Go to contents

Bizarre crimes committed by ‘Dr. Jekylls of 21st Century’

Bizarre crimes committed by ‘Dr. Jekylls of 21st Century’

Posted October. 09, 2017 11:27,   

Updated October. 10, 2017 09:26

한국어

Hollywood war movies often put emphasis on combat scenes in which the friendly forces and the enemy soldiers engage in fierce battle. However, pulling the trigger to kill someone is not an easy thing to do even in a battlefield. According to “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society” authored by American author Dave Grossman, only 15 to 20 percent, or one in five soldiers, actually fired their guns and rifles toward the enemy forces during the Second World War.

This is because humans by nature hate killing others even risking the very instinct to protect themselves. While Koreans enjoy a long Chuseok (thanksgiving) holiday, crimes in which people were murdered like flies have occurred in succession in foreign countries. In Las Vegas, the United States, 64-year-old retired accountant Steven Paddock opened fire on the crowd at a concert, killing 58 concertgoers and injuring more than 500. The gunman in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, which shocked the whole world, was an affluent retiree and had no notable criminal record. The motive behind this gruesome crime remains unknown.

In Europe, a female Swedish journalist, who went to interview Danish inventor Peter Madsen, was found dead without her head 10 days after she went missing. It is suspected Madsen is killed her in a submarine he had created, and severed her body into pieces before dumping. His computer contained video files of women who are tortured to death. The crime was all the more shocking because it was a bizarre murder committed by a celebrity millionaire inventor. Both Paddock and Madsen who killed innocent people mercilessly were well heeled, which makes their crimes all the more scary.

Unlike in the Second World War, the portion of soldiers who actually opened fire in the Vietnam War exceeded 90 percent, author Grossman said. He expressed concern about the phenomenon in which the method that increased the portion of soldiers who opened fire more than four times is widely used among civilians. That is, humans’ emotion also gets blunter as they are defenselessly exposed to images of all different violence including mass shootings through movies and games, and witness horror scenes repeatedly. As we witness disgusting crimes committed by “Dr. Jekylls of the 21st Century," it is about time we have to ask this question to ourselves: Are humans born as monsters or are we breeding monsters?