The Triad--I've heard this about mass murderers, this page says serial killers,

[raccoon]

but hey, either one is bad news.

The Triad

Animal Cruelty

These secret compulsions are seen as the seeds to greater mayhem. "Violent acts are reinforced, since the murderers either are able to express rage without experiencing negative consequences or are impervious to any prohibitions against these actions. Second, impulsive and erratic behavior discourages friendships," increasing isolation." "Furthermore, there is no challenge to the offenders' beliefs that they are entitled to act the way they do." (Ressler, et al, Sexual Homicide) "All learning, according to Ressler, has a "feedback system." Torturing animals and setting fires will eventually escalate to crimes against fellow human beings, if the pattern is not somehow broken.

Torturing animals is a disturbing red flag. Animals are often seen as "practice" for killing humans. Ed Kemper buried the family cat alive, dug it up, and cut off its head. Dahmer was notorious for his animal cruelty, cutting off dogs heads and placing them on a stick behind his house. Yet not all serial killers take their aggressions out on pets. Dennis Nilsen loved animals, particularly his dog Bleep, whom he couldn't bear to face after being arrested for fear that it would traumatize the dog. Rapist torturer and murderer of eight, Christopher Wilder, had made donations to Save The Whales and the Seal Rescue Fund.

Pyromania

Peter Kurten loved to watch houses burn, and Berkowitz, when he tired of torturing his mother's parakeet, became a prolific pyromaniac, keeping record of his 1,411 fires. "Oh, what ecstasy," said Joseph Kallinger to his biographer Flora Schreiber, "setting fires brings to my body! What power I feel at the thought of fire! ... Oh, what pleasure, what heavenly pleasure!" Pyromania is often a sexually stimulating activity for these killers. The dramatic destruction of property feeds the same perverse need to destroy another human. Because serial killers don't see other humans as more than objects, the leap between setting fires and killing people is easy to make.

Bed Wetting

Bed wetting is the most intimate of these "triad" symptoms, and is less likely to be willfully divulged. By some estimates, 60% of multiple murderers wet their beds past adolescence. Kenneth Bianchi apparently spent many a night marinating in urine-soaked sheets.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/tick/5b.html

This thread inspired me to post this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x7822830

[raccoon]

1. Nobody has responded to this thread. I'd have thought the way we've heard

about serial killers so much in the last 20 years or so in the movies, TV, novels, etc., that there'd be some response. We heard about serial killers about as much as we hear about antidepressants, antacids, erectile dysfunction meds.

I'm seriously considering going out and eating worms. Except that I probably wouldn't be able to find any because it's been so dry around here. Looks like the Southwest, with dry grass and yucca plants.