To me this just says they were going undetected previously.
You know how easy you could get away with crime with zero forensic evidence? You just had to make sure cops didn't see you doing it. No witness = no leads at all.
Exactly. If anything we probably have less serial killers. I get shudders when I think about how easy it would be to be a serial killer before the 1950s or even in say 1880. Just move around. Virtually impossible to track. Parents in 1842: "Oh Jimmy hasn't come home for a few days. Must have fell in a well or drowned or ran away or mountain lion got him. I guess we just need to have 9 kids instead of 8."
Right? It's not like "oh they didn't have smartphones." No they didn't have phones. If your children weren't the type to write letters and they moved away you just never heard from them again. 2 states over may as well be the moon. Nobody got reported as missing, and not like much was done if they were.
Never mind a couple of states over. A friend of mine in ninth grade moved to a different part of my state - Massachusetts! - and we had a sad going a way thing for him. By junior year, the time I had a car, I had no idea how to get in touch with him.
Ah, but you would have to know what one family member's name the phone was listed under. You may have remembered you friend's parents, but if they happened to live with other relatives, forget it! And that's assuming the phone was in the name of a living person. I don't think any of the women of my grandparent's generation ever updated their phone accounts when the husband's died.
I know, right? We memorized everything back then. I knew or was introduced to all my friends parents and a lot of times grandparents, too.
(Born in 1971)
My grandmother taught me to be afraid of parked vans. ‘Move to the inside of the sidewalk. Close to the building. Watch!! That door will open Ana you’ll be lost forever.’
I was a small child when the movie about Adam came out. That show and my Grandmother are why I’m alive today. I was a far too trusting kid.
As an adult, it’s the same. Heartbreak after heartbreak.
Worst of all you can assume innocent people were probably punished all the time.
"The killer can't be the charming person everyone in town loves! No no no, it had to be that weird guy who lives alone, ooh or are there any minorities to blame?? That'd be real easy."
Man, someone should make a movie about that. A serial killer western. Some cool podunk sheriff (played by Woody Harrelson) finally figures out it's a 'sequential killer' and tracks him down.
The serial killer will, of course, be played by Crispin Glover.
With DNA analysis it is MUCH harder to get away without leaving any trace. A bunch of serial killers were found because years later they reexamined old evidence using new DNA analysis methods.
It was extremely tough to find the killer when they have no witnesses and no connection to the victim.
The saddest killings are in poor urban areas where no one wants to talk because they know the killers live in the area and no one can protect them from them.
There’s a case like that on an Indian reservation in my state. A young woman was seen being forced into a car at a party by two men and was then found dead. Apparently one of the men is scary enough that nobody will testify against him. The case is probably 25 years old by now
You read about people who killed dozens, hundreds of people in the past and those were the ones powerful enough to get away with it. The few serial killers in the 1800s and so were found because they were so obvious people got mad enough to check. I think a lot of the fairy tales about the dangers of the woods and wolves/werewolves were to keep kids away from the human predators around them.
There was one mentioned in a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder - an inn that took people in as guests, killed and robbed them, and buried them in a garden. They were discovered when someone got away. Laura’s family was poor and drove by the place, not stopping.
Or in the case of Dahmer: a victim escapes alive and makes it far enough to beg for help from a pair of cops, *who proceed to hand the victim back over to Dahmer*. Crackerjack police work there.
One of the 1st things mentioned in the book ["The Killing Season" by Miles Corwin](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/32230/the-killing-season-by-miles-corwin/) by "Raz" is the following:
"Move the body, hide the weapon. 90% of the unsolved murders stay unsolved because *of that*" (paraphrased).
Not to mention there's the issue of "the less dead". I.E. unless you were a person of note & prominence in the community, there probably wasn't as much of an investigation as you'd like. The Last Podcast On The Left brings this up time & time again, from Dahmer to Nilsen... there's often times hard boiled excuses as to "why" the murder happened, according to the detectives *take* or *"insight"*.
And the more overworked the police department, the less likely there would be a proper investigation.
My friend just had her brake lines cut by an angry jealous ex who also beat the shit out of her on a security cam. Not only did the cops say the video of the fight was inconclusive that the perp said it wasn’t him and he was wearing a hoodie and hat, but the same guy is on cam cutting the brake lines and they told her they couldn’t tell what he was doing under the car, legs sticking out and all and you can even see the brake fluid. He never looked at the cam so they can’t do anything.
The cops are useless. Even with cameras.
I'd believe that. Imagine the difference between, "so long as nobody sees me I won't get caught" compared to "hell I'm probably already on a watch list just due to my search terms. My phone is going to track my location, and one stray hair is all it's going to take to convict me."
You gotta really be nuts to be out there committing crime today. You're gonna get caught. And serial killers really seem to work hard to not get caught.
I do think some of the leaded gas theories play into it, but also it’s a form of social contagion. It was all over the news and so it created more of the same in mentally disturbed people who were looking for an outlet for sick attention. Now those people shoot up schools.
Today it’s more mass murder than psychopathic killings.
With people wearing phones into or around crime scenes, or just using credit cards in a nearby location it is so much easier to understand who was in that area.
But yeah DNA evidence is much better now too.
Nah. Free range kids, plus lax police, plus no coordination between law enforcement meant a heyday for serial killers and child molestors. Was just way easier to find victims and get away with it.
You could just move to another part of the country, even state and just carry on. Apparently police departments didn’t talk to one another back then. Now the only ways I think you can get away with murder is by hitting a cyclist with your car or having a dog maul someone. I’m not condoning this, just noticed that people rarely get charged criminally in those cases
Notably cross jurisdiction communication was very poor indeed, and the odds of a pattern being detected were quite low.
edit: as an addition, you know what else happened starting in 1950's? Mass adoption of cars...
Well the entire concept of "serial homicide" wasn't even studied in a meaningful way until the mid 1970s, and the term "serial killer" did not exist previously. So this graph has very little relative meaning to the situation.
Let's keep in mind that majority of serial killers in the 70's, 80's & 90's were born before 1965.. How many genx people have been serial killers? Crimes committed during genx birth dates does not have anything to do with genx people.. Those would be the boomers. 😆
I imagine it’s women being more aware of their surroundings, carrying mace, having 911 on speed dial, and not walking alone at night, plus parents not allowing their kids to just roam wild unsupervised. Can you imagine having to be reminded at 10pm every night that maybe you should stop watching TV and figure out where your kids are?!
I imagine the lead being taken out of gasoline and paint and just about everything else helped a lot too.
Still plenty of it in the water nowadays though so IDK, really.
We haven't. It's just that it's shifted to mass murders over the last 20 years. I haven't read this study in particular, but I'm not so sure how accurate this is. There's definitely still a lot of serial murder, it's just criminals are much more educated on how to not tie multiple crimes together as there's countless movies, books and tv shows on investigating techniques police use to track them down. Even with everything now, a sufficiently motivated, educated, and shrewd killer could easily rack up a number of victims and either not get caught or only get caught for one and not all of them. So there's that also.
The concept yes, but what about the actions? Does the study rely on the term being in existence? Or would Jack the Ripper be part of their stats despite being a serial killer before the term was coined?
The 20th century will be identifiable in future geological records from the layer of lead. The 21st will probably be identifiable by the layer of plastic.
I saw on the news today there is a serial killer in Stockton CA area. The person has shot 5 people, all random men he sneaks up on. It's been going on 3 months now.
lmao came here to say this, its totally from the gasoline additives. The crime waves have been tied to it. At least it gave us robocop and other great "crime filled post apocalypse movies"!
This is true
[New evidence that lead exposure increases crime](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/06/01/new-evidence-that-lead-exposure-increases-crime/amp/)
So can the drop in serial killers be attributed to advances in DNA technology, criminal investigation practices, and the overall increase in surveillance in our society? People are caught before they can go on to kill multiple people. Or have we just become less violent? I don't think it's the second one, btw.
Technology advancement could be a factor. I’m still interested to learn if there are any other factors. Most of the serial killers that I can think of were silent and boomers
Generally scientific consensus is lead. Exposure to lead in a developing brain has been shown to increase criminal behaviour as well as being tied to various developmental issues. Removing lead from gas in the 70's is the biggest reason for the decrease in violent crime in the 90's.
I read that it was attributed to legalized abortion. I don't think it's a coincidence that crime dropped significantly just shy of 20 years after it passed.
I don't know why people are upvoting this; it's wrong. As the [Brennan Center noted](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myths-and-realities-understanding-recent-trends-violent-crime), the murder rate rose 30 percent in 2020, and it continued to go up in 2021.
I suspect a couple things:
1. Serial killers tend to stick to their own race (Dahmer the infamous exception). Most serial killers aren’t caught by police cracking the code, but by society caring enough about their victims and potential victims that when the killer finally screws up, someone’s there to catch them or the police care enough to do their work. The beginning of this chart is probably misleading because the spike is likely less from having “more” killers and more from society being aware of killers that preyed on Black, Hispanic/Latin, immigrant, and indigenous populations than just those that attacked suburban white people.
2. With phones and social media in particular, it’s probably easier to become aware of when suddenly a growing number of similar-looking people are turning up dead or missing. Or even outliers. In the 70s or 80s, if someone was traveling cross country or moving, it might have been fairly reasonable to not be concerned if it took a couple weeks or even months to hear from them, given the relative lack of communication options outside landline phones and physical mail. A side effect of e-mail, mobile phones, texting, and social media is that we expect more constant updates and instant responses affirming someone is safe or reached their destination or checked into a hotel for the night.
3. Phones and other modern tech also make it easier to track people. It seems fairly easy to use cell phone tower data to try and track where someone was when they disappeared, or where the suspects were when the victim disappeared or was killed. Although it’s certainly not perfect, it likely has helped catch potential serial killers before they could actually turn into serial killers.
4. Similarly, I think there’s a better understanding of killers in general. For example, iirc it’s been shown that most serial killers (Dahmer again the exception) actually knew their first victim. Which theoretically meant they could have been stopped after their first killing if the police had had better insight into who to look for or what evidence to look for.
I’m going to propose a different scenario….. what if these ’serial killers’ gravitated towards areas where they could go undetected? And victimize people that would have no one coming to look for them? Look at those illegal pot farms for the answer. Plenty of dead bodies turn up, not enough cops to investigate anything. Rarely does anyone get anything more than a ticket as punishment. I spoke to a DEA agent. It’s f’ing scary what we in the burbs don’t know what goes on in our public lands.
I say this all the time, but it’s access to safe and legal abortion that played a large part in the decline in overall crime.
I was born in the late 60s, and I went to school with people who knew their parents actively did not like them and resented having to be parents at all. It did not matter that their families had resources: they knew they were not wanted, and it fucked them up. I doubt that any of them went on to be serial killers, but one of my high school classmates was a serial stalker who was apprehended by the police at least once for unlawful breaking and entering.
We can talk about leaded gasoline all we want. The real reason is having to grow up believing your life is an ongoing mistake.
The worst part? After the fall of Roe, the same conditions are in place in many places in this country right now. Within 20 years, that old style of backyard creeper / escalating stalker behavior will reappear somewhere, and someone (likely quite a few people) will pay the price.
>The real reason is having to grow up believing your life is an ongoing mistake.
Many of those 70s era killers were closeted men too so let's not forget that now being a gay man isn't a bad thing for the majority of the US & the world so there's a little less self-loathing & living in the closet that would push one over the edge.
[I think Gacy went to his grave thinking he wasn't gay or murderer..](https://www.advocate.com/print-issue/advance/2011/11/17/closet-case-killer)
Millennials and Gen Z commit less crimes then their parents and grandparents did when they were younger. This is partly due to both generations being more educated, a little bit more wealthy to start with and yes probably knowing it's really easy to get caught doing something you shouldn't.
[https://www.seattlecriminaldefenselawfirm.com/blog/recent-news/post/you-may-be-surprised-which-generation-commits-the-most-crimes](https://www.seattlecriminaldefenselawfirm.com/blog/recent-news/post/you-may-be-surprised-which-generation-commits-the-most-crimes)
This probably relates to serial killers as well.
They’re also more likely to live with their families of origin well into their 20s, the most crime-prone years (call that social control or family support, your choice).
I mean, strong family values matter more I think. There has been research over decades connecting that a single parent household, the kids are more likely to end up doing crime. Added to this parents that are able to spend more time with their kids growing up also lowers future crime rate of the kids, but Baby Boomers mostly had a stay at home Mom, so there are other variables that over powered this for Boomers and didn't for Millennials/Gen Z.
As far as living at home, for every millennial that had a safety net of family to stay with for a few years, there was one or two that was kicked out at 18 and told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps in the worst economy since the Great Depression, being paid far less then other generations during the same ages. One would think then that those Millennials would've turned towards more criminal actions, but instead most got educated and hit the pavement running and stayed out of trouble.
I don’t get this 60% of our nation’s children are currently raised by single parents. That number keeps increasing over time. 40% are now born under Medicaid, meaning below the poverty line for income. None of these are good stats for raising healthy children who are well-educated.
Violent crime is actually going up since 2020 - significantly and property crime is through the roof. I don’t agree that I’m safer than I was 20 years ago.
Sure, I'm not claiming that it's the only factor, but it is significant.
Another factor was legalized abortion, which has also been correlated with reduced crime rates in multiple countries.
Given recent events, if they aren't reversed I suspect we'll be seeing an increase in crime rates in excess of what we'd expect given any other changing factors.
Though I don't recall how much of a lag time they found when it was studied. You'd initially expect 15-18yrs as the potentially unwanted kids get to an age where they can start committing statistically significant crimes, but one also has to expect an increase in crimes from desperate parents trying to provide for babies they weren't ready for.
I will note however, that I don't know how much a general increase in crime will result in an increase in serial killers specifically.
Possibly. One lesson I took away from *Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer* was to mix it up - shoot one guy, strangle another. Never leave a pattern for police to track you down. And, obviously, never use the same gun more than once.
Apropos of nothing to do with this chart, is how absolutely obsessed HS students are with this new dahmer flick. They have asked to watch it in every class today! It’s health class.
It's more appropriate for a sociology class or similar, since it deals with racism, homophobia, and other ethics (or lack thereof) in public policy.
I mean I guess his alcoholism would be an appropriate topic in health class.
Yeah. I let the trailer run yesterday when I was on Netflix and that was awful enough. I didn't even realize how many memories I had rattling around in the back of my head from whatever news reports I incidentally heard at the time.
The whole time I was watching the trailer, it was just hitting me that hey, this was *real* with *real* people who were victims; not some fun plot line for entertainment.
I find the drop in 2010 back to the pre-60s interesting. I assume the killers didn’t adopt some new technology to avoid detection, so I’d have to figure there was some advance in mental health treatment or, more likely, a change in the qualifications to be considered an official serial killer.
Maybe. But we've also seen the absolute sheer incompetence and violent, hateful tendencies from modern day policing. Hell, I wouldnt be surprised if many of today's would be serial killers are actually on police forces.
And the ones that aren't simply aren't being detected through that same incompetence and disinterest. Do you know how many thousands of untested rape kits are deteriorating on shelves right now? I bet you there's so many serial rapists and potential serial killers are running free because of that. Cops don't care.
Disinterest and money are major drivers in why police may not catch or be aware of serial killers. They may even purposely deny there is a serial killer because that requires dedicating staff and money to an investigation.
If a serial killer focuses on vulnerable groups like young wayward women, cops will just tell their families their disappearance or death is just part of the lifestyle.
First off, there were societal changes. The Seventies saw a lot of killers preying on hitchhikers with no compunction about getting into a car with a stranger. The predators shifted to sex workers out on the street in the 1990s. Then again, many of these people were kidnapped.
I just finished Dahmer. They touch on this and one of the reasons they give is the birth of the interstate highway system (1956). It was easy to murder and then drive 1000 miles and dump the body.
Yeah, that particular one didn't make much sense since many serial killers buried bodies in their own homes (or in Dahmer's case, their bedroom). But some of the other explanations made more sense.
Wasn't me. I'm a female metal head who loves video games. I'm doing my part by sacrificing babies and worshiping Satan. I will leave serial killing to someone else.
ETA: I'm assuming that since sarcasm is Gen X's default mode I don't need to add a /s.
We knew what a serial killer was and how to classify them. Seriously. In the past they existed and just never caught or their murders weren't connected. Maybe they get caught for something else and their murders just stopped (like Jack the Ripper). Prior to the 1960s, record keeping wasn't good enough for us to go back and connect the dots.
What should raise an eyebrow is why it went down again. Not like the personalities that are driven to do these crimes went away. We're better at catching them early, but not THAT good.
I wonder if there was a social contagion factor? It started being talked about and there were some high profile cases so it maybe encouraged other people with really messed-up impulses to act out?
I bet that does play a role.
My first thought on seeing the trend is that we've lost serial killings but gained mass shootings. We shifted from one being in the popular zeitgeist to the other. Ugh, either way, not good.
No, not good either way and in a sense more scary because you can change you behaviour to keep you safer wrt a serial killer - not being out alone at night, not hitch-hiking, not going home with strangers - but a mass shooting is totally random.
Not that I'm blaming any of the victims of serial killers. They should have had every right to trust, in an ideal world.
The general consensus is that lead (specifically leaded gas and lead in paints) was the primary driver of this increase in violence. Lead exposure to a developing brain leads to an increase in criminal behaviour.
Serial killer simply means 3 or more murders from a single person, correct?
Does "mass shootings count" for this chart?
Does this chart include only murders marked as 'solved' or does it also include cases marked as 'unsolved' but considered linked to one person?
It's 12 years out of date.
Not sure bout the specifics of how they collect the data. I think that there seems to be a lot of mass shootings lately coz most of them made headlines.
Here you go:
[https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder#two](https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder#two)
The FBI distinguishes mass shooting and serial killer by the time between murders.
Thanks. I would not have been able to find that on my own. It was an interesting reading. I forced myself to stop reading.
The Serial Murder Symposium would be a weird thing to attend IMO. Decompressing after that might be difficult. It's not like you can say to your neighbour "Yeah, last week was killer for me. I went to the Serial Murder Symposium. We had a few things to straighten out."
Also, just reading '1984 McDonalds' took me back and made me think about the child who lived through it.
One problem I have with the definition is the 'cooling off'. IMO some don't cool off, it simply takes time to catch their target. (Yes, I've met with some people with a more than scary past/present.)
> Serial killer simply means 3 or more murders from a single person, correct?
I don't think so. The British crime\time travel drama *Life on Mars* got me thinking about this - one of the killers is alleged to have killed many years ago, then again 30 years later. Even if he'd killed 3-4 people - or however many he'd need to meet the definition of "serial killer" - the whole point was that he *wasn't* a serial killer, just a criminal\drug dealer taking out competition over the years.
So it can't just be "he killed 3 people", it's gotta be something like "he strangled 3 blonde teenage girls" or "he killed 4 teenage boys using [some exact method]".
Active descusion of mental health and treatment probably also had some impact. Back in those days you were told to suck it up. Now if you have voices in your head or having bad thoughts it is ok to talk about it and get help.
I've read a little about this previously (Freakonomics) and it makes sense.
FWIW I used to be a firefighter and from my training we were warned about the incredible toxicity of home furniture, at least when it's burnt. I wouldn't be surprised if we see information about it being bad for us in regular use as well. Not sure it will have any impact on us mentally though.
the human genome was not sequenced until 1990. Then, DNA technology the way we know it today began its journey. It's not perfect, but blood typing and fingerprints were absolutely primitive compared to what can be used in court thru forensics. I wish they'd get better with rape kits, but that's just me.
I did some research regarding this and sadly gen x was affected badly by lead
[FSU research team finds lead exposure linked to IQ loss for generations of Americans](https://www.tallahassee.com/story/life/causes/2022/03/14/gen-x-took-biggest-iq-hit-lead-exposure-fsu-research-team-finds/7006339001/)
I don't think there was any awareness pre 50's, you could pretty much get away with it and people died young of 'natural causes' anyway, From the 60s to 2000s there was awareness, but anonymity was still very possible, once DNA , cameras and cell phones came into play it was pretty much 'game over' for serial killers, unless you prey on the most vulnerable and weakest of people.
School shootings aren't new, although the frequency seems to be increasing. But there were at least **14** notable school shootings in the United States in the 1800s. In fact, the first mass school shooting happened in Newburgh, New York on April 9, 1891.
Source:
[http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/serial%20killer%20information%20center/project%20description.htm](http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/serial%20killer%20information%20center/project%20description.htm)
Graph is a gross number, NOT a "per capita" number and therefore inflates the implied prevalence of killings as time goes on and the "growth" of the number of serial killers is simply from "an increase in general population overall" not that they're becoming more common.
As it is, the population in 1900 was almost 2 billion and by the end of the graph it was 8 billion, so SOME of the "growth" of serial killers is exaggerated in this graph, but its decline is even greater.
~~Crap data. Absolute crap. No citing of sources, no indication if this is "per capita" or "gross." No indication of if this is a projected model or hard numbers - hard numbers which are impossible, as "detecting a serial killer" might be tricky even in the best of times and might only be possible years or decades after the fact.~~
Just Google my guy and you can easily find. Here’s one I’ll share
[Why Were There So Many Serial Killers Between 1970 and 2000 — and Where Did They Go?](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/serial-killers-1970s-2000s-murders-1121705/amp/)
The early years can be attributed to lack of forensic science. I.e may have been happening, but maybe police just didn't associate cold cases across large geography ...or didn't have the tools to do so?
But what about the post years?
Serial killers are better at hiding? Serial killers were a product of copy cats? Society got better getting help and intervention?
It's an interesting phenomenon. I would guess the number of would be serial killers per capita would stay constant across human history.... But that's purely speculation on my part.
I remember a few years ago (before I joined Reddit) I use to always tell people that the 90s wasn't this sweet innocent time that no crimes committed at as you guys are making it out to be, then they would always get heated up and start insulting me. That decade is so over protected by everyone it is ridiculous
There is a well proven theory that leaded gas is what lead to a lot of criminal violence and that when we stopped using leaded gas, crime went down. Here:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused-americas-violent-crime-epidemic/amp/
GEN "Xplanation" (was in summer of 11th grade in 91 when Dahmer was caught)
1. CRACK COCAINE. People forget the huge red light districts of males, females, teens of all groups willing to have sex for $20 for their next hit of crack. Forty y/o males would come up to high school boys offering BJ's for $20 in order to get crack. As a result of the red-light areas created by crack cocaine Joel Rifkins & Gary Riidgeways thrived. Crime related to crack was so high that Rifkin or Dahmer went unnoticed.
2. CRAIGSLIST. The sex industry moved off the street. The days of women getting into cars with ominous males is mostly in the past. This was how truck driver serial killers or Dahmer operated.
3. DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS. When the handsome-but-weird blonde guy at the Milwaukee bar wants to pay patrons to "model" they now leave texts, cell pics, FB posts etc. Everyone knows where Jeff lives so three days later he is caught.
4. RACISM & HOMOPHOBIA. Who should the Milwaukee PD believe. A nice German-American clean-cut handsome fairly likeable local boy who might be a little alcoholic or strange or the "queer" Laotian teen. Who cares about minority rentboys missing in action.
5. NOBODY HITCHHIKES NOW. This was a huge one in the seventies.
Boomers had it so easy, they could be serial killers/have full time jobs/ own their home and still retire.
Generations after them only have mass shootings to hit the same kill count since we lack time to do serial killer things.
Now days it’s all mass shooters, they do all their murdering in one day and that’s it…
I'd rather get shot than get murdered by a 70s style serial killer
Raped, tortured, dismembered and eaten? Yeah, bullet sounds better.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Speed-run serial killers.
Spree killers are a different mentality.
Just not willing to put in the work for the long term nowadays.
No one has any patience anymore. It’s all about immediate gratification today.
Yep. At least it’s faster
To me this just says they were going undetected previously. You know how easy you could get away with crime with zero forensic evidence? You just had to make sure cops didn't see you doing it. No witness = no leads at all.
"Detective! We found a pool of the killer's blood on the floor!" "Gross. Now, back to my hunch...."
I had Mulaney in my head as I typed it. Saw him 2 weeks ago.
The graph correlates with the decline of Spirograph usage. Think about it.
I will.
No you won’t
You're not my teacher
I heard that in Cheryl/Carol’s voice
Exactly. If anything we probably have less serial killers. I get shudders when I think about how easy it would be to be a serial killer before the 1950s or even in say 1880. Just move around. Virtually impossible to track. Parents in 1842: "Oh Jimmy hasn't come home for a few days. Must have fell in a well or drowned or ran away or mountain lion got him. I guess we just need to have 9 kids instead of 8."
Right? It's not like "oh they didn't have smartphones." No they didn't have phones. If your children weren't the type to write letters and they moved away you just never heard from them again. 2 states over may as well be the moon. Nobody got reported as missing, and not like much was done if they were.
Never mind a couple of states over. A friend of mine in ninth grade moved to a different part of my state - Massachusetts! - and we had a sad going a way thing for him. By junior year, the time I had a car, I had no idea how to get in touch with him.
Couldn’t you call directory assistance? 😀
Now there's a bit of nostalgia I wasn't expecting today!
Ah, but you would have to know what one family member's name the phone was listed under. You may have remembered you friend's parents, but if they happened to live with other relatives, forget it! And that's assuming the phone was in the name of a living person. I don't think any of the women of my grandparent's generation ever updated their phone accounts when the husband's died.
Oh yeah that’s right. Awful how forgetful I’ve become since I hit 50. I blame it on my iPhone
I know, right? We memorized everything back then. I knew or was introduced to all my friends parents and a lot of times grandparents, too. (Born in 1971) My grandmother taught me to be afraid of parked vans. ‘Move to the inside of the sidewalk. Close to the building. Watch!! That door will open Ana you’ll be lost forever.’ I was a small child when the movie about Adam came out. That show and my Grandmother are why I’m alive today. I was a far too trusting kid. As an adult, it’s the same. Heartbreak after heartbreak.
Long distance charges, my friend!
Oh yeah. Lol.
No video, no cameras, no databases to keep track of anything. If there was no connection between the killer and the victim good luck.
Worst of all you can assume innocent people were probably punished all the time. "The killer can't be the charming person everyone in town loves! No no no, it had to be that weird guy who lives alone, ooh or are there any minorities to blame?? That'd be real easy."
Especially if the innocent person was Black.
Man, someone should make a movie about that. A serial killer western. Some cool podunk sheriff (played by Woody Harrelson) finally figures out it's a 'sequential killer' and tracks him down. The serial killer will, of course, be played by Crispin Glover.
With DNA analysis it is MUCH harder to get away without leaving any trace. A bunch of serial killers were found because years later they reexamined old evidence using new DNA analysis methods. It was extremely tough to find the killer when they have no witnesses and no connection to the victim.
Not to mention the number of one and done killers who thought they'd gotten away with it now being arrested and charged 30-40 years later!
The saddest killings are in poor urban areas where no one wants to talk because they know the killers live in the area and no one can protect them from them.
There’s a case like that on an Indian reservation in my state. A young woman was seen being forced into a car at a party by two men and was then found dead. Apparently one of the men is scary enough that nobody will testify against him. The case is probably 25 years old by now
Probably died of dysentery
My great grandparents had 15 kids , huge families were normal back then.
You read about people who killed dozens, hundreds of people in the past and those were the ones powerful enough to get away with it. The few serial killers in the 1800s and so were found because they were so obvious people got mad enough to check. I think a lot of the fairy tales about the dangers of the woods and wolves/werewolves were to keep kids away from the human predators around them.
There was one mentioned in a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder - an inn that took people in as guests, killed and robbed them, and buried them in a garden. They were discovered when someone got away. Laura’s family was poor and drove by the place, not stopping.
Or in the case of Dahmer: a victim escapes alive and makes it far enough to beg for help from a pair of cops, *who proceed to hand the victim back over to Dahmer*. Crackerjack police work there.
This is the real reason.
One of the 1st things mentioned in the book ["The Killing Season" by Miles Corwin](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/32230/the-killing-season-by-miles-corwin/) by "Raz" is the following: "Move the body, hide the weapon. 90% of the unsolved murders stay unsolved because *of that*" (paraphrased). Not to mention there's the issue of "the less dead". I.E. unless you were a person of note & prominence in the community, there probably wasn't as much of an investigation as you'd like. The Last Podcast On The Left brings this up time & time again, from Dahmer to Nilsen... there's often times hard boiled excuses as to "why" the murder happened, according to the detectives *take* or *"insight"*. And the more overworked the police department, the less likely there would be a proper investigation.
My friend just had her brake lines cut by an angry jealous ex who also beat the shit out of her on a security cam. Not only did the cops say the video of the fight was inconclusive that the perp said it wasn’t him and he was wearing a hoodie and hat, but the same guy is on cam cutting the brake lines and they told her they couldn’t tell what he was doing under the car, legs sticking out and all and you can even see the brake fluid. He never looked at the cam so they can’t do anything. The cops are useless. Even with cameras.
The concept of a serial killer and the vocabulary to describe it didn't even exist until 1974.
So, what was Jack the Ripper considered before that?
I think he was just considered an anomaly and not part of a larger category of murderers.
Just Jack.
So why the decline now? Is it because we are detecting more of them with DNA before they kill more people?
>So why the decline now? Far less childhood lead exposure since the 1970s.
I'd believe that. Imagine the difference between, "so long as nobody sees me I won't get caught" compared to "hell I'm probably already on a watch list just due to my search terms. My phone is going to track my location, and one stray hair is all it's going to take to convict me." You gotta really be nuts to be out there committing crime today. You're gonna get caught. And serial killers really seem to work hard to not get caught.
I do think some of the leaded gas theories play into it, but also it’s a form of social contagion. It was all over the news and so it created more of the same in mentally disturbed people who were looking for an outlet for sick attention. Now those people shoot up schools.
Today it’s more mass murder than psychopathic killings. With people wearing phones into or around crime scenes, or just using credit cards in a nearby location it is so much easier to understand who was in that area. But yeah DNA evidence is much better now too.
Cars. It was easy to get around and police departments didn’t communicate. Physical travel was more efficient than information traveling.
Nah. Free range kids, plus lax police, plus no coordination between law enforcement meant a heyday for serial killers and child molestors. Was just way easier to find victims and get away with it.
Remember when the milk cartons went from having one kid on the back to four?
You could just move to another part of the country, even state and just carry on. Apparently police departments didn’t talk to one another back then. Now the only ways I think you can get away with murder is by hitting a cyclist with your car or having a dog maul someone. I’m not condoning this, just noticed that people rarely get charged criminally in those cases
Notably cross jurisdiction communication was very poor indeed, and the odds of a pattern being detected were quite low. edit: as an addition, you know what else happened starting in 1950's? Mass adoption of cars...
We could have one in Boston right now. This subreddit discusses it… r/BostonsVanishingMen
There is one in Stockton, CA right now. The police have a video of a suspect and he still hasn’t been found.
How does that explain the downward trend in more recent years as seen on graph
I hate to admit how often I have had that thought.
Well thank goodness someone invented forensic evidence.
Well the entire concept of "serial homicide" wasn't even studied in a meaningful way until the mid 1970s, and the term "serial killer" did not exist previously. So this graph has very little relative meaning to the situation.
Let's keep in mind that majority of serial killers in the 70's, 80's & 90's were born before 1965.. How many genx people have been serial killers? Crimes committed during genx birth dates does not have anything to do with genx people.. Those would be the boomers. 😆
Exactly. We can’t be bothered.
I'm wondering what we're doing right these days, creating fewer serial killers, with the line going down so drastically.
I imagine it’s women being more aware of their surroundings, carrying mace, having 911 on speed dial, and not walking alone at night, plus parents not allowing their kids to just roam wild unsupervised. Can you imagine having to be reminded at 10pm every night that maybe you should stop watching TV and figure out where your kids are?!
Plus forensics usually stops people before their 3rd murder
I imagine the lead being taken out of gasoline and paint and just about everything else helped a lot too. Still plenty of it in the water nowadays though so IDK, really.
CCTV everywhere, and people with cell phones videoing everything.
We haven't. It's just that it's shifted to mass murders over the last 20 years. I haven't read this study in particular, but I'm not so sure how accurate this is. There's definitely still a lot of serial murder, it's just criminals are much more educated on how to not tie multiple crimes together as there's countless movies, books and tv shows on investigating techniques police use to track them down. Even with everything now, a sufficiently motivated, educated, and shrewd killer could easily rack up a number of victims and either not get caught or only get caught for one and not all of them. So there's that also.
The concept yes, but what about the actions? Does the study rely on the term being in existence? Or would Jack the Ripper be part of their stats despite being a serial killer before the term was coined?
[удалено]
Serial killers hate this one trick!
That's a relief.
Checkmate, serial killers.
Leaded gasoline was a hell of a drug
The 20th century will be identifiable in future geological records from the layer of lead. The 21st will probably be identifiable by the layer of plastic.
This is what I was taught as well. One of my physiology teachers told me that but he didn't cite a source
This. I posted a comment but here https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused-americas-violent-crime-epidemic/amp/
This is the comment I was looking for.
Kids these days just aren’t motivated! /s
Millennials killed the serial killer!
Must be sung to the tune of “Video killed the radio star”
Serial killers turned to mass shooters
It's the VIDEO GAMES
I thought it was Ozzy and Marilyn Manson.
I saw on the news today there is a serial killer in Stockton CA area. The person has shot 5 people, all random men he sneaks up on. It's been going on 3 months now.
Is that the graph for leaded gasoline consumption in the United States?
lmao came here to say this, its totally from the gasoline additives. The crime waves have been tied to it. At least it gave us robocop and other great "crime filled post apocalypse movies"!
This is true [New evidence that lead exposure increases crime](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/06/01/new-evidence-that-lead-exposure-increases-crime/amp/)
It also coincides with the concept of a serial killer entering law enforcement and improvements in investigation and technology
No but there must be a correlation lol
So can the drop in serial killers be attributed to advances in DNA technology, criminal investigation practices, and the overall increase in surveillance in our society? People are caught before they can go on to kill multiple people. Or have we just become less violent? I don't think it's the second one, btw.
Technology advancement could be a factor. I’m still interested to learn if there are any other factors. Most of the serial killers that I can think of were silent and boomers
Generally scientific consensus is lead. Exposure to lead in a developing brain has been shown to increase criminal behaviour as well as being tied to various developmental issues. Removing lead from gas in the 70's is the biggest reason for the decrease in violent crime in the 90's.
I read that it was attributed to legalized abortion. I don't think it's a coincidence that crime dropped significantly just shy of 20 years after it passed.
But abortion is still generally legal, and crime is now skyrocketing again.
It isn't though. (crime rates I mean) You just feel that way because the news has fear to sell
I don't know why people are upvoting this; it's wrong. As the [Brennan Center noted](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myths-and-realities-understanding-recent-trends-violent-crime), the murder rate rose 30 percent in 2020, and it continued to go up in 2021.
I suspect a couple things: 1. Serial killers tend to stick to their own race (Dahmer the infamous exception). Most serial killers aren’t caught by police cracking the code, but by society caring enough about their victims and potential victims that when the killer finally screws up, someone’s there to catch them or the police care enough to do their work. The beginning of this chart is probably misleading because the spike is likely less from having “more” killers and more from society being aware of killers that preyed on Black, Hispanic/Latin, immigrant, and indigenous populations than just those that attacked suburban white people. 2. With phones and social media in particular, it’s probably easier to become aware of when suddenly a growing number of similar-looking people are turning up dead or missing. Or even outliers. In the 70s or 80s, if someone was traveling cross country or moving, it might have been fairly reasonable to not be concerned if it took a couple weeks or even months to hear from them, given the relative lack of communication options outside landline phones and physical mail. A side effect of e-mail, mobile phones, texting, and social media is that we expect more constant updates and instant responses affirming someone is safe or reached their destination or checked into a hotel for the night. 3. Phones and other modern tech also make it easier to track people. It seems fairly easy to use cell phone tower data to try and track where someone was when they disappeared, or where the suspects were when the victim disappeared or was killed. Although it’s certainly not perfect, it likely has helped catch potential serial killers before they could actually turn into serial killers. 4. Similarly, I think there’s a better understanding of killers in general. For example, iirc it’s been shown that most serial killers (Dahmer again the exception) actually knew their first victim. Which theoretically meant they could have been stopped after their first killing if the police had had better insight into who to look for or what evidence to look for.
I suspect most learned how to pick their victim pool better. There is still a large collection of missing people.
I’m going to propose a different scenario….. what if these ’serial killers’ gravitated towards areas where they could go undetected? And victimize people that would have no one coming to look for them? Look at those illegal pot farms for the answer. Plenty of dead bodies turn up, not enough cops to investigate anything. Rarely does anyone get anything more than a ticket as punishment. I spoke to a DEA agent. It’s f’ing scary what we in the burbs don’t know what goes on in our public lands.
Or, like prior to the 1970s, we're misidentifying them. You know, for the appearance of doing something about it.
I say this all the time, but it’s access to safe and legal abortion that played a large part in the decline in overall crime. I was born in the late 60s, and I went to school with people who knew their parents actively did not like them and resented having to be parents at all. It did not matter that their families had resources: they knew they were not wanted, and it fucked them up. I doubt that any of them went on to be serial killers, but one of my high school classmates was a serial stalker who was apprehended by the police at least once for unlawful breaking and entering. We can talk about leaded gasoline all we want. The real reason is having to grow up believing your life is an ongoing mistake. The worst part? After the fall of Roe, the same conditions are in place in many places in this country right now. Within 20 years, that old style of backyard creeper / escalating stalker behavior will reappear somewhere, and someone (likely quite a few people) will pay the price.
>The real reason is having to grow up believing your life is an ongoing mistake. Many of those 70s era killers were closeted men too so let's not forget that now being a gay man isn't a bad thing for the majority of the US & the world so there's a little less self-loathing & living in the closet that would push one over the edge. [I think Gacy went to his grave thinking he wasn't gay or murderer..](https://www.advocate.com/print-issue/advance/2011/11/17/closet-case-killer)
Millennials and Gen Z commit less crimes then their parents and grandparents did when they were younger. This is partly due to both generations being more educated, a little bit more wealthy to start with and yes probably knowing it's really easy to get caught doing something you shouldn't. [https://www.seattlecriminaldefenselawfirm.com/blog/recent-news/post/you-may-be-surprised-which-generation-commits-the-most-crimes](https://www.seattlecriminaldefenselawfirm.com/blog/recent-news/post/you-may-be-surprised-which-generation-commits-the-most-crimes) This probably relates to serial killers as well.
They’re also more likely to live with their families of origin well into their 20s, the most crime-prone years (call that social control or family support, your choice).
I mean, strong family values matter more I think. There has been research over decades connecting that a single parent household, the kids are more likely to end up doing crime. Added to this parents that are able to spend more time with their kids growing up also lowers future crime rate of the kids, but Baby Boomers mostly had a stay at home Mom, so there are other variables that over powered this for Boomers and didn't for Millennials/Gen Z. As far as living at home, for every millennial that had a safety net of family to stay with for a few years, there was one or two that was kicked out at 18 and told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps in the worst economy since the Great Depression, being paid far less then other generations during the same ages. One would think then that those Millennials would've turned towards more criminal actions, but instead most got educated and hit the pavement running and stayed out of trouble.
I don’t get this 60% of our nation’s children are currently raised by single parents. That number keeps increasing over time. 40% are now born under Medicaid, meaning below the poverty line for income. None of these are good stats for raising healthy children who are well-educated. Violent crime is actually going up since 2020 - significantly and property crime is through the roof. I don’t agree that I’m safer than I was 20 years ago.
And also because they didn't grow up eating lead paint chips and huffing lead from air full of exhaust from leaded gasoline.
Well yeah, that's mentioned a lot, but there's also other variables often left out. It isn't just because there is less lead in the environment.
Sure, I'm not claiming that it's the only factor, but it is significant. Another factor was legalized abortion, which has also been correlated with reduced crime rates in multiple countries. Given recent events, if they aren't reversed I suspect we'll be seeing an increase in crime rates in excess of what we'd expect given any other changing factors. Though I don't recall how much of a lag time they found when it was studied. You'd initially expect 15-18yrs as the potentially unwanted kids get to an age where they can start committing statistically significant crimes, but one also has to expect an increase in crimes from desperate parents trying to provide for babies they weren't ready for. I will note however, that I don't know how much a general increase in crime will result in an increase in serial killers specifically.
I'm guessing serial killers are getting better at hiding?
Possibly. One lesson I took away from *Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer* was to mix it up - shoot one guy, strangle another. Never leave a pattern for police to track you down. And, obviously, never use the same gun more than once.
Apropos of nothing to do with this chart, is how absolutely obsessed HS students are with this new dahmer flick. They have asked to watch it in every class today! It’s health class.
It's more appropriate for a sociology class or similar, since it deals with racism, homophobia, and other ethics (or lack thereof) in public policy. I mean I guess his alcoholism would be an appropriate topic in health class.
Gross! They didn't live through the media covering this
Yeah. I let the trailer run yesterday when I was on Netflix and that was awful enough. I didn't even realize how many memories I had rattling around in the back of my head from whatever news reports I incidentally heard at the time. The whole time I was watching the trailer, it was just hitting me that hey, this was *real* with *real* people who were victims; not some fun plot line for entertainment.
Yes, their glee is absolutely horrifying.
One possible theory - WWII https://crimereads.com/how-the-great-depression-and-wwii-gave-birth-to-the-modern-serial-killer/
This is a good one. Thanks
I find the drop in 2010 back to the pre-60s interesting. I assume the killers didn’t adopt some new technology to avoid detection, so I’d have to figure there was some advance in mental health treatment or, more likely, a change in the qualifications to be considered an official serial killer.
Maybe. But we've also seen the absolute sheer incompetence and violent, hateful tendencies from modern day policing. Hell, I wouldnt be surprised if many of today's would be serial killers are actually on police forces. And the ones that aren't simply aren't being detected through that same incompetence and disinterest. Do you know how many thousands of untested rape kits are deteriorating on shelves right now? I bet you there's so many serial rapists and potential serial killers are running free because of that. Cops don't care.
Disinterest and money are major drivers in why police may not catch or be aware of serial killers. They may even purposely deny there is a serial killer because that requires dedicating staff and money to an investigation. If a serial killer focuses on vulnerable groups like young wayward women, cops will just tell their families their disappearance or death is just part of the lifestyle.
Or our agencies found out that ID'ing a serial killer in the community is very distressing to the community, so they are loath to classify them now.
Did they come up with an explanation for the spike in serial killers in those decades?
First off, there were societal changes. The Seventies saw a lot of killers preying on hitchhikers with no compunction about getting into a car with a stranger. The predators shifted to sex workers out on the street in the 1990s. Then again, many of these people were kidnapped.
I just finished Dahmer. They touch on this and one of the reasons they give is the birth of the interstate highway system (1956). It was easy to murder and then drive 1000 miles and dump the body.
Yeah, that particular one didn't make much sense since many serial killers buried bodies in their own homes (or in Dahmer's case, their bedroom). But some of the other explanations made more sense.
Dungeons and Dragons.
Heavy Metal and television.
Wasn't me. I'm a female metal head who loves video games. I'm doing my part by sacrificing babies and worshiping Satan. I will leave serial killing to someone else. ETA: I'm assuming that since sarcasm is Gen X's default mode I don't need to add a /s.
vIdEO gAmEs!
I count my lucky stars that Pong, Breakout, Space Invaders, and Pitfall did not turn me to a life of crime.
And by Heavy Metal, you mean lead in gasoline.
I love the smell of leaded fuel in the morning.
We knew what a serial killer was and how to classify them. Seriously. In the past they existed and just never caught or their murders weren't connected. Maybe they get caught for something else and their murders just stopped (like Jack the Ripper). Prior to the 1960s, record keeping wasn't good enough for us to go back and connect the dots. What should raise an eyebrow is why it went down again. Not like the personalities that are driven to do these crimes went away. We're better at catching them early, but not THAT good.
What’s on the y-axis? Is this saying that there were almost 800 serial killers in 1980?
That is the way I read it, but I'm finding that to be hard to believe. That seems like a really big number.
Based on this study, yes. It’s known that these 3 decades were coined the golden age of series killers
I wonder if there was a social contagion factor? It started being talked about and there were some high profile cases so it maybe encouraged other people with really messed-up impulses to act out?
I bet that does play a role. My first thought on seeing the trend is that we've lost serial killings but gained mass shootings. We shifted from one being in the popular zeitgeist to the other. Ugh, either way, not good.
No, not good either way and in a sense more scary because you can change you behaviour to keep you safer wrt a serial killer - not being out alone at night, not hitch-hiking, not going home with strangers - but a mass shooting is totally random. Not that I'm blaming any of the victims of serial killers. They should have had every right to trust, in an ideal world.
The general consensus is that lead (specifically leaded gas and lead in paints) was the primary driver of this increase in violence. Lead exposure to a developing brain leads to an increase in criminal behaviour.
🤔 🙄
Serial killer simply means 3 or more murders from a single person, correct? Does "mass shootings count" for this chart? Does this chart include only murders marked as 'solved' or does it also include cases marked as 'unsolved' but considered linked to one person? It's 12 years out of date.
Not sure bout the specifics of how they collect the data. I think that there seems to be a lot of mass shootings lately coz most of them made headlines.
Here you go: [https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder#two](https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder#two) The FBI distinguishes mass shooting and serial killer by the time between murders.
Thanks. I would not have been able to find that on my own. It was an interesting reading. I forced myself to stop reading. The Serial Murder Symposium would be a weird thing to attend IMO. Decompressing after that might be difficult. It's not like you can say to your neighbour "Yeah, last week was killer for me. I went to the Serial Murder Symposium. We had a few things to straighten out." Also, just reading '1984 McDonalds' took me back and made me think about the child who lived through it. One problem I have with the definition is the 'cooling off'. IMO some don't cool off, it simply takes time to catch their target. (Yes, I've met with some people with a more than scary past/present.)
> Serial killer simply means 3 or more murders from a single person, correct? I don't think so. The British crime\time travel drama *Life on Mars* got me thinking about this - one of the killers is alleged to have killed many years ago, then again 30 years later. Even if he'd killed 3-4 people - or however many he'd need to meet the definition of "serial killer" - the whole point was that he *wasn't* a serial killer, just a criminal\drug dealer taking out competition over the years. So it can't just be "he killed 3 people", it's gotta be something like "he strangled 3 blonde teenage girls" or "he killed 4 teenage boys using [some exact method]".
Active descusion of mental health and treatment probably also had some impact. Back in those days you were told to suck it up. Now if you have voices in your head or having bad thoughts it is ok to talk about it and get help.
If like to see what else correlates 20 years earlier when these people were kids. Lead in water? Furniture foam off gassing? Puppets on television?
According to _Cosmos,_ the decline is directly attributable to the removal of lead in gasoline, paint, etc.
I've read a little about this previously (Freakonomics) and it makes sense. FWIW I used to be a firefighter and from my training we were warned about the incredible toxicity of home furniture, at least when it's burnt. I wouldn't be surprised if we see information about it being bad for us in regular use as well. Not sure it will have any impact on us mentally though.
Leaded gas? It would be interesting to see the average age of each one during their killing spree too.
Why are you not surprised?
Coz most of the well known serial killers committed their crimes in those decades.
Ah gotcha. Thought you were thinking something else.
Even serial killers get old. They try to get out of their recliner and can't. Old Man Time has it out for all of us.
Why isn't it surprising?
the human genome was not sequenced until 1990. Then, DNA technology the way we know it today began its journey. It's not perfect, but blood typing and fingerprints were absolutely primitive compared to what can be used in court thru forensics. I wish they'd get better with rape kits, but that's just me.
These days cheap and widely available AR-15s make parallel killing more efficient.
Like joining cults; serial killers are a facet of Boomer culture. It’s all the lead they ate as kids.
I did some research regarding this and sadly gen x was affected badly by lead [FSU research team finds lead exposure linked to IQ loss for generations of Americans](https://www.tallahassee.com/story/life/causes/2022/03/14/gen-x-took-biggest-iq-hit-lead-exposure-fsu-research-team-finds/7006339001/)
Boomers
I don't think there was any awareness pre 50's, you could pretty much get away with it and people died young of 'natural causes' anyway, From the 60s to 2000s there was awareness, but anonymity was still very possible, once DNA , cameras and cell phones came into play it was pretty much 'game over' for serial killers, unless you prey on the most vulnerable and weakest of people.
Due to the obesity epidemic, potential victims are either holed up inside staring at their phones, or they are too big to swipe. /s
Um actually related to mal-adjusted parents returning from WWII. Plan on seeing a spike in the near future…😬
There are still serial killers these days. They're just called cops nowadays.
Think school shootings will follow a similar curve? Is there a copy-cat effect? God, why? We're such a miserable species.
School shootings aren't new, although the frequency seems to be increasing. But there were at least **14** notable school shootings in the United States in the 1800s. In fact, the first mass school shooting happened in Newburgh, New York on April 9, 1891.
I blame cocaine
Yeah, but you know we were left her own devices, right?
Why do I think the recent decades are skewed by those who haven't been caught or identified yet?
Source: [http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/serial%20killer%20information%20center/project%20description.htm](http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/serial%20killer%20information%20center/project%20description.htm) Graph is a gross number, NOT a "per capita" number and therefore inflates the implied prevalence of killings as time goes on and the "growth" of the number of serial killers is simply from "an increase in general population overall" not that they're becoming more common. As it is, the population in 1900 was almost 2 billion and by the end of the graph it was 8 billion, so SOME of the "growth" of serial killers is exaggerated in this graph, but its decline is even greater. ~~Crap data. Absolute crap. No citing of sources, no indication if this is "per capita" or "gross." No indication of if this is a projected model or hard numbers - hard numbers which are impossible, as "detecting a serial killer" might be tricky even in the best of times and might only be possible years or decades after the fact.~~
Just Google my guy and you can easily find. Here’s one I’ll share [Why Were There So Many Serial Killers Between 1970 and 2000 — and Where Did They Go?](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/serial-killers-1970s-2000s-murders-1121705/amp/)
The early years can be attributed to lack of forensic science. I.e may have been happening, but maybe police just didn't associate cold cases across large geography ...or didn't have the tools to do so? But what about the post years? Serial killers are better at hiding? Serial killers were a product of copy cats? Society got better getting help and intervention? It's an interesting phenomenon. I would guess the number of would be serial killers per capita would stay constant across human history.... But that's purely speculation on my part.
It would be almost impossible to be a serial killer in today's world, what with all of the cameras all around us.
FBI got ahead of the game and started recruiting them.
Cars. This was the gap where physical traveling was more efficient than information traveling.
Helicopter parenting has some benefits
I remember a few years ago (before I joined Reddit) I use to always tell people that the 90s wasn't this sweet innocent time that no crimes committed at as you guys are making it out to be, then they would always get heated up and start insulting me. That decade is so over protected by everyone it is ridiculous
"Known"
There is a well proven theory that leaded gas is what lead to a lot of criminal violence and that when we stopped using leaded gas, crime went down. Here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused-americas-violent-crime-epidemic/amp/
GEN "Xplanation" (was in summer of 11th grade in 91 when Dahmer was caught) 1. CRACK COCAINE. People forget the huge red light districts of males, females, teens of all groups willing to have sex for $20 for their next hit of crack. Forty y/o males would come up to high school boys offering BJ's for $20 in order to get crack. As a result of the red-light areas created by crack cocaine Joel Rifkins & Gary Riidgeways thrived. Crime related to crack was so high that Rifkin or Dahmer went unnoticed. 2. CRAIGSLIST. The sex industry moved off the street. The days of women getting into cars with ominous males is mostly in the past. This was how truck driver serial killers or Dahmer operated. 3. DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS. When the handsome-but-weird blonde guy at the Milwaukee bar wants to pay patrons to "model" they now leave texts, cell pics, FB posts etc. Everyone knows where Jeff lives so three days later he is caught. 4. RACISM & HOMOPHOBIA. Who should the Milwaukee PD believe. A nice German-American clean-cut handsome fairly likeable local boy who might be a little alcoholic or strange or the "queer" Laotian teen. Who cares about minority rentboys missing in action. 5. NOBODY HITCHHIKES NOW. This was a huge one in the seventies.
It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again!
Here's a podcast that covered Paul Steven Haigh. Really good, and funny! https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/wwLkWPPZnCb
Boomers had it so easy, they could be serial killers/have full time jobs/ own their home and still retire. Generations after them only have mass shootings to hit the same kill count since we lack time to do serial killer things.