Killer's Remorse | Psychology Today

On Dateline last night, Steven Dean Gordon admitted that he'd “screwed up.” He’s a convicted sex offender and serial killer. With a partner, Frank Cano, he murdered four women in 2013 and 2014 in California. He confessed, describing to police what he’d done. In other reports, he stated that a note from his niece finally made him see that what he did is “beyond evil.”

During victim impact statements, Gordon shed tears and then said, “I am sorry for everything. But those are hollow words compared to what those women went through. I truly am sorry. I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I am sorry.”

I’ve written about serial killers who turned themselves in, like Edmund Kemper, Wayne Adam Ford, and Elmer Wayne Henley, but their acts weren’t necessarily from remorse. Still, a few have indeed described their misery.

You might understandably doubt that someone like this can actually feel remorse, especially if he's killed more than once with an especially callous attitude. Maybe he’s just misreading self-pity or trying to manipulate.

Yet Gordon and those listed below are not just apologizing. They believe they should die. When Gordon received a death sentence, he praised the jury. “If you kill four people like this in cold blood," he said, "you deserve to die.”

Similarly, Connecticut serial killer Michael Ross told writer Martha Elliott for her book, The Man in the Monster, that he felt bad about raping and killing eight women and girls. She spent a lot of time trying to understand him. “I became curious about Michael’s bifurcation of himself and the monster, his mental illness,” she told me. “I wanted to understand how a farm boy and Cornell grad became a brutal killer, and [also] try to explain his psychopathology.”

Exquisite feelings of power are difficult to surrender. Elliott says that Ross described this addiction as a cancer of the mind, a part of his brain that needed to be excised. Elliott viewed Ross as a multi-layered person. “Perhaps what I learned most from Michael Ross,” she writes, “is that even the person who is supposed to be the worst of the worst is still a human being.”

Sentenced to death, Ross ended his appeals and opted to accept execution. He wanted the “monster” to die. “Only in death,” he said, “will we be separated from one another.” He also said that he was doing it for the families.

Another serial killer who begged to be stopped was Mack Ray Edwards. With a partner, he entered a home in Sylmar, CA, in 1970 and abducted three girls. Two got away. The third child remained missing, but before the police could work up an investigation, Edwards entered the LAPD station, handed over a loaded revolver and announced his name. “I have a guilt complex,” he said. He described the kidnapping and gave directions to where the missing girl could be found. She was unharmed. And she was lucky. Edwards was a serial killer.

Since 1953, Edwards claimed, he’d been killing children. His first victim had been an 8-year-old girl. Three years later, he killed two kids in one day. Because he worked for the highway department, it as easy to bury them where new roads were going in.

He had tried to control himself, he said, but the compulsions were too strong. In 1968, Edwards killed two 16-year-old boys. The following year, Edwards slaughtered a 13-year-old. When he found himself doing it again, he decided to give himself up.

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Waiting for his trial, Edwards attempted suicide twice. He told the jury he wanted to be executed. He got his wish, but the appeals process was too slow for him, so he finally succeeded in taking his life.

David Maust killed three boys he’d befriended, placing their bodies in concrete. After his sentencing in 2005, he admitted to killing two others. “They were good, nonviolent, innocent young people who did not deserve to die,” Maust said. “None of them did nothing wrong. They had nothing I wanted except for them to be my friend, and they took nothing from me. But I still killed them for no reason.”

He hanged himself in his cell, leaving a long suicide note that described his decision to end his life even before his arrest.

“Before I left to come to Indiana, I made a deal with myself that I would come back and take responsibility for every evil act I committed in life (including the three murders in Indiana) and then right before the trial or right after I testified in court —I would do the right thing and kill myself because I wanted my trial to be for the families and I didn’t want them to wait long for the justice they desired. For if their sons are not alive than I feel I should not be allowed to live either, and I have always felt that way…"

It’s a myth that most serial killers want to be caught. Mostly, they don't, and few ever express remorse. Yet, in rare instances, they do, and some confirm it in their actions. Whether Gordon will follow through on his stated remorse as the other three did, however, remains to be seen.