An Interest in Serial Killers

In an earlier post, Asperger's Awareness for Assistance Professions, I touched on the importance of professional awareness of certain behaviors in Asperger's, and how they can be misunderstood. Such misinterpretations, handled improperly, can cause a great deal of havoc in the lives of people with Asperger's, and their families. I recently saw yet another example of this depicted in the movie, "Billy The Kid."

As I laid out in my last post, Billy The Kid is a documentary following a few days in the life of a 15 year old from Maine named Billy, who has Asperger's. Not too far into the film, Billy's mother relates a call she received at home:

"I got a call at home that, you know...'Is Billy okay? Um, does he seem okay at home?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, he's fine. Why?' And, well, he took this and this and this out of the library today...and we just want to make sure that everything was okay. One was about serial killers...serial killers through the ages or something like that. One was about spree killers like Bonnie and Clyde, that sort of thing. And I guess he took, you know, two or three out in one day...and somebody noticed and it sent up a red flag...because Billy has issues."

This account greatly saddened me, because I could follow the school officials' line of reasoning to its final conclusion - which could be potentially explosive and highly damaging to Billy and his family, if handled incorrectly. And, I personally bore the brunt of these types of incidents throughout my childhood.

It was clear that I was not completely off track in this line of reasoning when I re-read the reviews of the movie. This account was frequently cited as evidence that Billy was "disturbed." Take John Anderson's response in Variety: "The only responsible note in 'Billy the Kid' is that when Billy checks out multiple books on serial killers from his school library, someone has the sense to make an issue of it. You don't want to wish that the same librarian had worked at Virginia Tech, but the thought certainly crosses your mind."

Now, I'm not saying that caution is not warranted in cases where a child or young adult shows an unusual interest in so dark a subject -- however, I find myself wondering why this librarian didn't ask Billy why he was interested in the subject. I think that he or she would likely have found the answer surprising. The fact that the immediate jump is to suspicion has its own dangers, which, unfortunately, have a disparate impact on those with Asperger's.

Because of the limitations of how those with Asperger's have in interpreting the social world, we can very easily, especially as children, miss cues about what might be appropriate in a given situation, what might upset another person, and what could be potentially misunderstood. That, coupled with our tendency to become fixated on certain interests, may cause us to inadvertently trigger concerns about our state of mind, or make people think we are "dangerous," when in fact, we're nothing of the kind.

As Tony Attwood writes in The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, "The child or adult may collect information on a topic that is causing emotional distress or confusion, as a means of understanding a feeling or situation. This can include death and mortality. An example is a child with Asperger's syndrome who had a very close relationship with his grandfather. The two would often walk around the family farm, deep in conversation about animals and farm machinery. On one walk, the grandfather had a cardiac arrest and died. The child did not appear to mourn the death of his grandfather in conventional ways but began a special interest in cardiac disease and read as many books as he could find on heart disorders. He wanted to know exactly why and how his much-loved and admired grandfather died."

In Billy's case, it seems clear to me, that he's simply trying to understand the world he lives in. When interviewed about the incident, he says, "Well, I've read about Son of Sam, and, of course, Henry Lee Lucas. I found out not all serial killers were born, you know, killers. Most of the time they way they were raised...the way they were abused leads to their insanity. Like Henry Lee Lucas was, you know...He was basically abused by his mother."

Reviewing my own childhood - I searched for answers in the very same way. Being, as Temple Grandin so aptly put it, "An Anthropologist On Mars," I was driven to fill the gaps in my innate understanding with a systematic study of humankind. What makes people tick? What are the rules for living successfully as a human being?

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When studying a culture, you don't just study the aspects you agree with. To truly have a comprehensive understanding, you have to study all the aspects of the culture. If you were studying the Maya, you wouldn't ignore the fact that they practiced human sacrifice, however repugnant you might feel it was. In fact, that very repugnance might drive you to think more deeply about it - to wonder how in the world one human being could justify doing something like that to another...

It seems to me that Billy was studying aberrations in human behavior, not because he wanted to emulate them, but because he wanted to understand why they occurred in the first place. The fact that he references the concept of "sin" several times throughout the movie hints at some religious background. If that is so, he most likely has been taught that one should not kill.

If murder is the ultimate taboo (as it should be), then people who not only do so, but do so without conscience, are an puzzle, a mystery -- an ominous one. We like to be able to understand the world. The rules that govern the way the world works. Uncertainty can be very stressful to a person with Asperger's, especially when we're young.

What are rules, if they're not in effect always - suggestions? If people aren't supposed to kill, and are supposed to feel bad if they do, then how do you explain those that do, and don't? That's frightening. It just doesn't fit with how the world is supposed to be. We're all supposed to be good and kind to each other.

If you can't explain why they do it, can you identify the indications that would allow you to differentiate a dangerous murderer from a person who "plays by the rules"? If you can't identify any differentiating factors, then how do you know that your next door neighbor isn't a serial killer? How can you be safe? If you're unable to make the pieces fit, the world is very scary. Lacking an instinctual understanding of people makes it even more so.

How do you predict human behavior? What are the common threads that make people behave aberrantly? How can you guard yourself against people who behave this way, if you can't identify them?

I imagine that these were the types of questions that were in Billy's mind as he read these books. As his mother states - "... he's not renting those books because...He's not treating them like a how-to book. He's researching. He likes to know a lot of...He likes -- He knows a lot of stuff about a lot of different things."

In the end, noting that many of these people were badly abused in childhood, he concludes that, "...you must always be careful on how you raise a child. You know, be careful not to abuse them." Is that disturbed?

He's not planning to become a serial killer. He's figuring out how we can make less of them. Sounds pretty smart to me.