By: Karla Garcia
One of the most interesting parts of studying serial killers is their emotions or lack thereof. When we think about serial killers, I think we associate them with having no remorse or empathy and that seems to be spot on. When someone is unable to feel empathy, they fail to understand the feelings of others and it makes them have no remorse. Mental health is important and without empathy we cannot have a healthy mentality.
But the question, “can serial killers feel empathy or remorse?”, is a question that has passed through many of our heads. Some people might say that expressing regret/remorse might be two different things from feeling it. Overall, when interviewing and analyzing serial killers we can see that they do not feel remorse or empathy towards the victim.
Ted Bundy
For instance, let’s look at Ted Bundy who believed that guilt was a mechanism used to control people, which allows us to see his reasoning for having no remorse. Bundy did not value human life or what would happen to him after he murdered everyone. These are clear signs of lack of empathy and should always be taken seriously and so should his mental illness problems which also added to his lack of empathy. Bundy also has mentioned before that if he wasn’t caught for his crimes that he would’ve continued killing for longer. Some might question if towards the end he felt some sort of remorse because he cried the night before his execution when he was praying with a minister, but as we know serial killers are very charismatic and good at lying. It might be possible that he felt something due to fact that he was dying, but it is unlikely he felt remorse for the victims.
Final thoughts
There are some cases in which serial killers feel remorse, but for the most part we see that since they have no empathy to start with it is almost close to impossible to have them be remorseful. Having no remorse is sick knowing that you ended innocent lives for your own personal satisfactions. Serial killers are best at being charismatic people who often hide their psychopathic behavior to fit it, but they cannot always execute it when they feel no remorse or empathy because eventually their desire to kill makes them slip up.
Keywords: remorse, empathy, lack of, mental health
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