Serial killer fangirls

The second question: Was Bundy a nice person aside from the rape, murder, fraud, arson, jaywalking and necrophilia? Rule's answer was a simple and concise, "No."

was there anything else besides that? bundy's pretty simple when you think about it: dude had serious issues with wanting power over people, whether exerted through murder, rape, or just plain lying. in his case, bundy really can't be seperated from his actions because there's nothing else there. @AnOminous also mentioned the black hole theory, which pretty much explains it. bundy loved to present all this different personalities because he didn't have one in the first place.

arguments can be made about what a serial killer is like outside of their crimes, e.g. Dahmer, but with Bundy his legacy tells you all you need to know. actually, i think a lot of the serial killer fandom comes from discovering the killer's life, and mistaking explanations for excuses.
 
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Probably all of the above. Someone like Bundy is a void of a person with absolutely nothing actually there, so similarly broken people feel compelled to project their own desires on this blank canvas. Bob Keppel, who interviewed and investigated Bundy and got him to confess to several previously unknown killings, described Bundy like this:

“I’ve always believed that these guys’ personalities were lower than dirt. If you could believe that there was something to them and looked inside their brain, what you would see about their lifestyle would be nothing more than a black hole. There would be pieces meandering about with this killer’s mind trying to grab on to these pieces but there would never be a structure there, there would never be a method by which they would survive. They’re untreatable. They cannot undergo any reclamation whatsoever because of this scattered black hole that I see them in. They grab onto a piece then they go off and kill somebody and they kill that piece. Then they grab for another one and kill again until there are not enough pieces to put together in their psyche at all. It’s just not there for them to survive. That’s why I came up with that black hole theory.”
Basically this,
Sociopaths have nothing inside them which is why they're able to do morally questionable things such as lie, cheat, deceive and manipulate to get their way without feeling guilt or empathy. You can't reach to them because there is no "them" only a façade they use to seem normal.
 

"I don't condone murder but I condone it. My heart goes out to the families of the victims, but much more importantly, the psychopaths that randomly killed so many people for shits and giggles are gone and the world is so much the worse for it. Also, whenever I get an anonyous ask, it's obviously the same peron each time! Fuck off and stop judging me!"

I dunno, maybe if you wanted to stop getting anonymous questions, you could try blocking anonymous questions? It's a simple fix, surely. Also, circular reasoning, holy cow. Say something, contradict it in the following sentence, add a smattering of, like, totally real feels OMG, and if anyone calls you out on your bullshit, don't answer any questions, just get pissed off that they had the affront to ask.

It's an SJW with a gun.

was there anything else besides that? bundy's pretty simple when you think about it: dude had serious issues with wanting power over people, whether exerted through murder, rape, or just plain lying. in his case, bundy really can't be seperated from his actions because there's nothing else there. @AnOminous also mentioned the black hole theory, which pretty much explains it. bundy loved to present all this different personalities because he didn't have one in the first place.

arguments can be made about what a serial killer is like outside of their crimes, e.g. Dahmer, but with Bundy his legacy tells you all you need to know. actually, i think a lot of the serial killer fandom comes from discovering the killer's life, and mistaking explanations for excuses.

Yeah, you're exactly right. There's a difference between a monster in a human suit and someone with the ability to compartmentalise their own terrible acts.

Take the difference between a military sniper and someone who goes up on top of a tall building and shoots at random people. The military sniper is a highly trained professional, following orders impersonally but humanely. He goes for the kill shot every time. Not just because it's efficient, less likely to draw attention to both his target and himself, and wounds can always be healed, but also because he's not a monster. He's not there because he enjoys it, he's there to follow orders and do his job. Maybe he doesn't care why he's been ordered to do it, maybe he genuinely believes that he's doing the right thing, but at the end of the war, he returns home to his family and takes up the hobby of growing monster sized pumpkins for display at the yearly show. And never touches a gun again for the rest of his life and is glad of it.

The monster in a human suit, however, enjoys every second of what he does and as far as he's concerned, it's the intervals between killing where he's fake. The only thing that's real is the act of murder itself. He does the deed and puts his human suit back on while he plans in exquisite detail just exactly what he's going to do when he can take the thing off again. Sometimes you have schizophrenics like David Berkowitz but most of the time, a serial killer isn't ill. They maybe manic during the crime itself, but they know what they're doing and it's really the only time that they feel anything. You can take someone like Rose West and see just horrific her childhood was at the hands of her father, Bill Letts (who may have been involved in the murders himself, as biographer Jane Carter Woodrow suggests) but just as you're feeling sorry for her, you remember what you're looking at and you find yourself wanting to take your brain out of your skull and scrub it with bleach.

I think for a lot of these groupies, they see the horrific crimes that their crush has committed, and think that the horror is merely the expression of deep and profound suffering on the part of the serial killer. On the part of the serial killer, they're just enjoying themselves. Another tidbit that I remember and can't quite place concerns a necrophile in the habit of revisting the corpses where he dumped them. When he was finally apprehended it was winter (I'm pretty certain this is an English killer, but correct me if I'm wrong) and he didn't want to undress when he was taken into custody. Turned out that he'd devised a special garment so that his genitals were uncovered and his legs and buttocks were proteceted against the cold. He was wearing a fucking jumper like a pair of pants and he was much, much more embarrassed about being caught wearing it than being caught having sex with a corpse.

Who says romance is dead? Still want to moon over that, groupie?

EDIT: @TowinKarz has reminded me that the deviant in the jumper was Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.
 
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Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper who murdered 13 women in the early 80's, was wearing something like that when arrested, it's what tipped the authorities off that they had their man because he was originally only detained for soliciting a prostitute. Speaking of which, that was his given justification for the murders, that he was only killing prostitutes, so what was the big deal? Right? He reportedly said himself "I were just cleanin' the streets"

Charming fellow... isn't he ladies? Step RIGHT up.

Particularly sick is that one of his victims was only 16, and another would-be one was 14 when he nearly beat her to death while she was walking home.

That pretty much shoots his prostitute-revenge excuse down, it's clear to me he's either a sociopath or just hates women enough to summarily kill them when he's feeling particularly pissed off.
 
Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper who murdered 13 women in the early 80's, was wearing something like that when arrested, it's what tipped the authorities off that they had their man because he was originally only detained for soliciting a prostitute. Speaking of which, that was his given justification for the murders, that he was only killing prostitutes, so what was the big deal? Right? He reportedly said himself "I were just cleanin' the streets"

Charming fellow... isn't he ladies? Step RIGHT up.

Particularly sick is that one of his victims was only 16, and another would-be one was 14 when he nearly beat her to death while she was walking home.

That pretty much shoots his prostitute-revenge excuse down, it's clear to me he's either a sociopath or just hates women enough to summarily kill them when he's feeling particularly pissed off.

(Many thanks for reminding me that I was thinking about Peter Sutcliffe. Nasty grub, that one). Honestly, every single serial killer that has gone after prostitutes did it simply because street walkers and drug addicts are easy targets. They're transient, less likely to be missed, and when it comes to business, going to deserted areas with strange men they've never met is simply how it's done. And when the body is found, there's a depressing tendency for others to wave off her death as something inevitable and her own fault. Hopefully the coppers are on their game, and they usually are, but on occasion you'll end up in places where the detectives are much more interested "real" people, and the murdered woman is given a token autopsy and there's maybe an afternoon of door knocking around the general area, and that's the end of it. Absolutely killers like Sutcliffe have intense fixations on sexually active women of all classes and backgrounds, but prostitutes, drug addicts, the homeless etc are easy targets. That's all there is to it.
 
It's interesting he doesn't have much of a fan following, seeing as he's still (last I checked) alive, or as alive as one can be after being locked up in Broadmoor since the disco era (and down an eye due to an attack from a fellow inmate), and it's not like he isn't known outside his native UK.

It really seems that killing prostitutes puts one at the bottom of the desire list for groupie attention, the more stereotypically innocent the victim, the more they seem to latch on.

Bundy had a fixation on college coeds, Richard Ramirez targeted everyone he happened to meet, which earned him a few women, but he never specifically went after them. Both have loud fandoms.

Who doesn't? Guys like Sutcliffe, or to use another English case, Dennis Nielsen, who are unknowns amongst the fangirls because they went after gay men.... it's like, it only counts if they themselves (the fangirls) were on the "hit" list. It's just another angle that makes you shake your head once you figure out it's happening....

They also only seem to like em' pretty. James Holmes, Dylan Klebold, the younger the hotter! Meanwhile, who do they ignore?

Leonard Lake racked up at least a dozen in California via kidnapping, sexual torture and then death, but, he looks too much like a middle-aged neckbeard who prattles on about D&D to really get them revved up, I guess. They don't care for Herb Baumeister either, he got 11 confirmed and probably double that in total, but again, they were those icky gay boys and he was an icky 40-something family man, guess they can't fap to that. Jerry Boudros? Fetishist who killed women and used their preserved body parts to model clothing for him? Meh, looks too much like my Dad..... Edmund Kemper? Yeah, he went after college girls too, but man, that lanky 7' beanpole with the corny moustache and glasses? Yuck, can we call central casting and get a BETTER killer in here?
 
They also only seem to like em' pretty. James Holmes, Dylan Klebold, the younger the hotter!

Maybe the dead ones attract the largest following because it's ~~more romantic~~ to be in love with a dead, tormented boy (who are more likely to go out with a bang (no source)) than an alive, sadistic man who was eventually caught after decades and put in prison 4 lyf.

I mean, most troubled teenagers have gone through those phases of ~god I hate everyone, I just want to kill them all, etc~ so they obviously identify with these poor tormented boys and become obsessed with them because ~~~~~finally somebody gets meeeeee :'(((~~~~~

American Horror Story definitely didn't help with its portrayal of the pretty daughter falling for the beautiful school shooter, either. The fans of that show were very, very borderline serial killer fangirls, and I know there was some overlap between these girls and fans of the show.
 
It certainly ensures there are no pictures of an aged 40+ version of their fantasy boy showing up, prison obese and grey-haired at some distant parole hearing so he can be rubber-stamped "LOL SRSLY?" and sent back, which as you point out, WOULD ruin that fantasy...
 

So, this girl is making all this photo edits unironically?

Maybe the dead ones attract the largest following because it's ~~more romantic~~ to be in love with a dead, tormented boy (who are more likely to go out with a bang (no source)) than an alive, sadistic man who was eventually caught after decades and put in prison 4 lyf.

And I think that theres the 'He was troubled, I wish I could've saved him'. These girls think that they had a chance of 'saving' the murderer, because they 'compreheend' him. Its sad and cringey.
 
It's interesting he doesn't have much of a fan following, seeing as he's still (last I checked) alive, or as alive as one can be after being locked up in Broadmoor since the disco era (and down an eye due to an attack from a fellow inmate), and it's not like he isn't known outside his native UK.

It really seems that killing prostitutes puts one at the bottom of the desire list for groupie attention, the more stereotypically innocent the victim, the more they seem to latch on.

Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, and Robert Pickton, a Canadian pig farmer who fed dead prostitutes to his pigs, also don't have much of a fan following, despite quite respectable high scores (probably 90+ and 50 or so respectively).
 
Gary Ridgway didn't get nearly the sensation that some of the others did (outside of the PNW) even though his was one of the longest-running mysteries. I also wonder if the fact that the majority of his victims were prostitutes factors in as well. The fangirls seem to focus more on the killers who they can imagine picking them as victims.

Green River, Running Red is a great book on him btw.
 
Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, and Robert Pickton, a Canadian pig farmer who fed dead prostitutes to his pigs, also don't have much of a fan following, despite quite respectable high scores (probably 90+ and 50 or so respectively).

Heeeellooo??? Because they're, like, ugly!!!
(sorry about that) *yawn*
 
Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, and Robert Pickton, a Canadian pig farmer who fed dead prostitutes to his pigs, also don't have much of a fan following, despite quite respectable high scores (probably 90+ and 50 or so respectively).

Harold Shipman's the most successful (250), and he's barely even known out of the UK. Probably because his crimes were pretty dull compared to the others, plus he was old and fat.
 
Harold Shipman's the most successful (250), and he's barely even known out of the UK. Probably because his crimes were pretty dull compared to the others, plus he was old and fat.

His crimes weren't what you'd call "dramatic" either. He gave trusting old ladies an injection, boom they're dead with a minimum of fuss. With no discernible frenzy or loss of control on his part, it's difficult to view him as what you'd roughly call "sexual". There were no signs of obvious lust on his part, and the fact he stole vast sums of money from his victims gives a vague sense that he was merely killing for profit. Of course, no one kills hundreds of people- especially helpless elderly women- without getting one hell of a thrill from it all, and indeed, aside from the money he also stole small items such as jewellery as trophies so he could relive his crimes. And even though there's statements from his family saying that he sometimes shared a bed with his mother as a teenager, along with other indications of incest both emotional and sexual, he was never a tormented soul, locked up and beaten regularly, longing for the day that his real family will suddenly turn up and rescue him. No, he's just a boring old man who nicked some money and jacked a heap of old biddies up with some poison. Nothing too interesting, right? Right? And it's not like his victims weren't all going to die soon anyway. He was probably just doing them a favour in the long run. Their families? The people who loved them? The contentment that comes from a lifetime of hard work so they can spend their final years in comfort and peace? What are you talking about? You're not making any sense.

Gary Ridgway didn't get nearly the sensation that some of the others did (outside of the PNW) even though his was one of the longest-running mysteries. I also wonder if the fact that the majority of his victims were prostitutes factors in as well. The fangirls seem to focus more on the killers who they can imagine picking them as victims.

Green River, Running Red is a great book on him btw.

Seconding Green River as a thoroughly decent read.

It certainly ensures there are no pictures of an aged 40+ version of their fantasy boy showing up, prison obese and grey-haired at some distant parole hearing so he can be rubber-stamped "LOL SRSLY?" and sent back, which as you point out, WOULD ruin that fantasy...

Agreed. Forever young and hot. A bit like James Dead, but with dead bodies and a trail of misery behind them that will take generations to fade.

Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, and Robert Pickton, a Canadian pig farmer who fed dead prostitutes to his pigs, also don't have much of a fan following, despite quite respectable high scores (probably 90+ and 50 or so respectively).

Yeah, it's fundamentally impossible to romanticise them regardless of how determined and edgy the murder groupies are. They just did what they did. They didn't leave any signatures, they weren't all that bright, and they weren't even attractive. And with Pickton there's the cannibalism too. He was in no way a IRL Hannibal Lector, elegant, seductive and fascinating, he was just an ugly man with pig shit under his fingernails and a highly disturbing method of disposing of the bodies.

That said, I've always been quietly bemused the way Belle Gunness has never received much by way attention from borderline psychopath third wave feminists. You'd think she'd be right up there as a hero who fought against the patriarchy and got rid of all those disgusting men. Incidentally, she was another one who used pigs as a disposal method.
 
Yeah, it's fundamentally impossible to romanticise them regardless of how determined and edgy the murder groupies are. They just did what they did. They didn't leave any signatures, they weren't all that bright, and they weren't even attractive. And with Pickton there's the cannibalism too. He was in no way a IRL Hannibal Lector, elegant, seductive and fascinating, he was just an ugly man with pig shit under his fingernails and a highly disturbing method of disposing of the bodies.

It doesn't take some great intelligence to be a successful serial killer, just a certain amount of caution and sticking to a tried and true method. Lecter is a work of fiction for a reason. There's little glamorous about these monsters.
 
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