A serial killer (also called a serial murderer) is an individual who murders three or more people,
(This source only requires two people) with the killings taking place over a period of more than one month in three or more separate events,, and the killings having a perverse psychological motive.See:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states that the motives of serial killers can include psychotic delusions, thrill-seeking, and attention seeking. The victims tend to have things in common, such as demographic profile, appearance, gender, or race. As a group, serial killers have a variety of personality disorders. They are often not adjudicated as insane under the law. The primary motivations for serial killing involve some form of psychological gratification, usually though not always sexual.
Etymology and definition The English term and concept of serial killer are commonly attributed to former Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Robert Ressler, who used the term serial homicide in 1974 in a lecture at Police Staff College, in Bramshill, Hampshire, England. Author Ann Rule postulates in her 2004 book, Kiss Me, Kill Me, that the English-language credit for coining the term goes to Los Angeles Police Department detective Pierce Brooks, who created the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) system in 1985.
The German term and concept were coined by criminologist Ernst Gennat, who described Peter Kürten as a ('serial-murderer') in his article "" (1930). In his book, Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters (2004), criminal justice historian Peter Vronsky notes that while Ressler might have coined the English term "serial homicide" within the law in 1974, the terms serial murder and serial murderer appear in John Brophy's book, The Meaning of Murder (1966). The Washington, D.C., newspaper, Evening Star, in a 1967 review of the book wrote:
Vronsky states that the term serial killing first entered into broader American popular usage when published in The New York Times in early 1981, to describe Atlanta serial killer Wayne Williams. Subsequently, throughout the 1980s, the term was used again in the pages of The New York Times on 233 occasions. By the end of the 1990s, the use of the term had increased to 2,514 instances in the paper.
When defining serial killers, researchers generally use "three or more murders" as the baseline, considering it sufficient to provide a pattern without being overly restrictive. Independent of the number of murders, they need to have been committed at different times, and are usually committed in different places. The lack of a significant break between the murders ("cooling-off period") marks the difference between a spree killer and a serial killer. The category has, however, been found to be of no real value to law enforcement, because of definitional problems relating to the concept of a "cooling-off period". Cases of extended bouts of sequential killings over periods of weeks or months with no apparent "cooling-off period" or "return to normality" have caused some experts to suggest a hybrid category of "spree-serial killer".
A core aspect of serial murder as opposed to other acts of murder is the motivation behind the killing, which is described as either being irrational or nonrational, and aims to satisfy a psychological urge or desire.
An estimate claimed that the leading motive for about 50 percent of serial killers was sexual reasons, with thrill seeking and a mere desire for killing being adjacent motives as well. According to the FBI's NCAVC report on serial killers, around 81.5% of murders were determined to be sexually motivated.
There is a debate on the precise definition of serial murder. Ferguson et al. (2003) viewed that no definition of serial killing will encapsulate offenders without error, and that more broad definitions will run the risk of "lacking the ability to discriminate between serial murderers and other offenders".
In Controversial Issues in Criminology, Fuller and Hickey write that "[t]he element of time involved between murderous acts is primary in the differentiation of serial, mass, and spree murderer," later elaborating that spree killers "engage in the killing acts for days or weeks" and the "methods of murder and types of victims vary". Andrew Cunanan is given as an example of spree killing, while Charles Whitman is mentioned in connection with mass murder, and Jeffrey Dahmer with serial killing.
In 2005, the FBI hosted a multi-disciplinary symposium in San Antonio, Texas, which brought together 135 experts on serial murder from a variety of fields and specialties with the goal of identifying commonalities across multiple-murder incidents. The group settled on a definition of serial murder, which FBI investigators widely accept as their standard: "The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s) in separate events". Serial homicide researcher Enzo Yaksic found that the FBI was justified in lowering the victim threshold from three to two victims given that serial murderers from these groups share similar pathologies.
History
Early accounts Historical criminologists suggest that there have been serial killers throughout history. Some sources suggest that legends such as werewolves and vampires were inspired by medieval serial killers. In Africa, there have been periodic outbreaks of murder by leopard men.
Liu Pengli of China, nephew of the Han Emperor Jing, was made Prince of Jidong in the sixth year of the middle period of Jing's reign (144 BC). According to the Chinese historian Sima Qian, he would "go out on marauding expeditions with 20 or 30 slaves or with young men who were in hiding from the law, murdering people and seizing their belongings for sheer sport." Although many of his subjects knew about these murders, it was not until the 29th year of his reign that the son of one of his victims finally sent a report to the Emperor. Eventually, it was discovered that he had murdered at least 100 people. The officials of the court requested that Liu Pengli be executed; however, the Emperor could not bear to have his own nephew killed, so Liu Pengli was made a commoner and banished.
In the 9th century (year 257 of the Islamic Calendar), "a strangler from Baghdad was apprehended. He had murdered a number of women and buried them in the house where he was living."
Early modern period to 20th century
The majority of documented serial killers were active in the United States. In one study of serial homicide in South Africa, many patterns were similar to established patterns in the U.S., with some exceptions: no offenders were female, offenders were lower educated than in the U.S., and both victims and offenders were predominantly black.
In the 15th century, one of the wealthiest men in Europe and a former companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais, was alleged to have sexually assaulted and killed peasant children, mainly boys, whom he had abducted from the surrounding villages and had taken to his castle. It is estimated that his victims numbered between 140 and 800. Similarly, the Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory, born into one of the wealthiest families in Transylvania, allegedly tortured and killed as many as 650 girls and young women before her arrest in 1610.
Between 1564 and 1589, German farmer Peter Stumpp killed 14 children, including his own son. He also murdered two pregnant women and had an incestuous relationship with his daughter. Stumpp claimed to have been granted the ability to turn into a werewolf by the Devil. As punishment for his crimes, Stumpp was put on a torture wheel and executed. His head was later severed and put on a pole next to the figure of a wolf to scare other people away from claiming themselves werewolves, too.
Members of the Thuggee cult in India may have murdered a million people between 1740 and 1840. Thug Behram, a member of the cult, may have murdered as many as 931 victims. In his 1886 book, Psychopathia Sexualis, psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing noted a case of a serial murderer in the 1870s, a Frenchman named Eusebius Pieydagnelle who had a sexual obsession with blood and confessed to murdering six people.
The unidentified killer Jack the Ripper, who has been called the first modern serial killer, killed at least five women, and possibly more, in London in 1888. He was the subject of a massive manhunt and investigation by the Metropolitan Police, during which many modern criminal investigation techniques were pioneered. A large team of policemen conducted house-to-house inquiries, forensic material was collected and suspects were identified and traced. Police surgeon Thomas Bond assembled one of the earliest character profiles of the offender.
The Ripper murders also marked an important watershed in the treatment of crime by journalists., While not the first serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper's case was the first to create a worldwide media frenzy. The dramatic murders of financially destitute women in the midst of the wealth of London focused the media's attention on the plight of the urban poor and gained coverage worldwide. Jack the Ripper has also been called the most infamous serial killer of all time, and his legend has spawned hundreds of theories on his real identity and many works of fiction.
H. H. Holmes was labeled as serial killer in the United States, responsible for the death of at least nine victims in the early 1890s. The case was one of the first involving a serial murderer that gained widespread notoriety and publicity through sensationalized accounts in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. In his book about Holmes, author Adam Selzer disputed the label of "serial killer".
At the same time of the Holmes case, in France, Joseph Vacher became known as "The French Ripper" after killing and mutilating 11 women and children. He was executed in 1898 after confessing to his crimes.
Another notable non-American serial killer is Pedro Lopez, a murderer from South America, who killed a minimum of 110 young girls between 1969 and 1980. However, he claims that the number is over 300. He was released from a mental facility in 1998 and his whereabouts are still unknown. He is commonly nicknamed the "Monster of the Andes". An additional non-American serial killer is Luis Garavito from Colombia. Garavito would kill and torture boys using various disguises. He murdered around 140 boys ranging in ages from 8 to 16. He would dump his victims' bodies in mass graves.
Late 20th century
The serial killing phenomenon in the United States was especially prominent from 1970 to 2000, which has been described as the "golden age of serial murder". The cause of the spike in serial killings has been attributed to urbanization, which put people in close proximity and offered anonymity. The number of active serial killers in the United States peaked in 1989 and has been steadily trending downward since, coinciding with an overall decrease in crime in the United States since that time. The decline in serial killers has no known single cause but is attributed to a number of factors. Mike Aamodt, emeritus professor at Radford University in Virginia, attributes the decline in number of serial killings to less frequent use of parole, improved forensic technology, and people behaving more cautiously. Claimed causes for the general reduction in violent crime following the 1990s include increased incarceration in the United States, the end of the crack epidemic in the United States, decreased lead exposure in early childhood and the legalization of abortion with the Roe v. Wade decision.
Characteristics Some commonly found characteristics of serial killers include the following: They may exhibit varying degrees of mental illness or psychopathy, which may contribute to their homicidal behavior.,