Psychological Theories behind Offending

1. Psychological Theories behind Offending A comparison of factors involved in similar cases of mass murder.

2. Criminologist Professor David Wilson recently wrote “serial killers are not remotely like the frightening or interesting people we associate with the label... underneath (are) men... who lived in an amoral world of black and white, while mine... was usually a messy and optimistic shade of grey.” What makes a serial killer?

3. Visionary: those driven by voices or visions • Mission: those who target a specific group of people • Hedonistic: Those who kill for the thrill • Individuals who believe they hold an ultimate power over their victims What makes a serial killer?

4. Brides in the Bath • 1898 Smith marries Caroline Thornhill and encourages her to steal from her employers • 1908 Smith marries Florence Wilson before clearing her out of £30 and selling her furniture. • Within a month he had married Edith Pelger • October 1909 Smith marries Sarah Freeman taking £400 in the process

5. Brides in the Bath • Following this he married Bessie Munday posing as a painter named Henry Williams. • Munday was no doubt appealing to Smith with her £2,500 trust fund. After finding out he could not rightly withdraw the money he plundered £150 of her own money and went back to Munday. • He later suggested to Munday that they draw up mutual wills left Smith free to end her life and claim £2,579. • In 1913 Smith went on to marry Alice Burnham, his sixth wife. She found 11 days later drowned in a bath. • Smith was awarded the £500 life insurance he had taken out just a few days before.

6. Brides in the Bath • Smith married yet again in 1914. Margret Lofty, his new bride, withdrew all her savings, made a will and drowned in the bath. • Suspicions were aroused when it was claimed Lofty'swill had been changed just a few hours before she took her last bath. Smith was arrested. • Pathologists looked for an explanation of how all three healthy women had died. • It became clear that it would not be possible for Munday to drown accidently as she was a few inches taller than the bath itself.

7. Brides in the Bath • an experiment was conducted with a diver in a bath, grabbing her feet and forcefully pulling them upwards. The force of the water rushing into the diver’s nose was enough to knock her out, taking almost half an hour to fully revive her. • As a criminal on trial for the murder of three women, Smith charm still rubbed off on women to the point the flocks of females were banned from attending. He was convicted of his crimes within 20 minutes and stood by his plea of innocence right up to the point he was hung in HMP in August, 1914.

8. The Acid Bath Murderer • John Haigh once exclaimed that George Smith was the ‘cleverest killers of the lot’ • After serving a prison sentence of four years for impersonating a solicitor, Haigh believed he had found a loophole in which an individual could get away with murder if there was no body. • Experiments with rats allowed Haigh to identify an acid in which the specimens would dissolve in less than half an hour

9. The Acid Bath Murderer • He identified his first victim as William McSwan, a man who had previously employed Haigh as his driver • He helped McSwan ‘disappear’ in order to avoid conscription in WW2 • Haigh knocked him out using a pipeand stuffed him into an oil drum with acid, continuously wrote letters in Haigh's name, telling them he was in Scotland avoiding conscription. • After a while, smith stopped writing the letters and instead killed Haigh’s parents and plunged them into acid before collecting over £8,000 from deeds, ration books and selling their belongings.

10. The Acid Bath Murderer • In 1948 he shot Archie and Rose Henderson and they suffered the same fate as Haigh’s other victims. • Haigh made another £8,000 and covered up the murders by again forging letters to relatives. • Olive Durnad Deacon, worth £36,000 also met a similar fate • He trapped himself when he offered to take one of Deacons friends to the police to report her disappearance. • He was arrested and his workshop was searched.

11. The Acid Bath Murderer • Haigh decided to plea insanity and claimed a car crash had transformed him into a vampire, confessing to three other murders- none of which held any truth. • The prosecution saw through his pleas and he was eventually convicted of six counts of murder and sentenced to death. • He was hanged in August 1949, leaving his suit to the chamber of horrors at Madame Tussauds.

12. Theories of crime • According to Yochelson and Samenow many criminals display errors in their thinking. These include a lack of empathy and little obligation to others. • Both Smith and Haigh were infamous for their ability to manipulate and high esteem in their ability to commit and get away with criminal behaviour. • Haigh showed little empathy and would often fantasise about the murders he was going to commit whilst in prison suggesting cognitive distortions • Haigh was also a compulsive liar, a trait he shared with Smith. Cognitive explanations

13. Theories of crime • Smith and Haigh both showed little remorse for his actions and pleaded innocence right up to the moment they were executed. • According to Gudjonsson, they man have constantly reoffended and showed no remorsedue to the suggestion external attribution was positively correlated with psychoticism. • It could therefore be possible to theorise that Smiths plea of innocence was based on an inability to empathise and therefore he reattributed blame and reduced his own guilt, allowing him to constantly reoffend and defend his innocence. • Haigh’s personality of low empathy would allow him to blame other factors in order to subdue the burden of guilt, meaning he was unlikely to confess or stop murdering. He also showed signs of mental element attribution in which he would attempt to lessen his liability by claiming he was insane and a vampire. Cognitive explanations

14. Theories of crime • Charles Whitman • Killed 15 people • Found to have a brain tumour • Brain injury • damage to frontal lobes can result in lower reticence • Brain chemistry • low levels of neurotransmitters (i.e. dopamine) linked to aggressive behaviour. • EEG abnormalities • Linked to violent crimes Biological explanations

15. Lesion in the frontal cortex. The Patient showed sociopathic behaviour (C) Orbital frontal damage in the 40 year old male Image sourced from: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050103

16. Theories of crime • Both Smith and Haigh had begun their criminal careers at a young age • Differential Association Theory (DAT) • Contact with criminal behaviour • Being surrounded by pro crime attitudes • Far greater exposure to anti social behaviour than law abiding behaviour • The Cambridge study • Linked criminality to delinquency Psychological explanations- Social environment

17. Theories of crime • Social Learning Theory • Criminal behaviour is observed and learnt. Replication is dependant on reinforcement. • Operant conditioning • works on the basis of positive reinforcement either socially or through materials. Psychological explanations- Learning theories

18. Theories of crime It is clear that the two men involved in these counts of murder are intrinsically linked. Indeed they both share fundamental characteristics. Both were manipulative liars who shared a grandiose sense of self worth. It would be easy to say that their desire for money perhaps overwhelmed any ability to comprehend their actions, and the fact that each was able to kill so many unnoticed only cemented this fact. However it seems that although inspired by Smith, Haigh was perhaps much more mentally unstable, and the causes of the actions he undertook may be numerous. Their motives were similar in that they killed and manipulated in order to satisfy their lust for money, but the causes of such behaviour will never be clear. Conclusions

19. Acknowledgements • Image 1 sourced: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050103 • Law, Responsibility, and the Brain by Dean Mobbs, Hakwan C. Lau, Owen D. Jones, Christopher D. Frithsource: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0050103 • Hill, G. 2009 Oxford Revision Guides AS and A Level Psychology Through Diagrams, Oxford • Hill, G. 2009 Oxford Revision Guides AS and A Level Psychology Through Diagrams, Oxford • Britain’s worst serial killers, published in 2010, The Mirror • http://friedgreentomatoes.org/articles/acid_bath_killer.php • Lintern, F. 2008 OCR Psychology A2, Heinemann