There’s Even a Term for People Attracted to Monsters
Women attracted to monsters like the Night Stalker are commonly referred to as “prison groupies”. However, there is a psychological term for what draws them to monsters: hybristophilia. It describes a paraphilia – an intense attraction to unusual objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or people – centered around people who commit crimes. The term combines the Greek words hubrizein, or the infliction of outrages upon others, and philo, a strong affinity or preference for something. For hybristophiliacs, arousal and orgasm are facilitated by, and are sometimes exclusively contingent upon, a partner known to have committed dark deeds.
Hybristophilia explains the copious amounts of fan mail that are sent to high profile evil prisoners like Richard Ramirez – correspondence that is often amorous or physically intimate in nature. The hybristophliacs who send such mail are attracted to and turned on by such monsters precisely because of the vile acts that they had committed – acts that repel most normal people. Some macabre admirers – as actually happened twice in the case of the Night Stalker – go on to marry or become affianced to the objects of their affection in prison. Another serial killer, Jeffrey Dhamer, had amorous women send him letters, gifts, money, and proposals of marriage – despite the fact that he was a homosexual.