Unlike many of my peers, I never really had an aptitude for science and always preferred to think of myself as the ‘creative’ type. I dragged myself to mathematics classes and yawned through resistance lectures. It wasn’t until adulthood that my passion for science began to emerge. Whilst I suppose most people would cite the age-old reason of ‘wanting to help people’ (I’m looking at all prospective doctors here!) or natural fascination with science as their motive for choosing to study it, I’m sad to say my motives are far more selfish, and far more obscure.

What stirred my scientific interest was not Albert Einstein, the Higgs boson particle, or even the Discovery Channel. It was actually serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Between 1978 and 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 young males, some as young as 14 years old. His modus operandi usually involved meeting young men at clubs and inviting them back to his Milwaukee apartment, where he would proceed to drug, sexually assault and kill them. But his crimes did not stop there.

Dahmer was finally apprehended by authorities on July 2nd 1991. In Jeffrey’s house of horrors, police found grisly human remains. Dahmer had attempted to preserve parts of his victims, including constructing a shrine made of skulls, a human heart in his freezer, male genitalia preserved in jars of formaldehyde and corpses in drums filled with acid. He had even injected hydrochloric acid into the brains of his victims in order to turn them into submissive living zombies, and eaten the remains of some of his victims.

Eventually, he was convicted of 15 counts of murder and sentenced to 15 life sentences. He expressed desire for the death penalty (which is not practised in the state of Wisconsin) and maintained that he was ‘sick not evil’. His sentence was cut short in 1994 when he was bludgeoned to death by a fellow inmate.

What makes Jeffrey Dahmer so interesting is he truly is the person you would least suspect. He is softly spoken, passive and eloquent – hardly what you would expect from a violent psychopath. This is evidenced in the lengthy, in-depth interview with Stone Phillips below:

What also sets Dahmer apart from most other serial killers is just how ‘normal’ his childhood was. Despite being a child of divorce, he maintained healthy relationships with his parents, and (by his own admission) suffered no abuse, and describes his childhood as happy.

This contrasts sharply with the childhood of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who was raised in poverty in Virginia. His mother Viola, a prostitute, would frequently bring clientele home and have sex with them in front of Lucas, his siblings and his disabled father. Viola’s neglect reached the extent that Henry Lee Lucas, after an accident with his brother, had to have his infected eye removed when she refused to seek medical help for days.

Moreover, prolific killer Ted Bundy suffered horrific abuse at the hands of his anti-Semitic father, and endured the pain of learning that the woman he thought was his sister was actually his mother.

Aileen Wuornos, often thought of as the only female serial killer, also suffered great tragedy. Abandoned by her mother and paedophile father, Aileen was sexually assaulted by her own grandfather and became homeless aged just 15, resorting to prostitution to support herself.

While it is undeniable these hardships must have helped to shape the monsters these people were to become, the question that really got me thinking was: does it excuse them?

And this, really, is what got me interested in science – the nature vs nurture debate. Was Ted Bundy a killer in utero? or did years of abuse trigger his psychopathy? Was Aileen Wuornos doomed to a life of depravity from conception? or was she made a killer by those who should have protected her? If so, then how do we explain how an individual with a comparatively idealistic childhood becomes a cannibalistic murderer?

The nature vs nurture debate has never reached a consensus. Popular theories suggest that it is both nature and nurture that seal our fate. Inactivity of the orbital cortex (which is thought to be the area of our brain which involves ethics, morals and control over impulsivity) is often associated with aggression. Moreover, monoamine oxidase A is amongst the genes synonymous with psychopathy. This study found a 60% link between heritability and traits often found in psychopaths. Antisocial personality disorder (which is similar to psychopathy) is also linked with inadequate levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. This evidence suggests that killers are born, not made.

However, it is somewhat sad to think of unborn children as violent psychopaths before they have even had a chance in life. Surely the undeniably traumatic childhoods of most serial killers cannot be coincidence? Similarly, how much can we really blame serial killers for their actions is if it was written in their DNA? It is these questions that really got me thinking about human behaviour.

Ever since, I have been fascinated with neurology and genetics – attempting to find out what makes the human mind tick, and what predispositions we have, and not just in terms of psychology, but with illness and other traits as well.

Over the years, this interest has broadened massively to encompass almost all aspects of science, but my heart will always lie with neurology, which is why I chose to study amyotrophic lateral sclerosis for my AS Level coursework in an attempt to get a better understanding not only of motor neurone disease, but for potential treatments and clinical trials also.

Having not studied science from 2006 until september of last year, it was daunting to return to such an academic arena, particularly one I never thrived in, however, (fortunately for me) passion always trumps aptitude! And it is that passion which has made me decide to carry on my studies of biology at an undergraduate level, and hopefully beyond.