This image is the cover for the book Talking with Psychopaths: Mass Murderers and Spree Killers, Talking with Psychopaths

Talking with Psychopaths: Mass Murderers and Spree Killers, Talking with Psychopaths

Bestselling true-crime author Christopher Berry-Dee's latest book tackles the heavy crime of people who randomly kill large numbers of others (spree killers) and those who set out to do so in specific places or situations (mass killers). As such killings become more frequent, the ready availability and ease of obtaining firearms and weak backgrounds checks in the United States inevitably lends to many of these cases, but there have been other recent examples in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Norway, where extremely robust firearms legislation could not stop these horrific crimes. What is more difficult to establish is the motivation behind such killings. Some are occasioned by grievance, real or imagined, while others have their origins in a sense of failure or feelings of inadequacy, yet others seem to be driven by a desire for power over their fellow humans, often coupled with an overriding contempt for the lives of others. In a search for answers, Christopher Berry-Dee offers case studies in some of the most infamous mass killings of the past fifty years, from school massacres to workplace killings, hate crimes to familicides. But is the awful truth that such murderers are almost impossible to predict and therefore almost impossible to prevent? Dig in and find out.

Christopher Berry-Dee

Born in 1948, Christopher Berry-Dee is descended from Dr. John Dee, Court Astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, and is the founder and former Director of the Criminology Research Institute (CRI), and former publisher and Editor-in-Chief of The Criminologist, a highly respected journal on matters concerning all aspects of criminology from law enforcement to forensic psychology. Christopher has interviewed and interrogated over thirty of the world’s most notorious killers—serial, mass and one-off—including Peter Sutcliffe, Ted Bundy, Aileen Wuornos, Dennis Nilsen and Joanne Dennehy. He was co-producer/interviewer for the acclaimed twelve-part TV documentary series The Serial Killers, and has appeared on television as a consultant on serial homicide, and, in the series Born to Kill?, on the cases of Fred and Rose West, the Moors Murderers and Dr. Harold Shipman. He has also assisted in criminal investigations as far afield as Russia and the United States. Notable book successes include: Monster (basis for the movie of the same title, about Aileen Wuornos); and the internationally bestselling Talking with Serial Killers and Talking with Psychopaths series.

Diversion Books