Childhood Events Cause Violent Tendencies?

Many shows portray serial killers as males that have a dark past and many family problems growing up. The episode, “Keeper” from the show, Criminal Minds is just one example. This episode shows many victims that were brutally manipulated, cut up, and dispersed throughout the woods. In the episode, we see that Cormac Burton is the killer and usually his victims are white, middle aged, males. Many assumptions are made that people, especially males, that have a dark past, will end up being more aggressive and violent than others with a “normal” upbringing. By viewing this episode, watchers may get the impression that serial killers have a dark past which contributes to their killings.

Garcia, one of the detectives, discovered the saddening past of the Burton family. After some searching online, the profilers found the name of the homeless man whom was throwing bloody limbs throughout the woods, Todd Burton. Some more investigating led them to uncover his, seemingly “normal”, brother, Cormac, and the rest of their family. The profilers discussed the brothers’ past by stating that their mother had drank herself to death, their father beat his wife and them until they moved away. Todd became homeless and Cormac moved and got a steady job in a different state. They took note to how the killings began after their father died from a heart attack. When shown the muzzle while in the investigation room, Todd broke down. “He made us live like pigs, in mud” he described to the profilers. Just this one glimpse at how his childhood has affected Todd shows us how someone would be able to hold onto curtain childhood events that will cause them to brutally murder innocent people.

The episode continued by showing many flashback of the traumatizing childhood of Todd and Cormac Burton. These flashbacks were shown in a way that allows the viewer to see the motive behind the brutal killings of five innocent victims. We see that the father used a muzzle on the boys when beating them, and many times made them watch him slaughter the animals. The episode then returns to “present day” and shows a man that had been kidnapped laying, unconscious, in a pen with a muzzle on his face. Knowing now that Cormac Burton was the killer, we can see that he still is traumatized from what he experienced in childhood. By seeing how his past has affected him, it wouldn’t be wrong to assume, in this case, his dark past was definitely a major factor in his serial killer tendencies.

Toward the end of the episode, we saw the event that drastically changed Cormac’s life for the worse. Taken into the investigation room, Todd uttered “lost dog” and explained how he was trying to find his dog, also named Cormac, in the woods. We later found out that Todd’s brother, Cormac, had a dog that was devastatingly taken from him as a child. Todd explains that their dad tore the dog away from Cormac, brought him up into the hills, and let him go. By doing this, Cormac was shown that certain things that you value and care about will be ripped away. By piecing it together, we see that Todd needed to find his brother, that his brother couldn’t survive without him, and was trying to find some dog as a way of making it up to his brother about losing his dog as a child. It is obvious that this was the event that caused Cormac’s hatred for his father to grow to a point where he would commit harmful and violent acts.

By the end of the episode Cormac was shown being caught by the police and arrested. The Burton family’s dark past enforces the norm that a bad childhood generates an aggressive killer. This episode of Criminal Minds was effective in bringing awareness to the motives of serial killers. However, it can be dangerous how it stereotypes serial killers as only people that have had a dark childhood. The show also somewhat excuses the murders just because of his childhood. It essentially sends the message that you should only be scared of males with a dark past and that if someone doesn’t fall under these “qualifications” you shouldn’t be threatened by them at all. This is detrimental because, although this can be one factor, many circumstances can come together to cause someone to commit murder and having a rough childhood shouldn’t necessarily be correlated with becoming a violent person.

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