Dahmer, Brudos and Bundy - Their Souvenirs-- And Why They Kept Them

Objects. Trophies. Body parts. Murder doesn’t always end at the crime scene.

Most killers disappear after the act. Others can’t let it end. For them, the moment of death is not the finale — it’s the beginning of something private, possessive, and deeply personal.

Criminal psychologists refer to this as trophy keeping: killers who take an item from a victim not as loot or evidence of conquest, but as a means of retaining control, fantasy, and emotional connection long after the murder ends.

Below are several killers who refused to let go — and why.

Jeffrey Dahmer — Bones and Control

Dahmer didn’t kill for chaos — he killed to keep. He preserved skulls, cleaned bones, stored body parts, and fantasized about building an altar inside his apartment. His crimes targeted young men and boys, many lured with offers of money, alcohol, or photographs. His trophies weren’t reminders; they were company, designed to maintain permanent control over a person who could never leave again.

Psychology insight: Dahmer displayed extreme attachment pathology, focused on preventing abandonment. His killings were driven less by violence and more by a need for possession and preservation.

Jerry Brudos — Shoes, Pictures, and Body Parts

Known as The Lust Killer, Brudos nurtured a sexual fixation on women’s shoes and underwear beginning in adolescence, escalating from theft and voyeurism into kidnapping, murder, and post-mortem posing. He collected photographs, footwear, lingerie, and body parts to revisit whenever he wished.

Psychology insight: Brudos represents fetishistic imprinting, where sexual arousal fused with inanimate objects and eventually required total control over the person connected to them.

Ted Bundy — The Heads He Wouldn’t Let Go

Bundy presented himself as educated, charismatic, and trustworthy, luring women using charm, deception, and staged vulnerability. He revisited secluded dump sites and kept certain victims’ heads for extended interaction, treating them as private trophies to support his self-image.

Psychology insight: Bundy is frequently cited as a model of narcissistic psychopathy, motivated not by compulsion but by ego preservation, control, and superiority.

Dennis Rader (BTK) — Photographs and Re-Creation

Rader bound, tortured, and killed according to a ritualized internal script. He staged scenes, photographed himself in victim-like poses, and catalogued images and writings to maintain fantasy continuity. Even when he wasn’t killing, he was curating.

Psychology insight: Rader demonstrated sexual sadism with strong fantasy reinforcement, viewing himself as both author and audience of his crimes.

Why They Do It

According to forensic and behavioral psychology, most trophy-keeping behavior aligns with three core drives:

1. Power over the dead

2. Memory reconstruction and reliving

3. Sexual or emotional fantasy maintenance

For these killers, the trophy turns a human life into an object — and the killer into an archivist of their own identity.

Final Reflection

For most people, objects are meaningless without context. For trophy-keeping killers, context is the object. The item is not a reminder but a continuation — a controlled, static version of the victim that cannot run, resist, or refuse.

The trophy becomes evidence of dominance, not of the crime but of identity formation: I did this, therefore I exist.

The violence ends, but the relationship does not. In the killer’s internal logic, the object is more reliable than the living person ever was. It will never contradict the fantasy, never challenge the narrative, never leave.

Over time, the boundary between memory, trophy, and person dissolves. What remains is a private archive of possession, maintained with the same calm practicality someone else might apply to collectibles or heirlooms.

To outsiders, it is macabre.To the killer, it is inventory.

Next Week:

Not every killer learns violence from the streets.

Some learn it in their childhood bedroom.

👉 The Killers Obsessed With Their Mothers

💬 A Note From the Author

Thanks for reading — I appreciate you spending a few minutes with me inside the darker corners of the human mind. I write about real cases, real lives, and the uncomfortable truths most people would rather look away from.

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— Rod Kackley