What is it about serial killers?
December 18th, 2024
An exclusive Q&A with Dr. Scott Bonn
By Sabrina Hornung
Dr. Scott Bonn is a renowned criminologist and serial killer expert. He is a professor, a best-selling author and he also travels the country discussing America's fascination with serial killers and true crime. In January, he’s bringing his 90-minute show to Fargo and Bismarck followed by a Q&A session, so get your questions ready.
During High Plains Reader’s exclusive Q&A opportunity, Dr. Bonn revealed a number of startling statistics. Interestingly enough, 80% of his audience is women ages 25 to 54. Then again, that statistic holds true for the bulk of networks airing true crime content. We couldn’t help but ask why. What attracts us (and maybe more specifically, women) to the darker side of humanity?
High Plains Reader: So why do you think women are so interested in serial killers?
Dr. Scott Bonn: Well, I'm glad you asked that question, and it comes right out of my show, and it's this; I think that if you had to reduce it to one word, it's empathy. We, as humans, have the empathy “chip,” if you will, in our brain, which the serial killers do not. It's the thing that distinguishes them, it’s the inability to feel the pain of others, which is why they're able to do what they do. I think it's particularly strong among women.
And women identify with the victims, which — if you watch the shows “48 Hours,” (and you know what, I like to call those the “OG true crime shows”) “Dateline,” “2020,” “America's Most Wanted,” — the victim is almost always a woman who goes missing or abducted and/or murdered.
So women identify with the victim, and I think that they are looking for answers — “How do I identify a potential perpetrator?” I had a woman say to me recently, “I don't want to become the murder victim of the next Ted Bundy, but I don't want to date him either.”
They're looking for tools. They're looking for red flags to identify potential danger and to avoid becoming a victim. And in addition, I think it's also a desire to understand the motivations of these individuals, because it's so incomprehensible what they do.
Think of Jeffrey Dahmer who abducted, raped, killed, dismembered, cooked and ate his victims. It's beyond comprehension to most of us, so there's this burning desire to understand, because I know I speak for myself, but I think a lot of people don't like the ambiguity. You don't like not knowing the answer to something. We feel much more secure and comfortable when we know the answers. So I think subconsciously, the feeling is, if I could just figure out why they do what they do, then maybe it's not so terrifying after all.
I do a Q&A session in the second act of my show. Here's where I get so many questions from women about how to identify potential danger and so forth. What I've noticed about my show is it becomes almost like a sisterhood by the end of the show, through interaction, and it's almost like a…
_(1)__293px-wide.jpg)
__293px-wide.jpg)
_(1)__293px-wide.jpg)
__300x100.jpg)
__300x100.jpg)