Serial Killers - Are They Necessary?

[DVV]

Yes Stan,
and Vacher killed in the fresh air of French countryside.
Still, the phenomenon is rather "urban" I think.
The problem, to me, is both social and personal.
And western society being well developed, as are the individual rights...
I'd bet that in a society in which individuals rights do not prevail so much, and in which people live more within a group, would "create" less serial-killers than ours.
But that, of course, makes the exceptions more interesting. I read something about a serial killer in Yemen, and I'd be curious of this case.

[sdreid]

I think Omar was originally from Sudan and was beheaded in Yemen a few years back.

[bluecedar]

No, DVV, but I can certainly imagine mass murder in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa, as we have seen.

[DVV]

I see...
Where there is no serial killer, there is tribal war.
Hmmmm...
However, wars may reduce the number of serial killers, providing them with the opportunity to kill legally and unoticed...
...and sometimes killing them on field...

[sdreid]

I believe the Germans actually made an attempt to organize a combat unit made up entirely of psychopaths in WWII. They probably weren't too good at taking orders though. On the "positive" side, they never suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

[DVV]

A German psycho-batalion, during WW II?
Stan, I will never sleep again.

[DarkPassenger]

Yea, Steve Wright, Ian Huntly, and the sad little murderers of "Baby P" were all really nice folk that we would all want to live next door to!!

Wright was a quiet, blue-collar worker. Nilsen was a loner and a geek. They're not all knuckle-dragging nutters y'know

[DarkPassenger]

One would think that in adverse conditions..particularly the East End of London from 1850-1890(as an example) we'd be inundated with far greater numbers of serial killers considering the effects the Industrial Revolution had on men and women and to me,above all,the effects from an absence of leisure...

But as Dark Passenger just mentioned:

Since 1888 the UK has had around eighty serial killers, and at worst we've had ten active in a single year. ( note: thats 120 years/80 s.k.'s= 1.5 per year in the U.K. over 120 years)

Believe it or not, there were up to very recently...20 or so serial killers present in the American Northwest in ONE calendar year. I have that URL somewhere on the Forums.....

I think that serial killers would be less prolific in a society with less leisure. The more leisure created, the numbers seem to spike. Whether its a direct cause,I don't know...but it certainly seems like it. There are more serial killers in affluent areas too. Name one from Mississippi. You CAN name 20 from California.

Yup, the UK's average number of active serial killers is about 2 per year, whereas it's been estimated that the US, which has a lot more "leisure," has around 35 active at any time. As you point out, the average hides peaks in the numbers. The UK is a depressing hellhole so it's not surprising that we have less serialists!

[Mike Covell]

I lived next door to a murderer for some years, and he was just a normal 9-5 construction worker, with a wife and kid. One night he went to some old blokes house and an argument broke out, (un)luckily, said neigbour had a knife, and stuck it into the old mans chest, and made away with £10!!

He made the mistake of asking the wife to wash and get rid of any evidence, she in turn called the police.

For £10 he lost his wife, kid, job, house, and life! He was locked up and she was sent on a program where she was moved away.

Up until the incident he was a really nice kid, often chatting about dvds, and offering the family tickets to the Deep.

[DarkPassenger]

You've made a classic mistake there Mike.

You didn't live next door to a murderer for years - you lived next door to a person for years, who one day ended up killing someone.

Chatting about DVDs etc. is normal behaviour because he's a normal person! I doubt he was genetically mutated and thought constantly about murder and evil things, throwing in the occasional pretense of being normal just to affirm his mask of sanity even more!

If you killed someone would you appreciate us saying, "well, we had a murderer on this forum for years and we never realised?"

Just nitpicking

[PepeLep]

I see...
However, wars may reduce the number of serial killers, providing them with the opportunity to kill legally and unoticed...
...and sometimes killing them on field...

I think that's a very valid point. They do seem to become more prevalent during times of relative peace. In the US, we had a run of them in the 1970s to '80s following the Vietnam war.

The United States civil war unleashed the sociopath in a lot of people. I'm from Missouri where the war was particularly ugly and personal. It gave us "Bloody Bill Anderson" who gathered scalps and out of his band it gave us Jesse and Frank James, the Younger brothers, and a bunch of other outlaws who could easily be called serial killers. Jesse James watched a large group of unarmed Union soldiers in Centralia, Missouri get lined up and shot at close range in a ditch when he was sixteen. Then a bunch of them were scalped. He participated. A member of the band counted the bodies by skipping across them.

...and people wonder why he was so anti-social in later years.

I think you really are onto something.

[DVV]

The United States civil war unleashed the sociopath in a lot of people.

Certainly so, PepeLep,
and that's what struck a man like Ambrose Bierce, and what is to be understood from his wonderawful writings.

Amitiés,
David

[Mike Covell]

You've made a classic mistake there Mike.
You didn't live next door to a murderer for years - you lived next door to a person for years, who one day ended up killing someone.
Chatting about DVDs etc. is normal behaviour because he's a normal person! I doubt he was genetically mutated and thought constantly about murder and evil things, throwing in the occasional pretense of being normal just to affirm his mask of sanity even more!
If you killed someone would you appreciate us saying, "well, we had a murderer on this forum for years and we never realised?"

Just nitpicking

There were several other similar murders in the area, which remain unsolved, and although he had no alibi for the other murders, there was no evidence to pin it on him. His wife could not remember his whereabouts for the nights in question. The murders always involved elderly men, single stab wound, money missing. One three occasions drugs was an element, including the murder for which he was charged. He was a known recreational drug user.
The couple moved to Hull from Leed's and the first murder happened the first month he was living here.

I only knew him as "Lee" and never bothered with his surname! But he was a nice kid with me, and it was his wife who always struck me as a little weird. She was really shy and retiring, never spoke to many of the neighbours and rarely smiled!