"I and the public know, What all school children learn. Those to whom evil is done, will do evil in return" (W.H. Auden).
             This quote is the basis to almost all forensic psychologists. It is a rough answer to the question: Why do they kill? Why do men, women, and children, assault, rape, mutilate and murder? Religions, ideologists, and every science that studies human behavior have offered their answers, yet, it is one question that will most likely remain unanswered for all of eternity. None of these ideas or theories creditably or authoritively explain the minds behind the evil and violent crimes that we follow up in the news every day. It is common sense to know that these certain people are not born violent. Poverty, subculture, race, and gender are all disqualified, due to the mass majority of exceptions. What's left? This is where the studies of Dr. Lonnie Athens, American criminologist, come into play.
             Because of Athens's personal experience of violence prepared him to find out not only the mass numbers of statistics, but allowed him to go between the lines, and find what other investigators may have missed. The book begins with Athens own story, moves next into his work and his studies, then tests his findings by examining whether or not they apply to well known violent criminals whom Athens had not investigated, to violent behavior in other cultures and times and to the ordeal of violence in combat. Finally, it explores his most recent work, which looks beyond violence to the construction of the human personality.
             Athens main study were murderers, assaulters and serial killers. Yet he never came face to face with any serial killers, he came to a great theory by studying the cases of certain serial killers; Gacy, The Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson and so on. He came to the conclusion of; popularity.
             John Wayne Gacy, an amateur clown, was a pedophiliac homosexual. He to...