“When I think of all the sweet, innocent people who suffer extreme pain and who die every day in this country, then the outpouring of sympathy for cold-blooded killers enrages me. Where is your (expletive deleted) sympathy for the good, the kind and the innocent? This fixation on murderers is a sickness, a putrefaction of the soul. It's the equivalent of someone spending all day mooning and cooing over a handful of human feces. Sick and abnormal.”(Syndicated columnist Charley Reese made an interesting analogy while criticizing the way abolitionists typically behave)
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Charley Reese
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In memory of Charley Reese, we will post this article by
Ashley Horsfall on those people who suffer from hybristophilia.
The People Who
Love Killers
Every day, murderers receive
letters from people who admire them. Online communities on websites like Reddit
bring together people with hybristophilia, essentially a sexual attraction to
criminals.
In the case of one community,
self-identified hybristophiles come together to discuss their mutual attraction
to serial killers and other dangerous figures. Some users comment on how “hot”
these people are, while some go as far as to discuss their satisfaction in the
way the killers “had sex with” their victims. On the sidebar is a clear
statement. “Some believe they can change a man as cruel and powerful as a
serial killer, but we don’t want change, we find them attractive as they are.”
Some people embrace their
affection for those who could never be called merely a “bad boy.” They share
this philia as if it were not more controversial than discussing your favorite
holiday frappucino. In between the excited statements (“Okay, but I literally
have the same obsessions! OMG!”) and heart emojis are comments with a simple
message. “Get therapy.”
Stumbling upon this community
was probably not as startling as it should have been. I’d definitely heard
about famous cases of people falling in love with murderers. But I didn’t
expect to find people discussing the details of their affection in such a blasé
manner. I realized I had a lot to learn.
What Is
Hybristophilia?
Hybristophilia is a sexual
attraction or arousal linked to individuals who have done something terrible.
In some cases, the attraction is based on something small, like infidelity or
fraud. A woman might get off knowing her husband had an affair. But in some
cases, the attraction verges into murderous territory.
As
you can see, hybristophilia does not always include a dramatic attraction to a
serial killer. It would appear that serial killers simply garner more media
attention. Those in the spotlight reap the largest, most vocal fan base.
If
you spend time researching hybristophilia, you will find both men and women
(though hybristophilia is often associated with women) describe having intense
emotions, sometimes more romantic than sexual. For instance, one poster
described Dylan Klebold as “husband material.” You know, if you don’t consider
the only reason anybody knows his name.
I
wonder how hybristophilia impacts the personal lives of the people living with
it. I wonder if they typically associate intense arousal with love. I wonder
who they date, who they marry. I wonder if they tell their loved ones about
their feelings.
Famous Cases of Hybristophilia
Hybristophilia
isn’t a new concept. If you’ve paid attention to any true crime news, you’ve
probably seen it before.
When
Ted Bundy was on trial for murder, vast swaths of women appeared outside the
courthouse with the hope of catching a glimpse of the killer. In fact, some
women who showed up at Bundy’s trial purposely changed their appearance so they
looked more like his victims with middle-parted brown hair.
In
1980, Bundy actually married one of his admirers. Carole Anne Boone married
Bundy after he’d confessed to 30 murders. The two initially met before the
murders began, but apparently Boone stuck around. In 1977, she was caught
helping him fund an escape from prison. In 1980, they married in the courtroom
during his trial. Two years later, Boone gave birth to a child she claimed was
Bundy’s. She divorced him a few years before his execution.
Richard
Ramirez faced the same mobs of women desperate for his affection. He even
married one of his groupies, Doreen Lioy, who had been writing to him after seeing
his picture in the paper. They married in the prison waiting room in 1996, but
they eventually separated before his death in 2013.
In
spite of the fact that Jeffrey Dahmer was a gay man, he received a slew of
letters and gifts from smitten women. In this case, it seems like many of the women
with a Dahmer obsession want to take care of him. They think a nurturing
relationship would have changed everything for the cannibal.
Angelo
Buono Jr., one half of the Hillside Stranglers, was linked to Christine
Kizuka. Buono caught her eye when she was visiting her husband in jail.
Buono lived in the cell next to him at the Los Angeles County Jail. Kizuka
eventually married Buono in 1986 at Folsom Prison.
One
Saturday Night Live skit poked fun at Erik and Lyle Menendez fans. In 1999,
Erik married a woman named Tammi
Saccoman at Folsom Prison before celebrating with a shared Twinkie. They’d
been pen pals up to the point. Saccoman went on to write a book about the
experience.
Susan
Atkins also married a man who claimed to be a multi-millionaire. Alas, it was
not meant to be. Donald Lee Laisure had been married 35 times and didn’t have
quite the fortune he claimed to. They divorced, and Atkins married another man
a few years later.
Not-So-Famous Cases of Hybristophilia
Of
course, not everybody with hybristophilia is attracted to the idea of a
handsome, high-profile serial killer. One German waitress, Dagmar Polzin, fell
in love with a picture of a death row inmate, Bobby Lee Harris. Within one year
of Polzin writing to Harris, the two were
engaged. Harris was re-sentenced to life in prison in 2003. Polzin came to
the United States to live with her fiance’s family.
A
woman serving a life sentence for the murder and dismemberment of a 19-year-old
man, Teresa Deion Smith Harris, began dating
Timothy Bernard McDonald from behind bars. Apparently he’d watched her
testify in the case and became smitten. McDonald and others remain convinced
that Harris is innocent. In 2016, he wrote a book about her case.
Cases of Aggressive Hybristophilia
In
most cases of hybristophilia, the admirer is passive. The admirer doesn’t
necessarily have an interest in participating in the crimes of their beloved.
This is not the case for those with aggressive hybristophilia.
Veronica
Lynn Compton was obsessed with the Hillside Stranglers. After she got in
contact with Kenneth Bianchi, Compton tried to kill a woman using Bianchi’s
M.O. in the hopes it would show the investigators the “real killer” was still
out there. Bianchi even gave Compton his semen so she could leave it at the
scene of the crime. Fortunately for everybody else, Compton’s
attempt to murder failed and the victim escaped. Compton was sent to
prison. In the meantime, Bianchi found somebody else to marry — Shirlee Joyce
Book, a woman who had previously tried to worm her way into the heart of Bundy
years earlier.
Then,
we have Karla Homolka. She actively participated in the drugging, rape, and
murder of several victims — including her own sister — alongside her husband,
Paul Bernardo.
Where Does Hybristophilia Come From?
It
certainly does not help that movies, television, and the news sometimes give
people a “bad boy” edit when they really deserve a “terrible person” edit.
Media outlets don’t help when they slap Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the covers of
their magazines. Zac Efron is going to play Ted Bundy in an upcoming film. Evan
Peters is fun to watch every week on American
Horror Story. But I wouldn’t say this is the main issue at play
here.
I’ve
entertained many ideas based on my research. Maybe some women want to nurture
bad men. Maybe some seek fame. Perhaps others like the idea of having a man
close, but not too close. Behind bars is safe.
For
these people, writing to somebody behind bars means they are the main
relationship in this person’s life. A woman might receive weekly letters in
which a man is conveying his innermost thoughts to her. It is so easy to fall
in love with the words on paper or the voice on the other end of the phone
line. Falling in love with somebody behind bars allows you to stay in a
perpetual stage of courting, not dealing with the monotony of work and family.
That
being said, I still don’t have an answer as to why so many people feel an
attraction to murderers and otherwise terrible people. Why some people try so
hard to give them attributes there is no evidence they ever possessed. I’m
ultimately left with more questions than answers.
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