Brain Injuries

What if there was a brain injury, tumor, or defect that changed them?

If someone has a brain injury, then they have a brain injury. They might have been able to do something to prevent the circumstances or actions that led up to their injury, but once they obtain their injury, that's usually just it. People with brain injuries can't always recover, so is it really their fault if they end up being a changed person after the organ that tells them everything has been severely damaged? They can't help the fact that they suffer from brain damage, so does it make it their fault that they were set off and suddenly provoked to kill? Even if someone thought that they might be taking a turn for the worse, who would truly want to go to someone and request help because they think they might be turning into a serial killer? How many people would really consider the possibility that they might go out and kill someone?

Brain tumors have been known to distort the personalities of people who suffer from them, so who's to say that this is what might have happened to a serial killer? Some people with brain tumors have been known to suffer from violent fits and sudden aggressive personality changes. Could brain tumors play a role in why some turn to killing? One case that could have been the result of a brain tumor is that of Charles Whitman. He was not a serial killer, but a mass murderer. After he killed sixteen people and wounded thirty from shooting at them from an observation deck, he was shot in the head by the police as they arrived on the scene. He did not know why he felt fits of rage and violent headaches, but perhaps that is what motivated him to go on his rampage. Before he died, he wrote a letter to the authorities, asking for him to carry out an autopsy on his brain. After the carried out an autopsy, they discovered a small tumor just above his brain stem. Could the tumor be the reason for his fits of rage and terrifying behavior? If that tumor hadn't been there, would it have changed anything? Would he not have killed? Since we obviously cannot go back into the past and recreate something like that, we can only speculate about the true causes and what might have happened.