THE PSYCHOLOGY OF KILLING
Character backgound: JAMES K. BEVERSON
James is a shy, recluse 35-45 year old male who is one of those unfortunate men who never seems to fit into any part of society. Essentially a social outcast, James in his younger years found interacting with people, especially women, to be extremely difficult – a situation that was not helped by the fact that women never saw him as anyone they particularly wanted to communicate with. Subsequently as the solitary years went past, James felt more and more intimidated by beautiful women because of the amount of psychological power they held over lesser men such as himself. For this reason, he made a point of ignoring them whenever possible, however, as time passed, he began to realise that this self imposed exile from female contact was working against him as he began to start “observing” women from a distance. This level of observation then turned into an innocent level of stalking, however, James was always far to afraid to approach any of the women he watched for fear of the rejection and abuse he was likely to receive.
Then one day an unfortunate incident occurred whereby James was discovered stalking a woman by her husband. The husband confronted James and even though he never meant any ill harm, the husband - with the woman's encouragement - severely beat James up. Later that same week, the woman was viciously attacked by an unknown and masked aggressor and all accusing fingers pointed at James as the guilty party; the woman herself openly accused him of being guilty even though she could not clearly identify the attacker. Having no friends to support him and not having a reliable alibi to call upon, James was charged with the assault of the woman even though he had no connection with the attack. It was then revealed that James had been stalking/observing a number of women and was suddenly considered to be menace to society. Before James could comprehend what was going on, the judicial system had made a decision to send James to prison for 5 years for aggravated assault.
Because of his quiet and shy nature, James was treated badly by other prisoners where he was forced to endure humiliating taunts and acts which in turn began to manifest itself in a deep hatred of beautiful women. After enduring 5 years of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his more agressive inmates, James was released from prison after serving his sentence. Knowing he had to start anew, James moved to another state to start life again.
Unfortunately his new start on life didn't go as planned, despite finding a new home and a new place of employment, James quickly discovered a renewed rage against beautiful women now that he was mixing with them within society. No longer content to simply follow them around from a distance, in his mind all beautiful women needed to be punished for what had happened to him and thus began his calculated attacks on unsuspecting females.
Because James was selecting women at random, Police were at a loss as to who had killed four women in the past five months. They had acknowledged that the culprit was the same person, however, the were struggling to find any leads since there appeared to be not motive to the attacks and none of the victims had been sexually assaulted or abused in anyway.
At the time we join our story, James is holding a steady job at a frozen food packing factory. After finishing afternoon shift the night previously, he was driving home when he came across a drunken Peta Torrino staggering alone down a dark quiet side street. While not intending to take anyone this particular night, James seized the opportunity before him and quickly grabbed Peta and whisked her away.