Agreed... this theme is a common one is literature. Some of these human monsters, as you call them, would be fascinating subjects to study. But as Hercule Poirot observes in "Cards on The Table":
"I am not so insensitive to art in crime as you think. I can admire the perfect murder - I can also admire a tiger - that splendid tawny-striped beast. But I will admire him from outside his cage... For you see, Mr Shaitana, the tiger might spring..."
Further, as the Dragon observes in Terry Pratchett's "Guards! Guards!":
You have the effrontery to be squeamish... but we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape - we n ever burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.
In my book, the most horrible of all human monsters - recent, at least - is Andrei Chikatilo, nicknamed "the Butcher of Rostov" or "the Red Ripper", who committed at least 52 rapes, mutilations and murders over a 12-year period in the former USSR. What makes it the most horrible, in my book, is that the man himself was so ordinary: a shy, short-sighted, studious man who was bullied by his mother, his school-chums and his wife, and who found release in raping and murdering both girls and women. How did he become such a monster? There are literally millions - even billions - of bullied boys around the world, but a very tiny minority become serial rapists and murderers (thank $deity$).
