Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators Read Online Free PDF Page A

history.
    Early trauma
    Patrick was born to Elisabeth and Joseph Byrne in Dublin in 1932, the second son of what would ultimately become a large family. He was much closer to his mother than to his father, and would remain so throughout his life. This preference for the mother is common in boys who grow up to become sadists, as the father is often so overbearing that the child cannot identify with him. In contrast, the mother tends to be pathologically overprotective, sometimes keeping the child away from possible playmates and making him reliant on her company. Beaten by one parent and emotionally suffocated by the other, the child retreats into a sadistic fantasy life, fantasies that he may later act out.
    Psychiatrists would later note that Patrick had sexual abnormalities of the mind when still a child, a trait invariably formed by nurture rather than nature. But they were unable 30
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    Patrick Byrne
    to find out about his formative experiences. It’s merely known that he was small for his age, had curly hair and sparkling eyes, but was extremely nervous and shy.
    When he was eight, his mother brought him to hospital in an unconscious state and he remained unconscious for three days.
    She said that he’d been playing outdoors when a wall fell on him, breaking one of his legs and battering onto his head.
    Patrick already had a slightly below average IQ and very poor literacy skills which would have made him unpopular with his teachers. And Irish teachers in the 1930s and 1940s were often disciplinarians who beat their little pupils mercilessly. In class he remained a passive-aggressive loner; though, like many disturbed children, he was creative, being good at art in particular.
    As Patrick moved into his teens, he found it impossible to talk to girls, though he fantasised about having sex with them.
    And as he matured, his fantasies became increasingly cruel.
    At 14 he left school and found a factory job. Soon he was drinking heavily. He remained desperately shy, and, even when dragged out to social events by relatives, sat in a corner and refused to dance.
    But at 17 he lost his virginity to a much older woman who had recently been widowed. His religious upbringing may have caused him to see this sexual relationship as abusive and wrong – in any case, he would later state erroneously that it was the start of all his problems. He hinted to a friend that he’d told his mother but that she’d refused to intervene. He had sex with the widow many times but believed that she’d put a spell on him and that she’d ruined him for girls his own age. He increasingly hated younger women who he saw as the source of his nervous tension, and he had masturbatory fantasies of putting helpless females through a circular saw.
    Early crimes
    Like many murderers-to-be, he started with lesser crimes which involved trespass, being convicted of three separate counts of 31
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    SADISTIC KILLERS
    housebreaking in Dublin. In retrospect, he may have been looting these houses for women’s clothing – some of society’s cruellest killers have been cross-dressers who have identified on one level with women due to their strong bonding with their mothers, but who, on another level, despise this supposed weakness in themselves and want to obliterate it. He may also have been hoping that the female occupant would return home, giving him access to a victim in a safe house.
    Byrne later spent two years in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps but they saw nothing untoward about his behaviour as he remained quiet and shy.
    When he was 26 his mother relocated him, his brothers and three sisters to England. The Byrnes now settled in Warrington and Patrick found a job as a labourer, though he was unreliable and often reported for work in a drunken state.
    The voyeur
    Patrick Byrne was still living with his mother and had never had a steady girlfriend, but in