The serial killer’s Achilles’ heel is the very thing that makes him so fascinating: His urge to repeat himself. He either stages his murders as rituals, thus providing clues to why he is enraged with the world, or he falls into patterns, because devising a new modus operandi for each killing calls for unsustainable levels of creativity and flexibility.
But what if a serial killer has enough wits and self-control to fashion an amorphous M. O.? What if he reads and learns from FBI profiles of fiends like himself and from fiction such as “The Silence of the Lambs”? What if the very serialism of his “work” escapes notice? And what if he defies the stereotype of serial killers as sullen loners by being a family man?
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