On Investigating Psychopaths

June 21st, 2012

Dearest Readers,

Enjoy another revealing and information-rich article from The Gacy Play dramaturg Jeffrey Gardner below! The Gacy Play starts previews this Saturday, do you have your tickets?

In my last entry here, I talked briefly about how serial killers (including John Wayne Gacy) are viewed and discussed by the American media and public.  Gacy, especially, has been mythologized– the Killer Clown, Chicago’s murderer, etc.

As I’ve continued my research for The Gacy Play, I came across three very different articles:

New York Times: Can you call a 9-year-old a psychopath?

Slate: Blood Loss: The Decline of the Serial Killer

io9: Should we eliminate Psychopaths from the gene pool?

More interesting than the articles, however, was how people responded to them in the comments section.  Take a look at the excerpts below:

Comment on “Should we eliminate psychopaths from the gene pool” article.

Comment on the New York Times article.

Comments on “The Decline of the Serial Killer” article.

Comment on New York Times article.

We’ve got quite a mix of reactions: and even more unusual (for the internet), they all seem to be on topic.

Psychopaths still clearly capture people’s attention and hold it.  I’m more interested in the number of directions people took the discussion–and especially all of the different ways people reacted to the commenter on io9 who claimed to be a psychopath himself.

What jumped out at you? We would like to know!