Motivation for Murder

I’ve been blogging for more than 7 years and have published over 500 posts. I’m currently updating and recategorizing all of these posts to make the content easier to access. In the process, I found a gem of a post to re-share with you today. I’ve updated it a bit. Enjoy.

This morbid and possibly disturbing post was first published in October of 2017.

Let’s Talk About Murder–and the Motives Thereof, Shall We?

Love, Lust, Lucre, and Loathing

A bad guy has to be believable. I mean, most people don’t go out and commit murder every day, do they? So something compelling must happen to make a normal person step over that line.

Even hardened killers have reasons for doing what they do–even if that reason is simply a rationalization.

While love, lust, lucre, and loathing are the general motives ascribed to killers, there are as many variations on the theme as there are murderers. Author John LesCroart expanded these simple motives to include more specific reasons for murder.

Motives for Murder

• To keep a secret
• Revenge
• Frustration/hate
• Money/Greed
• Sex/Jealousy
• Property Dispute
• Personal Vendetta
• Political
• Class Conflict
• Narcotics
• Other Felonies lead to murder
• Urge to Protect

I’m finishing up a murder mystery trilogy right now, and as I revise and proof it–I hope for the last time–I’m reading with a critical eye concerning motives.

While my little murder will be solved in eighty thousand words or fewer, real-life murderers stray from the safe, predictable world of literary murders. If you’re up for a macabre study, here are a few motives of real-life murderers to brighten your day.

• Ted Bundy killed more than 20 young women between the years of 1974 and 1978. He was executed in Florida in 1989.
  • “I haven’t blocked out the past. I wouldn’t trade the person I am, or what I’ve done – or the people I’ve known – for anything. So I do think about it. And at times it’s a rather mellow trip to lay back and remember. I just liked to kill, I wanted to kill. I want to master life and death.” Ted Bundy

• The Zodiac Killer operated in northern California during the late 60s and early 70s. This killer was never caught and is responsible for at least 7 deaths.
  • “I like killing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of them all.” Zodiac Killer, in one of the letters he sent to taunt the police.
  • The Zodiac Killer is also responsible for one of the best excuses for not finishing a research paper I ever heard. A high school student who was researching the Zodiac Killer (yes, I was that teacher—the one who gave weird assignments) came to me one day during my office hours and told me he needed to change his topic. I was surprised because he had been researching steadily and, for once, had turned in all the precursor work on time and in good order. When I asked why, he became a little uncomfortable. “Turns out my dad was in northern California at that time, and I can’t eliminate him as a suspect. He doesn’t have an alibi for any of the murders, and when I asked him about it, he told me to mind my own business.” I allowed him to change his topic for the assignment to another serial killer and we both agreed we should never speak of this again.

• Carl Panzram claimed to have committed over 20 murders and was executed in 1930.
  • “I have no conscience, so that does not worry me. I don’t believe in man, God nor the Devil. I hate the whole damned human race, including myself.”

• Herbert Mullin killed thirteen people in California in the early 1970s. He confessed to the killings, which he claimed prevented earthquakes. He is currently serving a life sentence.
  • “Satan gets into people and makes them do things they don’t want to.”

• Jane Toppan, nicknamed “Jolly Jane,” confessed to 31 murders. She was determined to be criminally insane and died in an asylum in 1938.
  • “That is my ambition, to have killed more people – more helpless people – than any man or woman who has ever lived.”

• In 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer killed two adults and wounded 8 children and one police officer at an elementary school, later saying, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”

• John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981 so he could get actress Jodie Foster’s attention.

• Fergus Glen was mad that his brother didn’t thank him for making dinner, so he used an axe to hack him to death in 2003. The siblings didn’t get along very well so that small perceived insult was apparently the last straw for the 36-year-old killer.

• Tan Teck Soon pushed his girlfriend off a 12-story building over an argument about chopsticks and then jumped after her. He thought she was about to break up with him and that they should die together. The trouble is he survived, and she did not.

• Dennis Nilsen is one of Great Britain’s most prolific serial killers. He is also one of the most enigmatic. Between 1978 and 1983, Nilsen took 15 different men out on nice dates in which he treated them kindly and then murdered them. Similar to America’s Jeffrey Dahmer, loneliness was the motive.

 

Do you have a favorite motive for murder? What would it take to make you add a soupçon of arsenic to the scones? Tell me all about it in comments!

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