Serial and mass murderers

 This week we will be taking a look at examples of serial and mass murderers. We'll be taking a look at what they did, why they did it, and how authorities could have handled things differently. We'll also be taking a look at where they fit into Levin & Fox's typology to help us understand what they were thinking.

Clifford Robert Olson Jr. was a serial child murderer active from 1980 - 1981 in B.C. He was born January 1st of 1940, and died in prison on October 2nd of 2011. In short, Clifford Olson killed several children brutally, and got paid a generous sum to prove that he did it. To do this, he took advantage of the lack of a firm connection between police forces in different municipalities. News travelled slowly and police from different towns didn't have the technology established to work well together. Olson would select his victims by looking for naive youth looking to make some money. He would hand them a high quality business card for a construction company, and convince them to go with him for a brief interview at the construction site. When they obliged, he would give them a sip of a spiked drink to knock them out. Once they were unconscious, he would take them to where he would be disposing of the body, which was usually a swamp or quarry. He was rather sadistic in his killings, using cruel methods that I'll spare you the details of and taking great pleasure in watching how children die. He also fantasized about gaining notoriety, daydreaming of the name "silver hammer man" in headlines.

Once Olson was eventually detained, the police couldn't actually find enough evidence to convict him of all of his murders. Olson knew this, and offered them a deal he knew they couldn't refuse. He offered to give them the locations and details of 11 bodies for 100,000 dollars (about $347,000 today). They obliged and after this deal was carried through, he offered another similar deal which was refused.

Now that we know what Olson did, how he did it, and how he acted afterward, we should be able to get a pretty good idea of which typology he fits into. Of the main types, I would say Olson fits quite well into the hedonistic thrill killer category, perhaps with some power/control mixed in. Olson is noted to have taken great pleasure in watching the process that children go through when they die, describing both the pleasure and the process in great detail during psychiatric assessments. The sadistic nature of his methods -- as well as the prolonged nature of some of them -- fit rather perfectly into this category. The reason I also suggest power/control as a category for this killer is due to the planned nature of his killings, as well as his dreams of infamy. Power/control killers are also known to kill rather sadistically and prolong the death of their victims. These types of killers also often leave behind little to no evidence, which fits Olson perfectly. In addition, if he were killing for a sense of control, this could explain why he chose children as his victims. Children would be easier to overpower both mentally and physically, and may give more satisfaction to the killer with less effort put in.

In the case of Olson, he would have been caught significantly sooner if there was better communication between different RCMP detachments, which is thankfully something we have now. In addition, he really should have been watched closer, as he had been in prison for most of his life since the age of 17.

Now that we've looked at the serial murderer Clifford Olson, let's take a look at the mass murderer Marc Lepine. Lepine was born October 26th of 1964. He was also a mass murderer who targeted women, killing 14 and wounding 10 on December 6th of 1989. This event took place at École Polytechnique in  Montreal. After moving throughout various rooms of the building shooting women, he shot and killed himself. Luckily for us he carried a suicide note on him that explains his motives. Lepine was a noted incel (short for "involuntary celibate") and misogynist. He blamed feminism for ruining his life, and looked down on women in traditionally male fields of work or study. In his suicide note he claims "feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventative leave, etc.) while seizing for themselves those of men." He also claims that his actions were for political reasons, and that he was fighting feminism as a whole.

These are the actions of a mission-oriented killer for sure. The goal of this type of killer is almost always to rid society of a certain type of people. In Marc Lepine's case, the type was feminists. He targeted feminists due to his past experiences with women, as well as potentially due to his abusive father leaving a lasting impression of violence towards women on him. He chose the École Polytechnique specifically because he had is application denied in the past, and looked down on women pursuing education in "masculine" fields.

In this case, stricter gun laws may have prevented this. It's hard to say what else could have realistically been done to prevent Lepine's actions.