Power is most often what serial killers seek when they murder, according to Canadian author Nadia Fezzani. She was curious about why people kill multiple times and was never satisfied with reports in newspapers or documentaries. So she decided to interview some herself.
Fezzani wrote to 80 serial killers in the U.S. requesting interviews and 19 agreed. She doesn’t know why they did. The best of the stories she collected are told in her book Through the Eyes of Serial Killers: Interviews with Seven Murderers.
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‘Looking for power’
“The most common one (serial killer) is the one looking for power,” says Fezzani. “They are people who have a very low self-esteem. So when they hold someone in their hands, someone’s life in their hands, they feel greater than God, they feel very powerful. That’s why they do it over and over again.
“There’s also the one who is looking for lust and thrill and even comfort,” she says noting that some people killed to obtain the victim’s social benefit cheques or access to their bank accounts.
Some killers ‘on a mission’
Fezzani says there are two other types: The mission-oriented killer wants to get rid of a certain type of people. She cites the case of a doctor who wants to eradicate some disease and will kill whoever has it. And then there are visionary serial killers who are psychotic and hear voices or say they get messages commanding them to kill, but she says they are in a minority.
Author convinced people are not born killers
Fezzani is convinced serial killers are not born that way. She says some may come into the world with an aggressive temperament but she believes that abuse in childhood leads them to kill and kill again. Those she spoke with had been bullied by peers, neglected or abused by parents.
“Children would grow up with a lot of anger, frustration, low self-esteem and adults didn’t do anything about it,” says Fezanni. “So, it’s very important to pay attention to the children’s problems. And when we don’t know what to do, we can go and get help from professionals.
“Sometimes we don’t think that a problem can be a big issue for a child, when it really can.”
She was also surprised that the serial killers she met looked like ordinary people. “We figure we should be able to see something wrong with them, but we can’t. They really look like anybody else. They are fathers. They’re engineers, doctors. They’re really anybody.”
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