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Serial Killers
 Serial murders - repetitive homicides, nearly
always one-on-one murders, where the
perpetrator is usually a stranger or has a slight
acquaintance to the victim.
 Historically, the majority of homicide victims
knew their killer, but during the 1990's, this
figure changed. Statistics from 1995's Uniform
Crime Reports state that 55% of homicide
victims have no known association with the
perpetrators.
 Berg & Horgan, Criminal Investigation, 3rd edition, pg. 332
 Osterburg & Ward, Criminal Investigation, 3rd edition, pg. 455
 The serial murderer’s motivation to kill is not
based on crimes of passion, victim
precipitation, personal gain or profit.

 Serial murderers are nearly always males

prompted by sexual or aggressive drives to
exert power through killing.
 Usually intelligent
 Good appearance Ted Bundy
 Superficial charm
 Able to differentiate right from wrong
 Have no conscience
 Enjoy victim's terror
 Serial murderers are often very mobile,
traveling from one locale to another to
find victims, extensive interstate travel

 Lack of any prior association with the

victims

 Use of remote burial sites

 Power Oriented – Ted Bundy and Dennis
Rader enjoyed watching terror of their victims

 Mission Oriented - killers feel they are

improving the world by getting rid of
undesirable people such as prostitutes, i.e.
Green River Killer Gary Ridgway

 Visionary - those who kill because they are

directed by hallucinations, i.e. David Berkowitz
- "Son of Sam"
 Hedonistic - gain sexual satisfaction from
raping, killing, mutilating, and sometimes
eating the victim, i.e. Jeffrey Dahmer
 Comfort - those who kill for financial
gain, such as insurance benefits, real
estate, i.e. Golay & Rutterschmidt
 Disciple - those killers who kill under the
influence of a charismatic killer, i.e. Leslie Van
Houten and Lynette Fromme of the Manson
family
 A psychological profile is a submitted report
utilizing information and approaches from
various social and behavioral sciences, focusing
on a specific type of violent crime
 According to the FBI, a typical serial killer is a
Caucasian male between the ages of 18-32 who
has been a victim of child abuse and who has
exhibited signs of the McDonald triad
 McDonald triad – bedwetting after the age of 12,
setting fires, killing small animals
 Most serial killers exhibit at least one of these
behaviors
 According to Robert Ressler (FBI), more than 60%
of serial killers wet the bed past the age of twelve
 The Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, set 1,412 fires
but switched over to killing because it gave him
more excitement and TV news coverage
 Keith Jesperson, a serial killer from British
Columbia who murdered more than 160 victims,
started with dozens of cats and other small
animals, before he moved on to human beings
 Intelligent, college educated,
handsome man who faked injuries and
impersonated police officers to gain access to
his victims.
 His criminal activity began as a peeping Ted
and as a shoplifter.
 While at the University of Washington, Bundy
worked for a suicide hotline with writer, Anne
Rule, who later wrote a bestseller “A Stranger
Beside Me”.
 The majority of Bundy’s victims were young
women with blonde/light brown hair parted in
the middle. Many victims were stabbed, raped,
tortured, and had been strangled with panty
hose. He desecrated and dismembered them.
 Bundy confessed to killing 23 women between
1974-1978, but the official toll may be closer to
100.
 Bite mark evidence from his victims at Florida
State University sealed his fate. Bundy was put
to death in Florida's electric chair in 1989.
 Ramirez, avowed devil worshipper, randomly
raped and murdered his victims in their
homes.
 Most of Ramirez's victims lived near freeways.
 In July 1989, Ramirez killed one of his victims,
beat and raped the man's wife, and then raped
the couple's 8-year-old son.
 While in 8th grade, Ramirez began sniffing
glue and smoking marijuana. By the time he
began killing, he had graduated to shooting
cocaine.
 Lieutenant Gil Carrillo, of the LA Sheriff’s
Department, was the co-lead investigator of the
Night Stalker serial murder case.

 Ramirez’s AC/DC baseball cap, his size eleven

and a half Avia sneaker footprint, along with
his fingerprint found on a stolen car led to his
capture and conviction.
 Gacy, a successful contractor and pillar of his
community, was arrested for the murder of more
than thirty young boys.
 These boys had been sodomized and strangled.
They often were tricked into being handcuffed.
 He buried 28 of his victims in the crawl space
under his home.
 He was put to death by lethal injection on May 10,
1994.
 Gary Ridgway murdered scores of women in the
Seattle area. The longest running homicide
investigation in U.S. history
 Ridgway pled guilty to murdering 48 teenage
runaways and prostitutes who he had strangled and
dumped into the Green River in the state of
Washington between 1982 and 1998.
 He was finally arrested in 2001 after DNA and paint
evidence linked him with the crimes.
 Evidence collected in 1987 (saliva and hair) was used as
evidence to obtain the arrest warrant.
 Ridgway passed the polygraph test years before he was
apprehended.
 Dennis Rader, the Bind, Torture, Kill strangler murdered his
victims in during a 25 year crime spree in Wichita, Kansas. Rader
was apprehended after DNA evidence collected at a crime scene
was tested against DNA collected from Rader's daughter. [1]
Rader was married with two children

 He was a Boy Scout leader, a compliance officer in charge of

animal control

 Rader was a psychopath who morphed into a serial killer, who

easily maintained a family life while committing these heinous
murders
 In typical psychopath style, Rader didn’t show a lot of affection or
emotion
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/27/btk.investigation/index.html - Obtained June 9, 2008
 A Vancouver-area pig farmer who murdered as many
as 60 female prostitutes
 Pickton was found guilty of second-degree murder
after the longest trial in Canadian history and an
investigation that cost $100 million.
 Evidence found in and around Pickton's property
included skulls cut in half with hands and feet stuffed
inside, a garbage bag with remains from another
victim, blood stained clothing, a .22 caliber revolver
with a dildo attached that contained both his and the
victim's DNA
 In a video-taped recording played for the jury, Pickton
claimed to have attached the dildo to his weapon as a
makeshift silencer.[ 1]

[1] Accused serial killer 'fed bodies to pigs' - The Australian - Obtained on January 25, 2007.
 Aileen Wuornos, a female prostitute, killed at least six men on the
roads of Florida. She was the subject of the film "Monster", which
starred Charlize Theron.
 Wuornos pawned a camera and radar detector that belonged to
one of her victims and had left her required thumbprint on the
receipt. When the thumbprint was run through AFIS (Automated
Fingerprint Identification System), her thumbprint matched an
outstanding warrant against a Lori Grody (one of Wuornos'
aliases)
 Wuornos‘ bloody palm print was also found in the vehicle of one
of her victim's
 Wuornos claimed she had killed each of her victims in self-
defense. However, because of Florida's "Williams Rule",
information regarding the other murders was presented to the
jury, clearly showing the pattern to the murders committed by
Wuornos.
 Puente was a 59-year-old boarding house owner in
Sacramento, CA. who killed seven of her tenants and
buried their bodies in her backyard.
 When neighbors complained about the stench coming
from Puente's yard, she told them the sewer was
backed up, rats were dead under the floorboards, or
she blamed the odor on the fish emulsion she put on
her garden.
 When her boarders started disappearing, a concerned social
worker tipped off police, who made a gruesome discovery: She
had drugged and killed her frail boarders.
 Puente's motive was to collect her tenants' government benefit
checks
 Bundy was apprehended after a patrol officer noticed a vehicle
prowling an area near a restaurant that had just closed. Bundy,
who sped away, was followed and then stopped by the alert
patrol officer. Bundy then provided a stolen credit card as
identification, assaulted the officer, and attempted to flee the
scene.
 One of John Wayne Gacy's victims worked in a pharmacy. He left
the pharmacy briefly to speak with a contractor in the parking lot
about summer employment. When he failed to return to his job,
his disappearance was reported. Gacy had been spotted in the
pharmacy between 6 and 8 PM the night of the victim's
disappearance.
 David Berkowitz,known as the "Son of Sam", came under
suspicion when investigators noticed that he had received a
parking ticket at a location near one of the murder scenes. When
following up on the parking citation, an officer noticed a machine
gun protruding from a bag in Berkowitz's car.
 A. There are two schools of thought on the extent of
serial murder in the U.S.
On the one hand, "The US produces more serial killers
than any other country. Up to 85% of the world's serial
killers are in America. According to an FBI Behavioral
Unit study serial killing has climbed to an almost
'epidemic proportion'. At any given time, there are an
estimated 20 - 50 active serial killers. Those who
change their targets, methods, are often never
identified. Experts speculate on what happens to
unsolved cases of murderers. Some may commit
suicide, die, be incarcerated, in mental institutions,
relocate, or have stopped killing, a few turn themselves
in." (http://www.karisable.com/crserial.htm)