What makes a murderer?

[Rightioohh]

Is it nature or nurture? Obviously, too much Lucy Letby in the news and I also watched Ben Field drama last night.
Subsequently read up to 1/100 people have psychopathic tendencies.
Are people literally born like this?
Letby and Field seemed to come from normal families. Letby especially didn’t fit the loner profile and seemed completely normal with doting parents.
I guess I always assumed, for someone to become like this, they must have had a damaged childhood. Now I feel like one of my kids could turn out like this, anyones could. It seems really scary. As does the thought any person I know could be like this, underneath a lovely front.

No one is born a murderer. Obviously some people are born with severe mental illnesses which can make them more likely to do harm, but I don't think anyone is 'born evil'.

Some people are born with something wired wrong, for the want of a better phrase but they are a minority.

Some have adverse childhood experiences.

Some are ideological like terrorists.

Some are angry like those who attack women on the street at night or go on a shooting spree.

However there are many with bad childhoods or who are angry who aren’t murderers so I think there is always some form of ‘nature’ present as well.

I remember watching a programme many years ago and they did brain scans on murderers which showed there was something in their brains.

There was a story of a lovely little boy who was abused. I think his dad did things like hang his dirty bedding on the balcony of the flat so everyone would know he'd wet the bed. Despite this, the boy was kind and caring, looked after his animals and so on. Then he fell out of a tree or something and banged his head. He completely changed, he started with animal cruelty, the animals he'd tended to previously, he started to harm and kill and then obviously he progressed.

I might not have got that entirely right, but it's what I remember.

I do think murderers have been hurt themselves to do such horrific things, but there is already something in them that makes them able to so easily take lives.

Just been talking to DH about this, it’s beyond me. Also Letby’s parents stood by her all the way through, I suppose you really don’t want to believe your child, that you gave birth to, brought up and cared for could be capable of such crimes. They also were not at the sentencing.

I’ve been thinking about her parents. This must be unimaginably awful for them. Either they believe her guilt and have to come to terms with that. Or they believe her innocence and have to watch her be locked up and called a monster.

There has been research done on the brain scans of people who have committed murder. From what i remember it concluded that the frontal cortex of these people was different to non psychopaths. However this didn't mean someone would end up a killer, environmental factors also had a big influence.
Have a look at the research of James H.Fallon

I grew up from the age of 4-16 with the loveliest boy imaginable. He came from a lovely family with two happy parents, a brother and a comfortable upbringing. Great school and a very nice place to live.

He was a good looking boy and was very popular and had lots of friends. The teachers likes him as although he was checking and in loving he wasn't badly behaved.

At 17 he repeatedly stabbed his girlfriend to death in her home. No drink or drugs involved.

In court his Defense team offered that he was influenced by the Sex Pistols music and the stabbing and murder of Nancy Spungen although I had never heard him talk about the sex pistols and the pink scene had been over for a couple of years.

He served 14 years in prison and was freed in 1997. He found religion in prison and formed a friendship with a prison visitor and when he was released they got married. He now has two children, a boy and a girl who are now of an age older than the girl he murdered.

He works and is known as a good natured, likeable man.

For years after the murder I refused to remember him as a killer and could only ever think about him as the kind and funny lad I grew up with.

It's only as I got old ghat I realised the magnitude of his horrific crime. He not only killed her as she battled for her life as he stabbed her 26 times but her mother smokes herself to death weighing four years as she could not cope with her daughters murder. The victim had a brother and the father died when the boy was a teenager.

A whole family destroyed.

The victim robbed of a life whilst he was able to get his back on track and have a job, get married, have children and all the things she will never do.

I carried some kind of torch of friendship for him for decades but now I despise him and die what he did.

I assume there is a deep psychological innate reason like sociopath that could go either way depending on your life experience. Take for example an intelligent psychopath could end up leading a drug gang or commit major corporate fraud depending on his upbringing and opportunities, either way he is a nasty bastard. If you combine this innate 'badness' with adverse childhood experiences you get a very damaged person who lacks empathy. Many people with awful childhoods hurt others but usually are remorseful but combined with no empathy it becomes very dangerous. Then you need a feeling of power, I suspect most killers do something like accidentally kill someone or kill a small animal then get such a rush from it that the feeling of power becomes addictive. Then lastly you need opportunities.

Absolutely no basis for any of the above, just my own thoughts!!

I think it’s a mixture of predisposition to psychopathy and the necessary environmental factors. Lucy Letby did seem to have a normal childhood but we don’t know the intricacies of her childhood. It’s been reported that her parents were overbearing and needy, it could have been quite a smothering childhood for her especially if her parents were somewhat neurotic or similar. If her brain was already wired a bit differently from everyone else’s, growing up in an environment that wasn’t completely emotionally normal might have just formed her brain in that way. That being said, I feel Lucy Letby is one of the scariest killers I’ve ever read about as she seems to have showed absolutely 0 signs of being that way. With most other cases there’s usually something in their background - I.e Wayne Couzens who had a wife, kids, job, no known prior offending but had been flashing women and using prostitutes/extreme porn etc. With Letby there seems to be absolutely nothing. Very scary and dangerous woman and I think we’d all like to know what creates such an individual.

Some people murder for financial gain, Some people murder because they are in an affair and want to get rid of the spouse, Some people murder in a jealous rage, Some people murder children because they can't control their paedophilic tendencies.
Some people murder through drugs/alcohol. Some are just pure evil.

Tell me I watch a lot of true crime documentaries without telling me.....

Control? I think a lot of crime is about control. LL had control over the lives of babies and this extended to a degree controlling the families and how their life went.

Carl Jung described something called the Shadow Self which is basically the dark side of the psyche. Everyone has this side within them which is in constant conflict with the good side of the psyche. I suppose murderers give in to the darker side and allow it to influence their actions. People like psychopaths have a lot of anger and are very impulsive so presumably don't have a lot of self control. A conscience helps too of course.