Monday's confession by BTK killer Dennis L. Rader was a rare public look into the eerie world of serial killers, one that is full of tantalizing patterns but governed by a violence that scientists and profilers do not understand.
Most serial killers are publicity hounds. But details of their crimes usually come out in the relative privacy of a jailhouse interview rather than in open court. The terms Rader used to describe his killings -- "trolling" for victims, "stalking" his prey -- startled former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt.
"He's quoting serial killer tradecraft," Van Zandt said. "These are the words I would use standing up in front of a class of FBI agents or law enforcement officers talking about serial killers."
Rader's words weren't the only thing crime experts found familiar. His personal history and tightly controlled demeanor dovetail with those of most other serial killers.
"These are guys with an excessive need for power, dominance and control," said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University. And they don't seem to be able to satisfy it, he said, in any socially acceptable way.
Even though decades of field and academic study have mapped commonalities among serial killers -- they are mostly men, abused as children, obsessed with power and status -- experts said they were far from determining what creates them.
"There are lots of children who are abused and abandoned," Levin said. "They feel an exceptional amount of powerlessness, and they grow up and compensate by being CEOs and businessmen."
Others, he said, turn into the BTK killer.
Serial killers tend to exist on society's margins, feeling neglected and passed over. Rader, a city ordinance officer, had been unable to become a cop; Ted Bundy, who killed dozens of women, flunked out of two law schools. Cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer was stuck in a menial job in a chocolate factory.
Dennis Nilsen, convicted in the 1980s of murdering 15 homosexual men, was a civil servant in London who would often tie his dead victims in chairs and lecture them about civil service regulation.
The publicity gained through their crimes offsets that perceived neglect.
The killings "are the fundamental achievements in their entire lives, the high points," said Elliott Leyton, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland and author of "Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer." The killings, he said, are typically recounted "the same way a craftsman would talk about a fine piece of furniture he made."
