My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers.

My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers By Helen Morrison, M.D., and Harold Goldberg Reviewed by Sara K. Dyehouse

Yes, Virginia, monsters do exist. Helen Morrison has met some of them. In fact, she has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours over the past 25 years chatting amiably with, and reading scores of letters from, serial murderers such as Richard Macek, Edward Gein, John Wayne Gacy, Robert Berdella, and Florida's own Bobby Joe Long. She even has sections of Gacy's brain in ajar in her garage, preserving it for the day when science advances enough to provide further information about this infamous killer of 33 young boys and men.

Obsessive about her reputation as an ethical, objective, and professional researcher, Dr. Morrison has refused for more than a decade to pay for additional interviews with Marcelo Costa de Andrade, one of Brazil's most notorious serial murderers, who in the early 1990s killed 14 young boys, drinking the blood of two. Her persistence, she hopes, will pay off, and eventually de Andrade will decide to grace her--free of charge--with his innermost thoughts about his murderous accomplishments.

In My Life Among the Serial Killers, Dr. Morrison, a certified forensic psychiatrist, researcher, and self-proclaimed "profiler," purports to do more in her book than "spin tales about [her] dealings with serial killers." She is on a life-long quest to discover the cause(s) or precipitating factor(s) that lead people to commit serial murder. From her vast experience interviewing scores of multiple murderers, she is "firmly convinced that there is something in the genes that leads a person to become a serial killer." Consequently, she resoundingly rejects various "specious theories" that propose brain injury, childhood abuse, and/or malnutrition as the precipitating factors.

Taking pains to distinguish serial killers from psychopaths who are "[a]ble to kill without remorse," but who "are otherwise humans like the rest of us, able to experience joy and happiness," Dr. Morrison graphically details the gruesome experimental acts that her subjects have inflicted on their victims and their nonchalant attitudes toward what they have done. She is convinced that none have progressed emotionally past an infantile stage, and thus have no ability to sympathize or empathize with their victims, which are abstract concepts beyond their level of emotional response.

Having spent her professional lifetime reading about, studying, and living (vicariously) the lifestyles of these aberrant individuals, Dr. Morrison has discovered seven commonalities among them: They have no motive to kill; they have no personality structures that fit into the usual theories of development; they are not psychopaths; they are not mentally retarded; they are not psychologically complete human beings; they have not all been physically and/or sexually abused; they are addicted to killing and cannot control their actions; they are not solely a phenomenon of the United States; and they are not of recent vintage. Ultimately, she hopes that society and the judicial system will come to appreciate the need to study these individuals closely, to apply our medical and scientific prowess to determine exactly what genetic or biological factor precipitates the addiction to kill others successively--all toward the goal of finding a "cure," or at least identifying these people before they strike.

While the faint of heart would do well to avoid this book, all who are interested in or fascinated by this frightening segment of society will find Dr. Morrison's personal experiences fascinating and insightful. While she does not profess to have the definitive answer as to why these people kill, Dr. Morrison makes a good case for genetic predisposition, and society would be wise to encourage her continued research in this regard. After all, while we might want Santa Claus to exist, we don't really want to believe in monsters, do we?

Sara Dyehouse is a graduate of Florida State University College of Law and practices in Tallahassee.