While no one is really sure how and why someone becomes a serial killer, there is certainly no shortage of serial killers who came from messed up families. It would seem that abuse and neglect are causal factors for a life of violent crime. When Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho introduced us to homicidal mama's boy Norman Bates, this was a story that could have easily been pulled from real headlines. There seem to be a high number of serial killers who hated their moms.

From unnaturally close mother/child relationships to childhood abandonment, bad mothering can have some deadly consequences. Unstable childhoods seem to predispose people to a life of crime and there are certainly some macabre bad mother stories pulled from case studies on repeat murderers. Killers with mommy issues will leave you grateful for the mother you had growing up.