Vronsky told Rolling Stone that to understand the reasons for the rise and fall of serial killers, you have to take in various factors. “The reason behind this is manyfold,” he said, “encompassing everything from sociological changes, to biology, to technology, to linguistics.”
READ RELATED: Parents Dismembered After Son’s Web of Lies – Crime Online
According to Vronsky, the postwar climate of the 1970s and vast numbers of American soldiers returning to their families may have drastically altered the childhood environments of a generation of kids. Being raised by PTSD-stricken fathers (prior to the existence of PTSD as a medical diagnosis) could have, in his opinion, led to an uptick of volatility, violence, and instability within the childhood home, triggering latent violent tendencies in young children who may have later grown up to act on them.
James Fallon, author of “The Psychopath Inside” (and a self-diagnosed psychopath himself), expressed his agreement with Vronsky telling Rolling Stone, “In cases like, for example, the BTK killer [Dennis Rader], Richard Cottingham [the Torso Killer], their fathers were returning war veterans with PTSD …” But Fallon also pointed out that millions of children grew up with war vets for dads and did not become serial killers, so he thinks it’s a combination of environment and something in their gene make-up.
Source:
