Nigel Blundell - Murder without Mercy

T hey are the criminals who horrify us most murderers without mercy. They may be driven by greed, hatred, sadistic urges or simply bloodlust.

But there is one added ingredient that makes their crimes utterly reprehensible in the eyes of a civilised societyand that is a total lack of remorse for their vile deeds.

This book is about the most perverse perpetrators of those crimes: the murderers who show no compassion, who kill without a hint of regret, without penitence, without shame. And their lack of conscience is evident because they do so not once but over and over again.

These monsters are not one-off killers, for whom a single slaying may be seen as an isolated act of madness. Nor are they mass killers, whose multiple homicides are committed in one act of mayhem. The fiends catalogued within these pages are specifically serial killers, whose individual crimes are separate but whose modus operandi rarely changes.

A serial killer has long been defined by the United States Bureau of Justice as the perpetrator of crimes involving the killing of several victims in three or more separate events. A 2008 FBI report widened the definition, in these terms: Serial murderthe unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events. It is a wide classification within which there are obviously significant subdivisions.

In the companion volumes to this book ( Serial Killers: The Worlds Most Evil and Serial Killers: Butchers and Cannibals ) the author examined specific categories of homicide. In Serial Killers: Murder Without Mercy , a broader array of criminals are covered, but ones with a common flaw in their charactersthe ability to commit homicide without any sign of recognition of their culpability. For all the wrong reasons, they are guilt free. And that genetic glitch is what makes them so eerily fascinating.

This disparate array of notorious criminals ranges from greed-driven poisoners of the Victorian Age to sex-obsessed stranglers of the present day. They provide unsettling evidence of the latent inhumanity lurking just beneath the surface of civilised society. Although the author attempts to identify the triggers that cause seemingly ordinary men and women to turn into murderous monsters, each case raises intriguing questions

Who can explain the maniacal fervour of Charles Manson, who manipulated the minds of his band of young assassins? What perverted reasoning caused Beverley Allitt to abuse her trust as a nurse and harm the children in her care? And how could poisoners like Mary Cotton and William Palmer calmly dispose of their own kinfolk in the most agonising manner?

Literally hundreds of killers such as these have been studied by eminent forensic psychiatrist Dr Michael Stone, who believes that there are differing levels of evil among serial murderers. Those who show no mercy or remorse are high on his list, among those for whom all regard for the welfare of ones fellow man evaporates, leaving one capable of immeasurable cruelty and harm. Dr Stone, whose The Anatomy of Evil is must reading for criminologists, says: Ordinarily, humans have a sense of shame, which acts as a braking mechanism to prevent us carrying our violent or vengeful fantasies into action. But in some who commit evil acts, this sense of shame was never properly developed to begin with.

Serial killers who fall into this category have a fundamental core of humanity missing, says fellow American forensic psychiatrist Dr Helen Morrison, whose interviews with more than eighty murderers are catalogued in her book My Life Among the Serial Killers . She explains: They can appear to be complete and whole human beings but are missing a very essential core of human relatedness. For them, killing is nothing. Serial killers have no emotional connection to their victims. Thats the most chilling part of it. Not only do they not care, they have no ability to care.