Whatever Happened to Serial Killers?

In the first five decades of the 20th century, the number of serial killers in the U.S. remained at a very low level. But between the 1950s and 1960s, the number of serial killers tripled. Between the 1960s and 1970s, they tripled again. In the 1980s and 1990s, they kept rising. And then, just as suddenly as the serial killer emerged as an American phenomenon, he (and it really is mostly a he) nearly disappeared. What happened to the American serial killers? And what does this phenomenon say about American society, criminology, and technology?

Today’s guest is James Alan Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern University. The author of 18 books, he has been publishing on this subject since before 1974, the year that the FBI coined the term “serial killer.”

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In the following excerpt, James Alan Fox explains to Derek how he got into the field of studying serial and mass killings and why the Hollywood representation of serial killers is so different than reality.

Derek Thompson: You are a renowned expert in serial and mass killing. How does that happen? How does one become one of the most well-known figures in studying serial and mass killing? How did that become your expertise?

James Alan Fox: Well, to some extent, I fell into it. But early in the 1980s, over 40 years ago, a colleague of mine, Jack Levin, and I were talking and he wondered: Has there ever been a systematic study of mass killers? And, by the way, at that point in time, the term “serial murder” didn’t exist; it was “mass killers.” So we were interested in seeing what patterns existed among serial killers and, indeed, was the Hollywood image of a glassy-eyed lunatic—like Friday the 13th or things like that—was that realistic or just pure fantasy?

So we collected data on 42 cases at the time, both serial killers and mass killers, and did a paper on it. And then, there was an AP story headlined “Extraordinarily Ordinary,” not quite what people expected, and it was in hundreds of papers. It just kept snowballing, and I’ve done half a dozen books on the topic. So I never planned on this, frankly. I teach two courses. I teach statistics, and I teach homicide, and, for me, if you go to a cocktail party and someone says, “What do you do?” If I said, “Oh, I am a statistician,” they’d say, “Oh, where’s the bar?” But when I say I study serial murder, they ask all sorts of questions. I guess I’ve become popular because the topic is popular.

Thompson: I would love you to explain how you found real serial killers and mass killers to differ from the Hollywood impression. One of my favorite movies is Silence of the Lambs, and there Buffalo Bill is this recluse. He’s socially isolated. He’s weird as hell. He’s certainly not married. In your research, it seems like you mentioned they’re extraordinarily ordinary. The typical serial killer is the opposite of Buffalo Bill. Social, living with a partner. What are other important ways in which you found the Hollywood archetype of the serial killer differs from the real thing?

Fox: Well, the thing about the Hollywood image—someone who looks evil and looks dangerous and acts weird—is that they wouldn’t be dangerous because we’d avoid them. This guy is walking around with a hockey mask and a knife; we’re not going to go up and say, “Where’s the rink?” So the thing about these serial killers in particular is they’re very good at appearing safe, not strange at all, and that helps in their ability to attract victims. The victims let their guard down when they confront someone like Theodore Bundy, who, you know, [was a] good-looking guy. Not all of them are good-looking, understand that too, but for the most part, they’re not put off–ish, and that’s why they’re dangerous because they’re extraordinarily ordinary.

Thompson: The ordinariness of serial killers must be especially surprising for people, given that serial killers in films are often represented as these hyperreal villains. Jason, Freddy Krueger, these are demons. They’re barely even people. There’s a mystical invincibility about them, and Hannibal Lecter is practically a superhero in his ability to outsmart everybody. So we do, as a society, seem to hold serial killers aside from the rest of murderers and treat them like superheroes of evil rather than real threats, right?

Fox: You mentioned Hannibal Lecter. So years ago, I was giving a speech at a college out in the Midwest, and they made a poster of my talk and had the picture of four serial killers. It was Bundy, and it was Gacy, and Dahmer, and Hannibal Lecter. First, it was Anthony Hopkins. Anthony Hopkins, looking like Anthony Hopkins, is an actor. But the thing is, for most people, Jeffrey Dahmer and Hannibal Lecter, oh, same thing to them. People aren’t really terrorized and frightened of serial killers; they feel that it’s not going to happen to them. And so they can be entertained by serial murder because they don’t see it as a threat in their lives.

We’re not entertained by mass shootings. People worry about it, think they’re going to be the victim. And we know this: The statistics show that six out of 10 Americans think there’s going to be a mass shooting in their community. If you ask them, “Is there going to be a serial killer running down your street?,” they’ll think no, so people can be entertained by serial murder because they don’t feel threatened. Whereas other kinds of crimes, date rape, mass killing, mass shooting, so forth, school shootings, that’s not entertaining, it’s frightening.

This excerpt was edited for clarity. Listen to the rest of the episode here and follow the Plain English feed on Spotify.

Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: James Alan Fox
Producer: Devon Baroldi

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