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Clothes Make the Killer
Some killers dress the part, influencing thoughts, acts, and identity.
Posted Nov 29, 2020
We’re aware of murder kits that some offenders prepare so they can more effectively carry out their crimes. We rarely consider their clothing. Yet some killers do consciously dress for murder. They even refer to certain outfits as their “kill” clothing. This “enclothed cognition” apparently helps them to feel more like a someone intent on taking a life.
Imagine Jack the Ripper getting ready for a fatal prowl. We don’t really know if JtR was a he, she, or they, but an image persists of a man stalking in an opera cloak, the better to hide his implements of death. This conveys the impression of a killer from the upper class, someone who could afford such a cloak and enhances the secretive nature of the sinister man who slaughtered sex workers undetected.
So, what do the killers say? When Edmund Kemper was arrested after killing his mother and her best friend in 1973, he admitted to the murders of six hitchhiking coeds. For hours, he described to detectives how he’d met the young women and what he’d done to them.
He blamed his mother’s emotional abuse. A motorcycle accident had forced him back home with her, and her constant belittling had enraged him. After arguments, he’d cruise around to watch the college girls she said were too good for him. When they’d thumb for rides, he’d pick them up. Soon, he’d packed a murder kit with knives and bindings. He’d worn a special outfit, reserved for murder: a pair of dark jeans, a buckskin jacket, and a tan checkered shirt. They’d reminded him he meant business.
The idea that “clothing makes the man” is based on the psychology of impressions. People dress “up” to enhance their status and make others think they’re more economically successful than they are. They want to influence how others view them, as well as reinforce their own sense of confidence or power. The concept of enclothed cognition identifies how color, fabric, and fashion play a part in how we develop our identities.
One study proposed a two-prong effect of symbolic meaning and physical experience. The researchers put subjects into lab coats, a clothing item associated with focus. The subjects participated in tasks that involved attention. Compared to controls, the research group showed increased attention to detail, especially when the coat was described as a doctor’s lab coat versus a painter’s smock. The researchers concluded that, when there’s a specific context of meaning, clothing influences the wearer’s psychological processes.
Clothing communicates. We can play roles more easily in costume. Clothing might even help to present a persona that’s different from our everyday selves. The more we identify with a specific outfit, the more it can impact our self-esteem and behavior. Our outfits help us to rise to the occasion, as the imbued expectations convey goals. Whether you dress for business, medicine, sports, cooking, or art, there’s a uniform of some sort that helps you to feel the part.
For killers, there’s clothing for power, for terror, or for concealment. Fictional boogeymen often wear masks, and so did some real-life killers. In 1946 in Texarkana, the “Moonlight Murderer” targeted couples parked in lovers’ lanes. Five were killed and three injured. One couple that survived told police they’d seen a man in a white mask with holes cut for the eyes and mouth. California’s Zodiac Killer, too, wore a mask during at least one fatal assault. Between 1968 and 1969, he killed at least five people (he claimed more). Never identified, he seems to have approached one couple in a park wearing a black executioner-style hood.
Trench coats have become symbolically loaded for school shooters. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wore them during their suicidal assault on Columbine in 1999, but even three years before them, Barry Loukaitis dressed in a black duster like a Wild West gunslinger before he killed his teacher and two students in Moses Lake, Washington.
Dennis Rader, the “BTK” killer in Wichita, Kansas between 1974 and 1991, used several different outfits to support a deadly ruse. In one, Rader wore an Air Force parka to make a military impression. For a different impression, he donned a tweed jacket and carried a briefcase. To approach his ninth victim, he glued a telephone company logo from a phone book to a hardhat to make her think he was there as a repairman. It worked, and a young woman died.
Clothing can enhance one’s sense of identity, and with it the motivation and confidence to play a role. Only a few killers have articulated what their murder clothes mean, but it’s safe to say that, for predators, how they dress is part of their preparation.
References
Adam, H. & Galinsky, A. D. (2012). Enclothed cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 48(4), 918-925.
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I instantly thought of Ed Kemper when I read the title.
Joseph DeAngelo is another one. Always wore gloves, but also always wore a mask, most often a different style mask, different shoes and a different jacket. Sometimes the color of the outfits would match. Like in one attack he was wearing all green. The masks would often be made from different fabric, have different patterns, sometimes it revealed his nose. One was made from a cheese cloth and another was a protective mask used by mechanics and welders. I've often thought about the subject of "kill clothing" which is rarely ever really talked about. Same with many prolific serial killers being OCD. When I was looking at the crimes of DeAngelo I kept saying to my self "this guy most probably has OCD" and it turned out he obviously did have OCD. A neighborhood kid accidentally dropped a soda on his garage floor and DeAngelo went ballistic, screaming at them. Gacy had OCD. I can name several more who obviously had OCD. Of course not saying "because you have OCD that means your gonna be a serial killer" just that many of the most prolific had OCD. Peter Kurten had OCD.
Andrew Kehoe who committed one of the worse mass murders in history had OCD. Both of them would change their clothes multiple times a day if they got dirty.
I must also bring up Dahmer. Dahmer wanted to dress like Darth Vader, wear yellow contacts so he could have the same eyes as Emperor Palpatine and sit in a chair that was similar to Darth Vaders chair and this chair would be seated at his shrine of bones and skulls. He wanted to do all of this to feel evil and powerful.
Which always brings me to "no notoriety" and the "blaming violent media" etc....are we gonna ban Star wars now? Are we gonna blame star wars now? Because Dahmer thought Darth Vader was "incredibly sexy" and wanted to dress up like him....why wasn't Dahmer called the "star wars copy cat killer"??????? I mean a 15 year old boy strangled his brother and in his confession he told them he FELT like Dexter ie a psychopath. That was enough to call him a "Dexter copy cat"
Same nonsense we saw with James Holmes and the whole "I am the joker" myth. Not only did he never ever say that but he had Orange dyed hair. Let me ask you a quick question. WHEN DID THE JOKER EVER HAVE ORANGE HAIR?! Every single depiction of Joker I've ever seen had a green haired Joker. "but it's dyed" okay, you got me......you win. *sighs at the stupidity*
i think Joseph DeAngelo probably enjoyed the whole idea of "I am the masked intruder who creeps in the night and breaks into your home at night. I am the phantom." The clothes just like his police uniform probably gave meaning to his identity. Both equaled power and control and authority, just in different ways. DeAngelo most probably loved every single moment of his attacks, the preplanning, the stalking, the clothing he wore including the mask, the planning of his escape routes, the climbing over fences and leaping from house to house on the roofs to get to the victims, by passing police cruises and community patrol looking for him and still attacking, the attacks them selves. As I read about his crimes and learned the details.....I couldn't help but see a very arrogant but incredibly self insecure man. That is one reason why I think he targeted some victims, not because of the victim but because of the boyfriend/husband. Like he was trying to prove to him self that he was the "alpha male" because he was so insecure. Also, it's an undeniable fact that DeAngelo also did it because he was a thrill junkie.
I do see meaning in the clothes they choose to wear and I've often thought about Russia in terms of this because Russia had a ton of serial killers during the soviet years and many of them told stories of their experiences under WW2 and Joseph Stalin. What all of those stories tells me is basically "this is when I realized I was a sadist and into thrills" Chikatilo said his village was bombed and he saw limbs. This gory scene and he felt extreme fear and sadistic delight at the same time. Another serial killer said he saw a women's head get blown off and that also stayed with him...and isn't it interesting that many of these soviet serial killers who grew up during this period and saw these things often fantasied during the murders that they were red partisans torturing and executing nazi prisoners. That also brings me again back to "no notoriety" and blaming violent media and porn. Thousands of Russians and Ukrainians witnessed exactly what all those serial killers experienced. Same with Germany [one serial killer said he saw women being gang raped by soldiers, saw his fellow children play with land mines and blow up] and yet they didn't experience sadistic delight. They didn't get thrill out of it and these are CHILDREN we are talking about.
As Jack Levin said when asked about "no notoriety" and Joseph DeAngelo
Jack Levin: Someone who is *laughs at the absurdity*. It takes a lot, to get to the point where you desire to rape, sodomize and murder people. Just seeing some other guy out there in the news isn't going to make you into a sexual sadist.
Yet DeAngelo brought up Jesse James and Son of sam in his poem he wrote to the police about how morality is irrelevant when it comes to his personal thrills and how he is creating a legend "The east area rapist." As he wrote "Jesse James has been seen by all and Son of Sam has an author" and we know that DeAngelo saw his sister gang raped and his parents were abusive and Joseph DeAngelo 'got it the worse".
Plus we got several instances of other serial killers and mass murderers admitting they were inspired and idolized Adolf Hitler. Some even admitted they idolized and admired Julius Caeser, Napoleon, and or Nero.
Yes, "notoriety" and other things people like to blame including porn doesn't turn you into a sexual sadist. It also doesn't cause clinical depression, doesn't cause paranoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, anti social personality disorder, or borderline personality disorder. It also doesn't cause you to be bullied at work or school.
From my understanding Dennis Rader's first real experience was seeing his grandmother garrote a chicken on the family farm. How old was he?
Seems to me like they were born sexual sadist and would of done it anyway due to an arrogant, selfish, psychopathic personality.
Also should point out that Soviet Russia did "no notoriety", took it even further then "no notoriety" not because of "copycats" but because of propaganda about "soviet russia doesn't produce such poisons from the West." They highly censored all crime in Soviet Russia. All the citizens knew were their children were being brutally killed or were missing. Let me ask you a quick question. Did this extreme form of "no notoriety" essentially ZERO notoriety of any kind stop Russia from having serial killers during this period? NO! Russia was flooded with serial killers during this "black out." Sometimes I wish we did play this "no notoriety" experiment ie Anderson Cooper's "I don't think history should remember the names of the killers but the names of the victims." so we can see how pointless and stupid it is. If we did take "no notoriety" seriously, we'd still be seeing mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting. It would have ZERO effect and I'd be asking "why are we still having these mass shootings? We blacked out their names and bios. Why are we having all these mass shootings? Why are fathers still killing their entire families? Why are disgruntled workers shooting up their work place?! YOU SAID IT WOULD STOP IT!" the whole thing is a total smoke screen. As Harold Schechtner said "is not the subject matter itself… What inspires such widespread disgust is the mere notion that convicted lust killers are allowed to be treated like minor celebrities.” yet no one says about about Adolf Hitler. Slap his face on magazines, slap his face onto big hollywood movies and TV movies. Say his name all through out media. Write a ton of books about him, etc. Hypocrites one and all.
Jay
I have a USAF buddy named Jay. Is your last name Gunnels?
Rader
Rader wore an Air Force parka to make a military impression. For a different impression, he donned a tweed jacket and carried a briefcase. To approach his ninth victim, he glued a telephone company logo from a phone book to a hardhat to make her think he was there as a repairman. It worked, and a young woman died.
Maybe I have stuff in common with Rader.
Why that man PROJECT me? I'm USAF and I work for AT&T. My clothing choices are very deliberate.
Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Maybe these guys are trying to join a Wolf pack?
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