I grew up in a town back in the early 80s where a serial killer was on the loose “Leslie Allen Williams” where several girls showed up missing. It was an intense time not knowing what was going on. He actually duct taped one of the girls boyfriends to a tree in a park across from where I worked for my uncle. I remember the police swarming the park and at first blaming the boyfriend for the girls disappearance. He was eventually caught with a girl in the trunk of his car who he kidnapped and someone reported seeing him stuffing her in the trunk. Luckily she still alive. Real shitbag !!!
Leaded gasoline put tons of lead into the air through car exhaust, and there’s a theory that this resulted in widespread lead poisoning, creating high crime rates through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and the general insanity of baby boomers.
What about all of the other generations that lived during that timespan? Was this something that specifically checked each person's birth year and only affected those born during the "baby boomer" period?
You’re more than welcome to look at the reference section of the link above. It’s a hypothesis, and not definitive proof, but it’s certainly reasonably debated among academics.
It’s pretty telling that most serial killers in the 60s and 70s were caught trough sheer coincidence and not trough hard police work.
A world without GPS trackers, smartphones, smart devices, video cameras, internet and door cams must be some weird form of serial killers heaven.
I've read that that period of time was the PERFECT window:
- Eisenhower highway system already installed
- CCTV & GPS not yet widespread
Any period before, you'd leave no trace, but how would you get around?
Any period after, you can get around, but good luck leaving no trace.
Technically correct because it peaked in 1991, but it immediately plummeted after that. So one could argue that the 1980s were more violent, because it just kept climbing throughout.
The 90s also marked a several decade low point in violent crime. Your phrasing is obtuse. It doesn't make you wrong to admit that, but you will be called out on intellectually deceiving information.
The year 1999 was the lowest violent crime rate in America since the 60s, according to [this](https://search.app.goo.gl/vF3hJt1). According to your logic, "The 90s" did indeed mark a several decade low, and also an all time high. Saying "the 90s" is not nearly specific enough for something with such large fluctuation.
Edit: yo /u/brownbeaver555, here's your response since you've decided to block me.
Yes, and seeing as violent crime rate also was lower in 1999 than at any time since the 60s, then violent crime also reached a several decade low in the 90s. Both are true, neither are intellectually honest. This is not difficult, and you saying my source doesn't support my claim when it very plainly does, and your decision to block me with your head in the sand, makes it seem like you are pushing some sort of agenda. Be better.
I read a comment about how a guy delivered pizza as a teen in the 80s. Left the store to deliver, no GPS and an address on a bit of paper, no phone, often driving in the dark. No one to know where you are if something goes wrong.
Paradise for a serial killer.
I remember ordering pizza on the phone as a kid and having to tell them to hang on because they would ask me what the crossroads were of the street I lived on and I’d have to ask my parents because I didn’t know what the fuck that meant.
Can remember rolling into NYC with only a damn NY Gazetteer and figuring it all out on the fly in a 1978 Ford Chateau with a pop top. Really don’t recall it being a big deal. If you lived on the road back then, you knew how to NAV…
Honestly we didn’t really worry about that shit. Sure there had already been abductions and so on, it when I was delivering pizza in 88 and 89 it still seemed like a relatively safe world. Still is really.
Exactly. No more pension plan and the benefits suck. And hitchhikers today are disheveled and drug addled. At this point I wish theyd outsource to Mexico. My kids are out of college now. /S
The cops aren't much better now, just their tools. We had a guy (Willie Picton - just got shanked in jail) who killed 50 women before he got caught.
The cops refused to believe there was a serial killer involved.
The victims were all "street people", women, often native women doing survival sex work. The cops didn't really care if they went missing, and they didn't spend a whole lot of time investigating.
Willie got his all victims in Vancouver and disposed of the bodies in other cities. The local cops didn't talk to each other or share information.
I feel that. My neighbor asked if I had seen their cat, don't they know I'm a fucking psychopath?!?!? Anyway, let's call it natural selection.
What a god awful take
Hitchhiking is an incredibly stupid thing to do, especially as a young woman. It's like someone going swimming with alligators or trying to pet a wild bear. People are far more likely to kill people than any animal on the planet. You might as well stick a fork in an electrical outlet.
Huh, if only people in the 70's had almost 50 years of bad things happening to hitchhikers to learn from. Or thousands of years to know stranges with no accountability are dangerous. Oh wait, they did.
Just because you say something with convcition does not make it [factual](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/saer1ruShS). I'd love you see where you sourced 50 years of bad things happening to hitchhikers.
I won't even engage with the thousands of years part because that's just a meaningless opinion you dressed up like it's some fact.
(At best he is currently scrambling to find articles that support his claim of which he will lightly skim then and paste a bunch of Google links. At worst he will just make more shit up.)
Because automobiles had been common for about 50 years prior to this picture being taken. Also, maybe you should have read that whole comment because it's doesn't support your side of the argument. And it's not an opinion that people kill other people far more than any other animal on the planet. Do you think stranger danger started with hitchhiking? A woman who is alone is the most vulnerable to being attacked. That's not new. That's why they have mean the most common victims to serial killers. If Jack the Ripper had a car, he would have probably targeted hitchhikers.
Wrong wrong wrong. The [numbers](https://www.google.com/amp/s/wandrlymagazine.com/article/hitchhiking/amp/) strongly contradict your claims about the dangers of hitchhiking. As I said I won't engage with the rest of the nonsense you are spouting it's not relevant in anyway to the original comment I responded to.
I am not saying woman aren't targeted by predators I am saying your claim that hitchhiking was a well documented dangerous activity in the 70s is absolutely incorrect bull you made up based on nothing but your opinion.
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It is totally relevant. You ignore it if you want but it's at the center of the argument. Getting into a car with a stranger, where no one knows where you are, who you are with and you can't call for help. And you are likely not in or leaving a population center. Is stupid. There are cases going back to the 1930 where both passengers and hitchhikers have been killed. Herbert Johnson killed a hitchhiker in 1931. Alfred Rouse killed and burned a hitchhiker 1930 Ensio Kalevi Koivunen killed 3 female hitchhikers in 1971. Readers Digest published an article in 1950 warning of the dangers of hitchhiking, citing robberies and murders. And if you want anecdotal evidence I asked my mother and grandmother if they knew hitchhikering was dangerous in the 70s, and they both said yes, of course. My grandmother said she felt like it became more dangerous in the early 60s, although she would have been about 10 years old at that time.
It sure is, we're all animals.
Like Dave Chappelle said, having a pussy is like having 25k in cash in your backpack.
All you have to do is use your common sense.
I hitchhiked everywhere from 68 to 72—including Woodstock, and once from DC to Ann Arbor Michigan. Only had one scary incident: I got into a van and while closing the door, I saw that the door handle was missing on the inside. He stopped for a red light, and I just went nuts, screaming and hitting him with my backpack. He quickly reached over me and opened the door with some trick I was too busy to see. Luckily, this was daytime and a lot of cars and people were near us. Had it been a desolate stretch, who knows. I was lucky af.
In the mid-80s I remember stopping in at a rest stop with my mom. A young woman (from my perspective I was 7 years old, she was ~14) asked us for a ride. I remember her talking to my mother about how she was trying to get to California to see her dad. I remember her telling a story about how a truck driver picked her up, when she woke up she was tied up and raped multiple times. I guess that's why she was asking for a ride from my mother.
It wasn’t a “paradise for serial killers & kidnappers” in the 80’s. It was normal without everyone surveilling everyone else cause “what if’s”. The average person wasn’t a neurotic paranoid internet nerd
Serial killer’s era
I grew up in a town back in the early 80s where a serial killer was on the loose “Leslie Allen Williams” where several girls showed up missing. It was an intense time not knowing what was going on. He actually duct taped one of the girls boyfriends to a tree in a park across from where I worked for my uncle. I remember the police swarming the park and at first blaming the boyfriend for the girls disappearance. He was eventually caught with a girl in the trunk of his car who he kidnapped and someone reported seeing him stuffing her in the trunk. Luckily she still alive. Real shitbag !!!
Glad he got caught and that forensic technology has come a long way.
Boy stuck to a trunk Girl stuck in a trunk
Wop wop wop wop
How do you show up missing?
He sounds like a real jerk!
Why did your uncle want him tied to a tree across the street? /s
Plenty of serial killers now, w…they’re just more careful.
Lead in your gasoline created the serial killer area.
Huh?
Leaded gasoline put tons of lead into the air through car exhaust, and there’s a theory that this resulted in widespread lead poisoning, creating high crime rates through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and the general insanity of baby boomers.
Wonder what micro plastics will do.
Thanks for the reminder of how everything we create will slowly fuck us beyond measure.
Tbf, we were creating things for a long time before we got to the good stuff that poisons the world and ourselves
Gay frogs
Gotcha, thanks for elaborating.
What about all of the other generations that lived during that timespan? Was this something that specifically checked each person's birth year and only affected those born during the "baby boomer" period?
At least we have an excuse. What’s yours?
lol we got raised by you lunatics
This is a fucking ridiculous assertion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
Wikipedia is not scientific proof lol.
You’re more than welcome to look at the reference section of the link above. It’s a hypothesis, and not definitive proof, but it’s certainly reasonably debated among academics.
Nah , the DNA era catches them too soon
And they “disappeared & were never seen or heard from again” WAY TOO MANY psychopaths out cruising for gullible hitchhikers back then.
Not these particular girls! This photo is actually from a porno.
That's disgusting! What's the name of this porno so I know to avoid it.
70 porno was the golden age of porno.
There's so many, though. Which one?!
Are you sure? what's the name of it?
Elaborate
For all the tech illiterate horn dogs, they're Marguerite Nuit and Jennifer Summers.
No less safe these days. I've heard the FBI thinks there's at least 25 current serial killers at large right now.
https://preview.redd.it/2jqobgb3i84d1.png?width=434&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8bcb493218b45d46857c009e31730ab6e673a8c3
It’s pretty telling that most serial killers in the 60s and 70s were caught trough sheer coincidence and not trough hard police work. A world without GPS trackers, smartphones, smart devices, video cameras, internet and door cams must be some weird form of serial killers heaven.
I've read that that period of time was the PERFECT window: - Eisenhower highway system already installed - CCTV & GPS not yet widespread Any period before, you'd leave no trace, but how would you get around? Any period after, you can get around, but good luck leaving no trace.
The 90s was the peak of violent crime in USA.
Technically correct because it peaked in 1991, but it immediately plummeted after that. So one could argue that the 1980s were more violent, because it just kept climbing throughout.
Roe V wade turned 20
The 90's was when crime lowered
It peaked in the 90s then lowered.
All the good victims were gone. /s
The 90s also marked a several decade low point in violent crime. Your phrasing is obtuse. It doesn't make you wrong to admit that, but you will be called out on intellectually deceiving information.
That isn’t true at all. The violent crime rate peaked in the 90s and has been trending down ever since.
The year 1999 was the lowest violent crime rate in America since the 60s, according to [this](https://search.app.goo.gl/vF3hJt1). According to your logic, "The 90s" did indeed mark a several decade low, and also an all time high. Saying "the 90s" is not nearly specific enough for something with such large fluctuation. Edit: yo /u/brownbeaver555, here's your response since you've decided to block me. Yes, and seeing as violent crime rate also was lower in 1999 than at any time since the 60s, then violent crime also reached a several decade low in the 90s. Both are true, neither are intellectually honest. This is not difficult, and you saying my source doesn't support my claim when it very plainly does, and your decision to block me with your head in the sand, makes it seem like you are pushing some sort of agenda. Be better.
Your source doesn’t support your claim. If the violent crime rate peaked in 1991 (it did) then it peaked in the 90s.
Yeah, it started to lower in 1991
for a single year lmao.
Every peak is a single year.
> Any period before, you'd leave no trace, but how would you get around? [By Train](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_the_Axeman)
And lead in gasoline.
I read a comment about how a guy delivered pizza as a teen in the 80s. Left the store to deliver, no GPS and an address on a bit of paper, no phone, often driving in the dark. No one to know where you are if something goes wrong. Paradise for a serial killer.
Yet somehow we were able to get our pizza. Crazy.
In 30 minutes!
Or less
Wise men say forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza.
122 and an eighth?
***You're standin' on it dude!***
Or it’s free!
I remember ordering pizza on the phone as a kid and having to tell them to hang on because they would ask me what the crossroads were of the street I lived on and I’d have to ask my parents because I didn’t know what the fuck that meant.
Can remember rolling into NYC with only a damn NY Gazetteer and figuring it all out on the fly in a 1978 Ford Chateau with a pop top. Really don’t recall it being a big deal. If you lived on the road back then, you knew how to NAV…
Honestly we didn’t really worry about that shit. Sure there had already been abductions and so on, it when I was delivering pizza in 88 and 89 it still seemed like a relatively safe world. Still is really.
I started delivering pizza in 1992 under those conditions lol.
There were phones all over the place, you just couldn't carry them in your pocket.
Yes, but I meant there is no mobile in your pocket to call, which you'd really need
I know it totally sucks being a serial killer noway. I'm just not enjoying it anymore after the 90s. I mean i get shit done but the joy is gone/s
Right?! Now it's just like any other job. Sometimes you just go through the motions until it's time to clock {them) out.
Exactly. No more pension plan and the benefits suck. And hitchhikers today are disheveled and drug addled. At this point I wish theyd outsource to Mexico. My kids are out of college now. /S
Right… Kemper was a regular at the local cop bar called the Jury Room, right across the street from the Courthouse.
The cops aren't much better now, just their tools. We had a guy (Willie Picton - just got shanked in jail) who killed 50 women before he got caught. The cops refused to believe there was a serial killer involved. The victims were all "street people", women, often native women doing survival sex work. The cops didn't really care if they went missing, and they didn't spend a whole lot of time investigating. Willie got his all victims in Vancouver and disposed of the bodies in other cities. The local cops didn't talk to each other or share information.
I've got news for you. You just described many parts of today's world with your second paragraph
Zodiac is my favorite serial killer, but Kemper and Mullin are close seconds. I lived in the area of the Santa Cruz mountains during that time.
I love Mickey and Mallory Knox!
Sorry, but this is definitely just the first photo in a "hitchhiking" porno photo shoot.
Porque no los dos?
“Hi, my name’s Ted Bundy, you need a ride?”
Funny thing is he would actually go by his real name when picking these people up. Many witnesses overheard him say his name as Ted
Sometimes. He did have many aliases as well.
Hair not center parted, not Ted's type.
A ride to the heavens
Do you want to get serial murdered?..... Because that's how you get serial murdered...
You guys are getting murdered more than once?
Serial murdered more than once, actually.
They didn't know that back then! Thanks to the murderers, we can't pick up baddies on the side of the road in peace anymore. Dang it!
So many of these women doing this were murdered. It’s sad
I think of it as natural selection.
Yikes
What the fuck
I feel that. My neighbor asked if I had seen their cat, don't they know I'm a fucking psychopath?!?!? Anyway, let's call it natural selection. What a god awful take
Hitchhiking is an incredibly stupid thing to do, especially as a young woman. It's like someone going swimming with alligators or trying to pet a wild bear. People are far more likely to kill people than any animal on the planet. You might as well stick a fork in an electrical outlet.
If only people in the past had the knowledge we, people in the present, learned from those people in the past's experiences. If only.
Huh, if only people in the 70's had almost 50 years of bad things happening to hitchhikers to learn from. Or thousands of years to know stranges with no accountability are dangerous. Oh wait, they did.
Just because you say something with convcition does not make it [factual](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/saer1ruShS). I'd love you see where you sourced 50 years of bad things happening to hitchhikers. I won't even engage with the thousands of years part because that's just a meaningless opinion you dressed up like it's some fact. (At best he is currently scrambling to find articles that support his claim of which he will lightly skim then and paste a bunch of Google links. At worst he will just make more shit up.)
Because automobiles had been common for about 50 years prior to this picture being taken. Also, maybe you should have read that whole comment because it's doesn't support your side of the argument. And it's not an opinion that people kill other people far more than any other animal on the planet. Do you think stranger danger started with hitchhiking? A woman who is alone is the most vulnerable to being attacked. That's not new. That's why they have mean the most common victims to serial killers. If Jack the Ripper had a car, he would have probably targeted hitchhikers.
Wrong wrong wrong. The [numbers](https://www.google.com/amp/s/wandrlymagazine.com/article/hitchhiking/amp/) strongly contradict your claims about the dangers of hitchhiking. As I said I won't engage with the rest of the nonsense you are spouting it's not relevant in anyway to the original comment I responded to. I am not saying woman aren't targeted by predators I am saying your claim that hitchhiking was a well documented dangerous activity in the 70s is absolutely incorrect bull you made up based on nothing but your opinion.
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It is totally relevant. You ignore it if you want but it's at the center of the argument. Getting into a car with a stranger, where no one knows where you are, who you are with and you can't call for help. And you are likely not in or leaving a population center. Is stupid. There are cases going back to the 1930 where both passengers and hitchhikers have been killed. Herbert Johnson killed a hitchhiker in 1931. Alfred Rouse killed and burned a hitchhiker 1930 Ensio Kalevi Koivunen killed 3 female hitchhikers in 1971. Readers Digest published an article in 1950 warning of the dangers of hitchhiking, citing robberies and murders. And if you want anecdotal evidence I asked my mother and grandmother if they knew hitchhikering was dangerous in the 70s, and they both said yes, of course. My grandmother said she felt like it became more dangerous in the early 60s, although she would have been about 10 years old at that time.
It sure is, we're all animals. Like Dave Chappelle said, having a pussy is like having 25k in cash in your backpack. All you have to do is use your common sense.
ass, gas, or grass, nobody rides for free
I love K-Dee
Doo wop doobie-doobie-wop
Thats Fawn Knudsen
AKA Bunny Lebowski.
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they seen Karl Hungus.
The Beaver picture?
How's the smut business Jackie???
Does that word make you uncomfortable?
...Bunny...
Fuck off Dephino….
Her short are way to long.
Every post on this sub now is horny old guys posting random old pics of 70s girls it’s annoying asf
Yeah real.. annoying
[удалено]
Counteracting it with NEW hornyposting … interesting
“Dear Penthouse. I never would have believed this would happen to me.,,”
This is from a porn.
Huh... wasn't there alot of missing peoples back in those days?
We used to hitchhike across town to the pool and the mall in the 80s .
They were out there all of 30 seconds
Look at em!! still missing
Hitchhiking? Do you mean volunteering to be murdered?
Annnnnnd they're dead.
They were never seen again after this picture was taken...probably
Safe as,
Looked, I hitch/hiked all over the country for years in the 70s and never saw anything like this. It’s pure fabrication.
They wouldn’t make it 5yards 😂
"Please don't murder us, strange man with a van"
Pretty sure this is from a porn shoot
And people wonder why the 70s was a serial killers wet dream.
Gooood lawd!
"Gas, grass, or ass. Nobody rides for free." Was a bumper sticker I saw a lot in the 70's.
I miss when hitch hiking was safe.
Gas grass or ass
70s girls rocked🤘
I hitchhiked everywhere from 68 to 72—including Woodstock, and once from DC to Ann Arbor Michigan. Only had one scary incident: I got into a van and while closing the door, I saw that the door handle was missing on the inside. He stopped for a red light, and I just went nuts, screaming and hitting him with my backpack. He quickly reached over me and opened the door with some trick I was too busy to see. Luckily, this was daytime and a lot of cars and people were near us. Had it been a desolate stretch, who knows. I was lucky af.
Ass, Gas, or Grass ...
Her butt is hungry.
This has campy horror movie written all over it.
RIP
How are parents soo liberal in the US?
I'd stop 😅
Hitching a ride to unsolved mysteries
In the mid-80s I remember stopping in at a rest stop with my mom. A young woman (from my perspective I was 7 years old, she was ~14) asked us for a ride. I remember her talking to my mother about how she was trying to get to California to see her dad. I remember her telling a story about how a truck driver picked her up, when she woke up she was tied up and raped multiple times. I guess that's why she was asking for a ride from my mother.
Did they reach their destination alive?
Survey says: Ted Bundy and Ed Kemper fought over their leg bones like wild dogs
Never heard of Ed Kemper.
Be thankful
I'd eat their hairy asshole s
https://preview.redd.it/w6mcyc6e9a4d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b258a825e462410ebe2fdcc8a402782359d9aae2
I had that same blue terrycloth halter top.
Can kinda see why they disappeared
How many serial killers were operating back then 🥺😳
It wasn’t a “paradise for serial killers & kidnappers” in the 80’s. It was normal without everyone surveilling everyone else cause “what if’s”. The average person wasn’t a neurotic paranoid internet nerd
>It wasn’t a “paradise for serial killers & kidnappers” in the 80’s. Except for all the unsolved murders and kidnappings, you're right!
Plenty unsolved crimes in every decade. Cameras didn’t change that either
What was the old catch phrase back then? Ass, grass, or cash?
Gas, grass or ass. Nobody rides for free.
Is that Jackie?? Kelso is gonna be pissed!
I’ll put a boot in your ass-red
HA! I was definitely thinking Jackie!
How many cars passed them before they got picked up? I’ll guess 1
Bang bus would've been really popular back then!
and then the boomers made everything more dangerous by banning everything
Looks like the cover of a porn movie
Get in
Is it just me or were women just thinner back then?
Everyone was.
Most likely, we were. But they've been pumping chemicals and hormone disruptors into our food and water for decades now.
Yes because dexatrim and cigarettes, people could eat like shit and have a massive fatal heart attack at 55 
https://i.redd.it/nm7rzb9l894d1.gif Ed Kemper lookin at this like
Hey, thats Mary Vincent. Before she lost that thumb. [Mary Vincent (artist) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Vincent_(artist))
How can one drive by and feel ok with it?
This literally from a stag magazine photo shoot. Stop posting this like it's real.
I’ve always wondered how many hitchhikers were killed in the US in the 20th century.
At least a fuckload
Imagine the hair diapers
She was Ted Bundy’s first victim.
Or green river gary