Analysis Of Hunting Humans By Ted Bundy

Hunting Humans, a novel that was written by anthropologist Elliott Leyton, examines various mass murderers and serial killers in an attempt to understand what led each of them to commit these gruesome crimes. Leyton explores their childhood and their adulthood in search of a turning point, in which they became a murderer/killer. A serial killer often kills more than one person within a period but are then known to take a break period from their vigorous activities, while mass murderers are known to kill many people within a certain location. A serial killer’s goal oftentimes is to provide revenge, but a mass murderer often no longer wants to live and sometimes takes a suicide letter with him/her. Two interesting cases that Leyton studied in
Bundy was not raised by his mother, instead, he was raised by his grandparents and referred to his mother as his sister. It was a secret that he actually their daughter’s child because Bundy’s mother was not married to his father; therefore, Bundy was viewed as an illegitimate child by the majority of his family members. While growing up, Bundy had become extremely jealous of children whose parents were in the upper-middle class. As he became older he was enrolled in a law school and where he met the girl he would fall in love with. She had everything that Bundy had hated of the upper-middle class as a young child. They eventually broke up, and when they did it took a large toll on Bundy. It was never discovered as to exactly how many women were a victim of Bundy’s, but they are aware that majority of these women shared one similar characteristic; they were of the upper-middle class. As well, many of Bundy’s victims after his college girlfriend had similar features or sometimes resembled her. After experiencing a complicated childhood, Bundy would harm innocent women because of his experience with his mother and his
As a teenager, Lucas’ mother was a prostitute and caused him to hate women by forcing him to be a bystander while she performed sexual acts with various men. This was ongoing occurrence for years, but as Lucas got older he would often go home late or not go home at all in hopes of missing this common practice of his mother’s. There would be consequences once Lucas did return home for missing his mother’s acts such as beatings. His first crime occurred when he was 23 years old when he stabbed his mother to death. He was not initially caught for this; instead, he was suspected of killing an elderly woman and was jailed for this suspension. After this, he spent many years going back and forth between prisons and mental institutions. He told employees in one particular institution that if he ever was free again that he would begin to kill again. Once Lucas was released from these institutions, he said that he killed two women the same day. There is evidence to support that Lucas killed three people in total during his lifetime, which are his mother, his girlfriend, and his landlady. However, he claimed to have assaulted and killed hundreds of women. Lucas’ mother had a very strong influence on who he became; because of his mother’s actions, Lucas believed that all woman were useless and did not deserve to be in this