Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer - Softcover

Leyton, Elliott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786712287 ISBN 13: 9780786712281

Publisher: Carroll & Graf, 2003

Synopsis

In this new edition of his landmark 1986 study, pioneering anthropologist Elliott Leyton examines the psyche and motivations of his six original multiple-murderer subjects and now takes stock of how far we've come since then in our understanding of why people commit gruesome assaults on innocent strangers. This case-study approach—based on years of immersion in the killers' diaries, confessions, psychiatric interviews, statements to the press, videotapes, and photographs— led the way in defining serial and mass murders not as the acts of alien creatures with deranged minds but rather as personalized protests by alienated men against the society that they believe has excluded them. Leyton also provides an analysis of the Washington, D.C. sniper case. While uncovering the central themes of modern culture that motivated their deeds, Leyton provides vivid and chilling portraits of Edmund Kemper, Ted Bundy, Albert DeSalvo, and David Berkowitz, serial murderers whose prolonged killing campaigns provided them revenge against the world and celebrity careers; and other mass murderers whose brief but horrific murder sprees constituted their own enigmatic suicide notes. The author shows that the motives of multiple murderers are not simply sexual or psychotic; but rise from the very core of American mass culture.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

In this classic study, Elliott Leyton challenges the conventional idea of serial murderers as deranged madmen. He explores the twisted – but comprehensible – motives of a half-dozen notorious killers: Edmund Emil Kemper, Theodore Robert Bundy, Albert DeSalvo ("The Boston Strangler"), David Richard Berkowitz ("Son of Sam"), Mark James Robert Essex, and Charles Starkweather. In the process of describing their crimes Leyton exposes the cold rationality that underlies their apparent pointlessness. The result is startling: a revelatory text on a deeply troubling topic.

About the Author:

Elliott Leyton is a professor of anthropology at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0786712287
• ISBN 13: 9780786712281
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 420