The Perfect Lie (Jessie Hunt, #5)

by Blake Pierce

The bulk of data on serial killers and violent serial offenders more generally suggested that most were made, not born. In the vast majority of cases, people who killed or raped or maimed others had themselves suffered brutal trauma as children. Sometimes it was abuse. Sometimes it was being a victim of or witness to a single violent incident that resonated with them. Sometimes it was being in a perpetually violent environment. Often it was all of those things. But that wasn’t determinative. Millions of kids grow up in violent or abusive circumstances and never go on to hurt anyone. Jessie was herself an example of this—a witness to her father’s abuse and eventual murder of her mother; a victim of his sadism. And yet she had gone on to fight against perpetrators like Xander Thurman. At least that was her official story. Of course, the literature did include examples of some serial killers who had perfectly normal childhoods with loving parents and comfortable conditions. In some cases, these people were simply born with something missing. Often the capacity for great cruelty or violence correlated with an inability to feel empathy for others, which was actually measurable in the brain. But was that just a happenstance of fate? Or was there some genetic component?

Was it possible for violent sadism to be passed down from parent to child like a family heirloom?