(Please excuse if this is redundant or a ridiculous question)
I’ve heard the saying “If you ask if you are crazy, then you are not crazy” and “Memory loss is not forgetting where you put your car keys, but forgetting you have a car.”
Along those lines, JP confessed to his horrific crimes as if he was confessing to something minor, like jaywalking or removing tags from a mattress. IMO
My question is: Do psychopaths KNOW they are psychopaths?
IMO, from my clinical studies and profession, most have what I'd call " fantastical belief systems" about their actions, and it's likely a superficial answer, because psychopaths lack introspection and remorse..
The usual comments we read post- crime relate to things such as the person believes they are " truly special", " Put on earth for a mission", " Ridding the world of evil ( those who focus on prostitute killings). Or that they are consumed by an evil force, were born evil, or can rid themselves of their evil nature through killing others.
Manson alternately blamed and praised Satan, then decided he WAS Satan.
Some are psychosexual deviants to the point that part of their sexual fulfillment involves the defilement of the human body to an extreme degree ( Dahmer, Dennis Rader, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, and thousands less well known). The sexual deviance which involves mutilation of the victim is likely the most publicized " reason" given for a particular ASPD with violence's infamy..
There are many aspects to the spectrum of criminality which are never released to the public because of the gruesomeness and out of respect for the living families of victims. Textbooks contain the details but the info can't be said on the evening news or on a website.
Some never sexually touched their victims, but killed many people and by the use of a drug or drugs and some are in textbooks and historical lore about older era serial killers.. There are women who give birth to, then killed many babies. Underlying factors were usually extreme poverty, and lack of access to birth control ( husband forbade it, there wasn't anything reliable during that time, they lacked awareness of how to stop the reproductive process due to lack of sex education). Prior to the mid- 20th century, it is believed that there was a whole subset of serial killers who were mothers who killed their newborns at birth or shortly afterwards and claimed the child was born dead, or was ill, or choked- a thousand different excuses for thousands of tiny lives lost. SOME of those skeletal remains are still being found today.. maybe stacked up, maybe in a family's ancestral home attic..
I just did a multiple keyword and site search and the common estimate by both LE and those involved in studying serial killers believe there are several thousand unknown serial killers in the US at large presently. I have heard of Thomas Hargrove's work, but I am not familiar with this publication source:
How Many Uncaptured Serial Killers Are Out There?
" There is no foolproof estimate for how many such criminals are living in communities, uncaptured, but Thomas Hargrove, the founder of the Murder Accountability Project, argued that there are as many as 2,000 serial killers at large — and that financial woes affecting city services could be making the problem worse."
