My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers

2004·2.59 MB·English

by  Helen Morrison

MY LIFE

AMONG THE
SERIAL KILL ERS

Inside the Minds of the World’s Most Notorious Murderers
HELEN MORRISON, M.D.
and Harold Goldberg
FOR MY BOYS: GIII, GIV and GED
It is true.The intangibles of your love, caring, laughter, and hugs banish all
the bad and evil that I see and experience in this research. My love to you.
—H.M.
For Mom, and for all those who listen and learn.
—H.G.
Now that I’m about to enter
Unmapped woods
I must shed all excess baggage
and like the backpacker
go light and essential,
leaving behind those luxuries
that have pseudonymed themselves
into necessities.
—JAMES IORIO,
“UNMAPPED WOODS”

CONTENTS

Photographic Insert
Author’s Note xi
Introduction 1
ONE Baby-Faced Richard Macek 7
TWO Dangerous Terrain: Hypnotizing a Serial Killer 17
THREE Breaking Through Macek’s Mind 31
FOUR Ed Gein and the History of Serial Killers 49
FIVE John Wayne Gacy 67
SIX The Gacy Interviews 91
SEVEN Taking the Stand at the Gacy Trial 101
EIGHT The Yorkshire Ripper and Wayne Williams 127
NINE Bobby Joe Long’s Letters and Dreams 147
TEN Serial Killers and Their Families 171
ELEVEN The Sadism of Robert Berdella 185
TWELVE The Trigger: Michael Lee Lockhart 201
THIRTEEN Rosemary West and Partners in Serial Crime 215
FOURTEEN The International Phenomenon:
Child Killer in Rio 233
FIFTEEN DNA and the Green River Killer 249
EPILOGUE Where Do We Go from Here? 263
Acknowledgments 275
About the Authors
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
AUTHOR’S NOTE

During the course of my investigations as a forensic psychiatrist, I have
profiled and/or interviewed more than eighty serial killers. When I speak
to them or to members of their families, it is always my policy to have
each of them sign a legal release form that allows me to use what they tell
me for scientific purposes. Some of the letters and interviews from the
people I have profiled appear in this book. They’re presented here not for
the purpose of titillation but to help the reader understand the theories
that I put forth in this book.
INTRODUCTION

T
he downtown Chicago summer night was filled with the wind-
spun perfume of nearby roses and freshly mown lawns. My chil-
dren were in bed, the youngest sleeping soundly with dreams of magic
and Harry Potter, and the oldest sleeping the hard sleep that comes
after playing three periods of ice hockey. Across the street, a young
couple walked hand in hand, and their laughter echoed as they passed
out of view. My neighbors pulled up in their car and I waved to them.
Dressed to the nines, they’d just celebrated their wedding anniversary,
and they waved back as they moved inside their house. As their door
closed and the neighborhood fell completely silent, I began to think
about my own life and the fact that my children and my neighbors
knew only in the most general terms what I do in my professional life.
Our friends recognize that I am a psychiatrist who deals with very dif-
ficult cases, and perhaps it’s better that they don’t know any more than
that. My two boys don’t know why I sometimes leave for weeks on end,
not yet. What I do is so very far removed from this thriving, affable
neighborhood—the satisfaction we get from planting oak saplings
with the community association, the occasional elegance of charity
galas or the opera—that most everyone would be shocked to hear
about it.
After a few minutes, I went inside our four-story brick house, a
nearly perfect place that was my husband’s grandfather’s home and of-
fice where he practiced medicine for decades. In the back of the first
floor is a former examination room that now serves as my work space