I really screwed up this time.

The Macdonald Triad

Sometimes referred to as the triad of sociopathy, these three childhood characteristics are typically associated with sociopathic behaviors:

Animal cruelty

Compulsive fire-setting

Persistant nocturnal enuresis (or more commonly, bedwetting) 

"I punched my mother out once."

"In the beginning, it fuels this kind of thought process. Then, at a certain time, it is instrumental in crystallizing it, making it into something that is almost a separate entity inside. "

Ed Gein, infamous for his disturbing and horrific crimes in the 1950s, has been a large inspiration for many aspects in Western popular culture. Some examples:

- Norman Bates from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

- Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

- Buffalo Bill (Jame Gumb) fromThe Silence of the Lambs

- "Dead Skin Mask", a song by the band Slayer

- "Nothing to Gein", a song by the band Mudvayne

- Mathieu Bellamont, a character in the video game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

- Ed Gein: The Musical, a play about Gein which premiered in Wisconsin, the state where Gein had lived

Movies about Gein himself:

- Deranged (1974)

- In the Light of the Moon (2000)

- Ed Gein (2001)

Gilles de Rais (1404-1440)

Gilles de Rais was a French nobleman in fifteenth century France; a leader in the French army and a companion of Joan of Arc. 

Rais allegedly raped and murdered many young children, the majority being young boys. Rais would lure blond-haired, blue-eyed children to his residences. Rais would then torture, sodomize, and rape the children, then kill them. He would often ejaculate over their dying bodies, and then decapitate them. With aid from his accomplices, they would judge which child was most fair among the severed heads. Most bodies of the victims were buried or burned.

At one point, one of Rais' servants, Henriet, began to collect children for his master, and would be present at the time of the massacres. Henriet would later describe how his master forced the servants to torture the children. Rais would bathe in the children's blood and would receive much pleasure from the death of the children.

After they were dead, however, Henriet confessed that Rais would express extreme guilt for his deeds, and would throw himself onto a bed, weeping and praying. His servants would clean the blood off of the floors and tossed the left over bodies into the fireplace as Rais would wallow in his self pity. 

The exact amount of victims is not known, but most estimate somewhere between 80-200 children, all aged between 6 and 18. Some even believe the number was closer to 600.