Psychological Description of Serial Killers

ABSTRACT: Serial crimes have always had a strong impact on society and added more complexity to the legal investigative systems. Beyond that negative impact, history has documented with fascination those cases and the name of some killers remain in the memory of society and law with strong reverberation. Maybe an even more complexity is added in these cases, to the psychological and psychiatric examination of the offender, starting from the psychological autopsy, profiling of the killer and the actual examination of the guilty. Psycho-analysis in these cases follows the legal investigation closely as it starts from the first details of the case, the study of the biography and forensic evaluation of the victim, analysis of the operational pattern, estimations of possible motivation of the crimes and finally releasing a profile for the possible murderer. As complex as a serial murder can look and as hard as the investigation may go, psychological profiling and analysis can bring one of the best chances of prevention, if done in the most efficient and correct way. As such, this paper proposes a review of psychological and forensic concepts about different aspects of serial murders and murderers. KEYWORDS: serial, killers, psychology, forensic, murde