Summary
Why would someone fall in love with a serial killer? The answer is more complex than sensational headlines suggest. This article explores the psychology behind hybristophilia—a romantic or sexual attraction to people known to have committed violent crimes—through the lenses of forensic psychology, trauma, attachment theory, and media influence. Drawing on peer-reviewed research, documented case studies, and expert commentary, it examines why these attachments develop, how social media has amplified them, and why understanding the phenomenon requires keeping victims—not offenders—at the center of the conversation.

Read Time: 27 minutes

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What drives people to fall in love with murderers, write fan mail to death row inmates, and build entire online communities around accused killers? The answer is more complex—and more human—than you might expect.

The Letters Keep Coming

In 1980, while standing trial for the murders of two Florida State University sorority sisters, Ted Bundy looked across a crowded courtroom and proposed marriage. The woman on the witness stand said yes. Carole Ann Boone, who had worked alongside Bundy years earlier in Washington and believed entirely in his innocence, accepted his proposal in a moment that managed to be both romantic and grotesque. They would go on to have a child—details remain murky about how, given that conjugal visits were not permitted—before Boone eventually left, taking their daughter into hiding after apparently accepting what the rest of the country already knew.

In some ways, it does.

Psychologists have a name for this phenomenon: hybristophilia—defined as a sexual or romantic attraction to people who have committed crimes, often violent ones. The term was coined in 1986 by sexologist John Money, derived from the Greek hybrizein, meaning “to commit an outrage against someone,” combined with philo, meaning “having a strong affinity for.” It’s also known informally as Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome, a nod to the Depression-era outlaw couple whose mutual devotion became as legendary as their crime spree.

Bundy is the most famous example, but the list is long. Jeffrey Dahmer received love letters and gifts from women while incarcerated. Richard Ramirez—the Night Stalker, convicted of thirteen murders and suspected of more—had up to fifteen girlfriends following his arrest and eventually married one of them, Doreen Lioy, who described him as “kind” and “funny.” Charles Manson, nearly eighty years old and behind bars, obtained a marriage license in 2014 with a twenty-six-year-old woman who had been visiting him for nearly a decade. Both Menendez brothers—convicted of murdering their parents in 1989—married women who had first written to them after watching their high-profile trials on television. Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland school shooter, received romantic correspondence after his arrest from young women who had followed his case online.

More recently, when Luigi Mangione was arrested in December 2024 for the alleged assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, social media erupted within hours. Fan edits flooded TikTok. A flag bearing a sexualized image of Mangione appeared outside the Manhattan courthouse. Young women organized viewing parties for his court appearances. A trio of self-described “Mangionistas”—so devoted to his case that they applied for press credentials under New York City’s creator credentialing rules—became a media story in their own right. Even Mangione’s own defense attorney publicly condemned them.

At first glance, these cases seem impossible to explain. Yet psychologists, criminologists, and forensic researchers have spent decades trying to understand why some people become emotionally attached to violent offenders—and why those attachments take such different forms.

None of this is new. What has changed is the speed, scale, and visibility with which these attachments now spread—along with what they reveal about the psychology, culture, and media ecosystems that sustain them.

What Hybristophilia Is—and What It Isn’t

Before going further, it’s worth being precise about what the term does and does not cover, because hybristophilia is frequently misapplied, misunderstood, and over-pathologized.

When Money coined the term in 1986, he defined it narrowly in a sexual context: arousal contingent specifically upon a partner’s known history of criminal outrage. The early framing emphasized the erotic, which led critics to argue that it overlooked the far more common emotional and psychological dimensions of criminal attraction—the rescue fantasies, the desire for notoriety, the parasocial attachment. Contemporary researchers have pushed for a broader understanding that captures these nuances.

Hybristophilia is not listed in the DSM-5-TR as a formal paraphilic disorder, and experts caution against forcing it into that diagnostic mold. Epidemiological studies remain scarce, leaving researchers with an observed phenomenon that is still poorly understood.

It also exists on a wide spectrum. Not everyone who finds themselves fascinated by a high-profile killer is a hybristophiliac in any clinical sense. True crime is consumed primarily by women—one study placed the figure at over 70 percent of the audience—and the dominant reported motive is not attraction, but self-education: learning warning signs, understanding predatory behavior, gaining a felt sense of safety through knowledge. That is meaningfully different from writing love letters to a man on death row.

Still, the spectrum is real, and it’s useful to understand where hybristophilia sits within it.

Passive and Aggressive: Two Faces of the Same Phenomenon

Forensic psychologists typically divide hybristophilia into two subtypes, which differ not just in degree but in kind.

Passive hybristophilia is the more common form. It describes attraction maintained at a distance—pen pal relationships, fan mail, obsessive online following, the belief that one has a unique emotional connection with an offender the world has misunderstood. Passive hybristophiliacs often develop what researchers call “rescue fantasies,” convincing themselves their love could rehabilitate someone society has written off. They do not participate in criminal behavior themselves, though they may be susceptible to manipulation by the very people they idealize. Carole Ann Boone, who believed in Bundy’s innocence right up until the evidence became too heavy to carry, is often cited as a textbook case.

Aggressive hybristophilia is rarer and considerably more dangerous. Here, the attraction is not kept at a distance. Aggressive hybristophiliacs actively participate in or facilitate their partner’s criminal behavior—luring victims, helping dispose of evidence, committing crimes alongside them. The Manson Family is frequently cited as one of the clearest documented examples of aggressive hybristophilia. Karla Homolka, who helped her partner Paul Bernardo rape and murder three teenagers—including her own sister—is another. These are not simply people who fell for the wrong person; they are those whose attraction or devotion to their partner became intertwined with them.

It is important to be clear: most people who experience any form of attraction to criminals do not engage in criminal behavior themselves. Passive hybristophilia, while psychologically complex and potentially harmful to the person experiencing it, is not a precursor to crime. Researchers note that the factors driving the transition from passive to aggressive hybristophilia are not well understood and remain a priority for future study.

The Psychology: Why Does This Happen?

No single explanation adequately accounts for hybristophilia. What the research does suggest is a cluster of overlapping psychological mechanisms that often operate simultaneously in the same person.

Excitation Transfer and the Fear-Attraction Misattribution

One of the most compelling theoretical frameworks draws on Excitation Transfer Theory: the idea that physiological arousal from one source—in this case, fear—can be misattributed to another source, such as attraction. The classic analogy is a roller coaster. What begins as terror, processed in the body as adrenaline and heightened heart rate, converts to euphoria once the person recognizes they are safe. Put a dangerous man in shackles in a courtroom with armed guards, broadcast him across television, and something similar can happen: the fear response his crimes generate, in a controlled and mediated setting, can shade into something that registers, neurologically, like excitement. Studies on recreational fear support this mechanism—terror at a distance can intensify attraction under the right conditions.

Attachment Disruption and Trauma History

Research consistently points to childhood trauma and disrupted attachment as risk factors for hybristophilia. People who experienced physical or sexual abuse, or who had caregivers who were inconsistent or rejecting, may be drawn to relationships that replicate those dynamics—not because they enjoy being harmed, but because chaotic, unreliable attachment feels familiar. The desire to “fix” or “heal” a damaged partner—what some researchers link to the “Wendy Syndrome,” a pattern of codependent caretaking—may represent a subconscious attempt to resolve unprocessed relational wounds.

That said, researchers including forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland have found that hybristophiliac women are not a monolithic group. Not all have trauma histories. Some are educated, professionally successful, and, by most external measures, thriving—which complicates any simple pathological explanation.

Power, Control, and the “Perfect Boyfriend” Fantasy

For some people, a relationship with an incarcerated individual offers a paradoxical form of control and safety. The incarcerated partner cannot leave. His world is controlled, and he often depends on outside correspondence for money, news, and emotional connection. That sense of control, however, can itself become part of an emotionally manipulative dynamic, as incarcerated individuals may exploit emotional dependence, financial support, or idealization. Ramsland describes this as the “perfect boyfriend” dynamic: she can claim that someone loves her without enduring the daily friction of cohabitation—no cooking, no accountability, no ordinary abrasions of a shared life. The fantasy remains intact, charged by distance and longing, never tested by reality. For survivors of abusive relationships in particular, the physical impossibility of harm can register, counterintuitively, as a form of safety.

The Desire to Save Someone

Some individuals believe they can rehabilitate or heal a troubled offender—that they are uniquely capable of understanding someone whom society has rejected. This creates a powerful emotional narrative in which the relationship becomes centered on redemption and transformation. It can feel meaningful, even virtuous: where others see a monster, she sees a wounded person who has never been truly known. That self-story is difficult to give up, even when the evidence demands it.

The Celebrity Effect and Parasocial Attachment

Notorious offenders often become public figures whether or not anyone intended them to. Books, documentaries, courtroom coverage, and social media discussions create a sense of familiarity that psychologists call a parasocial relationship—a one-sided emotional connection with someone the individual does not know personally. Repeated exposure to an offender’s story, image, and purported inner life can blur the line between the real person and a carefully constructed media narrative. For some people, that media figure becomes the object of genuine emotional investment. Notoriety gets mistaken for charisma; constant coverage gets mistaken for significance.

Evolutionary Psychology Perspectives

Some researchers have explored evolutionary frameworks, theorizing that attraction to dominant, risk-taking, physically powerful men may represent an exaggerated version of ancestral mate preferences—traits that, in a pre-modern environment, might have signaled the ability to protect a partner and offspring. These hypotheses remain controversial, and there is little direct evidence that evolutionary mechanisms alone explain hybristophilia. But they gesture at something real: the fact that certain configurations of power and danger have always carried an erotic charge for some portion of the population.

Cognitive Distortion and Idealization

Many hybristophiliacs display a marked tendency to filter out or rationalize evidence of their partner’s crimes. They construct an alternative version of the person—the “real” him, the one who would never harm her, the one the world doesn’t understand. This cognitive distortion allows them to maintain attraction to someone whose documented history would, for most people, extinguish it entirely. Some individuals display genuinely delusional thinking. Others are less delusional than deeply invested in preserving the story they’ve built about the offender.

Famous Cases: When Theory Meets Reality

Ted Bundy and Carole Ann Boone

The most iconic case in the annals of hybristophilia, Bundy’s courtroom marriage to Boone in 1980 remains remarkable for its brazenness. Bundy proposed while Boone was on the witness stand, exploiting a Florida legal provision that recognized a declaration of marriage before a judge as legally binding. Their subsequent correspondence was intimate enough to result in a pregnancy—how, exactly, remains the subject of speculation given the restrictions of his incarceration. Boone maintained his innocence throughout his trials, eventually fleeing into hiding with their daughter after his 1989 execution, reportedly having finally accepted the truth of what he had done.

Richard Ramirez and Doreen Lioy

The Night Stalker had no shortage of female admirers during his 1989 trial, several of whom appeared in court wearing dark clothing, smiling and waving at him across the room. One journalist who covered the proceedings said he had never seen a defendant with more apparent sexual appeal. Of Ramirez’s many prison correspondents, Doreen Lioy—a freelance magazine editor who began writing after seeing him on television—was the one who married him, in a ceremony at San Quentin in 1996. “He’s kind, he’s funny, he’s charming,” she told CNN. “I just believe in him completely.” They remained married until Ramirez died of cancer on death row in 2013.

Charles Manson and Afton Burton

In 2014, a nearly eighty-year-old Charles Manson obtained a marriage license with Afton Elaine Burton, a twenty-six-year-old who had visited him regularly for nearly a decade and operated a website maintaining his innocence. The license expired before a ceremony took place. Regardless of motive, the episode illustrated that hybristophilia has no apparent ceiling on notoriety: Manson, who orchestrated the murders of at least nine people and became one of the most recognizable symbols of evil in American culture, attracted devoted female followers until the end of his life.

The Menendez Brothers

Both Lyle and Erik Menendez, convicted of the 1989 murders of their parents, received substantial romantic attention during and after their trials. Both eventually married women who had initiated contact through correspondence after watching television coverage. The case attracted renewed public interest on TikTok in the early 2020s, with young women creating content expressing sympathy and, in some cases, attraction toward the brothers. When the possibility of Erik’s release was publicly discussed in 2024, the online response was notable for how many people who apparently invested in the outcome appeared to be romantically or parasocially attached to him.

Luigi Mangione and Online Fascination

The December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the subsequent arrest of Luigi Mangione for his alleged murder, unfolded in a media landscape that made every development instantly visible. Mangione—young, conventionally attractive and highly educated—was quickly scrutinized and discussed online. Some online discussions framed him as a symbol of broader frustrations with the American healthcare system, while others emphasized the seriousness of the criminal allegations against him. In some corners of social media, that debate slid into something less comfortable: posts that framed him as misunderstood rather than dangerous, that lingered on his appearance and backstory more than on Thompson’s death.

It would be an overstatement to say Mangione inspired a full-blown fandom on the scale of earlier, more mythologized cases. But the speed at which people began projecting narratives onto him—rebel, martyr, romantic anti-hero—illustrated how little time it now takes for an alleged killer to become a screen onto which others can project their grievances, fantasies, and attractions. Even cautious sympathy or aesthetic fascination, expressed publicly and repeatedly, raises the question of where political critique ends and hybristophilic attachment begins.

Common Misconceptions

Because hybristophilia is so often discussed in sensational terms, a few persistent misunderstandings are worth addressing directly.

“Everyone interested in true crime has hybristophilia.”

False. Most true crime consumers are drawn to the genre for reasons unrelated to attraction to criminals—understanding how investigations work, learning to recognize warning signs, supporting victims, or examining systemic failures in the justice system. Interest in crime is not the same as attraction to criminals, and conflating the two does a disservice to both phenomena.

“Only women experience hybristophilia.”

False, though media coverage heavily skews toward cases involving women attracted to male offenders. People of any gender can experience attraction toward criminals. The research imbalance reflects the documented cases more than the full population of people who experience it.

“People with hybristophilia automatically have a mental illness.”

False. While psychological factors—including trauma, disrupted attachment, and certain personality traits—may contribute to hybristophilic attraction, the phenomenon itself is not automatic evidence of mental illness. A complicated mix of personal experience, cultural influence, attachment patterns, and psychological need shapes human attraction. Hybristophilia exists on a spectrum, and most people who experience it never act on it in any way that harms themselves or others.

“Hybristophilia is a modern phenomenon driven by social media.”

False. The behavior long predates the internet—Bundy’s courtroom was packed with female admirers in 1979, and people were writing amorous letters to notorious criminals well before that. Social media has amplified and made visible what was always there; it did not create it.

True Crime, Social Media, and the Industrialization of Dangerous Attraction

Hybristophilia predates the internet by at least a century, but the internet has done something to it. It has scaled it, accelerated it, and made it visible in ways that were previously impossible.

A 2025 peer‑reviewed study in the journal Deviant Behavior examined the relationship between TikTok engagement and hybristophilia among nearly one hundred women aged 18 to 27. The researchers analyzed a sample of TikTok videos and comments posted between 2020 and 2024, focusing on content that romanticized or glamorized men who commit crimes—including serial killers like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, as well as fictional characters such as Joe Goldberg from Netflix’s You. Women who actively watched and interacted with this kind of content—liking, sharing, and seeking it out—scored significantly higher on measures of hybristophilia than those who did not engage with it. Some related work has also explored whether “dark personality” traits like Machiavellianism and psychopathy help predict these tendencies, but those findings remain preliminary.

The content itself followed a familiar script. Videos cast notorious offenders as misunderstood, protective, or secretly romantic. Commenters described violent men as “ideal partners,” reframing possessiveness and brutality as proof of loyalty. A recurring “I can fix him” fantasy—closely related to what some researchers call the Wendy Syndrome—ran through much of the discourse. Dark humor was everywhere, allowing creators and viewers to acknowledge the taboo nature of their attraction while maintaining plausible deniability about how serious it was.

TikTok’s design amplifies this dynamic. Content that provokes strong emotions—fear, excitement, outrage—tends to be rewarded by the algorithm and shown again. Repetition matters: the study found that it was not just passive exposure but active engagement that most strongly tracked with hybristophilia scores. The platform is not simply a mirror reflecting existing psychological tendencies to users; it appears to reinforce them. Fictional media contributes as well. Decades of film and popular media have taught audiences how to read the “dangerous, misunderstood man,” from brooding anti‑heroes to “dark romantics” whose violence is aestheticized into something compelling. Shows like You, in which a charming stalker and murderer is rendered sympathetic through first‑person narration, generate fan enthusiasm that operates on the same psychological logic as attraction to real offenders.

None of this means that everyone who watches You or follows true crime on TikTok is a hybristophiliac. The vast majority are not. But the cultural infrastructure that makes hybristophilia imaginable—the vocabulary of “I can fix him,” the aestheticization of danger, the parasocial intimacy with media figures—is broader and more accessible than ever, and that matters.