Milton Keynes couple write gripping book about what goes on in the minds of sexual serial killers

An Open University professor and his wife have written a book on the grim subject of sexual serial killers.

Frederick Toates and Olga Coschug-Toates researched 80 killers to discover links between their early development and subsequent crimes.

The questions they ask – and answer – are: What makes a serial killer, what motivates their action, and what sort of upbringing did they have to make them turn out this way?

The book, called Understanding Sexual Serial Killing, is available on Amazon and from major sellers.

Frederick is Emeritus Professor of Biological Psychology at the OU and has a life-time experience of studying the brain and how it controls behaviour, both normal and abnormal.

He said: “We estimate that some 95% of sexual serial killers have had something awful happen in the childhoods, such as very serious physical abuse, psychological abuse and/or abandonment.

"If we could wave a magic wand and solve the problem, what would we do? Without doubt, it would be to halt domestic abuse and taunting/bullying by school peers.”

Olga is a trilingual translator and interpreter for legal, social services and mental health translation. She was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Open University and principal coordinator for the NATO Scientific Programme between the UK, Russia and Moldova.

The couple, who live in Tinkers Bridge, also wrote a book called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder together in 2002, giving tried and tested strategies to overcome the disorder.

They admit that delving into the minds of serial killers for the new book prompted a complex mixture of emotions.

"These including fear, disgust and sympathy - obviously sympathy for the victims but also for the killers, given in many cases their hideous life-circumstances,” said Frederick.

"We believe the book brings some order to a confused subject. Serial killers kill for various motives: power, money, anger, revenge against society and attention. However, most appear to kill for sexual pleasure, and this forms the particular topic of the book.”

Olga is Romanian by birth but fluent in Russian. There are numerous serial killers coming from the USSR and the post-Soviet world but very little of this was up to now available to those without the Russian language. The book corrects this.

“Depressingly the same features seen in Western killers are also evident in those from Russia,” said Frederick.

The first part of the book reviews scientific data and theories, while the second part presents biographical sketches of sexual killers, bringing to life their profiles with in-depth analysis and linking their early development and later killing to current theoretical understanding.

It considers the phenomenon of sexual serial killing from the perspective of motivation theory, as advanced in psychology and neuroscience.

The book has been given a glowing review by Canadian author and criminologist Lee Mellor, who describes it as “among the best on sexual homicide to appear in the twenty-first century.”

He said: "No serious forensic psychologist or criminologist would consider omitting it from their library.”