Why was the 70s the Golden Age for serial killers?

Lead in the cigarettes.

I think the interstate highway system had a lot to do with it. It made serial killing much easier and harder to detect. (For example, Herb Baumeister, who dumped his victims along I-70 between Indianapolis and Columbus.)

Technology of the 1990s onward has thwarted many serial killers.

A booming economy, people had free time with the high wages they made.

Ax murderers are making a comeback in the nations libraries.

Sick fucker.

Technology makes it easier for them to get caught. I believe many serial killers are caught before they actually go on a spree.

They were inspired by Donna Summer.

I think the sexual revolution and the "If it feel good, do it" mood of the sixties had something to do with it, people acted on desires that they'd repressed in earlier eras. Also the sexual revolution, at least in a negative way, the Zodiac and the Babydick killer seemed to be motivated by a jealous rage at people who were getting laid when they weren't.

There were a huge number of factors, of course, from law enforcement techniques to a huge increase in rootlessness to drugs being widely available for the first time. Maybe California became an epicenter for this stuff because there was so much migration there, from the runaway hippies to people moving from the Rust Belt in search of work, nobody knew anyone else and that made it so much easier.

A period where all the norms were being thrown out the window. Agree with R8 - unleashed Id took many forms - sex, violence, abuse. I honestly think “it was the 70s” is a valid excuse for a lot of behavior - because it was such a crazy time before Reagan and the Republicans tried to pull everyone back to the 50s standards of morality.

Smoking and drinking and taking various drugs during pregnancy was still cool. Maybe it was a brain damaged generation?

Hitchhiking

Well consider we were still adulterating gasoline with tetraethyl lead - and lead is a neuro-toxin.

The serial killers of the 70s were born in the thirties, forties, and fifties, when ironclad morality still ruled.

And pregnant women might smoke, but drinking heavily was not considered okay for married women, and drugs were not available. No, it was the Reagan-loving Yuppie Scum of the 80s whose mothers had gotten through their pregnancies on cocktails and Miltowns...

drugs were readily available in the late 60's.

I think some of it may have been that once one did it it triggered others into the challenge of doing it and trying not to get caught but getting lots and lots of attention

I wonder if the media circus that followed the Manson gang's killings in 1969 inspired in some twisted minds the desire to want to achieve the same type of immortality.

It’s all just perception and marketing

My gran was addicted to amphetamines In the early 50s. They were prescribed by her doctor to " give her energy" ( they totally did too!)

It was the zeitgeist of the times!

Mood rings.

Who was the greatest serial killer?

The Vietnam War fu kt a lot of people up

[quote] Who was the greatest serial killer?

Probably Dr. Harold Shipman in the UK. He has been proven to have killed 218 different people, the highest of all death tolls of any serial killer.

Shag carpeting. It was enough to make anybody feel stabby.

[quote] Why was the 70s the Golden Age for serial killers?

Overexposure to Karen Carpenter's singing.

Many people applied the popular catchphrase "Keep on truckin'" to all their activities.

Publicity in real time just for destroying life.

The popularity of hitchhiking and runaways for one.

[quote]I wonder if the media circus that followed the Manson gang's killings in 1969 inspired in some twisted minds the desire to want to achieve the same type of immortality.

I agree with this. The cultural prominence of serial killers may have inspired copycats. Serial killing -- like mass shooting -- is often motivated by a desire to make headlines and compete with previous killers, and so it's not only a psychological phenomenon but also a cultural one.

[quote] I wonder if the media circus that followed the Manson gang's killings in 1969 inspired in some twisted minds the desire to want to achieve the same type of immortality.

This was certainly true of Columbine and all of the copycat shootings since. The media, and all of the attention they paid to those two idiots, share a lot of blame for that.

VG, R8

I believe too that various 'movements' and migrations had a lot to do with the California serial killer phenom'. Opportunity was key-especially in the case that many have forgotten..the Juan Corona/Yuba City killings. All of the victims were migrants or transients. Not people whose absence would be noted readily, if at all.

As a Cal' native, I've heard it all in regards to the state's alleged weirdness. But as I always say, all the kooks in California are almost always from somewhere else.

All the hippies took drugs during the late 50's and 60's, gave birth to psychopaths.

Sometimes I read posts on DL and wonder how the poster can function in their day to day lives.

Are most 70s serial killers dead?

In the fifties women had a zillion kids, while going crazy. They are the aftermath.

Mass murderers are usually one-offs; serial killers are usually one at a time, but multiple occurrences.

That is to say, I highly doubt if the Manson slayings (contiguous nights, so can be considered a mass murder) or the Charles Whitman campus shootings influenced Ted Bundy or JWGacy, for example.

Serial killing is so passe.

Mass shootings is now all the rage.

r36, LOL. Love u.

R33:

What happened to America's serial killers?

Vietnam made everyone crazy and violence prone.

I think a lot of serial killers obviously have a genetic predisposition towards psychopathy but in addition would never have been born via birth control or abortion in later years. They were the unwanted babies of unfortunate circumstances whether it be dysfunctional families, or the younger kids of an oversized family.

No DNA tech then

No smart phones

Let's see, the Babydick Killer was born in 1945, Ted Bundy was born in 1946, the Zodiac was probably born between 1930 and 1940, Gary Ridgeway the Green River Killler was born in 1949, Charles Manson was born in 1934, Edmund Kemper of Santa Cruz was born in 1945, Randy Woodfield the I-5 killer was born in 1950... so most of these "Golden Age" killers during a time when social morality was stiff and substance abuse was unfashionable, at least for married women. And domestic violence was legal and abortion was not, if that's a factor.

I'm of the opinion that serial killers are more born than made, as some serial killers seem to have come from perfectly functional families, but I suppose the parenting styles of the 1930s and 1940s could have brought out the worst tendencies in some. During the 1930s and 1940s many of the "Greatest Generation" were very focused on survival and put little energy into emotional issues, plus the parenting fashions of the time discouraged "spoiling" children by showing them any affection, they were supposed to discipline their children firmly and make them beg for any shred of approval, lest they lose control over the family. Cold and uptight family life was the style of the day, which is I suppose why people went so crazy when the sixties came along and everyone was finally given permission to do everything they'd been forbidden to do.

Frankly, today's "helicopter parenting" seems more likely to produce serial killers than the parenting styles of the early 20th century, what with kids being told that their happiness is all that matters and that the rules will always be bent for them. But then, I suppose kids raised by insane helicopter parents will expect mummy and daddy to go out and do their thrill killing for them.

That’s not how it works, R42

Interstate highway system, increased drug use, pre-abortion hundreds of thousands of kids born into extreme dysfunction. Economy of the seventies also sucked. Improvements in police technology and lower fertility rates began reversing crime overall in the 1990s. All stated earlier upthread. I also think mass killings are the “thing” now and this has more to do with psychiatric medications affecting a small percentage of their male users.

Serial killers have not gone away. They have always been around and will always be around.

What went away was the media hype in real time.

Society got used to it through mass exposure and stopped the silly habit of giving them cute, yet menacing nicknames and elevating them to celebrity status.

Now, they are relegated to ID network and the CBS procedural ‘Criminal Minds’

I had an affair with Juan Corona!

I blew Richard Speck!

And I'm so fuckin' beautiful I can't stand it myself!

Eric Harris was not a serial killer, but he sure was hot!

[quote]I'm of the opinion that serial killers are more born than made, as some serial killers seem to have come from perfectly functional families, but I suppose the parenting styles of the 1930s and 1940s could have brought out the worst tendencies in some.

I agree that it's a generational thing, that the 1970s became a golden age because this is when the generation that grew up in the shadow of both Depression and WW2 hit their 30s and reached the age when they could start acting out. The 1960s was a preview of what to come; people like Charles Whitman, the Boston Strangler and the Zodiac Killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Manson and all the nutjobs who killed MLK, RFK and Malcolm X were all born in the 1930s or 1940. The serial killers of the 1970s were born later, I believe.

Contributing to the madness, I think, was media. Starting in the 1940s, we were seeing exploitation movies that were beginning to push the envelope in terms of violence, and I think that kind of fed whatever tendencies these people had. I have no doubt that some of these people probably saw stuff like The Sniper and Suddenly, and were also turned on by Psycho and the slew of rip offs based around hurting or murdering beautiful women (No Way to Treat a Lady, Frenzy, etc.).

Is that you, Tipper?

None of the above. There were no more psychopaths than usual afoot - it certainly had nothing to do with changing cultural values. That is the most simplistic stupid belief of all... may as well be the Bible thumping not so right commentary.

It was only the 60’s when the concept of a “Serial Killer” emerged and that would have been more or less Albert DeSalvo aka the Boston Strangler. Modern police work, specifically Forensic Psychology was in its earliest beginnings. It began to emerge in the 1970’s with the development of this science in the FBI.

Now there simply is far far far more awareness that such damaged individuals walk amongst us - or they are currently in the Kremlin, White House or Beijing. Also public educators are taught to be aware of signs of inappropriate behavior in children. (another reason to abolish charter & private schools.)

Also the overwhelming volume of guns sold by the arms manufacturers in America certainly do make it easier for these twisted personalities to stage massacres rather than serial events.

There certainly was not a “Golden Age” it was absence of science and then the emergence of discovery that created this awareness.

R50 - abolish private schools? But how will Democratic Party politicians educate their children?

Pet rocks.