UF Researcher Unearths Reports Of Serial Murder By Children

October 14, 2004

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — They leave multiple clues at the scene of the crime. They are impulsive and less adept at hiding their weapons. And they confide in friends who just can’t keep a secret.

In short, they are terrible at covering their tracks.

Yet until now, the disturbing details of a half-dozen children’s serial killing sprees have remained well hidden, concealed in 150 years worth of medical literature, true-crime tales, newspaper clippings and history books, says a University of Florida forensic psychiatrist.

The stories surfaced only recently, shedding light on a previously unknown psychopathic phenomenon, reports Dr. Wade C. Myers, writing in the journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law. Myers initially began studying cases of sexual murder by children and adolescents after he was asked on occasion to evaluate them for the legal system.

“I wanted to see what I could learn from the scientific literature about kids who do these sorts of crimes,” Myers said. “When I went to the textbooks to learn more, I found there was almost nothing written about them. That was the impetus for my studies of children who commit sexual homicides. With time, I began to wonder whether there actually were children who had independently committed serial murder, so I hunted through innumerable articles, crime books and other sources in a quest to better understand this form of juvenile murder.”

From actor Anthony Hopkins’ chilling portrayal of Hannibal Lecter to accounts of the multiple murders of Ted Bundy, Aileen Wuornos or John Wayne Gacy, serial killers both abhor and fascinate. And while cases of children perpetrating such heinous crimes are exceedingly rare, Myers said their stories nonetheless speak to a wider societal issue: the effect of an unstable or abusive family life on juvenile delinquency in general.

“One of the biggest factors in helping to decrease delinquency or violent acts by children is to arrange for children to have the most stable, caring, loving upbringing possible, with positive role models,” said Myers, an associate professor of forensic psychiatry at UF’s Health Science Center.

In contrast, the children described in Myers’ paper, five boys and a girl, were commonly subjected to cruel discipline, neglect, and physical and emotional abuse. Three were from the United States, two from Europe and one from Central America. All murdered before they turned 18, killing at least two victims — usually other children — most often by cutting, stabbing or strangling them.

The first case involved a boy who was born in Boston in 1859 and killed two young boys when he was 11. The most recent case involved a boy from El Salvador convicted of seven murders in the 1980s and suspected in 10 other killings.

“These children’s upbringing was the opposite of ‘Leave it to Beaver,’” Myers said. “For instance, one had a prostitute for a mother who abandoned her as a child. Another had a brutally abusive father who butchered farm animals in front of his son from the time he was a toddler. Parental antisocial role models create powerful effects on a child’s development and identity formation.

“It’s safe to say that none of these children would have committed serial murder had they come from stable backgrounds, and none of them did come from stable backgrounds,” he said.

In most cases, the children took a sadistic pleasure in torturing their victims before killing them, and the crimes all had sexual elements, Myers said. Before she was caught, a girl from England taunted the parents of a 4-year-old neighbor boy whom she strangled on the eve of her 11th birthday, asking them if they missed their son. She even attended his funeral, laughing as his coffin passed by. According to the journal article, a psychiatrist who evaluated her “said he had never encountered such a psychopathic child — one as ‘intelligent, as manipulative or as dangerous.’”

All six children who committed serial murders waited days or months before murdering again, differentiating their cases from mass or spree murder cases such as the Columbine shootings, which don’t have a “cooling off” period between the acts, Myers said.

The research also omitted cases such as that of convicted Beltway sniper John Lee Malvo, who as a minor killed multiple victims but did so while under the direct influence of an adult co-conspirator. In addition, Myers did not include a number of famous serial killers who killed for the first time during adolescence but didn’t strike again until adulthood, as they did not meet the definition of committing serial murders while still minors.

None of the children gave any prior indication they were likely to murder, Myers said. And unlike many of their adult counterparts, the children tended to be ill-prepared and impulsive in their modus operandi, leaving a bigger trail of evidence. Moreover, they favored victims who lived nearby, thereby placing themselves in a much smaller pool of suspects and increasing the likelihood they would be caught.

“In some ways, you could see how the abusive background of these children ended up becoming a factor,” said Myers, who is now writing a book on the subject. “They had little capacity to feel guilt and displayed psychopathic personality features, such as being emotionally cold, callous and manipulative. What is harder to explain with these children is what actually creates in them a fascination with sadistic acts, that is, pleasure in the harming or killing of others. That’s harder to answer. We still don’t know where these feelings, urges and fantasies come from.”

Forensic psychologist Reid Meloy, a noted expert who served as a consultant on the Oklahoma City bombing and Madonna stalking cases, said Myers’ work represents the first time anyone has looked at serial homicide committed by adolescents as a clustering of cases and then tried to delineate the shared characteristics of that group.

“I think it contributes to the understanding of violence in youth,” said Meloy, also an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego and president of the nonprofit research group Forensis Inc. “The difficulty, of course, is that these cases are so rare and so unusual it may not shed light on the more common violence we see adolescents committing. In a fortunate way it remains a very rare phenomenon, much rarer than even adult serial homicides. Dr. Myers is the foremost researcher in this area and the work he’s done has been pioneering. Nobody has taken the time prior to this to look at these very aberrant and very lethal adolescents.”