ramirezdahmerbundy:

Serial Killer Trophies

Between killing, some serial killers need something to remind themselves of how powerful they are. Many keep some personal item of the victim as a trophy of the kill, what investigators call “tokenism.” This can be a wallet, necklace, driver’s license, shoe or some other object, and the killer handles it when alone to relive the killing and reassert his mastery over his victim. Masturbation usually accompanies tokenism, because it brings the power and satisfaction of the kill back to the murderer. Some serial killers take body parts as trophies. Jerry Brudos, a serial killer who operated around Salem, Oregon, cut off one victim’s feet, mounted them on a base, and kept them on his mantle as a constant reminder of his power. Edmund Kemper took the head of one of his female victims and used it as a masturbatory aid in the shower. Ted Bundy took some heads back up to his apartment and masturbated on them. Some serial killers empower themselves by becoming cannibals, as the 1920s killer Albert Fish did with a ten-year-old girl he had abducted. The consumption of human flesh has the same meaning for serial killers as if has for centuries to cannibals in the jungles of South America: As Bellevue psychiatrist George Chase one put it, “they orally incorporate” the powers of the victim via cannibalism or at least they try to.