To think that serial killers can’t exist these days?

[Snooks1971]

Or actually get away with murder enough to become a serial killer maybe I should say. Just finished Night Stalker on Netflix, which made me think about this, although I’ve thought along these lines before. Have always been fascinated with Jack The Ripper after visiting Madame Tussaud’s as a young teen (late 40s now).

I haven’t googled any facts and I’m just an armchair observer, but surely with mobile phones, cctv, forensic developments, tech interfaces actually talking to each other this wouldn’t be possible now.

Then I wonder how many serial killers from the past that we have never of who must have got away with it. Makes my mind boggle a bit.

the Grindr killer is Stephen Port I think.

I think every generation thinks that because it has state of the art technology, some aspects of human nature will be stamped out. But the fact is, whatever technology we have, humans are always the same. Always smart enough to get round the obstacles, but not smart enough to stop themselves.

There will always be serial killers and rapists and paedophiles. It's part of humanity, and it won't disappear any more easily than love or anger would.

Of course they can!

For many reasons:

Poor policing - not necessarily bad coppers but lack of resources and manpower plus of course all the issues we've seen in previous cases where there was no co-ordination between forces, suspects slipped through the net etc. I was actually talking about one case the other night with someone and they were reminding me that LONG before the truth came to light (I'm
Talking decades here) and almost a decade before even the police were starting to think there was a connection they were certain it was a serial killer and even got their job sussed! They were right on both counts. I was a kid at the time but looking at the cases as an adult I wonder how on EARTH the police didn't connect them far earlier

Then there's victimology.

Despite the old "lessons will be learned" at the time of Fred and rose west, teen "runaways" are still very low priority to police. Partly sheer numbers, partly apathy and attitudes to a certain "type" of teen girl/young woman.

Homeless are an easy target as they're "already missing" and so very unlikely to be reported and looked for.

The mentally ill, care leavers, learning disabled, gay people and sex workers are all easy targets too sadly. For a variety of reasons but mainly because certain groups simply aren't considered worthy of the efforts of being looked for when they go missing by those who make and enforce the law.

It's very gradually improving with campaigning/political agitation but it's very slow going.

Then there's the matter of evidence.

Incredibly hard to get certain cases to court now I think too hard I think it's gone too far in favour of suspects. I know it needed to change from the old 70's and 80's before culture of basically frightening suspects into a confession etc but it's ridiculous the level of evidence needed now.

There's also far too much reliance on certain types of evidence and their being seen as "perfect" - the csi and dna effect! Something the show itself sought to address in one episode of csi New York which I believe was based on a real incident (but was heavily dramatised in the show). It was a situation where a number of swans used to collect dna evidence were contaminated by an employee not following correct procedure in the factory where they were manufactured. Iirc in the episode it reached the point the DA publicly announced there was a serial killer they were trying to track down, something happened which made Gary sinise's character with one dead person go "hang on something not adding up here" and he works out what's happened. Again iirc the real life incident on which this was based when they were getting a crazy number of "hits" with the dna tests the police and csa lab techs realised quite quickly this statistically didn't make sense and quickly traced the equipment used and worked back on possible contamination points to work out where the problem was and it was right back at the factory making the swabs and an employee not following correct procedure.

Even when uncontaminated dna evidence is not infallible, dna can be present at a scene or on a body for any number of reasons, we all shed dna containing cells all over the shop all the time. "Dating" of when the dna was left is more an art than a science as there are a lot of variables. Then there's various medical anomalies that can affect dna.

It's not just dna evidence either it's all kinds of "expert" evidence - remember dr Roy meadow?

No one piece or type of evidence should be relied upon.

Which makes it difficult to even trace let alone arrest and prosecute a serial killer

Also location, there are vast vast areas in some countries like USA, Australia, Russia etc that aren't inhabited or monitored in any way and if someone buries a body in eg the outback or in a huge American lake or something chances are police etc aren't even going to know to look there! Let alone where to start in an area of like 50000 acres of ranch land!

Then there's if they dump the body at sea, huge areas of oceans completely unexplored.

Or (even more gruesome) they do things like chop the body into little bits and scatter or cremate it or acid baths etc...

Serial killers are constantly evolving just like the rest of us.

Contrary to many fictional tv shows and films they don't always target the same type of victims or use the same methods to kill or get their victims or dump the bodies in the same place repeatedly. Some do this stuff, many don't.

@LucyLime At one point a minimum of 3 kills = serial killer that's no longer the case and police/law enforcement will define based on things other than number of kills

"angels of mercy" and "last min hero" type serial killers in the medical profession I suspect are more prevalent than anyone would like to admit. And I speak as an ex hcp. It's still such a position of trust that they're rarely suspected, add in pressure/busyness due to lack of resources/manpower and the knowledge they have it's almost a perfect storm.

@Whirlwind14 That doesn't surprise me at all. I KNOW I've met a few (convicted now released, mainly dv)

The fetishising of serial killers is quite bizarre! Even when ted Bundy had escaped and killed very young girls in the most violent and tortuous ways he had loads of young women fans until he was executed.

@Porcupineintherough I don't think a financial motive rules one out. Shipmans main motive was financial, some of the most famous and historic serial killers had money as motive eh h h Holmes one of the earlier American serial killers.

Ditto revenge, Jack the Ripper one theory (and I think there was evidence to support this possibility) was that he was vengeful due to having caught an sti by using sex workers - and remember these were fatal at this time, pre penicillin!

Plus, do the computer systems of all the state police talk to each other?

No I have family in USA one of whom is ex law enforcement but still knows how it works and is still in contact with ex colleagues, often even the different counties within a state don't communicate properly. There's a lot of issues with territory marking, trying to keep a capture within your specific police force (there's different types of police too - city forces, sheriffs dept, Feds, stats police etc) some of whom are elected rather than otherwise earn the post so have very political agendas for how they act - mainly wanting to keep their own depts stats looking good, so there's problems with reports not being recorded etc also old outdated equipment, officers not knowing how to correctly use the systems etc

We have the same issues here in Uk. 2 police forces I believe have now been pulled up, reprimanded and put on "special measures" for things like not recording all reported crime, failing to investigate, dismissing victims as unworthy of attention etc

Law enforcement throughout the world needs much improvement.

@covetingthepreciousthings that’s dreadful - it’s lucky that he didn’t kill anyone.

One of his unidentified victims found out on socials 💔 the story was all over Twitter and the victim initially posted a selfie with the rapist from a night out in a “that’s weird, I met that guy too” way. I think it transpired that he stayed over and couldn’t remember the rest of the night’s events so it was likely he was also a victim. He deleted the post and deactivated his account.

Also I think the media had reporting restrictions on the case as to not jeopardise it - he had so many victims that he needed multiple trials.

the story was all over Twitter and the victim initially posted a selfie with the rapist from a night out in a “that’s weird, I met that guy too” way

Hadn't heard that, that's really horrible to discover that.

@NeedCoffeeToSurvive unfortunately the events leading to the grindr murderer’s arrest are worse the police didn’t even bother investigating until after the 3rd victim in the exact same spot!

That was only after a previous victim’s loved one kept campaigning too. To police, there was apparently no foul play as it was just “gay men doing gay men things”

@Eckhart We're all quite confident in technology being absolutely amazing and being right all the time but technology can be mislead as easily as a person can, police are able to track a mobile phone location so an easy way around that is just sending the device in the opposite direction by sticking it on an unsuspecting vehicle or person and having it head towards a different mast, a case a few years ago saw police come up with a conclusion of what happened to a man largely based on a mobile phone route. I highly doubt we'll ever have technology that's completely unbeatable, these people will always exist in society.

I immediately thought of the pensioner murders in the Cheshire area too @Seasaltyhair

I remember reading quite a detailed article on the BBC about the report into those murders that was written I think by an ex coroner. I tried to go back to it a few days later and it had vanished. There are other pieces still available on the story but I think there must be an active investigation on it now, hopefully, otherwise it would still be there.

@sofiaaaaaa gosh those poor people, thankfully he was caught in the end, although I dread to think how many families don't fully know what happened to their loves ones. Disgusting attitude from the police saying "gay men doing gay things", unfortunately this is a common problem in many places.

There's apparently 25-50 active serial killers in the USA at any one time. Some experts believe its higher.

And I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this but the definition of a serial killer (according to my a level psych) was at least 3 murders taking place over at least a month with a significant amount of time between each one. Like a cooling off period between each one.

@Whattodo1610

Oh how naive you are OP .....

This.

Not all serial killers are jumping people in U.K. streets lined with CCTV. Many will be killing in homes, away from cameras; in places where women have no rights and/or the police are totally corrupt (please don’t anyone pitch in saying women can be serial killers too - we all know this but it is a drop in the ocean compared to males); in very remote areas; holiday resorts where the truth is buried to avoid bad publicity; child of someone very important/ influential etc

Plus many are quite tech savvy, do their research and avoid capture or at least for a while.

Trivia re the Golden State Killer. One of his nicknames prior to the GSK moniker, was ONS, which stood for Original Night Stalker. He got it when Ramirez was captured and one the detectives working on the GSK cases said "Hey! Our guy was the Original Night Stalker".

Yes, there still are serial killers. Israel Keyes was caught just a few years ago. He was good enough that none of his killings were connected. He got caught because he broke his own rules and got extremely sloppy on his last murder.

Look how many unsolved murders there are, it only needs one piece of evidence to be missed that could form a link from one case to another & then a serial killer has got away with a murder.

I imagine it would be easy enough for them to get away with it in some countries, a bit like how paedophiles indulge in sex tourism. Have you any idea how many bodies are found weekly in South American countries, for example?

There’s got to be serial killers, no doubt about it. What freaks me out though is the number of one off killers just walking amongst us. I’m talking people who may have knocked someone over in a country lane and driven off or someone who maybe punched someone one time and got away with it. Creepy. In fact, I know someone who was left for dead in a country lane and woke up in a hospital with a broken leg after a jogger found her. She’d been hit by a car and was unconscious so that person was happy to drive off not knowing if they’d killed someone. Strange mentality.

@StrippedFridge

UK data for 2018/2019 shows that 75,918 children were recorded missing by UK police forces.

I wonder how many runaways end up with a serial killer.

Unfortunately this

Once I had to go to a house with my job where a 36 year old women had been dead for over 2 weeks. Nobody reported her missing, nobody knocked on her door in the middle of a city. It is so easy to end up isolated and vulnerable and killers know who these people are and where they are. Another time a mid 20s in an isolated house fire covered up a sinister end. Relocated to Ireland for a fresh start and told nobody. Elderly parents hadn't had any contact for 8 years and thought she was in France.

These break your heart, but addiction problems, fleeing violence, redundancy, mental health issues can all lead to extreme vulnerability.

Name changed because I’m not supposed to know this.

My FIL is very senior within the police in my state/territory. Unofficially, police believe there may be a serial killer operating in a fairly remote but touristy area as there have been too many unexplained disappearances over the year. But where are the bodies? I asked. Crocodiles, he replied.

I wouldn't be surprised to find we have serial killers operating in the UK. It's not like there is a shortage of people who would't be missed, and although the country might not be as large as the US/Canada, there are still plenty of remote places that bodies could be hidden. The police have been looking for poor Keith Bennett for decades but still not found him. I can easily believe there are bodies out on the moors that aren't known about.

I always think this about criminal gangs. If you like killing and injuring people, what better excuse than to join a gang.

Or if you prefer to operate alone, make it appear that the killing is gang related.

Can't believe I'm typing this - going to go and read something more edifying ...

The cat killer is now far beyond Croydon and still going strong, as far as I'm aware, although I haven't seen any SNARL updates on him for a couple of months. Agree, it does seem likely that he may go on to harm humans when he has killed hundreds of animals and 'presented' their bodies in such a way.

It's interesting how many people have referred to mobile phone technology halting serial killers. Surely Serial Killer 101 would be to just not carry one?

@ShandlersWig

I think, if you wanted to be a serial killer today, as long as you picked the right vulnerable, down trodden people in society, you'd get away with it for a while. So homeless, runaway boys, sex workers etc.

The game would be up pretty sharpish if you targeted white, young girls.

Sadly I've thought this was true for a while, especially when it comes to the media. A lost child for example is generally given big news headlines if prettier than your average kid. Same with adults though, men very rarely get big headlines. Richer victims also get more headlines than poor ones.

The thing with DNA evidence and fingerprints is that it's only useful once you have a suspect or if they've previously committed a crime and it's on the database.

For instance, if I suddenly became a serial killer today they could collect my DNA and fingerprints but they wouldn't find a match!

@Frankola

There are undoubtedly many serial killers out there that haven't been caught unfortunately.

I'm obsessed with this kind of subject

Many have been caught due to mistakes made rather than anything else.

The scary thing about serial killers is that most of them are psychopaths who feel no remorse or empathy but are incredibly talented at mimicking social cues and behaviours to fit in, so you'd never suspect them. Look at Ted Bundy or Harold Shipman.

A really good example of that is BTK - Dennis Radar.

He had a wife, daughter and son who never suspected a thing. His daughter has done an interview which is on YouTube.

He was the President of the congregation (whatever that is) at his local church and a scout group leader.

No-one had any clue that he was a sadistic killer in his spare time.

Murderers have often committed domestic abuse first, and before that have often been cruel to animals.