Source: Catalogue: Introduction to the Serial Killer Expo, Atlanta (2026) (klick for .pdf)

Translated from the German Catalogue to the Serial Killer Exhibit in Berlin (2025)

by Mark Benecke

Serial killers—women and men alike—have lost a healthy sense of their environment. They are alone, but never insane. They can be lucid and sincere about what they believe they want—both with themselves and with others. But antisocial personality disorders combined with a strong inner linearity: this is a lethal mixture. In the best-case scenario, such people become very good at jobs that require managing one crisis after another. In the worst case, they torture, kill, or eat (or do all three in succession) one person after another.

The victims of serial killers have often done little or nothing at all. They are sex workers, domestic workers, children, the poor, people who are deceived or who act in good faith. If we want to prevent serial murder, we therefore have to understand the perpetrators. Because people who lack malice and protection—the preferred victims of serial killers—will always exist. That side of the story could only change in a perfect world. But in the forensic field, we do not live in a sparkling fairy tale.

Even police officers and other professionals involved are regularly overwhelmed by the weight of these cases, although not as victims who are killed. The prosecutor in the case of my client, Luis Alfredo Garavito († 2023), responsible for the rape and murder of more than three hundred children, was so shaken during my last visit to his living room that, out of concern for his nerves, any further conversation with him became unnecessary. His last glimmer of hope was the idea that God had “entrusted” him with the terrible Garavito case. To this day, I do not know why this thought could have comforted him—especially since it cuts both ways: “his” serial killer Garavito was convinced that at the end of time, God would walk together with him—the perpetrator—through the afterlife.

How do I know this? He wrote it to me in a gold-edged Bible after being baptized as a Christian in prison. The only person to emerge with a relatively intact psychological balance was Garavito’s evangelical pastor. He had served several years in prison for cocaine trafficking and, first in his home country and later in prison in the United States, had learned that goodness and beauty are not primarily to be found here on Earth.

The police officers involved in the Garavito case initially did not believe the mothers of the missing children. Above all, they did not want to believe that the children could have been abducted in broad daylight. Later, they bitterly regretted this and never forgot it. Until the end of their careers, they tried to support the parents—but it was all in vain. Who could return a child to a mother, or restore her lost faith in justice?

Some local officers asked me whether the rural folk music of Garavito’s region might have turned him into a serial killer. This shows how long the distance still is—especially in a poor country ravaged by violence—between such superstitions and effective prevention and protection. It also recalls a long-debunked belief that video games, films, comics, or similar media trigger violence. But it is not that simple: all media can promote both good and evil. What matters are the environment and the personality of the person who consumes them.

Such misunderstandings are repeated again and again in the field of serial murder—fascinating to many, but rarely examined in depth. One example is Jeffrey Dahmer († 1994), who has once again become one of the most widely known serial killers thanks to Netflix, an excellent graphic novel created by one of his former classmates, the republication of conversations with the perpetrator, and an old book by his father. A monster, a beast, a psychopath—no doubt. And yet, when I watch interviews with him, what I see above all is a deeply sincere and calm person who has absolutely no idea how healthy, lasting relationships work. They certainly do not work by injecting drugs into someone’s skull and listening to a “partner’s” heartbeat. Even Dahmer understood that. In fact, he understood everything. And yet, to this day, there is no reliable therapy for his personality disorders.

Nothing holds these offenders back, even when they demonstrate insight. This is why new serial killers continue to appear—even when it was long believed that, thanks to forensic technology and big data, this should no longer be possible. The most unexpected example is Samuel Little († 2020). No one even realized that a long series of murders had been taking place unnoticed—yes, mostly against sex workers, and yes, in many cases it was assumed they had died from drugs or accidents.

Had people taken that horror seriously, many actions of other individuals who suffered—and still suffer—from similar attachment disorders could have been prevented. Because serial murder can be prevented: through a loving attitude toward children who might become victims or perpetrators—that is, toward all children; through open, unembarrassed conversations about love and emotional bonding; through early assessment of antisocial behavior; and through the careful examination of all bodies for traces, even when they belong to poor people, drug users, or those who have fallen to the bottom of the social ladder.

REFERENCES:

Nico Claux (2023) Russian Cannibals: Addicted to Human Flesh. Serial Pleasures eds., ISBN 979-8859149346
Janis Weißheit (2025) Encyclopedia of Criminal Cannibals. Foreword by Mark Benecke, Kirchschlager, Arnstadt, ISBN 978-3934277960
Jean Rises (2023) Real Snuff: Urban Legend or Reality? Serial Pleasures eds., ISBN 979-8858285663
Mark Benecke, Miguel Rodríguez, Anna Zabeck, Armin Mätzler (2005) Two homosexual pedophile sadistic serial killers: Jürgen Bartsch (Germany, 1946–1976) and Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos (Colombia, 1957– ) Minerva Medicolegale, Vol. 125 (3), pp. 153–170

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