Deadly brain strain drives dangerous twisted murderers
Infamous killers who were diagnosed with disorders
MATT Damon took the character to the big screen in the 1999 film adaption of novelist Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley.
And now it’s Fleabag star Andrew Scott’s turn to play the character with borderline personality disorder in Netflix’s new Ripley mini-series, starting Thursday.
BPD traits include disturbed patterns of thinking or perception, emotional instability, impulsive behaviour and intense and unstable relationships.
Here KIM CARR looks at famous murderers said to have personality disorders…
IAN BRADY
Alongside Myra Hindley he was responsible for the deaths of five children in and around Manchester between 1963-1965, dubbed the Moors murders.
The brute was labelled with antisocial and narcissistic personality disorder and was also given a diagnosis of psychopathy. He spent 19 years in prison, refusing treatment.
AILEEN WUORNOS
A prostitute who shot and robbed seven male clients in Florida, she was executed by lethal injection in 2002 after a decade on death row. She claimed the murders were self-defence.
Actress Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal of borderline personality disorder-suffering Wuornos after telling her story in the 2003 film Monster.
JOANNE DENNEHY
She admitted stabbing three men and disposing of the bodies in Cambridgeshire ditches in 2014, and after psychiatrist assessments was said to have psychopathic, antisocial and emotional instability disorders.
DANIEL GONZALEZ
Inspired by Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Surreyborn Gonzalez killed four and injured two more in 2004 across London and Sussex.
He was said to have antisocial personality disorder after an Old Bailey trial rejected his claim of being not guilty by reason of insanity.
RICHARD CHASE
After drinking his victims’ blood and eating their remains, he was dubbed the “Vampire of Sacramento” when he killed six people in one month in 1970s California.
One psychiatrist questioned whether he was schizophrenic and diagnosed antisocial personality disorder instead.
TED BUNDY
Another antisocial personality disorder murderer, who kidnapped, raped and took the lives of an unknown number of women and girls in the 1970s.
He was arrested in Utah and confessed to 30 killings the night before his execution in 1989 across seven states but the real number of his victims remains uncertain.
CHARLES MANSON
Leader of the Manson Family cult, the antisocial personality
disorder-diagnosed fiend was convicted of firstdegree murder and conspiracy to murder.
These involved the brutal deaths of seven people, including five at the home of actress Sharon Tate and filmmaker Roman Polanski in 1971, in California.
Sharon was eight and a half months pregnant at the time of her murder.
Manson died in a heart attack colon cancer. 2017 from caused by
JEFFREY DAHMER
Killing 17 boys and men between 1978 and 1991, he was known as the Milwaukee Cannibal and was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder plus schizo-typal.
Despite also having a psychotic disorder, he was found to be legally sane at his trial.
Handed 16 life terms he met his maker in 1994 when an inmate at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage killed him.