Alright, it’s been almost a year since last season started, and the DVD has been out for several weeks now. I don’t think the details mentioned about Season Five are too much of a spoiler, but I’ll keep it general anyway. The villain of that season is a small group that kidnaps women of a particular type, keeps them prisoner and rapes and tortures them before electrocuting them and dumping the bodies in a swamp (though I am not certain whether entrusting the termination and disposal of their victims to the dumbest and least educated among them was the brightest move on the group’s part). The scenario makes me curious, because most of the behaviors of killers on the show, including those of Dexter himself, are determined by balancing their homicidal urges with practical means available and the obvious need for secrecy. Unlike most of the murderers the show examines, however, this gang has something akin to the luxury of purely indulging in their private tastes and peccadilloes (it is a perverse reflection of Dexter’s own revelations in this season of the efficacy of a partnership). One of the details about the gang is that each member seems to take a trophy or some sort from each victim. One clips a lock of hair, another keeps a piece of jewelry and another retains a video recording of the rapes and torture.

So hence my first question:
If you were in such a club or gang, what would YOU take as a trophy from your victims?
(I’m thinking teeth, personally, though of course in life or death matters, you can never tell what you would do until you actually come to the point of decision)

What would your victim profile be? How would you choose your victims?
The gang on Dexter picks women with a physical resemblance to their first victim, and generally ones who will not be missed soon. I would also ask to refrain from simply enumerating the sort of people you believe the world would be better off without. That is in the first place, Dexter’s profile, so try to be a little original here. In second, even for Dexter, it’s a BS excuse. Serial killers do it because they want to, not because the people could be construed in any manner, no matter how warped, to deserve it. I am asking these questions as a framework for self-reflection, not to provide a platform for self-righteous ranting. Would you include a sexual component in your choice, or focus strictly on the life-death angle? If the former, would it be someone to whom you are attracted or the opposite of your typical sexual preference, or some inverted resemblance to your normal desires and life? And I ask you to consider this question as a tie-breaker sort of thing, with all concerns of practicality and evasion of justice already assuaged (i.e., don’t say “Hobos, because no one will miss them.” Things like that should be taken for granted or you won’t last long enough to develop a pattern. If you settle on hobos as the most practical choice, what KIND of hobo? Tall, thin, short, fat, male, female, young, old? Do you clean them up first? ).

Taking into consideration (or excepting) your trophy of choice, would you do anything practical or aesthetic with the remains?
(e.g. food, fodder, fertilizer, soap, lampshades, scrimshaw, etc? )

Would part of your fun include letting the bodies be found? Would you refrain from concealing that it was a serial killer, or would you make them look like accidents or suicides or more typically motivated murders?
In other words, do you get your kicks off of getting away with it by cleverly concealing your crime, or out of getting away with it, despite the best efforts of law enforcement to find and stop you?

Would you attempt to make some sort of relationship or personal connection with your victim once selected but before the actual killing?

That’s all for now. Feel free to add your own questions in the thread!