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

Over the course of twenty-five years, Dr. Helen Morrison has profiled more than eighty serial killers around the world. What she learned about them will shatter every assumption you've ever had about the most notorious criminals known to man. Judging by appearances, Dr. Helen Morrison has an ordinary life in the suburbs of a major city. She has a physician husband, two children, and a thriving psychiatric clinic. But her life is much more than that. She is one of the country's leading experts on serial killers, and has spent as many as four hundred hours alone in a room with depraved murderers, digging deep into killers' psyches in ways no profiler before ever has. In My Life Among the Serial Killers, Dr. Morrison relates how she profiled the Mad Biter, Richard Otto Macek, who chewed on his victims' body parts, stalked Dr. Morrison, then believed she was his wife. She did the last interview with Ed Gein, who was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. John Wayne Gacy, the clown-obsessed killer of young men, sent her crazed Christmas cards and gave her his paintings as presents. Then there was Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams; rapist turned murderer Bobby Joe Long; England's Fred and Rosemary West, who killed girls and women in their "House of Horrors"; and Brazil's deadliest killer of children, Marcelo Costa de Andrade. Dr. Morrison has received hundreds of letters from killers, read their diaries and journals, evaluated crime scenes, testified at their trials, and studied photos of the gruesome carnage. She has interviewed the families of the victims -- and the spouses and parents of the killers -- to gain a deeper understanding of the killer's environment and the public persona he adopts. She has also studied serial killers throughout history and shows how this is not a recent phenomenon with psychological autopsies of the fifteenth-century French war hero Gilles de Rais, the sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Bathory, H. H. Holmes of the late ninteenth century, and Albert Fish of the Roaring Twenties. Through it all, Dr. Morrison has been on a mission to discover the reasons why serial killers are compelled to murder, how they choose their victims, and what we can do to prevent their crimes in the future. Her provocative conclusions will stun you. In this memoir, a forensic psychiatrist chronicles her work with more than 80 serial killers and her thoughts on what compels them.Judging by appearances, Dr. Helen Morrison has an ordinary life in the suburbs of a major city. She has a physician husband, two children, and a thriving psychiatric clinic. But her life is more than that. She is one of the world's leading experts on serial killers, and has spent as many as four hundred hours alone in rooms with depraved murderers, digging deep into killers'psyches in ways no profiler ever has before.In My Life among the Serial Killers, Dr. Morrison relates how she profiled the Mad Biter, Richard Otto Macek, who chewed on his victims'body parts, stalked Dr. Morrison, then believed she was his wife. She did the last interview with Ed Gein, who was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. John Wayne Gacy, the clown-obsessed killer of young men, sent her crazed Christmas cards and gave her his paintings as presents. Then there was Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams; rapist turned murderer Bobby Joe Long; Fred and Rosemary West, who killed girls and women in their Gloucester “House of Horrors”; and Brazil's deadliest killer of children, Marcelo Costa de Andrade.Dr. Morrison has received hundreds of letters from killers, read their diaries and journals, evaluated crime scenes, testified at their trials, and studied photos of the gruesome carnage. She has interviewed the families of the victims—and the spouses and parents of the killers—to gain a deeper understanding of the killer's environment and the public persona they adopt. She has also studied serial killers throughout history and shows how this is not a recent phenomenon with psychological autopsies of the fifteenth-century French war hero Gilles de Rais, the sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Bathory, H.H. Holmes of the late nineteenth-century, and Albert Fish of the Roaring Twenties.Through it all, Dr. Morrison's goal has been to discover the reasons serial killers are compelled to murder, how they choose their victims, and what we can do to prevent their crimes in the future. Her provocative conclusions will stun you.Praise for My Life Among the Serial Killers“A scary piece of work, with even scarier implications.” —Kirkus Reviews“A profoundly enlightening book. Morrison provides startling insights into what factors breed serial killers, and she avoids the broad generalizations that make other books of the topic seem slick and superficial.... This is an absorbing, disturbing book that makes it clear just how much we have yet to learn.” —Booklist

Over the course of twenty-five years, Dr. Helen Morrison has profiled more than eighty serial killers around the world. What she learned about them will shatter every assumption you've ever had about the most notorious criminals known to man. Judging by appearances, Dr. Helen Morrison has an ordinary life in the suburbs of a major city. She has a physician husband, two children, and a thriving psychiatric clinic. But her life is much more than that. She is one of the country's leading experts on serial killers, and has spent as many as four hundred hours alone in a room with depraved murderers, digging deep into killers' psyches in ways no profiler before ever has.

In My Life Among the Serial Killers, Dr. Morrison relates how she profiled the Mad Biter, Richard Otto Macek, who chewed on his victims' body parts, stalked Dr. Morrison, then believed she was his wife. She did the last interview with Ed Gein, who was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. John Wayne Gacy, the clown-obsessed killer of young men, sent her crazed Christmas cards and gave her his paintings as presents. Then there was Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams; rapist turned murderer Bobby Joe Long; England's Fred and Rosemary West, who killed girls and women in their House of Horrors; and Brazil's deadliest killer of children, Marcelo Costa de Andrade.

Dr. Morrison has received hundreds of letters from killers, read their diaries and journals, evaluated crime scenes, testified at their trials, and studied photos of the gruesome carnage. She has interviewed the families of the victims — and the spouses and parents of the killers — to gain a deeper understanding of the killer's environment and the public persona he adopts. She has also studied serial killers throughout history and shows how this is not a recent phenomenon with psychological autopsies of the fifteenth-century French war hero Gilles de Rais, the sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Bathory, H. H. Holmes of the late ninteenth century, and Albert Fish of the Roaring Twenties.

Through it all, Dr. Morrison has been on a mission to discover the reasons why serial killers are compelled to murder, how they choose their victims, and what we can do to prevent their crimes in the future. Her provocative conclusions will stun you.

Booklist

“Profoundly enlightening….Morrison provides startling insights into what factors breed serial killers…An absorbing, disturbing book.”

For most of her professional life as a forensic psychiatrist with a law degree, Dr. Helen Morrison has been on a mission to discover (or at least lay the groundwork to discover) the reasons why serial killers are compelled to murder. Many law enforcement officials say they have become hardened to killings. This is something Dr. Morrison will not allow herself to do. “It won’t work if I treat a murder as through it is anything routine. I have to keep my emotions completely open in order to advance my theories and help eradicate the phenomenon of serial killing,” says Dr. Morrison. This will be a one-of-a-kind memoir by a female forensic psychiatrist who has profiled 80 seial killers in nearly thirty years of work. Some of her profiling—with killers including Richard Macek (known as the Mad Biter), Ed Gein (the inspiration for Hitchcock’s Psycho), John Wayne Gacy (upon whom she performed an autopsy as well), Wayne Williams and others—involved 400 hours of interviews. (In fact, she was first to profile serial killers using methods of forensic psychiatry.) She will also provide “psychological autopsies”of serial killers throughout history, from the 15th century through today, demonstrating that this is not a recent phenomenon and these cases help us better understand the serial killers of today. Dr. Morrison will write the stories of her work with these killers as she takes us inside the interview rooms and pushes the killers until they break and reveal their true natures. She takes us out into the field and into the crime scenes as she struggles to profile a killer. The dramatic stories also provide her with the opportunity to explain her theories as to why they do what they do (and it’s not, she says, because they were abused as children). While she’s not an FBI agent, she has been hired to work on a number of their cases, as well as with other state and city organizations. At the end of the day, she goes home to her husband and two children in a quiet suburb of Chicago. Neither her children or her neighbors know what she does. Over the course of twenty-five years, Dr. Helen Morrison has profiled more than eighty serial killers around the world. What she learned about them will shatter every assumption you've ever had about the most notorious criminals known to man. Judging by appearances, Dr. Helen Morrison has an ordinary life... She has a physician husband... & a thriving psychiatric clinic. But her life is much more than that. She is one of the country's leading experts on serial killers, & has spent as many as 400 hours alone in a room with depraved murderers, digging deep into killers' psyches in ways no profiler before ever has. In My Life Among the Serial Killers, Dr. Morrison relates how she profiled the Mad Biter, Richard Otto Macek, who chewed on his victims' body parts, stalked Dr. Morrison, then believed she was his wife. She did the last interview with Ed Gein... John Wayne Gacy, the clown-obsessed killer of young men, sent her crazed Christmas cards ...Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams; rapist turned murderer Bobby Joe Long; England's Fred and Rosemary West ... and Brazil's deadliest killer of children, Marcelo Costa de Andrade. Dr. Morrison has received 100 of letters from killers, read their diaries and journals, evaluated crime scenes, testified at their trials, & studied photos of the gruesome carnage. She has interviewed the families of the victims - & the spouses & parents of the killers - to gain a deeper understanding of the killer's environment & the public persona he adopts. She has also studied serial killers throughout history & shows how this is not a recent phenomenon with psychological autopsies of the 15th French war hero Gilles de Rais, the 16th Hungarian Countess Bathory, H. H. Holmes of the late 19th century, and Albert Fish of the Roaring '20s. Through it all, Dr. Morrison has been on a mission to discover the reasons why serial killers are compelled to murder, how they choose their victims, & what we can do to prevent th "In My Life Among the Serial Killers, Dr. Morrison relates how she profiled the Mad Biter, Richard Otto Macek, who chewed on his victims' body parts, stalked Dr. Morrison, then believed she was his wife. She did the last interview with Ed Gein, who was the inspiration of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. John Wayne Gacy, the clown-obsessed killer of young men, sent her crazed Christmas cards and gave her his paintings as presents. Then there was Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams; rapist turned murderer Bobby Joe Long; England's Fred and Rosemary West, who killed girls and women in their "House of Horrors"; and Brazil's deadliest killer of children, Marcelo Costa de Andrade." "Dr. Morrison has received hundreds of letters from killers, read their diaries and journals, evaluated crime scenes, testified at their trials, and studied photos of the gruesome carnage. She has interviewed the families of the victims - and the spouses and parents of the killers - to gain a deeper understanding of the killer's environment and the public persona he adopts. She has also studied serial killers throughout history and shows how this is not a recent phenomenon with psychological autopsies of the fifteenth-century French war hero Gilles de Rais, the sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Bathory, H. H. Holmes of the late nineteenth century, and Albert Fish of the Roaring Twenties."--BOOK JACKET. CONTENTS......Page 7 Photographic Insert......Page 156 Author’s Note......Page 9 Introduction......Page 10 ONE Baby-Faced Richard Macek......Page 16 TWO Dangerous Terrain: Hypnotizing a Serial Killer......Page 26 THREE Breaking Through Macek’s Mind......Page 40 FOUR Ed Gein and the History of Serial Killers......Page 58 FIVE John Wayne Gacy......Page 76 SIX The Gacy Interviews......Page 100 SEVEN Taking the Stand at the Gacy Trial......Page 110 EIGHT The Yorkshire Ripper and Wayne Williams......Page 136 NINE Bobby Joe Long’s Letters and Dreams......Page 164 TEN Serial Killers and Their Families......Page 188 ELEVEN The Sadism of Robert Berdella......Page 202 TWELVE The Trigger: Michael Lee Lockhart......Page 218 THIRTEEN Rosemary West and Partners in Serial Crime......Page 232 FOURTEEN The International Phenomenon:......Page 250 FIFTEEN DNA and the Green River Killer......Page 266 EPILOGUE Where Do We Go from Here?......Page 280 Acknowledgments......Page 292 About the Authors......Page 294 Credits......Page 295 Cover......Page 1 Copyright......Page 296 About the Publisher......Page 297 A forensic psychiatrist offers insight into the minds of serial killers, sharing stories about her FBI work with such figures as Ed Gein and John Wayne Gacy while analyzing the profiles of killers from the middle ages to today. Includes material on Richard Macek, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, the Yorkshire Ripper, Wayne Williams, Bobby Joe Long, Robert Derdella, Michael Lee Lockhart, and Rosemary West In March of 1977, the old road to Waupun, Wisconsin, was somehow eerie and foreboding, not simply rural but isolated in the kind of way that makes you watch your back.