Sadistic serial killers: 4 horrifying cases

Ted Bundy, Gilles de Rais, Elizabeth Bathory and Chikatilo: infamous serial killers.

Before we begin... where does the word "sadism" come from?

Sadism: defining the concept

The term sadism (as a synonym for cruelty) arose with the case of Donatien Alphonse François, better known as the "Marquis de Sade"a Parisian born in 1740. The Marquis de Sade was imprisoned due to his scandalous life, which was replete with incidents involving prostitutes in which a multitude of violent acts and sodomy were reported. After many incarcerations and successive releases, he was finally transferred to the famous he was finally transferred to the famous Bastille prison.. Interned and with little chance of release, he wrote all his controversial works. Finally, the Marquis de Sade managed to escape from prison due to the revolution, but he spent his last years in a mental hospital in Charenton.

Among his most famous works are "The 120 Days of Sodom" (1784), "Justine" (1791), "Philosophy In The Boudoir" (1795) and "Juliette" (1797), writings that were censored for many years due to their high and explicit content of extreme violence and rape. Here is the link to the film adaptation of one of them.

Thus, the case of the Marquis de Sade was one of the most paradigmatic in the study of sadism and the psychology of the serial killer. and the psychology of the serial killer, and was useful to establish the basis of what in the future we would know as Criminal Psychology.

The sadistic profile in the serial killer

As for the different psychological profiles of the serial killer, we can find all kinds of personalities and psychologies, we can find all kinds of personalities and motives for which they carry out their crimes..

There are some serial killers who commit crimes because of their desire to feel powerful, others who perceive themselves as a kind of "vigilante". In other cases, the psychological causes may be due to serious mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, psychotic outbreaks, manic episodes... but prevalently we find those who perpetrate these crimes for the sheer pleasure of seeing their victim suffer, i.e., sadists. sadists.

Individuals who enjoy the pain of others.

The sadistic serial killer is one who feels sexual arousal by inflicting pain on another person.. It can be physical pain: seeing his blood, beating, torturing, watching him agonize; or psychological: i.e., humiliating the victim, lowering his self-esteem to zero, feeling that he is his master, etc.

Rape is considered a form of sexual sadism, although sexual intercourse is not usually the primary satisfaction of sadistic serial killers and, on most occasions, this type of sexual assault is not reported.

Sexual sadism in DSM IV

Although it is not a very widespread sadistic behavior, it is useful to know some important aspects of sexual sadism.. 

This pattern of sadistic behavior is included with the denomination of "Sexual sadism" in the DSM IV (302.84) in the paraphilias section, defined as: "During a minimum period of 6 months, recurrent and highly arousing sexual fantasies, sexual impulses or behaviors involving acts (real, not simulated) in which the psychological or physical suffering (including humiliation) of the victim is sexually arousing for the individual".

Some relevant cases of sadistic serial killers

Gilles de Rais

Gilles de Rais was a French marshal who participated in the 100 Years' War with Joan of Arc. It is said that Gilles de Rais was deeply in love with her, and when his idolized Joan was captured and burned at the stake, he was deeply angry with God, he was deeply angry with God and pleaded in despair that he would never again be faithful to Christian moral mandates.

From then on, he locked himself in his castle and began to kidnap children, to whom he performed the worst atrocities. He tortured, raped and murdered them, and then continued to commit acts of cruelty.He tortured, raped and murdered them, and then continued to commit acts of necrophilia with their lifeless bodies. We find quotes from Gilles de Rais himself in the trial he was given when he was condemned for these terrible acts in the book "The Marshal of Darkness". We quote:

I confess that I killed those boys and girls in different ways and using different methods of torture: with some I separated their heads from their bodies, using daggers and knives; with others I used sticks and other whipping instruments, giving them violent blows on the head; with others I tied them with ropes and ropes and hung them from doors and beams until they drowned. I confess that I took pleasure in wounding and killing them thus. I enjoyed destroying innocence and desecrating virginity. I took great delight in strangling young children even as those children discovered the first pleasures and pains of their innocent flesh. [...]

I liked to see the Blood flow, it gave me great pleasure. I contemplated those who possessed beautiful heads and proportionate limbs and then opened their bodies and delighted in the sight of their internal organs and very often, when the boys were already dying, I sat on their stomachs, and was pleased to see their agony....

I am one of those people for whom everything connected with death and suffering has a sweet and mysterious attraction, a terrible force that pushes down. (...) If I could describe or express it, I would probably never have sinned. I did what other men dream of. I am your nightmare.''

Elizabeth Bathory, the Bloody Countess

Belonging to one of the most powerful families in Hungary in her time, Elizabeth holds the Guinness World Record as the woman who committed the most murders in the world. the woman who has committed the most murders in the history of mankind, with about 650 tortures andwith around 650 tortures and deaths, all of them young girls between the ages of 9 and 26.

In addition to a sadistic and sexual perversion, Countess Elizabeth Bathory had a special attraction to blood, and was not only content to drink it (as is usual in so-called vampire killers) but also bathed in it in order to prevent her skin from aging over the years.

The figure of Elizabeth Bathory is world famous, especially thanks to various accounts of her story and for being one of the main characters in horror games, for example the board game "Atmosfear". Popular culture has given Báthory a prominent role as the most bloodthirsty and ruthless woman on record.

Films have also been made about this woman such as The Countess (2009) y Báthory, the Countess of Blood (2009) and Báthory, the Countess of Blood (2009). (2008).

Andrei Chikatilo, the Butcher of Rostov

This case is about the protagonist of the macabre photograph at the head of this article. Andrei Chikatiloborn in Ukraine in 1936, had since adolescence problems of sexual impotence that he only overcame in an extremely pathological way.He discovered his first strong erection when he cut a naked girl (whom he was going to abuse) with a knife, feeling great excitement when he saw the blood.

Andrei murdered 53 women between 1982 and 1990most of them minors. His crimes were perpetrated with inhuman cruelty: he amputated their nipples and pulled out their uterus and then ate it, among other things.

These words were uttered by Andrei himself: "In perverse sexual acts he experienced a kind of rage, a feeling of unrestraint. Especially after watching all kinds of sex films. What I did, I did after watching videos of perverse sexual acts, cruelties and horrors".

The psychiatrists of the Serbsky Institute claimed that Chikatilo was a prudent sadist who did not suffer from any disorder that could make him recoil from the immorality of his acts, since his acts were premeditated. For that reason, he was sentenced to death. At the same trial, shielded in a metal cubicle to protect him from the enraged crowd, he took off his clothes and waved his penis, shouting, "Look at that futility. What do you think I was going to do with this?"

The movie "Citizen X" is about the investigation into the murders of Andrei Chikatilo. Highly recommended.

On the other hand, a documentary was made about him, we provide the link here:

Ted Bundy

Born in 1946, raped and murdered dozens of women between 1974 and 1978 in the United States. in the United States.

Bundy took advantage of the kindness of his victims to commit his crimes. He would prowl around universities posing as a badly wounded man, on crutches or some similar trick.. He pretended to drop his books, so the girls would pick them up and walk him to his car. Ted Bundy seemed too tender and helpless to be dangerous or threatening to the girls who came to help him.

The moment the coeds approached his car, Bundy would hit them with a crowbar and begin his macabre plan. In addition to torture, mutilation and rape, he practiced necrophilia.. He returned repeatedly to the Seattle woods where he had buried the corpses, often taking pieces of them home with him. In all, he confessed to thirty murders, although the actual number is unknown, probably much higher.

Bundy said:

"It happened in stages, little by little, my experience with pornography in general, but with pornography that features a high level of sexual violence, once you become addicted to it, - and I see this as a kind of addiction just like other kinds of addiction - you start looking for all kinds of material with more powerful, more explicit, more graphic stuff. Until you get to a point where pornography goes so far that you start to wonder what it would be like to actually do it [...].

I've met people who radiate vulnerability.... Their facial expressions say, I'm afraid of you. These people invite abuse.... Expecting to be hurt, do they subtly encourage it? [...]

I am the most cold-blooded bastard you have ever met.

We serial killers are their children, their husbands...and we are everywhere."