Forensic psychologist ignores the obvious. Anything but alcoholism, as usual.
“The fact that they would dirty their own nest, as it were, is peculiar to me and suggests a level of mental illness or sickness.”
So said forensic psychologist N.G. Berrill, director of the New York Center for Neuropsychology and Forensic Behavioral Science, in hypothesizing that mental illness must play a role in the aberrant behavior of a killer like Anthony Sowell, who not only committed atrocities close to and in his home, but kept the trophies there as well.
Perhaps. However, the classic video of a bewildered Jeffrey Dahmer in prison, long sober, is revealing: he could be any John Smith. The common thread is more likely alcohol and other-drug addiction. It may or may not trigger mental illness, but without the addiction the crime would not likely be committed.
As I’ve long lamented, because journalists are unaware of its importance and, more recently, privacy laws interfere with solid investigative journalism, addiction cannot be proved in every murderer. However, the article that quotes Mr. Berrill lists eight of the most notorious serial killers in history. We can positively prove alcoholism in at least five of the eight: Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Dean Coril and Elmer Wayne Henley. A sixth, David Owen Brooks, was a likely codependent accomplice in the Coril-Henley murders. I’ll leave it to other researchers to investigate whether the other two mentioned, Gary Ridgway and Herman Webster Mudgett (known as “Dr. Holmes”), were alcoholics—which would best explain (but not excuse) the atrocities.