Shahar Madjar, MD, Journal columnist

In my first article in this series, I told you about Jacob, the first serial killer apprehended in Israel.

Jacob confessed to eight murders over an 11 year period. Among them, the killing of his father, and of his mother who was his last victim. In the second article, I invited you to decide to which category of serial killers Jacob fits best–The Visionary, The Missionary, The Hedonistic, and The Power-Control serial killer. Here is the conclusion to this series:

Jacob’s crime scene wasn’t typical to that expected of a Power/control killer. There was nothing to demonstrate a well-planned, or a meticulously executed murder. After all, the police found Jacob by following the blood stains on the floor all the way to where Jacob was, asleep in his mother’s bed. But, is it unreasonable to believe that Jacob–the ‘black sheep’ of the family, an unemployed, alienated drifter who had no significant emotional ties–was compelled to kill others in an attempt to bring a sense of control into his life?

It is also not unreasonable to assume that Jacob found some pleasure in killing others. He didn’t eat, torture, nor dismembered his victims, but he might have found pleasure, in the form of excitement, thrill, or comfort, in the process of killing. And that might have put him in the category of Hedonistic killers.

Jacob could also be categorized as Mission-oriented serial killer. After all, he described himself as having a “sense of mission,” targeting a certain type of people, mostly solitary male beggars whom he murdered “to save them from our miserable world.”

And last, there is evidence to justify categorizing him as a Visionary serial killer. After all, he claimed to have special connection with God. “I believe I am a messenger of God,” he declared. “It’s like being a missionary in the jungle,” he said, ” … I do charitable deeds, for God, and it’s real …” These visions could have been psychotic hallucinations and delusions as they often are in serial killers belonging to the Visionary category.

Deciding which category Jacob fits best isn’t easy. It is not uncommon for serial murderers to fit more than one category. And Jacob would definitely fit into more than a single category of serial killers.

J. Norris in his book Serial Killers (1989) makes the case that serial killing is all about an urge. He writes: “Because his killing is not a passion of the moment but a compelling urge that has been growing within him sometimes for years, he has completely incorporated this practice into his lifestyle. It is as though he lives to kill, surviving from one murder to the next, stringing out his existence by connecting the death of his victims. Without this string of murders, he feels he will fall apart, that he will disintegrate psychologically.”

If serial killing is a compelling urge that can’t be controlled, what had brought about this urge, and why can’t it be controlled? Aren’t we taught to believe in free will–the capacity to make choices between different courses of action, to distinguish the good from the bad, the legal from the illegal, the moral from the immoral? Aren’t we taught to then take the right course of action with swift, dec­­­­isive clarity? And yet, who hasn’t known a person who had made the wrong decisions for themselves, who had wronged others?

One of the solutions to this predicament is to adapt Determinism–the philosophical view that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Some forms of determinism propose that this chain of event can be tracked back to the origin of the universe, to the beginning of time: Early atoms have joined to form molecules, certain sequences dictated the form and function of individuals and societies, and billions of years later, Jacob was born. His brain structure was predetermined by the laws of genetics, and possibly by random mutations he could not change. His mind was formed in a physical and social environment over which he had no control. There was no choice, no free will. An urge appeared in Jacob’s mind, to which he submitted the way other urges appear in the minds of others–to break the law, to sin, to have yet another slice of cake. It is all beyond our power to control, our ability to exact our own free will.

But, of course, we know of the temptations, and the choices, and we want to believe in our free will, our ability to distinguish between good and bad, and ability to follow the right path. It is within this context of our wish to believe in free will that we find interest, even fascination, in the most extreme of human behavior and misjudgment–in the lives, motivations, and deeds of serial killers.

Editor’s note: Dr. Shahar Madjar is a urologist at Aspirus and the author of “Is Life Too Long? Essays about Life, Death and Other Trivial Matters.” Contact him at smadjar@yahoo.com.