Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Serial Killers
In our modern society, there is no greater boogeyman than a serial killer. They are ruthless killers, they are everywhere, and they haunt you, right? Not really. Serial killers are very real and very dangerous, but the chances of meeting one of them are almost negligible.
It is part of the Lifehacker’s Never Fear series . The world is a scary place, but we tend to lose our fear in things that don’t really deserve our precious time and energy. Let’s fight these fears with a little knowledge.
What is a serial killer
Serial killers are known for their numerous murders similar to those depicted in movies and TV shows, but there is a more specific definition that sets them apart from the other multiple killers. According to the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit , a serial killer is someone who killed at least three victims.
More importantly, these murders must have happened as separate events at different times, which is why the serial killer experiences what is described as a period of emotional cooling between each of them. This sets them apart from mass murderers, mass murderers and hitmen like hitmen.
Why are you afraid of them
The worst thing about serial killers is the misunderstanding by the general public. They seem to target complete strangers just to get the pleasure of killing them. There is no clear motive, so it seems that no one in our society is immune. On top of that, serial killers aren’t dysfunctional, temporary loners, as Harry Rogers , a retired homicide detective and forensic coroner-turned-crime writer, explains. These are seemingly normal people living a normal life:
Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer in Seattle, was married, lived in the same house for many years and worked as a car painter on a regular basis. BTK killer Dennis Rader was also married, had children, was a church leader, and was killed in a small radius of his home in Wichita, Kansas.
Serial killers can be anyone from your glorious neighbor to a grocery store clerk or a Bible study leader. It makes them feel like they are all over the place. Rogers says they become sort of folkloric monsters like the boogeyman, Bigfoot or the witch living in the woods – only you know that they are there, waiting to strike.
However, this mythology does not arise by itself. In Why We Love Serial Killers, author Scott Bonn, Ph.D., professor of criminology at Drew University, explains that part of the problem lies in the sociological concept of “moral panic,” which Bonn believes is “a situation in which public fear and government intervention significantly outweighs the objective threat posed by society from the individual or group allegedly responsible for creating the threat in the first place. ” Basically, the public, the media and law enforcement agencies are doing everything much worse than they really are. If one assassin is lost in a city, the entire population feels in danger. In addition to this, the media is obsessed with so-called “atrocities” or colorful, shocking descriptions of events that are used to provoke moral outrage or to mobilize control efforts. How could you not be afraid of a serial killer when you were told all the horrific details in such a dramatic, twisted form?
Why is there no reason to be afraid of them at all
So, you know what serial killers are scary about, but why should you suppress this fear once and for all? First, serial killings aren’t as common as you might think. According to Bronn, people greatly overestimate the number of serial homicides in the United States:
According to opinion polls, the general public believes that serial killers are responsible for about 25 percent of all murders in the United States. In fact, serial killings account for less than 1 percent of all murders committed in the United States.
By comparison, there are about 15,000 murders in the United States every year, which means that, on average, there are fewer than 150 murders per year for serial murders. And Bronn says the FBI estimates that there are between 25 and 50 serial killers in the United States at any given time. There just aren’t that many serial killers. In fact, as Rogers points out , they are extremely rare:
Less than 0.01% of homicides are classified as serial incidents. In a 2013 study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the homicide rate in North America is 3.9 per 100,000 population, so with a combined population of 464 million, you have a 0.00039% chance of being victim of a serial killer.
Even with Rogers’ higher estimate of the roughly 300 serial killers currently active throughout North America, that still represents about 0.00064% of the population. And yes, you do have a better chance of winning the lottery – if you’re wondering.
But wait, the one evil genius wreaking havoc in the city is still something to be feared, right? Films and television make serial killers brilliant madmen, so dexterous that they cannot be caught, but this is not at all the case. Bonn suggests that pop culture has cultivated the myth of the “evil genius serial killer”:
The image of the evil genius of a serial killer is largely a Hollywood invention. Real serial killers usually don’t have unique or exceptional intelligence. The reality is that the majority of serial killers whose IQ is between the borderline and above average. This is very consistent with the general population.
Bonn goes on to explain that it is not intelligence that makes serial killers successful, but obsession, careful planning, and psychopathic personality. So they are no smarter than you or me, they’re just really addicted to the act of murder just as you actually like “very strange case”. And even if they were the blatant criminals we see in fiction, Rogers suggests that their numbers are dwindling, with fewer and fewer over time. This is all thanks to advances in crime fighting such as DNA testing, behavioral profiling, and other technological and psychological detection methods that give serial killers much less room to maneuver.
What can you do to avoid them (if you’re still worried about it)
Yes, serial killers still exist, but it’s actually pretty easy to avoid them, says Rogers . Their victims fall into very specific categories and activities. Serial killers choose easy, vulnerable and disposable prey. Typically they are young people of both genders and high-risk lifestyles such as sex workers, drug addicts, vagabonds, and free spirits who travel alone. If you avoid it, you should be safe – at least from them.
In addition, Bonn reports that FBI data indicate that nearly half of the victims of known serial murders that occurred between 1985 and 2010 were between the ages of twenty and thirty. It seems that the older you get, the less likely you are to become a target – something to be happy about as you walk down the hill. All in all, the likelihood of being killed by a serial killer is ridiculously small, so save all the energy you spent worrying about doing something more useful.