What makes a serial killer kill serial#
These include such things as the diverse influences of the mass media on serial killers as well as their tendency to select victims from particular walks of life. Unfortunately, it also narrows the analysis of such crimes, as it fails to incorporate many of the familiar (although not inevitable) characteristics of serial killing. This definition is accepted by both police and academic experts and therefore provides a useful frame of reference. Serial killing is the rarest form of homicide, occurring when an individual has killed three or more people who were previously unknown to him or her, with a ‘cooling off’ period between each murder. Serial killing is a distinctly modern phenomenon, a product of relatively recent social and cultural conditions to which criminologists can provide fresh insight by accentuating the broad institutional frameworks, motivations, and opportunity structures within which serial killing occurs (Haggerty, 2009). So, while throughout human history there have probably always been individuals who engaged in serial predation, in previous eras it was not possible for an individual to be a serial killer.
What makes a serial killer kill series#
In fact, serial killing is intimately tied to its broader social and historical setting, something that is particularly apparent when such killing is considered in relation to a series of broad historical changes that have occurred over approximately the past 400–500 years, commonly associated with the rise of modernity. While this emphasis on personal biography lends itself to much needed psychological analysis, the cumulative effect of such accounts is that serial killing can appear a-historical and a-cultural, as though such predispositions might manifest themselves in identical ways irrespective of context. Popular representations of Jeffrey Dahmer, Harold Shipman, John Wayne Gacy and other notorious figures emphasise the sociopathic tendencies of the lone serial killer, presented in accounts that accentuate how assorted personality traits and risk factors ostensibly contribute to their otherwise unfathomable behaviour. The study of serial killers has been dominated by an individualised focus on studying the biography of offenders and the causes of their behaviour.
Kevin Haggerty and Ariane Ellerbrok examine the cultural and historical context of serial killing
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