”The Butcher Boy”, a novel by the Irish author Patrick McCabe, chronicles the life of a young boy named Frances ’Francie’ Brady. As the novel progresses, the reader is shown how a series of unfortunate events changes Francie. In the beginning of the novel, he is a happy boy who does not have anything that troubles him. However, in the end Francie Brady has turned into a cold-blooded murderer who sees no other way for him to change his life other than to kill the woman he accuses of being the cause to all of his troubles. When looking at the early life of convicted serial killers and mass murderers, four main influences were present in both the lives of the fictional Francie Brady and the real life murderers. These were then divided into four chapters: “Dysfunctional family”, “Adolescent criminal activity”, “Sexual abuse” and “Regression”. Each of the chapters begins with an overview of what happened to Francie Brady and the second part draw comparisons to similar incidents in the early lives of the serial offenders. The aim of this essay is to look at the similarities and to give the reader the opportunity to draw their own conclusion to if Francie Brady might in fact have been a serial killer caught early in his career.