Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer. Rev. ed.

Geoff Hamilton is a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of
British Columbia.

This is an updated edition of Leyton’s landmark work, first published
in 1984, on the psychology of “multiple murderers.” The academic
study of murder has experienced extraordinary growth in the last two
decades, and the author draws on much of this research in revisiting his
subject. Leyton’s guiding thesis is that so-called serial killers and
mass murderers are largely motivated by class-based resentments, and he
demonstrates that their crimes can be understood, at least in part, as
the outcome of frustrated social ambitions. Detailed appraisals of the
usual suspects—Charles Starkweather, Edmund Kemper, Ted Bundy, et
al.—appear along with discussions of recent murderers such as the D.C.
Snipers, and a chapter charts the changing characteristics of multiple
murderers over the centuries.

The book is, like its previous edition, indispensable reading for
those interested in the psychological study of homicide. Leyton writes
in an exceptionally limpid and jargon-averse style that makes his work
accessible to those allergic to the contemporary scholarly vernacular
(his habit of italicizing important phrases is, however, a little hokey
and distracting). Each case study elegantly and convincingly exposes the
social pressures that helped shape particular criminals, while debunking
a good deal of cultural mythology about the existence of freakishly
inhuman predators. One of Leyton’s key contributions is, indeed, his
demonstration of the ordinariness, as well as the predictability, of the
causality behind extreme violence.

In his conclusion, Leyton offers a provocative indictment of American
culture for its (alleged) promotion of “righteous slaughter” and
devaluation of the victims of violence. The complex dynamics of this
insidious acculturation are, perhaps not surprisingly, never seriously
engaged in the book (the specific contribution to multiple murder of an
often-invoked target, “the Internet,” is left completely
unexplained). Leyton acknowledges the work left to be done, however, in
calling for a “polymathic leader” who might draw on eclectic
knowledge to explain more comprehensively the phenomenon of multiple
murder.