Hi everyone, I'm Hannah Bryant. Nice to meet you all. Hope you all enjoyed the talks today so far. Great.
Because buckle up, because mine's going to be a little bit more messy and sinister than the ones before. Enjoy. So today I'm going to talk about a topic that I'm sure the majority of people in this room have a pretty well-formed opinion on.
Now I'm not aiming to change any of these minds over the next few minutes, but I'm not a miracle worker. I just want you all to really think about what you thought you knew on the subject. Come on Hannah, please, just get on with it.
Okay, okay, hold your horses. My topic today is the timeless debate of, ta-da, arterial killers born or made. A conversation that's had both my A-level psychology class and the Bryant dinner table in heated discussion for hours. I'm sure that there are a few in the audience today who are, like me, die-hard fans of true crime, excuse the pun, who have also spent hours, maybe even days at times, glued to a screen watching the Ted Bundy tapes or Meet Mary Murder on Netflix.
And maybe your opinions on this matter stem from those. But, and that is completely fair enough, mine did too for a while, all serial killers are born pure evil. seems to be the narrative that these movies and TV shows push.
And one day, I came to the all-round shocking realization that maybe the media can be a little bit biased sometimes. Crazy, I know. And maybe some serial killers aren't exactly born with little devil horns, but instead are born from extensive trauma.
After all... Born evil does sell more. Just to clarify, I am by no means excusing anything that these killers have done.
I'm just looking at why they did what they did from a slightly different angle. Now, I for one can't choose one of the born or made options, so I tried to decide which side of the debate I fall on for this talk. And I chose two of the world's most prolific killers.
Yes, only two. Small sample size I know, but this girl does have a life. and use these two cases to look into what I truly believe.
And the research I conducted, hours of it mind, has landed me in the wonderful position of being exactly back where I started. Still sitting on the fence over here? Yay. First we have the lady killer, that was his real killer name, Ted Bundy.
Mr. Bundy is, in my opinion, one of the rare examples of a killer who was born that way. He was born to a single mother, but surrounded by a family that supported and cared for him, and they sent him to a good school. But sadly, little Bundy disregarded this entirely, and started showing violence from a very young age, getting angry at his mother for his being illegitimate. He even set up traps for his peers, resulting in broken legs and other injuries he never seemed to regret. And soon he turned into a f***er.
fully-fledged serial killer with a kill count of an estimated up to 100 and a confirmed and confessed 28. There's nothing that I can see from any of his interviews about his childhood that can point to any reason for his actions other than a born nature, especially seeing as they started from so young. Ted Bundy can therefore, in my opinion, only be a born killer. He was a good-looking boy from a reasonably well-off family that cared for him.
What other than a Nate need to kill? would have made him do it. I am, however, going off of what he has said in interviews, and there is always a chance that he didn't disclose the entire truth. But from what is considered fact in the case, it is easy to see him as a born killer.
Now moving on to my case study for being made. A man with a story so shocking, I think it is incredible he lived through his childhood at all. Richard Ramirez, the valley intruder, the walk-in killer, or as he's most famously known... The Night Stalker.
Ramirez had the most horrific childhood and family life that one can imagine. Disclaimer, if you are sensitive to upsetting stories and a few disturbing facts, there will be some in the next portion of my talk, but there'll be no disturbing images shown on the slides. Over the course of his childhood, Richard not only experienced copious amounts of abuse at the hands of his father, often being beaten near to death, but he also had a freak accident at the age of six. resulting in a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy. Due to the seizures that this condition came along with, he lost his position on the American football team.
He was quarterback. And along with that, he lost any support he had from his father. He was alone. And when his war criminal cousin, Miguel, got back from Vietnam, Richard latched onto him hard.
Miguel took the opportunity to tell Richard all about the crimes that he'd committed. Kidnapping, raping and decapitating Vietnamese women, taking photos with the shrunken heads of them, bringing them home, and he showed all of this to 13-year-old Richard. That same year, Miguel shot Richard's sister-in-law, point blank in front of him.
after a minor disagreement, soon after shooting himself too. This left Richard alone again. This would have left the young and impressionable Ramirez traumatized and introduced to violence as a good way to communicate by his own family.
What could go wrong? Remember his epilepsy? It has been reported that he also had these mini seizures, filling his head with visions of monsters and a voice commanding him to do things.
a voice he thought was Satan's. This all started when he was six. When he finally moved to San Francisco at the age of 18 and found drugs, this voice in his head told him to steal, to subsidize the habit.
And one day, in a robbery gone wrong, he killed the old woman whose house he'd broken into. He likened the feeling of killing to that of being a god in one of his interviews. And so the voice told him to kill again. Thus, the Night Stalker was born. Ramirez was created by trauma, abuse, and a freak accident that could have happened to anyone.
If he'd been born into a loving family, or if the accident hadn't happened at all, I believe that he would never have done what he did. He was made into a killer by accident, unlike Bundy, who actively sought out his first victim. I think that from these two men, we can see quite well that serial killers can be both born or made, and they all have their own stories that lead to the crimes that they commit. I hope that through this talk I have given you a moment to think, and I have made you consider the fact that maybe neither biological nor social reasons can be used only to explain why all killers kill. And you have to pay attention to their story to uncover why they, which of the two it's more likely to be.
And although I know this is a huge judgment to attempt to make on a sample size of only two case studies, I think they both show it's not a case of only one or the other being totally correct, but they both totally play a part. It's also important to understand that these two case studies are the extremes of both sides of the argument, and they may not be, and to be honest, probably aren't, mutually exclusive points. For example, John Wayne Gacy killed tens of young men despite being well-off and coming from a family that was very highly regarded. He was even meant to take over KFC, but he still killed, implying that he was born that way. But he also was abused by his father, like 68% of male prisoners in the States who reported childhood abuse before the age of 12, according to the National Institute of Justice.
This implies that he could have been made as well. Therefore, in my opinion, It is impossible to say what makes a serial killer kill using only one of the nature or nurture points, as in reality, all evidence points to both coming into play. But before I finish my talk, I'd like to take a moment to remember the real human cost that came from these stories. Thank you.