Sadistic Serial Killers: 4 Creepy Cases

Before starting… Where does the word "sadism" come from?

Sadism: defining the concept

The term sadism (as a synonym for cruelty) arose with the case of Donatien Alphonse François, better known as the "Marquis de Sade", a Parisian born in 1740. The Marquis de Sade was jailed because of his scandalous life, which was full of incidents with prostitutes in which multitudes of violent acts and sodomy were reported. After many incarcerations and successive releases, finally He was transferred to the famous Bastille prison. Internal and with little chance of being released, he wrote all of his controversial works. Finally, the Marquis de Sade managed to escape from prison due to the revolution, but the last years of him were spent in a psychiatric hospital in Charenton.

Among his most famous works we find "The 120 Days of Sodom" (1784), "Justine" (1791), "Philosophy at the Dressing Table" (1795) and "Juliette" (1797), writings that were censored for many years due to their high and explicit content of extreme violence and violations. Here we leave the link of the filmographic adaptation of one of them.

Thus, the case of the Marquis de Sade was one of the most paradigmatic in the study of sadism and the serial killer psychology, and it was useful to establish the foundations of what in the future we would know as Criminal psychology.

The sadistic profile in the serial killer

Regarding the different psychological profiles of the serial killer, we can find all kinds of personalities and reasons why they carry out their crimes.

There are some serial killers who commit crimes out of their desire to feel powerful, others who perceive themselves as a kind of "vigilante". In other cases, the psychological causes may be due to serious mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, psychotic outbreaks, manic episodes... but we mostly find those who perpetrate these crimes for the mere pleasure of seeing their victim suffer, that is, the sadistic.

Individuals who enjoy the pain of others

The sadistic serial killer is the one who feel sexual arousal inflicting pain on another person. It can be physical pain: watching his blood, hitting, torturing, watching him agonize; or psychological: that is, humiliating the victim, lowering his self-esteem to zero, feeling that he loves him, etc.

Rape is considered a form of sexual sadism, although the sexual act is not usually the main satisfaction of sadistic serial killers and, in most cases, this type of aggression is not reported sexual.

Sexual sadism in DSM IV

Although it is not a very general sadistic behavior, It is useful to know some important aspects around sexual sadism.

This pattern of sadistic behavior is included under the name of "Sexual Sadism" in DSM IV (302.84) in the section on paraphilias, defined as: “During a minimum period of 6 months, recurrent and highly exciting sexual fantasies, sexual impulses or behaviors that involve acts (real, not simulated) in which the psychological or physical suffering (including humiliation) of the victim is sexually arousing to the individual".

Some relevant cases of sadistic serial killers

Gilles de Rais

Gilles de Rais was a French marshal who participated in the 100 years war alongside Joan of Arc. It is said that Gilles de Rais was deeply in love with her, and when her idolized Joan of her was captured and burned at the stake, he felt deeply angry with god and he desperately claimed that he would never again be faithful to Christian moral injunctions.

Since then, he locked himself in his castle and began to kidnap children, to whom he carried out the worst of atrocities. He tortured, raped and murdered them, and then continue committing acts of necrophilia with their lifeless bodies. We find citations from Gilles de Rais himself in the trial that they carried out when he was convicted of these terrible acts in the book "The Marshal of Darkness." We quote:

‹› I confess that I killed these boys and girls in different ways and using different methods of torture: some had their heads separated from their bodies, using daggers and knives; with others I used sticks and other instruments of spanking, giving them violent blows on the head; I tied others with ropes and ropes and hung them from doors and beams until they were drowned. I confess that I experienced pleasure in hurting them and killing them like that. He enjoyed destroying innocence and desecrating virginity. He took great delight in strangling young children even when those children discovered the first pleasures and pains of their innocent flesh. [...]

I liked to see the blood flow, it gave me great pleasure. She contemplated those who possessed beautiful heads and proportioned limbs and then opened their bodies and delighted me at the sight of the internal organs of her and very often, when the boys were already dying, I would sit on her stomachs, and I was pleased to see her agony…

I am one of those people for whom everything related to death and suffering has a sweet and mysterious attraction, a terrible force that pulls downward. (…) If I could describe or express it, I would probably never have sinned. I did what other men dream. I am your nightmare. ››

Elizabeth Báthory, the Bloody Countess

Belonging to one of the most powerful families in Hungary in her time, Elizabeth possesses the Guinness record What the woman who has committed the most murders in the history of mankind, with around 650 tortures and deaths, all of them young girls between 9 and 26 years old.

In addition to a sadistic and sexual perversion, Countess Elizabeth Báthory had a special attraction for blood, and was not only content with drinking it (as is customary in so-called vampire killers) but instead bathed in it in order to prevent her skin from aging over the years.

The figure of Elizabeth Báthory is world famous, especially thanks to different stories of her about her history and for being one of the main characters in horror games, for example the board game "Atmosfear". Popular culture has given Báthory a prominent role as the most bloodthirsty and ruthless woman on record.

Movies have also been made about this woman such as The Countess (2009) and Báthory, the Countess of Blood (2008).

Andrei Chikatilo, the butcher of Rostov

This case deals with the protagonist of the macabre photograph at the head of this article. Andrei Chikatilo, born in Ukraine in 1936, he had sexual impotence problems since he was a teenager that he only overcame in an extremely pathological way, as he discovered by having his first strong erection the moment he cut a naked girl (whom he was going to abuse) with a knife, feeling great excitement when watching the blood.

Andrei he murdered 53 women between 1982 and 1990, most of them being minors. His crimes were perpetrated with inhuman cruelty: he amputated their nipples and tore their uterus to later eat it, among other things.

These words were spoken by Andrei himself: “In perverse sexual acts he experienced a kind of fury, a sense of debauchery. Especially after watching all kinds of sex movies. What I did, I did after watching the videos of perverse sexual acts, cruelties and horrors. "

The psychiatrists of the Serbsky Institute alleged that Chikatilo was a prudent sadist who did not suffer any disorder that could be reversed by the immorality of his actions, since his actions were premeditated. For that reason, he was sentenced to death. In the same trial, protected in a metal cubicle to protect him from the angry crowd, he took off his clothes and shook his penis, shouting: “Look how useless. What do you think he was going to do with this?

The film "Citizen X" is about the investigation into the murders of Andrei Chikatilo. Highly recommended.

On the other hand, a documentary was made about him, we provide the link here:

Ted Bundy

Born in 1946, raped and murdered dozens of women between 1974 and 1978 in United States.

Bundy took advantage of the kindness of his victims to commit his crimes. He he prowled around universities posing as badly wounded, with crutches or some similar trick. He pretended to drop his books, so the girls picked them up and walked him to his car. Ted Bundy seemed too cute and helpless to be dangerous or threatening to the girls who came to help him.

As the students approached his car, Bundy hit them with a crowbar and began his macabre plan. In addition to torture, mutilation and rape, practiced necrophilia. He would return recurring times to the forests of Seattle where he had buried the corpses, many times taking pieces of them home. In all, he confessed to thirty murders, although the actual figure is unknown, probably much higher.

Bundy said:

"It happened in stages, little by little, my experience with pornography in general, but with pornography that presents a high level of sexual violence, once you become addicted to it, —and I see this as a kind of addiction just like other types of addiction— you start looking for all kinds of material with things more powerful, more explicit, more graphics. Until you get to a point where pornography goes so far that you start wondering what it would be like to actually do it [...]

I have met people who radiate vulnerability... His facial expressions say: I am afraid of you. These people invite abuse... Expecting to be hurt, do you subtly encourage it? [...]

I'm the most cold-blooded bastard you've ever met.

Serial killers are their children, their husbands... and we are everywhere "