I just got some weird error when I tried to post.

Throughout the 20th century the popular image of a serial, or mass killer in the media was one of a deranged lunatic, practically foaming at the mouth. Or of some evil genius, insane, but brilliant. In modern times it has become popular for the media to gleefully debunk this myth, the word "myth" even gets used a lot, modern people love to bust old fashion myths. And so these days when you open up a newspaper commentary with expert opinion it’s not usual for the journalist to make a point of how the expert busts the myth. I’ve even read some journalistic interpretations for major mental health panels, where the journalist claims that various experts made a point of debunking this myth.

Unfortunately this is all hype. Just as it seemed thrilling and exciting in the 70’s to quote a psychiatrist saying "the killer is undoubtedly a mad man living out a revenge fantasy on his estranged mother", now it’s even more exciting to contradict that and quote experts as saying "it’s a common myth that serial killers all suffer from schizophrenia…". Humans love opposing views, and controversy.

So what does the data show? With thousands of records of confirmed serial killers and decades of research the medical community has mostly focused it’s efforts on understanding serial killers in their own class of the mentally ill. If they say serial killers aren’t the same as schizophrenics, it’s not because they don’t share traits it’s because they now believe they can be even more precise.

The simple fact is that over 80% of serial killers meet the criteria for psychopathy, and over 50% meet the criteria for Schizoid personality disorder. That last one might come as a bit of a surprise, aren’t we constantly being told that serial killers are not crazy, are not eccentric and can easily blend into the community? You bet your sweet bippy. The other thing we get told is that personality disorders aren’t the same as other kinds of mental illness, as though that means that people with borderline personality disorder are somehow less noticeable than those with bipolar.

I think a better explanation is that serial killers don’t blend in because they’re normal, they blend in because most of us suck at noticing abnormal behaviour.

Serial killers are much more likely to be delusional, paranoid, infantile, violent, drug abusers, withdrawn, anti social etc. What’s interesting is that they often fall into a narrow spectrum that never experiences full blown hallucinations. Some might describe this as a sub psychotic. With regards to intelligence there is the same ridiculous back and forth, but a clear picture emerges, pseudo intellectual, smart but undisciplined, clever but lacking academic rigor, auto-didactic, egotistical. Serial killers overestimate their intelligence, their personality traits make them poorly suited to formal education, the think they’re smarter than their teachers, they don’t like organised education.

Look a little deeper at any serial killer and you’ll notice just how strange they really are, it just requires more than a superficial look.

Ross chased a man with knife, that’s easily within the realms of a host of mental illnesses, it’s tame quite really, I know I’ll cop flack for saying it, but it says nothing to me of severity. It doesn’t mean he was hallucinating, he could have even been having a great day, I’ve been chased with a knife with mentally ill people on good days. To put Ross into a spectrum of schizophrenic behavior that would decrease his value as suspect we would need to look for evidence of visual hallucinations, and catatonia. The phone both incident involved alcohol, did I mention serial killers often abuse alcohol, in fact if they’re the eldest in the family the odds even go up a little more.

Ross is reported as delusional, severely delusional, but there is no mention of anything worse and believe me full blown schizophrenia gets a lot worse. Ross is able to hold down a part time job, he dresses well, but doesn’t bath properly, he’s smart but lacks mental discipline; he’s sardonic, cynical, moody, theatrical. Also he looks as though he has a flattened affect. I know this sounds crazy, but in the old days it was popular for doctors to photograph subjects with severe mental illnesses, I’ve looked at hundreds of these kinds of photo’s and it’s something you really can see. That "left the building" look is really common, I think some experts shy away from it because it sounds kooky and most of the evidence is empirical, but it used to be taken a lot more seriously. The other common trait that people in that head-space have is a tendency to speak in a monotone.

The Zodiacs writing’s indicate that he had a flattened affect. Anhedonia, difficulty felling emotion. These people often seek thrills and take risks. It’s also common with bipolar, didn’t the History Channel find out something about that in relation to Ross?

It can be difficult to tell how intelligent these people are as they often suffer from a difficulty in finding certain words, often bigger words hide from them and they pause as they reach for them, they can in some moods suffer from a real paucity of speech that makes them seem almost dumb. Their intelligence is usually revealed in their choice of abstract subject matter and unusual interests. The paucity of speech can be very confusing, some of them even seem rough and poorly educated at times. The Zodiac demonstrates all these traits, he’s like an intelligent, or clever child. I think the Zodiac drank while writing and at times struggled to get his thoughts in order, he was successful for the most part, but this apparent disorder of thought shows up in the form of a childish writting style.

A lot of people think that Ross couldn’t be z because due to his paranoid schizophrenia, he couldn’t be alert enough to make codes or ciphers like z did.

Then I watched a movie last night that I hadn’t watched in a long time and had a ‘ahh hah’ moment.

A Beautiful Mind starring Russell Crowe. Who here has seen it? John Nash, a brilliant mathematician and Princeton legend, was a paranoid schizophrenic. Something tells me, he may have been good with ciphers, despite his mental illness. I would think the same could be true of Ross.

I’d love to hear from Doranchak to get his opinion on somebody like Ross or John Nash being able to make zodiacs ciphers

I have worked in human services for the past 15 years and have worked closely with individuals who experienced paranoid schizophrenia. I can tell you, without the slightest degree of doubt, that someone who is enduring it can in fact carry out these actions. On a good day, and a good day alone. At least until it overcomes the individual or the individual is without medication. That would definitely not be the case with Ross Sullivan as he had frequently visited Dr and psychiatric wards/hospitals, so it almost guaranteed that he frequently took medication.
It’s almost just as certain he he refrained for taking it also for periods of time, judging by his behavior and ending up back in the hospitals so often.

You’re right! It is a total myth!
I’m a psychiatric nurse, and I’ve worked very close to patients with schizophrenia. The paranoid type is hardly disabled; they are very capable of functioning like everyone else. The catatonic types are the ones who are mentally challenged the most, I find. There are other types such as disorganized sz. or schizo – type personalities. You know, keep in mind in the mid-century, many were misdiagnosed as having sz as well, even ppl who were bipolar with severe mania could have been misdiagnosed (psychiatry lacked knowledge like we have today). I’m not certain what exactly Sullivan’s symptoms were . . . could be anything from manic to mild paranoia or delusional.
All this being said, keep in mind, Ross was a college student and that alone tells you he was NOT completely mentally challenged. You would have to be naive to believe he were with knowing that info..
I can definitely verify as a psychiatric nurse RN, that schizophrenia does not mean disabled — not at all. If he even had schizophrenia, who knows. Btw, the DSM for diagnosing wasn’t even available at that time he was diagnosed. To the best of my recollection, it was 1968. Psychiatrists and doctors alike took a jab of guesswork along with what they did know and observe. As I’ve stated, psychology was still developing and ignorant in those days in comparison to today.

Anyway, anyone that can enroll in college and keep a certain GPA is far from completely mentally disabled.

. . . use some commonsense.

Btw Morf,

I live in Syracuse, NY. If there’s anything I can investigate here (Ross being from here) let me know. I wish I knew if there’s anyone in the area that knew him or anything about his family. I would certainly try to contact them. There’s got to be something out there more about him than what has been collected. There are many Sullivans that live in this area, and I wouldn’t know where to start.

I think you have my email from registering with the forum if you ever want to contact me.

I’m a psychiatric nurse, and I’ve worked very close to patients with schizophrenia. The paranoid type is hardly disabled; they are very capable of functioning like everyone else.

Yeah but members who have never worked with patients with schizophrenia, and don’t have any medical experience and have never evaluated RS, say he can’t be Z because he has schizophrenia (even though LE believed Z to have schizophrenia)

So how do you argue with that?

Just for fun, lets look at the old profile about Z (not Ross).

"Dr. Miron, a psycholinguistics expert wrote this report for the Syracuse Research Institute:
"He is no more than high school educated, reads little, is isolated, withdrawn and unrelated in his habits, quiet and unpreposessing in disposition, a discretionary illiterate. Prefers the passiveness of pictures, tv and the movies. Would have spent much of his time in movie houses, specializing in sado-masochistic and occult eroticism. A borderline psychotic, his communications display the characteristic signs of magical thinking and narcissistic infantilism, typical of the schitzophrenic. Zodiac rather well fits the pattern of what might be called pseudo-reactive schitzophrenia. Such individuals engage in their bizarre behavior as a sort of cover up for their underlying, and more hidden psychosis. They can be expected to display wide swings of emotion from intense euphoria to deepest depression. He lives the secret life of seclusion and presents to the world a mask of containment, pleasantness, and ordinariness."
Dr. Murray S. Miron"

I’m a psychiatric nurse, and I’ve worked very close to patients with schizophrenia. The paranoid type is hardly disabled; they are very capable of functioning like everyone else.

Yeah but members who have never worked with patients with schizophrenia, and don’t have any medical experience and have never evaluated RS, say he can’t be Z because he has schizophrenia (even though LE believed Z to have schizophrenia)

So how do you argue with that?

Don’t mean to sound harsh to those who have no education in mental illness and psychiatry, but they’re ignorant. How else can you state that without being blunt?

Let’s see, he was enrolled in college. He was clear enough to take cryptography which consists of higher level mathematics (google it up in Pdf form and take a look at how advanced mathematics are pertaining to cryptography). I’m certain there were prerequisites to this course, considering you have to build your knowledge of math up before understanding this type(s) of math. I’m assuming he could solve equations, read and stay focused enough in order to learn and process. Even if it was an intro course to cryptography, there’s still higher math involved.

This alone verifies he was NOT mentally challenged as some believe. You have to think about it. How can someone even enroll in college courses being completely unstable as assumed Ross was? They can’t! He was not a dumb man. I believe him to have been intelligent, honestly.

It’s not a hard concept to understand, that someone limited in mental function as some assume cannot enroll in college. So, he was institutionalized. Big deal, many ppl were in those days. The question is, was he institutionalized when the murders were occurring? From what I’ve read, he wasn’t.

I suggest those who believe schizophrenia means mentally disabled needs to educate themselves. There’s plenty of sites and forums out there to visit and gain knowledge on the topic.