My Personal Journey through Post-punk, Art, Music and Radio
6. True Crime and the Study of Murder
In 1980 I read a book which was to have a major influence on my interests and preoccupations over the coming years. The book was "The Order of Assassins - The Psychology of Murder" by the English author Colin Wilson. The book presents a careful, historical and psychological analysis of murder and violent crime over the past few hundred years with a special focus on the Age of Murder, that is the 20th-century. The book made me realise some fascinating issues about human behaviour in this seemingly dark subject. I wanted to know all there was to know about all aspects of this extreme act by one human being towards another. Psychology (especially motivation), detection and forensics, legal aspects and police investigation all fascinated me. I began to collect and read true crime books, particularly studies of serial killers, a phenomenon of the 20th-century societal system. I became particularly interested in bizarre and extreme aspects of crime, literature, film, sound, art and in fact extreme human expression in general.
This interest in true crime increased dramatically once I started working as an engineer. I spent many lunch hours scouring the local bookshops near where I worked. My interest in this area even became known by overseas music contacts who would send me recently released books.
I maintain these interests today and have learnt much about 20th-century murder and particularly serial killings. There is a very definite difference between serial and mass murder. A serial killer is one who kills three or more over a period of time such as a few years like Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy in America. A mass murderer is one who kills two or more in one place at one time, such as Martin Bryant in Port Arthur in Tasmania. The mass media and many journalists still confuse these two terms which have been clearly defined by the FBI in America and are well understood by many true crime writers.
Through my self-study of this seemingly dark subject I have learnt a lot about human behaviour and the potential which lies beneath the surface of us all.
On Mother's Day 1994 I started (with Aspasia Kotevska, partner of Jamie Leonarder) a special interest group for people with my interest in true crime and particularly 20th-century murder. We called the group The Norman Bates Society True Crime Club named after the most famous and notorious murderer in popular culture. We wanted to have a name which people could relate to but it was really a group that met monthly to discuss and analyse cases and murderers like a scientific study (without the science). We talked about books or articles which we had read and watched video material. Originally we met monthly on Sunday afternoons at the Mu Meson Archives. We soon began organising public lecture and film nights about various aspects of this phenomenon. Simultaneously we also began producing our own newsletter and T-shirts. I designed the logo for the group which featured dual heads of Norman Bates and the real-life serial killer and model for Norman Bates, Ed Gein. We became well-known to the public when in 1995 we organised a lecture visit for former FBI serial killer investigator from America called Robert Ressler. He gave two-day seminars on "Personality Profiling And Crime Scene Assessment" in Sydney and Melbourne as well as public talks in both cities. None of the members of our group had ever organised anything like this before. We put a lot of work into organising the visit (travel, accommodation, seminar venues and public venues). We all became very close to Robert Ressler who became a friend to us all. He had been all over the world giving lectures and training to police officers, lawyers, forensic specialists, psychologists and psychiatrists about this growing epidemic of seemingly motiveless multiple murder. The members of our group responsible for this organisation were Aspasia, Lara Keogh, Stephen Feelgood, Peter Doyle and myself assisted by Jamie Leonarder. We were thrilled to receive a fax from Robert Ressler after his return to America thanking us and telling us that it was the best organised visit he had ever been on. It was a real feather in the cap for our group of first-time lecture tour organisers.
