Brothers in Harms: How to Make a Murderer

Source: Art by Author

Serial killer Danny Ranes died recently. He grew up in one of the few families to produce two serial killers who were brothers. His death spurred me to find other cases of extreme aggression by offenders who grew up together. Whether it’s nature or nurture, bad seeds or bad parents, their life choices demand analysis, if only to help family counselors spot and interrupt similar trajectories.

I’ve researched killing teams composed of relatives who killed together, e.g., the Freeman brothers who murdered their parents and younger brother in 1995 after a build-up of family conflict. In 2001, Alex and Derek King, 12 and 13, slaughtered their father with a baseball bat, while the Menendez brothers fatally shot both parents in 1989, citing years of abuse.

But that’s not what I mean. These incidents arise from situational factors coupled with a certain type of team chemistry.

What I mean are cases like these: Danny and Larry Ranes were serial killers with different MOs, timelines, and victim types. Serial killer David Meirhofer's younger brother committed a series of brutal child rapes. And Hadden Clark and his brother both had a thing for killing and cannibalism.

Back to the Ranes brothers. Larry, 19, fatally shot four men on separate occasions in 1964. He said he’d killed to rob because his victim had annoyed him. Yet his rivalry with his older brother, Danny, offers more clues. Their abusive alcoholic father had made them fight over quarters, sometimes viciously. The father also beat them indiscriminately and eventually abandoned them. Defense psychologists testified that Larry’s victims had resembled his father, so in a state of rage that produced temporary psychosis, he'd killed them.

But Danny’s victims were female. In 1972, he raped and killed a young mother before he enlisted a teenage accomplice in three more murders of young women. The kid confessed, leading to Danny’s arrest. Yet targeting females could still have been the result of his father's abuse. He'd been primed to be violent.

Lewis et al (1985) compared 9 males who’d been evaluated during adolescence who'd later committed murder to a group of 24 incarcerated delinquents who'd remained nonviolent for 6 years post-discharge. The goal was to identify factors common to the 9 that might suggest treatment strategies. Family trauma was central, with the subjects’ homicidal behavior viewed as an attempt to master their past by victimizing others. Most were vulnerable to paranoid thinking that bordered on psychosis. Exposure to parental brutality moved these vulnerabilities into violent acts.

More recently, Cole and Anderson (2016) performed a qualitative study with five male and three female high school students who showed antisocial tendencies. They'd all had aggressive parents, leading the researchers to surmise that the family (the “first agent of socialization”) has a significant influence on how the child interacts with others. A lack of father-son bonding, especially when the father was violent or absent, showed up in most of the cases, as did rigid, assertive parenting. The antisocial children had looked to the nearest role model during the development of their identity and found authoritarian-type aggression. They'd copied the behavior.

Labella and Masten (2018) confirm that risk factors for the development of aggression and violence in children reside in the family system, beginning before birth. There can be a genetic component, but contextual stressors such as poverty or familial conflict significantly impact development, especially when there’s high negativity or parental harshness or violence.

In a meta-analysis of 30 research studies that focused on familial attachment styles, Ogilvie et al (2014) identified a strong correlation between insecure attachment and adult criminality. In particular, in violent vs. nonviolent offenders, there were higher rates of insecure attachment.

Given the Ranes’ brothers’ lack of bonding with their violent antisocial father, along with his encouragement of their aggressive rivalry growing up, it’s no surprise they acted out. We don’t know much about the Meirhofers' father, but the Clark brothers had an abusive alcoholic father who also abandoned them – by killing himself. Strangely, though, both indulged in cannibalism.

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In 1984 in California, Bradfield, 34, invited a married co-worker to his home for dinner. She resisted his sexual advances, making him angry. After banging her head against a cinder block and strangling her, he cut her body into pieces, cooked part of her breasts on his barbecue grill, consumed them, and stuffed the rest into plastic bags. He placed them in his car and turned himself in to police.

Hadden, two years younger, also expressed a desire to consume his victims. He claimed to have killed a dozen women and girls, but the only two linked to him were 6-year-old Michele Dorr and 23-year-old Laura Houghteling. After Hadden stabbed Michele, he said he'd tasted part of her remains before burying the rest.

He and Bradfield were the eldest of four children in a privileged blue-blood family. Their father was highly educated, but he frequently fought with his wife, Flavia, creating an unstable home. The boys likewise developed explosive tempers. Bradfield had a drug problem and Hadden would kill the pets of kids he didn't like. Flavia said he’d been a “brain-damaged baby” but denied there was anything wrong with him. Wishing he'd been a girl, she'd dressed him in female attire and called him Kristen. She seemed oblivious to his problems, although he’d been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia while in the Navy. The third son also became physically abusive to his wife, while the only girl ran off as a teen and disowned the family.

The sample sizes in the studies are small, but the research is consistent in identifying poor attachment to caretakers and violent familial role models as key influences on children who grow up to be violent. Siblings from the same family who separately commit such acts reinforce these findings, suggesting areas for counselor training. We need to know more.