Understanding Serial Killers Exam 1

Types of murder

mass, spree, serial

mass murder

-single lethal event
-involving 3/4 victims
-often know some/all of the victims (lust type serialists do)
- typically a single person working alone
-close to home
-many involve domestic homicides

mass shooting

-does not require fatalities
-gn violence archive included both killed and injured in data on mass shootings

active shooter

one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area

George Hennard Luby’s Cafeteria massacre

mass murder- killed 23, injured 20, then suicided

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold Columbine High School Murders

mass murder

mass murderer motives

-typically personal of some sort (rational or not)
- ex: jilted boyfriend kills girlfriend and her whole family because if he can’t have her no one can

mass murderers- who are they?

-Most are male, white, conservative, and come from stable, lower-middle-class backgrounds
-many have serious mental health issues and are depressed, despondent, and hopeless
-often unemployed
-often some military experience
-NOT usually adopted, illegitimate, or institutionalized as children
-usually people who aspire more than they can achieve (general strain theory)
-typically die in an explosion of violence directed at a group they fell oppresses, threatens, or excludes them

mass murder victims

-personally selected
-proxies
-no strong gender preference

5 most common types of mass murderers

-disciples (kill at hands of leader)
-family annihilator (kill whole fam)
-paramilitary enthusiasts/pseudo commando
-set and run killers (bomb setters)
-disgruntled employee (going postal)

less common types of mass murderers

-murder for profit
-murder for sex
-psychotic killer, legally insane

Terrorism

-usually distinguished from mass murder
-killer is motivated by ideology of some sort that is shared by a group and committed to violence in support of that group

Mullen’s Mass Murder Typology Based on Victim-Offender Relationship

victim specific (targeted attack against particular people)
-Gene Simmons killed family members at X-mas

instrumental (victims are part of a broad category of interest)
-Marc Lepine killed female engineering students because he hated feminists

Massacre- victims indiscriminately killed

Brenda Spencer

-1st school shooter
-I don’t like mondays- shot at elementary school across the street from her house

Bifurcated Mass Murder

-most occur at single location
-sometimes, however, the killer starts at one place and moves on
-Cho, the Virginia Tech Killer-shot 2 people in residence hall prior to main attack at the classroom building
-public to private are extremely rare
-private to public much more common

Luby’s Cafeteria Massacre

-Hupp and her parents were having lunch at the Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen in 1991
- a gnman shot 50 people and killed 23 including Huppe’s parents

-Hupp later expressed regret about removing her gn from purse and locking it in her car

Best Practices for Mass Murders

-law enforcement should immediately act, not wait for backup
-civilians
-run (distance is your friend) zig-zag
-hide, cover, conceal, fortify
-fight (last resort)

Spree Killers

-mobile mass murderers (similar to bifurcated mass murder but only have 2 stops)
-serialists with very short careers
-involve at least 2 victims, 2 locations
one scheme or course of conduct
-NO cooling off period

Cooling off period

-unique to serial killers
-revert to normal behavior such as attending school, work, church, or interacting with family and others
-Great variance (1-1000 days)

Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate

-1950s era murder spree that rocked the country
-Caril’s parents were among their first victims

Andrew Philip Cunanan

-spree killer
-murdered 5 people, including fashion designer Versace, during cross country murder spree in summer of 1977
-ended with his suicide

John Wayne Gacy

-killed 30+ boys in his home
-most buried in crawl space beneath his home
-does not fit 3 or more separate locations criteria

Steve Eggers- The Less Dead

if you kill college students or other “valued” targets, police response is more immediate and aggressive than if you kill people of lesser social value the reaction is sometimes muted

Organized Serial killer

-intelligent
-meticulous planner (bring weapons, restraints, other tools to the scene
-clean up crime scene
-follow news reports closely

Disorganized Serial Killer

-less intelligent
-more impulsive and sloppy
-no replanning; use weapons and tools of convenience
-leaves scene “as is”

Are most killers organized or disorganized?

originally a dichotomy but further research and analysis suggests it’s more of a continuum with most killers exhibiting mixed

Holmes and Holmes 4 Serial Killer Classifications

1. Visionary

2. Mission Oriented

3. Hedonistic

4. Power/ Control Oriented

Visionary Serial Killer

Obeying voices from God or Satan
- Herbert Mullin- voices told him to kill in order to prevent a devastating earthquake from destroying CA

Mission-Oriented Serial Killer

Believe it is their duty to rid the world of certain types of people (eg., prostitutes)
-Jack the Ripper may have been trying to rid the London streets of “Human Garbage”

Hedonistic Killers

Killing for pleasure
-3 types:
-Lust
-Thrill
-comfort

Hedonistic- Lust killer

-violence and sex are intertwined; they achieve sexual gratification through homicide and violence

Hedonistic Thrill Killers

-find killing exciting, sadists who get a thrill from inflicting pain
-only interested in conscience and sex torture is how they vent their sadism

Hedonistic Comfort Killers

Kill for material gain
-include “black widows” and “hit men”
-black widows typically poison and hitmen typically use firearms
-behave from lust and thrill killers

Richard Kuklinski

-hedonistic comfort killer
-mafia contract killer
-worked for the 5NY families, 2 NJ families, and beyond
-claims 100-200 kills
-primarily killed in connection with monetary activity
-varied in killing methods

Power/Control Oriented Killers

killing for dominance
-depraved sexual torture is usually involved
motivated by a pathological need to control other people
-pleasure derives from power and control over victims NOT the sex acts
-usually male however, some experts argue that the Angel of Death killers are power and control killers and they are often female

Types are Characterized by Different Killing MOs

-visionary and mission-oriented killers tend to kill quickly and efficiently
-killing is a “necessary evil”
-guns or sometimes massive blunt trauma
-rarely torture or kill with their bare hands

-thrill hedonists and power and control oriented killers want to make the killing last as long as possible; it enhances their pleasure and elongates feelings of power and control
-the killing is the whole point, its not a means to and end, it is the end
-elaborate killings are common
-torture and hands on killing methods like strangulation is favorable

Some Serial Killers Have Multiple Motives and Can Fit into more than one Classification

TRUE

Gary Ridgeway Classification

-said strangling people was erotic (lust/thrill)
-enjoyed necrophilia (lust)
-made statements about wanting to control women and killing prostitutes gave him that sense of control (power/control oriented)

Unified Typology of Multiple Murder-Integrated Approach

-because of some of the overlap present between serial and mass killers and among the various proposed typologies, Fox and Levin proposed a unified typology of multiple murder by reference to motive (they disregard spree killing)
-power, revenge, loyalty, profit, and terror

Motive- Power

-Serial Murder: Ted Bundy type, inspired by sadistic fantasies, torture, and murder a string of strangers in order to satisfy his need for control and domination

-mass murder: a pseudo-commando dressed in battle fatigues storms a McDonalds making it a war-zone

Motive-Revenge

Serial Murder- Grossly mistreated as a child, a man avenges his past by slaying women who reminded him of his abusive mother

-mass murder- after being “wrongly” fired from her job, a woman returns to work and open fires on her former boss and co-workers

Motive-Loyalty

Serial Murder- A team of killers turn murder into a ritual, proving their dedication and commitment to each other like Canada’s Barbie and Ken Killers (aka Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo)

Mass Murder: A depressed housewife like Andrea Yates kills her children in order to save them of the horrors of hell or evils of the world

Motive- Profit

Serial Killer: A woman poisons a series of spouses to collect the insurance money
-Hit men who are often excluded when discussing serial killers fit here

Mass Murder- A band of armed robbers make it their practice to kill all witnesses who happen to be on the scene in order to hinder their apprehension

Motive-Terror

Serial Killer: A profoundly paranoid man commits a series of bombings to warn the world of impending doom

mass murder: a Group of Islamist extremists blow up plane to send political message (9/11)

Locust of Motivation

-intrinsic motivation- doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable to you (thrill)
-extrinsic motivation- doing something because it leads to a separable desirable outcome ($)

Bryant’s Conceptual Paradigm of Thanatological Crime o Serial Homicide

-functional/instrumental
-malicious mischief/amusement
-profit/economic advantage
-pathological cumpulsive

2 patterns of victimization

-deceased person is directly victim of the crime
-deceased are used to victimize

functional/instrumental motivation and victimization of the dead

cannibalism
-occasionally resorted to in order to survive, but for serial killers usually done as a way to keep part of the victim with them

Ex: Swedish Drs. Teet Harm and Thomas Allgen were forensic pathologists who killed 8 prostitutes
- told police they were part of a secret Swedish society whose main goal was to promote cannibalism and necrophilia as acceptable practices

Functional/Instrumental Motivation and Use of the Dead to Victimize the Living

Plea bargain info about other victims or other killers in exchange for lesser punishment or a delay in their execution
-using the dead to gain advantage for themselves but in the process harm the victim by further dragging out the process and denying closure

-serial homicide offenders who pose their victims bodies in public places, to mock both the public and police to terrorize the members of the pubic and create the image in the publics mind that the police are helpless to stop the killer

The Boston Strangler

-killed 13 women over a two year period
-posed their bodies in an attempt to scare/intimidate the public and police
-all of De Salvo’s victims were strangled with stockings, which he then tied into a bow under their chins before posing them
-in the case of 19 year old Mary Sullivan, he wedged a New Years greeting card between her toes

Malicious Mischief/Amusement and Victimization of the Dead

-desecration of the bodies for fun or amusement
-collection of souvenirs or trophies
drivers licenses to body parts

Jerome “Jerry” Brudos “the Lust Killer”/ “the High Heel Killer”

-killed at least 4 women in the late 1960s in Oregon
-kept trophies (underwear and shoes) in order to relive his crimes and the sexual excitement he got from murdering
-amputated the breasts of one of his victims, to use as paperweight sand the foot of another victim was kept in his freezer and used to model shoes he collected from his victims while he masturbated

Malicious Mischief/Amusement and Killers who use the Dead to Victimize Living

-rarely serialists will make prank telephone calls and write letters to the family of the deceased to upset them and amuse themselves (Ex; Albert Fish Boogie Man)

-more commonly, serialists will communicate with the media/and/or police which not only torments victim’s families but also society at large by threatening to continue their random killing rampage
-these communications appear to provide an amusement to the killer who is controlling the correspondence (Ex. Zodiac Killer)

Profit/Economic Advantage and Victimization of the dead

-Homicide for profit
-Motivation particularly associated with female serial killers who often kill family members or others in their care in order to cash in on life insurance policies or get other benefits
ex: body Snatchers William Burke and William Hare

Profit/economic advantage and using the dead to victimize the living

-Psychics and mediums will offer services to police or family members in exchange for fees or publicity

pathological/compulsive motivation and victimization of the dead

-killers who mutilate or sexually assault corpses
_Jack the Ripper- after killing his victims by cutting their throat, systematically mutilated their corpses with the goal of organ removal and desecration of the corpse

Edmund Kemper

-killed at least 6 female students in early 1970s
-poor relationship with his mother, he would troll for victims and kill after having a fight with her
-after killing his victims, he would take their bodies home, photograph them naked, and then dissect them
-he would decapitate their bodies, at least one head was retained for simulated oral sex

Robert “Willie” Pickton

-Pig farmer in British Columbia
-Convicted in 2007 of murdering women
-disposed of their remains by feeding some to the pigs on his farm
-suspicion he disposed of others by grinding their flesh, mixing it with pork and selling the product to the public and local businesses

Pathological/Compulsive and Use of Dead to Victimize Living

-Serial killer who targets particular groups of people, based on race, gender, or sexual orientation
-killer’s motive may have been to “rid society” of these “types of people” but a larger effect of this specific targeting is high levels of fear experienced by those in the serial killer’s operating area that fit the victims profile

Colin Ireland

-Pathological/Compulsive and Use of Dead to Victimize Living
- British Serial Killer known as the Gay Slayer murdered at least 5 homosexual men he met in pubs
-Collin posed as a homosexual to be taken to each of the victim’s homes where he would torture and murder them after making a New Year’s resolution in 1993 to become a serial killer
-Asked why he targeted homosexuals he told officers they ‘keep their mouths shut and don’t tell the police things

Ted Kaczynski

unabomber- resembles a set and run mass murder but is technically a serial killer

Richard Speck

mass murderer who killed 8 nursing students in 196 in an apartment in Chicago, primarily, according to him, for thrill seeking purposes, thrill seeking is a typical serial killer motive but not typically a mass murder motive although it was/is for folks like Speck

Murder/manslaughter rates according to UCR

fluctuated between 1400 and 1900 annually over the last couple of decades
- 2024 there were 16,935 homicide incidents

difficulties of looking at serial killer rates

-differing/competing of serial killing alters the range of included criminality
-hard to figure out who to count as a victim of serial killing without definitive definition for what counts as a serial kill

FBI estimate of serial killings

5000 per year
-the quantification problem is the result of the large number of murders never solves. We have a body but can’t tell who murdered it- “uncleared offenses”

How many homicides are uncleared

about a third
-clearance rates for homicide rates in 2023 was 58%

Generally, clearance rates for murder are lower today than past decades

TRUE
-there are more murders today than in 1960, police are overwhelmed
-due process revolution of 1960s that prevent abusive tactics that might formerly have led to more arrests
-more careful about arresting innocent people
-murderers getting harder to catch
-stranger killings may be on the rise

Some Over-estimation may also be attributable to furthering political agendas

-FBI wanted to grow and empower its burgeoning behavioral science unit as the go to place for serial murder and other serious crimes: big problem gets big $ which increases power
-feminists drew on serial murder to highlight disproportionate victimization of women
-death penalty and other get tough on crime advocates drew on serial murder to justify tougher sanctioning

Contemporary Estimates of Seria Murder

-Hickey in 2004 suggested there were 40-64 serial murder victims a year (1975-2004)
-Kiger (1990) suggested about 1% of all homicides per year were serial in nature (150-200 depending on the year)
-Fox and Levin (2005) estimates there were between 120-180 serial murders a year in the 1980s
-Eggers changed his tune in 2003 and stated that people between 1977-1992 an average of 67 people a year were killed by serial killers

Why are contemporary estimates much lower

-only count those victims confirmed in official record as serial killer victims
-more recent researchers have been disregarding uncleared cases in estimating the incidence of serial killing

2 Ways serial murders remain unknown to law enforcement

First: no body is ever found
-almost never get counted in the UCR or anywhere else
-number is not definitively knowable and is subject to much speculation
-we can be pretty sure, it is greater than 0

Second: body is found but perpetrator is not identified
-if it is recognized as a homicide, these cases will usually show up in the UCR counts as uncleared homicides
-if it’s mistaken for an accident, suicide, or is undetermined, won’t even make it into the UCR

Quintet’s pools of potentially uncounted serial killer victims

Missing Person (Pool 1)
-cases given low priority because most don’t involve foul play
-people with transient lifestyles like male and female prostitutes “go missing” voluntarily all the time

Missing Missing Persons Persons (Pool 2)
-missing persons nobody missed (never reported
-well documented and extensive problems with administrative purges and other erroneous canceling of missing persons’ reports compounds problem

Unidentified/Misclassified Dead (pool 3)
-NCIC data indicates that there are currently more than 6,000 cases, about 25% are female (this is a conservative estimate if you add BJS data from non-law enforcement sources its more like 140,000 unidentified dead
-applying Washington formula to the NCIC data gets you an addition 180 serial victims (20% homicides, 15% serial)
-medical murderers may be in the 100s

Keith Jesperson (Happy Face Killer)

-”I had a transient lifestyle. They were victimized because they were in my lifestyle”

How many people go missing a year

More than 800,000 missing person reports are filed annually
-more than 100,000 are active/unresolved at any given time

Missing Missing Persons

Quintet concluded that a prevalence rate of 49% of serial victims are protitutes
-based it off that 65% of serial victims are female and 75% of female victims of serial killers are prostitutes; concluded we are missing 19-29 prostitute victims of serial killers annually
She also looked at unaccounted for foster kids as part of the Missing-Missing

Quinet’s bottom line

-2 different estimates based upon different underlying assumptions (e.g. assumed 5 and 10 year accumulations in order to annualize)
-Lower estimates- somewhere between 182-361 serial victims annually go uncounted
-given current estimates of between 40-250 serial killer victims annually, that’s a huge part going uncounted

Serial murder reached it’s height in the 70s, remained high through 90s, but decreased in past couple decades

-imprisonment binge/long sentences
-forensic and technological advancements make us better at catching them earlier
-greater protective actions by potential victims

Linkage Blindness Steve Egger (1984)

-investigators are unable to connect homicides separated and space to the activities of a single serial killer or team
violent criminal apprehension program (ViCAP) and other efforts at greater interagency cooperation has probably reduced linkage blindness and increased identification apprehension

Serial Killer Facts

-Many of the identified ones are not white
- depending on data, between 5-15% are female
-insanity is a legal term: only 2-4% are legally insane
-most serial killers are of average intelligence
-some are motivated at least sometimes by material gain
-many appear to kill due to rejection and abandonment in childhood NOT

Samuel Little “most prolific” Serial Killer (per FBI)

-claims to have strangled 90+ victims between 19070-2005
-law enforcement has confirmed 50+
-killed primarily African-American women, many of whom were poor, drug addicted and involved in sex work
-many victim’s death originally ruled as over-doses or accidents or undetermined

Serial Murder Facts Pt 2

-most kill under 10 victims
-some stop for several years and/or have long period s between kills or even stop perminently
-75% start in their 20s-30s (slightly older than regular murderers)
-about 25% have 1 or more partners
-some victims aren’t sexually asssulted
-over 2/3 kill locally

Exit Strategy

-mass murderers and spree killers often have no exit strategy, serial killers normally do
-many mass/spree murders save the last bullet for themselves
-by contrast, serial killers almost always want to save their own life/freedom at any cost
-plan elaborately not to get caught
-most willing to deal at the end for more time, help recover bodies

Kevin Haggerty 6 preconditions that serial murder is a product of the modern world

1. Mass media- the rise of celebrity status (BTK)
2. A society populated with strangers
3. Society devoid of core values which results in depersonalization of others, perceiving relationships as instrumental and encourages extreme rationalizations
4. A cultural framework that denigrates some groups and places them at risk for predation
5. opportunity structure that affords serial killers more access to certain victims like prostitutes
6. Notion that society can be engineered and some serial killers see themselves as providing a service by ridding society of undesirables

Lycanthropy/Werewolves

-pervasive myth across many cultures/times
-werewolves usually male
-metamorphosis usually accomplished for the purposes of killing and mauling
-victims are often women and children
-eating flesh of victims commonly reported
-even today the term wolf is associated with aggressive male sexuality

Peter Stubb of Bedrug Germany

žHistorical figure of 16^th century

žActual serial killer who raped, tortured, killed and ate 15-17 women and children

žHad a mistress, Katherine Trompin

žAlso incestuous relationship with his daughter, Beel, with whom he had a son

žHe tore son to bits and ate his brain, when the authorities asked him about it he said "The brain had been the greatest delicacy in his entire life.”

Vampires

-Historical origins in Vlad Tepes of Romania and Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary (both 15th century nobles)
-creatures of the night with insatiable Blood Lust
-always somewhat eroticized but overtly so in the last several decades
-fairly obvious parallels with modern pyscho-sexually motivated serial killers- quite a few of whom drink the blood of their victims