Book Review: My Life Among the Serial Killers -- Helen Morrison with Harold Goldberg

An eye-catching title, wouldn't you agree? And it did its job; it caught mine.

As for the book itself, it reads somewhat like a novel, somewhat like a text. But it reads very well and is riveting. Morrison has her own ideas about what makes or doesn't make a serial killer, most of them at odds with the behavioral science contingent at Quantico (FBI). Nor does she believe that serial killers are easily categorized, fitting the cookie-cutter triple aspects used by most profilers to predict serial murderers: chronic and late bed-wetting, some degree of pyromania, and animal/small child abuse.

No, Dr. Morrison believes that the serial murderer is a little more complex than that. She has spent much of her professional life studying and profiling serial killers, including John Wayne Gacy, Bobby Joe Long, Ed Gein, and Richard Macek, the Mad Biter. She was the first person to publicly state that the serial killings in Atlanta during the 80's were being committed by a black man. Wayne Williams' arrest proved her correct and silenced her critics.

Dr. Morrison believes that there is a lot to be learned about serial killers before we can adequately predict or accurately profile who is or may someday become a serial murderer. And she believes that unlike the psychopath, who can be treated, a serial murderer cannot because he is somehow addicted to killing, acting on a compulsion that only he follows to its horrific end.

My Life Among The Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers is also underscored by the constant gender bias and outright discrimination Morrison had to undergo throughout most of her career. Not only is it a good read, but it is also a testament to the dedication of a doctor whose goal is to find the answer, solve the riddle of why. An honest account, the good Dr. Morrison lets us know that we are a long way from understanding the normal functions of the human brain, let alone an aberrant one that has no aversion to killing.