Honora Kelly, also, and most famously known as, Jane Toppan is one of America’s most famous serial killers. She was a woman who confessed to killing over thirty-three people, but experts say she killed around seventy more undocumented. She lived from the years 1857 to 1938. Honora’s mother died when she was very young from tuberculosis and her father was very abusive and known as the town’s alcoholic, he also was noted as a crack smoker. Her dad, Peter Kelley, died from being insane and supposedly sewed his eyelids shut when working as a tailor. The characteristics and actions of her farther will play a major role in Honora’s future as a serial killer (n.d, 2003)
At age six, two years after her mother died, Honora’s father placed her and
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She killed the mother, then the daughter, and finally the father and remaining daughter. When the remaining Davis’s caught on to what was happening they filled for toxicology of the one daughter, and found out she was poisoned. They then did toxicology on the others that were killed and it also came back positive for poison (Schechter 20003). Once Jane was arrested it took a year for her to confess to the murders. Jane even reportedly tried poisoning herself for sympathy. When it came time for trial, the jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity. In one news report they quote Jane saying “ she never would have killed all these people if she had been married and had a happy family.” Jane was then sentenced for life at Taunton Insane Hospital, with multiple suicide attempts, till her early 80’s and died in the year 1938. What lead Jane to kill is still unknown, but researchers would say it was her childhood trauma and father’s neglect and abuse that truly created this famous American serial killer (Allen, Averill, Cook, 2005).
Relation:
In an article called “The Traits of A Serial Killer,” by Simon (2004), psychopaths are not “created” over night, but rather their behavior can be connected all the way to their childhood. What trauma a child experiences plays a major role in the rest of his or her life. A serial killer, most of the time,
This is one of the oldest arguments in the history of psychology. Each side indicates valid points, making it difficult to fully decide whether the motives of serial killers and criminals lie behind a subconscious intention routed from trauma over the course of their life, or if it is predisposed in their DNA. When nature and nurture outweigh other types of psychological trauma, a criminal can turn into a killer. These ideas can trigger psychopathic, sociopathic, and narcissistic behaviour (“Traumatic Experiences in Childhood and Psychopathy” 1). Analyzing these concepts help give probable reasoning for criminal actions.
The mother (identified as Vivian L Schmith) was reported to have Alzheimer's, to have taken all the knives into her room, and who that Vivian be suicidal. Information on the incident included that the suspect had stabbed her husband (Walter A Schmith) recently.
From the beginning she was different than the other men and women around her. First of all she was Presbyterian from Kentucky rather than Creole Catholic. Also, unlike the other women, she was not willing to sacrifice herself for her husband or for her children. In fact her children were part of the reason she did, in fact, kill herself. She did it so that she could avoid and escape the responsibilities and obligations that being a mother had placed on her.
She later confessed to 31 crimes in the New England area, and is believed to be connected to at least 70 other deaths, but they cannot be definitively connected to her due to the families of the victims refusal to exhumation and autopsy of the bodies. On June 23, 1902 her case was heard at the Barnstable County Courthouse in Massachusetts, there Jane admitted to 11 of the killings, and following a statement about how she enjoyed killing people and strived to kill the most people ever recorded, along with information of her multiple attempted suicides over the years, she was declared insane and it was decided she should spend the rest of her life in
A profile Report by Eric W. Hickey (2015) described Aileen Carol Wuornos was a serial executioner who had murdered seven men, broadly accepted to be the United States ' first female serial executioner. She was indicted six for the killings and sentenced to death, at last meeting her end through execution by deadly infusion. The result of an exceptionally broken marriage, Aileen had been subjected to terrible torments as a young lady. Her dad was a psychopathic pedophile who was in prison at the season of her introduction to the world while her mom was a youthful young person who deserted Aileen and her sibling. Raised by her grandparents, she got herself the casualty of widespread adolescence sexual mishandle because of her granddad. She never knew any ordinary familial relations and got to be distinctly pregnant as an aftereffect of assault when she was only 14—she asserted that her sibling was the father of her youngster. Presented to sexual exercises at an extremely youthful age she started giving sexual supports in return to sustenance, medications, and cigarettes when she was nine years of age. Tossed out of her grandparents ' home as a youngster she started squeezing out an existence as a whore. She later began ransacking and murdering men successively winning the reputation of being the main female American serial executioner (p. 316-317).
Thesis: Psychopathy creates serial killers which can be caused by both biological and environmental factors that are out of the killer’s control. TS: Many people argue that psychopathy causes people to become serial killers and that it is brought on by a multitude of factors such as physical and psychological abuse from early childhood. SP: Peter Vronsky, author of Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters, provides statistics supporting that many serial killers have been abused or witnessed abuse in their lifetimes, stating, EV1: “Many male serial killers had truly traumatic childhoods: 42 percent reported physical abuse, 74 percent psychological abuse, while 35 percent reported witnessing sexual violence as children, and 43 percent reported being sexually abused themselves” (Vronsky 45).
My first piece of evidence is that i got from her was “She liked the warm glow he had”. This shows that she loved him and cared for him and etc. Which will be evidence to that she didn’t mean it when he killed him. She felt betrayed that he would say that he was going to get a divorce with her and she had a six month baby which was a terrible thing to do to a pregnant woman. That is a reason why she slowly started to go crazy.
Mary Ann Cotton was innocent in the serial killing of 21 plus people. This includes 8 of her children, 7 stepchildren, her mother, 3 husbands, 1 lover, and 1 friend. Mary Ann Cotton was convicted of using arsenic poisoning to kill her victims. Ms. Cotton was a young nurse with a lot of ambition. The case says that the murders began to happen when she married her first husband at the age of 20 in 1852. His name was William Mowbray. Mr.Mowbray had died of intestinal disorder, but the case against Mary Ann Cotton says she killed using arsenic. But there was no trace of arsenic in his blood system or toxicology level. This is false and uncertain that he was killed with arsenic if he died of intestinal disorder, they falsely convicted Mary Ann.
Before we get to our final suspect I’d like to note that over 50 people have confessed to killer her, but none were proven guilty. Many people also think a women was the killer. People think, that because the body was so heavy, the murderer couldn’t move the body so she was cut in half. A bunch of people have also called in and said their relatives were the killer.
In the late sixties and seventies, a feared serial killer, Ted Bundy, disseminated terror throughout the United States. He was connected to at least thirty-six murders, although some believed he had committed more than one hundred murders. Bundy confessed to killing thirty women in seven states before his execution by electric chair on January 24, 1989. Ted Bundy appeared as a successful and an attractive gentleman, who seemed to have a lot going for him. Nevertheless, ingrained was the heart of a serial killer! Ted Bundy was a psychopath; proving that the lines between sanity and insanity are thin; however, in the case of Bundy, it was on the edge of non-existence.
While the average person might have endured abuse in their lifetime, serial killers have rarely ever gone without it. Considering that a high population of serial killers have experienced abuse, it is obvious that a child who goes through these types of environments is more likely to develop a desire for killing. In a January of 2013 article titled 10 Most Common Traits of Potential Serial Killers written by Hestie Gerber, a digital marketing specialist, Gerber states that children who experience abuse or neglect often begin to normalize their emotionless, unloving home lives, which in turn causes them to lack empathy
There are many traits that make a serial killer, with abuse during childhood playing a major factor. The four main aspects of abuse that seem to make killers are: emotional, psychological, sexual and physical abuse. The serial killer group has six times more reported physical abuse during childhood than the general population. Research has demonstrated that many serial killers have much in common when it comes to their childhood experiences Emotional abuse often diminishes a child’s self-esteem, making it hard for them to adapt to their surroundings, such as situations involving school or work. Due to this factor, most serial killers often find it hard to keep jobs and intimate relationships for longer than a very short period of time. Emotional neglect also impairs a child’s ability to develop empathy, therefore lacking compassion. If the child grows up to become a murderer, having no empathy means they are able to kill someone without
The serial killer Katherine Knight early life matches something similar to Claudia’s life. Both had violent childhoods, but the difference between Knight and Claudia was that Knight had “uncontrollable rages”. While Claudia only had thoughts, this could be due to her only being a child and not strong enough to overpower anyone older. My research also concluded that mostly all serial killers have anti-social behavior. Most of them are social outcast, just like Claudia.
Serial killers are the byproduct of many different things: trauma, death of loved ones, abuse, neglect, adoption, and even witnessing abuse (Are Serial). Serial killers have had to endure a massive amount of something such as trauma or abuse to an unimaginable extent to become what they are; the extent of the abuse, the trauma, the psychological damage they endure is incomprehensible to many. The destruction of one’s innocence can occur at any given time in his or her life, but he or she is more impressionable in his or her youth by the negativism of someone else’s actions (Scott, Shirley L. What Makes Serial Killers Tick ~ Childhood Event). People are susceptible to what they endure in their adolescence, and cruel upbringings, such as
They usually hate their parents. Almost every serial killer is abused as a child, whether it is sexually, emotionally, physically, or psychologically. This abuse may come from a stranger or a family member, but many serial killers try to lie about this history of abuse. Most serial killers have records of early psychiatric problems and often spent time in institutions as children (i.e.: mental hospitals or psychological rehabilitation centers). They have an intense interest in voyeurism, fetishism, and sadomasochistic porn at a very early age, and they also have a very high rate of suicide attempts. Future serial killers share three other traits in their childhoods. More than sixty precent of serial killers wet their beds past the age of twelve. They also have a fascination with fire, which may be an early manifestation of their fondness for mass destruction. In addition, almost every serial killer starts his abuse and sadistic torture on animal victims (Fisher and Fisher, 2003).