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Originally Posted by Chula Vista
Wasn't mentioned in the book I read about him.
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Was it the one by Ann Rule? I loved how she told stories about knowing him. It's easy to see a lot of these people as just a list of all their terrible acts, and guesswork psychology, but hearing about him working working with her at a suicide hotline where he seemed dedicated to legitimately stopping people from killing themselves raised real questions about the nature of serial killer mentality.
Did he care about helping people? Was it a way to balance out his "sins"? Was it just a cover to make him look like a good person? Did he get off on trying to get control over the mind of someone in such a fragile mental state? Was it just a lark? Clearly he was a monster, but it's also good to try to see these people as a full person and not just the sum total of their crimes.
I'm conflicted over the death penalty in general, but I definitely think that someone with such an aberrant psychology would provide more worth to society by studying them than by just executing them. I think that anyone who is so obviously disturbed as Bundy or Dahmer should be placed in an institution, not as a way to rehabilitate them---which is by all accounts impossible---but to study them scientifically: in-depth therapy to record their thought processes and life experiences, noninvasive medical procedures like MRIs to detect brain aberrations, possible etc.
Keep them locked away for life in the same way as a prison, but try to use what would otherwise be a waste of a learning opportunity in order to benefit mankind. Even if they can't be helped, we might learn things to help diagnose them, treat them, deal with them, recognize the symptoms in children and hopefully reverse their abnormal psychology from progressing further, etc. It might not yield immediate results, but this approach might help future generations in the long-term.