Lust Murder, “Sequence Killers,” and Netflix’s ‘Mindhunter’ (2017)

It takes a very specific type of person to study pure evil clinically — that is, doing what one can to put aside one’s preconceived notions and judgments to truly understand the mechanics of evil: what is its genesis? What is its function? How does it work? Most importantly, how can we stop it?

How does one even begin to study this problem with even a pretense of objectivity? The FBI attempted their answer starting in the 1970’s with what was more or less the American boom in serial murder — this was but years after the Manson murders rocked the world; only about a decade after Psycho’s twisted vision hit the big-screen; only about 15 years after Psycho’s inspiration, “The Butcher of Plainfield” Ed Gein was caught and placed into intensive criminal psychiatric care in Wisconsin; The Zodiac Killer was still stalking the fields and concrete jungles of California at this time; killers like Ted Bundy and BTK (known for his modus operandi , of “Bind, Torture, Kill”, and who himself factors into the story of what we will be examining, Netflix’s Mindhunter in his own leering way, more on that below) also recorded their first known kills at this time.