Serial Killers

Serial killers are murderers who hunt humans. They find a thrill not only in killing but in stalking their victims. In twentieth-century America, serial killing was a crime of the middle classes. This particular type of murder became a source of great fascination in American culture of the 1970s and 1980s.

The term “serial murder” was first used by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Agent Robert Ressler in the 1980s, though multiple homicide has been part of human history for as far back as anyone can remember. Mass media—fixated on sensational stories that attract attention —took the term and disseminated it throughout the culture, replacing the terms “lust murder” and “mass murder.” In the twenty-first century, the term “mass murder” (killing many people at one time) means something different from “serial murder” (killing many people, one at a time).

The first serial killer to gain notoriety was not American, but English. Jack the Ripper murdered five London prostitutes in 1888. His legend is shrouded in mystery because his identity has never been revealed with absolute certainty. Hundreds of books and stories and more than a dozen movies feature Jack the Ripper.

In 1984 the FBI published a series of articles listing primary offender characteristics. The data was compiled from interviews with thirty-six imprisoned serial killers, all male. Based on these interviews, the profile of a typical serial killer is that of a white male between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, often an only child or the eldest child in a family, who believes he is more intelligent than ordinary people. As a consequence of this supposedly heightened intelligence, he believes the rules of society do not apply to him.

These characteristics are not absolute. For example, there have been female serial killers, the most famous being Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory. She and her female followers imprisoned and murdered hundreds of women in her castle in the early seventeenth century.

Famous serial murderers

Several serial killers became household names. Albert DeSalvo (1931–1973) was better known as the Boston Strangler. John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) was convicted and executed for the murder of thirty-three boys in the 1970s. He buried most of their bodies under the floorboards of his house. Ted Bundy (1946–1989) went on a killing spree across the United States between 1974 and 1978. Although the total number of victims will never be known, he eventually confessed to raping and murdering thirty women. He was sent to the electric chair for his brutal crimes.

David Berkowitz (1953–), better known as Son of Sam, killed six people and wounded many more in the 1970s. He was sentenced to six life sentences in prison. Ed Gein (1906–1984) was a Wisconsin native who murdered his victims and then skinned them. He used their skin to make clothing and cover furniture. Although only two murders could be pinned on Gein with certainty, his brother died under mysterious circumstances in 1944, and six people disappeared from rural Wisconsin communities between 1947 and 1957.

Jeffrey Dahmer (1960–1994), another Wisconsin native, was indicted for the murder of fifteen men and boys between 1978 and 1991. One of his victims managed to escape, only to be returned to his custody by the Milwaukee Police Department. Dahmer killed, dismembered, and ate his victims. After being sentenced to 937 years in prison, Dahmer was beaten to death by an inmate.

In the media

Serial killers have been the subject of books and films for decades. Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) portrayed serial killers as villains in a number of his films, including The Lodger (1926), Psycho (1960), and Frenzy (1972). Crime fiction writer Thomas Harris (1910–1995) invented Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter, a serial killer who is also a psychiatrist. All of Harris's Hannibal books were made into movies, the most famous being The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The Hannibal Lecter character was based on Ed Gein, as was Norman Bates in Psycho.

As far back as the 1940s, serial killers have been featured in television programs. Examples include Unsub (1989), Twin Peaks (1990–91), the various editions of CSI (2000–), Criminal Minds (2005–), and Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001–).