SOCI 3410 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4-6: John Wayne Gacy, Life Insurance, Ted Kaczynski
7 Jun 2018
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SOCI3410 Week 4 Reading Notes
CHAPTER 4: AN ANATOMY OF SERIAL MURDER
Prevalence of Serial Murder
• Serial murder involves a string of 4+ homicides committed by 1+ perpetrators that spans
a period of days, weeks, months, or years
• The most publicized & prominent form of serial killing consists of a power-hungry sadist
who preys upon strangers to satisfy his sexual fantasies
• Motivations & patterns of serial homicide are quite diverse
• Examples of serial homicides & perps:
o Nurse who poisons patients to ‘play God’
o Disturbed man who kills prostitutes to punish them for their sins
o Team of armed robbers who execute store clerks after robbing store
o Satanic cult whose members commit string of human sacrifices as initiation ritual
• Impossible to trace recent or long-term trends in prevalence & incidence of serial murder
in the US bc. there is no official data source on serial murder
• Radford database, which includes nearly 5000 repeat killers & 14000 victims worldwide
is the best proprietary dataset
o Contains 150+ variables pertaining to various offender & victim characteristics,
location, offender history, motivation, sentencing, time frame, method, mobility
& paraphilic behaviours
o Offers info on offenders w at least 2 victims regardless of motivations
• Impossible to determine precise number of victims killed by offenders in Radford
database
• Despite recent advances in technology & communication, law enforcement may still be
unaware of the presence of many other serial killers
o Linkage blindness: when investigators aren’t able to connect homicides,
separated over time & space, to the activities of a single perp
• Radford data on known serial killers can be used to examine long-term trends in serial
homicide
o Exclude unsolved & unconnected cases
o May not include obscure killing sprees that have escaped attention
• Serial Killing Patterns
o Rapid growth from 1960s into 70s & 80s
▪ Attributable to changes in data accessibility + quality of record keeping
▪ Consistent w general rise in violent crime & in resident pop.
o Slight decline from 80s to 90s & 00s & 10s
o Fear of crime grew w growth of crime
• FBI’s annual estimate of 3500-5000 victims is unfounded & inaccurate
o Many more homicides w unknown motive… wrongly equated w no motive
o Remains a tendency to inflate extent of serial murder problem
• Data suggests that during peak in the 80s, 1190-1760 Americans were slain by serial
killers (120-180/year)
• Organizational vested interests (i.e. congressional approval of expenditures for FBI
initiatives related to serial homicide) partially responsible for gross exaggeration in
official estimates of prevalence of serial murder
• 80s = unusual era re: serial murder phenomena
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
SOCI3410 Week 4 Reading Notes
o Both fear & fascination surrounding serial killers = widespread
• Decline in prevalence of homicide over past decade or two parallels a sharp downturn in
all forms of murder during the 90s
o Due to many of the same factors, to some extent
▪ Growth in prison pops. Kept violent predators behind bars
▪ Improved law enforcement investigative techniques (i.e. DNA profiling &
databases + inter-agency communication) thwarted would-be serial killers
▪ Advances in tech (i.e. Amber Alerts, sex offender registries, surveillance
cameras, GPS tracking, etc.) as additional tools to capture predators
▪ Some cases occurring in recent years not identified & solved = absent
from database of known perps
o Social & cultural changes that have also impacted behaviour of certain offenders,
would-be offenders & would-be victims
▪ Internet has provided sexual predators w more options to potentially
satiate sadistic desires w/out resorting to murder
▪ Porn may serve as a release valve for certain individuals
o Technology provides greater safety for potential victims
A Profile of the Serial Killer
• Serial killers implicated, on average, in 6.77 killings over span of nearly 5 years
o 842 male assailants slightly deadlier than the 55 females
• Most serial killers captured, killed, or stop on their own before amassing victim tally
anywhere near the most notorious serial killers
• Disproportionate involvement of males in serial homicides reflects, in part, their greater
number in murder rates generally
o Gender ratio among serial killers (94% male) even more pronounced for murder
generally (~ 89%)
▪ Consistent w prevailing view that almost all serial killers are men
• Age distribution of serial murderers tends to be older than for murderers in general
o >50% offenders first started killing before age 30
▪ Average onset: 27.3 (males) & 29.2 (females)
o In rare cases, serial killers begin their careers as teens who’re supposedly
rehabilitated but continue to offend after release (ex. Edmund Kemper)
• Racial breakdown
o Whites only slightly outnumber Blacks among males (48.9% vs 41.1%)
o Nearly ¾ of female serial killers are White
o Involvement of Black serial killers understood as a consequence of racially
disparate linkage blindness
▪ Serial murder tends to be intraracial (i.e. Whites killing Whites, Blacks
killing Blacks)
▪ Serial killings of Black victims less likely to be connected, prioritized for
investigation & solved
o Media tends to overlook Black-on-Black serial killing sprees
• Gender differences in motivation & signature
o ~ ½ of male serial killers motivated by pleasure, thrill, or fantasy fulfillment vs.
1/3 of females
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
SOCI3410 Week 4 Reading Notes
o Male serial killers, frequently sexual predators, tend to target women or young
boys & girls as victims
▪ Strangers whom they can stalk, capture, control & kill to satisfy their
sadistic impulses & violent fantasies
o Many male killers commit lust killings (i.e. specifically targeting prostitutes)
o % of serial killers who’ve included female prostitutes among their victims has
increased in recent years
▪ Likelihood that a serial murderer targets female prostitutes = greater than
ever
o Male killers often combine murder w sexual assault
o Some male killers torture their victims to fulfill their sadistic desires or kill their
victims w excessive force (overkill) as expression of rage
o Female serial killers generally kill victims w whom they have shared some kind
of relationship… victim often dependent on them for care
▪ > ½ female serial killers targeted family members (incl. black widows)
▪ Ex. Marybeth Tinning & Marie Noe
▪ “Angels of Death” – medical professionals who are able to murder those
under their care w/out raising suspicion of foul play
• Ex. Gwendolyn Graham, Catherine Wood, Genene Jones &
Chelsea McClellan
o Very few female serial killers target strangers
▪ Ex. Aileen Wuornos’s style of killing closely resembled that of a male
predatory killer
o Female serial offenders usually murder victims they know, either in their personal
lives or on the job
• Victims
o Females constitute 6% of perps, yet rep. nearly 60% of murder victims
o Nearly 40% of female victims strangled to death vs. only 14% for males
o Majority of male victims (57.2%) succumb to a gunshot wound… 2x as much as
share of females killed by gunfire (27.9%)
o Serial murder typically a stranger-perpetrated crime
▪ 64.2% of victims killed by strangers
• Apprehension more difficult when killed by strangers
▪ ~ ¾ of female victims killed by a stranger
▪ ½ of male victims also murdered by a stranger
• Many killed by acquaintance (i.e. rival gang member or caretaker)
• Geographic location
o Majority of killers kill near home (ex. John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Robert
Berdella & Joel Rifkin)
o Dern & et al. (2004) – most German perps. lived no further than 10km from the
location of their crimes
o Snook et al. (2005) – serial killers in Germany typically dispose of their vcitims
within 6-30km of their homes
o Hickey (2010)
▪ 11% of killers operating from 1975-2004 operated in a specific location
(ex. at home or workplace)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
& paraphilic behaviours: offers info on offenders w at least 2 victims regardless of motivations. Internet has provided sexual predators w more options to potentially satiate sadistic desires w/out resorting to murder: porn may serve as a release valve for certain individuals, technology provides greater safety for potential victims. Marybeth tinning & marie noe: angels of death medical professionals who are able to murder those under their care w/out raising suspicion of foul play, ex. Chelsea mcclellan: very few female serial killers target strangers, ex. Extraordinarily ordinary: our proclivity for interpreting suspicious events as benign unless confronted w undeniable evidence of the contrary = veneer of civility, ex. Soci3410 week 4 reading notes: ex. hospitable demeanor in dining area of restaurant vs. complaining about customers in the kitchen, diff. btwn serial killers & other successful ppl lies in their greater willingness to torture.
