Trigger warning: Violence.
What makes a serial killer or mass murderer? This question is often posed with lots of pontificating on things like nature vs. nurture, childhood trauma and the like. Indeed, a few standout risk factors have been identified: autism spectrum disorder, head trauma and child abuse being the Big 3. But there's one that often goes unmentioned, either out of ignorance or because it's not politically correct to discuss it. This single factor is so overwhelmingly omnipresent in serial killers that it's almost unbelievable that the world's leading psychologists would overlook it by chance, which leads me to believe it's the latter. That risk factor is a history of service in the U.S. military.
If you were to Google any well-known serial killer in U.S. history right now, chances are you'd find that they've got a history of military service prior to committing their crimes. Try it. David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz? Honed his expert rifle shooting skills in the military. Gary Heidnik? Received high marks in service & attended military school. Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer? Joined the U.S. Navy in 1964 & served in Vietnam for 22 months before becoming a police officer in California, where he committed his brutal series of rapes & murders. The one exception I can think of is Night Stalker Richard Ramirez, but alas, he was directly influenced by his older cousin Miguel who served in Vietnam & shared horrific stories of raping the body-less heads of women he'd decapitated in the war. He also shot his girlfriend in the face in front of young Richard, cementing the marriage of sex and violent gore in his mind.
In my own life I know several vets who went in relatively normal and came out to commit horrific crimes--one raped a girl in my town while she was unconscious (drunk) and another committed suicide after getting addicted to meth & going AWOL from the Marines. The worst of the group killed his infant son and then committed suicide before he could be charged. It later came out that he ran over a child in Iraq due to instructions by a commander to never slow down for fear of being blown up by an IED. The cries of his baby boy must've caused flashbacks that triggered a rage. When he returned home, he was told by a superior never to speak of the incident so he was unable to truly get help for the trauma. One has to wonder how common this is with vets returning home from war zones.
When Violence Abroad Comes Home
Soldiers are given intense training in marksmanship & survival before leaving for war. This training is harsh, unkind and downright cruel at times but is necessary to prepare them for what's coming. When war is over, they're sent right back into the "civilian" community without any kind of de-escalation or therapy to help reacclimate them to life outside a warzone. This often makes it extremely difficult to reintegrate into society as the fight-or-flight response and adrenaline are still running high. These mechanisms literally kept them alive for months or years abroad except now they serve no purpose other than causing nightmares, flashbacks, depression & other symptoms of PTSD.
When people think of PTSD they usually only consider how horrific it is for the person afflicted, but if not treated properly it can also result in domestic violence and, in extreme instances, violent crime in the community. See: the case of Chris Kyle, who was killed by a fellow veteran he had taken on a "shooting therapy" excursion as a form of (dangerous & ineffective) PTSD treatment. Another well-known example is the D.C. Sniper, who went on a multi-state shooting spree with a child he was molesting. Both killers had a history of military service prior to committing their crimes, but there are many less well-known cases.
These war wounds can also blossom into homegrown terrorism. OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh served in the Gulf War & became jaded to the military's mission halfway through, returning home to unemployment & disillusionment with the ATF's behavior at Waco, prompting him to become radicalized & commit the Oklahoma City Bombing 2 years to the day after the Waco siege on April 19, 1995. McVeigh was every bit the terrorist that Mohammad Atta or Ramzi Yousef were but his path to terrorism is less comfortable to discuss since he was a white American militiaman with a history of military service. So they executed him in record time before he could say too much about his motivations. Problem solved. If the OKC bombing happened today, there's no doubt that FOX News, OANN and similar networks would praise McVeigh's politics & views, if not his methods. Just look how many people fawned over Kyle Rittenhouse.
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| Timothy McVeigh during the Gulf War |
There's no question that our government is failing to provide our veterans with adequate housing, mental health care & treatment for specific ailments such as Gulf War Illness & Agent Orange poisoning. But few media outlets are willing to touch on what that failure might mean for the rest of us. It's abhorrent to hang your soldiers out to dry after they've served their country; we can all agree on that. It's this secondary effect that needs discussion because there seems to be a conspiracy of silence about the effects of war-induced PTSD on American society as a whole. When the military fails to de-escalate returning soldiers after war, we all pay.
Caring for our vets is often left entirely up to private organizations like Wounded Warrior Project, which is disgraceful. These orgs shouldn't even have to exist! If our military and government did what they were supposed to by providing for these people, they wouldn't have to rely on charity, which is beyond insulting. If you risk your life for this country, you should be set for life--not discarded when you're no longer physically capable of fighting. When you consider that these traumatized soldiers are also highly trained with weapons & often left to self-medicate with alcohol or other substances, it can become a volatile situation.
Obviously correlation doesn't equal causation. Perhaps people who enlist in the military already have a higher propensity to commit violent acts for some reason, such as lower socioeconomic status or education. Military recruiters flock to impoverished high schools so this has to be taken into consideration. Also, there's a possibility we have the cause and effect backwards: maybe people willing to kill in the first place are just joining the military because they already have that tendency and the military service itself isn't "causing" anything. It's sort of like the link between football and domestic violence: is the head trauma making players violent, or are they already violent as evidenced by their behavior on the field every day?
Either way, sweeping this risk factor of military service under the rug because it's uncomfortable to talk about doesn't do anyone any favors. Our government doesn't have the right to put us all in danger because they refuse to care for our vets. We should all be livid that this is happening because it's preventable. Every war since WWII has been unnecessary & based on lies rather than protecting our nation. But if they're going to send our troops to war, the least they can do is provide them with housing, healthcare (including adequate mental healthcare) & employment opportunities upon return. And that includes allowing and encouraging soldiers to talk about WHATEVER horrific things they've seen and done at war with a licensed therapist, not burying it deep inside where it will surface later in a horrific way.
Note: This is a critique of our government, not our troops. In no way do I mean to imply that all veterans are violent or have the potential to harm others. It's clearly a tiny minority who go on to commit violent acts upon returning from war. I deeply appreciate the sacrifice our troops make by enlisting voluntarily. Caring for our vets for their own sake should be priority #1. I just wish our government felt the same.
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