ttp@kestrel.ARPA (01/14/86)
This book is in the Portable Stanford series, published by Stanford
University Press. It's about 120 pages long. The series publishes
timely books by Stanford authors about diverse subjects. I was so
enthralled with another book in the series, Some Must Watch While Some
Must Sleep, about the Stanford sleep lab experiments, that I
subscribed to the series. Where else would you read about dypnea [sp?]
and apnea?
Donald Lunde is a psychology professor at Stanford who has given
expert testimony in some infamous and non-infamous murder cases,
including three mass murder cases that occurred in Santa Cruz in the
early 70's. The book discusses murder demographics (cross cultural)
and attempts to construct pschological profiles of murderers, to which
the author contributes his own analysis, based on the idea that
certain types of murder situations (e.g. mother strangling child) have
their own specific psychology, but that expecting to find a
generalization over all situations is unwarranted. I found the
demographic information to lack sufficient organization so was
difficult to retain. Nevertheless, there were interesting facts like
"of the people killed by guns each year, N% are suicides, and M% are
accidents, P% are by family members, Q% are accidents, R% are felony
murders". I think P+N+M+Q was about 70%, then R accounted for much of
the rest. (Felony murders are those committed in the process of some
other crime, e.g. armed robbery). Only about 5% of the murders were
by insane people, who, as a whole, have a lower murder rate than
"normal" people.
What I took away from this book was a greater understanding of mass
murder, insanity, and the insanity trial. Such incidents crop up
often in the press (Ng was the latest, until the Goldmark family in
Seattle was killed), and are incomprehensible, especially with the
complete lack of perspective given in the press. Are such murders
increasing? Are they a new thing? The book describes two
psychological "diseases", paranoid schizophrenia and sexual sadism,
which accounts for the diagnosis of about half of the insane
murderers. (This of course doesn't imply that most paranoid
schizophrenics will become murderers. The book was very scrupulous at
avoiding unwarranted connections, and exposing them when others had
made them.) It didn't discuss the illnesses of the other half, nor the
relationship (I don't know if there is one, but I would have thought
so) among other sexual assaults and madness.
The two psychological types were exemplified by two of the Santa Cruz
murderers, and similar murderers throughout history were described.
The first was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic; the disease onsets
in the early 20's without much warning in earlier years. The murderer
in this case was pretty much nuts -- his family knew it and tried to
have him committed. However the California State Mental hospital
system had been mostly dismantled by the administration of then
governor Reagan, and the federal support promised to take up the slack
never arrived. In short, the family didn't have the money to commit
him, and the loony was free to wander around. In time, an insistent
voice in his head, sounding like his father, commanded him to kill
people as sacrifices -- these sacrifices would save lives by
preventing earthquakes (in fact, no earthquakes came to California in
1972). Another paranoid-schizophrenic murderer killed a family in
their beautiful hill-set house, because the house, he believed, defiled the
natural landscape. This seems to me to be similar to Son of Sam, and,
in fact, the description of the alleged murderer in the Seattle case
("history of mental problems, believed the family to be the root of a
jewish, communist organization."). Paranoid schizophrenics seem to
choose topical delusions -- environmentalism, earthquakes, etc. Their
mass murders occur for the most part within a short period of time;
the murderers make some, perhaps, but really little effort to cover up
their crimes. The symptoms of schizophrenia can somewhat be treated by
a constant regimen of drugs.
The other type of mass murdrer is the sexual sadistic serial murderer,
who commits a series of murders over a long period (e.g. the Boston
strangler, Jack the Ripper..). The murderer described in the book was
sadistic from an early age, centered around a hatred for his mother.
[Although some case historical perspective on the lives of the
murderers was given, the author was careful not to conclude any causal
relationships ("the murderer's father left the family when he was
young, he grew to resent his mother, he became sadistic" is not a
causal sequence).] Early bizarre activities were mutilation of his
sisters' dolls and later the family cat (I was chilled by my
remembering reports in the last year in Mountain View of mutilated
cats and dogs). This type is very secretive, and successful in
escaping blame. The person associates sexual gratification with
sadistic fantasies, and is dangerous when the fantasies are
actualized. Common in this type are orgasms while breaking into a
house by opening a window, or while stabbing or strangling the victim.
This is scary stuff, but clearly the people are disturbed.
The author then describes the legal aspects of the insanity trial, and
the evolution of the definition of insanity, which over the years has
become something like "whether their capacity to understand their
crime was impaired". The murderers above were all judged to be
legally SANE by the juries, although both the defense and prosecution
assessed the earthquake muderer as paranoid schizophrenic.
I liked the book in that it greatly contributed to my understanding of
everyday (unfortunately) events, which, usually being
incomprehensible, are easily sensationalized. Reading this book leads
to a more genuine understanding of the events, although perhaps even
more chilling for the understanding.
-tom