Nilsen’s murders offer us a dark and disturbing glimpse inside the psychopathic mind

was one of the greatest explorers of the mind of the serial killer. Wilson died in 2013 but his theories about what makes and motivates a serial killer will continue to influence criminology for generations.

In lengthy works such as A Criminal History Of Mankind and essays like The Age Of Murder, Wilson suggests that serial killers, a relatively modern phenomenon, are primarily motivated by the need for “selfactualisation” – the desire to fulfil some inner want which expresses an individual’s psyche.

Until the 20th century, most murders were motivated by an individual’s basic “needs” – they killed because they were cold, hungry or poor, as a shortcut to wealth and status, in vengeance because of insult, to protect themselves from danger, or to safeguard honour and reputation.

Sex crime was common, but sex crime involving murder and torture was relatively rare. However, in the 20th century, a different type of murderer emerged, motivated solely by the desire to kill and inflict suffering. This is the era of the sexual serial killer, of which Nilsen is the most marked stereotype.

Wilson linked this change in the pattern of murder to the psychological theory of the “hierarchy of needs” – the most basic needs are food, shelter and warmth; then comes security, followed by friendship, then prestige; and finally self-actualisation or achieving your full creative potential.

As history progressed into the 20th century, most of our human needs in the West were met. We had food, housing, security, jobs, education – but what was missing in many human lives was a sense of fulfilment, selfactualisation or even, as Wilson says, “selfesteem”. For a few twisted souls – who have usually suffered extreme abuse in childhood (Nilsen was sexually assaulted by a teenage boy as a youngster) – this thwarted desire for personal fulfilment deforms into something terrifying and dark.

Wilson saw significance in a comment by the multiple sex killer Melvin Rees, a gifted jazz musician, when he was arrested in America in 1960: “You say it’s wrong to kill – only individual standards make it right or wrong.” To Wilson, the murders of Rees – and other serial killers like Nilsen – were “to some extent crimes of intellectual rebellion, and therefore could not be classified simply as sex crimes. [Rees] was justifying his sex crimes with his intellect, and felt … that he had seen through the sham of morality. He saw himself as being above normal morality, and in that sense, could be classified as a self-esteem killer”.

Wilson hypothesises that the stresses of industrialised urban modern life on this small band of psychopaths is of such intensity that they become so alienated from society that killing becomes easy for them. Wilson often quoted an experiment in which rats, when put under the stress of overcrowding, turned violent and sexually aggressive.

The portrait of the archetypal serial killer which emerges from Wilson’s studies is that of a weak and pathetic man, damaged in childhood, unable to withstand the strain of modern life, and therefore incapable of experiencing any sense of self-worth.

This description fits Nilsen perfectly. In a curdled mix of revenge against a society which has rejected them and the desire to inflict control over the world, these men turn to violence as the sole remaining expression of their inner self.

Serial killer traits

IN the film Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer – a grimly authentic account of the inner life of a repeat sexual murderer – the title