Brian Masters (born 25 May 1939) is a British writer, best known for his biographies of serial killers. He has also written books on French literature, the British aristocracy, and theatre, and has worked as a translator. [1]
Masters "grew up in a prefab on the Old Kent Road", [1] Southwark, south London, to a "hunchback" mother with a weak chest, and an illegitimate "no hoper" father. [2] During his adolescence, he asked to interview television personality Gilbert Harding for the school magazine. Masters became close to him, and Harding functioned as a mentor with Masters serving as a companion and secretary. Masters was apparently quite unfazed when Harding asked to watch him bathe. [1] [3]
The family moved to Wales with a vain hope of improving his mother's health. Masters read French Literature and Philosophy at University College, Cardiff where he gained a first in 1961. Briefly a teacher in France (as part of his degree), he worked for a time as a travel guide "organising educational tours for American students". [1]
Early in his career, Masters wrote books on French writers such as Molière (1970) and Camus, among others, without any pretence at them having any real originality. [1] The publisher Anthony Blond interested him in a book on the public's dreams about the Royal Family, which was the first of several books by Masters on the British aristocracy.
Masters is best known for his books about serial killers, written with the co-operation of the subjects or their families. He corresponded with Dennis Nilsen from shortly after his arrest in February 1983, and met him in prison without having "felt the slightest unease" [4] during his conversations with Nilsen. His book contains writings by Nilsen, and Masters considers various theories which attempt to explain Nilsen's actions. Masters reaches no definite conclusion on "the essential unknowability of the human mind", [5] but Nilsen is "not a stranger amongst us" rather "an extreme instance of human possibility". [6] Masters, who is gay, feared that another author might get things wrong about the case given the climate for gay men at the time. [7]
Masters was accused of being overly sympathetic to Nilsen at the time his book was first published in the UK, a view he rejects in his memoir. [4] Michiko Kakutani, in a New York Times review after its 1993 United States publication, saw the book as "less a sensationalistic 'true crime' story than a chilling, psychological portrait of a murderer, a deeply disturbing voyage into the mind of a man who killed 15 times". [5]
Following the book on Nilsen, Masters wrote The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer and She Must Have Known: The Trial of Rosemary West . At the time of the publication of the book on Dahmer, Masters told Charles Nevin writing for The Independent : "The contemplation of extraordinary human behaviour with vile effects reminds one of the fragility of human sanity . . . and I think studying these terrible crimes makes one more grateful for life as it is, and increases one's potential for pity, by which I mean one doesn't pity the murderer more than his victim: one pities all mankind." [8]
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismembered seventeen males between 1978 and 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton.
A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three murders, others extend it to four or lessen it to two.
Dennis Andrew Nilsen was a Scottish serial killer and necrophile who murdered at least twelve young men and boys between 1978 and 1983. Convicted at the Old Bailey of six counts of murder and two of attempted murder, Nilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years; this recommendation was later changed to a whole life tariff in December 1994. In his later years, Nilsen was imprisoned at HM Prison Full Sutton in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Robert Kenneth Ressler was an American FBI agent and author. He played a significant role in the psychological profiling of violent offenders in the 1970s and is often credited with coining the term "serial killer", though the term is a direct translation of the German term Serienmörder coined in 1930 by Berlin investigator Ernst Gennat. After retiring from the FBI, he authored a number of books on serial murders, and often gave lectures on criminology.
Macabre is an American extreme metal band from Chicago. Since their formation in 1985, the band has featured the same three members with no lineup changes. The group's style blends thrash metal, death metal, and grindcore. Lyrically, Macabre have a strong focus on serial killers, mass murderers and humorous elements. The group is currently signed to Nuclear Blast.
Michiko Kakutani is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
John A. Balcerzak is an American former police officer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Black Dogs is a 1992 novel by the British author Ian McEwan. It concerns the aftermath of the Nazi era in Europe, and how the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s affected those who once saw Communism as a way forward for society. The main characters travel to France, where they encounter disturbing residues of Nazism still at large in the French countryside. Critical reception was polarized.
Dahmer is a 2002 American drama film written and directed by David Jacobson, and co-written by David Birke. A limited theatrical release, it is based on the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer, who killed seventeen young men and boys in Bath, Ohio and Milwaukee, Wisconsin between 1978 and 1991. It stars Jeremy Renner as Dahmer, and co-stars Artel Great, Matt Newton, Dion Basco and Bruce Davison.
Exquisite Corpse is a horror novel by American writer Poppy Z. Brite. The protagonist of the story is Andrew Compton, an English convicted homosexual serial killer, cannibal and necrophiliac. Brite has described it as "a necrophilic, cannibalistic, serial killer love story that explores the seamy politics of victimhood and disease."
Jesse Michael Anderson was an American convicted of the murder of his wife, Barbara Anderson. He had also wounded himself at the time, and told police that the couple had been attacked by two black men.
Necrophilia, also known as necrophilism, necrolagnia, necrocoitus, necrochlesis, and thanatophilia, is sexual attraction or acts involving corpses. It is classified as a paraphilia by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD) diagnostic manual, as well as by the American Psychiatric Association in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).
My Friend Dahmer is a 2012 graphic novel and memoir by artist John "Derf" Backderf about his teenage friendship with Jeffrey Dahmer, who later became a serial killer. The book evolved from a 24-page, self-published version by Backderf in 2002.
Steven Martin Cox is an English Australian artist and writer, known for his homoerotic images; stream of consciousness landscapes and animal/human hybrids. He writes art-related and queer-related articles and reviews for various publications.
Necrophilia is a pathological fascination with dead bodies, which often takes the form of a desire to engage with them in sexual activities, such as intercourse. Though prohibited by the laws of many countries, there have been many reported cases of necrophilia throughout history.
The Meursault Investigation is the first novel by Algerian writer and journalist Kamel Daoud. It is a retelling of Albert Camus' 1942 novel, The Stranger. First published in Algeria by Barzakh Editions in October 2013, it was reissued in France by Actes Sud. Its publication in France was followed by nominations for many prizes and awards.
My Friend Dahmer is a 2017 American biographical psychological drama film written and directed by Marc Meyers about American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The film is based on the 2012 graphic novel of the same name by cartoonist John "Derf" Backderf, who had been friends with Dahmer in high school in the 1970s, until the time Dahmer began his killing spree in 1978. The film stars Ross Lynch as Dahmer, Alex Wolff as Derf, Dallas Roberts as Jeffrey's father, and Anne Heche as Jeffrey's mother.
Des is a British three-part television drama miniseries, based on the 1983 arrest of Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen, after the discovery of human remains causing the blockage of a drain near his home. The series premiered on 14 September 2020.
In the Cut is a 1995 thriller novel by American writer Susanna Moore. The plot follows an English teacher at New York University who becomes entangled in a sexual relationship with a detective investigating a series of gruesome murders in her neighborhood. The novel was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 2003 by director Jane Campion.
A Father's Story is a memoir written by Lionel Dahmer, father of American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The book was published in 1994 by William Morrow and Company.