Dude, don't let them get to you, Its a fair question. I know local health departments/support groups for runaways/ladies of the night helps. Back in the 70's and 80's no one said anything if their friend was missing/taken.
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Are serial killers still a thing?
- Thread starter Good4Squat
- Start date
Dude, don't let them get to you, Its a fair question. I know local health departments/support groups for runaways/ladies of the night helps. Back in the 70's and 80's no one said anything if their friend was missing/taken.
I don't know why half the thread is giving you so much shit for this question. I'd initially chalked it up to me watching virtually no broadcast news at this point but it does seem that news media as a whole has stopped glorifying serial killers, which is for the best.
In some ways, Angels of Mercy are still "common" and they can accrue body counts far larger than the John Wayne Gacy types.
Someone like Richard Ramirez I think would've definitely been caught really quickly today, if he did it now the way he did it back in 85. He was kind of sloppy with his killings, leaving footprints all over, or taking food out of his victims kitchen and eating it and leaving some of it behind. Can't be leaving behind cans of half drank soda and half eaten melon with the spoon still stuck in it.
My ex GF told me that serial killers aren't reported on like they use to be because the media hyping them up would create copy cats. So the FBI are actively restricting reporting on them. Only releasing info about them at the very end of their investigation. Don't know how right she is about that though.
Just had a whole convo with a friend about these goddamn Netflix documentaries. I watched one about how violence dominated news reports in the 70s ( vietnam, political assassinations, serial killers) and some believe that alone led to the slippery slope of copy cat killers and the crave for attention and "one upping" of other famous murderers. Lately it feel like every fucking trending title on Netflix is some documentary about a ridiculous criminal and I can't help but shake the feeling the same phenomenon is about to happen again. Psychopaths love attention.
OP
OP
You say that..But we have netflix focusing on serial killers, and you always see those true crime stories. I think like other people said, I think its just harder to get away with multiple murders over the years than in the past...
Yeah, lots of research on this, completely different motivations, pathologies etc. Any glance even at popular accounts of both crimes make this clear. Ted Bundy would not gain any satisfaction from a mass shooting (where the perpetrators usually die at the scene anyway). Very interesting distinctions between offenders
Technology is such a big aspect. It's amazing a lot of serial killers were caught in the past because they were basically having to compile a bunch of handwritten information without computers. Nowadays with everything digital you could do a simple cntrl+F search and realize in some cases that a certain suspect had actually been interviewed multiple times and kept coming up in likely suspects.
Just took me by surprise I guess, scrolling through.
What I said was rude though, no excuse. It's a valid question as they definitely are few and far between
Elizabeth Bathory and Gilles de Rais make Jack the Ripper look small time
I don't think this is a weird question OP. I would imagine better forensics has to do with it? At least in terms of preventing the long strings of killings over years that Hollywood loves to make movies about. But I'm not an expert on this. It also could be that they're just in the news less.
Nah, they're not in vogue anymore. They went out of fashion a few years ago when they became mainstream with everyone getting into true crime books and dramas.
Advancements in technology/techniques mean that they're more likely to get caught/stopped. That factored with the fact that news media are held back from sensationalizing serial killers and producing copy-cats means that unless they're really prolific you will never hear about them until you dive really deep into it.
It's a fair question to ask, and there are plenty of theories, from improved forensic science to less lead in the environment. The one I see most often is that many "serial" killers are more likely to be "spree" killers today.
absolutely yes, but they have to be 10x smarter and clever than the ones we know about.
Israel Keys was a proliphic 21st century serial killer. Dude had stash spots, equipment spots and body spots all over the country and only got caught because he got too comfortable and made a mistake. he was partially active in 1996 and fully active until 2012
en.wikipedia.org
Israel Keys was a proliphic 21st century serial killer. Dude had stash spots, equipment spots and body spots all over the country and only got caught because he got too comfortable and made a mistake. he was partially active in 1996 and fully active until 2012
Israel Keyes - Wikipedia
This is a pretty interesting question, I think. Criminology, innit? I don't really have anything to add, I just wanted to say I think it's a valid question and I'm gonna check in on the thread later to see what kind of conclusions or hypotheses people have presented.
I'm surprised at the reactions people are having. Are none of you fans of true crime? Discussing serial killers is very common, and this question pops up all the time.
I agree with the people that say that advancement in technologies makes capturing serial killers easier than it was before, you often hear about people who want to be serial killers getting caught after 1-2 murders. Some still manage to not get caught sadly.
Also, part of the reason why we'd hear about serial killers all the time was due to how the media used to glamorize them. Thankfully this has changed a lot in recent years
I agree with the people that say that advancement in technologies makes capturing serial killers easier than it was before, you often hear about people who want to be serial killers getting caught after 1-2 murders. Some still manage to not get caught sadly.
Also, part of the reason why we'd hear about serial killers all the time was due to how the media used to glamorize them. Thankfully this has changed a lot in recent years
Yeah, I was watching the documentary and I was like "if one home in any of these neighborhoods had security cameras, he would've been caught so much faster".
Man, episode 3 pissed me off how he could've been caught way sooner if it weren't for politics and bureaucracy.
The FBI suggests that there are between 25 and 50 serial killers operating in the US at any given time. Seems to me they are always a thing.
I think that advances in detection have made it near impossible to have a long "run". Just too much ability to track down trace evidence and too much science around crime scene work. Too much science around profiling.
Not impossible but mass shootings are easier to pull off since you don't have to succeed at multiple crimes.
I think most potential serial killers get popped early or even on their first kill.
Not impossible but mass shootings are easier to pull off since you don't have to succeed at multiple crimes.
I think most potential serial killers get popped early or even on their first kill.
There are but its definately a lot more rare than they used to be. We actually kind of talked about this last month in that Zodiac Killer thread that was made.
Serial killers today face 2 main problems:
1) Advances in forensics and the internet existing have made it a lot harder to get away with multiple murders without being caught. DNA, security cameras and everyone having a cellphone on them at all times makes it way more likely you're going to slip up and get caught.
2) Victims are harder to come by. People are much more cautious these days and don't tend to wander by themselves. Most serial killers of the past operated in the 70s and 80s when hitch hiking was still in vogue and people were way more trusting of strangers. I feel like people are way more apprehensive to go home with someone they don't know at a bar or get in a strangers car willingly.
Serial killers today face 2 main problems:
1) Advances in forensics and the internet existing have made it a lot harder to get away with multiple murders without being caught. DNA, security cameras and everyone having a cellphone on them at all times makes it way more likely you're going to slip up and get caught.
2) Victims are harder to come by. People are much more cautious these days and don't tend to wander by themselves. Most serial killers of the past operated in the 70s and 80s when hitch hiking was still in vogue and people were way more trusting of strangers. I feel like people are way more apprehensive to go home with someone they don't know at a bar or get in a strangers car willingly.
They are still a thing but news now is a lot different. If a serial killer got caught today, they'd be notorious for a week until some celebrity cheats on their spouse with the maid's stepdad.
Sometimes I read the thread titles as someone just walking up and saying it, so the title took me by surprise and I reacted poorly. There has been a few in recent years in Canada for some reason, like Robert Pickton I linked before or Bruce McArthur linked above too. Also Luka Magnotta kind of counts
They have.
To be fair, the lead-crime connection is kind of contested (I think there's a study out of New Zealand that debunks it), but it's wild to think about.
I believe it's also suspected that several are transient types like long haul truck drivers as it's far harder to connect murders in entirely different parts of the country together. As someone who did touring music gigs this wouldn't surprise me.
There are always active unsubs out there . Cell phones and cameras everywhere make it more difficult I imagine.
Fair question imo, maybe could've been worded better. Murders and missing person cases that used to get a lot of attention in US media don't get nearly the attention they used to. Politics gets all the attention now. Maybe things will get boring again under Biden, that would be kind of nice tbh. Not long ago I was telling my room mate I kinda miss the days when our 24 hour news coverage obsessed over missing or dead attractive white people.
why are people getting worked up over this question?
My girlfriend and I are into true crime and we just spoke about this recently. OP, I think the main reason would have to be the advancements in technology, surveillance and forensics science that have happened over the past decades that have made it easier to prevent and catch these predators.
My girlfriend and I are into true crime and we just spoke about this recently. OP, I think the main reason would have to be the advancements in technology, surveillance and forensics science that have happened over the past decades that have made it easier to prevent and catch these predators.
Yeah, I have even thought about it myself in the past. Never made a thread about it on the internet but I wondered about it too. I don't think it is that weird to consider when you examine history and compare it to today.
Without question. Killers have gotten a lot smarter than back in the day. Lots has changed, murder rates have gone down a ton, but so have the clearance of murder cases by police. There's a lot of factors at play with regards to all that so it's not completely clear cut. More would be serial killers are likely picked up earlier for their initial crimes and murders and are in prison preventing them from doing further harm, but there's still a lot out there that haven't been caught because they're smarter and more careful.
Samuel Little was active well in to the late 90s and not caught until 2012. LISK has not been caught and could in fact possibly be two different serial killers active on Long Island, as well as responsible for other killings across the US over the past couple decades.
I think people vastly over estimate the ability for law enforcement to solve crimes. It's one thing to kill someone you know out of passion and purpose and get caught, but it's another when you literally have no connection or ties to the victim and you literally travel from out of state come in kill someone and then leave without a trace. There may be lots of cameras and shit around these days, but they're not everywhere and people like sex workers, undocumented immigrants and just minorities and poor people in general are still extremely vulnerable.
Samuel Little was active well in to the late 90s and not caught until 2012. LISK has not been caught and could in fact possibly be two different serial killers active on Long Island, as well as responsible for other killings across the US over the past couple decades.
I think people vastly over estimate the ability for law enforcement to solve crimes. It's one thing to kill someone you know out of passion and purpose and get caught, but it's another when you literally have no connection or ties to the victim and you literally travel from out of state come in kill someone and then leave without a trace. There may be lots of cameras and shit around these days, but they're not everywhere and people like sex workers, undocumented immigrants and just minorities and poor people in general are still extremely vulnerable.
Serial murder is and has always been very rare, sure we all know the household names but there was never a point where it wasn't rare. Add in the progress we've seen with forensic sciences and surveillance explains how we don't hear about it as much. Obviously, there are still some out there and in a morbid way it's interesting how these individuals are compensating for all these advancements.
Yeah I don't hear much about them in the news and I wonder if there is less focus or something. I had the same thought as well like is there focus on missing people etc.