SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 110: Zodiac

[europe1]

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Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC.


It was the Zebra that did it?

Our Director

David Fincher

David Fincher was born in 1962 in Denver, Colorado, and was raised in Marin County, California. When he was 18 years old he went to work for John Korty at Korty Films in Mill Valley. He subsequently worked at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) from 1981-1983. Fincher left ILM to direct TV commercials and music videos after signing with N. Lee Lacy in Hollywood. He went on to found Propaganda in 1987 with fellow directors Dominic Sena, Greg Gold and Nigel Dick. Fincher has directed TV commercials for clients that include Nike, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Heineken, Pepsi, Levi's, Converse, AT&T and Chanel. He has directed music videos for Madonna, Sting, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, George Michael, Iggy Pop, The Wallflowers, Billy Idol, Steve Winwood, The Motels and, most recently, A Perfect Circle.

As a film director, he has achieved huge success with Seven (1995), Fight Club (1999) and, Panic Room (2002).

Our Stars

Film Overview

Premise: In the late 1960s/early 1970s, a San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified individual who terrorizes Northern California with a killing spree.




Budget: $65 million
Box Office: $84.8 million

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Trivia
(courtesy of IMDB)
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* The only real comment that Robert Graysmith said about the finished screenplay was, "God, now I see why my wife divorced me."​

* The shooting script was two hundred pages long. To prevent any problems with length, that such a long script might cause, Director David Fincher decided to ask his cast members to speak faster.​

* In one of the Zodiac's letters, he muses on who would portray him in a film about him. In this film, he is portrayed by three separate actors, and in any shot featuring the Zodiac, the actor's faces are always out of focus or obscured. This served to keep the audience guessing, and perhaps as a balk to the actual Zodiac killer, so that he wouldn't be portrayed by a visible, or famous actor.​

* Zodiac's confirmed (to date) first murders on Lake Herman Road was excluded from the film, because there was no surviving victims to corroborate details. In the spirit of accuracy, the creators decided to not include the Lake Herman killings, but instead begin with the July 4th crime, considered to be his second set of double murders.



* Jake Gyllenhaal shares one of the film's creepiest scenes with Charles Fleischer. In real-life, the two have known each other since Gyllenhaal was three years old.​

* (At around thirty-three minutes) Dave Toschi, in real-life, was the inspiration for Steve McQueen's performance in Bullitt (1968). In the film, Graysmith mentions that Toschi wears his gun like Bullitt. Avery replies that Bullitt got it from Toschi.​

* George Lucas gave an interview to Empire magazine once stating that the Zodiac murders captured his imagination at the time as a high schooler and then college student at USC, and he always felt like Toschi was harshly judged for how the investigation was handled. He explained this is why he named a location on Tatooine Tosche Station, in honor of the SFPD inspector.​

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Members: @europe1 @MusterX @Scott Parker 27 @the muntjac @Cubo de Sangre @sickc0d3r @chickenluver @FrontNakedChoke @AndersonsFoot @Tufts @Coolthulu

 

[europe1]

Man... this movie really is one big Byzantine Crescendo. You just keep spiraling down into obsession and mysteries, doggedly following circumstantial leads until you enter a state of addictive paranoia. I like how everything always comes into question. Everything can always be a misdirection or coincidence or some unrelated tidbit that has nested itself into the case. No bit of evidence can seem entirely solid, as the fingerprints expert said, "there are different schools for this."

And very fittingly, the film has a very strong sense of escalation. The obsessions gripping the characters are like quicksand, sinking them deeper and deeper the more they struggle to figure it out.

As usual, I think Fitch is a master of using camerawork and editing. Look how he speedily shifts between locals and characters, doing so-so to keep the pace flowing and the information fresh. On the camera work, man, the movie is just expertly done. Notice for example, when the three policemen first interview Arthur Leight, how right when they grow suspicious of him, the camera starts focusing straight at the faces, instead of at a sidewards angel (as is usually done), so to accentuate the tension of the scene (Silence of the Lambs prolifically used this technique too). Or when Gyllenhall is arguing with his wife about his obsessions, the camera rarely if ever joins their faces in the frame. The camera often focuses on the wife, with Gyllenhall hectically doing something out of frame, so to communicate their estrangement from one-another. Subtle, common, tricks like that really accentuate the tension and atmosphere of the film.

For some reason... a movie about a mystery made me want to talk about camera work and editing...

On the acting front, I really liked Ruffalo and Gyllenhall. But Downey felt a bit too... ostentatiously Downey for me.

 

[MusterX]

Oh Zodiac film you, two hour and forty minute run time up my spine, like a slow moving street sweeper at 3a.m.

The Zodiac is never one that really fascinated me because he was so, vanilla. He's like one of the original serial killers we knew about in the modern era and he benefited greatly from less than spectacular detective work and forensics. He was never particularly morbid or shocking like many of the ones that came after him. Someone like Ted Bendy wanted to kill because it was gratifying to him whereas the Zodiac seemed to be gratified not by the killed as much as by the games he played with the media and police.

He was also short lived compared to someone like the Green River killer who killed for decades before finally being brought to justice. Zodiac's crimes probably only spanned a year or two and then he stopped which is really weird because serial killers can't stop, its a compulsion. This is a piece of evidence that counts against Arthur Leigh Allen. He went to prison for other crimes and got out in 4 years but there were no more murders or letters from the Zodiac while he was in prison from 1974-1977.

If you put a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on him he would look pretty close to the composite sketch as well. The Zodiac claimed he used a disguise while he was killing.

I don't know how much was true in the film concerning the maids discussion with the Zodiac about his birthday being December 18th but Arthur Leigh Allen was indeed born on the 18th of December.

The Zodiac wasn't this depraved psycho though, not like we know now with guys like Dahmer. He wasn't into having sex with the bodies that I know of, not into cannibalism, and didn't save the body parts. In fact, even his method of killing seems very anti-serial killer because he mostly used a gun and the vast majority of serial killers are more hands on than a gun allows. I'm sure some people may have suspected the Son of Sam killer as being the Zodiac when he began shooting people in 1976.

Arthur Leigh Allen died of a heart attack and died in 1992 and he was only linked to the 7 that were attacked in 1968-69. He was suspected of killing as many as 20-28 and he claimed to have killed 37. The movie centered on the prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen although with techniques pioneered later he was cleared due to DNA evidence, the partial print on the taxi, and handwriting analysis. Thing is, you can't trust their collecting methods in 1968-69. The DNA could have been anyone's, the partial print on the taxi also could have been anyone's, a detective, someone that walked up to the cab and looked in before the police arrived, who knows, and hand writing analysis is notoriously unreliable which is why nobody goes to jail based just on handwriting alone. It would have to match perfectly.

One of the most damning bits of evidence against Arthur Leigh Allen is that in 1992, Mike Mageau picked him in a line up and said that is the guy that shot me. Mageau was played by Jimmi Simpson in the film.

The couple that was first killed in the film was Mike Mageau and Darlene Ferrin which was actually the second set of murders in real life.

Darlene was killed but Mike survived and picked out Arthur Leigh Allen as his assailant. Mageau also described a brown Corvair at the Blue Rock Springs scene. Allen's friend, Philip, owned a brown Corvair that Allen was allowed to use. An unidentified man named "Lee" was known to associate with Ferrin, shown above, and Allen frequently went by his middle name Leigh. So there was all this circumstantial evidence against Allen but he gets cleared due to the much later DNA test. The dude even wore a watch that said Zodiac on it.

 

[the muntjac]

When I was in my late teens/early 20's, I went down a rabbit hole reading anything I could about serial killers. One of those being, of course, the Zodiac Killer. Honestly, he's not one of the more interesting or bizarre killers. It's more so the mystery of who he is and the way he taunted the police and the media with codes. Granted, when this movie was coming out, I was excited to see it, and it did not disappoint. It's shot well, it's acted well, it's got pretty much everything you could ever want to know about the case in it, and most importantly, the pacing of the movie is done well. This is a movie about a murder case that has been open for decades, so there's a lot of names, dates, and locations to go over, basically a lot of tedious information. We see three different murder scenes all within pretty much the first 15-20 minutes of the movie, and the rest of the 2 hour 42 minutes runtime is all about collecting information and putting the clues together. On paper, this sounds kinda boring, but the way in which the film never seems to slow down and take a breath and constantly barrages the viewer with new information, whether it's helpful to solving the mystery or not, keeps the story chugging along nicely and kept me gripped. Just look at what David Fincher did with Social Network. It's also another movie based on a true story filled with tedious information, but the way that he kept the story non-linear by having the story bounce around kept the story more enthralling. Fincher knows how to pace subjects that would seem boring on paper.

I know I've mentioned this before a few times on this forum, but the scene with the couple at the lake that Zodiac ties up and stabs is one of the more chilling scenes in a movie I have ever seen. Yes, the fact that this actually happened to two people definitely adds to that chill factor, but the way in which the scene is structured helps too. There's no music or music cues in the scene. There's nothing jump-scare about it. It's a straightforward horror show. It's a very tense moment. It starts as seemingly a robbery, and ends with a blindside of stabbings. I knew beforehand what would happen, but even so, just seeing a very faithful adaption of a horrific true event gave me the willies. Pretty much every word spoken in that scene is what is in the police report given by the survivor. Even the girl mentioning that he was studying psychology, and the guy asking if the gun was even loaded and Zodiac showing him the clip. Scary stuff.

My biggest gripe about the film is the handling of the Kathleen Johns event. This is the woman with the baby who is abducted by the seemingly helpful driver. The problem is that it seems unlikely that this was done by the Zodiac because Johns' events of that night changed, or became drastically more sinister every time she told the story when questioned by police. In her first police report, she says the driver acted friendly even though they drove around for over an hour on back roads while passing stations. She eventually felt creeped out enough to bail from the car at a stop sign and hid in a field. She said the guy just got out, shut her door, and drove off. It was in later renditions of her story when the driver allegedly said the line of, "After I kill you, I'm going to throw your baby out of the window," and after she jumped out of the car, the guy tried finding her with a flashlight. The only reason Zodiac started getting thrown into this story is because she saw a picture of the composite drawing of the Zodiac on the wall and claimed that was the guy. That's when her story started to get more bonkers. I think she was just looking for attention. Zodiac took credit for the crime after it was printed in the paper, and he didn't give police specific details that he used to give in his earlier letters. When this scene started when I first saw the movie, I was intrigued in which direction it would go, and obviously it went in the most Hollywood scare-factor direction. The fact that the movie dips to black after Zodiac says the baby line feels like a copout to me because it's like Fincher wanted to add this line, but didn't really know how to then end the scene since the story is most likely bullcrap anyway. But hey, it makes for a creepy scene, right?

Funny enough, I've never read Graysmith's book, which the movie is heavily based on. Discussion on who the Zodiac Killer could have been will probably derail this thread, but I've always been inclined to believe it was Arthur Leigh Allen. There's just too many puzzle pieces that connect with him that can't be ignored, regardless of some questionable DNA results. To wrap this up, this is probably the fourth or fifth time I've seen this movie, and even though it doesn't hold the thrill of the first time I saw it, it's still a fine movie. I'll probably watch it again sometime in my life.

 

[the muntjac]

On the acting front, I really liked Ruffalo and Gyllenhall. But Downey felt a bit too... ostentatiously Downey for me.

I liked him. Downey's role in this gave him a career renaissance, if you will, which lead to him being Sherlock Holmes and Iron Man. There was a lot of talk and praise about him when Zodiac came out. Granted, he was playing a depressed alcoholic, so you wonder how far into the well he had to draw from to nail the role.

 

[the muntjac]

Someone like Ted Bendy wanted to kill because it was gratifying to him whereas the Zodiac seemed to be gratified not by the killed as much as by the games he played with the media and police.

I thought Ted Bundy was a jerk, but Ted Bendy puts him to shame. He went on a real bender.

 

[MusterX]

I thought Ted Bundy was a jerk, but Ted Bendy puts him to shame. He went on a real bender.

My point was that the Zodiac was a different kind of psychosis than someone like Bundy. Ted was a biter, he was violent to the extreme once he started killing and he was gratified by the killing. Zodiac didn't seem to even want to get his hands dirty. Most of the time he would just shoot his victims and leave. Both are murderers but Bundy is way further up the list of depravity than the Zodiac.

 

[the muntjac]

My point was that the Zodiac was a different kind of psychosis than someone like Bundy. Ted was a biter, he was violent to the extreme once he started killing and he was gratified by the killing. Zodiac didn't seem to even want to get his hands dirty. Most of the time he would just shoot his victims and leave. Both are murderers but Bundy is way further up the list of depravity than the Zodiac.

Indeed. Bundy actually had a girlfriend, wife, or at least some sort of woman in his life while he was out choking other women to death and then committing necrophilia on them. Point is, it's not like Bundy was incapable of getting laid. He just preferred raping dead women. A real sicko, that one.

Zodiac's story is very similar to David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam. Mainly, they both shot their victims in vehicles and then fled. They also both wrote taunting letters to the police and media. I'd say Berkowitz's story is more intriguing though. Both of them are rather low on the depravity totem pole of serial killers, but they're still sick bastards in their own rights.

 

[MusterX]

Honestly, he's not one of the more interesting or bizarre killers. It's more so the mystery of who he is and the way he taunted the police and the media with codes.

I came across this article from 2011 that was pretty interesting. The Zodiac sent something like 4 ciphers but only the first one was broken but this guy back in 2011 says he broke the 340 character code that named the Zodiac.

Starliper also thinks that he has solved a cipher devised by Zodiac that has remained unsolved for over 40 years.

"The first one was cracked by a history teacher and his wife," said Starliper. "What I'm driving at was the first code was cracked by amateurs. So they figure that any communication after that would be able to be cracked by amateurs."


After the decryption of the first code, Zodiac sent many more communications to law enforcement and the media, including his most famous: a 340-character cipher, mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle, according to zodiackillerfacts.com. To this day, the cipher has not been completely cracked.


Starliper, however, believes he has found the solution to that code.

KILL/SLF/DR/HELP/ME/KILL/MYSELF/GAS/CHAMBER/AEIOUR/DAYS/QUESTIONSABLE/EVERYY/WAKING/MOMENT/IM/ALIVE/MY/PRIDE/LOST/I/CANT/GO/ON/LIVING/IN/THIS/WAY/KILLING/PEOPLE/I/HAV/KILLD/SO/MANY/PEOPLE/CANT/HELP/MYSELF/IM/SO/ANGRY/I/COULD/DO/MY/THING/IM/ALONE/IN/THIS/WORLD/MY/WHOLE/LIFE/FUL/O/LIES/IM/UNABLE/TO/STOP/BY/THE/TIME/YOU/SOLVE/THIS/I/WILL/HAV/KILLD/ELEVEN/PEOPLE/PLEASE/HELP/ME/STOP/KILLING/PEOPLE/PLEASE/MY/NAME/IS/LEIGH/ALLEN/

https://patch.com/california/fostercity/has-the-code-of-the-zodiac-killer-been-cracked

 

[MusterX]

Indeed. Bundy actually had a girlfriend, wife, or at least some sort of woman in his life while he was out choking other women to death and then committing necrophilia on them. Point is, it's not like Bundy was incapable of getting laid. He just preferred raping dead women. A real sicko, that one.

Zodiac's story is very similar to David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam. Mainly, they both shot their victims in vehicles and then fled. They also both wrote taunting letters to the police and media. I'd say Berkowitz's story is more intriguing though. Both of them are rather low on the depravity totem pole of serial killers, but they're still sick bastards in their own rights.

That's one thing about serial killers, they try to blend in well. Green River killer held down a job and tried to go about his business when not killing. BTK had a wife and kids and worked as a city code enforcement guy. Ted Bundy worked a suicide hotline. John Gacy was a clown for children's birthday parties and owned his own construction company while also being a political activist. You would never know these guys were sadistic killers unless you met them at the wrong place and the wrong time. Humans are scary.

 

[the muntjac]

I came across this article from 2011 that was pretty interesting. The Zodiac sent something like 4 ciphers but only the first one was broken but this guy back in 2011 says he broke the 340 character code that named the Zodiac.

Starliper also thinks that he has solved a cipher devised by Zodiac that has remained unsolved for over 40 years.

"The first one was cracked by a history teacher and his wife," said Starliper. "What I'm driving at was the first code was cracked by amateurs. So they figure that any communication after that would be able to be cracked by amateurs."


After the decryption of the first code, Zodiac sent many more communications to law enforcement and the media, including his most famous: a 340-character cipher, mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle, according to zodiackillerfacts.com. To this day, the cipher has not been completely cracked.


Starliper, however, believes he has found the solution to that code.

KILL/SLF/DR/HELP/ME/KILL/MYSELF/GAS/CHAMBER/AEIOUR/DAYS/QUESTIONSABLE/EVERYY/WAKING/MOMENT/IM/ALIVE/MY/PRIDE/LOST/I/CANT/GO/ON/LIVING/IN/THIS/WAY/KILLING/PEOPLE/I/HAV/KILLD/SO/MANY/PEOPLE/CANT/HELP/MYSELF/IM/SO/ANGRY/I/COULD/DO/MY/THING/IM/ALONE/IN/THIS/WORLD/MY/WHOLE/LIFE/FUL/O/LIES/IM/UNABLE/TO/STOP/BY/THE/TIME/YOU/SOLVE/THIS/I/WILL/HAV/KILLD/ELEVEN/PEOPLE/PLEASE/HELP/ME/STOP/KILLING/PEOPLE/PLEASE/MY/NAME/IS/LEIGH/ALLEN/

https://patch.com/california/fostercity/has-the-code-of-the-zodiac-killer-been-cracked

I actually remember when this happened. Damn, that was all the way back in 2011? Man, where have the years gone?

However, I believe this guy’s code-cracking has come under scrutiny, and there’s other code-breaking buffs that say his solution isn’t legit, which is a shame because I remember this being exciting when it first broke.

 

[the muntjac]

That's one thing about serial killers, they try to blend in well. Green River killer held down a job and tried to go about his business when not killing. BTK had a wife and kids and worked as a city code enforcement guy. Ted Bundy worked a suicide hotline. John Gacy was a clown for children's birthday parties and owned his own construction company while also being a political activist. You would never know these guys were sadistic killers unless you met them at the wrong place and the wrong time. Humans are scary.

It’s crazy. Can you imagine going to one of Gacy’s neighborhood bbqs he would throw and smelling the weird, foul odor in his house that people said they smelled, only to find out later that you went to a serial killer’s party and it was the stench of rotting dead bodies filling up your nose? That’s some twisted shit.

Speaking of the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway, it’s theorized that he was plucking prostitutes from the same Vancouver area around the same time that Robert Pickton was. That’s nuts to think that there was overlap between two high profile serial killers getting victims from the same source.

 

[europe1]

The Zodiac is never one that really fascinated me because he was so, vanilla

Obviously he has nothing on the GOAT serial killer!

as much as by the games he played with the media and police.

So if he brought his wife to the killings they would have been the original Natural Born Killers?

and the vast majority of serial killers are more hands on

partial print on the taxi also could have been anyone's, a detective, someone that walked up to the cab and looked in before the police arrived, who knows, and hand writing analysis is notoriously unreliable which is why nobody goes to jail based just on handwriting alone. It would have to match perfectly.

The movie does play with these factoids constantly though. Throwing them like curve-balls to constantly befuddle it's protagonists. And yeah... handwriting... cocked an eyebrown when that was first brought up. But I guess it was deamed legit back then.

The couple that was first killed in the film was Mike Mageau and Darlene Ferrin which was actually the second set of murders in real life.

One thing that I found kind of odd... if Arthur Leigh and the woman knew each other... wouldn't there have been more witnesses to collaborate that piece of evidence than just the dame that was incarcerated?

, I went down a rabbit hole reading anything I could about serial killers.

Ah. I also remember the youthful halcyon days of beating down homeless people and raping wome- I MEAN EATING CANDY AND PLAYING NINTENDO!

I KNEW IT! You sick fucks can't help but laying out clues for us normies to follow! I'm sending the high sheriffs to your Nintendo dungeon right now mister!

This is a movie about a murder case that has been open for decades, so there's a lot of names, dates, and locations to go over, basically a lot of tedious information.

I agree. I though the movie had a very pedagogic presentation of all its details. There is a really neat narrative to their presentation and escelation, with the constant jostling between time-periods and protagonists serving to keep it fresh.

Just look at what David Fincher did with Social Network

Man I always loathed Social Network just due to the look and feel of that movie. I can't even get through it. Fincher has greated some absolute masterpieces like Gone Girl and Seven but some of his stuff just rub me the right off.

It's more so the mystery of who he is and the way he taunted the police and the media with codes.

About them codes, when I was watching this movie (didn't know anything about the Zodiac killer previously), and the code element was brought out, I thought...

Okay, this guy is clearly after fame and attention. He wanted to be seen as a mastermind, some grand chess-master that outwits his opponents.

So... why not just make the codes unsolvable? That would have guaranteed his reputation. The codes would have remained uncracked until the sun goes out and he would be perceived as the mastermind. After all, serial killers arn't all about sportsmanship and fair-play, they're after that sense of being something grandiose.

I know I've mentioned this before a few times on this forum, but the scene with the couple at the lake that Zodiac ties up and stabs is one of the more chilling scenes in a movie I have ever seen. Yes, the fact that this actually happened to two people definitely adds to that chill factor, but the way in which the scene is structured helps too. There's no music or music cues in the scene. There's nothing jump-scare about it. It's a straightforward horror show. It's a very tense moment. It starts as seemingly a robbery, and ends with a blindside of stabbings. I knew beforehand what would happen, but even so, just seeing a very faithful adaption of a horrific true event gave me the willies.

Also... that it starts as such an intimate moment. When the scene begins, the girl is comfortably resting her chin on his chest to show that they're really close and affectionate, having a gay old time at the beautiful and scenic lakeside. Then, THAT happens.

Even the girl mentioning that he was studying psychology, and the guy asking if the gun was even loaded and Zodiac showing him the clip. Scary stuff.

That seems like a fairly galling thing for a psychology student to say. Was he trying to win affection from the killer (in hopes that he wouldn't kill them) by trying to share a moment between them, or something?

My biggest gripe about the film is the handling of the Kathleen Johns event

Also... considering how suspicious those circumstances were. With her wheel falling out after he "fixed" it and everything, it seems supremely odd that she would agree to hitchhike. Especially with her baby in there.

It's also odd since the movie throws shade at every piece of evidence -- making us question if they're even valid. Yet that scene almost goes un-commented on. It could be cut from the film and change virtually nothing. Here the filmmakers had a chance to muddy the waters even more, yet didn't? Why do that? Maybe because that scene was so emotionally-charged and nightmarish that they wanted to keep it more as an emotional high-point than as a puzzle-piece in the game.

He just preferred raping dead women. A real sicko, that one.

and putting the clues together

I thought that code-breaking discussion was really interesting in just how much common-sense it entailed. Like searching for double consonants, and knowing that the double-l is the most common double-consonant. It's sort of like the better Sherlock Holmes stories where there is a lot of common-sense involved.

You would never know these guys were sadistic killers unless you met them at the wrong place and the wrong time. Humans are scary.

What are the common psychological features for serial killers anyways? I've heard childhood trauma and a childhood torturing of animals are common signs. I would imagine that hatred of others would be fairly common too, misogyny and racism and such.

Speaking of the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway, it’s theorized that he was plucking prostitutes from the same Vancouver area around the same time that Robert Pickton was. That’s nuts to think that there was overlap between two high profile serial killers getting victims from the same source.

Man, what was it with the late 60's and 70's? It looks like a boom period for wacko serial killers.

 

[europe1]

It’s crazy. Can you imagine going to one of Gacy’s neighborhood bbqs he would throw and smelling the weird, foul odor in his house that people said they smelled, only to find out later that you went to a serial killer’s party and it was the stench of rotting dead bodies filling up your nose? That’s some twisted shit.

John Gacy was a clown for children's birthday parties

Googling John Gacy made me look at Scott Parker 27 in a whole new light...

 

[MusterX]

What are the common psychological features for serial killers anyways? I've heard childhood trauma and a childhood torturing of animals are common signs. I would imagine that hatred of others would be fairly common too, misogyny and racism and such.

I'm definitely no expert but I have read a good amount of material about the topic over the years. It seems its different for each killer what might contribute to their eventual dive into the deep end of the pool. Ted Bundy for example said in his last interview before he was executed that the main contributing factor for him was an addiction to pornography and the fact his mother was a whore. So you have this weird mix of hatred of his mother and pornography, its no surprise he chose girl victims and brutalized them.

Ted at least admitted it, I don't think Gacy ever did, he was proclaiming his innocence either all the way to the end or almost to the end. Dahmer showed the classic "serial killer" behavior as a child and loved to dissect animals and put them into vats of acid, which he later did to his victims. I don' think Dahmer got the attention he needed from his parents as a child but that isn't the only contributing factor. One that I always found scary was Ed Kemper. He was 6'9" and had a genius level I.Q. of 145. So you are physically going to be smaller and mentally he is a genius. Luckily I think he actually felt a little bad and wanted to get caught so he only had 10 victims.

There used to be a show called Most Evil that you can probably still find somewhere online. It was a show where a clinical psychologist named Michael Stone from Columbia University would examine all the serial killers and then rate them on a scale of 1-22 to determine who was "Most Evil." This show ran for a period of seasons and eventually was taken over by another host but there are some pretty seriously good episodes.

Yep, I just looked on YouTube, they have a ton of full episodes. Here is an example, I just picked one at random.

This one covers psychotic killers and that goes to your original question, what makes each killer do what he did. Manipulators, control killers, rage killers, spree killers, stone cold killers, sexual deviants, fantasy killers, etc., all have a different mental problem and reasons.

 

[Andersons Foot]

I love this movie. Great cast, dialogue feels natural, it looks great.

As far as the Zodiac Killer, I'm still not sure I have an opinion on who he is. I tend to think it was Arthur Leigh Allen, but I'm not convinced. It seems odd that he'd just outright tell someone he was going to start killing people as "The Zodiac Killer". Maybe that guy was just trying to pin it on ALA for whatever reason. It's a very interesting case.

They should've had him the night he killed the cab driver.

 

[europe1]

Ted Bundy for example said in his last interview before he was executed that the main contributing factor for him was an addiction to pornography and the fact his mother was a whore

Well... to be fair... we can hardly take a serial killer at face value, given their physical condition. And even if they genuinely believe so themselves, it may very well be a symptoms instead of the underlying cause kind of situation.

But of those mentioned in this thread, I think it's interesting that Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer, Kemper all had traumatic or extremely neglectful childhoods. Or at so their wikipedia articles would lead me to believe. Are their a number of high-profile cases where this was not the case.

 

[MusterX]

@europe1 These would be examples on Michael Stone's Most Evil Scale. Each one would have a more detailed explanation but you will get the idea. There are many different types of killers.

22 levels of evil, broken down by a Columbia psychiatrist.

Level 1
Those who have killed in self-defense, and who do not show traces of psychopathy.

Level 2
Jealous lovers who committed murder; although egocentric or immature, they are not psychopaths.
Example: Samuel Collins

Level 3
Willing companions of killers: aberrant personality, impulse-ridden, with some antisocial traits.
Example: Leslie Van Houten (Manson Murders)

Level 4
Those who have killed in self-defense, but had been extremely provocative toward the victim for that to happen.
Example: Jose Elizondo

Level 5
Traumatized, desperate persons who killed abusive relatives or other people, but who show remorse for their crime and are not psychopaths.
Example: Martha Ann Johnson

Level 6
Impetuous, hotheaded murderers, yet without marked psychopathic traits.
Example: Robert John Bardo

Level 7
Highly narcissistic, but not distinctly psychopathic persons—some with a psychotic core—who kill persons next to them, with jealousy as an underlying motive.
Example: Mark David Chapman (Shot John Lennon)

Level 8
Non-psychopathic persons with smoldering rage, and who kill when the rage is ignited.
Example: Charles Whitman (The "Texas Tower" sniper)

Level 9
Jealous lovers with marked psychopathic features.
Example: Betty Broderick (Killed her ex-husband and his new wife.)

Level 10
Killers of people "in the way", such as witnesses. Extremely egocentric, but not distinctly psychopathic.
Example: Susan Smith (Killed her two sons and then told the media it was two African Americans that did it.)

Level 11
Psychopathic killers of people "in the way", such as close friends or even family members.
Example: Dennis Rivera (Killed another gang member who was going to testify against him in court.)

Level 12
Power-hungry psychopaths who kill when they are "cornered".
Example: Ervil LeBaron (Killed his opponents in a religious cult through the doctrine of "Blood atonement"

Level 13
Psychopathic murderers with inadequate, rageful personalities, rage being the reason of their killings.
Example: Ed Gein who inspired characters like Leather Face and others.

Level 14
Ruthlessly self-centered psychopathic schemers who kill to benefit themselves.
Example: John List (Killed his entire family and then disappeared for 18 years. He had a new identity, remarried and started a new family.)

Level 15
Psychopathic cold-blooded spree killers or multiple murderers.
Example: Andrew Cunanon (Killed Versace) Charles Starkweather (Went on a 2 month killing spree in Nebraska for which several movies have been made.)

Level 16
Psychopaths committing multiple vicious acts, with repeated acts of extreme violence.
Example: Ted Kaczynski (Unabomber)

Level 17
Sexually perverse serial murderers: Rape is the primary motive and the victim is killed to hide evidence.
Example: Ted Bundy, Arthur Shawcross, David Berkowitz, Henry Lee Lucas

Level 18
Psychopathic torture-murderers, where murder is the primary motive, and the victim is killed after a torture that was not prolonged.
Example: Gary Ridgeway (The Green River killer)

Level 19
Psychopaths driven to terrorism, subjugation, intimidation, and rape, short of murder or murder is not the primary motive.
Example: Gary Krist

Level 20
Psychopathic torture-murderers, where torture is the primary motive, but in persons with distinct psychoses (such as schizophrenia).
Example: Albert Fish (Known as "the Boogeyman", he loved to torture children), Joseph Kallinger

Level 21
Psychopaths who do not kill their victims, but do subject them to extreme torture or extreme violence.
Ariel Castro (Extreme torturer)

Level 22
Psychopathic torture-murderers, where torture is the primary motive. In most cases, the crime has a sexual motivating factor.
Example: Tommy Lynn Sells, John Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, BTK, Ed Kemper, etc.

 

[europe1]

Level 22
Psychopathic torture-murderers, where torture is the primary motive. In most cases, the crime has a sexual motivating factor.
Example: Tommy Lynn Sells, John Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, BTK, Ed Kemper, etc.

I'm guessing Luis Garavito would belong in that category (whom has the highest body count among serial killers who did not work in medecine)

 

[MusterX]

I'm guessing Luis Garavito would belong in that category (whom has the highest body count among serial killers who did not work in medecine)

Yes, a level 22, because he was into rape, torture, and murder. The level 22's don't want to just kill, they are motivated by sexual deviancy and torture. That's why the Texas Tower sniper was only a level 8 on the scale, whereas Garavito would be a full on level 22. Another 22 would be Andre Chikatilo, ./shiver