common physical traits of serial killers

In order to avoid the death penalty, Norris testified against Bittaker. “Once they got the girl into their van, it didn’t matter if they were 15 or 17,” says O’Toole about the age discrepancies, adding that “they didn’t ask for their IDs.” Ultimately, they murdered five girls: Leah Lamp, 13 Jacqueline Gilliam, 15 Shirley Ledford, 16 Lucinda “Cindy” Schaefer, 16 and Andrea Hall, 18. That was the kind of girl he was attracted to: a younger girl, more of a teenage girl. “Was that gamesmanship? I don’t know,” she says. O’Toole, who interviewed Bittaker for the FBI, says that their plan was to “get a girl for each teenage year.” Their goal was a seven-victim spree: one each for ages 13 to 19. The pair formed a close friendship, and hatched a plan to rape and murder teenage girls once they were both free. Bittaker was serving time for assault with a deadly weapon for stabbing a supermarket clerk, when Norris joined him at the complex in 1977 on a rape charge.

The pair met at the California Men’s Colony prison in San Luis Obispo. All told, the duo raped and murdered five teenage girls over four months in 1979 before their apprehension. pliers, hammers) before ending their lives.

The Toolbox Killers: Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norrisīittaker and Norris earned their macabre nickname for the items they used to torture their victims (e.g. Other killers are more comfortable waiting for the “right” highly desirable victim to come along.Ī&E True Crime takes a closer look at some serial killers with well-defined victim preferences, and what made them home in on their victims of choice. Some serial killers will feel such a strong compulsion to murder that-when the itch comes on-they won’t be very selective, choosing victims largely by who is available and accessible at that time. is joined by retired FBI Profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole who explains what it is like to get inside the mind of a killer.Īccording to O’Toole, the amount of variety in the full breadth of serial killer’s victims speaks to their impulsivity. In this episode of PD Stories, Tom Morris Jr. “At first, you don’t know what you like and what you don’t like.”

O’Toole says these preferences typically develop over time: from early “practice” murders-when the killer is still finding their murderous identity, and will kill whomever is most readily available-to later on, when they’re more experienced and have narrowed down how, and whom, they wish to kill.

Common physical traits of serial killers