“Helter Skelter” from the Beatles’ White Album is the song that often comes to mind in the context of murder. Members of Charles Manson’s cult committed mass murder to it, under the notion that their vicious act would spark a race war. Supposedly, Paul Watkins, a family member, had told this to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. In fact, Manson said that the lyrics in most of the White Album songs contained subliminal messages from the Beatles to him.
The song also propelled the murder of Jason Sweeney, 16, in Pennsylvania. His best friend, along with three others, listened to “Helter Skelter” for hours to psych themselves up for what they called “a party beyond redemption.” On May 30, 2003, Sweeney was on his way to see a girl, Jessica, who was about to set him up. Pretending to be his girlfriend, she lured him to a pre-determined spot. Then his best friend, Eddie Batzip came at him with Dominic and Nicolas Coia. They bludgeoned him to death. They’d plotted this attack for over a week, discussing how they’d kill him and spend the money he’d just been paid at his job. For several hours that day as they waited, they listened to the Beatles’ song, “Helter Skelter” over and over, more than forty times through. Killing Sweeney had given them a rush.
British “Railway Killers,” David Mulcahy and John Duffy preferred Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” for inspiration. During their spree in the 1980s, they’d play a tape of it in their car to psych themselves up for rape and murder. It’s easy to see how they viewed themselves as the “horror that looks you right between the eyes” and the “beast about to strike.” The lyrics build with suspense as the victim freezes and realizes her fate. “No one’s gonna save you.” Singing along to these aggressive lyrics energized them and supported their predatory moves.
Effects of Violent Song Lyrics on Aggression
Anderson, Carnagey and Eubanks (2003) tested college students in five different studies for the effect of violent song lyrics on thoughts and feelings as precursors to aggression. Subject pools, evenly balanced between male and female, ranged from 30 for one study to 162 for another. Four of the five experiments demonstrated that subjects who listened to a violent song felt more hostile than those who heard songs similar on other qualities but nonviolent. “Violent lyrics,” they conclude, “most likely operate through both the affect and cognition routes, influencing appraisals of the situation and emotional state and (eventually) the behavioral decision.”
Some killers find their sense of identity in a song. The “Night Stalker,” Richard Ramirez, hunted human prey in Los Angeles between June 1984 and August 1985, going on a killing spree that took at least 15 lives. At one scene, he left a baseball cap with the logo for the group AC/DC, obsessed with their 1979 album Highway to Hell. His favorite song was “Night Prowler,” which featured lyrics like “Was that noise out your window? Or a shadow on your blind? And you lie there naked like a body in a tomb… As I slip into your room.” Ramirez wanted to view himself as a stealthy creeper that entered homes undetected while people slept.
Fischer and Greitemeyer (2006) examined the impact of sexually aggressive song lyrics on aggressive behavior. Involving 161 students (88 males and 73 females) who thought they were participating in marketing surveys, the research manipulated misogynous vs. neutral song lyrics and measured resulting levels of mildly aggressive behavior on confederate participants. Male subjects exposed to misogynous song lyrics administered more hot chili sauce to females than to males. In the second study, male subjects who heard misogynous song lyrics vs. neural lyrics reported higher levels of desire to retaliate against females. Although the study was more oriented toward male aggression to mirror social dynamics, female subjects who listened to “men-hating” lyrics also reported more aggressive feelings. The researchers concluded that “music with misogynous song lyrics should be considered as a potentially dangerous source.”
Ian Brady of the British child killers from the 1960s known as the “Moors Murderers” selected a song to represent each of his victims. Among them were Roy Orbison’s “It’s Over” and Sandi Shaw’s “Girl Don’t Come.” The music made it fun and playing the songs helped this couple relive their horrific murders. Myra Hindley, Brady’s partner, stated, “I couldn’t believe how exciting it would feel to do something really bad, how free you can feel when all is lost.” She said they had their best sexual experiences, often to music, directly after a murder.
Sometimes a killer says the music made him do it. It just got into his head.
In 2002, 28-year-old Ronald Pituch murdered his mother with a dumbbell when she wouldn’t buy him cigarettes. Then, he tied up his five-year-old niece before he took off. Along the way, he encountered 11-year-old Gregory Katsnelson on his bike. Pitcuh stabbed the boy, then turned himself in. He claimed to have a mental illness, saying he’s fixated on a song, “Ronnie,” by Metallica. The song features a boy with a violent temper who went on a shooting spree. “This bloody day, lost my way. All things wash away. But blood stained the sun red today.”
Degrees of Influence
Music doesn’t make anyone kill, but like many other things that have inadvertently influenced murder, some songs have given unstable people a sense of identity, sometimes potentially triggering fatal acts and sometimes just filling out the vision. Not all of the implicated songs have even been about violence. They’ve just been interpreted that way by people intent on harm.