This post came out of some tangential reading around trends in a related topic: the increase in mass shootings in the US (or rather whether there was an increase). Murder is an ugly topic and multiple murders even uglier but it is also a topic that generates a lot of cultural engagement via news, true crime and fiction.
I was vaguely aware of a shift in attention in that cultural aspect, that "serial killers" had become something coded with the past. There is still cultural interest but many notable fictional treatments in recent years (such as David Fincher's Zodiac or the Netflix series Mindhunter) use the topic almost with an element of nostalgia.
There's some genuine evidence that the 1980s were actually a period of "peak serial killers":
"One strange thing shown by the data is the decline in killings by serial murderers in the United States since the absolute peak of the 1980s: 404 victims in 1987 alone. During the 1980s, there were 150 serial killers who had killed two or more victims and 104 who had killed three or more victims.
There has been a sharp decline since, with 138 serial killers who killed two or more victims in the 1990s, and 89 who had killed three or more. Fast forward to 2010-2018 (the last year with complete data in the database at the time of the last update) and there were just 43 serial killers in those years that had killed two or more victims, and 23 who had killed three or more."
https://www.iflscience.com/serial-killer-database-shows-strange-decline-in-serial-killers-since-the-1980s-65524
The paper that news report was based on offers three possible causes:
"• The increase in technology has made it more difficult for serial killers with motives such as insurance fraud (e.g., black widows) to go undetected.
• Stricter parole policies have put fewer potential serial killers back on the streets. Since 1950 in the Unites States, 16.8% of the serial killers in our database killed again after being released from prison for a prior homicide. This figure, combined with the fact that 79% of U.S. serial killers spent time in jail or prison prior to their first murder, supports the relationship between longer prison sentences and decreased serial killer frequency.
• There is a decreased availability of high risk targets for serial killers. That is, there are fewer people hitchhiking, offering rides to strangers, and walking to school. As shown in Table 3.05, some of the largest decrease in serial killer victim types from 1980-1999 to 2000-2017 are: Hitchhiking related, abductions from shopping centers, and disabled motorists or good Samaritans."
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Aamodt-2/publication/342501023_RadfordFGCU_Annual_Report_on_Serial_Killer_Statistics_2020/links/5ef75a6492851c52d6007c8c/Radford-FGCU-Annual-Report-on-Serial-Killer-Statistics-2020.pdf
Serial killings, even in the 1980s, are rare events so trends could be impacted by other factors such as changes in reporting, killers being caught more swiftly or, potentially, police getting worse at solving homicides. Small changes in those factors could lead to proportionally large changes in the reported figures for serial killers.
The intriguing question though, is whether the decline of one kind of murderer is related to an increase in another? If the late 20th century was notable for serial killers, the early 21st is notable for mass shootings (at least in the US). Are the two connected? It appears not:
"There are those who argue that the nature of mass violence has shifted as well, particularly since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 and the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. These events, some say, changed the way we approach and perceive murder. Rather than the stereotypical serial killer, we now have different types of mass murderers, be they foreign and domestic terrorists, lone wolf gunmen, or school shooters. On the other hand, most experts believe that the psychological and motivational profiles of serial killers and mass shooters or terrorists are vastly different, so it is not accurate to trace an evolution from the former into the latter."
https://www.biometrica.com/what-happened-to-the-serial-killer-phenomenon-that-terrorized-and-captivated-an-entire-generation/
Mass shooters and serial killers are more likely to be men than women and may have other demographic aspects in common but appear to otherwise be quite different in motivation and psychology.
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