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Next Door Monsters: The Dialectic of Normality and Monstrosity in True-Crime Narratives,

"In some respects, the absence of sympathy for the criminal in contemporary true-crime narratives recalls the Puritan view of sympathy as a dangerously unstable emotion" (Schmidt 195). How does Schmidt suggest that having sympathy for a serial killer is a good thing/bad thing? Is that even possible? Why would we want that?

Schmidt suggests that sympathizing with serial killers is a way of reasserting cultural, spiritual, and political authority to change serial killers. Schmidt's view is that every person in the community was no different from what the accused might have done, and at times in their lives, they must have done something that deserved to be punished. In this respect, having sympathy among serial killers was a way of retaining God's grace. Specifically, the Puritans, through the Puritan Ministerial Elite, belied that people should live with compassion and sympathy for each other to attract and retain God's grace.

On the other, Schmidt believed sympathy was not the solution to the problem of...