commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Part of the reason many of us are fascinated with murder is because we want to fathom the state of mind of the killer at the time he or she commits the awful crime, but at the same time we are unable to succeed in fully understanding that state of mind for the simple reason that we are not killers. Thus, the actual state of mind of the killer remains elusive except on those problematical occasions when it is described by actual killers, and even then we can’t help but be aware that we are listening to unreliable witnesses.
This desire of ours to fathom the killer’s state of mind and motivation is no doubt part of the reason for our eternal fascination with the better-known serial killers; post-arrest many (though not all) of them are more than willing to divulge their feelings at the time of the murders, as well as their motivation for their crimes.
For example, in one of his quotes, David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz stated:
“I was literally singing to myself on my way home, after the killing. The tension, the desire to kill a woman had built up in such explosive proportions that when I finally pulled the trigger, all the pressures, all the tensions, all the hatred, had just vanished, dissipated, but only for a short time.”
In one of his interviews, the 6’9” Santa Cruz Ce-Ed Killer, Edmund Kemper, with his I.Q. of 136, waxed enthusiastically about the sexual nature of murder and decapitation:
“I remember there was actually a sexual thrill . . . you hear that little pop and pull their heads off and hold their heads up by the hair. Whipping their heads off, their body sitting there. That’d get me off.”
This level of intense involvement/pleasure goes a long ways toward explaining why the serial killer must engage in repeat performance after repeat performance.
Furthermore, the “high end” serial killer is sometimes eager to provide a social context for his crimes: e.g., Ted Bundy blamed his crimes on violent pornography, and the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, implied that he was just doing on a small scale what society does on a much grander scale:
“I don’t believe in the hypocritical, moralistic dogma of this so-called civilized society. I need not look beyond this room to see all the liars, haters, the killers, the crooks, the paranoid cowards–truly trematodes of the Earth, each one in his own legal profession. You maggots make me sick– hypocrites one and all. And no one knows that better than those who kill for policy, clandestinely or openly, as do the governments of the world, which kill in the name of God and country or for whatever reason they deem appropriate.”
Of course, the feelings of “high end” serial killers such as Berkowitz, Bundy and Ramirez may – in some instances – be more rarified or even exalted in a supremely dark way than the mundane thoughts and feelings of your ordinary thuggish killer, even if the thuggish one may have potential to kill again.
A recent case out of Florida provides an excellent example of that.
Here are the facts as reported by Sebastian Murdoch based on “a heavily redacted police affidavit” the Huffington Post obtained:
The corpse of 24-year-old Jennifer Hedges was found Oct. 9 floating in the Indian River. The victim, who police said was a prostitute, met with 45-year-old Lance David Berning, the suspect, on the night of her murder.
In a heavily redacted police affidavit obtained by The Huffington Post, investigators detailed the graphic crime, saying that Hedges had been strangled to death by Berning before her feet were tied to concrete and she was dumped in the river.
According to the police affidavit, Berning met with a friend four days later at a local bar to have a few brews. At some point during the evening, the suspect told his friend that he’d had sex and smoked crack cocaine with Hedges before killing her.
And then this execrable individual described his pleasure in the act, that he “really got off on it”, and that the reason he strangled her was she started getting “prissy” while performing a sexual act on him, which he perceived as sufficient reason to strangle her. The possibility of moving from a single isolated murder to becoming a serial killer is telegraphed in a remark Berning made to his friend “that he enjoyed the experience so much he planned to kill another victim in about six months.”
Berning got into the drama of it almost as if he were watching a movie, telling his friend that “Hedges put up a fight during the murder, breaking Berning’s windshield and badly biting his palm.” The alleged killer also rated his performance telling his friend that he “would get better at disposing a body next time where they do not find it.”
Another difference between Berning and more famous serial killers is the fact that whereas the well-known serial killers, who are often “careful” souls who value their “freedom”, typically have rather few arrests on their records other than, in some cases, arrests for early murders, Berning is little more than a run-of-the-mill career criminal. An example of this careful approach to life and crime is Edmund Kemper who served 6 years in a mental institution for killing his grandparents when he was 15 before being released back into his mother’s custody at the age of 21.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Berning had been arrested 20 times in Florida and served time for crimes including intimidation of a witness, battery, and grand theft. In documents obtained by the publication, police said Berning referred to his crime as a new “hobby.”
Although they have no evidence at this point, the police are reportedly worried that Berning could be responsible for earlier unsolved homicide cases in the Brevard County area.
Berning’s beer-fueled braggadocio proved to be his undoing. His friend, apparently aghast at the revelations, went to the police who then arranged for a sting operation:
Police said they got Berning to admit to his crime through a sting operation involving the friend that had learned of the murder. On Oct. 16, a recorded conversation between Berning and his friend culminated in a confession after the friend asked if anyone had seen the crime, according to the report.
“Nobody saw a fucking thing,” the suspect allegedly said. “It was three o’clock in the morning on a deserted fucking street. Nobody saw shit.”
Whereas there is often a dark and demented poetry in the statements of the famous serial killers (e.g. Carl Panzram, who confessed to 22 murders and claimed to have sodomized over 1,000 males, stated memorably: “I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it’), it seems evident that one such as Berning is hardly capable of a deft turn of the phrase.
“Nobody saw shit.”
Well, nobody needed to, Mr. Berning, considering that you implicated yourself with as little thought as if you were merely describing a trip to the mall or a Sunday afternoon spent glued to the television watching the NFL (my current crime of choice).