Need to Control and Dominate Others

The need to control others is a major aspect of compulsive murderers’ gratification; in fact, it is at the core of their motivational dynamics. Kraflt-Ebing (1886) and MacCulloch, Snowden, Wood, and Mills (1983) note the desire for control as the primary driving force in compulsive murder and the primary element of sadism. Weinberg and Levi (1983) also believe that obtaining total control is critical to the sexually sadistic killer. And Langevin (1991) concluded that the offender’s “ultimate control” over the victim provides the most motivation.

According to Brittain (1970), sadistic murderers’

desire to have power over others is an essential part of their abnormality and if the victim resists they become more determined and brutal. If the subjugation of the victim to their power is more important to them than the infliction of pain, this may help us to understand why they do not feel cruel, for they may be unaware that cruelty is not their primary objective but only the means whereby they achieve their end. (p. 204)

Johnson and Becker (1997) found that many of their adolescents expressed the need for total control over other people.

It’s the killer’s need to have ultimate control over his victim that causes the sexual excitement. He probably does this because of his own poor feelings of self worth and inadequacies. Complete control is the only way to overcome this inadequacy... the actual death itself could be anti-climactic, (p. 345)

The need to control others often begins in childhood and manifests itself in a variety of ways. For example, the future offender may attempt to directly control other children through acts of play that get out of hand, or he may intimidate other children by threats of direct violence. Ressler et al. (1988) found that over half their 36 sexual murderers were cruel to their peers as children and adolescents. The future sexual murderers were “filled with troublesome, joyless thoughts of dominance over others. These thoughts [were] expressed in a wide range of actions towards others ... abusive[ness] ... destructive play patterns, disregard for others, firesetting, stealing, and destroying property” (p. 74). Myers et al. (1998) found that 92% of their group of juvenile sexual murderers had histories of fighting, including the use of weapons to intimidate other adolescents.

A long tally of compulsive murderers intimidated, controlled, or held captive their victims. Sometimes this behavior began early. As an adolescent, Jerome Brudos (Rule, 1983) abducted girls at knife point, forced them to undress, photographed them, and kept them for hours in the family barn. As an adult, Brudos abducted and then killed several women. Ressler and Shachtman (1992) report the case of John Crutchley who committed sexual murders as an adult. As an adolescent, he “liked to control people and often made them do his bidding” (p. 172). Gary Heidnick (Englade, 1988) also gained total control over his victims. After abducting them, he kept them captive in his basement, which was converted into a torture chamber. In this case the control, captivity, and total domination seemed just as arousing as the (eventual) sadistic murders. Jeffrey Dahmer tried to render his victims helpless by injecting acid into their brains so that he could control them and get them to do whatever he wanted (Jentzen, Palermo, Johnson, Ho, Stormo, and Teggatz, 1994). Serial sexual murderer Dennis Rader called himself the ВТК Killer—bind, torture, kill—illustrating how motivating control of his victims was for him (Ramsland, 2016).