The Madman Within

I must admit a strong interest in the case of Russell Williams, the former top pilot in the canadian millitary and now confessed murderer/rapist/burgular/all around waste of a human being. His list of crimes so long as to almost seem redundant. Almost.

I find abhorrent behavior fascinating because I can't relate to it, but also because only the truly abhorrent can. Since I was young I've had an interest in serial killers, not so much on the crimes themselves or morbid details therein but in what motivates someone to reach such levels of depravity and how they are able, usually quite successfully for long periods of time, to hide this from others. The logistics, their process.

Though I'm no closer to understanding this, the questions I ask now are different. For instance: Russell Williams must have been acutely aware of his sick impulses, what if he had an outlet for them that didn't involve systematic terrorization and murder? Is this hypothetical outlet I speak of even possible? Before I can fully form an answer to that another pertinent question comes to mind: What, if anything, can citizens/government/law enforcement do to possibly stop someone like this in the future?

Maybe nothing. As someone who has only ever read about deranged minds from afar I really have no idea how entrenched or inescapable truly sick impulses are. For arguments sake (because my argument depends wholly on this) let's say that, at least in the case of Russell Williams, there was a tipping point. Not an exact time or place but some sort of formative period where he could have stayed on the path that led him to be a respectable human being for most of his life, but instead took a 180. I hypothesize this because so far the details seem to indicate that his descent, and certainly all of crimes, took place in the last 3 years alone. I say this with trepidation given what may later come to light, but it looks like he remained a law abiding and upstanding citizen until 2007. In looking at the totality of his existence, only a small fraction of it was spent undertaking heinous criminal activities. If he was 'normal' for so long, why couldn't or why didn't that continue?

I have to think that at least theoretically he could have turned out differently. I refer back to my question about having an outlet. I think if society can answer that question then there is a chance to stop predators like this. Perhaps it's naive to think that someone like Russell Williams, even if presented with some fictional outlet that sated his desires (sick as they might be) would chose that over the psychological and physical torture of real, live victims. Ultimately I'm just not comfortable with the thought that this was inevitable.

It seems far fetched to me that you could stop someone's brain from initiating depraved tendencies, but I know nothing of brain physiology so maybe that is, or can be, possible ala Minority Report. Surely there are many people who have twisted thoughts but never the inclination to act on them. Why wasn't Russell Williams one of them? What was/is different about him?

After all, it's the acts that we find most appalling. If he bought women's underwear from Winners and put them on and took pics of himself in his own home jerking off he wouldn't be arrested. There's no crime for being weird, there IS a crime for the manifestation of that weirdness into acts that harm others. Russell Williams became the later, but couldn't he have remained the former?

My desire to know answers to questions like that almost drive me to become a psychologist or sociologist, only in hopes of pinning down the elusive aspects of why certain members of our species wantonly wreak havoc and cause so much harm to so many other members of our species and if there is any way of preempting that.

Sadly i'm too often presented with interesting case studies.