They’ve spawned books by the thousands and movie and true-crime documentaries by the hundreds, but is the Golden Age of the Serial Killer coming to an end?
Serial murder is nothing new, of course. Records of what are now recognised as serial killings go back as far as Chinese noble Liu Pengli (c 144 BC) and a ninth-century “Baghdad Strangler”, to a number of 16th-century nobles (Gilles de Rais) and commoners (Peter Stumpp). The age of the celebrity serial killer began with Jack the Ripper in 1888, but the ‘golden age of serial murder’ spanned 1970 to 2000, peaking in 1989.
Since 2000, serial killing has declined in tandem with a general decline in crime in the US (notwithstanding the massive spike in crime attendant to the so-called racial reckoning of recent years). But some researchers believe they are declining to near non-existence.
Even as serial killers came to inhabit a central place in the nation’s imagination – inspiring hit movies, television shows, books, podcasts and more – their actual number was dwindling dramatically. There were once hundreds at large, and a spike in the 1970s and ’80s terrified the country. Now only a handful at most are known to be active, researchers say.
The causes range from technological to social.
It is harder to hide. Rapid advances in investigative technology, video and other digital surveillance tools, as well as the ability to analyze mountains of information, quickly allow the authorities to find killers who before would have gone undetected.
When asked how to avoid becoming a victim, one serial killer advised staying away from “bars, pills, and freeways”. It appears many people have taken the advice.
Americans have adopted more cautious habits in their everyday lives – hitchhiking, for example, is less common, and children are driven to and from school. That reduces easy targets. And, some theorize, those bent on killing now opt for spectacular mass murders.
The arrest last year of Rex Heuermann, an architectural consultant who the authorities say murdered three women and buried them on a Long Island beach more than a decade ago, may turn out to be the last gasp of the ‘classic’ serial killer.
The techniques that led to the arrest of Mr Heuermann, who has pleaded not guilty to the crimes, help explain the waning of serial killing […]
It’s not as if serial killers haven’t tried to keep up with the times, of course. Heuermann tried to cover his digital tracks by communicating with victims using so-called burner phones.
But thanks to exponential progress in technology since 2010, investigators were able not only to chart Mr Heuermann’s decade-old movements; they could also monitor exactly what he was searching online in recent months. They saw that he was using an anonymous account for internet queries like “Why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the long island serial killer,” prosecutors said. He had also been visiting massage parlors and contacting women working as escorts, they said.
Adam Scott Wandt, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says the sheer amount of data we each generate now has made getting away with murder harder than ever.
The amount of data people create in their daily lives is more than many can conceptualize, he said. Just by walking outside, people are now tracked by ever-present cameras, from Amazon’s Ring units outside homes to surveillance at banks and retail stores, he said. Every use of a phone or computer creates streams of data that are collected directly on devices or immortalized on servers, he said.
A concerted effort by the federal government to ensure that even the smallest police departments can use technology to their benefit has also helped give investigators an upper hand, Mr Wandt said.
So, from a peak of 198 known active serial killers and 404 known victims, in the late ’80s, a 2018 report claims just 12 known active serial killers and 44 victims.
Which begs the question: what about the “unknown unknowns”, to borrow Donald Rumsfeld’s famous phrase. Are serial killers merely flying under the radar of modern technology?
Or are they being replaced by a new breed of mass killers: spree killers and mass shooters?
While mass shootings have increased, many committed by teenagers, serial killings have apparently diminished. But both are committed by “criminal psychopaths,” [Terence Leary, an associate professor in the psychology department at Florida Gulf Coast University] said. Some people who might once have become serial killers might instead be choosing a single fatal gesture, he said […]
The two practices also reflect their respective eras. Mass killers today have taken to livestreaming massacres and leaving behind manifestoes. Serial killers, who flourished in an age before social media, operated clandestinely in many cases.
One thing’s for sure, though: media and public fascination show no signs of going away.
While serial killers’ additions to [the homicide] toll have become scant, documentaries, podcasts and shows examining their lives and crimes have boomed. And the internet has created virtual communities across the nation who trade sometimes-fantastical theories about real-life crimes.
New York Times
The Wild West era ended sometime between the 1890s and the 1900s – when Pat Garrett and Butch Cassidy were both killed – the Western as a genre boomed in subsequent decades and refuses to die, even today.
No doubt the serial killer, in fiction and documentary, will continue to stalk screen and page for decades to come, even if the real thing mercifully fades away.
