Killer IQ Final: What Did You Learn?

So we've reviewed the intelligences according to Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences as they might relate to killers.  We've found that, on some, they likely rank high and on others likely low...just like everyone else.  The truth is, in the end, serial killers aren't anything special.  They aren't  mad geniuses or criminal masterminds; Hannibal Lector will only ever exist in the movies...and in a criminal's own mind. Lector, for all his psychotic, sociopathic, glamour is a myth and one that most killers - narcissists that they generally are - fancy themselves to be like.

Terribly Average

Most profiles of serial killers given by the FBI state that they are of average to above average intelligence.  And, yes, it frequently is the case.  There's a reason for this.  Generally speaking one needs a vague amount of intelligence to get away with more than one murder without getting caught.  Enough to think ahead some, to know how to avoid leaving a great deal of evidence behind that would lead directly to them, or at least not come stumbling out of an alley covered in the victim's blood and a knife in hand.  There's also evidence (from a Radford University project collecting data on serial killers) that, statistically, serial killers tend to fall into the "normal/average" range of IQ overall.  ...Both the reasoning that intelligence is needed to repeatedly commit and get away with homicide and the statistics say that at least average intelligence is generally needed to become a serial killer.  Of course that does lead to another question.  Why, if at least of functioning intelligence, do some of these killers do such stupid things?

Pitiful Pride

So often these killers have such a serious narcissistic personality disorder that they get in the way of their own success...in all aspects of their life, including their murders.  These (most frequently) men like to consider themselves criminal masterminds, able to outwit the rest of the world which simply isn't a thought based in reality to begin with.  Add to that the belief that most, if not all, others are less than human and these people take risks and flaunt the law in a way that make the average, normal, person shake their heads in utter disbelief.

Ted Bundy, once referred to as "The High IQ Killer", thought so highly of himself that he decided to be his own lawyer.  Aside from the old adage that the man who defends himself has a fool for a client Bundy didn't realize something very key about himself...he wasn't charming or clever enough to hide the fact that he was enthralled by his own case.  That, as he worked to defend himself, he couldn't hide the fact he was reliving the crimes from anyone, including the jury.  He thought he'd done a fine job...the jury thought he needed to be put down via electric chair.

Randy Kraft (who killed 16 people throughout much of the 1970s) had a recorded IQ of 129 and made a great deal of money as a computer consultant...he also was caught after driving drunk with a strangled body in the passenger seat. Even a relatively "stupid" person would know better than to do something like that but these individuals, these serial killers, have such an inflated ego that it blinds them from basic logic and self-preservation.