am i a killer?

Why are most, if not all serial killers middle age, white, intellengent, males? I’m not middle age yet, but does that mean in 15 years i have more of a chance of chopping up my nabors then say a young, asian, geinus female? and what about other countrys? Are serial killers more commen in the USA or does the media just not inform me that bjorn from icland kills 23 people becouse the gey parlement devil told him to.(just kidding bjorn. at least i hope it’s not true :eek: )

“middle age, white, intellengent[sic], males”?

Well, if intelligence is correlated with spelling (as it often is in online groups) then I believe you having nothing to fear.
Then again, who am I to talk. I keep forgetting to leave the apostrophe out of “it’s” when necessary. I think either the possesive or the contraction should be deprecated, probably the contraction.

I would say you have a much greater, but still miniscule, chance of becoming the 21st century’s Ed Gein, more so than Connie Chung does.

On a humerous, not-really-adding-anything-to-the-OP side note, I was listening to a radio talk show, and they were playing a game called “White Crime or Black Crime?”

OK folks, take our guesses.

Crime # 1 – someone shoots their cousin in the face as a result of an argument over who owed who 7 bucks–White Crime or Black Crime??

Crime # 2 – someone has 43 ears in the freezer from all the people he killed, and so he baked them into an omelette. White Crime or Black Crime??

Silly stuff.

Why is it that my spelling always degrades when I comment on someone else’s?
sigh

“have”, not “having”

Aceospades - Just to comment on whether or not serial killers were common in other countries I was watching a news documentary thing on a recent rash of disappearances in Ireland. Somthing like eight young women over five years have all disappeared without a trace. The first one they didn’t even investigate for a while because thir thought was “She’ll turn up they always do.” and all the way up until the last one went they hadn’t even really begun pursuing the idea that it could be a serial killer. I took this to me they do not get many of them over there.

Here in Canada, we have had a few, Clifford Olson, Paul Bernado and Karla Homolka and a few others. The US seems to have more, but then again the US has a WHOLe HELLUVA lot more people. One more interesting thing, most serial killers (from what I understand) kill people of their own race, with a obvious exception of Jeffrey Dahmer.

Ace:

  1. Ignore all remarks about spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. You’re fine.

  2. I think serial killers are more common in the U.S. because we have 250 million people and in Iceland they only have 250, period. [joke] No, actually, statistically we just have more people, so we have more S.K.s.

Also, I think we have more of the social pressures that lead to someone turning into a Ted Bundy or a John Wayne Gacy.

As to why they tend to be middle-aged unmarried white males, I don’t know if even the FBI profilers understand that. All they can do is look at the numbers and try to go from there.

From what I understand of SKs, they tend to be very repressed, inward-looking, and someone who’s cruising the SDMB almost by definition isn’t “inward-looking”. Only “look, Ma, no hands!” exhibitionists and extroverts are interested in this sort of thing.

Also, I might add, a person has to be exceptionally secure to hang around even when people insult his spelling. :smiley:

I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Although–well, I wasn’t going to mention it, but is that–hair–growing on the palms of your hands…?

[sorry, just watched Wolf with Jack Nicholson]

:smiley:

Aww. But criticizing spelling and grammar is so easier to do than actually comment on the question!
:slight_smile:

Sorry to disagree, Notthemama, but spelling and grammar are important. The point of language, written and spoken, is communication. When we follow some standards of spelling and construction, we decrease the possibilities of being misunderstood.

So, Ace, what have you got against Jim Nabors, anyway?

The fact is that women and minorities just aren’t doing their part. And the young? Forget them. They are too into spectacular violent episodes like shooting up schools. No, all the work is left to us middle-class, white, middle-aged types.

Seriously though, in regards to the OP, I can only think of one SK that didn’t fit the profile off the top of my head, and that was Wayne Williams of the “Atlanta Child Murders” case.

[hijack] Other than Jack the Ripper, how many SK cases have there been before the 20th century? It seems all the ones I have ever heard of are from the 60’s or later.

IIRC, (and I may not), the most prolific serial killer in history was in the old Soviet Union. He was basically allowed to operate unchecked because the Kremlin didn’t want to admit that such a thing could happen in their pure “workers paradise”, serial killers were a product of the decadent west, so no real official investigation was done until after the fall of communism (I think, maybe after Peristroyka (sp?)).

When a real police investigation finally caught this guy, it was discovered he had tortured and killed hundreds of people (mostly kids, I think). It was all pretty gruesome.

IIRC, (and I may not), the most prolific serial killer in history was in the old Soviet Union. He was basically allowed to operate unchecked because the Kremlin didn’t want to admit that such a thing could happen in their pure “workers paradise”, serial killers were a product of the decadent west, so no real official investigation was done until after the fall of communism (I think, maybe after Peristroyka (sp?)).

When a real police investigation finally caught this guy, it was discovered he had tortured and killed hundreds of people (mostly kids, I think). It was all pretty gruesome.

Pthalis: There have certainly been a lot of serial murderers before the '60’s. I’ll have to check my sources to come up with a better list, but I certainly remember the case of the Doctor who built a hotel which had a different death-trap in each room (and set it up right outside the World Expo in Chicago).

The lack of media exposure of serial killers prior to the advent of the mass media in the 20th Century, combined with a lack of forensic procedures that made it much harder to investigate murders, combined with a lack of communication between jurisdictions (thus making it harder to trace several crimes across jurisdictions to a single person) means that it’s probably less a matter of “we have more serial killers” than “we’re able to accurately attribute more crimes to serial killers”. Sort of the same as the difference between “the rate of spousal abuse has exploded recently” compared to “abused spouses feel safer in reporting the abuse they’ve taken, thus we have an increase in abuse cases reported.” Or how Philly recently made its violent crime rate appear to drop dramatically by simply re-labeling certain crimes as ‘non-violent’.

YOU MEAN I’M A BAD SPELLER! WHY HASEN’T ANYONE EVER POINTED THAT OUT TO ME EARLER!

in regards to population, since the USA has more people then iceland and canada and thus more SK, does that mean that China has more SK to deel with. The USA has 8 hundred million people ( a ruf guess), China over 3 billion (another ruf guess, i should relly put more research into this). does that mean that China has 4 times more SK then the USA? of coarse there are not that meany white males in China. does this mean that there are not meany ocarences of SK or does this mean that SK are not always white? also does being poor have anything to do with SK? Does working 12 to 15 hours a day 6 days a week some how deture a potenchel SK from going out and killing his fill.

In terms of all-time high body counts, I think Erzsebet Bathory (sp?) is up there (and is now the subject of an opera - http://bathory.org/ - as well as a B-movie script floating around). Cece wrote a column about her as well as featuring some other no-goodniks (including the Doc in Chicago with the special death-house). In this case, it was a she as opposed to a he, but in most others I’ve read of it has been an educated caucasian commiting the serial killing. Some notable exceptions are Maturino Resendiz, the railway killer whose trial is about to begin, and a black guy (featured on HBO’s “Autopsy” and convicted based on dental evidence) whose name escapes me.

On Spelling: while we should not become obsessed I think it does reflect on the writer. Not long ago I saw someone write “unpresidented” meaning, I suppose, unprecedented. It made me wonder what this person was thinking because to me unprecedented is very clearly un-precedent(ed) and I just wonder how anyone who thinks it is related to president may know the meaning or what they are talking about. What is “unpresidented”? Maybe a “Lewinsky” in the oval office?

For me the problem is not the spelling per se (another often misused expression) but if you confuse “effect” and “affect” it makes me wonder if you know the meaning of each word. To me they are entirely different words, with very different meanings and I cannot imagine mistaking them.

On the other hand I suppose knowing how to spell diarrhoea is not as important as finding the toilet in a hurry.

Anyway, on the topic, what is important is the density of crime per (say) 100,000 people, everything else is meaningless.

The USA does have a higher crime rate than most developed countries and in great part this can be attributed to the culture and the level of violence in it. Statistically one would expect most serial killers to be white for the simple reason that white people are the majority. They are men because in every race men tend to be more violent than women.

I really cannot see anything surprising or unexpected here.

. . . and Rafael Ramirez, whose trial starts today in Houston, Texas. He’s the one who traveled by rail and allegedly killed people living near RR tracks.

. . . and Rafael Ramirez, whose trial starts today in Houston, Texas. He’s the one who traveled by rail and allegedly killed people living near RR tracks.

One clarification - is it really “middle-aged” white men? My understanding is the serial killer profile is 20 to 35 or 40, while “middle-aged” is typically looked at as 40 to 55.

Am I wrong here?

I think psychologists, profilers, and cops would be very interested in knowing the cultural reasons why this group seems more driven to serial killing than, say, black males the same age. Or are the black males not living that long because of gang activity? How about hispanics, or asians, or other ethnic groups? Is it a disproportionate ratio?

What factors do socio-economic class play in the types of crimes people to which people are driven?

Sorry for not helping out any.

Aceospades, statistics like this don’t really apply to particular cases. Only the details of your own situation and the choices you make will determine whether you have to worry about starting to hack up your neighbors for fun. :wink:

And let’s mot forget Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker.

There are plenty of sites if you want to know about serial killers and mass murderers. There is a site that lists them by body count. No, the United States did not corner the market on serial killers. Actually I think there are a couple of guys in South American that have us hands down on just numbers, but then nobody cared that one of the guys was killing street urchins in Rio. One less little beggar to bother the real citizens. I don’t think we’ve beat anyone out on the grisly methods either. Jack the Ripper took his last victims face off. And there’s a serial killer running loose in France right now that’s making his bodies look like models for a Salvador Dali sketch.

Needs2know