> Is it just me or are there fewer serial killers these days?
Maybe. OTOH, the decline in identified serial killers tracks with the decline in identifying the perpetrators of killings period, as the clearance rate for homicides has dropped. Plenty of room for serial killers to hide in that:
The main reason is that most homicides are not the fancy middle class pre meditated murder type of crime as seen on TV but are often related to other criminal activities and with low evidence. This means that any witnesses are likely going to be within that world of not speaking to the police and any evidence in a gang killing for example, will be of low quality.
Try watching a show called “the First 48” on A&E sometime. Their murder cases are only solved because a suspect confesses. If the suspect doesn’t confess, or lawyers up, then forget about solving it.
My own personal speculation is that TV shows have a lot to do with it. People watching TV get used to the idea of an elite crew of colorful personalities inevitably hunting down their man, and they think murder is a guaranteed jail sentence, so they murder less often. In reality, probably pretty easy to get away with murder.
Also: video games. Young men, who commit most of the murders, spend more time playing video games and therefore less time murdering.
Yup, and this doesn't even include all the disappearances that never get called homicides. You're disincentivized against calling a case a homicide if you can't bring a case—your clearance rate will drop. It also doesn't cover all the clearances which involved an innocent person pleading guilty to avoid heinous sentencing.
But really, what made these serial killers famous is that they often tried to communicate and bask in their fame, no? I'm curious if they no longer advertise themselves, or that their letters are no longer advertised widely?
I do remember seeing the luka magnotta documentary on netflix (don't fuck with cats), which while not quite a serial killers, comes close to someone who liked the attention.
No you just catch the ones that didn't do their homework.
Most of the (solved) crime news I read about, I'm always confounded how unaware criminals are about "tradecraft".
For an example of stupid criminals, I remember reading in the local newspaper about a group of guys that had robbed a store of phone cards (the story is a bit old) and tried to sell them back to said store.
Instead of using a public phone with one of those cards, they just used their own mobile phone to contact the store. Since in France you're required to give ID to get a SIM card, I'll let you guess how long it took the police to find the robbers :)
In Belgium a group of robbers was told by a shop owner to not steal him now but to come back in the evening to steal more money from the cash register. He also managed to convince the police to be there in case they would come back, and they did.
It's survival bias in that we don't know about the criminals that get away with stuff, only the ones we catch.
Most burglaries and robberies are performed close to where the criminal lives. They are mostly opportunistic crimes done criminals with no thought at the time of what they are doing and no fear of the consequences.
The stereotypical version of that is the drug addict doing anything to get money for their fix, but generally it's associated with not very smart people who do stuff and do not fear the consequences.
The number of murders 'cleared' divided by the number of murders recorded. What makes a crime cleared or not depends on who is doing to measuring but consider it to relate to whether the government thinks that they have enough evidence to charge someone with the crime.
Funny you ask! I was just pondering that the Zodiac, who only was confirmed to have killed like 5 people, is a legendary serial killer who most Americans are familiar with, because of the mystique around his moniker and his cyphers and who his victims were.
Yet the Chicago Strangler [1], who is still active, still operating to this day, 50+ victims, few have heard of....because he attacks marginalized groups like black runaways rather than white people.
Do you honestly believe everyone would suddenly know about the Chicago Strangler if they were murdering only white meth addicts? This racial rhetoric is so tired.
Exactly. Just look at the Green River Killer. He’s not well known, but he killed 50 young women, mostly white, but also mostly runaways and sex workers.
I feel like the Green River Killer is quite well know...
But even if he's not as well known as Zodiac, again, look at the victim profile: runaways and sex workers. It's not just about skin color, although for some reason both of you zeroed in on that. I specified "marginalized groups" such as [mostly black] runaways. It's about being poor, unknown, and not white.
"Yet the Chicago Strangler [1], who is still active, still operating to this day, 50+ victims, few have heard of....because he attacks marginalized groups like black runaways rather than white people."
Your implication is that white people can't be marginalized. Economics cut across skin color.
In another comment in this thread, you mention that a condition of being marginalized is being non-white. The logical inverse of that is white people cannot be marginalized. Yet here, you acknowledge that white people can be marginalized.
So, which is it?
The common thread seems to be economic status as another commenter stated.
Alright, my previous comment was too fuzzy, let me try to be more clear.
Directly contrasting a specific "non-white marginalized group" with "all white people" does, for me, evoke the impression as if the assumption was that there were no people among "white people" that could be marginalized the same way.
> He only said that that serial killer targets black runaways, and that that is a marginalized group.
This is the part of the comment I was replying to that I took issue with and felt I had to rebut, because it's simply a false summary. The original comment definitely was a stronger statement than that through the broad comparison it drew.
If the original post had been phrased "... rather than white middle class people" (which I believe was the intention), I would completely agree with it.
Yes. The police have had a long history of chalking up death in impoverished black neighborhoods to “gang violence” and closing investigations. Topically, Chapelle had a famous stand up bit about it.
I'm not a student of serial killers but it's hard for me to even begin to formulate a motive for this particular guy. Men that kill women is common; women that poison men is pretty common. Let's theorize these people have a fetish for killing. Another category is those with automatic weapons that kill groups of people all at once. Just for notoriety knowing they will be caught or expect to commit suicide at some point in the process.
But Zodiac is killing couples he doesn't know at a distance with a gun (or a knife, likely because a gunshot would draw too much attention). He wants to be notorious but not personally notorious? He just has a hate on for anonymous couples? Are there (m)any more examples of this kind of killer? Hypothetically, if he could kill say a hundred couples from a distance with a bomb would that motivate him? I'm just not getting it.
The 90's were an insanely violent time, besides gun violence being at all time highs etc, I remember in high school in the mid-late 90's fights every day happening at school. Some people say lead caused the violence, all I know pollution was horrible in silicon valley (south bay) in the 90's. Every day in the summer you couldn't see the mountains and there was a thick brown haze in the air.
I’d like to reply to badconvincer, but my vouching for his dead comment isn’t reviving it. Anyway, what I want to say is this:
Growing up in the 90s, witnessing 9/11 and the ensuing cultural “snap back,” I think both of you are right. I think what we really had going on before 9/11 was that the country had a very cavalier, devil may care attitude. For some sections of society, that enabled a more carefree lifestyle; for others, we literally didn’t care if they destroyed each other. I think that devil may care attitude disappeared after 9/11 and especially during the ensuing wars.
Where we’re at culturally now would probably require an entire essay to explain. I do think an argument could be made that something similar happened in the late 2000s and early 2010s, where one segment of society let its hair down and was able to exhale, while a totally different class of people were marginalized.
We’re at or near another cultural “snap back” now, I think. What that’ll look like, I have no idea.
Fights were more common, bullying was rampant but people seemed lighter and happier like nothing was pent up. Probably just rose colored glasses though.
It is actually kind of frightening hilarious to see movies like Predator 2's depiction of the future. Robocop, as well. It is stark how violent things were back then, it seems.
Organized crime is more powerful and better organized right now than it has ever been in American history.
The reason people are unaware of this is that organized crime is really only visible when they are having problems. Gang wars lead to news coverage, one gang monopolizing an area and effectively extracting revenue from it does not.
Not sure about the original Robocop, but Robocop 2 definitely had comic moments - the bit I particularly remember was the Sunblock 5000 advert (https://robocop.fandom.com/wiki/Sunblock_5000).
I think it was intentionally "raised to eleven." Supposed to be a somewhat satirical take on where things were headed. That said, I couldn't cite why I think that.
It could just be better policing. If you catch someone after they kill once or twice, they don’t get the chance to become a serial killer. But I haven’t looked up any stats on this.
If it was “better policing”, you expect the clearance rate for actual homicides to have gone up as well as the identified serial killers to have gone down. Instead, the clearance rate has gone down, as well. “Worse policing” of murder would better explain both reduced clearance of homicides and reduced numbers of identified serial killers.
Worse policing also leads to more incorrect clearings.
Who knows how many murders were incorrectly pinned on husbands or wives, or known petty criminals, or tramps? The same technology we use to find murderers can also exonerate people.
We also tossed out a lot of bogus methods based on pseudo-science and learned a lot about the reliability of witnesses; and all the modern technology exposed many expert witnesses as charlatans.
Surveillance is much easier these days with that little computer in our pockets. Doesn't that nearly everyone still publishes their location to services like FB. I predict that the West will move closer to Chinese style surveillance and censorship. Actually, I don't have to predict it. It's already happening little by little.
I’ve read before that the FBI estimates there are ~50 to 70 active serial killers in the U.S. at any given time. The problem is they’re incredibly sporadic and sometimes go dormant for any number of reasons for months, years, or decades at a time.
Like a lot of things these days, people don't take pride in their craft anymore. Everyone takes shortcuts. Today's serial killers are sloppy and just want to do things quick and easy so they can get back to browsing facebook and instagram.
I was watching point break last week, and temporarily felt bad that bank robberies can't really happen anymore. If for no other reason, because they make a good story line.
I was in the Quad Cities (Iowa/Illinois interface) in the spring and there was a bank robbery pretty much every other week. Turned out to be the same guy each time, but as an East-coaster who's not too familiar with the Midwest there was a couple of months I was convinced that bank-robbing simply never died out in the heartland.
Bank robberies rarely ever happened like Point Break to begin with. The average bank robbery is a quiet affair conducted with a slipped note and the implication of a gun.
I interviewed a family friend who had then recently retired from chasing bank robbers in the FBI for a school project a decade and change ago. The biggest take-a-way was his assertion that, at least at that time, anyone could get away with robbing a bank once. It's not getting away with the crime itself that's hard: it's not leaving a pattern on the next one.
Have also heard this from someone in law enforcement. He said it's the easiest crime to get away with, as long as you only do it once and don't particularly care about the money. The dye packs make it hard to spend.
I've heard it claimed that bank tellers won't risk giving a bank robber dye packs if the robber specifically demands no dye packs. But I'm pretty skeptical of this..
I guess that influences the perception of "fewer serial killers" at the same time beyond the drop of detection. The way that "big name" serial killers like Zodiac or the Golden State Killer became widely known is by actively taunting the police/public, which nowadays is probably far too risky to do. So we not only have serial killers that know how to hide better, but also ones that know not to seek out media attention.
