What You Don't Know About Serial Killers

Dr. Sasha Reid’s resume would make the highest overachiever feel inadequate. Her bio speaks for itself: interdisciplinary social science researcher and a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary. She recently finished her PhD at the University of Toronto in Developmental Psychology and Human Development, with a dissertation focused on the developmental origin of serial killers. Her academic background also includes two master’s degrees, in Criminology and Sociolegal Studies and Applied Psychology and Human Development.

Let me summarize that for you: she’s a genius and she studies serial killers. Here’s the best part: she’s going to share some surprising things she’s learned about serial offenders with CrimeCon 2020 attendees. Let’s get to know Dr. Reid:

CCI: How did you come to pursue this line of research?
SR: During my Master’s program I studied psychopathy and how psychopathic traits develop. You can really only read about so many psychopaths before you run into a serial killer. I’ve always been fascinated by crime, deviant behavior, abnormal psychology. I wanted to understand more about how those traits develop.

CCI: What’s something that has surprised you in the course of your research?
SR: I was surprised to learn that external risk factors don’t actually predict or explain why violators do what they do. It’s easy to say “Oh, they had a bad childhood” or say they’re a monster and leave it at that. It’s a common misconception that there’s a clear connection between childhood abuse and psychopathy. During my PhD. research, I wanted to see which external factors could accurately predict the development of psychopathic traits and none of them would.

CCI: What factors do contribute to that development?
SR: It’s a combination of thought process and experience. It’s about what they think and how they see the world and how they interpret the things that happen around them. They believe the world is the way they see it, then when any experience that doesn’t fit that image comes along, they’re not equipped to handle it. Circumstances and situations become distorted and overwhelming and resort to violence as a way to deal with it.

CCI: You’ve created a database of serial killers and risk factors. How is the database used?
SR: There are actually two separate databases but they can be used in tandem. One is a databank serial killer that I studied for 7-8 years to understand their development and factors in their lives that might determine their criminal trajectory. We looked at how their criminal behaviors advanced and escalated. Who are they offending? Did their victimology or MO change? Did they begin using different weapons? It helps us better understand who they are and looking at aggregate data may help build more accurate criminal profiles.

The second database contains information about missing persons in Canada. Canadian law enforcement tracks every single missing and murdered in the country. We can look at the data and see trends over time and in different geographic areas. It is used to study the landscape of victimology as it changes over time.

CCI: What can we expect from your CC20 session?
SR: Attendees will learn about how a serial killer’s thought processes can contribute to criminal violence and influence their victimology. In most cases we know what happened to the victim but never why it happened. It’s important to understand that. It’s called phenomenology -- the study of how to go inside the mind of another person and their consciousness. We’re looking at not just one person but dozens of people at the same time to draw a general understanding of their world and how they’re experiencing it. The audience will also learn a little about the history of how we’ve (mistakenly) conceptualized serial killers and why our current perceptions of them are problematic.