Out from underneath the floorboards came HBO’s six-part documentary “The Jinx,” which details the life of tried-but-never-convicted murderer Robert Durst. Durst, a man tried for one murder and suspected in two others, interestingly agreed to interview for the documentary, a choice which just lead to his headlining arrest on Sunday right before the season finale. New evidence uncovered by the documentary producers and a recorded admission of guilt (while talking to himself in the mirror) motivated prosecutors to reopen the case against him. What’s crazy is that this story is true.
And also that we’re still, as a society, obsessed with the tales of murderers. We still clamor for that grim spectacle, and news stations still delight in reporting it. It has been years, thankfully, since America has had a major serial killer. In the 1970s and 80s there was an epidemic of killers. John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer horrified the public, and firmly placed in the American conscience the stereotypical conception of the serial killer: “all men, all white, all evil geniuses or mentally ill; they want to get caught.” And that’s been the stereotype the media and the public have been mining and enjoying ever since, from Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter to Kevin Spacey’s John Doe. We’re drawn to the horror, the story of “high stakes, danger, mystery, heroes, and a villain who ultimately gets his comeuppance.”
But for some reason, despite the dearth of serial murders and the rise of more modern fears, the Dursts of the world still hold America rapt with attention. This would be fine if we went about it in a methodical and thoughtful manner, but as coverage of Durst shows, we would rather see these stories crammed into the mold of our preexisting conceptions, to the detriment of the victims and broader awareness of mental health. By perpetuating the stereotype of the insane serial killer, we’re spreading misinformation about serial killers and about legitimate mental illness.
It’s very hard not to treat Durst like the prototypical, killer clown murderer given that he fits the trope so well. He is suspected of killing his wife and then murdering a witness in her trial. While posing as a woman, he killed his neighbor in Texas by gun, then dismembered the body. In what can only be taken as farce, he got off by pleading self-defense. He apparently talks to himself in the mirror. He voluntarily attached himself to a documentary speculating on his guilt. Then there’s the fact that he’s the son of a real-estate titan, born into riches, able to evade conviction through “the wealth at his disposal and the crack legal team he could assemble,” naturally setting up the additional stereotypical narrative of a privileged man born into riches, taking his deranged whims out on the lower classes — like a perverted metaphor for income inequality.
But instead of focusing so much on twisting Durst’s story into a narrative, we should take a more empathetic approach for everyone involved. Too often, we peg these killers as irredeemably evil, or monstrous, or the devil, as 35 percent of Time Magazine and New York Times serial killer articles do. Instead, we should refocus. The Hannibal Lecter narrative is compelling, but it accomplishes nothing constructive, taking tragedy and transforming it into entertainment. The victims — whom we should be mourning — take second string to the gripping psychology and life story of the killer. Moreover, our enthrallment to speculation on the killer’s sanity (such as Durst being followed by a “supernaturally dark cloud”) trivializes mental illness. Serial killers, according to the FBI, are by and large “not adjudicated as insane under the law.” Far more often they suffer from “personality disorders, including psychopathy, anti-social personality, and others.” And while these killers still obviously need some sort of treatment, we diminish the killers’ guilt by speculation and cheapen others’ legitimate mental illnesses. We, by and large, have nothing to fear from those suffering from mental illness. Despite the pervading myth that the mentally ill are just waiting to crack, evidence points to the contrary. That means we’re getting our ideas from somewhere else. And it’s not personal experience. As a paper authored by Columbia psychologists concludes, “the primary sources of public beliefs regarding the dangerousness of people with mental illness are not to be found in the observed behavior of these people.” We’re getting these ideas from television, movies, and the media.
So while it can be very tempting to absorb Durst and other killers into the cultural idea of the serial killer, we should forbear. Durst is probably guilty. But we shouldn’t write him off as another in a series of American killers: we shouldn’t give him the distinction of celebrity. We shouldn’t misrepresent mental illness by calling him insane. We should, at times like these, remember the victims and think about how future tragedies such as these can be avoided.
Brennan Edel is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at b.edel@cavalierdaily.com.
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