Not excusing their actions but more so understanding why they would do it, for example Edmund Kemper killing his mother and the stabbing of Ai Mogami where you see the ‘victims’ in a less sympathetic light.
Not excusing their actions but more so understanding why they would do it, for example Edmund Kemper killing his mother and the stabbing of Ai Mogami where you see the ‘victims’ in a less sympathetic light.
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All the time, especially when the motive is revenge on your tormenterabuser, but also in other cases.
Eileen Wiurnos. Like I’m not endorsing murder but damn she was given absolutely no chance from basically birth. If feel sad for what happened to her.
Ed Kemper is so fascinating to me. I don’t think I empathise with him exactly but it’s easier for me to understand him and his motivations in comparison to someone like dahmer or Keyes.
Kip kinkel, reading his journal entries and listening to the interrogation tapes made me cry, because I have had similar thoughts in the past. Feeling helpless and useless to your family and society, it’s tough.
I think a lot of people understood, and could relate to, the motivations of Luigi Mangione.
I don’t see his victims in a less sympathetic light but I completely agree with and understand the ‘why’ of Ted Kaczynskis bombing campaign. I don’t agree with the methods used to propagate his ideologies nor do I idolise him but everything he stood for and was fighting against was for the right reasons.
Any of the abused women who killed their husbands… Or parents who took out their children’s abusers…and one really recent well known case that hasn’t had a conclusion yet.
The Gary Plauché case. His son was raped, the legal punishment for molesting children is way too lenient, so Plauché took matters into his own hands.
Thankfully he received a suspended sentence. He committed his killing in a very specific circumstance, so he was unlikely to reoffend. It would be hypocritical for a system that valued “rehabilitation” to throw the book at him, and deeply unpopular too.
All of them. None of them can help but be the people they were or have the desires they did. We’re all victims of a cosmic lottery with no choice in playing and no real control over the outcome.
I empathize with none, but do understand quite a few of them, as in their (often quite warped) reasoning/motivations aren’t really shocking or incomprehensible to me.
Another person I sympathize with is Soghomon Tehlirian, the assassin who slew Talaat Pasha. Tehlirian was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, which Mehmed Talât directly orchestrated.
Tehlirian was acquitted by reason of insanity. It’s possible the jury decided that “my mother’s ghost told me to do it” isn’t a sane reason for doing something, but it’s also possible it was a case of jury nullification. Either way, Tehlirian is considered a hero in Armenia to this day and his assassination caused many scholars to question whether or not “national sovereignty” included the right to commit genocide (WWII would definitively answer that question with “No!”).
Gypsy Rose
Anyone who kills their rapist
Multiple cases here. There have been multiple cases I’ve heard about where a girl/teen has been raped and the father kills the rapist.
One guy I heard about literally made the rapist dig his own grave before shooting him dead. I’m not saying any of that is right but prevents future rapes and/or further victimization of other people. I’m not saying murder is right, but that sort of revenge seems justified there. Plus, the father is attempting to do the right thing.
So, a lot of revenge cases if it’s for legit other reasons too. If someone kills your family and gets away with it, I get why you’d want them dead.
Pretty much all cases where abusers were killed.
Why Gary, Why?
morgan from the slenderman stabbing. i have a lot of similar mental health issues and i just don’t feel she knew what was real or not. obviously it’s horrible the victim had to go through that but i cant help but feel bad for morgan as well
L’gi
Aileen Wuornos comes to mind first because she was a victim of repeated and severe abuse throughout her life coupled with homelessness. I believe she was acting more out of desperation, trauma, and mental illness than sheer evil like many serial killers do.
Also, if they’re to be believed I’d say, the Menendez Brothers because they claimed they were victims of severe abuse too by their parents, particularly their father. Some folks also believe they were acting outta trauma rather than pure malice too.
Honestly, I empathize with any killer who attacked their rapist and/or abuser.
I’m not saying I agree or feel bad for them but the kids who shoot up their schools. ONLY the ones who were bullied and tormented by other students. Kids can be extremely hurtful. I was bullied when I was young and it gets to the point that you are so full of hate and sadness at the same time that you just snap. A person can only take so much.
Andrea Yates – needed mental health care,and the tragedy may have been avoidable .
Marianne Bachmeier
She shot and killed the man who raped and murdered her 7 year old daughter in 1980, in the courtroom, on day 3 of his trial. Klaus Grabowski, a 35-year-old butcher, was a previously convicted pedophile sex offender.
She was sentenced to 6 years, served 3 and was released on probation.
Marianne Bachmeier
ETA; This occurred in Germany.
I do not condone what he did at all, but one I haven’t seen mentioned here is Ed Gein.
A severely autistic, quite possibly developmentally disabled man who grew up with a horrifically abusive mother. She mentally, emotionally, and physically abused him, isolating him from his peers and any other influences, making herself the complete and utter center of his world and convincing him that other people (particularly other women) were evil and could not be trusted. When she died he was completely lost, left at the mercy of his fantasies and his loneliness.
The thing about Ed is that he wasn’t a sadist. He wasn’t a malignant narcissist. He definitely knew the murders were wrong (and that’s certainly where my sympathy ends), but I’m genuinely not sure if he understood the immorality behind his grave robbing an and corpse mutilations. He left his trophies lying around his living room, for crying out loud. He showed them off to the local kids, even told them flat out what they were. He was happy when he was caught. Happy when he was placed in an institution. It gave him the structure and the limitations he needed. He was, by all testimonies, a model patient.
I don’t know if Gein could ever have been a “normal” member of society. He probably never could have lived on his own, held a regular job, gotten married. But if he’d had a kind, supportive family and real psychiatric care I genuinely believe he would never have hurt anyone.
That guy who shot the karate teacher that kidnapped his son. Gary something
Many cases of parenticide really as often there is a history of abuse and I can’t help empathise with a killer being so broken and trapped that they felt it was their only way out.
Likewise, women who murder their abusive partners or those who abused or molested their kids.
I know women also abuse their partners but it’s far, far more common that at least physical violence is inflicted on the victim.
Gypsy Rose. She was totally powerless and horrifically abused for her entire life and took the only chance she had at freedom. She manipulated Nick Godejon but she had no choice, he was, as far as she saw, her only way out of the hell she was living through.
Dnepropetrovsk maniacs, especially Viktor Sayenko. When I was a child, I wanted to do the same kind of thing they did, even though I never had any negative influence of that kind. I would certainly have become an accomplice to murder if I had been friends with someone with similar desires.
I don’t think many would see what Gary Plauché did was wrong.
Andrea Yates. She had severe postpartum psychosis and she told her doctor and wrote in her diary that she didn’t want to have sex because she didn’t want to become pregnant because she knew that pregnancy would certainly be dangerous and Rusty got her pregnant within 6 weeks of her discharge from the hospital following a mental health crisis.
A lot actually. Often when listening to true crime I’m like "Damn that’s basically my childhood too! Thank God I’m too much of a pussy to also kill people"
I understood the Columbine shooters’ frustrations with high school but they went way too far
I empathize with Cain Velasquez. His son was reportedly molested over 100 times at a day care, and then Cain was sentenced to 5 years in prison for attempted murder after shooting the man who molested his son
Richard Chase. I know what he did was heinous, I’m not condoning that. But he was so mentally sick and he tried to get help but he was let down over and over by medical professionals and his own family.
Whoever shot Ken Rex McElroy
I don’t condone or even empathise with his behaviours but I understand where Elliot Rodger was coming from. As someone who grew up an outcast, had low self esteem and (possibly) untreated OCD some parts of his manifesto were… disturbingly relatable. I just wish the guy could’ve realised he wasn’t the only one going through that and it is possible to get help.
Jennifer Pan or anyone who kills tiger parents that steal your childhood
Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Aileen Wuornos. We’ll never know if all those men she killed did beat or rape her, but she was failed by the system from birth. She had no chance to become someone better. When they executed her, they made her a scapegoat for the utter bullshit that is American government.
All the people that kill their children’s rapist or murderer
Richard Ramirez ….
Lyle and Erik, Gary Plauche, tbh feel for Aileen Wuornos
and of course Luigi Mangione
Gypsy Rose Blanchard.
Andrea Yates
Aileen Wournos or whatever her name was. She had a horrible childhood and was an extremely damaged person. She never stood a chance against life.
Most of them are understandable. Neglected at home or sexual trauma and abuse leading to dark thoughts compounded by genetics and material they see when young. Then, typically hurting animals before committing stalking and then murder; for the most part. But there are also revenge killings or recognition killings. And those are also understandable to some extent. Anger and loneliness can make you do some wild things. Now imagine you had no or very little impulse control and none or little empathy.
I don’t remember the killer but he was a child and the day he killed nearly all of his immediate family members he suffered a tragedy that his father made a million times worse- while out hunting with his dad, his beloved dog was injured. His dad made him shoot the dog and then continue hunting like nothing happened. One of the few Serial Killer podcasts I couldn’t finish.
The French father who was sentenced got 1 year suspended sentence when he assaulted his daughters killer -> The Kalinka Bamberski case has spanned 30 years and has caused considerable publicity because of the issues of French-German relations and vigilante justice it raised. Kalinka Bamberski, a French teenager, was killed in 1982 in the house of her German stepfather, Dieter Krombach, a serial rapist and former physician. Suspicious autopsy results caused the girl’s French father André Bamberski to pressure German authorities into investigating Krombach’s involvement in the death.
When Germany closed the case and denied extradition to France, Krombach was tried in absentia in France and convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 1995, a verdict later overturned by the European Court of Human Rights on procedural grounds. In 2009, Bamberski had Krombach abducted in Germany and driven to France. Krombach stood trial there, was convicted in 2011 of having caused intentional bodily harm resulting in unintentional death, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the verdict on appeal in 2018. A French court gave Bamberski a one-year suspended sentence for the abduction.
def Luigi
Alot of them. Ive always had the ability to see through it all and understand why they did the things they did and have empathy for the worst of the worst. We’re all human and the brain works in crazy ways especially when it comes to trauma.
The menendez brothers. From a sympathetic viewpoint i’d dare to even say that they did "nothing wrong".
They were both HORRIBLY sexually abused by both their father, they snapped in adulthood die to trauma and killed both parents. Everyone in their family knew and nobody spoke up
Gypsy Rose Blanchard because she was suffering so much under her mothers Münchhausen by proxy syndrome and was probably so desperate and angry at her that she wanted to get rid of her in order to be free
Just the other day. A guy in a senior home had a chainsaw. PRESUMED he was gonna kill someone. I also live in a senior home with a couple sh!tty people and things. I understood where that old guy was coming from. The guy was shot by cops.
Gypsy Rose. The hate she gets is insane.
Her mother held her captive. She tried to escape and was brought back. Her mother tortured her with medications and unnecessary surgery. SHE HAD HER TEETH REMOVED.
‘She took advantage of an autistic man!!1!!1’ my boyfriend is autistic. It doesn’t make you wanna fuck kids, which he said he did, and it doesn’t make you wanna kill. Which he was interested in before he ever met her.
‘But she’s annoying and cringe!!1!1’
She spent most of her life being held captive and tortured. By her mom. She then had to kill her mom to escape. Up until a year ago, she was in prison since then. That’s her socialization. OF COURSE SHES ODD WHAT DO YOU MEEEAAAAN
She went thru something horrible. She says she deserved to serve time and she could have handled it differently. I don’t even think that that’s entirely fair to her, but she does, and holds herself accountable. People just need to leave her alone. If they went thru that shit they would be weird too
Robert Pickton kinda applied here for me.
I don’t understand what he did at all, don’t get me wrong. But he made me realize that some people really don’t have a fucking chance at all.
Super abused physically and sexually since pretty much birth by both parents. Dad got him a personal pig as a child and forced him to have sex with it, and then after a few years made him slaughter the pig and had the whole family eat it. Like. You don’t have a chance in hell in being normal after that.
Makes me like The Good Place’s ending more, tbh, which is random lol. But it makes the system make more sense.
Gypsy rose Blanchard. With all her mom put her through, I don’t blame her for having mom taken out.
Would have to be the “Brain eater” killer for me tbh (Robert maudsley)
Lol I got a couple where I completely understood and excused their actions.
I still deeply empathize with Gypsy Rose Blanchard. She’s made horrible decisions basically her entire life but I can’t help but feel like it was really the only possible outcome.
Even now, as she basically ruins her own life and the lives of her boyfriends, I get it. She’s literally never had a chance to live a normal life. I hope she is getting so, so, so much therapy.
gypsy rose 100%
Luigi
a guy i went to high school with beat his dad to death, but the dad was known for being very abusive. The victim’s own mother even said he basically had it coming
Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Shot her abusive lover after he likely caused her miscarriage.
Today, she would have likely instead been convicted of manslaughter.
besides the obvious ones who e.g. killed their rapist, Olga Hepnarová. she murdered 8 people by driving into a tram stop. not understandable, what she did was horrible, plus the people she murdered were 100% innocent and completely random, but i feel bad for her.
life didn’t treat her lightly. she was mistreated, bullied, ostracized and misunderstood in many ways, and was obviously at least severly depressed, though she was never diagnosed with anything (70s Czechoslovakia wasn’t really known for quality psychiatry, to say the least). she was suicidal since she was a child and believed that everyone hated her and wanted to hurt her. i guess i kind of empathize with her because i went through some similar things. what adds to that is that she got the death penalty, and there are haunting descriptions of the execution out there. it’s just so heartbreaking for me that she never recieved the help she needed.