'Behemouth' [sic] to associate himself once more with the 'monster'
archetype. However, he also reveals a physical descriptor: 'chubby' and may have, consciously or
subconsciously, misspelled 'behemoth' using the word 'mouth' because his 'chubbiness' and, to a
lesser extent, 'monstrosity', was the result of overeating.
Meta-information: Berkowitz was overweight, and an emotional eater.

T1P23. I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game—tasty meat.
I live for the hunt—my life.
The author's existential fulfillment is in stalking and killing humans as if hunting animals.
Previously, he claimed he was hunting for blood for Sam, but this phrasing and the use of the
term 'tasty meat' seems to imply that he is also invested in the process.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that he was striking out
against society and, more specifically women, for rejecting him.

T1P24. wemon [sic] of Queens are z [sic] prettyist [sic] of all. I [sic] must be the water they
drink.
By employing the phrase 'water they drink' seems to indicate that the author does not drink the
same water. Therefore, the author probably does not live in Queens. The use of the letter 'z'
instead of the word 'the' may reflect the author's earlier efforts to imitate a Scottish accent. Here,

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he seems to be attempting to write in a Slavic, German, or French accent in which the word 'the'
is replaced with 'z' ('ze'). Considering his recent and repeated reference to blood drinking, the
imitation of a Slavic accent may be simply an imitation of how Dracula speaks in horror movies.
Along with T1P20, this seems to indicate a playful immaturity in which the author is merely
saying things for his own amusement. The idea that he actually speaks English as a second
language and does not know how to spell 'the' is refuted by his earlier uses of the word.
Meta-information: Berkowitz lived in Yonkers. His first language was English. To our
knowledge he had no history of interactions with Scots, the French, Germans or Slavs.
Berkowitz admitted to a fascination with horror movies.

T1P25. Blood for papa. Mr. Borrelli, sir, I dont want to kill anymore no sir, no more but I
must, ‘honor thy father.’
The author contradicts T1P22, now claiming that he does not want to kill, but is forced to do so
out of Christian filial piety. This is the only passage in which he writes of his 'papa' and 'father'
without also dropping the name 'Sam'. Finally, the author slides from using the formal title
'Captain' to 'Mr.' for Joseph Borrelli.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that he was striking out
against society and, more specifically women, for rejecting him.

T1P26. I want to make love to the world. I love people.

The author wishes to be a happy and engaged member of society, which is consistent with the
alienation of ETV offenders.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that he was striking out
against society and, more specifically women, for rejecting him. He stated that there was 'a force'
that made people turn away from him.

T1P27. I don't belong on Earth. Return me to yahoos.

The author believes that he has not adapted to the social world around him, and feels like an
alien. This interpretation is reinforced by its proximity to T1P26. In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's
Travels, the Yahoos are “a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept or
example”188 who inhabit a remote island, and bear a stark resemblance to human beings:

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 My horror and astonishment are not to be described, when I observed in this abominable
animal, a perfect human figure: the face of it indeed was flat and broad, the nose depressed,
the lips large, and the mouth wide... The fore-feet of the Yahoo differed from my hands in
nothing else but the length of the nails, the coarseness and brownness of the palms, and the
hairiness on the backs. There was the same resemblance between our feet, with the same
differences; which I knew very well, though the horses did not, because of my shoes and
stockings; the same in every part of our bodies except as to hairiness and colour, which I
have already described.189

Perhaps most importantly, the Yahoos are casually and frequently violent, murdering one another
over attractive stones they find in the mud. In the years since the publication of this book, 'yahoo'
has formally entered the English language to refer to “a boorish, crass, or stupid person.”190
Indeed, it is possible that the author saw himself as such a person. In Gulliver's Travels, the
Yahoos are comparable to monsters (T1P5)
Meta-information: Berkowitz was socially isolated and unable to fit in. Whether he was referring
to Swift's Yahoos or the word that was subsequently derived from them is unknown.

T1P28. To the people of Queens, I love you. And I wa [sic] want to wish all of you a happy
Easter. May God bless you in this life and in the next
The author is either mocking one of the communities he has victimized through insincere
utterances, or wishes to establish that he has no animosity against the community, only
individual residents.

T1P29. Police—Let me haunt you with these words; I'll be back! I'll be back! To be
interpreted [sic] as—bang, bang, bang, bank [sic], bang—ugh!!
The author will kill again, subjecting police to tertiary transformation by using a gun to facilitate
the secondary transformation of victims. Police are encouraged to be afraid of the author
because he will create unwanted transformation at both levels. The promise of future violence
also helps maintain the author's relevance.
Meta-information: Berkowitz did go on to kill again.

T1P30. Yours in murder

Captain Joseph Borrelli and Berkowitz are bound together by the act of murder, as depicted by

317
the transformative triangle.

Text Analysis: Letter 2

Figure 15. Last page of Berkowitz Letter to Breslin, May 30, 1977
When: May 30, 1977
To Whom: James Breslin, columnist at The New York Daily News newspaper
Text:

Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C (1). which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine,
urine and blood (2). Hello from the sewers of N.Y.C (1). which swallow up these
delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks (2, 3). Hello from the cracks
in the sidewalks of N.Y.C. (1) and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the
dried blood of the dead (2, 3) that has settled into the cracks. J.B. (4), I'm just dropping you
a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest (5) in those recent and horrendous .44
killings (6). I also want to tell you that I read your column daily and I find it quite
informative (7). Tell me Jim, what will you have for July twenty-ninth? (8) You can forget
about me if you like because I don't care for publicity (9). However you must not forget
Donna Lauria and you cannot let the people forget her either. She was a very, very sweet
girl (8) but Sam's a thirsty lad (29) and he won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of
blood (3, 10). Mr. Breslin, sir (11), don't think that because you haven't heard from me for
a while that I went to sleep. No, rather, I am still here. Like a spirit roaming the night (12).
Thirsty, hungry, (13) seldom stopping to rest (12); anxious to please Sam (10). I love my
work (14). Now, the void has been filled (15). Perhaps we shall meet face to face someday

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 or perhaps I will be blown away by cops with smoking .38's. (16) Whatever, if I shall be
fortunate enough to meet you I will tell you all about Sam if you like and I will introduce
you to him. His name is 'Sam the terrible.' (17) Not knowing the [sic] what the future holds
I shall say farewell and I will see you at the next job. Or should I say you will see my
handiwork at the next job? (18) Remember Ms.Lauria (8). Thank you (11).
In their blood (2)
and
from the gutter (1)
‘Sam's creation’ .44 (19)
Here are some names to help you along. Forward them to the Inspector for use by the
NCIC Center. They have everything on computer, everything. They just might turn up,
from some other crimes. Maybe they could make associations. (20)
‘The Duke of Death’ (21)
‘The Wicked King Wicker’ (21)
‘The Twenty Two Disciples of Hell’ (22)
‘John 'Wheaties' (23) – Rapist and Suffocator of Young Girls. (24)
PS: Please inform all the detectives working the slaying to remain. (25)
[LAST PAGE]

P.S: [sic] JB, Please [11] inform all the detectives working the case that I wish them
the best of luck. ‘Keep 'em digging, drive on, think positive, get off your butts, (25) knock
on coffins,(26) etc.’ Upon my capture (27) I promise to buy all the guys working the case a
new pair of shoes if I can get up the money (28). 

Son of Sam [symbol] (30)191

T2P1. Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C

Hello from the sewers of N.Y.C
Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of N.Y.C.
from the gutter
'Gutters', 'sewers', and 'cracks in the sidewalks' all refer to both literal and figurative spaces
specifically in 'N.Y.C.' 'Gutters' and 'sewers' are culturally associated with refuse/waste. The
author creates this association with 'cracks in the sidewalks' by explaining that “ants... dwell in
these cracks and feed in the dried blood of the dead.”192 As he cannot literally exist in 'gutters',
'cracks', and 'sewers', the author is using these signs metaphorically. They symbolize places in the
middle of society that are nevertheless habitually overlooked and filled with abjects (see T2P2),
which the author perceives he inhabits by saying 'Hello from...'
Meta-information: Berkowitz was socially isolated and unable to fit in.

T2P2. dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood.

which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks.

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from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the dried blood of the dead
In their blood
The author lists numerous abjects as occupying the gutters, sewers, and sidewalk cracks. He may
have done so to elicit a reaction in a similar way that Rolling, Magnotta, and Arkwright did with
their posing, but this seems like a secondary motive at best. The author sees himself as situated
in the places where abjection resides, perhaps using these abjects as icons to indicate that he
lives in physical squalor. They may also be symbols implying that he lives in a psycho-social
squalor; that he is a man considered similarly grotesque and ejected like bodily fluids into unseen
places. The use of the term 'delicacies' to describe abjects may lead the reader to conclude that
the author is a paraphile—a hematolagnist (blood fetish), coprophile (feces fetish), emetophile
(vomit fetish), and/or urolagnist (urine fetishist)—but it is important to remember that the 'sewer'
and not the author 'swallow' the delicacies in this letter. This seems to indicate a literary
motivation for using “swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper
trucks.”193
Meta-information: Berkowitz evidenced none of the fetishes listed above, and admitted to
structuring elements of his letters for purely aesthetic purposes. Reflecting back on his self-
concept immediately before the killings, Berkowitz stated “I felt like worthless shit.”194 'Shit'
belongs in sewers and gutters.

T2P3. swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks
ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the dried blood of the dead
Sam's a thirsty lad and he won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood
Thirsty, hungry,
There is an emphasis in the author's writing on the ingestion of things, particularly blood and
meat.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was a
hoax. For those interested in Freud, Berkowitz's psychiatrist, Dr. Abrahamsen, concluded that
Berkowitz had an oral fixation.195

T2P4. J.B.
The author is addressing Daily News reporter Jimmy Breslin directly by his initials. However,

320
unlike the first letter he did not begin the letter with this or the formal 'Dear'. This may indicate a
perceived familiarity with Breslin.

T2P5. dropping you a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest in those recent
and horrendous .44 killings.
The author's tone is complimentary, acknowledging he enjoys Breslin writing about the murders
he has committed.
Meta-information: Following his arrest, Berkowitz asked whether he would be receiving
newspapers while on remand.

T2P6. in those recent and horrendous .44 killings.

By using the adjective 'horrendous' the author is either expressing guilt, being sarcastic, or
simply acknowledging that the murders he committed are horrendous (which he enjoys). T212,
however, renders the first possibility extremely unlikely.

T2P7. I read your column daily and I find it quite informative

The author claims to read the Daily News every day and is complimentary in his tone.
Meta-information: Once captured, Berkowitz wrote to Breslin saying “Dear Mr. Breslin, It has
come to my attention that you wish to speak to me... I am quite disgusted with the way the Press
has been spreading lies about me but perhaps some of these can be ironed out in our meeting...
Please bring a beer when you come. Sincerely, David Berkowitz.”196
Seemingly, he continued to trust and value the columnist.

T2P8. Tell me Jim, what will you have for July twenty-ninth?
However you must not forget Donna Lauria and you cannot let the people forget her either.
She was a very, very sweet girl
Remember Ms. Lauria.
The author is making a moral appeal to Breslin to write a piece for the anniversary of his first
murder victim, Donna Lauria. In doing so, the author is hoping to reinforce his homicidal self by
using a symbolic link (the anniversary) to the secondary transformation of Donna Lauria from
living woman to corpse to prompt a tertiary transformation in the editorial content of the Daily

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News. As he reads the Daily News, the author's homicidal self is reinforced (primary
transformation) because the press assures him that he remains relevant.
Meta-information: Berkowitz fantasized that Donna Lauria's spirit was romantically bound to
him after he murdered her.

T2P9. You can forget about me if you like because I don't care for publicity.
The author denies he is motivated by attention-seeking, which is immediately recognizable as a
lie due to the very fact that he pens letters to police and journalists. Instead, he tries to frame
himself as a concerned citizen who is making a moral case for a Donna Lauria memorial.
Meta-information: Berkowitz later admitted that he loved the limelight.

T2P10. Sam's a thirsty lad and he won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood.
anxious to please Sam.
The author is again claiming that he is killing to please a figure called 'Sam', previously
identified as his father. However, where the descriptor 'father' or 'papa' had routinely appeared
before 'Sam' in the previous letter, it is conspicuously absent here.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was
a hoax.

T2P11. Mr. Breslin, sir,

Thank you.
By using terms such as 'sir' and 'thank you', the author is showing respect and even potentially
deference to the reader, journalist Jimmy Breslin.
Meta-information: Once captured, Berkowitz wrote to Breslin saying “Dear Mr. Breslin, It has
come to my attention that you wish to speak to me... I am quite disgusted with the way the Press
has been spreading lies about me but perhaps some of these can be ironed out in our meeting...
Please bring a beer when you come. Sincerely, David Berkowitz.”197 Seemingly, he continued to
trust and value the columnist.

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T2P12. don't think that because you haven't heard from me for a while that I went to sleep.
No, rather, I am still here. Like a spirit roaming the night.
seldom stopping to rest
There are two themes of these passages. The author needs to reaffirm his homicidal self by
receiving feedback from the audience (Breslin and the general public) which confirms the
authenticity of the homicidal self (third dynamic on the transformative triangle). Therefore, he
sends a communication to the media using his victims-as-soapboxdddddddd advising them 'don't
think that because you haven't heard from me for a while that I went to sleep... I am still here.'
The second theme is one of restlessness—possibly even insomnia ('don't think...that I went to
sleep', 'roaming the night', 'seldom stopping to rest').
Meta-information: Berkowitz claimed to have trouble sleeping and resting because of the dogs
barking in his neighbourhood.

T2P13. Thirsty, hungry

Until this moment, the author portrays 'Sam' as being thirsty for blood, and not himself. Here he
slips up and attribute this bloodlust to himself as well, perhaps indicating that the 'Sam'
explanation was a red-herring all along.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was a
hoax.

T2P14. I love my work

The author not only enjoys trolling for victims and killing them, but also sees it as his true
vocation. Knowing what we do about ETV offenders, this could imply he is unhappy in his
current career, or between jobs. The word 'work' may simultaneously refer to a 'work of art', with
the author viewing himself as a kind of homicidal performance artist. If this is the case, then it
demonstrates his belief that he has been elevated to a level of cultural significance where his
murders are actually appreciated by the public.
Meta-information: Following his arrest, Berkowitz stated to Dr. Abrahamsen “I finally had

dddddddd
The term victim-as-soapbox is not employed here to dismiss, minimize, or trivialize the victim; instead, it
identifies the fact that the media would have no reason or motive to publish the communication if the author had
not committed murder.

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convinced myself that it was good to [commit murder], necessary to do it, and that the public
wanted me to do it. The latter part I believe until this day. I believe that many were rooting for
me. This was the point in which the papers began to pick up vibes and information that
something big was happening out on the street.”198 Berkowitz was constantly shifting from one
dead-end job to another.

T2P15. Now, the void has been filled

The negative emotionality stemming from the author's self-discrepancy has been alleviated due
to the creation of his homicidal self. The word 'void' denotes 'emptiness', which is associated
with dejection-related emotions, rather than agitation.199
Meta-information: Berkowitz spoke of a legacy of suicidal ideation and depression which had
plagued him since childhood.

T2P16. Perhaps we shall meet face to face someday or perhaps I will be blown away by
cops with smoking .38's.
The author is hinting that both Breslin and the whole world will inevitably come to know him,
whether through arrest or suicide-by-cop. As the conditions under which the author will meet
Breslin are not outlined by the author, this could also constitute a threat.

T2P17. Whatever, if I shall be fortunate enough to meet you I will tell you all about Sam if
you like and I will introduce you to him. His name is 'Sam the terrible.'
The author promises to reveal everything about the 'Son of Sam' mystery to Breslin if they have
the opportunity to meet. His use of the word 'fortunate' once again suggest a reverence for the
journalist.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was a
hoax. Once captured, Berkowitz wrote to Breslin saying “Dear Mr. Breslin, It has come to my
attention that you wish to speak to me... I am quite disgusted with the way the Press has been
spreading lies about me but perhaps some of these can be ironed out in our meeting... Please
bring a beer when you come. Sincerely, David Berkowitz.”200 Seemingly, he continued to trust
and value the columnist.

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T2P18. Not knowing the [sic] what the future holds I shall say farewell and I will see you at
the next job. Or should I say you will see my handiwork at the next job?
Through the second dynamic of the transformative triangle, Breslin will be able to vicariously
glimpse the author through the secondary transformation of his next victim(s) which will lead to
Breslin, the Daily News', and society's own tertiary transformation.

T2P19. ‘Sam's creation’ .44

Instead of remaining consistent in naming his homicidal self—'Mr. Monster'—the author
identifies himself by a different sobriquet “‘Sam's creation’ .44”201 While the '.44' clearly
identifies the author as the '.44 caliber killer', the media's original moniker for him, his use of
'Sam's creation' implies that he does not believe that he is responsible for his murderous
behaviour. He was made the way he is by 'Sam.' Interestingly, the author does not once call 'Sam'
his father once in this whole letter, but does maintain that he was created by Sam.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was a
hoax.

T2P20. Here are some names to help you along. Forward them to the inspector for use by
N.C.I.C. Center. They have everything on computer, everything. They just might turn up,
from some other crimes. Maybe they could make associations.
The author is providing vague clues though the sincerity of his motives should be doubted given
his observable history of lies and contradictions.
Meta-information: Berkowitz would later claim that he was part of a cult called The Church of
the Process along with Sam Carr's sons and various other members. Subsequent investigations
have revealed this is a Satanic-panic hoax.

T2P21. ‘The Duke of Death’

'The Wicked King Wicker'
As he did with 'Son of Sam', the author has used alliteration to make these names sound better
aesthetically. He has also associated them with the aristocracy by using the title 'Duke' and
'King'.

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Meta-information: Sam Carr and his children lived at 316 Warburton Avenue, on the corner of
Wicker Street. Wicker Street led to the back of Berkowitz's apartment at 35 Pine Street (the
address has since been changed to 42 Pine Street).

T2P22. ‘The Twenty Two Disciples of Hell’

More cryptic allusions to a nefarious group of which we should be extremely skeptical.
Meta-information: Berkowitz would later claim that he was part of a cult called The Church of
the Process along with Sam Carr's sons and various other members. Subsequent investigations
have revealed this is a Satanic-panic hoax.

T2P23. John 'Wheaties'

The author reveals yet another possible accomplice.
Meta-information: One of Sam Carr's sons was named 'John' and his daughter was 'Wheat'.

T2P24. Rapist and Suffocator of Young Girls.

By calling “John 'Wheaties'”202 a rapist of young girls, the author attributes the “mostly young—
raped and slaughtered”203 he claimed rest “behind our house”204 in his previous letters to this
murderous acquaintance.
Meta-information: No remains have been discovered behind the Carr house, nor was any
member of the Carr family ever prosecuted for violent crimes.

T2P25. Please inform all the detectives working the slaying to remain.
Please inform all the detectives working the case that I wish them the best of luck.
‘Keep 'em digging, drive on, think positive, get off your butts,
The author does not express any antagonism toward law enforcement, to the contrary, he
encourages them to pursue him.
Meta-information: Berkowitz asked “What took you so long?”205 to police officers when he was
captured. He immediately admitted to the killings, and was observed smiling.

T2P26. knock on coffins,

The author seems to be implying that the cops investigate the dead or cemeteries. This could be a

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play on words for 'knocking on wood' though there seems no corresponding reason to invoke this
superstition.
Meta-information: The term 'pine box' is a linguistic icon and symbol for coffins. Berkowitz
lived at 35 Pine Street in Yonkers, in a building called Pine Hill towers.206 He would later admit
to inserting this clue intentionally.207

T2P27. Upon my capture

Here, the author contradicts earlier statements that he will almost certainly be killed in a shoot-
out with police. It also suggests that he expects to be apprehended, and that the idea does not
cause him discomfort.
Meta-information: Berkowitz asked “What took you so long?”208 to police officers when he was
captured. He immediately admitted to the killings, and was observed smiling.

T2P28. I promise to buy all the guys working the case a new pair of shoes if I can get up the
money.
The author is again encouraging the police, and noting the amount of work it must be taking
them to catch him. His suggestion that he might not be able to afford the shoes implies that he
does not have a high-paying job.
Meta-information: Berkowitz was a postal worker.

T2P29. Sam's a thirsty lad

The use of the word 'lad' which invokes boyhood or youth is a strange one considering Sam has
previously been described as both the author's father and as old. This inconsistency, when paired
with the author's self-description as a 'brat' who is also 'thirsty, hungry' may suggest that Sam is
not a separate person at all, but a fabrication or another dimension of the author's personality.
Meta-information: In a 1979 press conference, Berkowitz admitted that the Sam Carr angle was a
hoax.

T2P30. Son of Sam [symbol]

As the symbol appears immediately after the words 'Son of Sam' it is reasonable to assume that it
is the author's personal symbol. The symbol consists of an 'x' shape with the ♀ symbol for the

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female gender in the right corner, and that of the male ♂ opposing it on the left. In the top space
is a Christian cross symbol placed diametrically opposed from a letter 's' in the bottom space.
We interpret this letter 's' to stand for 'Sam'. Beyond being an initial, the fact that the 's' is
positioned across from the cross along with the author's association of 'Sam' with demonic forces
indicates that it represents Christ's theological opposite, the Devil and evil.eeeeeeee This pictorial
intersection of femininity with the Devil could either represent the perceived evil of women—
remember 'wemon'—or their consumption by the demonic forces driving the author.
Meta-information: Berkowitz admitted to killing because he hated women, and that he created a
religious meta-delusion to facilitate his actions and provide him with an excuse if caught.

'Son of Sam' Corpus Analysis and Theoretical Synthesis

The first step in analyzing any corpus of victim-as-soapbox communications is to
determine if an offender is lying, what he is lying about and when, and then to deduce why. The
most obvious method is to look for internal contradictions within and/or between
communications. In the 'Son of Sam' case, for instance, the author claims to be killing at the
behest of 'Sam' (T1P13, T1P19, T1P25, T2P10); on two occasions stating he does not want to
kill but is being forced to (T1P25, T2P10). Yet, there are twice as many instances (T1P23,
T2P13, T2P14, T2P15) where the author states he derives satisfaction and fulfillment from
hunting and murdering his victims. Only one of these positions can be true. Ockham's Razor, or
the Law of Parsimony, which espouses Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem—
“plurality should not be posited without necessity”209—is a useful tool here. Let us consider the
following possible scenarios:
1) The author paradoxically lives for and wishes to stop killing. Ultimately, he is forced to by
'Sam', an abusive blood-drinking patriarch, who keeps him tied up behind the house or locked
indoors. Moreover, he is affiliated with other serial murderers such as 'John 'Wheaties' – Rapist
and Suffocator of Young Girls.' The author sends letters to the police and media revealing leads
and clues, yet Sam and John 'Wheaties' both either (a) allow him to do so, or (b) somehow do not
know he is doing it. Alternatively, the author is punished by Sam and/or John 'Wheaties', but
decides to send the letters anyway, making no mention of the likelihood of punishment.

In Berkowitz's schema, anyway. The true opposite of Christianity would be disbelief, with Satan just
eeeeeeee

considered another character in the Christian canon.

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2) The author is a psychotic who falsely believes he is under the control of his father, Sam, and
thus holds strong conflicting attitudes regarding his murderous mission. He also believes he is
associated with a 'rapist and suffocator of young girls' called 'John 'Wheaties.' Despite these
pronounced delusions, the author is nevertheless able to keep a job or obtain a succession of jobs
which allow him to afford a car and a residence in the vicinity of New York City, while eluding
authorities for over a year.
3) The author is a lone non-psychotic who commits murder and lies about 'Father Sam' and 'John
Wheaties' because these actions benefit him.
Clearly, the last scenario is the most parsimonious, and reinforced by the author's unusual habit
of mentioning his 'father' by his first name (T1P6, T1P8, T1P9, T1P11, T1P13, T1P20, T2P10,
T2P17, T2P19, T2P30).
If the author has proactively provided a false motive while denying more plausible
motivations attributed to him, we should consider the possibility that he is impression managing.
That the first sentence of the author's initial communication denies his misogyny (T1P2, T1P4)
should be regarded with great suspicion, particularly given the nature of his crimes. More to the
point, he also laughably claims to be disinterested in publicity (T2P9) while actively engaged in
seeking it. Why would the author admit to being a murderer—arguably one of the most
stigmatized statuses in Western society—while denying being a woman-hating wannabe-
celebrity? Precisely because the offender is most ego-dystonic about his gender, sexuality, and
(lack of) notability, he wishes to hide his insecurities from us. We may now deduce that he is
primarily a heterosexual who has not been in a relationship during the span of his crimes, and
may have a complete non-history with members of the opposite sex. This is supported by the
findings of this study in which only Mark Chapman was romantically involved at the time of his
murders. Furthermore, 60% of the sample had no known sexual history whatsoever.
Having dismissed the Sam/Wheaties explanation and established the offender's motive, an
examination of the remaining text reveals a classic expressive/transformative process. The theme
of confinement, isolation, and alienation is established literally (T1P17) and figuratively (T1P11,
T1P12, T1P27, T2P1) throughout the corpus. The author is adamant that he does not wish to be
this way (T1P17, T1P26). Unsurprisingly, this alienation is accompanied by statements in which
he perceives himself as childish (T1P6, T1P7, T2P29). This pairing is consistent with ETV's
position on maturity and socialization. If we accept that the author occupies a socially isolated,

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hermit-like existence and is infantile, his claim that he is 'chubby' (T1P22) along with his
constant references to ingesting items (T1P9, T2P3), may lead us to accept that he is indeed
overweight. Social isolationffffffff incentivizes him to retreat indoors, where overeating and lack of
exercise lead him to become fat. Certainly, this contradicts the descriptions provided by eye
witnesses210, but they are notoriously unreliable.211
These conclusions allow us to glimpse an actual/own that is almost certainly discrepant
from the author's ideal/own. Further evidence of this comes in the form of dejection-related
emotions, including suicidal ideation (T1P19, T2P16), expressed in the first letter. In both letters,
the author hints at an ego-syntonic homicidal self (T1P23, T2P14)—a 'Monster' (T1P5, T1P22,
T1P23) who wanders into civilization at night to devour (T1P23) 'princess' after 'princess'
(T1P21)—narrowing his self-discrepancy, and thereby reducing these dejection-related emotions
(T2P15). He encourages the police to pursue him (T1P29, T1P30, T2P25). Every offender in the
sample who specifically mentioned the police in their communications showed a
disproportionate interest and involvement in sub-hegemonic hero culture: law enforcement,
firefighting, the military, and/or survivalism. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume the author is
of a similar disposition. By transforming from an irrelevant subordinated masculinity to an
antagonistic hyperreal Monster masculinity, the author has established a place of relevance in the
narrative. Small wonder he welcomes law enforcement, without malice, as rivals; they are the
Yang to his Yin. When they fulfill their archetypal sub-hegemonic Hero roles by bringing him to
justice—the metaphorical slaying of the Monster—they reveal the author's identity, and finalize
the pseudo-mythological narrative212 he has constructed for public consumption in films,
television programs, newspapers, true crime paperbacks, and doctoral dissertations.gggggggg Put
another way: they give him the fame and relevance he denies he craves (T2P9). Though he warns
the police and public that he will not be taken alive (T1P19, T2P16), he also contradicts this
(T2P27), likely because he wishes to bear witness to his own notoriety.
As previously stated, there are many reasons to suspect that notability is one of the author's
primary motives. On several occasions, he equates his homicidal activity with his life's work
(T1P23, T2P14, T2P18). The fact that the author has accessed an automobile for over a year

Of course, possessing the physical stigma of being overweight may have contributed to his isolation in the first
ffffffff

place.
gggggggg
Perhaps this is why he gave them clues as to his identity and whereabouts (T2P21, T2P23, T2P26).

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makes it likely that he is employedhhhhhhhh. However, our findings that every offender in our
sample were either unemployed, worked sporadically, or unsatisfied in their career (see Chapter
3), coupled with the author's self-discrepancy crisis and perception of murder as vocation, makes
it probable that he either laboured miserably in one menial positioniiiiiiii or drifted aimlessly from
one job to the next. His occupation(s) did not confer the prestige on him he so desired, so he
made murder his true profession.
Perhaps this is why the author is surprisingly polite to Captain Joseph Borrelli and Daily
News journalist Jimmy Breslin (T1P1, T2P11): he respects their status and notability, particularly
Breslin (T2P17). Another equally likely explanation is that he is a genuinely well-mannered and
non-offensive character in his day-to-day life. Meekness may be a cause or symptom of his
social isolation.
In summary, the communications paint a portrait of a chubby, sporadically employed
bachelor and consummate loner, who, having failed to court women, identifies as a Monster and
embarks on a campaign to destroy them. A timid and childish connoisseur of Hero culture, he
hopes to be pursued and captured by the police, ridding him of dejection-related emotions and
garnering him a measure of celebrity.
Although many of these conclusions can be readily observed in a suspect, in a city the size
of New York, the pool of people matching this description remains unmanageably large. Yet,
considered retrospectively, Berkowitz's letters contained enough information to lead the police
right to his door. During an interview with Berkowitz at the Central New York Psychiatric
Center on October 26, 1978, Berkowitz confirmed attorney Felix Gilroy's suspicions that the
killer had intentionally included clues as to where he lived in his letters213 because “I wanted the
police to come and find me.”214 In the letter to Captain Joseph Borrelli, Berkowitz refers to a
'Sam', states that he is an outsider on a different wavelength, and refers to himself as 'the Chubby
Behemouth.' Pooling this information with 'The Wicked King Wicker' and 'John Wheaties' from
the Breslin letter, we find veiled references to Sam Carr; Sam's son, John Carr, and daughter,
Wheat Carr; and Wicker—the street which Berkowitz's apartment building exited onto.jjjjjjjj

hhhhhhhh
The chronically unemployed non-student offenders in our sample did not own an automobile at the time of
their killings. See Danny Rolling, Luka Magnotta, Daniel Gonzalez, and Anthony Arkwright.
iiiiiiii
Furthermore, there is nothing in the communications to indicate that the author had exceptional intelligence or
ability.
jjjjjjjj
Writing in his The Ultimate Evil, Satanic cult conspiracist Maury Terry notes that he had searched the
phonebook for all entries corresponding to the surname “Carr” and found an entry for “John Wheat Carr” at Sam

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Furthermore, there are a number of letters Berkowitz sent to his former landlords the Cassaras,
the Carr family across the street, and his downstairs neighbour Craig Glassman, which should
have immediately linked him to the Son of Sam murders. Five of the letters are reproduced and
analyzed below:

Text Analysis: Letter 3

When: April 10, 1977
To Whom: Sam Carr, resident of 316 Warburton Street, Yonkers
Caveat: This fragment of the full letter is available to the public.
Text:
This is to inform you that I'm in the process of filing legal papers in Yonkers City Court
to have one of your dogs removed from our property cause he is a public nuisance (1)...
Our lives have been torn apart because of this dog (2)...Anonymous (3)215

Note: In George Carpozi's Son of Sam, the author claims that in this letter “The writer... asked
[Sam Carr] the 64-year-old retired City of Yonkers employee to rid himself of his black
Labrador retriever, Harvey, a trained guard dog.”216

T3P1. I'm in the process of filing legal papers in Yonkers City Court to have one of your
dogs removed from our property cause he is a public nuisance
Rather than going to speak with the Carrs in person, the author sends a letter explaining that he is
taking legal action. This seems to indicate he is uncomfortable with face-to-face confrontation.
As there is no reason to inform the Carrs that he is filing the papers, one might conclude that the
claim is a bluff. The use of the term 'our property' seems to indicate that the author shares
property with the Carrs—a fact which, as home owners, they would know to be untrue. Thus, the
author has an incorrect or distorted view of what constitutes property. Another possibility is that
the dog in question, Harvey, routinely wanders onto the author's property, although this was
likely not the case, as Carr seems to have always tied Harvey up.
Meta-information: Berkowitz hated barking dogs. He would later shoot Carr's dog on April 27.

Carr's address. Most likely, this referred to a shared telephone number for both John and his sister, Wheat, as they
both resided at their father's home on Warburton Avenue.

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T3P2. Our lives have been torn apart because of this dog
The author suggests that there are other parties, perhaps neighbours or family members, beyond
himself
who have experienced chronic distress because of Carr's black Labrador retriever, Harvey.
Meta-information: There was no 'our.' Berkowitz lived alone and hated barking dogs. He would
later shoot Carr's dog on April 27.

T3P3. Anonymous
The author refuses to disclose his identity but nevertheless signs the note with the word
'anonymous.' There seems little motivation to do that other than to create a sense of mystery and
dread in the recipient(s) of the letter. This is in keeping with the general threatening tone of the
communication.

Text Analysis: Letter 4

When: April 19, 1977
To Whom: Sam Carr, resident of 316 Warburton Street
Text:

Samuel Carr (1),

I have asked you kindly to stop that dog from howling all day long, yet he continues to do
so. I pleaded with you. (2) I told you how this is destroying my family. We have no peace,
no rest. (3) Now I know what kind of person you are and what kind of a family you are.
You are cruel and inconsiderate. You have no love for any other human beings.(4) Your
[sic] selfish, Mr. Carr. My life is destroyed now. I have nothing to lose anymore.(5) I can
see that there shall be no peace in my life, or my families [sic] life until I end yours.(6)
You wicked evil man—child of the devil.(7) I curse you and your family forever. I pray to
God that he takes your whole family off the face of this earth. People like you should not
be allowed to live on this planet. (8)
'A Citizen'(9)217

T4P1. Samuel Carr

The author addresses the letter using the recipient's formal first name and last name, without
employing cordialities such as 'dear' or titles like 'Mr.' The tone is direct and confrontational, yet
the author still has not spoken to Carr in person.

333
T4P2. I have asked you kindly to stop that dog from howling all day long, yet he continues
to do so. I pleaded with you.
The author is stating that he has made attempts to be reasonable, placing the blame on the
recipient. His use of the adjective 'kindly' is particularly interesting because his initial letter was
far from cordial. Instead, we interpreted the language to be antagonistic. There is a hysterical
quality implicit in his use of the word 'pleaded'.
Meta-information: According to Carpozi, in his first letter to Sam Carr, Berkowitz asked him to
get rid of the dog. He would later shoot Carr's dog on April 27.

T4P3. I told you how this is destroying my family. We have no peace, no rest.
Again, the author brings up the devastation Harvey's howling is causing to the cohesion and
mental health of his family.
Meta-information: There was no 'my family.' Berkowitz lived alone and hated barking dogs. He
would later shoot Carr's dog on April 27.

T4P4. Now I know what kind of person you are and what kind of a family you are. You are
cruel and inconsiderate. You have no love for any other human beings. Your [sic] selfish,
Mr. Carr.
Here, the author leaps to paranoid conclusions about Sam Carr and his family based on very little
information. Where the judgment 'inconsiderate' may be appropriate if Harvey was still noisy,
the idea that Sam, and perhaps his entire family, are 'cruel', 'selfish', and 'have no love for any
other human beings' because their dog continues barking shows an eagerness to demonize the
family and a penchant for the dramatic. Note the misspelling of the word 'you're' as 'your'.
Meta-information: The word 'cruel' appears repeatedly in the letters Berkowitz would later send
to his downstairs neighbour, Craig Glassman.

T4P5. My life is destroyed now. I have nothing to lose anymore.

This statement shows that the author, rather than seeing the noise disturbances as a temporary
annoyance which can be dealt with in a number of ways, declares his life 'destroyed'—that is,
beyond redemption. Furthermore, he explicitly states his lack of stake in conformity and its

334
permanence. He projects the cause of this and his negative emotionality onto Sam Carr, his dog,
and family. Interestingly, here he switches to the singular voice (e.g., 'my' and 'I' over 'we have
no rest'). If not for the following line (T4P6), it would be tempting to entertain the possibility that
the author has become estranged from his family.
Meta-information: Berkowitz lived alone and suffered dejection-related emotions resulting from
an unstable sense of self.

T4P6. I can see that there shall be no peace in my life, or my families [sic] life until I end
yours.
Though mentioning himself first, the author re-establishes that his family is still suffering from
the effects of Harvey's barking. By including a death threat as the only possible solution, the
offender not only confirms his suspected mental instability but also commits the crime of
aggravated harassment. There are marked paranoid traits.
Meta-information: Berkowitz lived alone and would later shoot Carr's dog on April 27.

T4P7. You wicked evil man—child of the devil.

Continuing with the observations made of T4P4, the adjectives and ad-hominems escalate from
'cruel' to 'wicked' and 'evil', veering into Abrahamic religion with the mention of a singular
'devil.' This is particularly telling given the magnitude of Carr's transgressions (i.e., having a
noisy dog) versus the author's statement that he must end Carr's life.
Meta-information: The word 'wicked' appears in the Jimmy Breslin letter at T2P21. Berkowitz
was heavily influenced by the film Rosemary's Baby in which a woman believes she has given
birth to the devil's child.

T4P8. I curse you and your family forever. I pray to God that he takes your whole family
off the face of this earth. People like you should not be allowed to live on this planet.
Here the author oscillates between what appears to be superstition/Black Magic—placing an
eternal curse on the Carr family—and paradoxically appealing to the Abrahamic 'God' to
eradicate them. He makes a childish declaration about the types of people who should be
permitted to exist, showing an authoritarian bent indicative of Fromm's necrophilous
personality.218

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Meta-information: Berkowitz was meta-delusional and showed a lifelong fixation with
Christianity. He also believed in curses stating that a secret force turned people away from him.

T4P9. 'A Citizen'

The author does not provide any name or means of contacting him. He uses the term 'a citizen' to
mask his identity while appealing to the dignity of local action and civic decency. This shows an
erratic moral and social self, which rapidly oscillates between anti-sociality and civility, malice
and decency. This points to severe interpersonal dysfunction and a potential personality disorder.

Text Analysis: Letter 5

When: June 6, 1977
To Whom: Sam Carr, resident of 316 Warburton
Caveat: The text of this letter to Carr is not available, however it is notable for listing the
residence of Jack and Nann Cassara at 174 Coligni Avenue, New Rochelle as a return address
(T5P1).

T5P1. Jack and Nann Cassara at 174 Coligni Avenue, New Rochelle
The point of the letter seems to have been to connect the Carrs to the Cassaras by giving them a
reason to communicate and providing addresses to facilitate their communication.
Meta-information: Berkowitz had rented a room at the Cassaras' house in February 1976 but was
tormented by the sound of barking dogs, and promptly left in April.

Text Analysis: Letter 6

When: June 9 or 10, 1977
To Whom: The Cassaras (Get-well card)
Text:
Dear Jack(1),
I'm sorry to hear about the fall you took from the roof of your house. Just want to say 'I'm
sorry' (2) but I'm sure it won't be long until you feel much better, healthy, well, and strong
(3): Please be careful next time (4). Since your [sic] going to be confined for a long time,
let us know if Nann needs anything (5). Sincerely: Sam and Francis [sic] (6)219

Return address on the envelope: “Mr and Mrs Sam Carr, 316 Warburton Ave, Yonkers” 220 (7)

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Extra: An illustration of a German Shepherd was on the card. This icon represents the various
annoying dogs in the neighbourhoods where Berkowitz lived.

T6P1. Dear Jack

Unlike the Sam Carr communications, this letter begins cordially and informally.
Meta-information: Berkowitz had met Jack Cassara personally.

T6P2. I'm sorry to hear about the fall you took from the roof of your house. Just want to
say 'I'm sorry'
The letter makes no mention of how the author heard of any fall, and apologizes twice within
two sentences. This could indicate that the author has little to say, or may be taken as a threat
that the author could cause Jack Cassara to have a 'fall' in the future.
Meta-information: Jack Cassara had not fallen from his roof.

T6P3. I'm sure it won't be long until you feel much better, healthy, well, and strong
This is a hackneyed and thoughtless overture. As the author has not seen Cassara's condition,
how could he make such a determination?
Meta-information: Jack Cassara had not fallen from his roof.

T6P4. Please be careful next time.

The author implies that Cassara's 'fall' was a result of his carelessness, and implores him not to
be this way the next time he is on his roof.
Meta-information: Jack Cassara had not fallen from his roof.

T6P5. Since your [sic] going to be confined for a long time, let us know if Nann needs
anything.
The use of the word 'confined' without any other descriptor (e.g., 'to a wheelchair', 'to a bed')
demonstrates the author's lack of knowledge of the situation but also, when combined with the
grammatical error, his ineptitude with the complexities of the English language. Note the
misspelling of the word 'you're' as 'your'.
Meta-information: Jack Cassara had not fallen from his roof.

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T6P6. Sincerely: Sam and Francis [sic]
This name-dropping seems to have been the main point of an otherwise platitudinous letter
As the female 'Frances' is spelled in the male form, and thus incorrectly, it is obvious that the
author is neither Sam or Frances Carr. Moreover, his lack of mastery over linguistic nuance is
again laid bare.
Meta-information: Sam and Frances Carr had never met the Cassaras.

T6P7. Mr and Mrs Sam Carr, 316 Warburton Ave, Yonkers

Again, the point of the letter seems to have been to connect the Carrs to the Cassaras by giving
them a reason to communicate and providing addresses to facilitate their communication.
Clearly, by strategically mentioning 'Jack' and 'Nann' the author has ensured that the Cassaras
would not simply dismiss the letter as being intended for somebody else and shipped to the
wrong address.
Meta-information: Berkowitz was a former tenant of the Cassaras and could see the Carrs' house
from his apartment.

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Text Analysis: Letter 7

Figure 16. Berkowitz's (First) Second Letter to Craig Glassman, June 1977
When: June 7, 17 or 18, 1977
To Whom: Craig Glassman
Text:
Craig Glassman(1),
You have been chosen. You have been chosen to die. (2) Craig I curse your mothers [sic]
grave. I curse your mothers [sic] grave (3). I am pissing on her Craig. urinating on her
head (4)Your mouth is filled with cum. your blood is sour. (5)You, Craig Glassman, are
truly Satan's child, and now, he wants you by his side. Come join him in death (6) little
ones (7). Master Glassman (8), you are a man with power (the power of darkness) (9).
You are hereby ordered to onleash [sic] your terror upon the people. 'Destroy all good and
ruin peoples' lives. Begin immediately!'(10 Mighty Craig, where is your weapon. (11) If
you don't obey thes [sic] commands, the commands of your father then you will be
punished. I swear, Glassman, your life will be pure Hell. (12)
We will kill you. We will murder you. (13) Remember, Craig that your mother the harlot
the lesbian whore wants to love your [sic] (4, 14) so make her happy-kil [sic] some your
child. (14) Remember if you dont [sic] do as we say you will surely die a premature
death. (12)
Your brothers & sisters(15)

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 Craig darling (16)
Craig Glassman the cruelest sickest man on earth. cruel Glassman, cruel Glassman, mean,
terrible, cruel, hateful Craig Glassman (17),
Die Craig Die (2)
Return address: Mother, the Cemetery (19) 174 Coligni Avenue, New Rochelle, NY
10801(20)221

T7P1. Craig Glassman

The author addresses the letter using the recipient's first and last names, without employing
cordialities such as 'dear' or titles like 'Mr.' The tone is direct and confrontational, yet the author
has never spoken to Glassman in person.

T7P2. You have been chosen. You have been chosen to die.
Die Craig Die
The author does not state who made the choice for Glassman to die, creating the possibility that
there is more than one party involved. This is a clear death threat.
Meta-information: On August 6, Berkowitz started a fire outside Glassman's apartment door and
threw .22 calibre bullets into it which were intended to shoot through Glassman when he went to
investigate.

T7P3. Craig I curse your mothers grave. I curse your mothers grave.
If Glassman's mother was indeed dead, this would demonstrate that the author either knew
Glassman or his family, or had some other way of obtaining this information. This is an
unequivocal expression of malice, highly personal, and may point to an offender who is highly
religious or superstitious. On both occasions, the word 'mother's' is misspelled 'mothers'.
Meta-information: It cannot be currently determined whether Glassman's mother was alive or
deceased at the time the letter was written. Berkowitz's adopted mother, however, was.

T7P4. I am pissing on her Craig. urinating on her head

Remember, Craig that your mother the harlot the lesbian whore wants to love your [sic]
The author is using abject symbolism and stigmatizing labels related to sexuality to provoke an
emotional response in the recipient. As he cannot be literally urinating on Mrs. Glassman's head,
this demonstrates that the author may readily use metaphor. The use of the word 'harlot' once

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again points toward a religious offender from one of the Abrahamic faiths. Note the 'waste'
motif.
Meta-information: There is no evidence that Glassman's mother's body was desecrated, or that
she ever engaged in prostitution or had same-sex attractions. Berkowitz is arguably the most
religious offender in this sample

T7P5. Your mouth is filled with cum. your blood is sour.

The author is using abject symbolism to provoke an emotional response in the recipient. He
appeals to the stigmatization of homosexual acts and communicates an image of Glassman as a
subordinated masculinity with polluted blood. Again, the speech is metaphorical at best, if not
just intended to shock. Note the blood motif.
Meta-information: Glassman was heterosexual and a deputy sheriff.

T7P6. You, Craig Glassman, are truly Satan's child, and now, he wants you by his side.
Come join him in death
This language is nearly identical to T4P7 in one of the letters to Sam Carr. The allusion to Satan
offers more proof of a high level of religiosity in the author.
Meta-information: Berkowitz was heavily influenced by the film Rosemary's Baby in which a
woman believes she has given birth to the devil's child. He would later lie that both Carr and
Glassman were demons or involved in a Satanic cult. Berkowitz is arguably the most religious
offender in this sample

T7P7. little ones

The use of this term is patronizing, and seems to reinforce the notion that the recipient is a child
as claimed in T7P6. However, Glassman is an individual, while the plural 'little ones' seems to
refer to multiple people.

T7P8. Master Glassman

Intriguingly, here the author abruptly switches from treating Glassman as a victim who has been
'chosen to die' and the recipient of numerous insults, to a 'master'—a role indicating that the
author is beneath him in an unspecified power structure.

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Meta-information: Berkowitz would later lie that Glassman was involved in a Satanic cult.

T7P9. you are a man with power (the power of darkness).

Continuing with the notion that Glassman is a 'master', the author now attributes a destructive
supernatural force to him.
Meta-information: Berkowitz would later lie that Glassman was involved in a Satanic cult.

T7P10. You are hereby ordered to onleash [sic] your terror upon the people. 'Destroy all
good and ruin peoples' lives. Begin immediately!'
Having encouraged Glassman to believe that he was a 'master' possessing the 'power of
darkness', the author then paradoxically issues him orders. Glassman is placed on one-side of a
black and white moral worldview—pointing to the author's religiosity again—and instructed to
commit malevolent acts. At this point it is unclear whether he is superior to the author or the
other way around. This may indicate that the author suffers from problems with interpersonal
communication and fitting in to power structures.
Meta-information: Berkowitz is arguably the most religious offender in this sample and socially
incompetent.

T7P11. Mighty Craig, where is your weapon.

The author seems to be trying to convince Glassman to procure a weapon to use in the
commission of murders. Note the author's failure to use a question mark.

T7P12. If you don't obey thes [sic] commands, the commands of your father then you will
be punished. I swear, Glassman, your life will be pure Hell.
Remember if you dont [sic] do as we say you will surely die a premature death
Switching power-positions once more, the author then threatens Glassman with death and misery
if he does not commit murder, as outlined at the beginning of the letter. The reference to 'your
father' is presumably the devil, harkening back to T7P6. The author has capitalized 'Hell'
unnecessarily, another hint that he is religiously-minded. The author uses the plural personal-
pronoun 'we' to imply that there are multiple agents threatening him. The sudden appearance of a
group of prodigal murderers should be regarded with suspicion, as the threat of power in

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numbers would generally be established earlier in the communication. Furthermore, by stating
that Glassman's father is the devil and then informing him of his father's commands, the author is
taking the role of an intermediary who presumably speaks to 'the devil' or somebody associated
with him.
Meta-information: Berkowitz acted alone. On August 6, Berkowitz started a fire outside
Glassman's apartment door and threw .22 calibre bullets into it which were intended to shoot
through Glassman when he went to investigate.

T7P13. We will kill you. We will murder you.

For the second time, the author uses the plural personal-pronoun 'we' twice in rapid succession to
enhance the gravity of his death threats.
Meta-information: Berkowitz acted alone. On August 6, Berkowitz started a fire outside
Glassman's apartment door and threw .22 calibre bullets into it which were intended to shoot
through Glassman when he went to investigate.222

T7P14. Remember, Craig that your mother the harlot the lesbian whore wants to love your
[sic] so make her happy-kil [sic] some your child. so make her happy-kil [sic] some your
child.
Though the multiple grammatical and spelling errors make this passage difficult to interpret, it
seems that the author is telling Glassman that his dead mother will be pleased if he commits
murder. This is the third strategy the author has employed in this letter to try to persuade
Glassman to kill.

T7P15. Your brothers & sisters

The author of the letter is claiming that it is from Glassman's figurative, not literal, siblings. If
Glassman is a child of the devil, this implies his 'brothers & sisters' are also children of the devil.
Meta-information: The letter was from David Berkowitz alone.

T7P16. Craig darling

Given the mixture of derision and respect directed at Glassman in this letter, it is difficult to
ascertain whether the term 'darling' is meant to be insulting or endearing.

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T7P17. Craig Glassman the cruelest sickest man on earth. cruel Glassman, cruel Glassman,
mean, terrible, cruel, hateful Craig Glassman
The content of this passage is restricted to pure vitriol directed against the recipient.
Meta-information: The adjective 'cruel' was similarly used to describe Sam Carr.

T7P19. Return address: Mother, the Cemetery

One of the most relevant passages, this could either refer to Glassman's supposedly dead mother
(referenced in T7P3 and T7P4) or the author's own mother. In the first instance, it supports the
notion that this message is coming from a supernatural power emanating from the grave. The
second might mean that the author's dead mother is an index causally linked to his antisocial
behaviour and advocating of violence.
Meta-information: Berkowitz's adopted mother, Pearl, was literally interred in a cemetery at the
time of the writing. It cannot be currently determined whether Glassman's mother was alive or
deceased at the time the letter was written.

T7P20. 174 Coligni Avenue, New Rochelle, NY 10801

The author provides a return address which actually exists, but is not a cemetery.
Meta-information: This address was Berkowitz's residence from February-April, 1976, and home
to his former landlords Jack and Nann Cassara.

Secondary Corpus Analysis

The old adage that serial killers secretly wish to be caught is generally untrue, though
David Berkowitz presents a notable exception. By scrawling the return addresses of neighbours
and former landlords on envelopes containing threatening, offensive, or peculiar letters, then
sending these letters to other neighbours and landlords, Berkowitz was intentionally facilitating
communication between the victims of his scatological writings. Specifically, his June 6 letter to
Sam Carr and subsequent letter to Craig Glassman both included a return address (T5P1, T7P20)
belonging to the Cassaras: the offender's former landlords in New Rochelle. Soon after, the
Cassaras received a get-well card from “Sam and Francis [sic]”223 with the Carrs' address at 316
Warburton Avenue listed on the back of the envelope (T6P7). The families were completely

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unknown to each other. Completing the circle, Berkowitz's last letter to Craig Glassman on
supposedly began with the phrase “I know Captain Carr put you up to this...”224 The result could
have been his arrest for the 'Son of Sam' murders before he had the chance to kill Stacy
Moskowitz and seriously injure Robert Violante on July 31, 1977. After receiving their bogus
'get-well' card, Mrs. Cassara had telephoned Mrs. Carr. When the Carrs disclosed that the content
of their own harassing notes was their dog, Harvey, who had been shot and injured on the
morning of April 27, a member of the Cassara family connected the incident to their former
tenant, David Berkowitz, who had also complained of the howling dogs. Berkowitz had suddenly
left the same month the Carrs began receiving their hate mail. Mrs. Carr explained that they had
already spoken with detectives from Yonkers, so the Cassaras reported the incident and
Berkowitz's name to the New Rochelle police. The police ascertained that Berkowitz was a 24-
year-old former soldier turned Bronx postal worker who was now living at 35 Pine Street in
Yonkers. As Berkowitz was not in their jurisdiction, they did not investigate him, but wisely sent
his name and address to Yonkers police.225 Detectives from Yonkers noted that Berkowitz lived
so close to the Carrs that both homes looked on to each other.
Upon speaking with his neighbours, they learned that Berkowitz had run downstairs
shouting “I don't like dogs barking.”226 After checking Berkowitz's address before he had moved
to New Rochelle, they found that an 84-year-old woman downstairs had received a threatening
noise complaint letter and that the superintendent's dog had been fatally shot.227 Even though
they were not working the case, the Yonkers detectives concluded that Berkowitz and 'Son of
Sam' might be one and the same. They spoke face-to-face with Detective Richard Salverson of
the NYPD who was specifically visiting departments in Yonkers, New Rochelle, and Mount
Vernon due to their geographical proximity to the Bronx and Queens (via bridges over the East
River), the boroughs where the Son of Sam attacks had occurred.228 Despite the Yonkers
detectives reportedly being told they had the best suspect by Salverson, for some reason the
NYPD never pursued the Berkowitz lead. Following the murder of Stacy Moskowitz, Sam Carr
had even visited the Task Force to inform them about Berkowitz and ask when they were going
to arrest him.229 According to Gibson, Berkowitz had also included the Cassaras return address
on one of the letters he had left for Craig Glassman (T7P20). This would have joined the
Cassaras to the Carrs and Glassman through letters—the Carr and Cassara communications also
both contained misspellings of the word 'you're' (T4P4, T6P5)—and Sam and Glassman, who

345
lived one floor below Berkowitz, through geographic proximity. Berkowitz had wreaked further
havoc in his neighbourhood. On May 16, 1977, he had set fire to the home of Robert Neto at 18
Wicker Street using a Molotov cocktail, though was never identified as the culprit.230
Though Yonkers detectives did a terrific job in recognizing the obvious links to 'Son of
Sam' and reporting them to the NYPD, who failed to act on this information in a timely fashion,
this is often not the case.
A practical solution is to develop a national computer database—DarkChatter—to log,
process, and obscene, threatening, and/or harassing texts. Such communications would include
letters, digital messages, and transcripts of telephone calls. Every text would have corresponding
data consisting of (1) the names and addresses of the recipients of the communications, (2) the
names and addresses of the recipients' family members, (3) the names and addresses of suspects,
and (4) any other pertinent information. Berkowitz's May 30, 1977 letter to Jimmy Breslin would
have caught the following crucial words in the corpus data: 'Sam,' 'Wicker,' 'John,' and
'Wheaties.' When Sam Carr and the Cassaras brought their own letters to the attention of the
police, the corpus data 'Sam' from the Cassaras' letter along with the corresponding data of Sam
Carr's children's names 'John' and 'Wheat'(ies) from the letter Carr himself had received, would
have linked at three points to the corpus data of the Breslin letter. The algorithm would then
establish a possible connection between the author of the anonymous letters sent to Sam Carr and
the Cassaras and Breslin's 'Son of Sam' letter. As the Carrs and Cassaras believed that David
Berkowitz had sent the letters, Berkowitz would have become a primary suspect in the Son of
Sam killings. A cursory review of the letters combined with a visit to Berkowitz's apartment
would have revealed that his building exited onto Wicker Street, and that Berkowitz himself was
overweight, consistent with the 'Chubby Behemouth' moniker in the Borrelli letter. Upon
knocking on Berkowitz's door, investigators would ask to be invited inside his apartment to
speak with him. If permitted entry, they would have been privy to a whole new secret archive of
Berkowitz's writings, in the form of his scribblings on his wall. The phrases “KILL FOR SAM
CARR/SAM CARR MY MASTER”231 and “In this hole lives the wicked king”232 correlate with
the 'Son of Sam' and 'Wicked King Wicker' phrases in the Breslin letter. This would be sufficient
evidence to lead to an arrest and issuance of formal search warrants. In the event that Berkowitz
refused to speak to the investigators, their suspicions would have deepened, and he could have
been placed on surveillance.

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 A final thought: Berkowitz's own words reveal that we must not only consider the message
of a handwritten communication, but also whether it was done in cursive or printing, and the
style of the lettering: “The reason I printed the letters to Captain Borrelli and Breslin was for
effect. I wrote those two out first in longhand. Then I wrote them again in print without any
changes, I thought the printing was more ghoulish looking.”233 Berkowitz, the 'Monster', was
deliberately manifesting his demonic meta-delusion in his handwriting to affect primary and
tertiary transformation through the tertiary-primary dynamic.

4.8 Colin Ireland: Victim-as-canvas/soapbox

Though the 'Son of Sam' and 'Gay Slayer' cases featured verbal communications with the
media and police, the ETV crimes of Colin Ireland differed from David Berkowitz's in several
important ways. While Berkowitz sent letters (written communications), Ireland made phone
calls (oral communication), many of which were not recorded. For this reason, we must contend
with the problem of generation loss, where the exact wording of the phone calls was initially
misremembered and/or altered during its re-telling. Also, though it is of no particular
significance in this post-hoc analysis, the exact date upon which some of the phone calls were
made differs from source to source. Finally, Ireland both made phone calls and left tableaux,
necessitating the inclusion of both in the corpus analysis. This section will examine the content
of seven phone calls Ireland made to the Samaritans, The Sun newspaper, and various police
departments between March 10 and June 15, 1993.

Text Analysis: Phone calls 1

When: March 10, 1993
To Whom: The Samaritans
Caveat: As there is no transcript of this brief phone call, it relies on the receiver's recollection
and will be summarized accordingly. The letter 'P' for 'passage' has been substituted here for 'I'
which stands for 'idea', as this text does not purport to be anything approximating a transcript of
the phone call.

On March 10, two days after the murder of Peter Walker, Ireland telephoned the Samaritans(1)
informing them that two dogs were trapped inside his victim's apartment (2). He gave Walker's

347
name and address (2), stating that he knew this because he was the killer (3).234

T1I1. the Samaritans

The decision to contact the Samaritans—a secular, registered charity primarily devoted to
preventing suicide by taking phone calls from distressed individuals—was probably a practical
decision. The caller knew that the volunteer on the other line would genuinely be listening,
motivated by altruism rather than career goals (hence empathetic), and that the phone call would
not be traced or recorded. However, the choice of the Samaritans over other charitable
organizations is revealing. In the early-1980s, Samaritans began volunteering in prisons across
the British Isles, eventually starting an influential Listener program at HMP Swansea in 1991.235
This service is now available in most British prisons.236 Given the fact that the caller was
reporting a murder he had committed, the strong possibility that he may have served time in a
prison which worked with a branch of the Samaritans arises. He may also have been employed
by or associated with a prison in some other capacity.
Meta-Information: Ireland was sentenced to serve two years in prison for robbery in 1980, an
additional two months in 1981 for attempted deception, and six months in 1985 for 'going
equipped to cheat'.237

T1I2. Informing them that two dogs were trapped inside his victim's apartment
Walker's name and address
The caller is providing this information because he wants Walker's body to be discovered. He
thus wishes for his crimes to be visible rather than go undetected. Information arising later
dispels the possibility that he was actually concerned for the animals' welfare.
Meta-information: Albert Patrick believes that Ireland claimed his first victim in January 1993—
a homosexual male who was found bound and dead in his apartment. Most of the corpse had
been devoured by the man's dogs who had been left inside and were starving.238 Patrick thinks
that the conscientious Ireland refused to admit to this crime because he was not proud of it.239

T1I3. He was the killer

The caller admits to murdering Walker to lend credibility to his claims, announcing the birth of
his homicidal self.

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Text Analysis: Phone Call 2
When: March 10, 1993; an hour after first phone call.
To Whom: Brandon Malinsky, Night news Editor at The Sun newspaper
Text:
“It was my New Year's Resolution (1) to kill a homosexual (2). He [Walker] was a homosexual
(3) and into kinky sex (4). You like that stuff, don't you? (5)”240

T2P1. New Year's resolution

Though more prevalent in the West, the idea of a New Year's Resolution—in which an
individual sets a goal for the coming year—exists across large portions of the world. One can see
it as striving toward an aspect of the ideal or ought self, or this self in its totality. Often we are
mindful of the age we will turn in the upcoming year, and this may be an expediting factor for
dramatic change. It also indicates that there were likely no homosexual victims before December
31, 1992.
Meta-information: Ireland was turning 39 on March 15, 1993—seven days after the murder of
Peter Walker.241

T2P2. kill a homosexual

The resolution specifically entails killing a homosexual because the caller is violently
homophobic and/or an ego-dystonic bi- or homosexual. In this communication he identifies
himself as neither. The use of the technical term 'homosexual' instead of pejorative terms such as
'queer', 'fairy', 'poof', 'poofter', 'shirt-lifter', or even 'homo' which were common British parlance
in the early-Ninetieskkkkkkkk is particularly revealing. In casual conversation, the average Brit
would typically use a pejorative term as such language was not stigmatized at the time; indeed, it
would have been rarer to use 'homosexual'. That a homicidal homophobe chooses instead to use
'homosexual' provides us with a vital clue. One can thus infer that he has spent a great deal of
time in an environment in which this term was used: academia, government, medicine, or the

The pejorative 'faggot' or 'fag' did not find its way into the vernacular until rather recently, likely due to the
kkkkkkkk

exposure of the American media. Hence, the British use of these terms to refer to offal and other portions of
meat, cigarettes, and a bundle of sticks.

349
homosexual community itself.
Meta-information: Ireland had worked as a bouncer at several gay bars and was able to move
through the Coleherne without standing out.

T2P3. He [Walker] was a homosexual

The caller specifies that Walker fit his victim criteria. In doing so he also amplifies Walker's
discredited and stigmatized identity. Again, he uses the term 'homosexual'.
Meta-information: Ireland had worked as a bouncer at several gay bars and was able to move
through the Coleherne without standing out. Walker was openly gay.

T2P4: kinky sex

Beyond noting the victim's preference in sexual partner, the caller also reveals the victim's
penchant for BDSM.
Meta-information: With a single exception, Ireland's victims advertised themselves as sexual
masochists who would let him tie them up. Not only did this comprise a crucial part of his modus
operandi, but he would later state that homosexual masochists, particularly, were the victims he
wished to target.

T2P5: You like that stuff, don't you?

This statement could be directed at journalist Brandon Malinksy or The Sun newspaper in
general. Both the author and the tabloid have a history of covering sex scandals. In 1993, The
Sun was generally a working-class publication which focused on gossip, crime, and sport,
featuring relatively easy crosswords and 'page 3 girls': topless female models on the third page.
This might indicate that the offender was a reader of The Sun but could also reflect that he was
simply aware of their penchant for sordid content, as were most Brits.

Text Analysis: Phone Call 3

When: June 8, 1993
To Whom: Kensington Police.
Text: “If you don't stop me, it will be one a week (1). I pissed myself when I read that I was an
animal lover (2). I thought I would give you lot something to think about, so I killed the cat

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(2).”242

T3P1: If you don't stop me, it will be one a week

By threatening to commit a murder every week, the caller is stressing the importance of the
police thoroughly investigating his earlier homicides in order to prevent him. Like Berkowitz, he
wants his adversaries to pursue him.

T3P2: I pissed myself when I read that I was an animal lover

I thought I would give you lot something to think about, so I killed the cat
The phrase 'I pissed myself' is a shortened version of the metaphorical 'I pissed myself laughing',
indicating that the killer found the interpretation of why he spared Peter Walker's dogs so
inaccurate that it was humorous. In order to give them 'something to think about'llllllll (i.e. call that
belief into question) he killed Collier's cat, Millie.243 Clearly, the offender is following his crimes
in the press.

Text Analysis: Phone Call 4

When: June 12, 1993
To Whom: Kensington Police
On June 12, Ireland telephoned Kensington police and gave the names of the four men he had
murdered
Caveat: The text here is the recollection of the officer who answered the phone, not a transcript
of it.
Text:
He's trying to explain to me that he's committed a murder in the last couple of days (1).
And I said to him 'okay, can you obviously tell me how am I going to believe you?' And
he went into the facts and said 'well, I'll tell you.' He said 'I killed a gentleman (2) the
other day and what I've done is I've placed the tail of the cat into his mouth.' (3) This
pricked my ears up and I started to think this is real not a prankster call.244

T4P1. He's trying to explain to me that he's committed a murder in the last couple of days
According to the policeman who took the call for Kensington Police, the caller actively divulged

llllllll
Interestingly, even though they came from different parts of the English-speaking world, both Danny Rolling
and Colin Ireland claimed to act in order to give the police 'something to think about.'

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that he had recently committed a murder. This shows that the caller wanted to remain on the
police radar and had no desire to cover up his crimes. From a theoretical standpoint, press
coverage and police attention helped was a tertiary-primary dynamic which helped reinforce his
homicidal self.
Meta-Information: Ireland had killed Andrew Collier in the days leading up to the phone call.

T4P2. I killed a gentleman

The caller's use of the word 'gentleman' is formal and conveys respect.
Meta-Information: As this is the police officer's recollection we must consider the possibility that
he is substituting some of his own words for Ireland's, or misremembering.

T4P3. I've placed the tail of the cat into his mouth
The caller is aware of the value of holdback information.
Meta-Information: Ireland placed Collier's murdered cat over his body in a '69' position with the
tail in Collier's mouth and the cat's mouth on Collier's penis.

Text Analysis: Phone Call 5

When: June 12, 1993
To Whom: Battersea Police.
Text:
“Are you still interested in the death of Peter Walker? (1) Why have you stopped the
investigation? (2) Doesn't the death of a homosexual man mean anything? (3) I will do another.
(4) I have always dreamed of doing the perfect murder (5).”245

T5P1: Are you still interested in the death of Peter Walker?

Expecting no reply, the caller is simply using this opening sentence to drop the name of his first
victim 'Peter Walker.' Though he had killed Christopher Dunn and Perry Bradley III by this
point, Ireland seemed particularly fixated on Walker: the only victim he mentioned by name in
his communications.

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T5P2: Why have you stopped the investigation?
Based upon the lack of media coverage, the offender is assuming the investigation into Peter
Walker is not ongoing. This provides us with two substantial clues: the offender follows the
media closely for reports on his criminal activities, and is almost certainly not a policeman, at
least not one with any knowledge of the 'Gay Slayer' investigation.
Meta-Information: The investigation was indeed active, reinvigorated by the offender's earlier
admissions.

T5P3: Doesn't the death of a homosexual man mean anything?

This statement is particularly revealing. Once again, it shows that the caller has assumed the
investigation is not a high priority. He has also referred to Walker as a 'homosexual' a third time,
using no other descriptor. Moreover, the caller is aware that homosexual male victims in this
particular time and location fall into Egger's less dead category. As the year was 1993 and
LGBTQ+ rights were much less advanced than they are today, the offender would have only
known this if (1) he was law enforcement or an academic studying crime, or (2) he was involved
in the LGBTQ+ community at some level. He is also (1) attempting to manipulate the police into
making a bigger deal of the investigation by shaming them into reflecting upon their own biases
and/or public image, (2) using irony, essentially saying 'you care as little about homosexual men
as I do', or (3) both.
Meta-Information: Ireland had worked as a bouncer at several gay bars and was able to move
through the Coleherne without standing out. Seven days earlier on June 5, the police had held
their first press conference to announce that the five deaths were linked and warn homosexuals
that a predator was murdering them. As there is no complete footage or transcript available from
the press conference, we cannot rule out that the police did not discuss building bridges with the
LGBTQ+ community.

T5P4: I will do another.

By threatening to commit another murder, the caller is stressing the importance of the police
thoroughly investigating his earlier homicides in order to prevent him. Like Berkowitz, he wants
his adversaries to pursue him.

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Meta-Information: Ireland did kill on at least one more occasion.

T5P5: I have always dreamed of doing the perfect murder.

The use of 'have' instead of the word 'had' indicates that the caller does not yet believe any of his
murders were 'perfect', while 'always' shows that his homicidal fantasies likely go back to his
childhood. 'Dreamed' may not just refer to these fantasies, but also reflects an aspirational pursuit
of positively-valued goals. This implies that being a consummately professional murderer is the
caller's ideal/own.

Text Analysis: Phone Call 6

When: June 12, 1993
To Whom: Battersea Police
Text (Ireland had the following exchange with the Detective Constable):

Officer: “Why are you doing this?”

Ireland: “I set out to see 'cos I've read several books on serial killers (1) and you see you know I
wondered if it could be possibly done and got away with (2).”
Officer: “But why in particular homosexuals?”
Ireland: “Because they're a class of err... keep their mouths shut and don't tell police things (3).
They're respectable (4), and that I don't like them (5).”
Officer: “But what was your aim in all that?”
Ireland: “Just to see if it could be done (2). Alright, so I'll leave you to get on with it (6). Bye bye
(7).”246

T6P1. I've read several books on serial killers

Here, the caller reveals that he is both literate and reads voluntarily and is modeling himself after
the serialkiller! talisman represented in these undisclosed books.
Meta-information: Ireland was literate.

T6P2. wondered if it could be possibly done and got away with

just to see if it could be done
The caller is emphasizing the dual role of aspiration and thrill-seeking driving his motives. Could

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he do it? This statement also shows his utter disregard for human life. His victims were not
people, but a means to an end. Tests in a personal experiment. There is an implication of
psychopathic traits.

T6P3. they're a class of err... keep their mouths shut and don't tell police things
The use of the term 'class' is interesting here, though as it occurs in an incomplete sentence, it
seems the caller may have realized he used the wrong word and stopped himself. 'Class' could
simply mean something similar to 'category' or 'type', however, though there are hierarchical
connotations to it. The caller demonstrates his knowledge of the homosexual community's
relationship with the police, suggesting he has spent a lot of time in one or the other group.
Meta-information: Ireland had worked as a bouncer at several gay bars and was able to move
through the Coleherne without standing out.

T6P4. respectable
As noted in the case study, the use of the adjective 'respectable' to describe a group which the
victim purports to dislike is an interesting anomaly, particularly given the fact that their
behaviour is stigmatized by large portions of the British public. The only sensible way to
interpret this in light of the other information and declarations is that his use of the word
'respectable' refers to their socio-economic status rather than their sexuality.
Meta-information: Ireland often stayed in his victims' apartment for hours after he killed them,
watching the television and eating their food.

T6P5. I don't like them

The caller reveals his animosity toward his victim group, albeit in the mildest terms. In doing so,
he seems to be trying to downplay the role of their homosexuality as secondary to his primary
transformation motivation.
Meta-information: Several sources report that Ireland was openly homophobic prior to his
murders.

T6P6. I'll leave you to get on with it

The phrase 'get on with it' is interchangeable with 'work the case' or 'investigate'. Once again, this

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is an indication that the offender enjoys the idea of the police attempting to catch him.

T6P7. Bye bye

Fortunately, this call was recorded, demonstrating that 'bye bye' is simply the caller's speaking
convention rather than the patronizing farewell it resembles in text.

Text Analysis: Phone Call 7

When: June 15, 1993
To Whom: Arbour Square Police.
Text:
“I have read a lot of books on serial killers (1). I think it is from four people that the FBI class as
serial (2), so I may stop now I have done five (3). I just wanted to see if it could be done (4). I
will probably never re-offend (5) again (3).”247

T7P1. I have read a lot of books on serial killers

The offender is literate and enjoys reading voraciously about at least one topic: one who does not
care for books could simply learn about serial killers by watching the television.
Meta-information: Ireland was literate.

T7P2. It is from four people that the FBI class as serial

This is a particularly revealing statement as the offender incorrectly recalled the number of
victims necessary to be listed as a serial killer. This indicates that his phone calls were impulsive.
Compared to his meticulously organized murders, the offender did not fact check or prepare a
statement for his phone call. It could also indicate that he does not own The Crime Classification
Manual or Robert Ressler's Whoever Fights Monsters in order to refer back to it. Likely, he read
it at a library, or borrowed it for a short time and returned it. Given his intense interest in the
subject, this implies that the offender has little to no disposable income. The need to fit the
perceived official criteria for being a serial murderer shows a certain respect for the FBI and
institutions in general.
Meta-information: Ireland was homeless and living in a bed sit at the time of the crimes. No such
books were found in his possession.

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T7P3. I may stop now I have done five
I will probably never re-offend again
The offender believes that he has achieved his primary goal of becoming a serialkiller! For this
reason, he proposes that there is no need to continue murdering. However, his use of the words
'may' and particularly 'probably' show that he is far from certain that he can stop, revealing a
compulsive element.
Meta-information: Ireland later claimed at the point where he murdered Spiteri he was losing
control of his impulses and offered to confess because he thought there was a chance he would
still murder gay men.

T7P4. I just wanted to see if it could be done

The success of executing his homicidal mission is either the offender's primary goal or what he
wishes others to believe his primary goal is. This downplays the fact that his victims were
tortured, which is not necessary to simply kill and become a serial murderer. It also ignores the
fact that his victims were consistently homosexual.

T7P5. re-offend
The use of the term 're-offend' rather than 'kill' hints toward somebody with a history of
interactions with the criminal justice system: an ex-convict, police officer, prison guard, mental
health professional, criminologist, lawyer, warden, parole officer, or some other related role.
Meta-information: Ireland had served numerous stints behind bars in the Seventies and Eighties.

Corpus Analysis and Theoretical Synthesis

Unlike Berkowitz's communications, there are no contradictions in Ireland's
communications, and therefore no reason to suspect gross deception.mmmmmmmm The content of
his telephone communications reveals that, through the commission of murder, the offender is
aspiring to a long-anticipated (T5P5) homicidal self (T2P1, T2P2, T5P5) drawing from the

mmmmmmmm
A single exception: Ireland originally called the Samaritans and reportedly expressed concern that
Walker's two dogs were locked inside. This was an attempt to get them to uncover the murder. Later, he murdered
Collier's cat to prove that he did not actually care for animals, and that the original phone call had been a ploy.

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serialkiller! talisman (T1F3, T5P5, T6P1, T6P2, T7P2, T7P3, T7P4). The offender's expressed
desire to meet the criminological criteria for this identity (T7P2, T7P3) along with his stated
motive 'to see if it could be done' (T6P2, T7P4) allows for two additional lines of interpretation:
that the challenge of completing the journey toward the homicidal self was important to the
killer, not just the end result (i.e., he enjoyed tricking, murdering, and sometimes posing his
victims), and perhaps a paradoxical quest for validity through institutionalized narratives. In
keeping with the tropes associated with the serialkiller!, he wants the police to pursue (and
perhaps eventually capture) him as indicated in at least seven incidences (T1F2, T3P1, T4P1,
T5P1, T5P2, T5P4, T6P6). His victim-as-canvas expressions are part of him playing this
serialkiller! role. For this reason, like Berkowitz, rather than insulting the police, the offender
actually encourages them. Similarly, he seeks validation of this identity through media coverage,
going out of his way to draw the press's attention to his crimes when he feels that it is non-
existent or inadequate (T2P1, T2P2, T2P5, T3P2, T5P2).
By contacting the Samaritans (T1F1), using the word 're-offend' (T7P5), and committing
serial murder-robberies, he also unconsciously indicates that he has spent some time in a
correctional institution, either as an inmate, prison guard, administrator, or mental health
professional. He is relatively well-spoken and literate (T6P1, T7P1). His modus operandi of
going home with men from the Coleherne, consistent use of the word 'homosexual' (T2P2, T2P3)
rather than more common pejorative terms, and knowledge of the relationship between the
LGBTQ+ community and police (T5P3, T6P3) demonstrates that he is ensconced in gay culture.
Though evidence of sexual penetration or fondling is absent, by suffocating and strangling nude
homosexual men on a bed and burning their genital areas, the offender leaves indices of his
sexually sadistic attraction to men. His homophobic comments (T2P2, T2P3, T6P5) coupled with
his posing of several victims using signs to highlight their homosexual deviance reinforces the
notion, proposed in an earlier section, that the offender is an ego-dystonic bisexual or
homosexual who believes that experiencing sexual pleasure by torturing men (i) obfuscates the
libidinal nature of his crime, and/or (ii) somehow repudiates his same-sex attraction. The
inversion of symbols of innocence through sexualization may tentatively lead us to conclude that
this ego-dystonic bi- or homosexuality may have resulted from the offender suffering sexual
abuse at a young age which he attributed to gay men.nnnnnnnn ETV analysis of his victim-as-

nnnnnnnn
There is a precedent for this. 48 years earlier in Windsor, Canada, ETV offender Ronald Sears had

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canvas communications supports this. The offender employed irony in his communications by
contrasting cute symbols such as teddy bears, dolls, and cats with the abjection of dead bodies.
There are also hints of humour in his telephone communications to both the media (T2P5) and
police (T3P2). As nearly every victim-as-canvas murderer showed an interest in Hero Culture,
the offender may have been employed, sought employment, or been enamoured with the police,
military, survivalism, or the fire department. The consistent use of fire in his crimes strengthens
the case for the last possibility.
Based upon this corpus analysis, there are several useful inferences we can make about
the offender which can be operationalized. Firstly, any suspect who was either a prison worker or
former inmate at a correctional institution with a Samaritan-presence between 1980-1992 would
become a higher priority suspect than one who had not. As the suspect is clearly striving toward
a homicidal ideal/own, and every offender in our sample went through a period of dejection-
related emotionality immediately beforehand, we should prioritize those who exhibited
dejection-related emotions in the days, weeks, or month leading up to the murder of Peter
Walker. Likewise, ETV offenders typically are unemployed or unstable in their employment.
The fact that two of the murders happened late on Monday nights (two more were on Fridays,
and the last was on a Saturday), as well as the fact that the victims were robbed, seems to
indicate a suspect who either did not work a nine-to-five job, or was unemployed. Therefore,
prioritization of these individuals also increases. Inversely, illiterate suspects would find their
priority reduced, though certainly not eliminated. Lastly, though this would entail personal
knowledge of a suspect's social habits, any suspect known to proactively make anti-LGBTQ+
remarks in one sphere of life while frequenting gay club and pubs in another—effectively living
a closeted, homophobic life— would also receive a bump in prioritization. With his subordinated
masculinity hidden, it is unlikely that the suspect would display effeminate mannerisms. In fact,
considering that every serial or spree killer (with the exception of Daniel Gonzalez) showed a
marked interest in Hero Culture, there is a strong likelihood that his work to cover his

propositioned homosexuals at meet-up spots only to stab them once they were vulnerable. While still at large, he
sent a letter to the local newspaper reading: “Dear sirs This is a challenge to you. 'I' will strike in the near future.
I can not disclose this to you of course. My avenge [sic] of these people are great. Nothing shall stand in my way.
I will use only the knife on my supposed enemies. I am not a returned soldier. This is no prank. THE SLASHER.
Please forgive me but these people have destroyed my whole life” (Mellor, 2012, p. 198). Once arrested, Sears
admitted to being molested when he was nine-years-old, and was now seeking vengeance upon 'sex perverts'
(Mellor, 2012).

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subordinated masculinity would have initially come through attempts to aspire to become a sub-
hegemonic survivalist, policeman, firefighter, or military grunt. Perhaps most crucially, before
they actually managed to record a phone call, the police would have received ear-witness
testimony as to the killer's accent, which in the UK contains clues to both the areaoooooooo he is
from and his social class. Ireland has a Kentish accentpppppppp which bears some similarities to the
estuary accent, but is certainly distinct enough for some to discern. Once a call was recorded, an
expert would have been able to identify it easily. This would be the offender's most indisputable
and primary identifying sign.
As all five victims were procured from the Coleherne, a dragnet strategy should have
been implemented at the venue following the murder of Perry Bradley IIIqqqqqqqq. The operation
would require eight undercover police officers, each with an exceptional understanding of the
criminal profile and an ear for the Kentish accent, to be present at the Coleherne every evening
till closing time for the period of approximately one month. The first would masquerade as a
doorman and wear a hidden wire. Though Britain is lax about checking identification cards at
drinking establishments, in this scenario such a strategy would have been invaluable. After
receiving the customer's identification, the doormanrrrrrrrr would ask the customer to confirm his
namessssssss which would entail the customer speaking it aloud. If the name provided by the
customer did not match the one on the card, the doorman could remark 'but it says [insert name]
on the i.d. you've just given me.' This way both accurate and inaccurate names would be
conveyed audibly and discretely to a second undercover policeman stationed outside the pub in
an unmarked car. He would run each of the names through the police database in order to
conduct a criminal record check. Any punter refusing to provide identification would be
immediately flagged as suspicious, and subject to surveillance. Two additional unmarked police

oooooooo
After playing back a recording of one phone call, they were also able to determine his whereabouts based
upon a background sound associated with Fenchurch railway station.
pppppppp
He spent his formative years in Dartford and Sidcup, areas in Kent which are located 25 kilometres and 19.31
kilometres south-east of London, respectively.
qqqqqqqq
Ideally, this would have started with the second victim, Christopher Dunn, but his death had still been
deemed 'accidental' at this stage
rrrrrrrr
Certainly, the offender may have used a fake piece of identification—in fact this should be anticipated. Ireland,
for instance, was known to employ the alias 'Colin Williams'. But rather than this being a problem, it would have
been the opposite. As the officer checking the identification would necessarily be an expert at spotting fake i.d.,
then any patron possessing it could immediately be arrested or followed. Similarly, because an i.d. may be real
but stolen, then it should be cross-referenced with any reports of stolen identification.
ssssssss
In the past I have been asked to provide my birthdate by a doorman to see if it matches the date on my
identification.

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cars, each manned by two officers, would assist in these background checks, but also be on
standby to tail any suspicious customers leaving the venue. The final two undercover policemen
would be positioned in the heart of the Coleherne, scouring the club for men fitting the
respective offender and victim profiles. One officer would be disguised as a submissive and
actively seeking out suspects, while the second would be generally surveilling the interior of the
pub as a whole. As the victims were all 'bottoms'—openly advertising their preference by the
wearing of symbolic handkerchiefs in their back-right pockets248—then (i) observation of
potential suspects could be relegated to those without 'bottom' handkerchiefs, and (ii) any person
seen leaving the Coleherne with a 'bottom' could immediately be documented or tailed by the
surveillance team. In summary, this operation would require five officers in three cars outside the
Coleherne, two undercover officers inside, and one acting as the doorman. Veteran homicide
investigator Cloyd Steiger of the Seattle Police Department has confirmed that this plan is
effective, reasonable, and within the budgetary allowance of most major police departments. 249
Unfortunately, these suggestions can only be applied to similar future cases. On March
11, 1993, four days after the murder of Peter Walker, the House of Lords ruled by a majority of
three to two that consensual sadomasochistic activities were illegal in Britain.250 With the
preferential sexual activities of many who frequented the Coleherne now criminalized, their
already adversarial relationship with police was greatly exacerbated—the inevitable result of 460
years of prosecution for homosexual acts and the perceived disinterest of police in homophobic
violence.251
A second way in which our findings can be operationalized—by taking advantage of the
offender's obvious desire to interact with the media and law enforcementtttttttt—was capitalized on
by the police task force. Shortly after the death of Emanuel Spiteri, a police press conference was
held to announce they had linked the deaths of the five men and warn the gay community that
there was a killer in their midst. On June 17, 1993, Detective Superintendent Ken John of
Battersea Police made a direct appeal to the offender: “Speak to me, I am willing to speak to you.
I need to speak to you. This is something we can talk about. Enough is enough. Enough pain,
enough anxiety, enough tragedy. Give yourself up – whatever terms, whatever you dictate,

tttttttt
This strategy has been successful in several notable ETV cases including those of 'BTK Strangler' Dennis Rader,
and 'UNABomber' Ted Kaczynski.

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whatever the time, to me and my colleagues.”252 More appeals followed. According to Detective
Superintendent Brian Edwards:
There was a two-fold purpose to the public appeals. First of all, we were looking to
protect the target victim community and alert them to the risks that they were facing so
they could take precautions against that risk. And secondly we were looking to get inside
the mind of the killer and to shape his thinking in the way we wanted it to go.253

It is notable that Ireland did eventually walk into a solicitor's office and admitted to being with
Emanuel Spiteri on the evening of his death, albeit denying his guilt and offering a plausible
excuse.
In this section we have seen how inferences about the semiotic content of phone calls
coupled with a victim-as-canvas analysis can inform and augment a police operation to ensnare a
serial killer. Though the next case, Luka Magnotta, has some commonalities and significant
departures, it provides us with another example of how our methodology may be applied in this
way.

4.9 Luka Magnotta: Victim-as-canvas/soapbox

Luka Magnotta's victim-as-soapbox communication was notably less elaborate than his
victim-as-canvas activities. Severing Jun Lin's hands and feet, he wrapped each in pink tissue
paper and garbage bags, packed them into small boxes with notes, and mailed them to the
headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Liberal Party of Canada, along with
two Vancouver schools. Each box contained a symbolic sender name and return address.

Text Analysis: Letter 1

When: May 29, 2012
To Whom: The Conservative Party of Canada headquarters
Extra: The note was signed with a black heart symbol. The package contained a severed foot
wrapped in pink tissue paper.
Text:
“Stephen Harper and Lauren [sic] Tesky [sic] (1) will know who this is. They f***ed up big
time! (2)”254. The sender's name read “Renee Bordelais (3)”255.

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T1P1. Stephen Harper and Lauren [sic] Tesky [sic]
At the time of the communication, Stephen Harper was leader of the Conservative Party, serving
his second term as the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada. The maiden name of his wife, Laureen
Harper, was 'Teskey'. Here the author has misspelled both her first and last names. His choice to
call Harper's wife 'Laureen Tesky' rather than 'Laureen Harper' should not be given too much
consideration, as she only changed her name to 'Laureen Harper' 13 years after their 1993
marriage when her husband became Prime Minister.

T1P2. Stephen Harper and Lauren [sic] Tesky [sic] will know who this is. They f***ed up
big time!
The author is implying that the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada and his wife possess some kind of
hidden knowledge regarding either the owner of the disembodied foot or the person who sent it.
The second sentence blames the incident on them. However, at no point does the author actually
reveal any information which would hint toward what this 'fuck up' was.
Meta-information: In the years since there has been no information linking the Harpers with
either Luka Magnotta or Jun Lin. One possibility is that Laureen Teskey was actively involved in
supporting animal welfare charities and Magnotta was the infamous kitten vaccuumer. Perhaps
by stating that the couple would know who this is, Magnotta is referring to himself, and his
belief that the Harpers were aware of his status as the #1 suspect.

T1P3. Renee Bordelais

Renee Bordelais is the mother of Canadian serial killer Karla Homolka's lawyer, Sylvie
Bordelais, and Karla's husband Thierry Bordelais.
Meta-information: After marrying her lawyer Sylvie Bordelais' brother, Thierry, Karla Homolka
changed her surname to 'Emily Bordelais'.

Text Analysis: Letter 2

When: May 29, 2012
To Whom: The Liberal Party of Canada headquarters
Extra: The note was signed with a black heart symbol. The package contained a severed hand

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wrapped in pink tissue paper.
Text:
“You need to speak to Laureen Tesky [sic] (1) & her family! Lots to Hide! (2)”256 Again,
the sender's name read “Renee Bordelais (3).”257

T2P1. Laureen Tesky [sic]

Here the author refers to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's wife by her maiden name, Laureen
Teskey, incorrectly spelling her surname. The choice to call Harper's wife 'Laureen Tesky' rather
than 'Laureen Harper' should not be given too much consideration, as she only changed her name
to 'Laureen Harper' 13 years after their 1993 marriage when her husband became Prime Minister.

T2P2. You need to speak to Laureen Tesky [sic] & her family! Lots to Hide!
Again, the author eludes to an insidious secret concealed by the Prime Minister's wife and
unspecified members of her family. Yet he provides no clue as to what is being hidden.

T2P3. Renee Bordelais

Renee Bordelais is the mother of Canadian serial killer Karla Homolka's lawyer, Sylvie
Bordelais, and Karla's husband Thierry Bordelais.
Meta-information: After marrying her lawyer Sylvie Bordelais' brother, Thierry, Karla Homolka
changed her surname to 'Emily Bordelais'.

Text Analysis: Letter 3

When: June 5, 2012
To Whom: “Louise Jones”258 at Vancouver's False Creek elementary school
Extra: The note was signed with a black heart symbol. The package contained a severed hand
wrapped in pink tissue paper.
Text:
“ROSES ARE RED. VIOLETS ARE BLUE. (1) THE POLICE WILL NEED DENTAL
RECORDS TO IDENTIFY YOU, (2) BITCH (3).”259 This time the sender's name and return
address were “L. Valenti (4)”260 from “St. Catharines, ON (4)”261

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T3P1. ROSES ARE RED. VIOLETS ARE BLUE.
The first two lines of this poem are an homage to (or borrowing of) 'Roses are Red', one of the
most well-known poems in the English language, which dates back to 1590. In its most familiar
form, the poem reads 'roses are red/violets are blue/sugar is sweet/and so are you.'

T3P2. THE POLICE WILL NEED DENTAL RECORDS TO IDENTIFY YOU

Here the author is using irony, substituting the complimentary and maudlin 'sugar is sweet/and so
are you' for 'the police will need dental records to identify you.' Far from an appreciative or
conscientious poet, as perhaps indicated by his reference to such a hackneyed poem, the author
ravages the poetic meter by using 15 syllables to end the composition, where the original poem
employed an aesthetically sensible eight syllables. This points to a lack of artistic ability.
Strangely, as the note was accompanied only by a severed foot, there was actually no way to
identify the victim through their teeth.
Meta-information: Jun Lin's head was found on July 1 near a lake in Montreal's Angrignon Park.
His body had already been identified through DNA technologies.

T3P3. BITCH
In this context, the pejorative 'bitch' is used to emasculate the victim and imply dominance and
ownership over him by claiming superior masculinity. The popularization of this term to refer to
men largely stems from late-Eighties and Nineties hip hop records. It is now common parlance
among certain late-members of Generation X, Millennials, and subsequent generations. This
suggests that the author of the letter was born in the late-Seventies, at the very latest, but likely
after.
Meta-information: Magnotta was born in 1982. As proposed in the previous chapter, he may
have selected Jun Lin as a victim due to symbolic associations of East Asian men with
femininity.

T3P4. L. Valenti
St. Catharines, ON
Though the return address indicates the letter was sent from south-western Ontario, it was
actually posted from Montreal.

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Meta-information: Canadian serial killer Karla Homolka's sister, Lori, changed her name to
Logan Valenti in 1996. She lives in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Text Analysis: Letter 4

When: June 5, 2012
To Whom: “Louise Jones”262(1) at St. Georges school
Extra: The note was signed with a black heart symbol. The package contained a severed foot
wrapped in pink tissue paper.
Text:
“Die Bitch! Soon!(2)”263 The name and return address read “Hurbert [sic] Chretien (3)”264
from “Gatineau, QC (3)”265.

T4P1. Louise Jones

Louise Jones is employed as an Administrative Assistant at St. George’s Junior School—a fact
which is readily observable on the institution's website.

T4P2. Die Bitch! Soon!

As the severed foot indicates the victim was likely already dead, this statement seems to refer to
another 'bitch' who is not yet dead, but will die 'soon': most probably, Louise Jones. The tone of
the email is undeniably threatening and intended to frighten Ms. Jones.
Meta-information: Magnotta did not harm anybody at St. Georges school, nor has any
connection between him and Louise Jones been reported.

T4P3. Hurbert [sic] Chretien

Gatineau, QC
Hubert Chrétien is the son of the former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien who held office
from 1993-2003. The author misspelled his name, so that phonetically it sounds like 'Herbert',
seeming to indicate that the author read and misremembered it, rather than hearing it. Hubert
Chrétien does live in Gatineau, Quebec but has largely not been a figure represented in the
media. Though the return address indicates the letter was sent from Gatineau, Quebec, it was
actually posted from Montreal. The referencing of another political figure is consistent with the

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first two letters, and seems designed to maximize the attention given to these incidents by
making them look like acts of terrorism or revolution.

Corpus Analysis and Theoretical Synthesis

Unlike the far lengthier and more complex letters sent by David Berkowitz, Luka
Magnotta's communications—at least what has been released of them—are extremely curt and
lacking in substance, averaging about two sentences each. However, like elements of both
Berkowitz and Ireland's letters, the offender intentionally provides clues which link the murders
and hint at his identity. Firstly, the signature behaviour of sending severed appendages wrapped
in pink tissue paper with notes is enough to link all four of these homicidal expressions. The
references to 'Renee Bordelais' (T1P3, T2P3) and 'L. Valenti' of 'St. Catharines' (T3P4) in the
context of a homicide confirm the suspect's connection to Karla Homolka. A simple Internet
search of 'Karla Homolka' would have revealed a bizarre 2007 article in the Toronto Sun
romantically linking her to Luka Magnotta.uuuuuuuu A subsequent search for 'Luka Magnotta'
would not only have revealed his pathological need for attention, professed White Supremacist
views, and profound interest in serial killers, but also a news article from The Sun in the UK
outlining a case against him as the elusive 'kitten killer'. The use of the author's term 'bitch',
seemingly to refer to his male victim (T3P3), places him in an age group roughly from 18-33
(born 1979-1994). Magnotta was 29. The symbolic associations of 'hearts' and the colour pink—
signs used in all four communications—with femininity should also lead us to consider a female
or effeminate male suspect, like Magnotta. By issuing threats, referencing Karla Homolka (T1P3,
T2P3, T3P4) and namedropping political figures (T1P1, T2P1, T4P3) without any accompanying
political commentary, the sender is essentially increasing abjection, instilling terror, and
appealing to pre-established Canadian media figures to be newsworthy. There is no evidence of
any other ultimatum.
Fortunately, in this case, the expressive/transformative communications were linked to
Magnotta within a single day of the body part appearing at Conservative Party headquarters,
largely thanks to his posting of the '1 lunatic 1 icepick' video five days earlier. The ironic themes

uuuuuuuu
I can attest to this because two years before the Magnotta murders, while researching my book Cold North
Killers, I had stumbled across the 2007 Magnotta-Homolka article while performing a Google search. The article
had appeared within the first few pages.

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in both the letter and video (e.g., use of the puppy) provides a semiotic link between them.
However, as demonstrated here, even without the video in question, efficient and proactive
investigation would have placed Magnotta's name at the top of the suspect list anyway, based on
the information available about him online.
This section completes our look at how victim-as-canvas and victim-as-soapbox
communications can work in tandem with other investigative measures to apprehend a
perpetrator, as well as demonstrating our methodology.

4.10 Gonzalez, Arkwright, Holmes, and Cho: Victim-as-soapbox/Costume

Another victim-as-soapbox ETV act is the donning of a costume—usually preceding or
during violence—whether it be as subtle and practical as Danny Rolling's “Ninja black”266 hit
clothes' or dramatic as Anthony Arkwright's devil mask. This expression embodies the becoming
of a new self in which the offender literally alters his physical appearance to match a sub-
hegemonic or hyperreal self.
A caution: Similar to the posing of corpses, before one embarks on a semiotic
interpretation of the offender's costume, it is first necessary to determine whether the attire was
used a disguise—modus operandi—or if it was truly an identity signature. On Christmas Eve
2008 in Covina, California, 45-year-old Bruce Pardo dressed himself in a Santa Claus costume
and drove to his ex-wife's residence, where he knew the family yuletide party would be in full
swing. Knocking on the door, Pardo was granted entry, and was greeted by his excited eight-
year-old stepdaughter. He shot her in the face with a semi-automatic handgun, before using
firearms and a homemade flame thrower to massacre nine people, including his ex-wife and her
parents.267 Psychiatrists were quick to weigh in, with one concluding that Pardo “was so full of
hate that he had to disguise his hate by dressing up as someone full of love—Santa Claus.”268
Yet, the true explanation is much simpler. Pat Bower, a neighbour of the victims, explained “I
would generally play Santa for the family every year... The family was always together. Brothers
and sisters, aunts and uncles were always in the house. They were a gigantic family.”269
Knowing he would not be granted access to the house by his embittered former family, Pardo
adorned the Santa costume so that he would be mistaken for Bower and allowed inside.
Let us return to those offenders who used costume as an identity signature. In the United
Kingdom, Anthony Arkwright and Daniel Gonzalez did not release photographs or video of

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themselves in their costumes, rather they simply wore them while murdering their victims in
privacy. Both offenders donned masks for only one homicide in their series of four slayings.
Arkwright drew upon the Satan avatar from the Holy Bible talisman, stripping naked and
donning a devil mask while he butchered Raymond Ford. Similarly, Daniel Gonzalez dressed as
the seemingly indestructible, machete-wielding Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th films:
perhaps the most recognizable slasher movie character of all time. Both masks were icons as they
resembled Lucifer and Voorhees, although it could be argued that an old-fashioned hockey mask,
having lost its initial meaning, is now also a symbol of the latter. Sections 3.9 and 3.10 have
already explored why these specific offenders were drawn to these particular hyperreal avatars.
The outstanding question, then, is why the killers chose to adorn such masks knowing they
would be the only living witnesses to their homicidal expression. Returning to the transformative
triangle, the answer lies in the primary transformation of the killer, secondary transformation of
the victim, and the primary-secondary dynamic between them. Primary transformation initially
occurs through the simple act of being conscious that one is wearing the mask (SAOS) with its
related implications for one's homicidal self. Yet, in keeping with the communicative origins and
negotiation of self implicit in ETV, the victim's presumably terrified reaction to the mask signals
to the killer that the victim has undergone the secondary transformation of being happily
indifferent to the offender to one who is frightened and completely defined by him. The victim's
facial expression, gestures, and any oral communications thus serve to affirm the killer's primary
transformation: he is as relevant, powerful, and terrifying as he believes.
On the other hand, mass murderers James Holmes and Seung-Hui Cho posed for selfies
in their costumes before embarking on homicidal rampages, literally dressed to kill. Holmes
claims to have dyed his hair red “to stand out I guess… to stand beside normalcy and be the
exotic figure [primary transformation]”270, and more practically, because “I thought it would
look better than green or blue.”271 Researchers at the University College of London have noted
that psychological testing has shown that red elicits the strongest response from observers, and is
associated with blood, anger, sin, courage, boldness, virility, danger and war272: “A Roman
general receiving a triumph had his entire body painted red in honour of his achievement.”273
Holmes also wore black contact lenses which are indices of pure evil or demonic possession in
contemporary Western culture, a notion chiefly borne by artistic representations in mass
media.274 So, when Holmes anticipated that people would observe his photographs and think

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“this guy’s different than other people… he doesn't look the same as a normal person…”275
because “he's got red hair and black contacts in”276, consciously or subconsciously, he was
evoking symbols and indices with very specific cultural meanings. Tellingly, he claimed the
photographs represented “the differentiated self… I dyed my hair red, put the contact lenses in,
and that wasn't the normal me… That portrays an evil me [emphasis added]… It's kind of a
character of me”277, adding “I don’t think it’s an inaccurate depiction of who I am. It was just a
capturing of the moment.”278 Like Arkwright who literally wore a devil mask and Gonzalez who
dressed as Jason Voorhees—the Hell-bound revenant—Holmes viewed his possession-eyed,
fiery-haired homicidal self as “a little devilish... There’s warrior-like characteristics but I didn't
view myself as a warrior.”279 While perpetrating his massacre, Holmes wore body armour,
though he told Dr. Reid that his decision to do so was more “function over form.”280
Nevertheless, he did post photographs of himself sporting the body armour, along with other
weapons, online, reasoning that those who saw them would view him as “familiar with the ways
of weaponry and body armour… that I'm a killer I guess.”281 This statement supports Mellor's
contention that weapon-collecting can lead to an increase in violent self-image, along with style
of dress, tattoo content etc.282

Figures 17-19. James Holmes Poses With Weapons

For a man who hadn't been in a fight since elementary school, identified with the subordinated
masculine character of Leonard from The Big Bang Theory, and was genuinely afraid that “thugs

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would rob me… beat me up…”283 in Aurora, Colorado—one of the 20 safest large cities in the
United States—having an 'evil' (self-)image was particularly useful. Commenting on the
depiction of his homicidal self in the photographs, Holmes remarked “He looks scary… I
wouldn't want to run in to him... he looks more like a thug… not a typical thug… a crazy thug
[emphasis added]... you’d wanna stay away from him.”284 For a man with such profound social
anxiety, this would have been seen as positive.
Before his homicidal incarnation, Holmes the student “didn't stand out. I was pretty much
going with the flow.”285 Interestingly, he believed the physical alterations marking his homicidal
self would lead observers to conclude that he was “mentally different”286 with “a different kind
of view of the world than other people.”287 Thus, Holmes needed society to acknowledge that he
was apart from it, not because he was outcast and socially anxious—the true explanation—but
because he was intrinsically 'different', somehow 'beyond' society. Expecting to be “remembered
by those pictures”288, he considered posting a photograph to the New York Times because he was
certain “they would repost it.”289 This visual expression of cognitive deviance may reflect
Holmes's desire to “speak through an image instead of having to use words.”290 His dichotomy
between different/evil/noteworthy and normal/good/unremarkable harkens back to Daniel
Gonzalez's view that “good people are so boring, aren't they. [sic] Bad people have all the fun.
Good people don't do anything. They are just boring.”291 Ultimately, Holmes admitted posting
the photographs “to be remembered... you’re going to be remembered by other people not
yourself.”292 Like fellow embodiers of hyperreal masculinity, Gonzalez the 'slasher monster' and
Arkwright the 'devil', Holmes threw his lot in with different, evil, and noteworthy at the expense
of being normal, good, and unremarkable.
Five years earlier at Virginia Polytechnic, Seung-Hui Cho, had similarly posed for a
series of photographs while brandishing dual handguns, knives, and a hammer. In the most
blatant example of primary transformation through costume, he even wrote “Ismail's Ax”293—a
variation of his Ax Ismail homicidal alias—on his arm in red ink, marking it as an instrument of
destruction [SAOS].

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Figures 20-23. Seung-Hui Cho Posing With Weapons and in Eric&Dylan! Regalia

But where Holmes had sought “to stand beside normalcy and be the exotic figure”294, Cho
conceived of himself as the latest 'martyr' in an uprising of “the Weak, the Defenseless, and the
Innocent Children of all ages.”295 Sporting a backwards baseball hat and military-style vest in
emulation of previous “martyrs”296 Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, he went on to murder 32 so-
called “Apostles of Sin”297 before taking his own life à la Eric&Dylan!. As Cho saw himself as
continuing a social movement, he donned an approximation of his predecessors' uniform, likely
believing that those who followed him would style themselves similarly. Like Holmes, this was a
SAOS also intended to affect the tertiary transformation of American society more than the

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secondary transformation of his victims who would have thought little of his subtle garb during
the ensuing panic.

Figures 24-25. Cho's costume is similar in style to the Columbine gunmen's

4.11 Conclusion

In Chapter 3, we mapped the expressive/transformative process as a descent into

depression and frustration followed by an existential upsurge toward a self. ETV offenders fall
apart and reassemble themselves in different guises comprised of media avatars and talismans.
This chapter has demonstrated that expressions or identity signatures mark the passage to a
homicidal self, sometimes leaving the semiotic residue of actual or former ideal selves. For
instance, Mark David Chapman left indices of his past in his hotel room and brought a copy of
The Catcher in the Rye, a sign of The Catcher homicidal self, to the Lennon assassination.
David Berkowitz marked his personal transformation into The Son of Sam Monster archetype
with letters describing blood, death, and hunting 'pretty princesses' in 'ghoulish' handwriting
reminiscent of horror movie posters. Swearing revenge on society for his incarceration and
divorce, Danny Rolling, the vengeful Mystery Rider 'killer gone insane', brought terror to
Shreveport and Gainesville by elaborately mutilating attractive females and leaving their bodies
in perverse poses. This negated the sexual power of the pretty young brunettes who rejected him,
terrorized the society to which he could not belong, and profoundly shook, challenged, and
pressured investigating officers—inflicting brutal retribution on representations of his past
nemeses à la Spaghetti-western era Clint Eastwood. Colin Ireland calmly telephoned the police

373
to announce that by killing five men, he has met the FBI criteria for becoming a serialkiller!.
Acting out popular tropes associated with this talisman, he posed the bodies of his victims with
toys and condoms—leaving an obvious and contrived signature, as the popular criminology
books had said he would. Similarly, Luka Magnotta promoted himself online as a kitten killer,
necrophile, cannibal, and white supremacist, anonymously promising a suspicious British
journalist that his next victim would be human. In May 2012, he lived up to his own hype,
affirming his Dangerous Elusive Paraphilic Killer homicidal self by posting his abject '1
lunatic 1 icepick' video online, mailing body parts to institutions guaranteed to make headline
news, and suddenly disappearing. Swearing to become a serialkiller! and slasher villain, Daniel
Gonzalez donned an antiquated hockey mask reminiscent of Jason Voorhees then went on a
murder spree across southeast England. Likewise, the “picture of darkness” 298 Anthony
Arkwright, who foretold of coming evils to the police, sported a devil mask. Arkwright, who
wished to emulate JacktheRipper! and PeterSutcliffe! in becoming a Famous Evil Ripper,
followed their example, inflicting extensive mutilations on his victims and setting up abject
tableaux which rivaled his talismans' most stomach-churning crime scenes. Pushed out of the
social world due to their taciturnity, James Holmes and Seung-Hui Cho disavowed normalcy
altogether, visibly manifesting their self-perceived homicidal uniqueness. Holmes cast himself as
the solipsistic mad genius—the ultimate individual—as evidenced by his red hair and black eyes,
posting a journal entitled 'Inside the Mind of Madness' to his psychiatrist: a series of disparate
entries which outlined his meta-delusion. Alternatively, Cho saw himself as the next warrior-
prophet in a revolution of the dispossessed, styling his murder clothing after his Eric&Dylan!
talismans and calling for a mass uprising of the alienated on videos he sent to NBC. Bullied or
ignored all his life, Elliot Rodger posted a final VLOG after killing his roommates in which he
declared himself the 'True Alpha Male' before attempting to massacre a sorority house in Isla
Vista, then speeding around the streets shooting young people and hitting them with his BMW to
punish them for being sexually active.
Admittedly, the task of determining what can be reasonably inferred from an offender’s
communications while already having knowledge of his identity and biography will have
undoubtedly influenced some of the interpretations made in this chapter. Yet, the observation
that important aspects of their selves, talismans, emotions, metadelusions, views, and motives
were revealed through these criminal expressions is indisputable.

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Endnotes

1 Wilson, 1975, p. 18.

2 Mellor, 2016e.
3 Mellor, 2016f.
4 Danesi, 2014, p. 162.
5 Lewis, 1972.
6 Danesi, 2014, p. 163.
7 Cobley & Jansz, 2012, p. 33.
8 Johansen & Larsen, 2002.
9 Danesi, 2014, p. 161.
10 Johansen & Larsen, 2002.
11 Johansen & Larsen, 2002.
12 Johansen & Larsen, 2002.
13 Johansen & Larsen, 2002.
14 No author, 2006, p. 1.
15 Danesi, 2014.
16 Danesi, 2014.
17 Danesi, 2014, p. 27.
18 Danesi, 2014, p. 27.
19 Lakoff & Johnson, 1980.
20 Danesi, 2014.
21 Danesi, 2014, p. 163.
22 Danesi, 2014, p. 96.
23 Danesi, 2014, p. 96.
24 Irony [Def. 1], n.d.
25 Jones, 1992, p. 176.
26 Jones, 1992, p. 49.
27 Jones, 1992, p. 20.
28 Jones, 1992, p. 176.
29 Jones, 1992, p. 49.
30 Jones, 1992, p. 20.
31 Jones, 1992, p. 20.
32 Campbell, 1949/2008.
33 Coleman, 1992.
34 Jones, 1992.
35 Sallinger, 1951.
36 Keppel & Birnes, 2009, p. 164.
37 Mellor, 2016e.
38 Keppel & Birnes, 2009; Mellor, 2016e.
39 Mellor, 2016f, p. 10.
40 Douglas, Burgess, Burgess, & Ressler, 1997.
41 Thorndike, 1904.
42 Anson, 2007, January 1.
43 Mellor, 2016e.
44 Rule, 1981.
45 Beckford, n.d.
46 Arrigo & Purcell, 2001.
47 Mellor, 2016e, p. 15.
48 Ramsland, 2016.
49 Mellor, 2016e.
50 Goffman, 1959.
51 Jung & Hecht, 2004.

375
52 Goffman, 1959.
53 Kristeva, 1982, p. 2.
54 Kristeva, 1982, p. 10.
55 Kristeva, 1982, p. 4.
56 Kristeva, 1982.
57 Venkatesh et al., 2016.
58 Black, 1991, p. 138.
59 Boorstein, 1961/2012, Location 110.
60 Boyse, 2010, August.
61 Venkatesh et al., 2016.
62 Black, 1991, p. 138.
63 Troyer, 2007.
64 Boon, 2016.
65 Jones, 1992, p. 213.
66 Cho, 2016c, p. 3.
67 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 64.
68 Tennyson, 1849.
69 Gell, 1998
70 Gell, 1998, Location 554.
71 Gell, 1998.
72 Harper, 2010, p. 312.
73 Harper, 2010, p. 312.
74 Gell, 1998, Location 887.
75 Gell, 1998.
76 Layton, 2003.
77 Gell, 1998.
78 Cobley & Jansz, 2012.
79 Gell, 1998, Location 1028-1041.
80 Gell, 1998, Location 1041.
81 Gell, 1998, Location 1041.
82 Gell, 1998, Location 1041.
83 Pollitt, n.d.
84 Gell, 1998.
85 Layton, 2003, p. 460.
86 Layton, 2003, p. 460.
87 Layton, 2003.
88 Harper, 2010.
89 Harper, 2010, p. 314.
90 Harper, 2010, p. 314.
91 Harper, 2010.
92 Harper, 2010.
93 Gell, 1998.
94 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
95 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
96 Harper, 2010.
97 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
98 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
99 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
100 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
101 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
102 Anthony Meoli, personal communication, late June 2016.
103 Anthony Meoli, personal communication, July 21, 2016.
104 Nancy Grace, 2006, October 25.
105 Nancy Grace, 2006, October 25.
106 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 377.
107 Mandel, 2014, October 16.

376
108 Fong, Chung, & Hoy, 2012, June 5.
109 Fong, Chung, & Hoy, 2012, June 5.
110 Pertiz, Chase, & Leblanc, 2012, May 30.
111 Reuters Staff, 2012, July 16.
112 London & Rolling 2011.
113 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 146.
114 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 344.
115 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 146.
116 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 146.
117 Ryzuk, 1994; Philpin & Donnelly, 1994.
118 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 137.
119 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
120 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
121 Mellor, 2016c.
122 Pertiz, Chase, & Leblanc, 2012, May 30.
123 Fong, Chung, & Hoy, 2012, June 5.
124 Mellor, 2012.
125 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
126 Makin, 1993, pp. 80-81.
127 Anthony Meoli, personal communication, July 21, 2016.
128 Ryzuk, 1994, pp. 209-210.
129 Anthony Meoli, personal communication, July 21, 2016.
130 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 244.
131 Philpin & Donnelly, 1994, p. 163.
132 Ryzuk, 1994, p. 343.
133 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 44.
134 Anthony Meoli, personal communication, July 21, 2016.
135 Goffman, 1963/1986.
136 Gekowski, 2000.
137 Appleyard, 2009; Gekowski, 2000; Wilson, 2009.
138 Schröer & Püschel, 2006.
139 Gekowski, 2000; Wilson, 2009.
140 Gekowski, 2000, p. 305.
141 Mellor, 2016a.
142 American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
143 Goffman, 1963.
144 Lee Salisbury, 2008, September 22.
145 Ireland, 2000, p. 296.
146 Gekowski, 2000, p. 296.
147 Gekowski, 2000, p. 296.
148 Gekowski, 2000, p. 296.
149 Gekowski, 2000, p. 296.
150 Lee Salisbury, 2008, September 22.
151 Mellor, 2016g.
152 Mead, 1934/1967.
153 Gekowski, 2000.
154 Gekowski, 2000, p. 298.
155 Danesi, 2014.
156 “Irony”, n.d.
157 Daly, 2014, September 30.
158 CBC News, 2014, December 23.
159 Mellor, 2016g.
160 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
161 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.
162 Appleyard, 2009.
163 Keppel & Birnes, 2009.

377
164 Keppel & Birnes, 2009.
165 Broeske, 2007, January 14.
166 Mackie Messer1, n.d.
167 Jenkins, 2001.
168 The Siberian Times Reporter, 2014, February 3.
169 Ramsland, 2016.
170 National Forensic Science Technology Center, n.d.
171 National Forensic Science Technology Center, n.d.
172 Shuler, 2007/2011.
173 National Forensic Science Technology Center, n.d.
174 National Forensic Science Technology Center, n.d.
175 National Forensic Science Technology Center, n.d.
176 National Forensic Science Technology Center, n.d.
177 “Forensic Linguistics”, n.d.
178 “Forensic Linguistics”, n.d.
179 Olsson, 2009, p. 2.
180 Olsson, 2009, p. 181.
181 Olsson, 2009, p. 181.
182 Olsson, 2009, p. 181.
183 Olsson, 2009, p. 178.
184 Olsson, 2009, p. 183.
185 Mellor, 2012, p. 198.
186 Klausner, 1981, pp. 141-142.
187 Abrahamsen, 1985.
188 Swift, 1892/2009.
189 Swift, 1892/2009.
190 “Yahoo [Def. 2]”. (n.d.)
191 Carpozi, 1977, pp. 134-135; Klausner, 1981, pp. 166-167.
192 Klausner, 1981, p. 168.
193 Carpozi, 1977, pp. 134-135; Klausner, 1981, pp. 166-167.
194 Fishman, n.d.
195 Abrahamsen, 1985.
196 Carpozi, 1977, p. 320.
197 Carpozi, 1977, p. 320.
198 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 103.
199 Higgins, 1987.
200 Carpozi, 1977, p. 320.
201 Carpozi, 1977, p. 135.
202 Carpozi, 1977, pp. 134-135; Klausner, 1981, pp. 166-167.
203 Klausner, 1981, pp. 141-142.
204 Klausner, 1981, pp. 141-142.
205 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 119.
206 Klausner, 1981.
207 Terry, 1989.
208 Abrahamsen, 1985, p. 119.
209 “Occam's Razor”, n.d.
210 Klaunser, 1981.
211 Wells & Hasel, 2007; Skeem, Douglas, & Lilienfeld, 2009.
212 Campbell, 1949/2008.
213 Terry, 1989.
214 Terry, 1989, p. 269.
215 Carpozi, 1977, p. 163.
216 Carpozi, 1977, p. 163.
217 Carpozi, 1977, p. 164.
218 Fromm 1973/2013; Boon, 2016.
219 Gannett News Service, 1977, August 12.

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220 Gannett News Service, 1977, August 12.
221 Gibson, 2004, pp. 18-19.
222 Carpozi, 1977.
223 Gannett News Service, 1977, August 12.
224 Klausner, 1981, p. 309.
225 Carpozi, 1977.
226 Carpozi, 1977, p. 170.
227 Carpozi, 1977.
228 Carpozi, 1977.
229 Carpozi, 1977, p. 230.
230 Klausner, 1981, p. 85.
231 Gibson, 2004, p. 23.
232 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 182.
233 Klausner, 1981, p. 168.
234 Joseph Green, 2015, August 9.
235 “Samaritans”, n.d.
236 “Samaritans”, n.d.
237 Gekowski, 2000.
238 Albert Patrick, Personal Communication, October 2, 2014.
239 Albert Patrick, Personal Communication, October 2, 2014.
240 Gekowski, 2000, pp. 291-292.
241 Gekowski, 2000.
242 Appleyard, 2009, p. 74.
243 Appleyard, 2009.
244 Lee Salisbury, 2008, September 22.
245 Gekowski, 2000, p. 297.
246 Lee Salisbury, 2008, September 22; Joseph Green, 2015, August 9.
247 Gekowski, 2000, p. 298
248 Joseph Green, 2015.
249 Cloyd Steiger, Personal Communication, October 6, 2017.
250 Wilson, 2009.
251 Wilson, 2009.
252 Gekowski, 2000, p. 299.
253 Robbie Coltrane, 2016, Dec 13.
254 Daly, 2014, September 30.
255 Blatchford, 2014, September 30.
256 Daly, 2014, September 30.
257 Blatchford, 2014, September 30.
258 Blatchford, 2014, September 30.
259 Daly, 2014, September 30.
260 Kelly, 2014, October 17.
261 Kelly, 2014, October 17.
262 Blatchford, 2014, September 30.
263 Daly, 2014, September 30.
264 Kelly, 2014, October 17.
265 Kelly, 2014, October 17.
266 London & Rolling, 2011, p. 15.
267 The Associated Press, 2008, December 30; Moore & O'Connor, 2008, December 25.
268 The Associated Press, 2008, December 30.
269 Moore & O'Connor, 2008, December 25.
270 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
271 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
272 No author, n.d.
273 No author, n.d.
274 “Black Eyes of Evil”, n.d.
275 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).

379
276 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
277 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 4. Day 25 (part 2).
278 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
279 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
280 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 22 (part 2).
281 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21(part 5).
282 Mellor, 2016b.
283 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
284 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
285 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
286 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
287 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
288 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
289 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
290 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 4).
291 C.M., 2006, March 16.
292 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
293 Langman, 2009, p. 96.
294 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
295 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
296 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
297 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
298 Grover Tu, 2016, April 21.

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 5. Conclusion

The expressive/transformative process of violence began with the observation that some
murderers use homicides as a means of communication—whether written, oral, visual, or
mixed—then sought to understand their underlying motivations in a sample of 10 offenders.
These initial 10 subjects were selected according to two criteria: (i) they engaged in homicidal
communication or expression, (ii) there were sufficient autobiographical and close biographical
sources (e.g., statements from police investigators, friends and family, lawyers, mental health
professionals) to conduct a thorough excavation of their lives and psychologies. This excavation
unearthed important commonalities across the sample. Every member (i) had, to varying extents,
failed to socialize effectively with their peers and lurked on the outskirts of society, (ii)
possessed unstable self-images and identities, often quickly flitting from one identity to the next,
(iii) was plagued by negative-emotionality, specifically, depression, sadness, and frustration;
and, perhaps less surprisingly, (iv) was diagnosed with a personality or psychotic disorder.
Furthermore, half of the offenders explicitly stated that they felt like a child who had never
grown up, while many of the others implied this and/or embodied immaturity. As their homicidal
expressions were comprised of signs (symbols, indices, and icons) relating to their identities
and/or those of their victims, the symbolic interactionism of Mead and Blumer emerged as the
sole theory which allowed us to link the external sign back to the communicative social process
through which the self arises and is continually negotiated. When combined with Goffman's
Dramaturgical Theory, the failed socialization of the 10 offenders was partially attributed to
communication dysfunctions: the inability of the offender to avoid being in wrong face or out of
face, which itself may result from deficient childhood development and/or mental illnesses or
disorders.
As Higgins' Self-Discrepancy Theory specifically explored aspects of Mead's self—
whether actual (the self-concept), ideal, or ought (self-guides) —and was predicated on a fusion
of symbolic interactionism with the developmental theories of Jean Piaget and Robbie Case, it
offered the best explanatory framework. SDT also scientifically linked dejection-related
emotions to discrepancies between the actual and ideal selves. Higgins's theory not only
accounted for the negative-emotionality in our 10-offender sample and their chronically unstable
self-image, but also linked the two phenomena, and related to Agnew's General Strain Theory.

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Here, the circular causal chain tying the sign to micro-sociological communication, the larger
society as a whole, and the offender's psychology, was fully established.
ETV was never intended to explain why these offenders committed murders, rather, it
focused on why, how, and what the offender communicated to his audience in the time during
and/or surrounding the homicide. Still, by looking at the victims as signs to contextualize the
other signs in the communication, it became clear that the victims were often killed to rid the
offender of dejection-related emotions resulting from self-discrepancies. Hence, Chapman 'the
nobody' killed the biggest 'somebody' alive, John Lennon, to usurp his importance; Ireland the
ego-dystonic bisexual and wannabe 'hard man' murdered five gay masochists; and tormented
virgin wimp Elliot Rodger stabbed and shot countless young Isla Vista residents to punish them
for being sexually active, proving that he was the 'true alpha male'. Unable to approach an
acceptable ideal self due to their personal deficits, these offenders eventually pursued one that
could be achieved purely through the commission of murder: a homicidal ideal self.
In the Information Age, in which we interact with media arguably more than people—
Baudrillard's hyperreal simulation—our understanding of the world and our position in it is
shaped accordingly. Unsurprisingly, our self-concepts and self-guides are hardly free from this
influence, as demonstrated by the patients in psychoanalyst Jay Martin's Who Am I This Time?
Socially isolated, unstable in their self, directionless, and often psychotic, the prospective ETV
offender is particularly susceptible. With popular media overwhelmingly propagating physically
unattainable gender roles—what we have termed hyperreal masculinity and hyperreal
femininity—and celebrating violent sub-hegemonic male characters while lampooning 'nerds',
'stoners', 'gays', and other subordinated masculinities, this typically subordinated male reaches
into the digital ether and pulls out one or more talismans (narrative prototypes) to grant him an
ideal self. These can be archetypal ('Monster', 'Outlaw'), a trope (serialkiller!, schoolshooter!), or
a specific character (avatar) from a narrative ('Jason', 'Holden Caulfield'). Often, the talisman or
avatar possesses characteristics which compensate for the offender's real or self-perceived
shortcomings (e.g., Rolling the 'dependent boy' becomes the 'independent manly outlaw' ) or
repurpose a deficit so that it takes on a hyperreal masculine quality (e.g., Berkowitz the 'Outcast'
becomes the 'Monster'). As our selves and identities are socially negotiated, the ETV offender
requires communicative feedback from his victim, the police, and/or the news media to be
affirmed in this homicidal self. Thus, while the murder(s) may net him benefits such as sexual

382
gratification, venting rage, or exacting vengeance, the accompanying communication calls
attention to the birth of the homicidal self, with the expectation of acknowledgment.
Expressive/transformative violence is therefore a fundamentally social and existential act.
Though the 10-offender study was qualitative in nature, 24 common characteristics were
readily observable among these offenders.
Expressive/transformative process has never purported to be scientific, yet it relies
heavily on empirical data, and is clear and logical in both its theory and methodology. ETV is in
its infancy, and possible future improvements and applications are abundant. Where substantive
sources are available, qualitative research might be conducted on additional offenders in order to
chronicle their expressive/transformative process, and interpret the signs they communicated and
trace them to the offender's selves and psychology. Incorporating offenders from more diverse
racial backgrounds will hypothetically reveal that racial/ethnic aspects of the self may be
generally more central to this demographic than white offenders. Two female ETV offenders,
Joanna Dennehy and Gertrude Baniszewski, received passing mention here for their victim-as-
canvas communications, but the representation of biological sex in our sample was restricted to
males. Provided the necessary sources were available, a parallel 10-offender qualitative study of
female ETV offenders would be extremely valuable, as it would explore the motives underlying
female homicidal expression, comparing and contrasting them to those of males. The same case
could be made for children—what of Mary Bell and Rod Ferrell who carved her initials into their
victims’ flesh1, or 17-year-old Peter Woodcock who sprinkled paper clips and pennies at his
crime scenes?2 Do their homicidal communications result from the same
expressive/transformative process, or is something less complex at work?
Canter & Youngs gathered data from 71 subjects before determining their sample size
was large enough to formulate Criminal Narratives theory. Similarly, ETV should conduct
qualitative analyses on a further 60 offenders who have committed ETV homicides before we
should even consider operationalizing it. However, unlike Criminal Narratives theory, ETV must
always utilize Blumer’s recommended methodology, and never rely on the administration of
questionnaires to gather data. The reason is simple: we must avoid unintentionally injecting ideas
into a subject’s head for them to report back to us at all cost. For instance, Criminal Narratives
theory utilizes a questionnaire in which a subject is asked to rank the roles they saw themselves
playing during the commission of a given crime on a five-level Likert scale consisting of the

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following options: ‘Not at all’, ‘Just a Little’, ‘Some’, ‘A lot’, ‘Very Much’.3 The problems with
this approach become evident almost immediately when the first question asks the subject to
choose one of the five available answers to “It was like a professional.”4 To understand the
problems with this approach, ask yourself this same question regarding your experience reading
this dissertation, and choose one of the five answers (refusing to answer is not an option):
Question: “While I was reading this dissertation it was like [I was] a professional”
Possible Answers: (1) Not at all, (2) Just a little, (3) Some, (4) A lot, (5) Very much.
Did this notion of being a ‘professional’ while reading the dissertation even enter your
mind before you were asked this question? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Yet, readers of I Kill,
Therefore I Am may include professional academics, psychologists, psychiatrists, researchers,
law enforcement etc., along with some readers who do not necessarily have a career related to
any of the content here. For those of you who did not once think “I’m reading this like I’m a
professional” before the question was posed, how did you rationalize your answer? Did you
reason that, even though the notion didn’t even cross your mind until now, since you are a
professional you should choose answers 4 or 5? Maybe because you did not actively think about
your professionalism until now you chose answers 1 or 2, deciding this was a more honest
approach. A third foreseeable option is that you decided to hedge your bets or mitigate the
unexpected and leading question by choosing moderation: answer 3.
By now, the problem with this approach should be obvious: many of you will have been
forced to agree with a statement about your self-concept related to reading I Kill, Therefore I Am
which was actually never part of the original process. This yields biased data through planting an
idea in your mind and then mandating you to comment on it. Bringing this back to the issue of
criminality, recall Chapman’s statements about becoming ‘Holden Caulfield’ or Berkowitz being
a ‘monster.’ Their narratives emerged by allowing them to speak freely; identifying the relevant
talismans, avatars, and archetypes; and finally interpreting them in a natural manner, as language
is intended. It is difficult to imagine somebody capable of understanding ETV who is also so
inept at basic communication that they would struggle to do this. Thus, the future of ETV will
avoid methodologies which produce biased data such as the one we have critiqued, and continue
to focus on the approach we have taken here. Once every member of the 70-offender sample has
been qualitatively analyzed with the relevant data extracted, we can conduct a statistical analysis
to determine whether any significant commonalities have emerged. Contrary to the assertions of

384
Canter & Youngs, we believe it is challenging but entirely possible to identify and quantify
themes using this process. As ETV has remained free from dogmatism, it is hypothetically
compatible with any theory of offender profiling, risk assessment, or clinical treatment that (i)
accepts the notion that our selves and identities arise and are negotiated through communication
(which is facilitated by the display and interpretation of signs), and (ii) has not formulated any
firm conclusions that necessarily exclude the precepts or methodology of ETV. One potential
example in the area of criminal profiling is the model first articulated by Douglas, Ressler,
Burgess, & Hartman in their article ‘Criminal profiling from crime scene analysis.’5
Moving beyond conventional criminality, ETV analysis might also be applied in war—
whether to individual soldiers, brigades or platoons, or entire militaries. From Tamerlane's skull
towers6 to American G.I.s collecting ears in Vietnam7, homicidal expressions during wartime are
perfectly suited for expressive/transformative analysis. Such expressions make clear statements
about group and individual identity, and, hypothetically, could improve morale by reducing
actual:ideal discrepancies in soldiers, military collectives, and nations.8 The military prides itself
on breaking down former selves and creating stronger ones, yet even soldiers who have survived
boot camp can experience profound crises of self when confronted with the realities of war. This
is fertile ground for ETV analysis and could be vital to the successful investigation and
understanding of certain war crimes, legally, morally, and clinically.
In a forthcoming academic chapter Jihadi Chic: Islamist 'Soul' vs. Islamist 'Skin', Mellor
& Kindarji aim to explore the expressive/transformative process in Jihadists.9 This will be the
first formal application of ETV to terrorism. Whether Jihadism, White Supremacy, anarchism, or
Irish Republican in character, each of these groups and the individuals comprising them mark
their identities with signs. The same can be said of mobsters and gang members. The blue Crips
and red Bloods throw up gang signs and mark territory with graffiti.10 Hells Angels sport red and
white11, while Bandidos wear red and gold12, with members of both organizations often bearded,
covered with tattoos, and clad in leather. Tattoos also mark the Yakuza: through the painful
process of irezumi their ability to stand in pain is signified indexically on their bodies in hand-
mixed ink.13 Like the red hair and black contact lenses of James Holmes, these costumes are both
expressive and transformative. As with Rolling, Magnotta, and Arkwright, criminal gangs
symbolically mutilate their victims, from the Medellin Cartels' 'Colombian necktie'14 to the
'Glasgow Smile' of the Chelsea Headhunters15. Terrorist groups also enact symbolic violence: for

385
example, Jihadists cut off heads16 and White Supremacists burn crosses to threaten their
victims.17 Whether a group is a military brigade, terrorist organization, or criminal enterprise,
these signs are routinely coopted by lone wolves. ‘Pulse Nightclub Shooter’ Omar Mateen18 and
‘Charleston Church Gunman’ Dylann Roof19 mimicked the conventions of Jihadist and White
Supremacist groups though neither was a member of anything. Mark Moore affected the image
of the rich and beloved gangsta rapper Prezidenteeh while he gunned down fellow black men in
his 'fantasy ghetto' of Scarborough, Ontario.20
Ultimately, ETV’s true test will be determined by its utility and success when applied
practically in pre and post-offence risk assessment, offender profiling, linkage analysis, and
clinical treatment. As it stands, an n of 10 offenders is far too small to support any statistically-
informed inductive determination of pre-offence risk potential or offender characteristics.
Unfortunately, the relative paucity of overt expressive/transformative behaviour combined with
the difficulty in acquiring a substantial corpus of autobiographical statements made by ETV
offenders will likely provide a significant barrier to acquiring a sample approaching statistical
significance in the near future. As pre-offence risk assessments and inductive offender profiles
challenge us to identify an unknown violent offender from within the general population, they
require large samples to produce the necessary predictive power. Post-offence recidivism
assessments and clinical settings differ in this regard. In the first case, an offender whose identity
is known has marked himself as an ETV offender by intentionally employing a semiotic corpus.
In the second, he necessarily comes under scrutiny due to institutional instruction, and is
interviewed by a clinician who is provided with his biographical details. During both a post-
offence recidivism assessment or treatment plan, relevant professionals might note elements of
the expressive/transformative process in the offender’s personal narrative, regardless of statistics.
Key areas of focus should include the offender’s ability to communicate/socialize, the nature of
his actual, ideal, and ought selves, negative emotionality, talismans, and meta-delusionality. Of
most immediate use, linkage analysis based on ETV communications does not seem to require
any additional research beyond what has been conducted in this dissertation. Serial offenders
Colin Ireland, Danny Rolling, and Anthony Arkwright all used signs to consistently convey a
specific theme focusing on the stigmatization of their victim’s conditions and behaviours, while
the latter two also maximized abjection across their series of killings.
I Kill, Therefore I Am has provided us with a theoretical foundation and preliminary

386
methodology for understanding ETV, but this is only the basis upon which future research can be
designed. Hence, as new findings regarding expressive/transformative violence comes to light,
our conception of this process will likely be subject to revision and further development. It is
certainly possible that scientifically-validated profiling methodologies, risk assessment tools, and
psychometric measures concerning ETV may emerge in the future. Until then, regardless of
whether ETV is incorporated into offender profiling, risk assessment, or mental health care, it
should always be used to complement other evaluative methods and tools— including, but not
limited to, offender and geographic profiles, forensic linguistic analyses, standard industry risk
assessment tests, and psychological tests —and never used in isolation.
As we conclude with a crescendo of cautions and caveats, murderous communications
continue to appear routinely on the Internet. Not so long ago, the 2008 film Snuff: A
Documentary About Killing on Camera mocked and debunked the snuff-video panic and urban
legend that had shaken Reagan-era America. Less than 10 years later, mankind believed it had
witnessed its first live-streamed murder, if only momentarily.21 With technology increasingly
mediating every facet of our lives and social alienation rampant in the developed world, we no
longer ask whether live-streamed homicide will happen, rather, we acknowledge that it is only a
matter of time. The question, then, is not 'will it happen' but 'will we believe it when we see it?'

1 Sereny, 1998; Jones, 2000.

2 Vronsky, 2004.
3 Canter & Youngs, 2009.
4 Canter & Youngs, 2009, p. 127.
5 Douglas, Ressler, Burgess, & Hartman, 1986.
6 Marozzi, 2006.
7 Sallah & Weiss, 2006.
8 Hedges, 2002.
9 Mellor & Kindarji, in press.
10 “How are Gangs Identified”, n.d.
11 Hayes, 2011.
12 Hayes, 2011.
13 Mellor, 2017.
14 Bowden, 2001.
15 Sullivan & Peake, 2011, March 26.
16 Jacoby, 2014, September 22.
17 “Burning Cross”, n.d.
18 Henderson, Alexander, & Sherlock, 2016, June 15.
19 Ghansah, 2017, August 21;
20 Hasham, 2015, May 28.
21 No author, 2017, April 17.

387
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Appendix A: Terminology

Biastophilia – Sexual preference for non-consensual intercourse over consensual intercourse.1

Erotophonophilia – Paraphilic lust murder.2
Mutilophilia – Sexual arousal from mutilating a human being regardless of whether they are
alive or dead.3
Necromutilophilia – Sexual arousal from mutilating corpses exclusively.4
Necrornopositophilia – Sexual arousal from posing and/or decorating corpses.5
Necrosodomolagnia – Sexual arousal from sodomizing corpses.6
Partialist post-mortem sexual activities – Engaging in sexual acts with disembodied pieces of the
human anatomy.7
Picquerism – Sexual arousal from stabbing or cutting a human being.8
Sarxenthymiophilia – Sexual arousal from possessing human body parts.9
Sexual Anthropophagy – Sexual arousal from devouring human body parts.10
Sexual Sadism – Sexual arousal from witnessing pain, humiliation, and/or fear in another human
being.11
Voyeurism – Sexual arousal from secretly watching another person, especially when they are
undressing or engaged in sexual activity.12

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 Appendix B
James Holmes: 'The Misfit With the Broken Brain' to 'James + x'
Talismans: Neo-liberal economic theory; Avatars: James Bond, The Joker?; Type: 3

Before delving into the expressive/transformative homicides perpetrated by James Holmes, it is

necessary to first dispel a crucial error which obfuscates our understanding of this individual and
his misdeeds: his association with the Joker avatar. Upon Holmes' arrest it was widely reported
that he either cried “I am the Joker”13 before firing into the crowd or made a similar claim to
police upon his arrest. This misconception was originally reported in a 2012 ABC News Report
quoting New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and was debunked by 18th Judicial District
attorney, George Brauchler, the prosecutor in the Holmes trial.14 Holmes himself denied the
rumour. When asked by psychologist William Reid “Did you ever call yourself the Joker?”15,
Holmes clarified “no... the dyed hair made them think about it along with the Batman movie”16
He claimed to have targeted The Dark Knight Rises premiere because “I knew there would be a
lot of people there.”17 Commenting on comparisons with the Joker, Holmes said that if he copied
the famous comic book villain's appearance “it was unconscious”18, and agreed that “it bears
some resemblance.”19 Given Holmes' interest in the Batman franchise20, his use of gas canisters
and explosives21, and the fact that his statement reading “Terrorism isn't the message. The
message is there is no message”22 echoes the chaos-for-chaos's sake philosophy espoused by the
Joker in The Dark Knight, it is difficult to believe the avatar did not colour his crimes to some
extent. Unfortunately, there is no way to prove this, so we will accept Holmes' claim that any
influence was unconscious.

James Holmes: Failed socialization and the formation and realization of the actual/own
James Eagan Holmes grew up in Oak Hills, California, the son of a
scientist/mathematician, Robert, and Arlene, a registered nurse. Along with his younger sister, he
seems to have enjoyed a stable, middle-class upbringing in a nuclear family. When James was
12, the Holmes brood moved back to his birthplace, San Diego. After graduating from Westview
High School in 2006, he interned at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies for the summer.
Later that year, he enrolled in an undergraduate neuroscience program at the University of
California, Riverside, graduating in 2010 with honours. In the autumn of 2011, Holmes began

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pursuing his doctorate in neuroscience at the University of Colorado.
Holmes' keen interest in neuroscience was motivated by a desire to understand himself.
Since he was a teenager, he had viewed himself as having a “broken brain”23 due to intense self-
diagnosed “social anxiety.”24 Whether his “social anxiety”25 resulted in “not being able to talk
well”26 or vice-versa is a chicken-egg scenario which is difficult to disentangle. In his diary,
Holmes wrote that he would “avoid social interactions”27 and “99% of the time will not initiate a
conversation... If discourse is unavoidable or avoidant action [is] socially unacceptable [my]
response will be short or in question form to have [the] other person be the one talking.”28 When
somebody unfamiliar spoke to Holmes, he “would have like violent [fantasy] images… things
like saws going against the other people… like sawing them or getting their heads cut off or
something.”29 Rather than hallucinations, this seems to have been a defense mechanism to
overcome his marked communication dysfunctions. Holmes speaks of the process as involuntary:
“[The images] just pop up… Then once it happens it's just done… I'm either still frozen or I
come up with a response or something... That was why I figured [my brain] was broken…[and]
not being able to talk well.”30 He perceived this “broken part of me”31 as residing in “the core of
my being”32 and would carry this self-concept into adulthood making the The Misfit With the
Broken Brain his actual/own self.
Noting his inability to articulate his thoughts to other people verbally, Holmes wished he
could “just speak through an image instead of having to use words… I think the closest thing
would be to draw but I'm not a very good artist.”33 In his diary he wrote that he had an “inability
to communicate what I want to say [emphasis added] although I can understand it. Typically [I]
have an image in my mind but can't say images or draw them, [it] would be nice if there was
some form of telepathy to transfer the images.”34 Holmes's aversion to verbal communication
was related more to “apathy in a boring situation when someone is giving a presentation or
otherwise rambling about frivolous information”35 than responding to a task-oriented interaction
because the latter is “something we have to do together, instead of like talking and there's
awkward silences.”36 Where Mark David Chapman insincerely donned an “I'M UNIQUE. I
THINK FOR MYSELF” t-shirt and David Berkowitz vapidly proclaimed his individuality by
adopting a counter-cultural skin, Holmes explained “I kind of view the world through my own
eyes as opposed to other people's... I’m different… I guess I kind of felt like I was separate from
mankind.”37 He saw this distinction from mankind as being irreconcilable with his existence as

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we live in “a social society. [In] any type of work you're usually going to have to interact with
people.”38
Holmes hated “mankind in general… because they make me anxious, and because they
make me anxious I hate them,”39 however, he clarified that this 'hatred' was more akin to his
aversive hatred of broccoli rather than violent misanthropy.40 He took care to distinguish
between the two, saying “I don't think the [hating like broccoli] had much to do with the
killing”41 and that he “didn't really hate any of the people [he shot] in the theatre, I just hate
mankind in general.”42 Even though Holmes briefly had a small circle of friends and a girlfriend
at the University of Colorado, his social deficits are among the most severe in this sample.
Initially, Holmes displayed deviant social behaviour by being too taciturn, and not
offering the culturally expected responses to social cues. But because he had an accurate looking-
glass self43 —the ability and propensity to see oneself through the eyes of the generalized
other—Holmes was well aware that his enacted identity was that of a “weird”44 person, which
was a misinterpretation of his preference for solitude: “[In my mind's eye I look]
uncommunicative… standing there and not saying anything and people are talking around me
and I don't know what to say.”45 Holmes’s self-consciousness rendered him socially anxious and
avoidant which manifested in verbal and somatic gestures [enacted identity] which others judged
to be deviant.46
Testifying at Holmes’s 2015 trial, ex-girlfriend Gargi Datta commented that “he was
pretty shy and closed off at school. He wouldn't go interact with other people by himself at
school”47, while in private quarters “he was more forthcoming than he was in school, but he still
wasn't extremely interactive.”48 “His sense of humour in writing was mostly pretty funny”49 she
claimed, but “his jokes fell flat in person.”50 This is likely owing to Holmes' 'flat affect'—
“characterized by the person's face appearing immobile and unresponsive, with poor eye contact
and reduced body language”51—a communication dysfunction which Holmes acknowledged
saying “yeah, I can see that, too… Just not showing too much emotion”52 According to Holmes's
psychiatrist, Dr. William Reid, an unnamed person described Holmes as “awkward around other
people, having difficulty in social situations”53 while another viewed him as “very angry.”54
Holmes agreed with the first appraisal but thought the second wrongly “interpreted my
awkwardness to anger.”55 He tried to act 'nice', although confessed this was not necessarily
genuine, but came from “social expectation.”56

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 Like Mark David Chapman, Holmes admitted to acting “different around different
people”57 and believed this would make people see him as “weird.”58 His enacted identity was
extremely non-interactive “anytime there were other people I didn’t know or wasn’t close friends
with.”59 While picturing himself interacting with others, Holmes imagined that they would
“stare”60 at him and think “why isn't he talking?… Is there something weird about him?”61 When
answering questions, Holmes was admittedly “very concise... I don't know if that's just a speech
pattern thing or I'm just freezing up.”62 Holmes recalled an incident in college in which he
“walked in”63 on other students “and heard them talking about”64 him in an earlier social
situation, saying “‘What was he doing there [in the earlier situation]?’”65 This discovery led him
to feel “like there was something wrong with me.”66 Holmes said that before college “I thought I
was a social equal.”67 When asked by Dr. Reid if hearing people gossip about him hurt him,
Holmes replied in the affirmative. In theoretical terms, the gap between Holmes' personal
identity and enacted identity led to a negative ascribed relational identity which left him feeling
misunderstood and with poor communication satisfaction.68 Both result in increased negative
emotionality.

James Holmes: Pre-homicidal Ideal/Selves and Negative Emotionality

In a display of determination and pragmatism, The Misfit With the Broken Brain
[actual/own] sought to become a Successful Cured Neuroscientist [ideal/own] who wanted to
“see why I was different… I was interested in the differences between normal people… and
people who were outside the norm… I guess mentally ill... I wanted to know as much as possible
so I'd do a bunch of searches on the brain or how the brain works… I sought career options that
might be related to that.”69 After fixing himself, he would then be able to “get a good paying
job”70, go about “raising a family”71 and “having a cookie-cutter life.”72 In other words, the
American dream.
Unfortunately, the socially-dysfunctional Holmes was unhappy in graduate school
because he was required to give several oral presentations, where there had been “less necessity
of public speaking in college.”73 A mere four months into the program, Holmes “became more
disorganized and I guess my mind was kind of falling apart… after Christmas when I came back
to graduate school [in 2012].”74 In October 2011, he had started dating fellow student, Gargi
Datta, but by February 2012 “she was acting more distant.”75 Correctly sensing an impending

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break-up, Holmes became “sad that the relationship was ending”76 which soon turned into full-
blown “depression.”77
Following his break-up with Gargi [trigger], Holmes became estranged from their social
group: “it was kind of a mutual abandonment... They stopped inviting me to activities and stuff...
because Gargi didn't want to see me... I guess Gargi was kind of the glue that kept it together... I
deleted their numbers… because I kind of figured our friendship was over... Out of sight, out of
mind.”78 Holmes explained that continuing to be connected to the group “reminded me too much
of Gargi.”79 Around the same time, his academic performance began to suffer. He sought refuge
from his depression by doing “escapist stuff like video games… It made it go away for the time
being.”80 [retreatism] In this way, Holmes was like Daniel Gonzalez and Elliot Rodger. Video
games also provided Holmes with a surrogate social life: “I wasn't quite as anxious [socializing]
when it's kinda over the digital web… as I am when I’m with people I'm kinda anxious… They
expect you to say something [in face to face interactions] and I usually like to listen more.”81
Crucially, video games routinely assign abstract point values to opponents, which are then
assimilated into the protagonist's overall score immediately after he defeats them. Often this is
achieved through firearm related violence: an important point to keep in mind as it will resurface
when we explore Holmes' homicidal ideal/own.
As the discrepancy between The Misfit With the Broken Brain [actual/own] and the
Successful Cured Neuroscientist [ideal/own] widened, Holmes' dejection-related emotions
became worse. He claimed “I felt sad and depressed”82 in a way he had never felt before,
describing his condition as “debilitating... morose... I did more escapism, watching TV...
listening to music... techno, trance... I was like almost catatonic... I didn't have the drive to do
anything... Every opportunity I had I would stay in bed, but if I had to go to class I would get
up.”83 Holmes continued to attend classes because he felt that “I still had a future. I just didn't
think about what I would do in the future.”84 Normalcy still held some potential value for him,
and he implied that he would be content “if I had a steady job”85 and could “maybe raise a
family”86, but ultimately he decided to “leave it to kinda fate to decide… That I would either
continue graduate neuroscience program or quit.”87 By June, the idea of having any kind of
normal future was “not there anymore.”88
Of the 10 offenders in this study, Holmes vocalizes the fundamental premise of
expressive/transformative process the most explicitly, saying he could not “solve the problem of

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getting out of my depression so I thought I'd make myself more valuable by killing people
[emphasis added].”89 Holmes repeatedly informed Dr. Reid that, in the months leading up to the
murders, he existed in “a depressed situation where I transfer[red] my feelings from suicide to
homicide.”90 He claimed never to have experienced suicidal ideation because “I would
automatically transfer it to homicidal thoughts.”91 Holmes believed that if he didn't do this “then
I would have to suicide.”92 The homicides thus served “as a kind of coping mechanism.”93
At first, Holmes sought to resist his homicidal “purpose… that's why I think I went to the
psychiatrist [Dr. Fenton] in the first place and told them about the homicidal thoughts... There
was like internal conflict... I wanted to be fixed to be normal, and the other was to carry out the
mission [ideal/own:homicidal ideal/own].”94 He hoped he would be prescribed “drugs and then
I'd be better”95 however, when “I got the drugs and it abolished my anxiety, my kind of fear of
other people, and maybe facilitated [the massacre].”96
Ultimately, like the other offenders in this study, Holmes sought to overcome negative
emotionality by using violence to negotiate a new ideal/own. He had been fantasizing of murder
since his teens, but of “no one in particular… It might have been a response to stress.”97
However, because he was a highly intelligent and educated young man, Holmes constructed a
logical system to channel and control his emotions—the theory of 'ultraception'—which
explained and justified the process of how this would occur.

James Holmes: Renegotiated Homicidal ideal/own

Holmes's homicidal ideal/own crystalized through a process of (i) weapon collecting, (ii) the
need to immediately transfer suicidal ideation to homicidal action, and (iii) his personal
philosophy. Explaining to Dr. Reid, Holmes said “[my plan to commit murder started] when I
first bought the taser, the knife…initially I rationalized it as like self defense,”98. He claimed to
have felt the need to protect himself, imagining a scenario where “I'm just like walking down the
street and thugs would rob me… beat me up… just with their fists and steal all of my money and
stuff.”99 That said, Holmes gave contradictory statements regarding which weapon acquisition
facilitated his homicidal thoughts. In one instance he said it was “when I bought the shotgun I
think.”100 In another: “It was offensive when I got the tear gas… I think it was May or June… I
don't know how it changed from self-protection to offensive, aggressive. I primarily thought of
[the use of tear gas] as offensive… If there was a riot or if I started a riot… it would disperse the

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crowd.”101 When Dr. Reid asked whether 'defensive' had morphed into 'offensive', or if they were
separate, Holmes replied, “I think it morphed… My planning got more deliberate… I got
committed to the mission… and then I decided to go buy the shotgun.”102 Holmes claimed he
“formed an attachment to it. Learning how it worked. Practicing with it... It just kept escalating
to get more and more weapons… Getting a shotgun is an escalation from getting just a
handgun.”103 Here we see parallels with Rolling and Arkwright's obsessive weapons collecting
and increased violent self-image.
Accordingly, Holmes's homicidal ideal/own self began to emerge in May and June of
2012 as “kind of a gradual process”104 until it became “consuming… the main focus”105 of
Holmes's life. Entries in his journal, which Holmes corroborated in his interviews with Dr. Reid,
show that he considered numerous types of homicide. His first thought was to use explosives, but
he dismissed this method as being “too regulated + suspicious.”106 Similarly, he was “too
impatient”107 for “biological warfare”108 as it “requires extensive knowledge”109 and
“equipment.”110 He considered serial murder “too personal”111 with “too much evidence”112
resulting from violence which yielded “few kills.”113 Finally, having “no fear of
consequences”114 Holmes reconciled himself to the idea that “being caught”115 for “mass
murder/spree”116 was “99% certain”117 and decided to choose this m.o. because it yielded
“maximum casualties”118 and was “easily performed w/firearms although primitive in nature.”119
He considered perpetrating the shootings at an airport but rejected this for pragmatic reasons
noting the “substantial security”120 and that airports have “too much of a terrorist history.
Terrorism isn't the message. The message is there is no message.”121 This paradoxical statement
will be discussed in more detail later.
Holmes' renegotiated homicidal ideal/own is unique—the product of his personal
metaphysical and moral reasoning—rather than being derived from any specific talisman or
avatar. It is also the most abstract. In pondering philosophical questions such as “what is the
meaning of life?”122, “what is the meaning of death?”123, “why should life exist?”124, and “what
is the purpose of living?”125, Holmes formulated his theory of ultraception, as represented by the
following symbol:

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Figure 26. The Symbol of Ultraception
Holmes explained the illustration to Dr. William Reid as “a symbol I call the 'ultraception' and
it's just that any problem can be solved with death… It's constructed with a 0, 1, and infinity
overlapping, and it's anthropomorphic. It's kind of like a face… So it's applicable to humans…
An abnormal person [emphasis added].”126 This notion of striving to be 'different' from other
people was obviously of great importance to Holmes, who dyed his hair red and wore black
contact lenses before the massacre “to stand beside normalcy and be the exotic figure.”127 As he
could not be 'normal', this constituted another option other than complete invisibility.
Having “studied economics”128 Holmes had formulated his theory of “human capital”129
in graduate school, and incorporated it into ultraception making it “kind of [an] economic theory
of value applied to people.”130 He decided that every person he murdered would increase his own
existential worth by a value of 1. Interestingly, Holmes only conceptualized this value as abstract
and purely quantitative—the higher the number the more value—without assigning properties
(e.g., dollars, happiness) to explain exactly what made it valuable. This idea of murdering a
person to absorb their worth is reminiscent of Mark David Chapman's assassination of John
Lennon, however it differed significantly. Where Chapman “killed the biggest Somebody
[emphasis added] on earth”131 in order to “usurp”132 Lennon’s “importance”133 and
“success”134—specific qualities, Holmes' psychological cannibalism was quantitative, targeting
multiple victims to whom he had assigned a value of 1. In a way, his emphasis on quantitative

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methods of murder over qualitative reflected his scientific inclinations. Although Holmes neither
killed up (à la Chapman, Berkowitz) nor killed down (à la Ireland, Arkwright), he did ponder
whether “a millionaire was more important than a homeless person”135, but at the end of the day
he chose to assign “an intrinsic value [of] this person is worth 1 value.”136
Unsurprisingly, given that the creator of ultraception was socially isolated and retreated
into hyperreal simulation to escape his dejection-related emotions, ultraception mirrors the
mechanics of countless video games in which players compete to have the most points. These
points seldom have any objective value outside the digital realm, though particularly high
numbers represent a player's unique virtuosity. In order to explain away this ostensible oversight
regarding what 'value' represented, Holmes compared ultraception to the issuing of fiat currency:
“It's kind of like the value of the dollar. Like the dollar isn't worth anything but you attribute
value to it. So if you attribute value to killing people, then you become more valuable.”137 Other
prominent themes in the zeitgeist of economic globalization and Information Age America found
their way into 'ultraception.' For instance, Holmes explained to Dr. Reid that “you can take
countries measuring their GDP of a given population and say this is a value which we place on
our nation's output. And you can do the same to individual people, and say this person has a
value and does this output or would do this output but then it goes to me afterwards after killing
them... You conquer the country through illegal war and then you receive its economic
benefits.”138 When Reid, seemingly more acquainted with actual history than war strategy
games, pointed out that the value of a country drops catastrophically when it is destroyed,
Holmes countered with a deflection, saying “the conquering country would have increased their
military effectiveness cos they’ve kind of won a battle... essentially you win the war by killing
them so you’re no longer in a state of war.”139 As if the voice of predatory capitalism itself was
emanating from his mouth, Holmes pointed out that “it was necessary to do what was in my best
interest.”140 The late Robert F. Kennedy's assertion that every society gets the kind of criminal it
deserves has never been more applicable. Having attempted to circumvent the emptiness of
nihilism by applying the inherently schizophrenic economic policies of the Federal Reserve to
the value of human life, Holmes acquired a high-powered assault rifle through a mail order
purchase and walked into the screening of a violent Hollywood film, spraying the audience with
bullets. In the shadow of the 2008 U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis, there is a grim irony to the
massacre; Reeves, McKee, and Stuckler found that approximately 10,000 suicides had resulted

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directly from this so-called 'Great Recession.'141
Unlike typical mass shooters, after firing into the audience, Holmes “just decided I was
done and left… I could have kept on shooting”142 but “I felt I shot enough people and the other
[factor] was the weapon jamming.”143 Consistent with ETV, the negative emotions he had felt
before completing the massacre and “standing outside the emergency exit door”144 were
immediately replaced by “relief.”145 At this point, Holmes was unsure of what to do because “I
kind of figured my life would end [literally and figuratively] at the end of the shootings.”146 His
only plan was “the basic biologic instinct to survive.”147 Though Holmes would murder 12
people, at this stage of his renegotiation of self it would be inaccurate to call his homicidal
ideal/own James + 12, as he did not know how many people would die. Instead, we will use
James + x, where x refers to the unknown death toll. To announce the existence of James + x to
the world, Holmes dyed his hair red, wore black contact lenses, and snapped photographs of
himself posing with weapons to resemble a hyperreal figure. This will be explored in Chapter 4.

James Holmes: Victimology

Table 20:
James Holmes Victimology
Victim Name Age Race Gender Profession Date Killed Where
Jonathan Blunk 26 White Male Worked at hardware store July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
A.J. Boik 18 White Male Coffee distributor July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
Jesse Childress 29 White Male Cybersystems operator July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
Gordon Cowden 51 White Male Small business owner July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
Jessica Ghawi 24 White Female Sports radio intern July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
John Thomas 27 White Male U.S. navy July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
Larimier
Matt McQuinn 27 White Male Worked in Target store July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
Micayla Medek 23 White Female Subway sandwich artist July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
Veronica 6 White Female None July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
Moser-Sullivan
Alex Sullivan 27 White Male Married bartender July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
Alex Teves 24 White Male Counselor July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
Rebecca Ann 32 White Female Customs relations July 20, 2012 Century 16 Aurora
Wingo representative

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 James Holmes exemplifies expressive/transformative offenders who choose non-
symbolic victims. His only point of discrimination was that he thought it was “wrong to kill
children”148 under the age of 12149 and “tried to minimize child fatalities by choosing [a]
midnight [screening], [with a] PG-13 [rating].”150 Nevertheless, he believed that taking a child's
life still contributed to the numerical increase in his self-worth through ultraception “because
their lives are valuable too.”151 Holmes intentionally targeted completely random strangers in a
dark room because “it was just a crowd… an abstract thing… I do not see them as
individuals.”152 Referring back to ultraception, Holmes would further expand upon this later in
the Reid interview:
I just consider them numbers really on people… there would be a number of people who
died in conglomerate mass or something… [At the theatre] I didn't like single them out as
individuals… [To me they were] not real people. It was just kinda amorphous people.
People were going to get hurt, not John Doe… [I was] unknowledgeable of their
ambitions and their thoughts.153

Holmes did not believe he had the capacity to murder individuals crossing out “serial
murder”154 as an option in his notebook because it was “too personal, too much evidence, easily
caught, few kills”155 and placing a checkmark next to “Mass Murder/Spree”156 because it had the
qualities of “maximum casualties, easily performed w/firearms although primitive in nature. No
fear of consequences, being caught 99% certain.”157 When questioned about this journal entry by
Dr. Reid, Holmes explained, “I chose mass murder over something like serial killing… because
it's impersonal. Because it's something I could actually do.”158 In his journal, Holmes had written
“the cruel twists of fate are unkind to the misfortunate”159 beside “targets random”160. When
pressed to offer more details, he explained “the people who were shot were misfortunate because
there are thousands of theatres and seats and they were in the wrong one at the wrong time.”161
Finally, Holmes's notion of death as a “dreamless imperceptible… the epitome of peace, justice,
and freedom”162 led him to reason that his victims were “going to be going to a peaceful state
and they're going to avoid all of the conflict”163 [mj] adding “it doesn’t matter what you do in
life… cos you're just going to die anyway.”164 These views are consistent with Holmes's
philosophical pessimism (see 3.11.6 James Holmes: Religious/Philosophical Aspects).
As of the Reid interviews, Holmes stood by his decision to commit the murders, though
he did express some regret over the “collateral damage”165 of those wounded: “[I]t's not good in

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that they had to be injured in order for you to kill the other people… because if I put my shoes in
their situation I wouldn't want that to happen to me… I regret they had to be wounded… They
get debilitated… and it's too bad that it couldn't be avoided.”166

James Holmes: Post-Arrest Self

When asked about his feelings upon hearing that there “was like over 50 wounded and 12
died”167, Holmes thought “just that I was worth 12 more people than I was before… I only count
fatalities.”168 Through the “philosopher's stone”169 of violence, Holmes transformed himself from
The Misfit With the Broken Brain to James +12: “I increased my self worth and I didn't have
to die.”170 Predictably, this narrowing of the discrepancy between Holmes' actual/own and
ideal/own selves by perpetrating “the homicide got me out of the depression. It gave me a
purpose... I accomplished what I set out to do… it went according to plan.”171
As of July 2014, Holmes remained fairly consolidated in his renegotiated homicidal self
as James + 12—“I did get the value, [but] it didn't stop my suicidal thoughts…”172—and
considers his body count a “moderate [success].”173 Dr. William Reid had noted that the
ultraception symbol adorned the wall of Holmes's cell. Regarding incarceration, Holmes' feelings
are ambivalent: “It was not my intentions [sic] to be locked up... I knew I was going to be locked
up, but I didn't want to be locked up... That's just the price you have to pay for completing the
mission.”174 On the other hand, the prospect of incarceration appealed to him in some way
because he wished “to be isolated, [though] not necessarily in jail.”175 Moreover, “I wouldn't say
it's entirely bad… at least I'm remembered as doing something [emphasis added].”176 When
asked by Dr. Reid how he would be remembered, Holmes replied “I'd be remembered in a poor
light... as mentally ill or different from the norm [emphasis added]…[but also for] being
successful with the mission.”177 Holmes admitted that, in 2012, being remembered was very
important to him, which is why he considered sending photographs of himself to the New York
Times, though “that [motivation] didn't surface consciously [at the time]... I didn't think people
would remember me for any other reason [emphasis added].”178
Regarding the possibility of his execution, Holmes applied his theory of ultraception to
explain the purpose of homicidal retribution by the state: “[mass murder] creates an imbalance of
value, so the justice system wants to obliterate that and get it back to zero... [by] killing me.”179
According to Holmes, if the executioner believed in the theory of ultraception they would “get

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the value”180 of executing him and if they “believed that I was worth 13 then they would be the
arbiter of that.”181 Holmes did not seem particularly fearful of death at the time of the Reid
interviews: “since I've got to jail it hasn't looked that bad of a possibility.”182
However, the transition into James + 12 did not resolve Holmes's emotional problems
completely. He stated that “the person who gives me the [mental health] tests”183 said “I show
strong signs of depression.”184 When asked what it's like to be a dangerous guy, Holmes
answered that he feels “isolated and alone... it's hard to trust people... I figure most people could
be dangerous to me as well... because I've been dangerous... [they might hurt me] to get even
maybe.”185 Holmes said other inmates “call me The Joker”186 which “makes me feel like they've
kind of turned me into a supervillain.”187
Finally, as a reward for murdering 12 people, Holmes garnered a global fan club of
“almost 500”188 mostly female admirers calling themselves 'Holmies' who send him photographs
of themselves, money orders, and letters garnished with lipstick marks, perfume, and menstrual
blood.189 At one point, the facility where he was detained received such a high volume of mail
addressed to Holmes that they were forced to change their mail policy. When Holmes's trial
began on April 27, 2015, several 'Holmies' flew or drove long distances to attend. One letter sent
to him reads:

[At the trial] there was me & Shena on the back row and Cyd and Kriss on the row in
front of us. Shena, I'm sure you know well by now as I'm pretty sure she writes you and
sends you money/pictures more often than what's healthy (haha). She was the blonde
mouthing things at you and trying desperately to make any sort of eye contact.190

Though Holmes' defense team entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, on August 24,
2015, he was found guilty and handed 12 life sentences with an additional 3,318 years without
parole. He was transferred to an undisclosed prison out-of-state in late-2015 after being punched
several times by a fellow inmate.191

James Holmes: Sexual/Gender Aspects

James Holmes met his first girlfriend Gargi Datta in September 2011 at the University of
Colorado, and by October they were dating. Holmes told Gargi that he loved her, but she did not
reciprocate, and in February 2012 the two broke up. According to Holmes, they enjoyed sexual
relations “three or four times a week”192 for a period of approximately four months, which

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continued intermittently after they had broken up: “I guess she wanted a non-committal
relationship so I figured I was better than nothing… It was just like the first [relationship] except
I knew there was not going to be a future between us.”193 According to Holmes, in May 2012 “I
just told her I wasn't happy and I didn't want to do the relationship anymore... because I wanted a
committed relationship.”194 Gargi had been Holmes's first girlfriend, though she claims he lied to
her about having previously “grown intimate with someone in camp, I believe an
undergraduate.”195
Though Holmes later expressed to Dr. Reid that he just wanted to “be alone. Solitary”196,
he showed an intense interest in having (or being seen to have) female companions. On one
occasion, Holmes manipulated a 'selfie' to appear as if he was romantically involved with an
attractive model (see Figure 31), which he then posted online.

Figure 27. Photograph Holmes doctored to include attractive female and posted online
Holmes explained that he had created the deception because “I kind of thought that that would
make me more desirable, seeing me with someone like that… [enacted identity] I was trying to

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feel desirable… because I'd broken up with my ex-girlfriend… Not wanting to be alone. Wanting
to start another relationship.”197 Furthermore, Holmes wrote of how the end of his romantic
relationship with Gargi Datta was an “expediting catalyst”198 for his violent acts. Holmes told Dr.
William Reid:

When I was a kid I thought I would never fall in love…[I remember] not wanting to fall
in love…[but] there's a biological drive to procreate, and there's a biological drive to fall
in love. And I couldn't overcome those… I was trying to fight my biology… I resisted
trying to fall in love… I'm glad I did [fall in love]…I got to know another person and
care for another person, and have that returned.199

Holmes addressed these contradictory desires for companionship and solitude in his diary:

View myself as divided. There is a biological me, which is driven by biological needs...
The real me is fighting the biological me. The real me, namely [the] thinking one does
things not because I'm programmed to, but b/c I choose to. The latest battle I lost was
when I finally succumbed to falling in love. Evolution, the biological program's coder is
very difficult to fight.200

Considering Holmes' relative sexual inexperience201 in light of his attempts to dupe others into
believing he was desired by women who embodied emphasized femininity, it is obvious his
attitude toward his sexuality was ego-dystonic. Like his quantity-focused approach to killing,
Holmes' use of call-girls after the break-up202 was likely an attempt to 'increase his numbers' and
reduce the discrepancy between the sexual-aspects of his actual and ideal selves. After all, given
his social deficits, he probably concluded that a substantial amount of time—perhaps the rest of
his life—would pass before he found another sexual partner. Thus, when Holmes replied “no”203
to Reid's question as to whether or not he wanted to be a “womanizer”204 like “James Bond”205,
he was likely being deceitful.
Compounding this obsession with his sex life, in his diary under a list of personal bodily
concerns, Holmes wrote:
Concern with cock. Suffered accidents as child. Allergic reaction to sex - scarring.
Excessive stimulation in response to ‘most beautiful woman in world’ I had read in a
book. Other event - a slab of skin tore away, did not heal. [The] Results of accidents [are
either] not prevalent to absence [sic] in appearance when erect.206

When questioned about this entry by Dr. William Reid, Holmes replied “I don't want to talk
about it.”207 However, when asked more generally about how he viewed his genitalia, he replied

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“small, I guess… well, based on national averages it's small.”208 Considering that Holmes
answered every other question put to him in his 22 hours with Dr. Reid, his refusal to talk about
the reference to a scarred or injured penis is noteworthy. Holmes' diary seems to indicate that he
may have caused some level of cosmetic damage, however insignificant, to his penis by
masturbating to an image or description of the 'most beautiful women in the world' in a
publication. Among the other scribblings in his diary were “Body dysmorphic disorder”209, a
phrase which Holmes clarified by saying “I wasn't happy that I had poor vision and bad sinuses
and [I was also] unhappy with my hair… I did a lot [of checking myself in the mirror].”210
Placing the sum total of these findings next to Holmes's stated identification with the nerdy
Leonard from The Big Bang Theory sitcom211, it is obvious he saw his actual/own as a
subordinated male.

James Holmes: Religious/Philosophical Aspects

Unlike the rest of the American-born offenders in this study, Holmes “never was really a
believer”212 in religion, stating that he had been “indifferent”213 to his Sunday school teachings.
His match.com dating profile listed “agnostic”214 under the 'faith' field. Queried about the
importance of his religious beliefs by Dr. Reid, Holmes answered “I'd say insignificant”215. Yet,
Holmes' journal indicates he spent a great deal of time reflecting on metaphysics. When Reid
asked him why he had printed the word 'why?' more than 100 times in a row in his journal,
Holmes explained “I think it was... 'what is the meaning of life and death?'... it's something I
mulled over for a long time.”216 One counterargument for the existence of an Abrahamic God
which Holmes particularly dwelled on was the issue of the creation of sin and free will.
Specifically, in his journal he wrote “what kind of GOD commands his people not to murder yet
cowers behind free will?”217 When Reid rephrased his questions to enquire as to whether Holmes
had a personal spiritual system, Holmes replied: “Yeah I kind of believe God is everything. So
He doesn't really need worship or to be preyed to, because He's just kind of everything in
total.”218 This belief seems to reflect Holmes' scientific background, and may be related to Deism
or facile spiritual interpretations of quantum theoryvvvvvvvv where it is proposed that the unknown
force driving the universe exists at the most microscopic level and links all things. According to

vvvvvvvv
See Rhonda Byrnes' bestselling book The Secret (which will appear in the Elliot Rodger case below), the
film What the Bleep Do We Know?, and various claims by the New Age author and speaker Deepak Chopra.

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Holmes, God is “always in our actions, and in our thoughts, and in the collective sum of
anything… So like anything you can think of, that is part of God… he kinda does everything and
anything.”219 It may also be that Holmes is using the word 'God' allegorically as a substitute for a
more abstract concept, since when asked if he believes God has any expectations of man, he
replied “No, I would say not.”220 Responding to questions of whether God pays attention to what
happens on earth and cares about it, Holmes answered “Well that would kind of mean he's
paying attention to himself cos he is everything... if you’re talking about everything then it’s
going to be negative and positive… It’s hard to say what he would care about because that's a
single thing … and he would be caring and not caring as in the same way.”221 When this was
restated more specifically in regards to the shooting, Holmes said that God would simply
acknowledge “just that it's changing something…It’s changing life”222 Asked again whether God
would care about Holmes's action specifically, Holmes replied “that's personifying God into a
human.”223 Holmes seems to be implying that to him God is a non-judging, perhaps non-sentient
totality, which neutrally experiences flux.
Turning to the question of life after death, Holmes explained that he didn’t “believe in
afterlifes [sic]”224 and described the state of death as “the dreamless sleep”225 where “before life
is the same as after you live... so it ultimately didn’t matter what you did in lifewwwwwwww because
it would just go back to before and after.”226 Within this metaphysical worldview, Holmes
reasoned “In life's there's conflict, struggles, there's not absolute freedom [because] you’re bound
by laws of nature, human laws. But when you're [dead and] in the dreamless sleep you’re just
kind of in a perfect state.”227
If we were to characterize Holmes's views in western philosophical terms, there are
echoes of philosophical pessimism—“I generally have a pessimistic view… all the time”228—
best characterized in the writings of Emil Cioran and Arthur Schopenhauer, along with
existential nihilism. Dr. William Reid seems to have formed similar conclusions, asking Holmes
about the influence of the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche229, who was strongly
influenced by Schopenhauer but ultimately rejected his asceticism. When questioned about his
familiarity with Nietzsche'sxxxxxxxx work, Holmes answered that he knew very little: “He believed

wwwwwwww
There is an obvious and interesting logical contradiction here, as Holmes has violated the logic of
his own nihilism by striving to have greater value and notoriety.
xxxxxxxx
The question of whether Holmes was a Nietzschean Übermensch or not would merit an entire essay in
itself. For brevity's sake, “no, not really. He was ultimately governed by the need for others' approval. This binds

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he was Godyyyyyyyy I think and then he went crazy.”230
Fittingly, as Nietzsche predicted of 21st century man, Holmes's lack of belief in a
traditional God resulted in his accepting of “moral relativism”231 where “you kind of decide for
yourself what's right and what’s wrong... [T]here’s no concrete absolute set of moral standards.
It's contrived by the individual.”232 Therefore, “the message is there is no message”233 implies
that the murders were a reaction to Holmes encountering nihilism. As Holmes does not believe in
objective moral truths, he interpreted his homicidal acts as “selfish, not morally wrong.”234
Responding to Reid's question as to whether he was a “wronger”235, Holmes replied that he was
not a 'wronger' because he had only been 'bad' for one day, while remaining 'good' over a period
of many more days.236 This reasoning seems to parallel that of another existentially nihilistic
multiple murderer, 'The Moors Murderer' Ian Brady, who in his controversial The Gates of Janus
proposed the questions: “[I]f a killer of six proved that he had consciously refrained from killing
a dozen other victims he previously had at his mercy, why should the dozen acts of clemency be
of lesser moral significance than the six fatalities?”237 Holmes recognized a rather obvious point
that the psychopathic Brady seemingly overlooked: “the magnitude [of what was done wrong]
matters”238—at least to other people.
Where Chapman buried his desire for fame in a classic morally righteous hero narrative,
Holmes constructed his theory of 'ultraception' upon the blank slate of nihilism. He “designated
like an arbitrary value of like 1 to each person…One value unit… One is significant enough... As
a human being they have this value and I take that value”239 by killing them. Interestingly,
Holmes recognized that his system was “objective, but that's my subjective opinion”240 and that
the value of 1 for each victim was “arbitrary”241. This actually shows that he did not possess a
delusional interpretive framework242 and, therefore should not be considered delusional but
meta-delusional: “[ultraception] would be a delusion viewed by other people, [but] not according
to me.”243 When asked if 'ultraception' applied to a person other than himself, Holmes replied:
“Well people can believe whatever they want so it's as valid as she needs it to be.”244 Ironically,
the end result of his philosophizing is something that bears resemblance to a spiritual belief
system. Holmes believes 'ultraception', like the holy scriptures, will endure past his death

him to the flock.”

yyyyyyyy
Incorrect.

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because “I’ve written it down. Shared it with other people. So it exists through them.”245
Thankfully, American society has yet to produce any 'ultraception' copycat killers.

James Holmes: Class Aspects

Class identity does not seem to have played a role in the multiple murders Holmes committed
against his “conglomerate mass”246 of victims. That said, he mailed a package containing burnt
money to his psychiatrist, Dr. Lynn Fenton, before the massacre: “I figured I wouldn't have any
use for money afterwards so I destroyed the currency… It was about as much as I could take out
from the ATM machine… I think four, six hundred [dollars].”247 Holmes explained that “one of
the reasons I didn’t stay with Fenton was because my insurance was going to get cancelled
because I dropped out of graduate school and she charged like $80 an hour… [I sent burnt
money] to show that was a reason that I didn’t come back to her.”248 Perhaps, consciously or
subconsciously, Holmes was attempting to demonstrate that the amount of mass murders in the
United States was the result of inadequate access to quality mental health care due to financial
factors.

James Holmes: Vocational Aspects

Holmes began studying neuroscience “to get a good paying job”249 and because “I wanted
to see why I was different… I was interested in the differences between like normal people and
like people who are different… outside the norm I guess… I guess mentally ill.”250 “I was also
really depressed… I just didn't have like my normal drive to finish things and succeed… Kind of
stuck in a rut… It was hard to get up and do things… I would like to go back and sleep in the
middle of the day on lunchbreak.”251 According to Holmes, his grades began to suffer when he
supposedly became “sick from mono and I was fatigued all the time... In my lab I kind of messed
up. Used the wrong procedure… I passed all of my courses and everything.”252 For a student
who had finished his previous studies with an absolutely outstanding GPA, this must have been
devastating.
In the months leading up to the mass murder, Holmes admitted to experiencing “a loss of
self-worth… The career I’d chosen was most likely over… some of my rotations didn't go very
well… Nobody cared if I stayed in the program or not.”253 Resigned to his homicidal mission,
Holmes left his prelims “up to fate”254 because “it didn’t matter if I passed or failed…because I

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 was gonna complete my mission and get locked up or killed.”255 At the time he admitted to
feeling socially “underappreciated”256 and an “outcast.”257 He stopped feeling invested in
university altogether when “I didn't pass my preliminary exams and I had a lab I could have
joined but the kind of topics were less neuroscience and more genetics… I just made the decision
not to take them, and then just made the decision to leave.”258 In June 2012, Holmes officially
quit the program. According to Holmes's program director, Sukumar Vijayaraghavan, “James
had told [Dr. Fenton] he did not think he would make a mark on the world with science so he
could blow up people and become famous.”259 Despite their significant differences, here he bears
an unsettling resemblance to Mark David Chapman.

Concluding Thoughts: James Holmes

Table 21

James Holmes: Selves and Strain

Actual/Own Ideal/Own Homicidal Self Post-Arrest Self

Sexuality Ego-dystonic. Lies about past Ego-syntonic. N/A Ego-syntonic. Hundreds of women
sexual partners. Girlfriend Steady sexual vie for his attention and send him
breaks up with him. Concern partner. letters and photographs of
with penis. Forges photos to themselves. He sticks his personal
appear he has an attractive sign to the wall of his cell and
female sexual partner. surrounds it with their photos.
Gender Subordinated. Subordinated. Hyperreal. No Reconciled.
Gender-role strain. gender-role strain.
Religion/Philosophy Agnostic Agnostic Ultraception Ultraception
Class Middle-class. N/A N/A N/A
Vocation Student. Neuroscientist. N/A Resolved. Incarcerated. Retreatism.
Race Ego-syntonic. N/A N/A N/A
Non-racist.
Notability Ego-dystonic. Ego-syntonic. Ego-syntonic. Ego-syntonic. Media circus.
Strain. Famous ‘blow up people Reconciled.
scientist. and become
famous'
The seven cases preceding this one have shown that, from a very young age, ETV
offenders experience difficulties with socialization and exhibit some degree of communication

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dysfunction: problems which interact to create a truncated and/or unstable sense of self. James
Holmes is the first of three American Millennial expressive/transformative murderers in this
sample who suffer from extreme communication dysfunctions to the extent where they hardly
speak. When these men are isolated from their families in college, their inability to cope with the
demands of adult life reaches a fever pitch, and they adjust by transitioning to a homicidal
ideal/own. In Holmes' case, his homicidal ideal/own was neither blatantly comprised of
hyperreal characters (e.g., Holden Caulfield, Catherine Tramell, Jason Voorhees) or archetypes
(e.g., Hero, Monster, Outlaw). Rather, upon abandoning the 'normal' Successful Cured
Neuroscientist ideal/own, he sought to externalize the cognitive deviance of his actual/own by
dying his hair red, sporting black contact lenses, and posing with weapons “to stand beside
normalcy and be the exotic figure” 260 with “a different kind of view of the world than other
people.”261 In other words, when confronted with his actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy, Holmes
rejected all attempts at conformity, embracing and amplifying his deviance into a homicidal
ideal/own which proactively and permanently separated him from society, physically and
existentially, by committing indiscriminate mass murder. This homicidal ideal/own “wasn't the
normal me… That portrays an evil me… It's kind of a character of me.”262 To emphasize and
promote his “different kind of view of the world”263, Holmes also sent his journal, which
included cryptic references to ultraception, to Dr. Fenton.264
Holmes' disinterest in people, in which conversation is simply the act of “rambling about
frivolous information”265 is reflected in his philosophical devaluation of individuals into 1s—all
are equal, possessing the least value possible.zzzzzzzz Even groups are nothing more than a
'conglomerate mass' of 1s to be murdered, increasing Holmes' own worth so that he could
transcend 'normal' and become the exceptional James+12 (worth 13 times what other individuals
are). Here we have echoes of Daniel Gonzalez, another ETV murderer with non-symbolic
victims, who opined “good people don't do anything. They are just boring”266, with 'good' being
synonymous with seemingly 'normal.' Holmes even compared himself to James Bond, saying
that like the fictional British spy, he was “a man of action.”267 Holmes' taciturn preference for
action over words is a trope of hyperreal masculinity conveyed in action films and video games.
Ironically, this wannabe 'exotic figure' was actually mainlining normative masculinity.

zzzzzzzz
Yes, arguably he could have made them worth .50, but this is nitpicking which misses the fundamental
point.

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 This is unsurprising. With his nerdiness, lack of success with women, and injured penis,
Holmes' masculinity was a major source of gender-role strain for him. Anticipating that he would
be perceived as committing the Aurora cinema massacre because Gargi broke up with him,
Holmes wrote in his journal “Most fools will misinterpret correlation for causation, namely
relationship and work failure as causes. Both were expediting catalysts not the reason. The
causation being my state of mind for the past 15 years.”268 Here Holmes is playing a rather
obvious trick: if one attributes his violence to strain regarding the gender and vocational aspects
of his self (arguably both linked to his masculinity), then one is a 'fool.' Since nobody wishes to
be viewed as unintelligent, they are incentivized to avoid this explanation. Yet, if we have
learned anything so far from the offenders in this sample it is that they misdirect us from those
aspects of their motives which embarrass them. Certainly, Holmes' proverbial psychological gun
was already loaded, but the collapse of his first sexual relationship and academic career pulled
the trigger. They did so because these were primary strains in his life. His actual/own The Misfit
With the Broken Brain suffered from severe social anxiety to the point of actually wishing to
be removed from society, while The Successful Cured Neuroscientist (ideal/own) wanted a
“cookie-cutter life”269 which entailed “a good paying job”270 and “raising a family”271 Both acts
require constant interaction with society: “[In] any type of work you're usually going to have to
interact with people.”272 Due to his deviant social behavior—chronically being out of face or
being in wrong face—The Man With the Broken Brain was unable to sustain a relationship
and stand-out grades. Retreating from society into media, the Man With the Broken Brain was
likely, consciously or subconsciously, at least partially inspired to create the theory of
ultraception by the video game convention of killing foes to accumulate abstract 'points.'
Reasoning that he would never be able to function as a normal person, Holmes plotted the
massacre because “the mission brought me hope”273—i.e. the possibility of finally having an
attainable self which would eliminate his negative emotionality: James+x. Moreover,
“destroying doesn't come out of the hatred… I don’t want to deal with the people, so one way is
to get rid of them.”274 Now isolated in protective custody, the 'exotic' Holmes hardly needs to
deal with anybody or anything.
Most fascinating is Holmes' constant framing of his actions in terms of the state. Besides
comparing his arbitrary view of human value to fiat currency, he justified ultraception by

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remarking “It's kind of human nature almost to fall back to wars and violence when there's no
solution.”275 Conceptualizing himself and his victims as competing nations, he says
“you can take countries measuring their GDP of a given population and say this is a value
which we place on our nation's output. And you can do the same to individual people,
and say this person has a value and does this output or would do this output but then it
goes to me afterwards after killing them... You conquer the country through illegal war
and then you receive its economic benefits.”276

Where the dropouts Chapman, Berkowitz, and Rolling wore the Holy Bible talisman, the case of
James Holmes showcases the terrifying phenomenon of a mentally-disordered intellectual
channeling content from textbooks and news media. Ultimately then, whether an ETV offender
is religious or nihilistic has little bearing on their capacity to commit murder, rather, it simply
changes the colour of their meta-delusion. As predicted by Nietzsche, the void left by the death
of God will be filled by political and personal ideologies, and the violent man will inevitably fill
it with violence.

Elliot Rodger: ‘Effete Cultured Outcast’ to ‘True Alpha Male

Talismans: Incel/Truecel culture; Avatars: Ramsay Bolton; Type: 1

Elliot Rodger: Failed socialization and the formation and realization of the actual/own

Elliot Rodger emigrated with his family from Sussex, England to Los Angeles at the age of four.
Like Colin Ireland, he moved constantly from school to school, though unlike Ireland, he did so
voluntarily because he could not deal with his social rejection and bullying.277From a young age,
Rodger's communication dysfunctions were severe, making him “incredibly hard work to talk
to.”278 Philip Bloeser, who Rodger had considered a friend, said that Rodger “was unable to
communicate with anyone. He was so shy and painfully awkward. He had a boring personality
and he didn't talk.”279 After watching one of Rodger's video rants, Bloeser “was amazed to hear
him talk so much and so articulately, usually all you would get were one word, monosyllabic
answers from him.”280 Again, we see echoes of the severe reluctance to express oneself in
conversation that inhibited the psycho-social growth of Millennial rampage killers, James
Holmes and Seung-Hui Cho. And like both gunmen, Rodger “perceived things very differently
to everyone else”281 and developed a “warped sense of reality”282, according to Bloeser. These
observations are corroborated by the testimony of family friend Simon Astaire who “got a sense

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of a boy who was unable to communicate… he was unable to engage, and it was difficult to
engage. And I saw lots of people trying to engage with him.”283 Lenny Shaw, an adult who
claimed to know Rodger, said “you would immediately see how awkward he was in just about
any situation and how shy he was and how afraid he was...”284 Taking all of this into
consideration, Rodger's issues with the sexual aspects of his self—the primary strain belying his
homicides—were directly related to his inability to effectively communicate. Bloeser proposes
“He would never dream of approaching a girl, he just expected them to come to him, which they
didn't. Even if any of them ever had, it wouldn't have lasted long, because he wouldn't chat to
them.”285 Though his personal identity was that of a 'cultured gentleman' Rodger did not seem to
realize that his enacted identity showed a socially-mortified dullard. As with similar offenders in
this sample, this resulted in a negatively-evaluated ascribed relational identity which begat poor
communication satisfaction and, crucially, a dangerous and consuming sense of not being
understood: “I don't know why you girls are so repulsed by me. It doesn't make sense. I do
everything I can to appear attractive to you.”286
Like David Berkowitz and Daniel Gonzalez, the inability to form a romantic/sexual
relationship with a woman was central to Rodger's self-concept. Rather than taking the view that
there were inherent deficiencies in his actual/own, Rodger blamed the female gender, claiming
that their “sexual attractions are flawed”287 and “perverted”288. In numerous Videologs (VLOGS)
he purported a seemingly genuine belief that he was “polite”289, looked “fabulous”290 and
“magnificent”291 in his BMW and $300 Giorgio Armani sunglasses292; as well as “so
awesome”293, undeniably “beautiful”294 , well-travelled295, “civilized, intelligent,
sophisticated”296 with “a sense of style”297 and had “so much to talk about.”298 To Rodger, this
was proof that as he was “the ultimate gentleman”299, he had experienced “injustice”300 because
“I deserve girls much more than all those slobs [with girlfriends].”301 At the same time he openly
recognized that he had been “cast out. No one likes me. No one accepts me. All my life I've been
struggling to fit in with the popular kids.”302 Taking this into consideration, we can summarize
Rodgers' actual/own image as an Effete Cultured Outcast—a truly special male in his own
mind, whose brilliance was unrecognized by the boorish culture around him.
Though Rodger did not discuss feeling like a child in a man's body, he never really lived
an adult life, as everything was provided for him by his parents, including childhood friends: “I
always had a pleasant experience during mother’s week. She always arranged playdates for me,

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because she knew I was too shy to initiate them myself.”303 He did however express that “I wish
I could be a kid again... I mean, when you're a kid you don't have to worry about things like
being attractive or how many girls like you. No one has unfair advantages.”304 For these reasons,
we should strongly consider the likelihood that Rodger suffered the same truncated development
as Chapman, Berkowitz, Ireland, Rolling, and Gonzalez, and that this resulted partially from his
communication dysfunctions.

Elliot Rodger: Pre-homicidal Ideal/Owns and Negative Emotionality

When he was nine-years-old (late-dimensional/early-vectorial), Rodger “…realized that
there were hierarchiesaaaaaaaaa, that some people were better than others [emphasis added]… At
school, there were always the 'cool kids' who seemed to be more admirable than everyone
else.”305 Rodger started to “compare myself to these 'cool kids' [looking glass self]. I realized,
with some horror, that I wasn't 'cool' at all. I had a dorky hairstyle, I wore plain and uncool
clothing, and I was shy and unpopular [actual/own]... This revelation… decreased my self-
esteem.” 306 Observing that many of the popular children in his school were white and rode
skateboards, Rodger constructed his first ideal/own self—the Cool Kid—accordingly: “I had
never even ridden on a skateboard before, but if I wanted to be cool, I had to become a
skateboarder... [Father] took me to the store Val Surf on Ventura Boulevard to buy me a new
skateboard...”307 Rodger “was thrilled to have this new skateboard and the possible chance it
gave me to be a cool kid [ideal/own]. It was time to start practicing... I was now a skateboarder,
though not yet good enough to reveal myself as one to the kids at school [emphasis added]. This
was the start of an obsession to copy everything the supposed 'cool kids' were doing.”308 Like
Rolling, Magnotta, Gonzalez, Arkwright, Holmes, and Cho, Rodger changed his physical
appearance to transition toward this ideal/own self: “My first act was to ask my parents to allow
me to bleach my hair blonde. I always envied and admired blonde-haired [sic] people, they
always seemed so much more beautifulbbbbbbbbb… father took me to a hair salon... I felt cool.”309

aaaaaaaaa
Specifically, dominance hierarchies among (and in many sociological theoreis 'between') groups of males and
groups of females.
bbbbbbbbb
Notice Rodger's ego-dystonic racial identity. Later, we will see him use race to claim superiority over other
men. Like Magnotta, Rodger's thoughts meet the definition of racism in its traditional use. Both men have strong
feminine characteristics in their highly subordinated masculinities. They use race and class to claim
superiority—both incredulous affectations of hegeomic masculinity— because their masculinities are so
stigmatized: “faggot” and “virgin”.

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 Framing this using the CTI, Rodger wished to narrow the gap between his enacted
identity of the 'cool kid' and his relational identity among those whom he deemed “cool kids.”310
This never truly occurred, because much to Rodger's “disappointment, no one really cared. They
were all in their own worlds. I don’t remember any kids showing recognition of my new
'coolness' [emphasis added].”311 Still, at this point, he perceived the gap between his enacted
identity and relational identity to be minimal. Ultimately, despite his perceived efforts “I never
really became good friends with the so-called 'cool kids'. I would see them more as competitors
than friends.”312 As the gap between his enacted and relational identities widened, Rodger's “life
at school was starting to become mediocre again, and I became frustrated with my struggle to be
cool [ideal/own].”313
Rodger's social isolation mirrored that of the other offenders in this study: “I didn't have a
regular group of friends who I always played with. I was like a nomad, moving from group to
group and trying to fit in with each one, but never fully integrating.”314 By sixth grade, Rodger
“didn't know what was cool anymore, I had no friends there. I simply didn't know what to do...
The social challenges that I faced in Fifth Grade were intensified tenfold.”315 Unable to find an
acceptable line, Rodger was ever in wrong face or out of face.316

My whole world had changed. The 'cool' thing to do now was to be popular with girls
[emphasis added]. I didn't know how to go about doing that. Skateboarding, I was able to
do... dressing well, that was simple... But attracting attention from girls? How in the
blazes was I going to do that? I didn't even understand what was so special about it
either, but everyone seemed to place so much importance on it [emphasis added to
second sentence].317

This last sentence is particularly informative as Rodger, who did not hit puberty until he was
nearly 14-years-old (late vectorial development), was not initially motivated to ingratiate himself
to his female peers due to sexual desire. Rather, his motives arose from a wish to be socially
included.
Instead of striving toward a new ideal/own self during this time, Rodger resigned himself
to his Effete Cultured Outcast actual/own while continuing to resentfully envy those who had
achieved his Cool Kid ideal/own.318 Following a similar path as Daniel Gonzalez and James
Holmes, by Seventh Grade, Rodger was using video games to retreat from his social problems.319
When Rodger's mother subscribed to high speed internet, he

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 was able to play World of Warcraft on her computer, along with Halo 2 on Xbox Live.
This was the point when my social life ended completely [emphasis added]. I would never
have a satisfying social life ever again. It was the beginning of a very lonely period of my
life, in which my only social interactions would be online through video gamesccccccccc… I
stopped caring about my life and my future. I even stopped caring about what people
thought of me. I hid myself away in the online World of Warcraft, a place where I felt
comfortable and secure.320 [Retreatism]

Still mandated to attend school, Rodger could not completely escape into the digital opium. He
would describe the years between the ages of 13 and 17 (late vectorial) as being a “depressing
and lonely period of my life.”321 Given the massive discrepancy between his Effete Cultured
Outcast actual/own and his Cool Kid ideal/own selves, it is unsurprising. In My Twisted World,
Rodger continues to write ad nauseam about being excluded, teased, and occasionally physically
bullied throughout high school. Three particularly relevant points for analysis are (i) his aversion
to being labelled a 'skateboarder', as he had abandoned the hobby, (ii) his visible fear of female
peers, and (iii) the world schema he formed during this process.
Regarding the first, Rodger wrote of how he “developed a hatred for the sport”322
because he “failed to become good at skateboarding... and whenever someone called me a
skateboarder, it reminded me of my failure [emphasis added] and I got very angry [trigger]. The
whole school started calling me it just to anger me...”323 He was mocked for his gynophobia—“I
was scared of girls”324—and called homosexual epithets (see Section 9.5). One particular
incident was crucial in the formation of his viewpoint:

Some boys randomly pushed me against the lockers as they walked past me in the hall.
One boy who was tall and had blonde [sic] hair called me a 'loser', right in front of his
girlfriends… Pretty girls [emphasized femininity]. And they didn't seem to mind that he
was such an evil bastard. In fact, I bet they liked him for it [emphasis added]. This is how
girls are, and I was starting to realize it. This was what truly opened my eyes to how
brutal the world is. The most meanest and depraved of men come out on top
[hegemonic/sub-hegemonic masculinity], and women flock to these men. Their evil acts
are rewarded by women; while the good, decent men [subordinated masculinity] are
laughed at.325

Of course, there is no evidence that there was anything “good”326 or “decent”327 about Rodger,
and based upon his actions, it is likely that he too would have engaged in bullying behaviour if

ccccccccc
The similarities to James Holmes here are startling.

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he was physically capable. Instead, he tried to recast his weakness as morality.
Returning to his hatred of being called a 'skateboarder', thanks to the extensive detail in
Rodger's autobiography, the link between his self-concept and emotional instability is repeatedly
laid bare for us. As discussed in Chapter 1, Higgins emphasized that a self-discrepancy must be
accessible in order for it to produce an emotional effect. In other words, something has to remind
the subject of his self-discrepancy.328 We have already seen how being reminded of his ineptitude
at skateboarding provoked Rodger's ire. Another example of how an emotional effect results
from the sudden accessibility of these self-discrepancies is perfectly demonstrated in the
following account:

Another horrible experience concerning the Bubenheims occurred… a few of Pollina’s

friends came over… cool kids. When I heard them talking about their awesome lives and
their parties, I had a breakdown right then and there [trigger]. I realized how much I’ve
been missing out in my life, and I cried in front of everyone. I felt like I would never
have a life as good as theirs [actual/own:ideal/own]. I told everyone that I wanted to
commit suicide.329

Unwilling to retreat into the digital opium any longer, Rodger had a

revelation that just because I was condemned to suffer a life of loneliness and rejection,
doesn’t mean I am insignificant. I have an exceptionally high level of intelligence. I see
the world differently than anyone else. Because of all of the injustices I went through and
the worldview I developed because of them, I must be destined for greatness. I must be
destined to change the world, to shape it into an image that suits me!330

Determined to become a revolutionary, Rodger spent his hours “reading books about history,
politics, and sociology, trying to learn as much...”331 as he could, and “formed an ideology...of
how the world should work...”332 which he would impose “on the world and set everything
right”333 after his pre-destined “rise to power...”334 Rodger “became a new person furiously
driven by a goal...”335—the Erotophobic Totalitarian Dictator (ideal/own)—who sought to
abolish sexual activity, “destroy all of the injustices of the world, and... exact revenge on
everyone I envy and hate.”336 Though Rodger finally “had something to live for”337 and “felt
empowered”338, the Erotophobic Totalitarian Dictator ideal/own quickly crumbled when it
occurred to him that he “had absolutely no idea or plan of how to acquire any sort of power. It
was naïve of me to think that I could one day become a dictator. The only thing I could do was
fantasize about it.”339 Predictably, Rodger's “whole world twisted even deeper into darkness and

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despair as my depressing life continued on. My hatred for people who have sex festered inside
me like a plague... My life, if you can call it a life, was living hell.”340
Following a period of reflection, Rodger “realized that I was still only seventeen... I
wanted to give myself a new chance at life... This calm session of contemplation made me feel a
lot better.”341 Thus began the construction of a third ideal/own which corresponded with
Rodger's enrollment in college: the Sexually-active Student Sophisticate: “College represented
a hope for me… I might possibly make friends, have interactions with girls, maybe even get a
girlfriend!”342 Like all of Rodger's pre-homicidal ideal/own selves, he quickly gave up on this
self, dropped out of college, and plunged into depression at the smallest slight. Apparently
forgetting that he had no plan to seize power, he returned briefly to the Erotophobic
Totalitarian Dictator ideal/own, fleshing out his ideology further before switching to a
Wealthy Screenwriter ideal/own. Within weeks he had abandoned this ideal/own after
discovering that “most writers of even the highest budget films didn't make as much as I thought
they did... Definitely not enough to live on for the rest of their life.”343 As Rodger had concluded
that accumulating riches would guarantee him a 'hot blond' girlfriend, work which did not
achieve this goal promptly had no value to him.
Within a year, Rodger enrolled at the University of California's Santa Barbara campus.
Having learned that the film Alpha Dog, which depicted attractive young people having sex, was
filmed in Santa Barbara, he returned to his Sexually-active Student Sophisticate ideal/own.
Rodger's mother found him an apartment in the Capri Complex in Santa Barbara which me
moved into in the early summer of 2011. Though he would have more than a handful of differing
roommates, he found reasons to hate all of them. When classes started in September, Rodger’s
actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy widened when “some pretty girls waiting outside”344 the
classroom “didn't pay any attention to me... I was sure I had an attractive appearance [ideal/own]
that day...”345 Instead, much to his chagrin, “a group of typical popular-type boys sat near me...
They somehow knew all of the pretty girls in the class... Right then, on the very first day of
SBCC, I was going through the exact thing… the feeling of being a lonely, unwanted outcast
[actual/own].”346 After discovering that a female classmate who'd caught his eyed had a
boyfriend, Rodger “couldn’t look at her beauty anymore, knowing that some punk was able to
enjoy having sex with her every day... [trigger] Shortly after dropping my math class, I decided
to drop all of my other classes in a rage...”347

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 Another ideal/own which arose during Rodger's desperate flailing for a tolerable position
in life was the Lottery Millionaire: “After continuous analyzing and contemplation, I concluded
that winning the lottery was the only way I could become wealthy at a young age, and thus it was
the only way to enjoy the rest of my youth.”348 Again, Rodger believed wealth would solve his
chronic inability to win a woman's heart. Upon seeing the negative results, Rodger's Lottery
Millionaire ideal/own crumbled and he “felt completely dead inside... I sat in my car for hours,
crying and crying and crying. I wailed with agony... I had no hope of ever having a happy
life.”349
As Rodger rapidly slipped back to his Effete Cultured Outcast actual/own, a new
ideal/own—at first only dimly perceived—began to emerge. It first manifested in the form of
minor but symbolic attacks against young couples in public. In a Starbucks, Rodger threw coffee
all over an “obnoxious punk”350 and a “pretty blonde... rubbing their bodies together and tongue
kissing in front of everyone.” 351 [trigger] He started having sadistic fantasies: “I wanted to do
horrible things to that couple. I wanted to inflict pain on all young couples… I realized… I was
capable of killing them, and I wanted to [emphasis added].”352 In one fantasy script, Rodger
“wanted to kill them slowly, to strip the skins off their flesh.”353 This violent fantasy may be
anti-mimetic. In the literary fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, whose first book A Game of
Thrones gave its name to the unprecedentedly popular television adaptation, there is a
psychopathic sadist named Ramsay Bolton. Ramsay is the most enthusiastic participant in his
ancestral house's tradition of flaying enemies alive.354 Not only was Elliot Rodger an admitted
reader of the novels355, but one of his World of Warcraft characters was actually named
'RamsayBolton'.356 Furthermore, Ramsay is the son of a wealthy and powerful man, but is a
bastard, and dispossessed from inheriting his family seat.ddddddddd Ramsay's sense of entitlement
and being outcast is shared by Rodger in his autobiography. It is thus probable that Rodger's
flaying fantasies were influenced by the Ramsay Bolton avatar from the Game of Thrones
talisman.
On a second occasion, Rodger splashed iced tea all over “A tall, blonde [sic], jock-type
guy” 357 and “one of the sexiest girls I had ever seen” 358 who had been kissing in public. [trigger]

ddddddddd
Ramsay is known by the bastard's surname 'Snow' until the last episode of Season 4, in which his father
legitimizes him for defeating the armies of Stannis Baratheon. The episode aired on June 15, 2014, mere weeks
after Rodger's killing spree. However, Rodger was a regular reader of the books in which Ramsay's
legitimization occurs in A Storm of Swords, published in 2000.

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As with the Chapman case, Rodger began to construct a twisted Hero narrative.359 Though he
effectively admitted that he was lashing out against a symbol which triggered self-discrepancy
related negative emotionality, in order to avoid confronting his substantial personal deficits,
Rodger, like Chapman, recast himself as a fighter of injustice, eventually culminating in the
moral claim that “you [girls] denied me a happy life and in turn I will deny all of you life. It's
only fair... You never showed me any mercy, so I will show you none... just for the crime of
living a better life than me.”360 This narrative likely prevented Rodger's psyche from completely
falling apart. Several similar incidents followed.
Where Berkowitz fired bullets at women of emphasized femininity and their boyfriends,
Rodger initially threw drinks on them— the same principle, but with a different degree and form.
As with the other offenders we can see a developing violence against both symbolic victims ('hot
blondes') and society itself. Rodger's beverage bombing was a preparatory crime—his version of
Berkowitz's arsons, Rolling's rapes, and Magnotta's kitten-killing. Several more of these
incidents occurred, but the one that preceded Rodger's murder spree was a pivotal turning point:

I stood awkwardly in the front yard [outside a house party] for a bit, realizing how
pathetic I looked all by myself [looking glass self] when everyone was partying around
me. To calm down, I climbed up onto a wooden ledge that bordered the street and
plunged down on one of the chairs there… Eventually, some partiers climbed up onto the
ledge… They all started socializing right next to me, and none of the girls paid any
attention to me. [trigger] I rose from my chair and tried to act arrogant and cocky toward
them, throwing insults at everyone. They only laughed at me and started insulting me
back. [trigger] That was the last straw, I had taken enough insults that night. A dark,
hate-fueled rage overcame my entire being, and I tried to push as many of them as I could
from the 10-foot ledge… I failed to push any of them from the ledge, and the boys started
to push me, which resulted in me being the one to fall onto the street. When I landed, I
felt a snap in my ankle, followed by a stinging pain. I slowly got up and found that I
couldn’t even walk… The people in this house must have been friends with the ones I
previously fought with, for they greeted me with vicious hostility. They called me names
like 'faggot' and 'pussy' [subordinated masculinity], typical things those types of
scumbags would say. A whole group of the obnoxious brutes came up and dragged me
onto their driveway, pushing and hitting me. I wanted to fight and kill them all. I
managed to throw one punch toward the main attacker, but that only caused them to beat
me even more. I fell to the ground where they started kicking me and punching me in the
face… I had never been beaten and humiliated that badly. Everyone in Isla Vista saw
what happened, and it was truly horrific.361 [trigger]

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And with that night came the final death of the Sexually-Active Student Sophisticate self-guide
and the birth of Rodger's homicidal ideal/own: “I actually gave them all one last chance to accept
me, to give me a reason not to hate them, and they devastatingly blew it back in my face. I gave
the world too many chances. It was time for Retribution.”362 In reality, he had made no attempt to
interact with any of the party-goers before hurling insults at them and trying to push them off the
ledge.

Elliot Rodger: Renegotiated Homicidal Ideal/own

Seemingly forgetting his Erotophobic Totalitarian Dictator ideal/own, Rodger declared “It
was only when I first moved to Santa Barbara that I started considering the possibility of having
to carry out a violent act of revenge, as the final solution to dealing with all of the injustices I’ve
had to face at the hands of women and society... I named it the Day of Retribution.”363 Rodger's
autobiography reveals a history of violent fantasies dating back to his teenage years. However, it
was in Santa Barbara that a practical plan for vengeance crystalized in his psyche. In its original
form, the plan was far more convoluted and sadistic than its actual realization:
On the day before the Day of Retribution, I will start the First Phase of my vengeance:
Silently killing as many people as I can around Isla Vista by luring them into my
apartment through some form of trickery. The first people I would have to kill are my
two housemates, to secure the entire apartment for myself as my personal torture and
killing chamber. After that, I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out
with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people
before I kill them, assuming that the good looking ones had the best sex lives [emphasis
added]. All of that pleasure they had in life, I will punish by bringing them pain and
suffering. I have lived a life of pain and suffering, and it was time to bring that pain to
people who actually deserve it.364

Next, Rodger, calling out to the Ramsay Bolton hyperreal other, planned to “cut them, flay them,
strip all the skin off their flesh, and pour boiling water all over them while they are still alive, as
well as any other form of torture I could possibly think of.”365 This original plan actually
encompassed a victim-as-canvas element, with Rodger wishing to “behead them and keep their
heads in a bag.. Once I reach Del Playa Street, I will dump the bag of severed heads… everyone
will fear me as the powerful god I am.”366 Obsessed with the notion that his half-brother, Jazz,
might one day have sex, Rodger would “drive down to my father’s house to kill my little brother,
denying him of the chance to grow up to surpass me, along with my stepmother Soumaya, as she

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will be in the way. My father will be away on one of his business trips...”367
Though the Day of Retribution had been scheduled for April 26, 2014, unfortunately for
Rodger he “woke up with a terrible cold... In addition, I found out that father had arrived home
two days earlier than he originally said he would, so if I had indeed went forth with my plans, I
would have had to kill my fathereeeeeeeee, which I wouldn’t be mentally prepared for.”368 Rodger
rescheduled The Day of Retribution for May 24, because it was “the absolute last weekend in the
Spring semester in which I can carry out this plan efficiently.”369 With a sad accuracy, Rodger
reasoned “If I don’t do this, then I only have a future filled with more loneliness and rejection
ahead of me, devoid of sex, love, and enjoyment. I have to do it. It’s the only thing I can do
[emphasis added].”370
On May 23, 24 hours before The Day of Retribution had been scheduled, Elliot Rodger
stabbed his roommates, Weihan Wang and Cheng Yuen Hong, to death along with their visiting
friend, George Chen. This was in accordance with his plan for the day preceding The Day of
Retribution. However, for reasons known only to Rodger, his Ramsay Bolton inspired torture
murders never followed. Perhaps the intimate nature of the initial triple-homicide proved too
psychologically and/or physically difficult for Rodger, compelling him to abandon his even more
grotesque plans to capture, flay, and burn “men who have had pleasurable sex lives while I’ve
had to suffer.”371 More likely, as suggested by the physical evidence, his roommates were not in
the house at the same time, and he was delayed waiting for them, cleaning up blood, and hiding
the bodies. He then continued to deviate significantly from his original plans, enacting The Day
of Retribution earlier that same day, instead of on May 24. On the Day of Retribution, Rodger
had planned to

attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender: The hottest
sorority of UCSB... I will sneak into their house at around 9:00 p.m. on the Day of
Retribution, just before all of the partying starts, and slaughter every single one of them
with my guns and knives. If I have time, I will set their whole house on fire... The Final
Phase of the Day of Retribution will be my ultimate showdown in the streets of Isla
Vista... I will then make my way to Del Playa, splattering as many of my enemies as I can
with the SUV, and shooting anyone I don’t splatter... I will then start massacring
everyone on Del Playa Street. I will pull up next to a house party and fire bullets at
everyone partying on the front yard. I will specifically target the good looking people,
and all of the couples. After I have destroyed a house party, I will continue down Del

Ramsay Bolton had no such compunctions, murdering his father, stepmother, and stepbrother in Episode 6
eeeeeeeee

Season 6 of the television program.

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 Playa, destroying everything and everyone. When I see the first police car come to their
rescue, I will drive away as fast as I can, shooting and ramming anyone in my path until I
find a suitable place to finally end my life…372

After murdering his first three victims, Rodger uploaded his final VLOG 'Elliot Rodger's
Retribution' on YouTube at 9:17 p.m. In this final VLOG, he reveals his homicidal ideal/own of
the True Alpha Male Avenger:
All those girls that I've desired so much. They'd have all rejected me and looked down on
me as an inferior man [subordinated masculinity – actual/own] if I ever made a sexual
advance toward them, while they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes. I will take
great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I am, in truth, the
superior one: the true alpha male [sub-hegemonic masculinity – homicidal ideal/own]373

According to Philip Bloeser, far from the “shy and painfully awkward”374 young man who gave
“monosyllabic answers”375 the Elliot Rodger “on the YouTube recording is not the person I
knew. In the video, he even sounds different, he puts on a different voice [emphasis added]. It's
almost demonic.”376 Perhaps the voice was different because it was not the voice of his
actual/own or previous ideal/owns, but that of his short-lived homicidal ideal/own the True
Alpha Male Avenger. Next, Rodger e-mailed his autobiography, My Twisted World, to his
biological parents and therapist.377 Within less than 10 minutes he had driven to the University of
Santa Barbara's Alpha Phi sorority house and knocked upon the door. When nobody answered,
he began shooting students on campus. Among those killed were Katie Cooper and Veronika
Weiss. Rodger then hurried back to his BMW and drove recklessly through the streets of Isla
Vista, hitting young men and women, or shooting them. Christopher Michael-Martines was shot
through a deli window and killed. Police fired at Rodger, wounding him. After crashing, Rodger
took his own life: “The prospect will be so sweet, and justice will ultimately be served. And of
course, I would have to die in the act to avoid going to prison.”378 The act ensured he would
never live to see his True Alpha Male Avenger homicidal self called into question.

Elliot Rodger: Victimology

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 Table 22
Elliot Rodger Victimology
Age Race Sex Profession Date Attacked Where
Weihan Wang 20 East Asian Male Student May 23, 2014, died Apartment
Cheng Yuan Hong 20 East Asian Male Student May 23, 2014, died Apartment
George Chen 19 East Asian Male Student May 23, 2014, died Apartment
Veronika Weiss 19 White Female Student May 23, 2014, died Street
Katie Cooper 22 White Female Student May 23, 2014, died Street
Christopher Michael- 20 Mestizo Male Student May 23, 2014, died Isla Vista deli mart
Martinez
Megan Carloto 22 Hispanic Female ? May 23, 2014, injured Street
Antoine Cherchian 25 ? Male Student May 23, 2014, injured Street
Bianca de Kock 20 Mixed? Female Student May 23, 2014, injured Street
Patrick Eggert 19 White Male ? May 23, 2014, injured Street
Jin Fu ? East Asian Male ? May 23, 2014, injured Street
Victor Garcia ? Hispanic Male Student May 23, 2014, injured Street
Elliot Gee ? ? Male Student May 23, 2014, injured Street
Christopher Hoang ? East Asian Male Student May 23, 2014, injured Street
Mitchell Lyubarsky 21 White Male ? May 23, 2014, injured Street
Bailey Maples ? White Female ? May 23, 2014, injured Pizza My Heart
Nick Pasichuke 19 White Male ? May 23, 2014, injured Street
Matthew Smith ? White Male Student May 23, 2014, injured Street
Aaron Zaglin 22 White Male Student May 23, 2014, injured Pizza My Heart

Enraged that he did not have a “hot, blonde-haired [sic] girlfriend to have passionate sex
with”379, in his 'Day of Retribution' video, Rodger declared “I am going to enter the hottest
sorority house at UCSB [Alpha Phi] and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond
slut I see inside there. All those girls that I've desired so much... If I can't have you, I will destroy
you.”380 Like Berkowitz, Rodger was annihilating unattainable embodiments of emphasized
femininity because “girls gave their affection and love and sex to other men, but not to me.”381
Where Berkowitz primarily targeted dark-haired 'pretty princesses'—the Italian women of New
York City who regularly passed him without so much as a glance—Rodger lashed out against the
stereotypical tanned California blonde who haunted his lonely world.
Though Berkowitz also shot several men, they seem to have been incidental rather than
intended targets. Rodger, on the other hand, raged against “all of you sexually-active men”382 for

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“living a better life than me... I hate all of you. And I can't wait to give you exactly what you
deserve: utter annihilation.”383 In other words, his male victims were similarly intended, and
comprised the majority of Rodger's casualties. His first three victims were his East Asian male
roommates, Weihan Wang and Cheng Yuan Hong, and with their friend, George Chen. In his
autobiography, Rodger stated

[Wang and Hong] were two foreign Asian students who attended UCSB. These were the
biggest nerdsfffffffff [subordinated masculinity] I had ever seen, and they were both very
ugly with annoying voices [emphasis added]… I knew that when the Day of Retribution
came, I would have to kill my housemates to get them out of the way.384

Here, Rodger seems to happily contemplate murdering these 'ugly' 'annoying' 'Asian' 'nerds',
although later he writes of their death as more of a means to an end: “The first people I would
have to kill are my two housemates, to secure the entire apartment for myself as my personal
torture and killing chamber.”385 Since Rodger did not end up using the apartment as his own
personal dungeon, it is necessary to ask why he felt the need to kill his roommates at all. It is our
contention that, like Chapman, Ireland (probably), and Arkwright, Rodger was, consciously or
subconsciously, destroying an aspect of himself which he hated—his East Asian heritage. His
racist views will be discussed in greater detail in Section 3.12.6, though it is of note that Rodger
attributed a significant portion of his social failings to his racial makeup.
Rodger's East-Asian victims—whom he killed in a much more personal fashion than his
subsequent ones—may have been slain for two racially-motivated reasons. The first is that in
murdering three “ugly Asian(s)”386, Rodger was repudiating a symbol of a hated aspect of his
actual/own: the annihilation of the 'inferior' Asian and the ascendance of the 'superior' Caucasian.
This refutation would have occurred internally (SAOS) as well as externally. The second
possibility builds upon the first. When Rodger saw that full-blooded East Asian males could lead
satisfying lives despite their perceived 'inferior' status, this decimated his racially-based excuse
for his own misery. Now Rodger not only hated them for representing an ego-dystonic part of his
actual/own, but for plunging him into cognitive dissonance, in which he was unable to reconcile
his views with the observable contentedness or successes of other men of East Asian heritage.
In his Day of Retribution video, Elliot Rodger declared that the young men and women
of Isla Vista were “animals and I will slaughter you like animals.”387 Dehumanizing one's

fffffffff
The irony of Elliot Rodger labelling somebody else a 'nerd' is laughable.

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victims is an age-old way to justify killing them, whether in military conflict (e.g., Israeli
soldiers called Palestinians “dogs”388 during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war), genocide (e.g., Nazis
considered Jews to be “rats”389; Hutus labelled Tutsis “cockroaches”390 in Rwanda), or straight-
up murder (e.g., The Manson Family referred to their affluent victims as “piggies”391). To
Rodger, females were inherently “flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their
brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of
reason or thinking rationally... That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men.
They are beasts themselves.”392 Building upon this premise, he concluded

Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society [mj]... Women should
not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by
civilized men of intelligence [actual/own]. If women had the freedom to choose which
men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men,
which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the
advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women
are like a plague that must be quarantined [emphasis added].393

Elsewhere, in his autobiography, Rodger reasoned that because “the females of the human
species have never wanted to mate with me...”394 he was “not part of the human race”395, leading
him to conclude that “I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger...
Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent... Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living
god.”396 Here, Rodger adopted a different rationalization strategy: rather than dehumanizing his
victims to feel above them, he elevated himself to the level of living deity. Either way, by
murdering “all of those girls who I've desired so much... all those popular kids who lived lives of
such hedonistic pleasure... they've all looked down on me...”397 Rodger was killing up. Yet,
because his extreme narcissism would not allow him to fully realize his own beliefs—that his
victims were 'better' than him—he opted for self-deception, whether identifying as a “god
exacting my retribution on all those who deserve it”398 or a civilized slayer of obnoxious beasts.
Only by convincing himself that he was in fact killing down—the adaptive preference formation
previously discussed in the Berkowitz case—could Rodger finally feel ego-syntonic in the
moments before ending his miserable existence.

Elliot Rodger: Post-Spree Self

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 For Elliot Rodger, the closing of the gap between the actual/own and renegotiated
ideal/own selves corresponded with the termination of his life by suicide. To quote a hackneyed
metaphor, he had chosen to live one day as a lion rather than a lifetime, in Rodger's own words,
as “a mouse.”399 His unified self, the True Alpha Male Avenger has been designed to live on
forever in a state of personal harmony and eternal triumph through the immortalizing medium of
the Internet. His final video portrayals would not be that of an awkward outcast [actual/own], but
of a man of violence cackling at the thought of destroying the objects of his hatred: “Humanity is
a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the
world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful
god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.”400
In a cruel twist of fate, had Rodger decided to surrender instead of committing suicide, he
would have finally met one of the attractive young blondes he coveted. For, as in the case of
James Holmes, several years after Rodger's killing spree, a young woman calling herself
'ElliotSupremeLady' began posting YouTube videos expressing her adoration for the
misogynistic killer. On Valentine's Day 2017, ElliotSupremeLady published a video entitled “I
love you Elliot Rodger”401, featuring photographs of the young blond-haired woman next to
photos of Rodger, giving the appearance that they were a couple. It is accompanied by the text
“Look what I made for you sweetie! Happy Valentine's day over the rainbow. I love you!”402 In
a second video, “My Elliot Rodger shirt!”403, ElliotSupremeLady models a mail-order black t-
shirt covered with a giant graphic of Rodger's face, declaring “I'm very happy with this shirt. I
love the big graphic on it. I love the picture: his big beautiful face [laughs].”404 A third posted
five days before this writing, “MY BIRTHDAY PRESENT! Elliot Rodger phone case”405 has
her showing off her new Elliot Rodger face phone case: “I really love this. I really like the..
cartoonish design on it, I guess you'd call it [laughs]. I dunno.”406 If one is so inclined, they may
view several other similar videos on her YouTube channel, along with countless Rodger tributes.
As baffling as this adoration is, it is nowhere near as dangerous as the legions of so-called
Incels (involuntarily celibates) and Truecels (true celibates) congregating online to share (often
violent) misogynistic views on reddit.com. According to one Reddit user “an Incel is an
Involuntary celibate, someone who can't form a sexual relationship with another person”407 while
“a truecel is basically the Olympics of Incels. A Truecel has likely never even touched a girls
[sic] hand before, and they believe they will live their whole life this way.”408 For some incels

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and truecels, Rodger is held in high regard. On Reddit, one finds comments such as:
“[Elliot] is someone we all should look up to. He had the courage to do what we all want to deep
down.”409

Every time a woman rejects a man's advances or ridicules him for whatever excuse is
popular, especially when done in his younger years, she contributes to the probability of
creating another Elliot Rogers [sic] in the future. The nightmare will end for everyone
when women stop saying 'no' and start saying 'yes'.410

“His rampage should have been solely directed at women. Women are the ones who kept him
from being happy.”411
“Everything he did was badly planned out. If he's gonna kill himself anyway he may as well at
least have a solid plan... He could have been a hero for all incels but instead he completely failed.
At least he had the same troubles as us.”412
“Most people would go insane if they were in Elliot's position. There was nothing wrong with
Elliot, except for how society treated him.”413
“ER understood just how awful these beings were and did the correct thing by punishing some of
them. Too bad he didn't manage to enter that sorority house - had he done so he'd probably be the
greatest hero in the history of the world.”414
The Rodger case remains a popular discussion point online, lingering in the public memory. In
2015, he became a talisman for virginal school shooter, Christopher Harper-Mercer415, and
judging by the number of resentful men gathering online purporting relate to him, the next
truecel-perpetrated massacre is likely just around the corner.

Elliot Rodger: Sexual/Gender Aspects

More than any other offender in this sample, Elliot Rodger's homicidal self was almost
exclusively the product of his sexual/gender aspects. His pronounced sense of class and racial
superiority is largely tied to it; that is, class and race would have been negligible factors in the
commission of his homicides without his perceived sexual/gender inferiority.
From his earliest years, the petit Rodger was insecure about his height and physique,
crucial cultural physical signifiers of masculinity:

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 I was very small and short statured for my age. I never gave this much concern during my
early childhood, but this fact fully dawned on me the day my family took a trip to
Universal Studios… I saw other boys my age admitted onto the ride, but I was denied
[emphasis added] because I was too short!… Little did I know, this injustice was very
small indeed compared to all the things I’ll be denied in the future because of my
height.416

In an earlier instance he recalled:

[S]ometimes I would go on the swing, though my father had to push me. I remember
getting jealous of other boys [emphasis added] who were able to swing by themselves,
boys who were even younger than myself. It was the second time I realized my lack of
physical capability.417

Though it is tempting to write off Rodger's small physique as simply another hang-up to deal
with, this imbalance of physical power left him subject to routine acts of physical and emotional
'bullying'—the patronizing term for 'abuse' when it is perpetrated by peers rather than adults:

People also liked to steal my belongings and run away in an attempt to get me to chase
after them. And I did chase after them in a furious rage, but I was so little and weak that
they thought it was comical... I had to wait in a quiet corner for the hallways to clear
before I could walk to class. I also took long routes around the school to avoid bullies.418

Based in part on his experiences in high school, Rodger predictably began to see himself as a
'lesser' man—a subordinated masculinity. According to Peter Rodger, his son “would say
‘[Women are] never going to like me because I'm not six-foot-two, a jock sporty guy.’”419
Indeed, this lack of physicality continued to manifest in poor athleticism which left Rodger
frustrated: “I had been trying very hard to get better at skateboarding, but when I saw that there
were boys a lot younger than me who could do more tricks, I realized that I sucked. I was never
good at sports or any physical activity... Why did I fail at everything I tried? I asked myself.”420
Karate lessons, Rodger's token effort at sub-hegemonic masculine violence, fared no better: “I
wasn’t getting better at my karate moves in the class…I was also frustrated at how James was so
much physically stronger than I was, and how he was so much more skilled at karate...”421
Predictably, he quit.
Between his slight build and general weakness, Rodger started to form a schema which,
accurately or inaccurately, attributed his social failures to his unmanly physical appearance. For
example, one Hallowe'en “four young thugs drove by me in a pick-up truck and proceeded to

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throw eggs at me, laughing while they did it... They must have seen me as a weakling [emphasis
added] who they could bully for their amusement. I didn't want the world to view me as
weak.”422 Motivated to move from the subordinated masculinity of the Effete Cultured Outcast
(actual/own) to the hegemony-oriented Sexually-active Student Sophisticate (ideal/own),
Rodger started “exercising and lifting weights... I hoped it would increase my confidence and
make me appear a bit stronger. Maybe if I built muscles, girls will be attracted to me, I hopefully
proclaimed to myself. I had never worked out or lifted weights in my life, so my body has always
been very frail and delicate.”423 But like Luka Magnotta who couldn't gain muscle, Rodger's
body remained unchanged. Unable to join the ranks of the athletic, he dismissed them: “All of
the hot, beautiful girls walked around with obnoxious, tough jock-type men... They should be
going for intelligent gentlemen such as myself. Women are sexually attracted to the wrong type
of man.”424 Like James Holmes, Rodger also professed concern regarding the size of his penis on
a Body Building forum: “The average [penis size] is 5.5 [inches]? I thought it was 4. This is very
unsettling.”425
Compounding Rodger's unease about his physicality, manliness, and desirability, was his
delayed onset of puberty. When a 10-year-old peer “took out a magazine that had pictures of
beautiful model women, and all of the boys gathered around and looked at them”426 the insecure,
pre-pubescent Rodger “didn't understand this”427 but “pretended to be interested just so that I
wouldn’t appear uncool.”428 Though he had started “to admire female prettiness”429, at this point
in his life females were more akin to his clothes, skateboard, or hacky sack—a status symbol to
close the discrepancy between his Effete Cultured Outcast actual/own and Cool Kid
ideal/own.
Despite Rodger's constant complaints of being denied sex, there is an erotophobic bent to
his character, reminiscent of Chapman. Though his fear of girls was evident at an earlier age,
Rodger speaks of “an incident... that would scar me for life. The first time that I was treated
badly by a girl occurred at this camp.”430 Already self-conscious about his physique and
athleticism compared to other men, Rodger was crushed when “I accidently [sic] bumped into a
pretty girl the same age as me, and she got very angry. She cursed at me and pushed me,
embarrassing me in front of my friends... I immediately froze up and went into a state of
shock.”431 The public spectacle of a boy with a hegemonic self-guide being physically dominated
by an attractive woman predictably widened Rodger's gender self-discrepancy: “Cruel treatment

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from women is ten times worse than from men. It made me feel like an insignificant, unworthy
little mouse. I felt so small and vulnerable... I thought that it was because she viewed me as a
loser [Effete Cultured Outcast]... It made me even more nervous around girls...”432 One might
conclude that Rodger was so insecure about his masculinity in relation to girls that by the time he
developed sexually the thought of intercourse absolutely terrified him. Take, for instance, his
first encounter with “pictures of beautiful naked girls... I was shocked beyond words. I had never
seen what beautiful girls looked like naked, and the sight filled me with strong and
overwhelming emotions. I didn't know what was happening to me. Was it the first inkling of
sexual desire in my body?”433 Where, for many men, this an exciting and pleasant experience,
the 11-year-old Rodger was immediately “traumatized. My childhood was fading away.
Ominous fear swept over me...”434 This is but one of several such accounts in Rodger’s
autobiography.
Like many young boys, Rodger had been taught that sex with girls was a normative and
enjoyable aspect of being a man. At the age of 10 (late-dimensional/early-vectorial), a family
friend at a dinner party “patted me on the back and told me that I have a great life ahead of me.
With a grin on his face, he told me that ‘in the next ten years, you’ll have a great time... a great
time’. I had no idea what he meant by that... Now I know what he meant.”435 Unfortunately,
Rodger never lived up to the 'great time' promised to his masculinity. This discrepancy between
his actual and ideal masculinity (subordinated vs. hegemonic) and sexual self became an
increasingly unbearable, unavoidable, and hair-trigger strain: “I saw people bragging online
about their sexual experiences ... they used the term 'virgin' as an insult to people who were more
immersed in the game than them. The insult stung, because it was true [emphasis added].436 The
writings of Prohaska & Gailey seem to account for nearly all of Rodger's issues with his gender
identity. His obsession with other men's sexual conquests can be attributed to the phenomenon in
which “men participate in activities that adhere to the hegemonic ideal so that other men will
recognize their masculinity... Men fear rejection by other menggggggggg, and the only way to avoid
this rejection is to participate in normative masculine behaviors... Thus, real manhood is only

Unfortunately, the ideological bent of this text overlooks the rather obvious fact that women also police
ggggggggg

men's masculinity and that men seek female approval in roughly equal measure. For an example, see the
behaviour of Rodger's stepmother on the next page.

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achieved when ‘real men’ acknowledge and approve of other men's accomplishments.”437 This
placed Rodger in perpetual competition with his more sexually successful housemates:

I was eating a meal in the kitchen when he came over and started bragging to my
housemates about his success with girls. I couldn't stand it, so I proceeded to ask them all
if they were virgins. They all looked at me weirdly and said that they had lost their
virginity long ago. I felt so inferior, as it reminded me of how much I have missed out in
life. And then this black boy named Chance said that he lost his virginity when he was
only thirteen! In addition, he said that the girl he lost his virginity to was a blonde white
girl! [trigger] I was so enraged that I almost splashed him with my orange juice. I
indignantly told him that I did not believe him, and then I went to my room to cry. 438

A sexually inexperienced cry baby, Rodger's subordinated masculinity invited constant ridicule.
Rodger also constantly compared his sexual/gender identity to that of his father's, and found
himself wanting. From a young age

my little mind got the impression that my father was a man that women found attractive,
as he was able to find a new girlfriend in such a short period of time from divorcing my
mother. I subconsciously held him in higher regard because of this. It is very interesting
how this phenomenon works... that males who can easily find female mates garner more
respect from their fellow men, even children. How ironic is it that my father, one of those
men who could easily find a girlfriend, has a son who would struggle all his life to find a
girlfriend.439

Moreover, Rodger was extremely sensitive as to how his father might judge his lack of success
with women (actual/own:ideal/other).
Ultimately, Rodger developed a seething envy of the sexually-active men and boys in his
life. This is somewhat understandable, as each reinforced his lowly position in the masculine
hierarchy. Prohaska & Gailey would interpret these interactions in light of their observation that
“many heterosexual men”440 see sexuality “as a commodity they must seize from women.”441
Boasting about sexual conquests among male peer groups confers status upon the man, which
partially accounts for why the virginal Rodger was regarded with ridicule both online (in World
of Warcraft) and offline. This phenomenon has been independently documented among
athletes—Rodger's 'six-foot-two jock sporty guys'—by Sabo442 and Messner.443 In this cultural
climate, punctuated by comedy films mocking '40 Year Old Virgin'(s), it is no wonder that Peter
Rodger's attempts to persuade his son that “'there is no shame at all in not losing your virginity,
and at a later age. Some people never do. Some people go into the church and choose
chastity'”444 failed. The shame, actually, is immense.

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 As with Chapman and Magnotta, Rodger was routinely called “names like 'faggot' and
'pussy'”445 by students in high school and collegehhhhhhhhh to both situationally construct and
reinforce his subordinated masculinity. Rodger's recourse was to term nearly all other men,
particularly those who were popular or sexually-active, 'brutes.'446 It is interesting to note that
60% of the offenders who did not seek out sub-hegemonic masculine ideal/owns before
committing murder—Chapman, Magnotta, and Rodgeriiiiiiiii—all sought to compensate by
pursuing varying degrees of hegemonic masculinity, which entails a strong class element (Class
Aspects). Only when it became clear that he would not win the lottery did the frail, weepy
Rodger attempt to transition to sub-hegemonic masculinity by realizing his True Alpha Male
Avenger homicidal ideal/own. Raised on action and adventure films and video games which
encourage “feudal notions of manly vengeance”447 as a normative response to slights and
frustrations, Rodger concluded:

To be angry about the injustices one faces is a sign of strength. It is a sign that one has
the will to fight back against those injustices, rather than bowing down and accepting it as
fate. Both my friends James and Philip seem to be the weak, accepting type; whereas I
am the fighter [emphasis added]. I will never stand to be insultedjjjjjjjjj, and I will
eventually have my revenge against all those who insult me…448

Rodger's views oscillated between old fashioned misogyny and the sort of erotophobic
homicidal authoritarianism reminiscent of the most extreme and deplorable branches of
feminism.kkkkkkkkk Concerning the latter, Rodger admitted that his “whole viewpoint and ideology
of abolishing sex stems from being deprived of it all my life. If I cannot have it, I will do
everything I can to DESTROY IT.”449 His ideology is best summarized by a quote from the
British psychiatrist Robin Skynner: “If people can't control their own emotions, then they have to
start trying to control other people's behavior.”450 But how could Rodger control his emotions

hhhhhhhhh
In the case of the college students, this only occurred when Rodger crashed a party drunk and was beaten up
after trying to shove several fellow partiers off a ledge.
iiiiiiiii
Holmes and Cho are our two exceptions.
jjjjjjjjj
Though they are oceans apart culturally, this quote calls up Danny Rolling's admiration of Josie Wales'
hyperreal masculinity: “He don't take no shit. You spit on his boot, he drills you nice and proper between the
peepers” (London & Rolling, 2011, p. 70).
kkkkkkkkk
Ironically, Rodger's ideas resemble the infamous 1967 SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto
penned by radical feminist Valerie Solanas who would attempt to murder the artist Andy Warhol and critic Mario
Amaya the following year. The manifesto argues that men are emotionally and socially inferior to women as a
result of possessing a Y chromosome, blames them for virtually all of the world's problems, and argues for the
genocide of the male sex which would result in an all-female utopia (Solanas, 1967).

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when his parents attempted to soothe his torment with expensive rewards instead of meaningful
guidance?
Where the more traditionally masculine Berkowitz, Ireland, and Rolling pursued sub-
hegemonic masculine ideal/selves, Rodger sought hegemonic masculinity, perhaps due to his
small stature and affluent upbringing. For Rodger, social class and success at courtship where
clearly linked.

Wealth is one of the most important defining factors of self-worth and superiority. I hated
and envied all of those kids for being born into wealth, while I had to struggle to find a
way to claim wealth for myself. I had to be ruthless, and do whatever it takes to attain
such wealth. After all, it was my only hope of ever being worthy of getting a girlfriend
and living the life of gratification that I desire.451

This class consciousness will be explored later in this case study.

Elliot Rodger: Racial/Ethnic Identity

Commenting on his racial/ethnic identity, Rodger explained that his father “Peter is of British
descent, hailing from the prestigious Rodger family”452 while his “mother is of Chinese descent.
She was born in Malaysia, and moved to England at a young age to work as a nurse on film
sets…”453 Born in England, Rodger emigrated to the United States at the age of five, where he
immediately “considered myself an ‘American kid’… I got accustomed to all the American T.V.
shows, and I started to adopt an American accent. I was looking forward to my new life.”454
Growing up in Woodland Hills, Rodger admitted to “feeling that I was different because I am of
mixed race. I am half White, half Asian, and this made me different from the normal fully-white
kids that I was trying to fit in with.”455 Following the Isla Vista Murders, Peter Rodger disclosed
that Elliot had once told him “I wish that I wasn't half-Asian.”456
Despite having a Chinese-Malaysian mother and Moroccan stepmother, Rodger was an
unabashed racist who took an immediate dislike to any housemates who were ethnic minorities.
When an East Asian using the handle 'Tyger' posted a question on puahate.com regarding
whether acquiring a nice set of shoes would attract women, Rodger replied “Shoes won’t help
you get white girls. White girls are disgusted by you, silly little Asian.”457 He might as well have
been addressing himself. Shortly after, when Tyger posted a photograph of himself with a
Caucasian female, Rodger expressed doubt that the picture was real: “It's fake. That guy is

467
probably some friend-zoned loser she is using as a guide during her trip to Korea”458, among
countless others. Similarly, Rodger couldn’t comprehend how “an inferior, ugly black boy
[could] be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am
descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves”459 and upon seeing a “short,
ugly Indian guy driving a Honda civic” 460 with “a hot blonde girl in his passenger seat” 461 asked
“What on earth is up with that?!?!”462 He also used the term ‘inferior’ to refer to Hispanics, who
he routinely looked down upon. His bigotry was also something he rarely articulated publicly.
After the massacre, Peter Rodger emphasized he was astonished at his son's racism.463

Elliot Rodger: Class Aspects

Hailing from the highest social class of all the offenders in this sample—upper-middle—Rodger
is also its most class conscious. He describes “the prestigious Rodger family”464 as “once part of
the wealthy upper classes before they lost all of their fortune during the Great Depression”465 and
notes that his paternal grandfather “George Rodger, was a renowned photojournalist who had
taken very famous photographs during the Second World War, though he failed to reacquire the
family’s lost fortune.”466 From a young age, Rodger had intimate knowledge of his father's
wealth and financial concerns, from “the offer to buy the Old Rectory [in England] for about
400,000 Pounds”467 which Peter Rodger “declined, a decision he would regret later on, as it
would have been a worthy investment.”468 to Peter's “temporary financial setbacks on top of the
divorce.”469 Elliot recalls his father's documentary film Oh My God, and how Peter “kept talking
about how he will become very rich from it”470 but “the movie would only bankrupt him in the
future.”471 Without commenting on the artist merit of the film, Elliot Rodger complained “My
father’s movie was released, but it did not do well at all… I was annoyed that he kept having to
make it clear to us that he was now in a 'financial crisis'… it was embarrassing.472
As a child who “always loved luxury and opulence”473 any measure of austerity frustrated
the spoiled Rodger. Social class was of paramount importance for him, as he could use it to
signify his perceived superiority. With a tedious class-consciousness reminiscent of Patrick
Bateman in Brett Easton Ellis's satirical American Psycho, Rodger also chronicled numerous
upscale eateries, events, and locales he had frequented. Linked to Hollywood and wealthy family
friends by his parents and stepmother, Rodger was a habitual name-dropper, which can clearly be
observed in his autobiography. Nor did Rodger neglect to remind the reader of the countless

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move premieres his family was invited to474, as well as having attended a “private Katy Perry
concert... held for extremely wealthy people... Every family there must have had a net worth of at
least twenty million...”475
Perhaps because it was the only social quality he had going for him, Rodger privately
considered his high school classmates “slobs”476, “degenerate, low-class”477, and frequently
invoked his socio-economic superiority in arguments against others. For example, he would use
his Hollywood-insider status to respond to criticisms on websites such as puahate.com:

Hahahahaha. You pathetic loser. How dare you insult my family. [sic] https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=Wf9ijiWiU2U… Skip to 31:30 in this video and you'll see me
walking the red carpet at the Hunger Games premiere with my high status father and
stepmom [emphasis added]. You're all jealous of my 10/10 pretty-boy face.478

Similarly, he strategically mentioned attending these premieres to teachers and fellow students in
order to curry social status.
Despite growing up in this upper-middle-class world of financial and social privilege,
Rodger was paradoxically conflicted about his socio-economic-status. Having learned that his
biological mother was dating a millionaire, he encouraged her “to seek marriage with this man,
or any wealthy man for that matter. She always adamantly refused, and demanded that I stopped
talking about it.”479 In another incident, convinced that he had been short-changed at the Katy
Parry concert “I tried to pretend as if I was part of a wealthy family. I should be... I WOULD
BE! If only my damnable mother had married into wealth instead of being selfish. If only my
failure of a father had made better decisions with his directing career...”480 With apparently no
self-awareness or sense of irony, he regarded the other concert attendees and “couldn’t help but
feel a bitter form of envy at all of the rich kids at the concert. They grew up in lavish mansions,
indulged in excessive opulence, and will never have to worry about anything in their pleasurable,
hedonistic lives. I would take great pleasure in watching all of those rich families burn alive.”481
Nevertheless, Rodger didn't hesitate to lord his own privilege over others, demonstrating a
hypocrisy that was verging on comical.
If it is not already apparent, Rodger was so snobbishly class conscious that it actually
deepened his subordinated masculinity, making him visibly effete. For instance, on a school
camping trip he “was appalled by how drab and uncomfortable the tents looked. I wanted a

469
cabin. So I went to my teacher and asked to be transferred to a group that was sleeping in a
cabin.”482 This refusal to ever sleep 'rough' violates the ability to endure physical hardship which
is one of many tenets of normative masculinity. Despite the fact that numerous notable
adventurers, explorers, and mountaineers have hailed from the aristocratic and upper-classes,
Rodger designated camping outdoors 'appalling' and 'drab', using class-coloured terminology to
justify his non-participation.
Brought up travelling “Virgin Atlantic Upper Class”483, with a father who “hired a limo
to pick up [Rodger's sister] Georgia and her friends”484 for her birthday, Rodger was similarly
fussy about vehicles:
To my chagrin, my father... pulled up to the house one day in a roaring Harley
Davidson... He kept insisting that he take me on the motorcycle whenever we went out,
instead of going in the car. This would be too embarrassing for me, and I adamantly
refused to ever go on the motorcycle.485

Indeed, the Harley Davidson sign quickly conjures up images of unkempt one-percenter bikers in
the mind's eye, but as Rodger himself admits, his father was introduced to it by the multi-
millionaire Leo Bubbenheim, whose family Rodger admired. Furthermore, in the 21st century,
there is clearly no shortage of what the late-comedian George Carlin referred to as “weekend
motorcyclists... dentists and bureaucrats and pussy-boy software designers getting up on a Harley
because they think it makes them cool.”486 According to Harley Davidson's own statistics, in
2011 the median Harley Davidson owner was a 47-year-old male with a $90,000 annual
income.487 Openly pampered by his parents and crying at the drop of the hat, Rodger's
masculinity was so subordinated that it actually undermined his socio-economic advantages:
I don't know why you girls are so repulsed by me. It doesn't make sense. I do everything I
can to appear attractive to you. I dress nice. I'm sophisticated and magnificent. I have a
nice car, a BMW... These sunglasses here are worth $300. Giorgio Armani... I wanna take
a girl out for a date and prove to her that I'm worthy.488

Amazingly, it never occurred to him that a large part of the hegemonic masculine allure is being
a self-made (or at least 'competent') man. In his 22 years, Rodger barely made anything, let alone
of himself. Lacking industriousness and resilience to work toward his goals, when he predictably
failed to win the lottery Rodger abandoned all hope, and became the True Alpha Male Avenger
homicidal ideal/own. His non-existent work ethic is revealed in the following section.

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Elliot Rodger: Vocational Aspects
Obsessed with his sexual/gender identity and class identity, the spoiled and entitled Rodger
placed almost no importance on his vocational aspects. As a child he entertained “hopes and
dreams of becoming a professional skateboarder…”489, but naturally, the thin-skinned serial
quitter soon “realized that I sucked… My dreams of becoming a professional skateboarder were
over.”490 Presumably neglecting this original life goal, he wrote that at the age of 18 “getting a
job [was] something I never thought about before in my life”491 because “I never thought nor
cared about money before I turned 18, because I was still living like a child, with my parents
handling the money and giving me the things I needed.”492 Now legally an adult, Rodger “soon
realized that the older I became, the more it was expected of me if I didn’t go to college. To
placate my mother, I started searching for jobs online every day, but I wasn’t able to find one
that was suitable for me.”493 This was further complicated by Rodger’s snobbish belief that the
jobs “available to me at the time were jobs I considered to be beneath me.”494 Because he was
“an intellectual”495 who was “destined for greatness”496 he “would never perform a low-class
service job.”497 In this way, Elliot Rodger, like Chapman, was truly a child of the hyperreal
Information Age: destined for greatness, but at what?
Eventually, Rodger did compromise and take on 'low-class' jobs, albeit for short periods
of time. He helped his father's friend Karl Champley build a staircase for his new house “every
weekday for about three weeks”498 noting that though “construction work was lowly and
laborious”499 this was “more like assisting a friend... in a private environment.”500 Even though
“it turned out to be quite a pleasant experience”501 and that, after finishing, Rodger “took a
moment to admire the work we did”502, he did not feel compelled to continue in construction.
Nor did he care for his “second and last 'job'”503 as a custodian who “to my horror and
humiliation... had to clean offices and even the bathrooms.”504 Unsurprisingly, he decided “there
was no way I would ever degrade myself to such a level. I felt like utter shit from even
considering working at such a place. I only worked for a few hours while I thought about how to
handle this foul situation... I called to announce that I was quitting.”505 The 'intellectual' Rodger
was more taken by his mother's suggestion “that I should become a writer, because I had some
talent in writing.”506 Without giving any consideration to his plot, characters, or style, he
concocted a plan to “write an epic fantasy story that will be made into a movie, and I will

471
 become rich from it”507 reasoning “being rich will definitely make me attractive enough to have
a beautiful girlfriend.”508 Predictably, Rodger threw in the towel before making any real attempt.
Despite his repeated claims of superiority, in a rare moment of truth, Rodger admitted
“Deep down, I've always known that I had no talents, and I’ve always tried not to think about
it.”509 Having been accustomed to inheriting merits (e.g., social class, racial background) rather
than earning them (e.g., making friends, charming girls), Rodger opted to play the lottery, and
“…of course, didn’t win. And neither would any of the tickets I buy after it...510 Routinely
dropping classes at various colleges and universities because “ …what was the point of going
through college, getting a degree, and finding some mundane professional job afterwards if I
could never experience the pleasure of girls along the way?”511, Rodger's prophecy became self-
fulfilling. He was so convinced of the futility of pursuing goals that attaining them was
necessarily impossible. The only thing he would succeed at in his adult life was becoming a
rampage murderer, which requires little effort other than the capacity to hate.

Concluding Thoughts: Elliot Rodger

Table 23
Elliot Rodger: Selves and Strain
Actual/Own Ideal/Own Homicidal Self Post-Arrest Self
Sexuality Ego-dystonic. Unable to form Ego-syntonic. Steady Ego-syntonic. The Resolved.
romantic and/or sexual sexual partner. destruction of unattainable Deceased.
relationship. Erotophobic. Sexually-Active objects of desire.
Gender Subordinated. 'Faggot', 'Pussy'. Hegemonic. No gender- Sub-hegemonic. True Resolved.
Gender-role strain. role strain Alpha Male. No gender- Deceased.
role strain.
Class Mertonian strain. Upper-middle- Upper-class. ‘I will be a God’ Resolved.
class. Student sophisticate. Deceased.
Vocation Student. Strain. 'Deep down, I've Millionaire. N/A Resolved.
always known that I had no No strain. Deceased.
talents….'
Race Ego-dystonic. Self-hating racist. N/A Ego-syntonic. Murdered Resolved.
Chinese roommates to Deceased.
resolve ego-dystonia.

Notability Ego-dystonic. Strain. 'I have Ego-syntonic. 'I must be Ego-syntonic. 'I must be Resolved.
craved... significance all my life...' destined for greatness.' destined for greatness.' Deceased.

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 Elliot Rodger's communication dysfunctions mirrored James Holmes' in that he rarely
spoke to his peers, although where Holmes was aware that this was the cause of his social
alienation, Rodger was utterly oblivious. In fact, without the insights of Philip Bloeser, Simon
Astaire, and Lenny Shaw, it is entirely possible to watch Rodger's VLOGS without having the
slightest clue that he never once approached a female. Rodger's anger was born from a rejection
that never occurred except in his own mind, though given his bigoted, dependent, and banal
personality, he was probably correct in anticipating rejection.
Like David Berkowitz, Rodger was of subordinated masculinity, friendless, alienated,
and pathologically consumed by his lack of success with women. Yet, they sought to reconcile
this problem of courtship by aspiring to different masculinities embedded within their self-
guides. Berkowitz strived for sub-hegemony in his pre-homicidal ideal/owns, casting himself in
the institutionalized Hero roles of volunteer fireman, auxiliary policeman, and soldier. When he
could not live up to his sub-hegemonic ambitions, he sought the hyperreal masculinity of a
demon-driven Monster. Rodger, who could never come close to being a sub-hegemonic 'brute'
(even if he wanted to), instead looked for ways to achieve hegemonic masculinity through
wealth, using social class to exceed others:
If I become a multi-millionaire, I would be able to walk on the beach with a beautiful
girlfriend too, and my life would be complete [attainment of Lotto Millionaire
ideal/own]. That was what I wanted. That was what I wished for in my future. As I’ve
always believed, I am destined for great things. Becoming a multi-millionaire at a young
age is what I am meant for.512

Rodger spoke as if he was dispossessed lord always referring to Peter Rodger as 'father' and
never 'dad' and decrying the denial of his perceived entitlements as eldest son. Hence, his affinity
for the Ramsay Bolton avatar. Particularly, class superiority allowed Rodger to compensate for
his inferior masculinity and maturity. Within the hierarchy of his self-hating racism, he was able
to also claim supremacy over almost all minorities, because he felt socially reduced by his
virginity. His unnecessary and brutal murder of three Chinese victims—stabbing Wang 15 times,
Hong 25 times, and Chen 94 times513—indicates extreme rage. As Rodger made no reference to
them being sexually-active (his usual trigger), one is left to conclude that this fury was directed
at their racial identity. There is little doubt that the mixed-race Rodger hated the Asian side of
himself.

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 Still, it is of importance to note that when the curtain finally came down with The Day of
Retribution video, Rodger the True Alpha Male Avenger was not protesting his financial or
racial lot, as both were ultimately mere ways to justify his entitlement to women over other men.
Instead, he raged against females, and more generally, the sex act which he coveted but lacked
the social skills to facilitate. Pathologically insecure about the sexual/gender aspects of his
personality, Rodger attempted to compensate by emphasizing the class and racial aspects of his
self—a weak claim to hegemonic masculinity—only to find his perceived superiority did not
automatically bring women flocking to his door. His response was sub-hegemonic violence.
This failure of normative heterosexual masculinity at virtually every level may be at least
partially owing to what Rodger describes as “my father's absence from my life... I always looked
up to him as a powerful and successful man.”514 In another statement he proclaims “I tried to
show [the website PUAHate.com] to my parents, to give them some sort dose of reality as to
why I am so miserable… They have always had the delusion that everything is going well for
me, especially my father [emphasis added].”515Instead of fatherly guidance, he was overindulged
by his biological mother, who bought him expensive luxuries when he felt sad. Accordingly,
Rodger was either completely dismissive of or startlingly clueless as to masculine conventions.
For instance, one VLOG shows Rodger driving through the streets of Santa Barbara, smiling
insincerely at the camera while bobbing his head to the rhythmic pulse of Whitney Houston's
1985 Dance-Pop hit “How Will I Know?”516 The performative quality of the video, highly
reminiscent of Magnotta, leads one to conclude that Rodger was trying to convince the viewer
that he was enjoying life and/or make himself seem fun and desirable to women. But in doing so
he inadvertently feminized himself. In another example, Rodger begins his 'Life is so unfair
because girls dont [sic] want me' VLOG by proudly announcing he is “enjoying a nice vanilla
latte”517, before taking a sip, and proclaiming “oh yeah, that's nice. Makes me feel all pumped
up.”518 The notion that a vanilla latte—a stereotypically bourgeois sweetened female drink—
could make a grown man “feel all pumped up”519 is the equivalent of getting an alcohol buzz
from a cooler. Regardless of the truth of Rodger's statement, it is not something a young man
who has been subject to normative male socialization would typically advertise online. Worse
still are his multiple non-self-conscious autobiographical admissions that he threw tantrums and
crying well into adulthood.
The one normative masculine convention Rodger did unfortunately absorb was the notion

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that 'real men' react to personal slights with violence. He distinguished himself from the other
“men who are starved of sex”520 and “share my hatred of women”521 on PUAhate.com by saying
that “unlike me they would be too cowardly to act on it.”522 As we have seen, he similarly
attributed weakness to virginal friends who had a healthier outlook on their situation. Like
Danny Rolling, Rodger finally cast himself as the sub-hegemonic Avenger ideal/own who would
punish society for his life of misery and alienation. But where Rolling styled this homicidal
idea/own in the fashion of the Outlaw archetype, Rodger, in his ultimate narcissism, reasoned
that if human women did not wish to mate with him then it must be because he was greater than
human: a “powerful god”523 in his own words, “punishing everyone I deem to be impure and
depraved.”524 His choice of words and contradictory thoughts indicate that this was more a way
of keeping his ego intact rather than a genuine meta-delusion, though we must remain open to
the possibility. After all, in mythology and contemporary religion, a 'god' is the ultimate
patriarch—the “superior one, the true alpha male”525 in Rodger's words—with hegemony over all
men and women.
As Rodger elaborated on his personal struggles in clear language—he was both the most
open and honest offender in this sample—his case acts as a decoder ring for the less
comprehensible rants of Seung-Hui Cho: fellow college shooter and bi-furcated mass murderer
detailed in the next case study.

Seung-Hui Cho: Charlatan Slaying Martyr-Prophet

Talismans: Eric&Dylan!, Holy Bible; Type: 1

Where socially-isolated student Elliot Rodger articulated his grievances literally—“since I hit
puberty, I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires,
all because girls have never been attracted to me... I'm still a virgin. It has been very
torturous”526—Seung-Hui Cho expresses the same kinds of sentiments allegorically:
“Committing emotional sodomy on me wasn't enough for you. Every single second wasted on
your wanton hedonism and menacing sadism could have been used to prevent today. Ask
yourselves, What was I doing all this time? All these months, hours, seconds.”527 Unfortunately,
for this reason Cho's statements are frequently dismissed as the incoherent ramblings of a
madman. This section will act as a decoder ring to reveal the similarities in the underlying

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rationale between Seung-Hui Cho and Elliot Rodger.

Seung-Hui Cho: Failed Socialization and the formation and realization of the actual/own
Seung-Hui Cho was born in South Korea, and developed whooping cough and
pneumonia when he was nine-months-old (early sensori-motor). At the age of three, he
underwent a medical procedure related to a heart murmur which reportedly left him traumatized
and afraid of being touched.528 In 1992, at the age of eight, he emigrated with his family to the
United States. The Chos eventually settled in Centreville, North Virginia where they worked in
dry cleaning. Even before leaving South Korea, Cho's communication dysfunctions were obvious
to both his immediate and extended family. His great aunt revealed “When I told his mother that
he was a good boy, quiet but well behaved, she said she would rather have him respond to her
when talked to than be good and meek.”529 An uncle corroborated these claims: “The kid didn't
say much and didn't mix with other children... Yes sir was about all you could get from him.”530
Attending Poplar Elementary School in Chantilly, Cho was unresponsive to teachers and
generally did not talk in class. Whenever he did speak he was reportedly mocked by other
students for his poor English and unusual voice.531 Despite Cho's refusal to discuss bullying, his
sister often witnessed other students taunting him in the hallways.532 Where they had initially
attributed his silence to problems with the English language, the teachers at Poplar Elementary
increasingly formed the opinion that its etiology ran much deeper. At home, Cho's shyness
increased and whenever he was asked to greet a visitor he would “become pale, freeze, and
sometimes cry.”533
As middle school approached, the Chos decided to enroll their son in counseling. Along
with art therapy, he was subjected to a number of tests. Consistent with Chapman, Berkowitz,
Ireland, Rolling, and Rodger, “Cho was diagnosed as being immature for his real age. He acted
and behaved as if he were a younger child”534 though “his tested IQ was above average.”535 In
Grade 8, Cho began to show “symptoms of depression”536 and his counsellor convinced him to
sign a contract promising to notify his parents or somebody at school if he was experiencing
suicidal or homicidal thoughts.
One month later, Cho encountered his homicidal talisman when news of the 1999
Columbine High School shootings perpetrated by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shocked the
nation. When he wrote a paper for class stating that he wished to “repeat Columbine”537, his

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family was notified, and he was sent for psychiatric evaluation. Cho was determined to be
suffering from “major depression: single episode”538 and an anxiety disorder known as “selective
mutism”539—a form of severe shyness which compels a person to remain silent when they are
socially expected to speak. Cho's communication dysfunctions only worsened in Westfield High
School, although with the help of a special education program, he was able to obtain Honors
grades. Achieving a 620 SAT score in math, he was admitted to Virginia Tech, his college of
choice, where he went to live and study far from the stabilizing influence of his family.
Unsurprisingly, this 'selective mutism' continued at Virginia Tech. According to Cho's
roommate, Karan Grewal, Cho “was expressionless... as he always was... I don't think he ever
looked anybody in the eye. None of us ever had a conversation with him... It was weird that he
never spoke but we'd all got used to it... If you talked to him, he would stare down at his lap.”540
Cho's taciturnity was so extreme that Grewal “never saw him with anyone else and I only
realised he knew English when I saw him typing quickly on his computer.”541 Another
roommate, Joseph Aust, echoed Grewal's observations: “He pretty much never talked at all... I
tried to make conversation with him earlier in the year… He gave one-word answers. He pretty
much never looked me in the eye.”542 Repeatedly listening to the alternative rock song “Shine”
by Collective Soul, Cho reportedly scrawled a passage of lyrics from the song on his dormitory
wall: “Teach me how to speak; Teach me how to share; Teach me where to go.”543
Cho's actual/own self mirrored Elliot Rodger's and Luka Magnotta's in his persecution
complex and feelings of being maliciously excluded. However, rather than emphasizing his
physical attractiveness and/or cultural superiority, Cho—perhaps as a result of his religious
upbringing544—saw himself instead as being more genuine and morally superior. Before his
rampage, he made frequent reference to “the Weak, the Defenseless, and the Innocent Children
of all ages”545 who he sometimes referred to as “us.”546 The use of the term “children of all
ages”547 reveals that he is not speaking of children in the biological or chronological sense, but
God's children. Cho's actual/own was the Weak, Defenseless, and Innocent Child of God.

Seung-Hui Cho: Pre-Homicidal Ideal/Own Selves and Negative Emotionality

As Cho was pathologically uncommunicative before his homicidal transformation, it is
difficult to determine whether his secondary education represented a striving towards a genuine
ideal/own or simply a path placed before him. There was a brief period in late 2004 when he

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sought to become a Professional Writer [ideal/own self], changed his major to English, and sent
a query letter to a publishing house. However, upon receiving a letter notifying him that his book
proposal had been rejected in Spring 2005, “his sister noticed that he seemed to have lost interest
in writing... was even more withdrawn... [and] seemed to not have any interest in his own
future.”548 According to the state of Virginia's Mass Shootings at Virginia Tech: Addendum to
the Report of the Review Panel the rejection “seemed to depress him.”549 In December of that
same year, Cho was diagnosed with a “depressive disorder”550. Fortunately, it isn't necessary to
confirm the existence of a pre-homicidal ideal/own self, as Cho's words immediately before the
Virginia Tech massacre confirm his dejection-related emotions and his decision to narrow the
discrepancy between his Weak, Defenseless, and Innocent Child of God actual/own and his
homicidal ideal/own. Speaking of the emotional “pain”551 he endured, Cho laments about “the
happiness I could have had mingling among you hedonists...”552 Having proclaimed “I might as
well kill myself”553, Cho, who would commit suicide after his rampage, announced “you thought
it was one pathetic, void life that you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die, like Jesus Christ,
to inspire generations of the Weak and Defenseless people.”554
In the imaginatively titled Story 2 penned in 2006, he wrote of the protagonist, Bud, as
“thinking about his life up until the current moment—All the emotional and mental abuse he has
endured, feelings of invisibility, inadequacy, unworthiness, the bombardment and the thrashing
of scornful derisions... He wants no more of the hellish torment of his intrinsically tragic life.”555
Reinforcing this perception of being invisible, he later added “eyes glance at Bud but without the
glint of recognition.”556 As with most of our offenders, Cho lacked any stake in conformity
which would prevent him from acting on his homicidal impulses:
As the time approached, I wished for a last minute miracle and discard [sic] this mission
you've given me... But when the time came, I did it. I had to. What other choices did you
give me?... When you’re raped of everything, you got nothing to lose.557

The concept of rampage murder as a 'mission' is similar to James Holmes'. As if to reinforce the
military aspect of this, both would sport paramilitary regalia during the commission of their
crimes [SAOS].

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Seung-Hui Cho: Renegotiated Homicidal ideal/own
Cho's homicidal ideal/own self “Ax Ishmael...the Anti-Terrorist of America”558 was that
of a Charlatan Slaying Martyr-Prophet. Having once been one of the “Weak and Defenseless
people”559, he now sought to rise from their ranks “like Moses”560 and “spread the sea and lead
my people—the Weak, the Defenseless, and the Innocent Children of all ages that you fucked
and will always try to fuck—to eternal freedom”561. His manner of doing this would be violent
retaliation for “committing emotional sodomy on me”562, adding that “like Easter [Monday]”563
which occurred exactly one week before the murders, the day of the massacre would “be a day of
rebirth”564. Cho's fellow “martyrs”565 included Columbine High School shooters “Eric [Harris]
and Dylan [Klebold]”566 who he declared sacrificed their “lives to fuck you thousand folds for
what you Apostles of Sin have done to us.”567 The Columbine High School gunmen remained
Cho's primary talisman, in fact his “revolution of the Children that you fucked”568 was originally
articulated by Harris and Klebold in the so-called 'basement tapes' in which they talk about
“starting a revolution of the dispossessed”569, with Harris boasting “We're going to kick-start a
revolution...”570 Cho emulated Harris and Klebold in style and dress as will be further explored
in Chapter 4. In the end, Seung-Hui Cho proved to be a far more efficient killer than both Harris
and Klebold combined, murdering 32 students and wounding 17 others with semi-automatic
pistols in a bifurcated mass murder occurring between 7:15-10:00 a.m. on April 16, 2007 at
Virginia Tech. But who were these “Apostles of Sin” the Charlatan Slaying Martyr-Prophet
railed against?

Seung-Hui Cho: Victimology

Seung-Hui Cho's explanations for his killing rampage are often dismissed because his victims
appear to have been selected at random:

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Table 24

Seung-Hui Cho Victimology

Victim Name Age Race Gender Profession Date victimized Where

Ryan Clark 22 Black Male Student in Psych/ April 16, 2007 West Ambler
Biology/English Johnston Hall
Emily Hilscher 19 White Female Student in Animal April 16, 2007 West Ambler
Sciences Johnston Hall
Minal Panchal 26 South Asian Female Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Architecture
G. V. Loganathan 53 South Asian Female Professor of April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Engineering
Jarrett Lane 22 White Male Student in Civil April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Engineering
Brian Bluhm 25 White Male Student in Civil April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Engineering
Matthew Gwaltney 24 White Male Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Environmental
Engineering
Jeremy Herbstritt 27 White Male Student in Civil April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Engineering
Partahi Lumbantoruan 34 East Asian Male Student in Civil April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Engineering
Daniel O'Neill 22 White Male Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Environmental
Engineering
Juan Ortiz-Ortiz 26 Hispanic Male Student in Civil April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Engineering
Julia Pryde 23 White Female Student in Biological April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Systems Engineering
Waleed Shaalan 32 Middle- Male Student in Civil April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Eastern Engineering
Jamie Bishop 35 White Male German instructor April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Lauren McCain 20 Native Female Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
American International Studies
Michael Pohle Jr. 23 White Male Student in Biological April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Sciences
Maxine Turner 22 White Female Student in Chemical April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Engineering
Nicole White 20 White Female Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
International Studies

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 Liviu Librescu 76 White Male Professor of April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Engineering
Jocelyne Couture- 49 White Female Professor of French April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Nowak
Austin Cloyd 18 White Female Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
International
Studies/French
Daniel Perez Cueva 21 Hispanic Male Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
International Studies
Caitlin Hammaren 19 White Female Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
International
Studies/French
Rachael Hill 18 White Female Student in Biological April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Sciences
Matthew La Porte 20 White Male Student in Political April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Science
Henry Lee 20 East Asian Male Student in Computer April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Engineering
Erin Peterson 18 Black Female Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
International Studies
Mary KareRead 19 East Asian Female Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Interdisciplinary
Studies
Reema Samaha 18 Middle- Female Student in Urban April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Eastern Planning
Leslie Sherman 20 White Female Student in April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
History/International
Studies
Kevin Granata 45 White Male Professor of April 16, 2007 Norris Hall
Engineering

Much like Elliot Rodger, Cho's victimology was extremely inclusive, but nevertheless symbolic.
As he literally had no friends, Cho viewed enough of the people at Virginia Tech as
“hedonists”571, “Christian Nazis”572, “Descendants of Satan”573, “Apostles of Sin”574, “sadistic
snobs”575, “Sinners”576, “Spillers of Blood”577, “American al-Qaeda”578, “Lovers of
Terrorism”579, “Descendants of Satan Disguised as Devout Christians”580, “Charlatans”581,
“Rapists”582, “Sadists”583, “Lifetakers”584, “Sadistic Charlatans”585, and “Masqueraded
Democratic Terrorists”586 to justify shooting them indiscriminately [mj]. Whether he viewed the
five professors he murdered similarly or if they were merely collateral damage in his personal

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war against the student population is indeterminable. Again, on the surface these descriptions
may seem “incoherent”587, but listening to his 'rants' with the poetic ear identifies several
narrative themes which bind them together conceptually.
Table 25

Decoding Cho's Communications

References to violence/violent groups References to sin/evil References to deceit

X Hedonists X
Nazis X X
X Descendants of Satan X
X Apostles of Sin X
Sadistic X X
X Sinners X
Spillers of Blood X X
al-Qaeda X X
Terrorism X X
X Descendants of Satan Disguised as Devout Christians
X X Charlatans
Rapists X X
Sadists X X
Lifetakers X X
Sadistic X Charlatans
Terrorists X Masqueraded

As Table 25 reveals, all of the terms Cho uses to describe his victims fall into at least one of
three categories with negative associations: violence, sin/evil, and deceit. The words 'Christian',
'Snobs', 'American', 'Lovers', and 'Democratic' lend context to the negative terms. So, although
the victims are ostensibly 'Christian', 'American', or 'Democratic', to Cho they are simply
American versions of Nazis and terrorists. This either invalidates their Christian, American, or
Democratic character, or inverts it, so that it becomes insidious. For instance, Christianity ceases
to be benevolent if it is propagated in the fascistic manner connoted by the term 'Nazis.' 'Lovers'
when used in the sentence 'Lovers of Terrorism' or 'Lovers of Sadism' obviously does nothing to

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detract from the negativity, and 'Snobs' next to the word 'Sadistic' either means that the victim is
sadistic and snobbish, or sadistic through snobbery.
With unintentional irony, Cho places himself in opposition to these labels by comparing
himself to history's most famous persecuted victim, “Jesus Christ”588, and “Moses”589 the
Biblical figure who declared “You Shall Not Murder” on Mount Sinai. If we take the characters
“Spanky”, “Ax”, and “Bud” in Cho's stories as being self-representations—and they certainly
appear to be—we gain even further insight into the way Cho perceived his victims.
In Story 2, Bud beholds his fellow students and concludes “I hate all these frauds.”590
With Mark Chapman's hatred of 'phonies', this theme is all too familiar. Fellow co-ed murderer,
Edmund Emil Kemper III, discussed earlier in this work as a covert expressive/transformative
offender, once similarly stated:

I consider it a very phony society, a very phony world, where people are too busy
copping out to so many things to exist and fit into a group that they had lost sight of their
individual aims and goals. I had become completely lost, and very bitter about what I
considered these phony values and phony existence...591

Cho's writings in Story 2 portray the day-to-day superficiality which Bud encounters, providing
us with valuable insight into the author's own experiences: “[A] fun-natured teacher ecstatically
lectures making social and political jokes occasionally. The class laughs. Everyone is smiling
and laughing as if they're in heaven-on-earth, something magical and enchanting about all the
people's intrinsic nature that bud [sic] will never experience.”592 As should be evident by now,
Cho's conception of the world as phony is not entirely incorrect. Goffman observed that social-
life is inherently performed. In a social setting, individuals act out line—expressions of their
perspective of a given situation, the perspective of others, and the way the individual is seen by
others. For somebody with Cho's communication dysfunctions, the theatrical nature of social
interaction could be judged fake and dismissed, with everyone taking part in it deemed
“phonies.”593 Bud's perception of college life is one riddled with characters enacting social
clichés. He sees
oversized football players acting, talking, and walking like rappers making obnoxious
commotions and comments that they should keep to themselves. Cheerleaders in show
uniforms gossiping in high-pitched tone with their noses slightly pointed to the sky and
severe makeup on their faces. Nerd-types carrying stacks of books, wearing obscene pink

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 wrinkle-free shirts, and talking about the upcoming state chess championship.594

Essentially, stereotypical representations of sub-hegemonic masculinity, emphasized femininity,

and subordinated masculinity which the isolated Cho sought to destroy. Like Berkowitz, Rolling,
and Rodger, he would do so because they offered no place for him among their ranks, killing up.

Seung-Hui Cho: Post-Spree Self

For Seung-Hui Cho, the closing of the gap between actual/own and renegotiated
ideal/own homicidal self culminated with his suicide. His unified self, the Charlatan Slaying
Martyr-Prophet, had been designed to live on forever in a state of personal harmony and eternal
triumph through the immortalizing mediums of television and the Internet. Rather than depicting
an awkward outcast, his final video portrayals would present a new man—one of violence,
posing like a movie hero with firearms and knives, and cryptically protesting a lifetime of
perceived injustices.
Yet, Cho may have genuinely believed that his self-sacrifice would usher in a revolution
of the socially excluded rising up against the socially included. His final statements delivered to
NBC was nothing short of a call to arms:

All of you who have ever been fucked by these Descendants of Satan Disguised as
Devout Christians, all of you who have went through what I went through, all of you who
have felt what I have felt in my life, all of you who have suffered the wrath of these
Democratic Terrorists, all of you who have been beaten, humiliated, and crucified—
Children of Ishmael, Crusaders of Anti-Terrorism, my Jesus Christ Brothers and
Sisters—you’re in my heart. In life and death and spirit. We'll soon be together. Let the
revolution begin!595

Like Elliot Rodger and The Columbine High School shooters, Cho sought to transform from
flesh and blood to a corporeally dead but eternal talisman for future murderers to emulate.

Seung-Hui Cho: Sexual/Gender Aspects

There is no evidence of problems related to Cho's gender, but he was obviously unhappy with his
sex life, which inevitably feeds into one's gender self-concept. Upon arriving at Virginia Tech,
he informed his roommates that he had a girlfriend, Jelly: a space-travelling super model who

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existed in his imagination. Apparently, she referred to him as Spanky. Cho once asked roommate
Andy Koch to leave their suite because Jelly was supposedly visiting.596 This 'invisible sex
partner' is reminiscent of David Berkowitz's fantasy relationship with Donna Lauria's spirit, and
Elliot Rodger's “hot blonde-haired”597 “imaginary girlfriend”598 who he had “passionate sex
with”599 in his “elaborate fantasies.”600 Jelly also appeared in one of Cho's creative writing
stories—Spanky's Big Adventure—as the girlfriend of the protagonist Spanky (Cho).601 Another
story, Man-Bitches features a relationship between a character with Cho's alias “Ax” and his
“super-hot girlfriend”602 Jen. In a third piece of writing, Cho tells the tale of Bud who wears “a
strappy black vest with many pockets, a black hat, a [sic] large dark sunglasses”603 and who tries
to “'kill every god damn person in this damn school'”.604 The story concludes when Bud meets a
“girl with gothic makeups [sic] and clothes”605 who encourages him to commit a massacre so
they can “fight to claim their deserving throne.”606
By presenting fictional representations of himself next to admiring young females in his
stories, it is clear that Cho was living out fantasy relationships on paper. In reality, the closest he
came to touching a female student was photographing their legs under his desk. Cho was also
complicit in numerous stalking incidents. In the first case, he sent unwanted phone calls and
Internet communications to student Jennifer Nelson. Knocking on Nelson's door at West Ambler
Johnston residence hall, Cho introduced himself as “question mark.”607 On November 27, 2005,
Nelson reported him to the Virginia Tech Police Department, but refused to press charges. A
second incident came to the attention of Resident Advisors on December 6. Christina Lillizu
reported that she had received profane and unsolicited instant messages from an unknown person
using an alias. On a third occasion, Cho entered East Campbell residence hall and went to the
room of Margaret Bowman, whose carpet he had repeatedly stabbed during a party earlier that
fall. Prior to his unannounced visit, Bowman had received mysterious self-deprecating comments
on her Facebook page. When she asked the poster his name, he replied, “I do not know who I
am”608—tantamount to saying 'question mark' and wholly consistent with the crises of self
plaguing our ETV offenders. Moreover, Cho wrote a message to Bowman on the whiteboard
outside her room quoting Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “By a name I know not how to tell
thee who I am. My name, dear Saint, is hateful to myself. Because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it
written I would tear the word.”609 A plausible interpretation of this is that Cho hates himself
because his inability to date transforms women from potential friends and mates into 'enemies.’

485
These incidents were reported to the campus police on December 12.
Clearly, Cho desired young women, but was so clumsy in his courtship attempts that he
adapted through criminal means. According to some sources, he had tried to start a relationship
with and been rejected by his first victim, Emily Hilscher.610 In his poem a boy named Loser,
Cho wrote: “In LOSER's little mind, he brings over a girl to this house. Only if he could do that
in this real world.”611 As there is no evidence that Cho used drugs or alcohol, his utterance “oh
the happiness I could have had mingling among you hedonists”612 likely expresses rage about
being excluded from romantic and/or sexual activities. It bears a notable resemblance to Elliot
Rodger's comment on “the hedonistic scum who enjoyed lives of pleasure that they don't
deserve... I can't have it...”613 Like Berkowitz and Rodger, Cho paradoxically attached a moral
stigma to sexuality. On a rare occasion when he decided to speak to a roommate regarding why
he had visited Jennifer Nelson's room, Cho “said that he wanted to go up there and look her in
the eyes to see how cool she was because that's the only way he could tell how cool she was...
And, when he looked in her eyes, he said that he saw promiscuity.”614 Here, like Chapman and
Berkowitz, Cho begins to use religion to compensate for his masculine shortcomings.

Seung-Hui Cho: Religious/Philosophical Aspects

Unlike the vast majority of Asian families in their community, the Chos did not attend a major
Korean-language church, instead choosing a small house of worship on the outskirts of town.615
There is no record indicating whether or not Seung-Hui Cho regularly went to church, however
the video statements he mailed to NBC mid-rampage convey strong religious themes. Though
multiple websites repeat the misconception that Cho railed against his parents' Christian
faithlllllllll, in reality he drew heavily from the Holy Bible talisman to interpret his victims'
characters as well as his identity in relation to them.
When considered in isolation, Cho's use of the term “Christian Nazis”616 seems to imply
that he saw all Christians as right-wing authoritarians. However, he also referred to
“Descendants of Satan”617, “Apostles of Sin”618, “Sinners”619, and most importantly,
“Descendants of Satan Disguised as Devout Christians.”620 Thus, the implication is not that all
Christians are bad—Cho even compared himself to Moses and Jesus Christ. Rather, he took issue

For instance, see the websites http://www.conservapedia.com/Seung-Hui_Cho,

lllllllll

http://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/cho-seung-hui.htm, http://serialkillers.wikia.com/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho

486
with people he perceived as sinful but masquerading as Christians: “Do they wanna fuck us and
pretend to be devout Christians?... Do they wanna perpetrate endless sessions of crucifixions and
holocausts on our innocent life then go to church and praise the Lord and Jesus? Do they wanna
fuck us and pretend to be Jesus Christ?”621
Instead, Cho saw himself and those who similarly suffer as the true Christians, because
like Christ, they are persecuted:

“I say we're [emphasis added] the Jesus Christs, my Brothers, Sisters, and Children. Jesus
Christ exists in us all: Ax Jesus Christ, John Jesus Christ, Jane Jesus Christ, Seung Jesus
Christ, Carlos Jesus Christ, Hakeem Jesus Christ, Mohammad Jesus Christ, Zhang Jesus
Christ, Oliver Jesus Christ, Elizabeth Jesus Christ, Vladimir Jesus Christ... I say there is
no pain they [emphasis added] can inflict on us that they haven't already inflicted.”622

Cho's call to “take up the cross, Children of Ishmael, take up our guns and knives and any
sharp objects, and take no prisoners and spare no lives until our last breath”623 is ultimately best
characterized as a Crusade against a perceived heathen sect.mmmmmmmmm Drawing from the
political and media discourse of post-9/11 America, he proclaims “You may stand steadfast on
the battlefield of your life's dedication to eternal terrorism American Al-Qaeda, but the Children
that you have fucked will rise. By the power greater than God we will hunt you down, you
Lovers of Terrorism, and we will kill you.”624 It is important to clarify that Cho did not literally
believe his victims were members of Al-Qaeda. This is evident in his reference to “Masqueraded
Democratic Terrorists who commit unforgivable acts of treason against mankind.”625 Cho speaks
of a form of terrorism which “vandalized my heart, raped my soul, and torched my conscious
again and again”626 via social exclusion. Outcasts like Cho are expected to either suffer in
perpetuity or commit suicide and quickly disappear from history, a reality of which he was all
too aware and sought to counteract: “You thought it was one pathetic, void life that you were
extinguishing... by destroying you, by giving you pain, we attempt to show you responsibilities
and meanings of other people's lives.”627 When Cho rhetorically asked “Don't you just wish you
finished me off when you had the chance? Don't you just wish you killed me?”628 he was
effectively saying that if society was content to let him die, they should have caused his demise

mmmmmmmmm
It is amusing to contemplate what the social and political reaction to this diatribe would have been if
Cho had used Islamic terminology rather than Christian. One can safely assume it would have been presented as a
sinister example of homegrown terrorism rather than being dismissed as the rantings of a madman.

487
directly before he had a chance to strike back.
Though his statement “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction... All the
shit you've given me, right back at you with hollow points”629 could be compared to the Old
Testament's eye-for-an-eye, Cho did not seek moral justification for his violence in religious
texts. Instead, he paradoxically conceived of it as teaching empathy by inflicting suffering: “You
have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life, thus... by destroying we create. We
create the feelings in you of what it is like to be the victim, what it is like to be fucked and
destroyed [emphasis added]. Because of your annihilations, we create and raise new breeds of
Children who will show you fuckers what you have done to us.”630 Here is an example of
secondary and tertiary transformation (see Chapter 4) in which the victims are edified and
'improved' by annihilation or injury, and the rest of the world is forced to ponder its treatment of
'invisible' people like Seung-Hui Cho.

Seung-Hui Cho: Class Aspects

Cho joins Mark David Chapman and Elliot Rodger as one of the most class-conscious offenders
in this sample. However, where the middle-class Chapman dreamed of near unattainable wealth
and the upper-middle-class Rodger was startlingly deluded as to just how financially well-off he
actually was, Cho hailed from a genuinely humble working-class family. Before moving to the
United States, his father had owned a used bookstore in Seoul. According to their Korean
landlord, Lim Bong-ae: “they lived a poor life... While emigrating, (Cho's father) said they were
going to America because it is difficult to live here and that it's better to live in a place where he
is unknown.”631 Yet, after 15 years of hard-grift in America, Cho's father continued to work from
8 a.m. to 10 p.m. as a presser at a dry cleaner's, prompting his mother to take a job at a high
school cafeteria in order to secure medical insurance for her family. They lived in a row house.
While viewing himself and those like him as “poor”632, Cho derided his victims as
“bratty, snobby kids”633 who ate “caviar”634, drank “cognac”635 and who stole “from the Poor and
the Weak…in order to gratify [their] fucking pride and hedonism.”636 In reference to his
perceived persecution by them he rhetorically asked them if “your two million dollar house
wasn't enough? Your BMW wasn’t enough? Your inheritances weren't enough?…What are you
going to do with the blood money? Buy a new Mercedes?… The fat surpluses that you roll on
everyday aren't enough?”637 Once more, Leyton's statement that multiple murderers have

488
 “enthusiastically embraced the established order only to discover that it offers them no place they
can endure”638 resounds. While protesting their indulgence, Cho hypocritically pined for “the
happiness I could have had mingling among you hedonists, being counted as one of you.”639 By
stating “every single second wasted on your wanton hedonism and menacing sadism could have
been used to prevent today”640, Cho was essentially saying that if he had been included in the
perceived debauchery he would not have resorted to murder. He was defined by the same victim-
envy as Chapman, Berkowitz, Rolling, and Rodger—expressive/transformative offenders who
kill up. In several of Cho's stories, the protagonist comes into money and those who once derided
him, including teachers and students, suddenly become sycophantic. This paradigm is consistent
with his view of society as being full of phonies and that money facilitates social inclusion.

Seung-Hui Cho: Vocational Aspects

There is no mention of Cho ever being employed. Immediately after leaving high school
he began attending Virginia Tech as a student. Still, like Holmes and Rodger, he effectively
dropped out of school in the Spring semester of 2007.641

Seung-Hui Cho: Concluding Thoughts

Table 26

Seung-Hui Cho: Selves and Strain

Actual/Own Ideal/Own Homicidal Self Post-Arrest Self

Sexuality Ego-Dystonic. Virginal. Ego-syntonic. Killed female he desired. Resolved. Suicide.
Girlfriend.
Gender Subordinated. 'Mocked by other N/A Sub-hegemonic. No gender- Resolved. Suicide.
students for his poor English and role strain.
unusual voice.' Gender-role strain.
Religion/Philosophy Christian Christian Becomes self-styled prophet Resolved. Suicide.
Class Mertonian strain. Working-class. Upper-class. Classless. Resolved. Suicide.
Vocation Unstable student. Pro writer. N/A Resolved. Suicide.
Notability Ego-dystonic. Mertonian strain. Ego syntonic. Ego-syntonic. 'I die, like Resolved. Suicide.
Published Jesus Christ, to inspire
author. generations of the Weak'

489
 In many ways, Seung-Hui Cho was a less articulate Elliot Rodger whose anger stemmed
more from general social alienation than perceived female rejection, although the latter was still
a significant factor. Ultimately, he wished to be included, but did not possess the necessary social
skills, becoming resentful in his dejection-related emotions. Unable to admit, or perhaps even
understand, that his actual self was a menacing character whose presence intimidated fellow
students, Cho instead saw himself as Weak, Defenseless, and Innocent Child of God—one of
many proverbial Jews oppressed by the pharaoh or early Christians persecuted by the Romans.
He viewed the social hierarchy of the 'popular' and 'unpopular' through this religious lens. While
Rodger re-purposed himself as a 'god' exacting arbitrary vengeance for his personal pleasure,
Cho cast himself in the mold of the prophetic 'Ax Ishmael' whose homicidal self-sacrifice would
serve as a talisman for allegorical “Brothers, Sisters, and Children”642: the ostracized “Jesus
Christs”643 of the future who would look to his example as he had looked to
Eric&Dylan!.nnnnnnnnn This self-conceptualization as a Christ-like figure played into his fixation
with social class. In the Holy Bible talisman, the Christ avatar preaches anti-materialism and
humility. Hailing from a poor family, virginal and at the extreme ends of non-interaction, it is
easy to see how Cho came to view himself as “Seung Jesus Christ”644 compared to more out-
going, sexually-active students from middle-class families—those “bratty, snobby kids”645 who
drove luxury cars and dined on 'caviar' and 'cognac'—conceiving of them as “Descendants of
Satan Disguised as Devout Christians.”646 This allowed his doctrines to overlap with those of his
heroes Harris and Klebold who reportedly asked several students if they were 'Christian' before
shooting them,647 even though Cho was clearly religiously inclined himself. In essence, his was a
homicidal enactment of the 'no true Scotsman' logical fallacy. He was the 'real Christian' ridding
the world of 'false Christians.'
Like Rodger, he did not see his murders as a choice, but actions society had forced him to
perpetrate reluctantly: “As the time approached, I wished for a last minute miracle and discard
[sic] this mission you've given me [emphasis added]... But when the time came, I did it. I had
to.”648 For Cho, the option of continuing existence as a sexless, friendless, and ignored
subordinated masculinity was not an option whatsoever, and his fellow students were completely
responsible. At first, his targeting of males and females of all ages and ethnicities makes his

nnnnnnnnn
In Chapter 4, we saw how Cho even emulated Eric&Dylan's homicidal garb.

490
victimology appear non-symbolic, but considering he was asocial to the point where his own
roommates didn't even know he spoke English, it is obvious that his concept of other people's
social lives would have been guesswork. Thus, every other student was an 'apostle of sin' or a
'sadistic charlatan.'649 Like Chapman, Cho was acting out an archetypal Hero narrative650—a
young man reluctantly forced to journey into chaos to die slaying the “Masqueraded Democratic
Terrorists”651 (Chapman's 'phonies') who “perpetrate endless sessions of crucifixions and
holocausts on our innocent life [and who]... fuck us and pretend to be Jesus Christ...”652 in order
to “spread the sea and lead my people—the Weak, the Defenseless, and the Innocent Children of
all ages that you fucked and will always try to fuck—to eternal freedom [Chapman's catching of
the innocent children in the rye].”653 The Virginia Tech mass murder was thus a misguided
subordinated man's attempt to wage a moral war which would culminate in the “rebirth”654 of
himself as sub-hegemonic Hero and the decadent landscape around him.655 At least that's how he
coloured it, for like Chapman and Rodger, his motivation was envy: the resentful destruction of
that which he could never become or possess. The fact that he purposely targeted student Emily
Hilscher, a love interest, before going on his rampage is revealing. While being 'normal' was
unattainable for Cho, his childhood exposure to the Eric&Dylan! talisman demonstrated he
could still be something. One only had to follow the cultural script of the school shooter656,
murder people en masse, and send hyperbolic communications to the media. Growing up, flashy
images on screens had been Cho's only companions, and with his suicide he would join the
hyperreal canon as an immortalized simulacrum: 'realer' in death than in life.
In the 10 years since the Virginia Tech massacre, Cho has endured as a canonical school
shooter in the public discourse, second only to The Columbine High shooters, and likely due to
his unrivaled body count. Yet despite a spike in bomb and rampage murder threats in the days
following his killing spree, Cho himself seems to have been abandoned as a talisman for prodigal
school shooters. One suspects the allure of Eric&Dylan! stems from the efficacy of their
homicidal expressions. Cho, with his flat affect, monotone voice, and cryptic diatribesooooooooo,
immediately comes across as mentally ill rather than a paragon of willful sub-hegemonic
vengeance against an unjust society.

ooooooooo
His Asian racial background may also be a factor here.

491
Endnotes

1 Hickey, 2015.
2 Hickey, 2015.
3 Mellor, 2016c.
4 Mellor, 2016c.
5 Mellor, 2016e.
6 Mellor, 2016e.
7 Mellor, 2016e.
8 Mellor, 2016c.
9 Mellor, 2016e.
10 Mellor, 2016e.
11 Mellor, 2016a.
12 Hickey, 2015.
13 Nelson, 2012, July 20.
14 Meyer, September 18, 2015.
15 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1)
16 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1)
17 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5)
18 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5)
19 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5)
20 Collman, 2015, September 10.
21 Collman, 2015, September 10.
22 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
23 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 21 (part 3)
24 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 21 (part 2)
25 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 21 (part 2)
26 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1)
27 Holmes, 2012, p. 32.
28 Holmes, 2012, p. 32.
29 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 21 (part 2)
30 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 21 (part 2)
31 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 4)
32 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 4)
33 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 4)
34 Holmes, 2012, p. 34.
35 Holmes, 2012, p. 38.
36 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
37 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 21 (part 3).
38 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. (Day 23, Part 1)
39 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
40 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 21 (part 3).
41 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 22 (part 3).
42 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 24 (part 4).
43 Cooley, 1902.
44 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 21 (part 2).
45 Croaker Queen, 2015, March 29. Day 21 (part 2).
46 Goffman, 1959.
47 Denver7 – The Denver Channel, 2015, June 10.
48 Denver7 – The Denver Channel, 2015, June 10.
49 Denver7 – The Denver Channel, 2015, June 10.
50 Denver7 – The Denver Channel, 2015, June 10.
51 American Psychiatric Association, 2005, p. 301.
52 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
53 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).

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54 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
55 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
56 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 3).
57 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
58 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
59 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
60 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
61 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
62 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
63 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
64 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
65 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
66 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
67 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
68 Jung & Hecht, 2004.
69 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
70 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
71 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
72 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
73 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4).
74 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
75 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4).
76 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4).
77 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 4. Day 25 (part 1).
78 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
79 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4).
80 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
81 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
82 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
83 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4); Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
84 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 22).
85 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 22).
86 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 22).
87 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 22).
88 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 22).
89 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
90 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
91 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
92 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 4. Day 25 (part 2).
93 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
94 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
95 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
96 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
97 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 22).
98 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4); Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
99 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
100 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
101 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
102 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 4. Day 25 (part 2).
103 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5)
104 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4).
105 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4).
106 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
107 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
108 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
109 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.

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110 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
111 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
112 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
113 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
114 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
115 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
116 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
117 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
118 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
119 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
120 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
121 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
122 Holmes, 2012, intro page with no number.
123 Holmes, 2012, intro page with no number.
124 Holmes, 2012, p. 31.
125 Holmes, 2012, p. 31.
126 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 4).
127 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
128 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 3).
129 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 2).
130 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 3).
131 Jones, 1992, p. 250.
132 Jones, 1992, p. 250.
133 Jones, 1992, p. 250.
134 Jones, 1992, p. 250.
135 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 4).
136 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 4).
137 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2)
138 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 2).
139 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 2).
140 Croaker Queen. 2015, June 4. Day 25 (part 1).
141 Reeves, McKee, & Stuckler, 2014.
142 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
143 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
144 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 25 (part 1).
145 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 25 (part 1).
146 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
147 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
148 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 4. Day 25 (part 1).
149 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 4. Day 25 (part 1).
150 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
151 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 4. Day 25 (part 1).
152 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
153 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
154 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
155 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
156 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
157 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
158 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
159 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
160 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
161 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
162 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
163 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
164 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
165 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).

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166 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
167 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
168 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
169 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2)
170 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
171 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1)
172 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 3).
173 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 3).
174 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 3).
175 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 25 (part 1).
176 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
177 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 3).
178 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 3).
179 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
180 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
181 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
182 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
183 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 1).
184 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 1).
185 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
186 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
187 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
188 Golgowski 2015, September 10.
189 Golgowski, 2015, September 10.
190 Golgowski, 2015, September 10.
191 Margolin & McKinley, 2016, Mar 3.
192 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
193 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4).
194 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4).
195 Denver7 – The Denver Channel, 2015, June 10.
196 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
197 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 1).
198 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
199 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 4).
200 Holmes, 2012, p. 35.
201 Knowles, 2015, June 4.
202 Lysiak & Chapman, 2012, July 30.
203 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1)
204 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
205 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
206 Holmes, 2012, p. 34.
207 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 4).
208 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 4).
209 Holmes, 2012, p. 31.
210 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 4).
211 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 4).
212 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
213 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
214 Rogers, 2012, July 23.
215 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
216 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
217 Holmes, 2012, p. 55.
218 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
219 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
220 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
221 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).

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222 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
223 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
224 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
225 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
226 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
227 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
228 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
229 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 2).
230 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 2).
231 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2)
232 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 3).
233 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
234 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
235 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
236 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
237 Brady, 2001, p. 47.
238 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
239 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
240 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
241 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
242 Mellor, Venkatesh, Wallin, & Thomas, 2016.
243 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 4).
244 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
245 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
246 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 3).
247 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 1).
248 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 1).
249 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
250 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
251 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
252 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 2).
253 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 4).
254 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 2).
255 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 2).
256 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 4).
257 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 4).
258 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 2).
259 No author, 2015, September 2.
260 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 5).
261 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
262 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 4. Day 25 (part 2).
263 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2)
264 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 4).
265 Holmes, 2012, p. 33.
266 C.M., 2006, March 16.
267 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
268 Holmes, 2012, p. 48.
269 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
270 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
271 Croaker Queen, 2015, May 29. Day 21 (part 3).
272 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 1).
273 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 2. Day 23 (part 2).
274 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 3).
275 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 3. Day 24 (part 3).
276 Croaker Queen, 2015, June 1. Day 22 (part 2).
277 Rodger, 2014.

496
278 Payne & Alleyne, 2014, May 29.
279 Payne & Alleyne, 2014, May 29.
280 Payne & Alleyne, 2014, May 29.
281 Payne & Alleyne, 2014, May 29.
282 Payne & Alleyne, 2014, May 29.
283 Payne & Alleyne, 2014, May 29.
284 HLN, 2014, May 27.
285 Payne & Alleyne, 2014, May 29.
286 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23a.
287 Rodger, 2014, p. 101.
288 Elliot Rodger, 2014, March 23b.
289 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23a.
290 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23a.
291 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23a.
292 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23a.
293 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23c.
294 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23b.
295 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23b.
296 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23b.
297 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23b.
298 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23b.
299 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23a.
300 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23a.
301 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23a.
302 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23c.
303 Rodger, 2014, p. 17.
304 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23d.
305 Rodger, 2014, p. 17.
306 Rodger, 2014, p. 17.
307 Rodger, 2014, p. 18.
308 Rodger, 2014, pp. 17-18.
309 Rodger, 2014, p. 18.
310 Rodger, 2014, p. 21.
311 Rodger, 2014, p. 21.
312 Rodger, 2014, p. 22.
313 Rodger, 2014, p. 23.
314 Rodger, 2014, pp. 23-24.
315 Rodger, 2014, p. 27.
316 Goffman, 1967/1982.
317 Rodger, 2014, p. 28.
318 Rodger, 2014.
319 Rodger, 2014.
320 Rodger, 2014, p. 40.
321 Rodger, 2014, p. 41.
322 Rodger, 2014, p. 46.
323 Rodger, 2014, p. 46.
324 Rodger, 2014, p. 46.
325 Rodger, 2014, p. 48.
326 Rodger, 2014, p. 48.
327 Rodger, 2014, p. 48.
328 Higgins, 1999.
329 Rodger, 2014, p. 54.
330 Rodger, 2014, p. 56.
331 Rodger, 2014, p. 57.
332 Rodger, 2014, p. 57.
333 Rodger, 2014, p. 57.

497
334 Rodger, 2014, p. 57.
335 Rodger, 2014, p. 57.
336 Rodger, 2014, p. 57.
337 Rodger, 2014, p. 57.
338 Rodger, 2014, p. 57.
339 Rodger, 2014, p. 58.
340 Rodger, 2014, p. 58.
341 Rodger, 2014, p. 59.
342 Rodger, 2014, p. 60.
343 Rodger, 2014, p. 70.
344 Rodger, 2014, p. 85.
345 Rodger, 2014, p. 85.
346 Rodger, 2014, p. 85.
347 Rodger, 2014, pp. 100-101.
348 Rodger, 2014, p. 106.
349 Rodger, 2014, p. 112.
350 Rodger, 2014, p. 87.
351 Rodger, 2014, p. 87.
352 Rodger, 2014, p. 87.
353 Rodger, 2014, p. 87.
354 Martin, 2011.
355 Rodger, 2014.
356 “Ganking is so much fun now”, 2012, October 19.
357 Rodger, 2014, p. 88.
358 Rodger, 2014, p. 88.
359 Campbell, 1949/2008.
360 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
361 Rodger, 2014, pp. 121-122.
362 Rodger, 2014, p. 123.
363 Rodger, 2014, p. 101.
364 Rodger, 2014, p. 132.
365 Rodger, 2014, p. 132.
366 Rodger, 2014, pp. 132-133.
367 Rodger, 2014, p. 132.
368 Rodger, 2014, p. 133.
369 Rodger, 2014, p. 134.
370 Rodger, 2014, p. 134.
371 Rodger, 2014, p. 132.
372 Rodger, 2014, pp. 132-133.
373 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
374 Payne & Alleyne, 2014, May 29.
375 Payne & Alleyne, 2014, May 29.
376 Payne & Alleyne, 2014, May 29.
377 Indy Staff, 2014, May 29.
378 Rodger, 2014, p. 201.
379 Rodger, 2014, p. 52.
380 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
381 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
382 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
383 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
384 Rodger, 2014, p. 128.
385 Rodger, 2014, p. 132.
386 Rodger, 2014, p. 121.
387 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
388 Livingstone Smith, 2011, Location 194.
389 Livingstone Smith, 2011, Location 4018.

498
390 Livingstone Smith, 2011, Location 4018.
391 Turner, 1999, p. 160.
392 Rodger, 2014, p. 117.
393 Rodger, 2014, p. 117.
394 Rodger, 2014, p. 135.
395 Rodger, 2014, p. 135.
396 Rodger, 2014, p. 135.
397 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
398 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
399 Rodger, 2014, p. 118.
400 Rodger, 2014, p. 135.
401 ElliotSupremeLady, 2017, February 14
402 ElliotSupremeLady, 2017, February 14.
403 ElliotSupremeLady, 2017, March 5.
404 ElliotSupremeLady, 2017, March 5.
405 ElliotSupremeLady, 2017, July 17.
406 ElliotSupremeLady, 2017, July 17.
407 “[question] what is a trucel and how are they neckbeards?”, n.d.
408 “[question] what is a trucel and how are they neckbeards?”, n.d.
409 “The Legend”, n.d.
410 “Want to help prevent another Elliot Rodgers? Speak out against male virginity shaming”, n.d.
411 “Elliot Roger Wasn’t Mentally Ill Not Really”, n.d.
412 “Elliot Roger Wasn’t Mentally Ill Not Really”, n.d.
413 “Elliot Roger Wasn’t Mentally Ill Not Really”, n.d.
414 “Elliot Roger Wasn’t Mentally Ill Not Really”, n.d.
415 Parker, 2015, October 4.
416 Rodger, 2014, p. 6.
417 Rodger, 2014, p. 6.
418 Rodger, 2014, p. 46.
419 ABC News, 2014, June 27.
420 Rodger, 2014, p. 26.
421 Rodger, 2014, p. 79
422 Rodger, 2014, p. 63.
423 Rodger, 2014, p. 63.
424 Rodger, 2014, p. 84.
425 “Elliot Rodger’s deleted comments on the Bodybuilding.com forum”, n.d.
426 Rodger, 2014, p. 25.
427 Rodger, 2014, p. 25.
428 Rodger, 2014, p. 25.
429 Rodger, 2014, p. 28.
430 Rodger, 2014, p. 122.
431 Rodger, 2014, p. 32.
432 Rodger, 2014, p. 32.
433 Rodger, 2014, p. 30.
434 Rodger, 2014, p. 31.
435 Rodger, 2014, p. 20.
436 Rodger, 2014, p. 74.
437 Prohaska & Gailey, 2010, p. 15.
438 Rodger, 2014, p. 84.
439 Rodger, 2014, p. 11.
440 Prohaska & Gailey, 2010, p. 15.
441 Prohaska & Gailey, 2010, p. 15.
442 Sabo, 1994.
443 Messner, 1992.
444 ABC News, 2014, June 27.
445 Rodger, 2014, p. 122.

499
446 Rodger, 2014.
447 Leyton, 1995/2011, location 4144.
448 Rodger, 2014, p. 72.
449 Rodger, 2014, p. 137.
450 “Robin Skynner>Quotes>Quotable Quotes”, n.d.
451 Rodger, 2014, p. 102.
452 Rodger, 2014, p. 1.
453 Rodger, 2014, p. 1.
454 Rodger, 2014, p. 5.
455 Rodger, 2014, p. 17.
456 ABC News, 2014, June 27.
457 “Elliot Rodger’s comments on PUAhate.com”, n.d.
458 “Elliot Rodger’s comments on PUAhate.com”, n.d.
459 Rodger, 2014, p. 84.
460 “Elliot Rodger’s deleted comments on the Bodybuilding.com forum”, n.d.
461 “Elliot Rodger’s deleted comments on the Bodybuilding.com forum”, n.d.
462 “Elliot Rodger’s deleted comments on the Bodybuilding.com forum”, n.d.
463 ABC News, 2014, June 27.
464 Rodger, 2014, p. 1.
465 Rodger, 2014, p. 1.
466 Rodger, 2014, p. 1.
467 Rodger, 2014, p. 4.
468 Rodger, 2014, p. 4.
469 Rodger, 2014, p. 9.
470 Rodger, 2014, p. 49.
471 Rodger, 2014, p. 49.
472 Rodger, 2014, pp. 56-57.
473 Rodger, 2014, p. 26.
474 Rodger, 2014.
475 Rodger, 2014, p. 102.
476 Rodger, 2014, p. 49.
477 Rodger, 2014, p. 55.
478 “Elliot Rodger’s comments on PUAhate.com”, n.d.
479 Rodger, 2014, p. 58.
480 Rodger, 2014, p. 102.
481 Rodger, 2014, p. 102.
482 Rodger, 2014, p. 25.
483 Rodger, 2014, p. 26.
484 Rodger, 2014, p. 34.
485 Rodger, 2014, p. 53.
486 Rickabaugh & Urbisci, 1999.
487 Allen, 2011, May 20.
488 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23a.
489 Rodger, 2014, p. 21.
490 Rodger, 2014, p. 26.
491 Rodger, 2014, p. 65.
492 Rodger, 2014, p. 61.
493 Rodger, 2014, p. 65.
494 Rodger, 2014, p. 65.
495 Rodger, 2014, p. 65.
496 Rodger, 2014, p. 65.
497 Rodger, 2014, p. 65.
498 Rodger, 2014, p. 67.
499 Rodger, 2014, p. 67.
500 Rodger, 2014, p. 67.
501 Rodger, 2014, p. 67.

500
502 Rodger, 2014, p. 67.
503 Rodger, 2014, p. 71.
504 Rodger, 2014, p. 70.
505 Rodger, 2014, pp. 70-71.
506 Rodger, 2014, p. 69.
507 Rodger, 2014, p. 69.
508 Rodger, 2014, p. 69.
509 Rodger, 2014, p. 69.
510 Rodger, 2014, p. 61.
511 Rodger, 2014, pp. 100-101.
512 Rodger, 2014, p. 79.
513 Serna, 2015, February 19.
514 Rodger, 2014, p. 8.
515 Rodger, 2014, p. 118.
516 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 24.
517 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23b.
518 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23b.
519 Elliot Rodger, 2014, May 23b.
520 Rodger, 2014, p. 117.
521 Rodger, 2014, p. 117.
522 Rodger, 2014, p. 117.
523 Rodger, 2014, p. 135.
524 Rodger, 2014, p. 135.
525 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
526 Jee Monk, 2014, May 25.
527 Langman, 2014, p. 1.
528 Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007, August 16, pp. 31-32.
529 Kleinfield, 2007, April 22.
530 Kleinfield, 2007, April 22.
531 Kleinfield, 2007, April 22.
532 Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007, August.
533 Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007, August, p. 32.
534 Liebert & Birnes, 2011, p. 16.
535 Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007, August, p. 34.
536 Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007, August, p. 35.
537 Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007, August, p. 35.
538 Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007, August, p. 35.
539 Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007, August, p. 35.
540 No author, 2007, April 19.
541 No author, 2007, April 19.
542 ABC News, 2007, April 18.
543 ABC News, 2007, April 18.
544 Liebert & Birnes, 2011.
545 Langman, 2014, p. 1.
546 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
547 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
548 Liebert & Birnes, 2011, p. 24.
549 TriData Division, System Planning Corporation, 2009, p. 22.
550 Liebert & Birnes, 2011, p. 33.
551 Langman, 2014, p. 1.
552 Langman, 2014, p. 1.
553 Liebert & Birnes, 2011, p. 33.
554 Langman, 2014, p. 1.
555 Cho, 2006c, p. 2.
556 Cho, 2016c, p. 3.
557 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.

501
558 Langman, 2014a, p. 4.
559 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
560 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
561 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
562 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
563 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
564 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
565 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
566 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
567 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
568 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
569 Langman, 2014b, p. 4.
570 Langman, 2014b, p. 4.
571 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
572 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
573 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
574 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
575 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
576 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
577 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
578 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
579 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
580 Langman, 2014a, p. 4.
581 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
582 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
583 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
584 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
585 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
586 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
587 woodytyler, 2007, April 19.
588 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
589 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
590 Cho, 2016c, p. 3.
591 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 64.
592 Cho, 2016c, p. 3.
593 Cho, 2016c, p. 3.
594 Cho, 2016c, p. 3.
595 Langman, 2014a, p. 4.
596 Kleinfield, 2007, April 22.
597 Rodger, 2014, p. 52.
598 Rodger, 2014, p. 52.
599 Rodger, 2014, p. 52.
600 Rodger, 2014, p. 52.
601 Cho, 2006a.
602 Cho, 2006b, p. 1.
603 Cho, 2006c, p. 1.
604 Cho, 2006c, p. 5.
605 Cho, 2006c, p. 3.
606 Cho, 2006c, p. 5.
607 Liebert & Birnes, 2011, p. 31.
608 Liebert & Birnes, 2011, p. 32.
609 Liebert & Birnes, 2011, p. 32.
610 Liebert & Birnes, 2011.
611 Cho, 2006d, p. 1.
612 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
613 Rodger, 2014, p. 101.

502
614 No author, 2007, April 19.
615 Liebert & Birnes, 2011.
616 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
617 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
618 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
619 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
620 Langman, 2014a, p. 4.
621 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
622 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
623 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
624 Langman, 2014a, pp. 1-2.
625 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
626 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
627 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
628 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
629 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
630 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
631 Chang, 2007, April 18.
632 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
633 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
634 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
635 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
636 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
637 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
638 Leyton, 1985/1995, p. 32.
639 Langman, 2014, p. 1.
640 Langman, 2014, p. 1.
641 Liebert & Birnes, 2011.
642 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
643 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
644 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
645 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
646 Langman, 2014a, p. 4.
647 Cullen, 2009.
648 Langman, 2014a, p. 3.
649 Langman, 2014a.
650 Campbell, 1949/2008.
651 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
652 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
653 Langman, 2014a, p. 1.
654 Langman, 2014a, p. 2.
655 Campbell, 1949/2008.
656 Rebbani-Gosselin, 2014.

503