Why do people have a morbid curiosity with serial killers? Is it because their actions are so far from the social norm that we want to have reasoning for their existence? Or is it because humans have always had those dark,dark places tucked away in their psyche and we are fascinated by the ones who step in to it.
Whatever the reason, it’s a reality that serial killer are a guilty fascination of some people. I dipped into that fascination to research my Facilitation Friday topic, killers of the 1970s. My interest in this topic, or at least my knowledge of it came from the Netflix Original series Mindhunters. It is a dramatization of everything I mention at the start of my facilitation with John E Douglas and Robert Ressler’s time at the BSU. Even if some things were changed for the sake of “engaging television” it is still highly accurate as it is based on John’s book recalling the program. I was particularly interested by Cameron Britton’s portrayal of Edmund Kemper. He seemed so different then what would first come to mind when thinking of a serial killer. He was calm and articulate. He didn’t look intimidating, but his physical stature made him so. I later found out that a lot of Cameron’s lines were straight from interviews with Kemper, so that idea of realism was well placed. But Ed wasn’t the only killer I researched. I looked at a wide array of murderers from that era, and included them all in a collage.
The serial killers in this collage include:
The Hillside Stranglers: Kenneth Bianchi/Angelo Buono Jr.
Ted Bundy
Joseph Paul Franklin
The Zodiac Killer
Richard Chase
Wayne Williams
The Son Of Sam: David Berkowitz
Jeffery Dahmer
Herbert Mullins
The Golden State Killer: Joseph James DeAngelo
The BTK Killer: Dennis Rader
John Wayne Gacy
The Coed Killer: Ed Kemper
Richard Speck
Charles Manson
Jerry Brudos
I did individual research on each one, (some more than others) about information like what years did they kill, their victim count, their methods, etc. I also learned a lot about a few of them from interviews and from a YouTube channel called The Infographic Show’s series on serial killers. It got to the point that when my parents and I watched Silence Of The Lambs for this project, I could correctly identify 5 of the 6 serial killers that Buffalo Bill was based off of.
After all the research, putting together the Keynote was fairly easy. Simple slides to complement what I was talking about work fine, and there are even some hidden cues if you look hard enough. For example, each serial killer’s photo that was aligned with one of my questions related or contributed to the question itself. It wasn’t just random, it was intentional. My Keynote also originally included Jim Jones, but when we split the topic and Brianna took cults I replaced his photo with the one of 1970.
As far as the actual presentation went, I feel like it was solid “pretty good”. As I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would to talk, I had to skip over a lot of the details. This did cause me to stumble a little bit, but I tried to remain on track as best I could. It also seems from the audiences reaction that I could have focused a little bit more on ethics rather than the science of profiling. I did get feedback from multiple people saying that they thought profile was an interesting topic, but as a discussion point it didn’t really have a back-and-forth.
Conclusively, I believe my facilitation went rather well. I was definitely thorough when I came to research and information about serial killers in the 1970s, I just could have used a little more direction when it came to the actual presentation itself.