This was my thought as well. If serial killers just figured out that being a cop would give them good cover, there might not be a real decline at all- just a rise in “death by natural causes” or whatever a coroner decides to call it.
The article is based on a misunderstanding of the data.
Murder in general has sharply declined, so before you concentrate on the cause of the decline of serial murder, you have to examine the figures and see if the decline is significantly different from the more general drop in murders. If it isn’t then whatever is causing the drop off in murder is also causing the drop off in serial murder, and there’s no need to focus on the serial aspect of the crime when discussing the drop.
And that’s an interesting thing, because we have this popular view of serial murderers as a group apart- a special form of crime that is different to the one-off murders that happen. And so this is a test case- are the things that are reducing murders in general also reducing serial murders, or are these two phenomena that need to be tackled differently.
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No. I meant that the overall impact for society on copycat killers, white supremacist recruitment and police violence has likely been a net positive for society.
I don’t know where the implications that serial killers are simply switching camps came up.
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Harder to pull off.
Better tech, too many eyes and ears everywhere. No instant gratification that seem the goal of everyone nowadays.
Why go with hard long haul, when you can go out with a bang?
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Lots of links to ponder in Kevin Drum’s blog. He’s been a proponent of this idea for years. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/
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There were a few decades there when law-and-order politics appealed to people for the very good reason that crime had gone way up. Imagine what American political parties would be like today if that line of thought hadn’t had those decades to get entrenched.
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Maybe for the past 4 years they’ve been too busy attending MAGA rallies?
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What are the stats for missing people during this time as well - a missing person may just be somebody who doesn’t want to be found or an as yet unfound or unfindable remains. Also, how many people that go missing actually get reported?
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Yeah, the numbers are a lot of guestimation, based on what’s turning out to be bad data. The most prolific serial killer in US history was only revealed in the last few years. He targeted people who the criminal justice system had so little regard for (poor women of color), they didn’t care - and didn’t investigate - how they died, or even knew if they had died. Most of his victims weren’t even recognized as murder victims, much less was any effort put into finding their killer. That dynamic is still in play. But on the other hand, this guy is like 80 years old, and started killing in the '70s, so his existence doesn’t disprove the assertion that the country is creating fewer serial killers these days.
That’s always been true, though. (See above.) It may be that the remaining serial killers are those that target groups that are still ignored by law enforcement, but the number of marginalized groups has been decreasing. (E.g. the police can’t ignore the deaths of gay men the way they once might have.) Other would-be serial killers that don’t do that might be more likely to get caught before they can become serial killers.
Still true - the most prolific US serial killer was revealed, due to confessions, in 2019. (see above) He was murdering people from 1970 to 2005, when he finally got caught for killing three people (the cops unaware of his other ninety victims).
I mean, you’d think so, but… (see above) The fact is, there are marginalized groups still, that when the remains of members of those groups are discovered, the cops’ response is often “they died of natural causes,” because they just can’t be bothered. So DNA might help stop serial killers in deaths recognized as murders, but not for deaths that aren’t. And we really have no idea how many such deaths there are.
DNA evidence would tie murders together, these days. No data sharing and no DNA evidence allowed killers to change jurisdiction and nothing would tie their crimes together. Not so much the case, now. (Though this presumes they’re being recognized as murders in the first place, which still isn’t always the case.)
Also, if this is true, I suspect the various dynamics that have dropped crime rates (e.g. less environmental lead) had a major impact, too.
Yeah, the presumption being made seems to be that serial killing is somehow a different thing from other violent crime, rather than a sub-set of it that would be impacted by the same dynamics that would reduce violent crime as a whole, which seems more reasonable to me.
To be fair, 9/11 is what put an end to that. (Pre-9/11, the protocol involved handing over the plane to hijackers to prevent deaths, but if their intention is to crash the plane, that protocol doesn’t make sense anymore. So there’s no point in trying to hijack the plane, as the outcome is the would-be hijackers will just end up being beaten down by passengers/sky marshals.)
Yeah, that really complicates things, as missing person statistics are a mess. (Which is why Qanon can get away with some batshit conspiracy theories - they wildly misrepresent what the statistics mean, to imply tons of children are disappearing into some void.) There’s a variety of situations being included in the statistics, and the numbers are wobbly. A teenager running away multiple times (and being found each time) ends up as multiple reports of a missing person, but an adult who disappears because they’ve been murdered might not get recorded at all (because no one noticed, because the cops wouldn’t take the report, etc.). I don’t know how much this has been studied, nor how accurate anyone’s estimation of the real numbers could even be.
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Yup. Not proud to say we have the “Highway of Tears” between Prince Rupert and Prince George in BC. Counting the victims in the Wikipedia article shows an escalation since the 70’s.
And its not just the middle of BC: a recent National Inquiry was conducted into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. From https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/
“…reveals that persistent and deliberate human and Indigenous rights violations and abuses are the root cause behind Canada’s staggering rates of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people.”
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That’s an extremely light article that misses some key things.
The advancement in policing techniques isn’t just profiling and forensics. But a shift to much bigger coordination across agencies. Previous to the 80 and 90’s the FBI couldn’t even get involved except by request in an advisement role, or if there were specific cross state crimes involved. Almost exclusively kidnapping. There were no databases, no processes for different police departments to share info or even look at another departments open cases to look for patterns without physical going there and digging through files by hand. Different jurisdictions often froze each other out or viewed each other as competitors.
All of that has changed significantly since, and is the core of the “it’s harder” idea.
They mention the media glorification, but not the shifts in what that looks like. The media is less likely to give us 24 hour updates about a serial killer and go full OJ on their trial. But they’re significantly more likely to do that with mass shooters and spree killers.
Together that’s the core concept behind the idea that this sort violence has shifted to spree killing. Cause while the specific pathology is a bit different. The core psychology is remarkably similar (as it is for sexual predators of all kinds, domestic abuser, and often enough certain kinds of terrorists).
They don’t mention the lead hypothesis, which is a key one when talking about the crime spike in this era. Not just because there was more crime, but more of that crime was violent crime.
That has potential implications for the overall incidence of sexual assault and rape apparently.
But when it comes to serial killers and pathological sexual predators like child molesters is actually a core part of escalation behaviors. The cycle of behavior these people run through tends to start with fantasy, grooming or stalking. Often using pornography, media, or trophies.
But it’s specific pornography. And even before porn was so easy to access. They’d basically make their own.
I’ve never heard that proposed as an explanation. Because that’s always been the case. The bulk of serial killers have always targeted marginalized people. The homeless, lgbtq people, runaways and sex workers. Almost all of them target people who are “easy” in some way. Kids, physically weaker people, older or younger people.
The concept here is the “less dead”. People who’s position in society is such that they can be considered less dead than if that dead person were a wealthy, attractive white woman.
While this is still an issue. It’s narrowed a whole lot. People no longer respond to missing kids by say “they probably just ran away” like that’s normal, non dangerous thing. We don’t skip out on investigating missing women because she had a job and that’s just what happens to women with jobs.
That’s the major thing on a lot of this. Since we know what we’re looking for it might be that they get caught during early, sloppier and less extreme crime. Cause not just the incidence that’s gone down. But the body counts as well.
Glory seeking is a big motivation. But there are a lot more not famous cases than famous cases.
That too. But from what I understand there’s still proportionally fewer serial murder (and proportionally more spree killings).
Like all crime lower from what I understand.
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Yet another sign of our declining educational system. /s
I thought of that, too, but lead poisoning hinders development of impulse control, which I would imagine is necessary for a “successful” career as a serial killer? I don’t know that they could rack up the numbers without good planning. But as someone (ETA: @Shuck) already mentioned, if they’re targeting marginalized communities, they could have crappy impulse control and still get away with it…
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That is true. One of America’s most prolific serial killers, Samuel Little, was a powerful boxer and many of his victims were prostitutes (marginalized) and he killed them without a weapon, so it didn’t automatically trigger a thorough investigation. Shockingly, some who died of obvious trauma were not considered homicides. Some of that must go on. Seems to me that it’s not common, but then again, if it’s not getting recorded there’s no way to measure it.
But even a guy like Samuel Little wouldn’t go on as long today as he did. He had a long criminal record and he would have left DNA in enough places that there would have been a match. In fact, in the end DNA helped get him locked up permanently. Unfortunately he committed a bunch of crimes including attempted murder and didn’t get serious sentences for it, resulting in many unnecessary deaths, mainly of marginalized women.
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And if there was evidence that such a phenomenon remained static, as opposed to increasing (or decreasing), I’d be interested in seeing it.
Because being a spree killer or active shooter is the new hotness? Serial killing is soooo old school.
Trump made their work looks like rookie numbers.
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Yeah, it’s Little that I refer to at the beginning of my comment - he’s the most prolific (US) serial killer that we know of. I still regularly read about people who are found dead, e.g. in a pool of blood, or their bones in some remote location far from their home, where the system declares their deaths to be of natural causes/accidents. I suspect - fear - that the murder rate is significantly undercounted as a result, at least for some specific populations. Killing people who are so marginalized their deaths won’t be recorded as murders seems to still be a winning strategy for serial killers. (Of course, even if there’s a secretly elevated murder count, we don’t know how many of those deaths are due to serial killers, much less younger serial killers.)
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I think there’s numbers showing a decrease in ocurance if not severity. But like a lot of crime statistics i tend to think thats skewed by everything crime related dropping.
But importantly it’s always been a problem and targeting these sorts of people is central to how serial crimes of this sort operate.
It’s just that how many people or groups of people qualify as less dead has narrowed over time. And there’s more opportunities for communities and activists to bring attention to an issue.
I was serious about the just a runaway thing. I’ve been a true crime geek most of my life. It’s really shocking how many serial killer stories start out that way. Because people and especially the authorities legitimately didn’t view missing children as a problem worthy of attention.
And I was just listening to a podcast the other day about a killer. Where the murder of his first victim was ignored and his explanation of how he was totally not involved in her body ending up in a ditch was accepted. Mostly because that teenaged girl was “trouble”. Seemingly because she often wore pants and wasn’t on the cheerleading squad.
As far as I can tell targeting of LGBTQ youth, undocumented immigrants, sex workers and the homeless hasn’t tapered at all. And the other end of it in media attention, we still don’t notice when Black kids go missing. So it’s not like it’s not a problem anymore.
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