Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

Margo shuddered. “This is spooky. What causes it? I mean, what happens to turn an innocent little baby into something like Jack the Ripper? Or Jill the Ripper?”

Shahdi Feroz said very gently, “Psychotic serial killers are sometimes formed by deep pyschological damage, committed by the adults who have charge of them as young children. It’s such a shocking tragedy, the waste of human potential, the pain inflicted. . . . The adults in such a person’s life often combine sexual abuse with physical abuse, severe emotional abuse, and utter repression of the child’s developing personality, robbery of the child’s power and control over his or her life, a whole host of factors. Other times . . .” She shook her head. “Occasionally, we run across a serial killer who has no such abuse in his background. He simply enjoys the killing, the power. At times, I can only explain such choices as the work of evil.”

“Evil?” Margo echoed.

Shahdi Feroz nodded. “I have studied cults in many different time periods, have looked at what draws disturbed people to pursue occult power, to descend into the kind of killing frenzy one sees with the psychotic killer. Some have been badly warped by abusers, yet others simply crave the power and the thrill of control over others’ lives. I cannot find any other words to describe such people, besides a love of evil.”

“Like Aleister Crowley,” Margo murmured.

“Yes. Although he is not very likely Jack the Ripper.”

Margo discovered she was shuddering inside, down in the core of herself, where her worst memories lurked. Her own father had been a monster, her mother a prostitute, trying to earn enough money to pay the bills when her father drank everything in their joint bank account. Margo’s childhood environment had been pretty dehumanized. So why hadn’t she turned out a psychopath? She still didn’t get it, not completely. Maybe her parents, bad as they’d been, hadn’t been quite monstrous enough? The very thought left her queasy.