Aspies For Freedom

They have no real evidence for their claims! This is completely absurd. (Please not that this article features some adult and disturbing content - other than the ridiculous false information about autistics). Is there anything we can do about this article? Should we write to the newspaper?


Piecing together serial killer puzzle
Psychiatrists, others find commonality in criminals' minds

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/lo...26,00.html

By Lou Kilzer, Rocky Mountain News
July 28, 2006

One thing they almost all have in common is an intense,
out-of-control fantasy life that involves sex.
But that alone doesn't explain why they kill.

Forensic psychiatrists are digging deep to find what else makes
serial killers kill. And they say what was old hat yesterday is being
challenged or modified today.

Dr. Arturo Silva, of San Jose, Calif., is in the middle of a study of
50 of the nation's most prolific killers. He says he has spotted
something intriguing: autism.

Not in all, he says, but some. And many of the others are borderline.


Silva says he finds two distinct groups - those who are withdrawn and
disorganized, with longstanding social problems, like Henry Lee Lucas.
Others appear to function well in society, including Ted Bundy, John
Wayne Gacy and the BTK killer, Dennis Rader.

But once you get to know them, even this second group, you would get
the impression that they "are kind of weird," said Silva. "You would
say, 'This guy is off the wall.' "

He says the killers have some traits shared with most males: They
tend to "deconstruct" objects and are more at ease in understanding
those objects rather than emotions.

Except that serial killers end up deconstructing women.

For Johanna Gallers, a Denver psychologist and criminal profiler,
some things are clear: Serial killers are psychopaths - they feel no
remorse.

And they have something physically wrong in an area in the brain
called the amygdala, where emotions are directed, she says.

"They seek power and control," she said, "over life and death."

Gallers says they often have some traits in common as children:
cruelty to animals, fire-setting and bed- wetting in later childhood.


California forensic psychiatrist Mohan Nair is not so certain all
serial killer feel no remorse. Some can, he believes.

But then the sexual fantasy takes over. He says that one theory is
that many were terrorized and abused as children, and they later try
to recreate that scene of terror.

And in some cases, as with Robert Charles Browne, in which they
appear to randomly pick their victims, there is still some order to
the madness.

Nair says that even when a specific victim is not stalked, a fantasy
is.

"If a person decides to do a school girl at 7:30 a.m., that kind of
scene will be thought of again and again."

One frightening thing, he says, is that people like Browne - who
claims 49 victims - do not frequently exaggerate.

Bad company

Robert Charles Browne's claimed 49 killings, if true, would rank him
among the worst serial killers in this country in modern times. Among
the others and their victim count:

Ted Bundy: 20+ (Some say it may be as high as 35)

Jeffrey Dahmer: 17

John Wayne Gacy: 33

Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer: 10

Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer: 48

A recent study in this country found that autistics are less likely to commit crime than NTs.


I think that it is more likely that the serial killers that he studied have sociopathy in common.

My god do I hate to do this: I think they're right. Regardless of whether they are doing it for the right reasons, a lot of serial killers do appear to be on the spectrum. Maybe it is something within autism.

Rubbish, they were all male, maybe the cause is maleness. They all lived in America, maybe the cause is being American! :roll:

I googled Silva, and apparently he is obsessed with hating autism (John Best wrote a post about him, and even the curebies found it disgusting).  He's been spreading this sort of manure for years, claiming that Jeffrey Dahmer was autistic, etc.

This is no different from racists claiming that blacks (or any other minority group) must be more violent by nature because some of them are in prison for violent crimes.

And yes, we should write to the newspaper.  If any other minority had been the target of Silva's attack, the newspaper wouldn't even have considered printing it.

There may be some serial killers who were on the spectrum. I would not say the majority or even a lot but some may be. However, there have also been black criminals. Should we therefore call all black people criminals or say that all criminals are black?

Autism + a whole bunch of other issues could make someone a serial killer. But that "whole bunch of other issues" on their own could do the same thing.

Personally, I think most serial killers are likely to be psychotic or sociopaths.

I was actually having a discussion with my mother about serial killers (we both like to read mysteries and watch detective shows) and how they don't seem to have them in other countries, and we actually concluded that there was something wrong with this country, why we produce disproportionate #s of them. (Serial killers, not cop shows).

And it's not just becos we are a bigger country: you don't see a whole lot of Chinese or Indians being serial killers ... well, not that I know of, and there's heaps more of them than there is of us.

(please excuse grammar)

PS: Unfortunately we were not able to conclude precisely WHAT is wrong with america that causes this.  I mean, there's a lot of things, how to pick....?!

maybe we have bad priorities and little respect for human life.  but many other cultures (although they may respect some that we tend not to, such as the elderly) have little respect for some category of human lives, so I'm not sure about that.

Most of your intelligent serial killers do in fact have some sort of PDD and/or Schizo, which is very similar and can often be used instead of autism if someone fits the Schizo criteria(not sure why we lose that coinflip). I'm not talking about the idiot ones like those snipers running around DC that had us all scared shitless for a good month or Ayleen Warnos, but your Unabomber/Green River/Zodiac types probably did have a PDD. And we would all be lieing if we said that the thought of becoming a mass/serial killer has never crossed the mind.

(1) I for one have never thought of killing more than one person.  If I had ever done a murder, which sDq I never would, it would have been of someone I hated and I don't have the mental energy to hate that many people.  Of course, I think we have established that serial killers are not about hate.

(2) When I say awful things against America, of course I don't mean we are all like that... I hope not!  It's like, you can complain about your family, becos they are your family... so I feel the same way about the country I happen to have been born in.

I've read that Dahmer had plenty of friends (before it was discovered that he was a serial killer, then he suddenly had no friends). I have also read that the Unabomber killed to copy some idea in some book that he read, which is clearly a psychotic/schizophrenic type of behaviour. Therefore I do not believe autism is at all necessary or suitable as an explanation for those serial killers.

Quote from stupid article

Would the reason why the killers have traits in common with most males be because THEY THEMSELVES ARE MALES?  :roll:

The article says that serial killers are weirdos. Well, who would have thought?  :roll:

The article is just a bunch of bollocks, with ideas that are so incoherent that it is hard to critique it. There isn't a single thing in that article that counted as any form of argument that autism has anything to do with serial killers. It was an article about soiciopathy, which is a completely different condition to autism. Complain about the article and stop taking it so seriously. It isn't worth it.

crna_kuna wrote

You made two very good points here. If these serial killers aren't just extreme cases or a sub-type of sociopathy, then they need their own exclusive DSM category.

DW_a_mom wrote

simply being an aspie can make an intelligent adult male into a serial murder suspect, even if there isn't evidence that he did the crime. This has happened. I'm sure that a prime suspect in a still unsolved serial murder case is an aspie, from what I have read about the man's life and personality in the news. If the police had any real evidence against the guy surely he would have been arrested years ago. The press have not been able to report the man's name (for legal reasons), but it wouldn't be too hard to find out his identity, as the police have been shadowing the man for a long time, and a photo of his home and name of the street where he lives has been reported. So the poor guy is known as a serial killer without being tried or even charged. I would think it's the last thing that a socially isolated depressive would need. This is why your son, and all of us, need legal protection from anti-autistic, anti-loner discrimination.

If your son were black or latino (...for all I know, maybe he is; although you look white in your avatar I have not seen your husband), he would hopefully be happy in his racial and cultural identity even though it automatically made him, in many instances, more likely a crime suspect.

What I mean is, a BIG PART OF THIS is a societal problem.

Part of it is, obviously, that if there are some autistic criminals and maybe even a very few autistic serial killers:  some autistics make bad choices (just like some black people, some latino people, some white people, let's just say: some humans in general), and they need to be made accountable for that.  But that's just them and has nothing to do with the rest of us.

The societal thing, though, should not make your son feel bad about his brain and his way of being, just as racism shouldn't be allowed to drag people down.  This is not to say that the spectrum is equal in all ways to a race or a culture, but there are some similarities in the areas of discrimination and in the area of it being perfectly possible (assuming they have the right attitudes) for people of 2 cultures or of 2 different neurotypes to be neighbors or get along or be friends or even marry.

So we have to try to change attitudes, maybe not hide out about being autistic until attitudes change.

[Maybe I am excited about this becos I just told my whole department (well, that's only 4 people) about my AS and about a bunch of autistic issues ... and they were really cool about it!]

Yeah it actually helped that they had had some spectrum-ish students (some dx and some not) and were positively impressed.  Although it was along the lines of "but he was very intelligent".  
...And if he weren't?!  Would he be less a person, or a person less worthy of your effort?  We are a community college, after all! (ie: we take anyone, and we try to teach them stuff.)

Yeah.  Slowly.   :?