Lessons Mothers Gave to Their Serial Killer Sons

I had been curious about the socialization of serial killers for a while. Recently, I read about how Ed Gein’s mother’s beliefs influenced his killings. As a result, I decided to explore how serial killers’ mothers perceived gender and how their perceptions influenced their sons’ thought processes. While there aren’t many details available about how mothers performed gender in their daily lives, overarching ideas and a few specific events allow me to dissect notions and codes about gender that they projected onto their sons.

One of Gein's 'artifacts' created from human fingers and breasts

credit: batcountrysite.wordpress.com

I focus specifically on male serial killers and their mothers for a few reasons. A serial killer is defined by the National Institute of Justice as someone who commits two or more murders “with a psychological motive or sadistic sexual overtones”. While this definition does not have complete generalizability, it is safe to say that it’s not uncommon for serial killers to have socially deviant sexual motives. It is valuable to examine the existence of these motives in tandem with performances of masculinity. Statistics from a database show that men form an overwhelming percentage of the total active serial killers. In 1990, global proportions were as skewed as 922 men to 69 women. Moreover, a serial killer’s relationship with one’s mother is often highlighted as a key common pattern in discussions. As we consider the impact their mothers’ beliefs had on them, it is also important to note that most of these beliefs were communicated during the men’s childhoods, at which times they were very impressionable. Let’s see how this played out with Ed Gein, a killer notorious for the atrocities he committed.

The twistedminds.creativescapism website writes “Ed Gein’s religiously fanatical, notorious mother (Augusta) convinced her son that women were vessels of sin and caused disease”. Many sources have stated that Augusta was extremely religious and believed all women were “prostitutes and instruments of the devil”. Perhaps the word ‘prostitute’ is used with too many different denotations depending on the user. This makes specific meanings such as Augusta’s difficult to discern without an explanation. Nevertheless, its usage leaves an incredible mark on the young serial killers to-be. As Michael Buchanan writes, “In some sort of twisted misinterpretation, Gein made literal vessels out of women, using their skulls for bowls, and other domestic objects.” This quote directly shows the effect Gein mother’s thinking about what women were had on what kind of a serial killer he wanted to be and how he wanted to kill. He considered his mother a saint and revered whatever she told him. He mutilated women after his mother constantly shared that gendered bias (to say the least) with him.

David Berkowitz, known as the ‘Son of Sam’ entered his trial chanting “Stacy was a whore”. Stacy was his latest victim. His use of the word ‘whore’ shows us that he views it pejoratively instead of being simply descriptive and thus neutral. When Berkowitz was much younger, after long having believed his mother was dead, he found out that he had been conceived as a result of her affair with a married man. He was disgusted and grew up to believe that sexually active women were dirty, lesser, and undesirable. He took this belief and translated it into knowledge about what kind of a woman he victimized, i.e., a ‘whore’. And, he believed this for all his victims, who he said he would kill again if possible. He practiced toxic masculinity in his thoughts and behavior as a killer. There is an unprecedented power, it seems, in the thoughts and beliefs our mothers convey to us in our early years.

Carroll Cole’s father fought in the Second World War, so as a child he witnessed his mother’s multiple sexual encounters. His mother’s sexual(ly deviant) behavior angered him. Later in his life, he would meet women in bars and while many of them would leave unharmed the next morning, he killed those he perceived to be “loose”, in particular, those who were married. Once again, we see the direct impact of a mother’s performance of gender as a ‘loose woman’ on her son’s thinking about how to be a serial killer.

There is a shared, underlying hatred for women who these men perceived to be too sexually active, which as we saw originates from their mothers. By calling these women whores or prostitutes, they asserted that women had a lack of sexual agency, and their sexual worth would be decided by words like 'slut' that men chose to use against them. In some form, their mothers had taught them to belittle women’s sexual choices by giving them pejorative labels.

The other commonality that shocked me was incidents of mothers dressing the young boys in what would typically be considered “girls’ clothes”. Take it right from the source: “If this were not enough, Cole’s mother would dress him in frilly dresses and petticoats for the amusement of her and her friends. They would sit at a table, and he would be forced to serve them tea, dressed as a girl, with his hair curled while they would laugh and call him names.” They go on, “On one occasion, when he was nine, Cole drowned a boy in his class who had called him a sissy, but the incident was thought to be an accident until Cole admitted to it years later in prison.”

Sissy is a word specifically used to denote that one is not courageous, strong, or whatever enough: not masculine enough. Their mothers used this word to instill a perverse sense of masculinity in them. Then, to be attacked by another boy for displaying a lack of masculinity again would result in a harsh reaction. Their mothers essentially de-masculinized them, and this made them obsessive about the portrayal and perception of their lack of masculinity and femininity. Essentially, their mothers consistently communicated that being a prostitute and a sissy was an insulting, degrading, lesser way of being.

These are not the only such stories. These common links fascinate me because they reflect on a unique role women play in the perpetuation of patriarchal violence. I hope that I have ignited some curiosity in you, and acknowledge that for some reason it’s only obscure listicle sites on the world wide web that tend to focus on and cover serial killers, so I have tried my best to provide reputable sources, but it has been hard.