Author and historian Peter Vronsky has been studying the cultural and environmental factors that contribute to the development of serial killers since his own literal brush with one: he walked past Richard Cottingham, the Butcher of Times Square, as he was leaving a motel where he'd committed a double murder.
Vronsky suggests (via CrimeReads) that there were several periods in American history that were perfect for laying the groundwork — and the troubled childhoods — of future serial killers. The first was the Great Depression, and he points to the sheer number of killers who were born at the tail end of it, including John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson (pictured), and Henry Lee Lucas.
Vronsky says that there's two parts to the story, and first, there's the complete disintegration of the social structure that America had been built on. For generations, men had been the breadwinners of the family, there had been clear divides between the haves and the have-nots, and everyone knew just what place they occupied. But then, World War I sent broken soldiers suffering from countless undiagnosed and untreated mental issues back to America, where they tried to build something resembling a family... and it was just in time for the Great Depression to take it all away. Men like Gacy and Manson were born into those families thrown completely in turmoil... and they were surrounded by the newly homeless, poor, and transient. In other words, victims.
