When the first profile was created, it said that the SK may have had law enforcement training. I think there's perhaps a stronger case for military training given the SK's expert use of cell phone technology. Someone in Iraq or Afghanistan would pretty much have all the knowledge required to avoid detection by law enforcement. There also seems to be a link between serial killing and the military. Check this out:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gaddy/gaddy61.1.html
"Today's military units have the ability to listen and pinpoint the point of broadcast of any type communication device and jam it."
http://www.ssrsi.org/Onsite/cellphone02.htm
"The advent of disposable mobile phones also has increased their appeal to insurgents in Iraq."
"...The use of cell phones as triggers for IEDs has been highly publicized and remains by far the most deadly use of cell phones by Iraqi insurgents. As of May 2007, U.S. deaths by IEDs numbered 1,359 -- almost half of the 3,389
U.S. service members who have lost their lives since the invasion of Iraq."
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081001091127AAsGybL
"As long as the cellphone they are bringing has a SIM card in the back...you just buy a SIM card from one of the Haji marts over there."
Nice and true, but the level of expertise of this SK didn't get that far. He used the victims phone for less than three minutes each. But in crowded areas like Times Square. So it's not the time you need to ping, that is relevant but the simple number of people with cells at their ears that makes it impossible to pinpoint him there. That is knowledge, everyone gets free into the house every night with CSI, Law and Order, Criminal Minds and Co. He didn't use a disposable, he used the victim's cell.
www.shsu.edu/~stdrem26/pictures/MilitarySerialKillers.pdf
"Grossman (1996) stated that today, the military uses various training methods to increase the killing rates of servicemen, including brutalization, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and role modeling."
Well, in fact, militaries do that since about 7000 years. But of course about every twenty years, there is a new hype about they finally found the absolute recipe ... which normally it is a lot but not final.
I think, but its' now two decades since I was discharged, the basic problem is, that you send young people to warzones. It's not easy to explain how life is there, but the basic parameters are, even on a day, nothing happens, nobody really relaxes because it could change any moment. And after a while, beginning with dead enemies and then with dead buddies, it appears as if the time you have till you leave is endless and there is no chance you can make it. Of course, your conscious part says, a lot of the others make, have done it already in fact, but the feeling is different. And to realx, even only for some valuable hours, you suddenly need pills, alcohol or drugs. Some parties become excessive. But even more dangerous is eating it all in oneself.
And then, one day, you are back in the world and everything is somewhat slower, a little bit less colorful and you think, you are surrounded by people, who have no idea but want to know. And you have no words to express that in completeness. It's like a part of you never really found home. Diagnosing PTSD is so easy, but to understand it is a different story. And this all has nothing to do with training. You need no training to get brutalized in a war zone. The belief in being the worst bad *advertiser censored* around is sometimes the only thing holding you alive. And then you come home as a real sick bad *advertiser censored*.
...Killing in the military or eliminating the enemy threat is deemed an essential survival tool. Servicemen are positively reinforced for this behavior. Servicemen also are exposed to the interactions of other servicemen being reinforced for their behavior. Grossman (1996) discussed this in his study, contending that the military uses positive role modeling and that the role models usually represent people who personify violence and aggression."
Can be, everything is now different. Every new generation tells the generation before, now it's all different and that's not different between clerks, cops, waiters and soldiers. It's called generation conflict. The point Grossman made is the group dynamic (the sacrosanct badass I mentioned above). And from my personal experience, I think, he got there a core factor. But especially in the last decades, military is much more drilled also in military law (distinctions who to kill and who not) and also rules of engagement. To kill the right target is reinforced positively, the wrong one, well, that can become an embarrassing story. And sometimes, of course, nobody wants to know too detailed what happened.
The role model discussion of Grossman is, in my opinion too generalized. I know, you talk here implicitly about a sniper and for snipers, black ops units and probably to a degree also Marines, his model of role modelling is pretty consistent with what I remember (I wasn't in the US military but worked together with them). However, Grossman forgets about the group dynamic counter effects like honor codes and unit codes.
So, in this special case, I would rather expect someone, who, if he was in the military (there is a probability for that), made it unrecognized through the psychological selection process for such training. The usual combination would be sniper/explosives. Militaries all over the world have a hard time, to filter out the psychopaths from the volunteers.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Serial_killers
"...The "military theory" has been proposed as an explanation for why serial murderers kill, as some serial murderers have served in the military or related fields. According to Castle and Hensley, 7% of the serial killers studied had military experience...
Here it goes funny. Happens sometimes, if psychologists use mathematics. In the US and Canada probably about 7% (Calste and Hensley studied only a small number) have military experience. That means
a.) 93% have none
b.) Since over all wars and so on, we have in the meantime about 12% veterans, the number of 7% would be lower than the statistical expectation.
I have only a number for 2000, but with some searching 2010 shoudl be somewhere to:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-22.pdf
...Among modern serial killers who have some background or experience in the military are some notable examples. David Russell Williams was a colonel in the Canadian Air Force who escalated from panty heists to serial rape to serial murder.[105]
Only Russel never flew combat missions. The nearest, he ever came to war, was camp commander in Dubai. His real traumatic experience would have been in Canada, where he was Wing Commander in Trenton. But that was already in 2009 and he was already three years killing. And the profile of dozens of petty thefts over a long time before he started first panty heists then rapes and then developed into killing is very similar to a lot of SKs which didn't serve in any military.
Robert Lee Yates killed prostitutes in Washington state while he was in the U.S. Army.
I'm not familiar with that case and can't find details, so I can't say too much here.
Serial killer Randy Steven Kraft killed U.S. Marines after he was discharged for mental health reasons; he reasoned: "If I couldn't be a Marine, they can't either".[103]
In fact, he was gay and also dependent on Valium for stomach aches and migraines (and don't ask me who gave him Valium for that). After the Air Force (and he was kicked from the Air Force, not the Marines) found out, they discretely discharged him honorably for "health reasons". So he came with problems to the military and had later still the same ones, only he had focused them on soldiers. Notable in this case is also a wide gap between what he did and what he confessed. Not always can one take the confessions of SKs as gold.
Jeffrey Dahmer served in the U.S. Army as a Combat medic until he was medically discharged.
Only Dahmer started to kill a long time before he joined. And he had also his drinking problem already earlier. When it was noticed, he got discretely discharged for "health reasons". That was the usual practice then and is partially still.
John Reginald Christie served in the British Army during World War I, and later served in the London Metropolitan Police during World War II.
Now, that's a funny one! It was WWI. Almost every male in a usable age had been drafted, which, if Castle and Hansley would be right with their suspicions, that the quota of SKs under the male population after WWI and then again after WWII should have been nearly 100% in Europe. But in fact, we can only guess (they didn't write down statistics about SKs back then). Since there are in the first five years after those wars the number of active SKs was in fact surprisingly low and of those we know were a lot of common criminals in the black market, I would assume, that the real psychopaths had caught themselves some bullets during the wars (they tend sometimes to idiotic actions under pressure).
Dennis Nilsen was a cook with the British Army, and later served in the Metropolitan Police and the civil service.[106]
In fact, Nilsen started to kill in 1978, five years after he was discharged on his own request.
Few of these individuals experienced combat situations during their military careers; some exhibited mental or behavioral problems separate from or prior to their military experiences."
In fact ALL of the cases, I recognized from this list came to the military with personality disorders or other mental diseases and had them still when they were discharged or caught.
The problem, I see with Castle and Hensley is, that if any other professional group would have a quota of SKs according to their share in the population, it wouldn't be worth a study. But the military is always nice, even the quota is in fact lower than the share of the veterans in the population. Which makes Castle and Hensley rather proponents of a political correct anti-militaristic approach than accurate. But then, since I served the country I was born in, I don't even claim to be entirely objective in that.
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Of course he did! Once a psychopath is in, he is normally tough, not hampered by too much emotion and obeys also dirty orders without ethical objections. And other kinds of SKs, without a significant anti-social personality disorder have also reasons to be good at what they do in the military. Remember Berkowitz, the Son of Sam? He searched there a replacement for his messed up family, the same as he did later in the weirdest circles he could find.