Why were there so many serial killers in the 1970s and 1980s?

lead

No social media to distract them dorks

The devil ran loose.

I blame the Internet.

Why not? It ruined everything else.

Two reasons:

Lack of technology (cell phone tracking, cameras everywhere).

The interstate highway system.

Both of these factors made it much more possible to be anonymous and get away with serial killing.

Now we have Dump.

It was far easier to get away with it back in the 70s and 80s. DNA testing, ViCAP and other national databases such as CODIS make it real tough for serial killers to remain under police/FBI radar.

They only get one or two murders in before they get caught, usually. But remember those girls in Indiana that disappeared on a hike a few years ago? No one ever found the guy and maybe he’s off killing more girls and maybe that wasn’t his first time.

About ten years ago there was a serial killer in Albuquerque. Don't think he was ever caught.

I've wondered that myself. I thought maybe it was because there are so many things to distract people now. For instance, you're happily on your way to murder and dismember some teenagers who are necking by the lake, and you get a fucking text message from your mother.

They’re still around, just doing it at pizza parlors in the DC area.

Ridgway kept right on butchering women for over 20 years, until 2000. What finally stopped him was the development of DNA testing.

And speaking of Ridgway, highly recommend Ann Rule's Green River, Running Red.

Why is everyone ignoring the pink elephant in the room (see OP's picture)?

Excuse me?

r12 I think Ridgway is the scariest of them all, because he was so boring and nondescript.

My Friend Dahmer was a good film, I thought.

they sit around behind their computers all day just like everyone else.

r10 you're a sick fucker.

Too many bathhouses and not enough Grindr

This is a potential serial killer, no doubt, who was caught after the first victim.

30 years ago, the technology used to catch him didn't exist and he would have gone on to kill again and again.

R5 is on to something. It’s nearly impossible to avoid surveillance video and cell information. I have some Ring campers outside my properties and just last month, one helped ID a suspect in an armed robbery across the street. The local police used my video to corroborate the license plate of the suspect vehicle that was also seen on other residential Ring cams in town. Small example here, but it’s a factor, I think. Think about the 70s and driving on the Interstate...stopping at a rest stop...nobody around to hear your screams or see your perpetrator..BAM....hit you over the head, stuff you in the trunk and drive off. Too easy.

That poor girl, at R19. I remember when she went missing. If he hadn’t picked her up at a bus stop, while she waited for a bus, that had a street/traffic cam pointed straight at the bus bench, he would have gotten away with it.

I agree he would have became a serial killer. He was attempting to abduct other students prior to abducting the Chinese student. And I wonder if he’s already killed before her. He is highly educated, and not stupid. Her body has still not been found, and he had breathed one single word so far.

My theory is that it is very possible that he has killed women previously. He never did so with college students, girls who would be immediately missed/reported missing, or anywhere near his home, much less in his own town, or apartment.

If he has killed before, he has more than likely murdered prostitutes. He eventually got sloppy, and allowed his addiction to sadomasochist murder, to overcome his reason, and he made grave errors in haste.

Below, check out some of his mental health disorders, shared by his own attorneys.

r5 is correct, basically police detectives weren't as good as they are now

r21 last I heard his attorneys decided against a mental health defense.

Word is that there is a serial killer in Malibu, CA.

Shoots people who are out camping, hiking, sleeping on the beach itself, due to homelessness, etc.

I told him he must be a killer, and he's in the White House.

What is a ring camp?

The two Nightstalker killers fascinate me. It's like a nightmare come real to have sick killers just break into your house at the dead of night. I'm shuddering just thinking of it.

R26 - I think that should be "Ring cameras"

They haven’t gone away and never will.

It’s about the fact the ‘shine’ wore off and they became an accepted fact of life and are no longer ‘marketed’ with scary names and interviews with Geraldo.

The same thing is currently happening to mass shooters at the moment.

R23, correct.

I shared the psych eval as a very general overview of what eventually becomes the top layer of the eventual profile of a serial killer.

All the hallmarks are there. Check it out, if you’re interested.

because of technology maybe they have just gotten better at it. I read a few years ago that there at least 100 serial killers on the loose at any given time.

look at that American woman that was just rescued by the French. No one even knew she was missing and she had been kidnapped 28 days earlier. How many others are out there that no one would notice was gone?

Lots of killers targeted gay men, Dahmer, Nilsen, Gacey etc I guess we are like prostitutes in that most of us are easily picked up and therefore vulnerable.

This is rather disturbing:

People don't assume their 16y.o ran away anymore like they did in the 70's

It's heart breaking all those kids killed by the Moors murderers, whose graves were never found. Those poor parents. Ian Brady was an asshole.

The disorders that cause serial killers to become serial killers are still around. Nurture that mind incorrectly, and a serial killer is made. That doesn’t mean that they will ever kill.

I’ve read of cases where these people only kill and torture animals. They usually do so secretly, and are rarely ever discovered or caught. These types are different than the sociopath who regularly abuses his dog or cat. This type of person stalks animals for the purpose of torture and abuse. They take great care to go all out.

I know that sounds so fucked up, and even hits many of us on a more visceral level than people who kill humans, because so many of us are head over heels about our pets. But they are out there, and they never graduate to the torture and death of people. They even seek out pets that they know and play with. Pets that belong to their neighbors, or friends.

This is why I keep my pets indoors, unless going for a walk, a swim, or a hike.

Fucked up minds are still around, and alive.

Tell me more about the Railway killer. He sounds scary. Wasn't he a Mexican or something, who rode the rails,and randomly killed people in the 90s?

I know someone whose cousin was killed by the railway killer.

R38 really ? Tell me more

I think they're still out there, they're just not getting famous any more. And some were famous not just because they killed, but because some of them like Zodiac and BTK wrote the police and bragged and taunted. Nobody does that any more, because advances in police technology have made it impossible to do without being caught.

No, I think there are still serial killers out there, but they're more careful now. They're not targeting people who'll be missed, for one thing, there are still areas like the highways of rural British Columbia where people say poor native women are going missing, but there's no serious investigation because they're assumed to be on the streets somewhere. A killer who doesn't use telltale methods, who works in varied jurisdictions, who doesn't brag or draw attention to himself, who doesn't let corpses be found, and/or who targets people whose deaths won't be investigated... might never be caught.

In other words, R40: truck drivers.

Yes truck drivers. Also hitchikers

I knew nothing about this Gargiulo guy. Good god, he is vicious.

Boredom. All the psychopaths channel their energies into internet trolling now.

The Long Island serial killer (also referred to as LISK, the Gilgo Beach Killer or the Craigslist Ripper) has never been caught. I read at some point that they thought he may have moved away which means he is being quiet or is still doing but being more careful

Baby boomers were young and hot blooded.

Porn...specifically, straight porn.

Objectifying people makes them easier to kill. It’s desensitizing & normalizes violence.

There is a guy w a YouTube channel that follows the many missing people in public parks that are never found. No evidence. Nothing. I've often thought that serial killers have moved to those kinds of venues because no CCTV etc.

Some of these go back many decades.

From r19’s link:

[quote]The FBI report noted that in April, before the alleged kidnapping, Christensen used his cellphone to access the sexual fetish website Fetlife, visiting forums such as "Abduction 101".

Part of it is that we no longer use leaded gas. That crime overall has gone down has thought to be, in part, because lead pollution has gone down.

Agree that the serial killers of today have just adapted their methods so that they elude notice or capture. I-10 and I-45 have been littered with bodies for decades, some killed using the same MO. Cops theorize it's truck drivers or other folks who travel these highways frequently. No doubt many are prostitutes or drug addicts that were already on the fringes of society.

I read the link at r50.

I really wonder if he somehow escaped.

These days they get caught too quickly to rack up many victims. And they didn't have DNA testing back then.

[quote] I know that sounds so fucked up, and even hits many of us on a more visceral level than people who kill humans, because so many of us are head over heels about our pets.

Anyone who is more upset over the death of an animal than a human has a screw loose.

Sometimes they run for president

[quote]People don't assume their 16y.o ran away anymore like they did in the 70's

THIS.

Technology, internet.

There are those who believed the banning of lead from paint and gasoline reduced the rate of violent crime.

I think it’s harder now with cell phones and the ability to ping locations. If Shelly Sikes had a cellphone her story may have ended differently.

R34 R57 I remember reading about the identification of the girl known as "Buckskin Doe." Apparently she was never reported missing because her parents just thought she had just ran away from home or some such.

This also happened with Grateful Doe, his mother just thought he ran away and never reported him missing! I don't think he was killed in a car accident.

It blows my mind that their families just didn't do anything after their loved one disappeared. Scary shit.

R61. Why did they just assume they had run away? Crazy!

Correction: "I don't think he was murdered, he was killed in a car accident."

We have mass shootings now instead.

Wikipedia list of formerly unidentified decedents.

You're welcome, DL.

Cameras, dna testing, and abortion are truly marvelous things. If we get psychotropic drugs on young people right, we’ll be doing great.

Not much to tell R39. She didn’t go into it but the victim did live in a rural area near railroad tracks. He was genuinely scary and two of his suspected victims were a young couple who were killed in a local lover’s area in Houston very close to where my mother lives.

Disco. Punk. Leisure suits. PCP. It was a disorienting time.

No internet then. That’s why.

PCP = pretty cool parties

They now deal with their anger issues on Datalounge.

R65 - so Nancy Grace was murdered in 2014? Is that why she's disappeared?

The theories and methods to profile serial killers emerged in the 70s. It’s a function of "finding what you’re looking for."

[quote] We have mass shootings now instead.

That's true. I agree that technology (cell phone trackers, DNA tests, etc.) have put a damper on serial killing (e.g., truck drivers).

Is the psychology behind "mass shootings" the same as the psychology behind killing people one-by-one? There's a kamikaze element to the mass shootings because it's hard to get away with it, though.

I was feeling grateful about a decrease in serial killers when R64 brought up mass killers.

R31 -American woman rescued by the French- Where was that? Do you have a link? I missed it. Thanks.

I think Bobby Durst killed scores of men and women

Lead?

Follow?

....

R40 and R64 have it. People are still getting murdered, like R40 said, but those that are harder to notice or keep track of, like the homeless. And like R64, the big freaks who would have done it one by one years ago now find it easier to just shoot up a place.

The good ole days lol

Mustache.

If Joel Rifkin’s tail light hadn’t been out, no one would ever have known he was a serial killer. No one ever noticed the prostitutes he killed were missing.

A few years ago the skull of one of the Gilgo Beach victims was found in woods by a stoner my nephew knows. The guy tried to sell a photo of the skull to the local newspaper. The local newspaper was like “Are you high? We don’t put pictures of murder victims’ skulls in our newspaper.”

Well yah. He *was* high.

[quote]If Joel Rifkin’s tail light hadn’t been out, no one would ever have known he was a serial killer.

Close. He had no license plate, it had fallen off his truck.

"Why did they just assume they had run away? Crazy! "

During the late sixties and early seventies, it was downright fashionable for kids to run away from home! With songs like "Looking For American" and movies like "Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring", it was even a part of pop culture. Kids would run away to be hippies or to get away from godawful homes or just hitchhike across the country in a spirit of adventure, and some of them cam to no harm, they found new lives within the hippie culture or came home after a while. Others became drugged out Walking Dead, or trusted the wrong person and were never seen again.

The authorities never really looked for runaway kids, there were just so damn many of them and they could be anywhere. If your kid ran away from your home in Tulsa, they could end up on a pot farm in Vermont or on the streets of LA, where they didn't pay taxes and no authorities registered their names. It must have been a scary time to be a parent, not that lots of the kids weren't running away from abusive homes.

r75

When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, we had real serial killers. MIllenials today don't know what they're missing. They sit at home glued to their cell phones instead of going out into the real world and getting killed.

[italic]Serial Mom[/italic] probably made it harder to get away with it.

R85 the police were pretty quick to dismiss missing young people as runaways when families reported them missing. Some potcast I was listening to talked about a twelve year old being written off as a run away. Her family knew she didn’t run off. She was very into ballet and a good student who never showed signs of rebellion. It was one of those walking home from a friends and never made it situations. I know running away was fashionable at the time, but I think there were usually fights with the parents before that.

W&W for r87!

It's true that you never hear about runaways anymore. Then again, I suppose almost every parent in the country has location-tracking ability via cellphones now..

Helicopter parents nowadays don’t let their kids of their sight long enough for them to run away.

R91: The dawn of the internet made it hard to run away and not disappear for good.

Abortion.

Keep it legal.

R87!

R87 Ugh you eldergays were so lucky growing up with serial Killers everywhere!! I wish we had a serial Killer on the loose in my neighborhood. What an adrenaline rush to get scared and then be anxious to find out who is killed next while hoping it’s the bitch next door.

With all the foreign adopted children with FAS now, we may see a resurgence. It was common for women to drink during pregnancy in olden times.

R67 Are you talking about Cheryl Henry and Andy Atkinson? She was a classmate of mine - heartbreaking story.

Because mass murder is so much more accessible for the quotidian American lunatic.

"The dawn of the internet made it hard to run away and not disappear for good. "

Also, credit is universal now. Back in the heyday of serial killers you could run away and get a place to stay if you had some cash, no landlords and hoteliers won't rent to anyone without a credit card and maybe a background check. Back then, you could get on an airplane with cash and no ID, use public phones to keep in contact with anyone you wanted to keep contact with, get a job without a social security number, etc. It was much easier to vanish, back in the heyday of serial killers.

R94 knows it!

More than a few of the pre-'90s serial killers -- David Berkowitz, Gary Ridgway, Dean Corll, Dennis Rader, Arthur Shawcross -- were to an extent products of the military, particularly Vietnam.

Disturbing that a list like the one R65 shares exists.

I wish Dahmer fucked my skull. Sigh.

The Malibu Sniper was caught, R24.

R105, Jesus, they wheeled him in like Hannibal Lecter into court, with restraints and a spit hood. What a lovely fellow...

I agree that lead was a contributing factor, even if r1 was joking.

It's been hypothesized that the interstate highway system contributed as well, allowing people to travel some distance in a short amount of time.

They're being caught more frequently. They discussed it on My Favorite Murder. Technology and the advancement of understanding.

Israel Keyes put in a lot of work trying to avoid detection, including planning his random murders years in advance, but he was still caught after a comparatively low number of murders (3 known, 8 others possible).

R102 has a good point as well.

Back in the early 90s NYPD gave cellphone/walk-in talkies to to frequent joggers in Central Park. They picked them up at the park precinct and dropped them off when they finished running. The phones only called the precinct, nowhere else..

It immediately cut crime in the park. When cellphones became commonly owned, most crime in the park disappeared.

That was smart.

Because parks have gotten rid of those nasty metal swings.

^And I'm completely serious about those swings.

They become mass shooters

Millennials are all about instant gratification these days. That's why they choose mass shootings. Serial killings take a lot of work.

"It's been hypothesized that the interstate highway system contributed as well, allowing people to travel some distance in a short amount of time. "

Most of the serial killers I've read up on worked within a limited area, in and around the metropolitan area where they lived, but of course the ones who have books written about them got caught.

Betcha there are still long-distance truckers out there, killing the occasional Lot Lizard for fun, and burying them in shallow graves off of highway pullouts. If anyone ever reports them missing the police don't worry much about it, because the missing person is a lot lizard and probably just moved on to some place with cheaper meth. And nobody ever takes corpse-sniffing dogs to random highway pullouts to see what's there.

[quote].... some of them like Zodiac and BTK wrote the police and bragged and taunted. Nobody does that any more, because advances in police technology have made it impossible to do without being caught.

I wonder if some killers post anonymously on the internet now in discussions about themselves. I remember reading about LISK in a forum and wondering if he was posing as one of the commenters. After all, he did taunt the teenage sister of one of his victims. He would probably get off on participating in a "Who is he?" debate.

There was a serial killer we strongly suspect posted here, too, r118.

Really , R119? Who?

Luka Magnotta, r120.

Not many female serial killers

With e-mail no one goes postal anymore.

BTK was one of those old farts, who probably couldn't program his VCR. ! He was also traced by a store camera delivering his correspondence to the back of someone's truck, in his own Jeep Cherokee. He was caught in 2005: the internet was around. Googled this shit.

I agree about the reduction of lead. BTK was old enough to have been exposed.

"In his letters to police, Rader asked if his writings, if put on a floppy disk, could be traced or not. The police answered his question in a newspaper ad posted in the Wichita Eagle saying it would be safe to use the disk. On February 16, 2005, Rader sent a purple 1.44-Megabyte Memorex floppy disk to Fox TV affiliate KSAS-TV in Wichita.[32][33] Also enclosed were a letter, a gold-colored necklace with a large medallion, and a photocopy of the cover of a 1989 novel about a serial killer: Rules of Prey.[33]

Police found metadata embedded in a deleted Microsoft Word document which was, unknown to Rader, still stored on the floppy disk.[34] The metadata contained the words "Christ Lutheran Church", and the document was marked as last modified by "Dennis."[35] An internet search determined that a "Dennis Rader" was president of the church council.[32] From the Home Depot incident, the police also knew BTK owned a black Jeep Cherokee. When investigators drove by Rader's house, they noticed a black Jeep Cherokee parked outside.[36]

^ caught for being a dumb ass

Legalized abortion resulted in fewer of these extreme psychopaths being born.

I keep telling you eldergays that your generation is fundamentally fucked up. That's really all there is to it

Number one legalized abortion. 2) Recognition of child abuse and neglect—people call it out now, before it was seen as a family issue. 3) Criminal justice/technology can catch up with these people much faster So they can’t accomplish many killings,and in some cases, catch them before they graduate to murder. 5) The mental health world is now aware of exactly how they operate since this was studied in the 1970s so you have to assume that some potential killers receive treatment or end up locked away based on what we know now 6) Porn and the Internet and access to incredibly graphic violence in media May have an effect or provide a release. Not so sure about this one

People lock their doors.

Years ago, in smaller communities, people would leave their doors unlocked. I think situational awareness of danger--aided by shows like Dateline and SVU, etc--have made people more vigilant.

R12 I agree with you except for point 6. In reading about several serial killers (many years ago), it seems that they started off with some relatively minor kink or trigger but escalated from there, and consumed more and more hardcore pornography. Eventually they became desensitized to that and moved to acting out with real victims. They may have already been killing by that time, but it just became more violent and degrading for the victim.

[quote]I wonder if some killers post anonymously on the internet now in discussions about themselves

On an Original Night Stalker forum, long before we knew the East Area Rapist was also the Original Night Stalker, someone logged in with a userid "EAR" and started asking members questions in DMs. People who had already speculated a connection between EAR and ONS have wondered for years if it was the killer, trying to find out a little bit about what people knew.

Could also have been someone who just randomly used the word "ear" as a login, but that sure is weird.

So many reasons but likely to be caught today heads the list.

Also since sks are psychopaths they share the common denominator of absentee bio fathers with overbearing domineering mothers. Starting young as peeping Toms is another factor often shared.

I thought this article was interesting, this section in particular:

[quote]e believes less qualified people are attracted to policing and move up the ranks to major crimes investigations.

“It’s probably the most frightening, which is cities that are consistently lowering their recruiting standards because they are desperate for people. Police work is not a sought after profession anymore, certainly not in this country.

Some agencies have no credit check, no physical tests, no written tests, essentially, people who would have been screened out of immediately from being considered are now getting in. In two to three years are winding up in specialty units like homicide,” he said.

Screwed up the formatting.

r133 that is from the Aboriginal Peoples TV network, so I'd take it with a lot of salt. They have a vested interest in pointing suspicion away from their own communities.

From the article:

[quote]“In Canada we know even less about (serial killers on truck routes) because the data just isn’t available,” Arntfield said. “We’ve tried to build a database in Canada that would allow us very clearly to see and visualize on a screen, coast to coast, who is being targeted, what numbers and how. We’ve faced roadblocks at every turn in this country.”

I wonder if any are channeling their needs into mass killings. Is the rise of mass killings related at all to the concurrent decline in serial killings? Could just be coincidence

R136, we’ve always had mass killers - people who lost their shit in a homicidal way. SKing has cited at least one school bomber from the 19th century.

With serial killers that hunt/prey ritual turns people into trophies - subhuman. Animals.

I still remember adults remaining red-faced angry - all the time. It was the lead. I know I was annoying as a child, but that silent generation was pissed at everything.

No more hitchhiking.

Vietnam generation got old.

I have to believe that drugs also played a part. Everybody was on something back then. I know that drug use is widespread now, of course, but still, a lot of people don't touch drugs these days. Back then EVERYBODY did them.

[quote]No more hitchhiking.

I’m being genuine here and not snarky. Do you think the lack of hitchhiking has a lot to do with it? I know hitchhiking virtually is gone, and despite the stories our parents told us about the dangers, but how many were victims of serial killers in reality?

Dahmer, BTK, SOS, Green River, Rifkin, et al. really didn’t pick up hitchhikers.

What about all the people who did drugs just to get high, not to commit murder?

R139, yes people are still on drugs today, you’re right. Could it have been the TYPE of drugs though? Today, opioids are the “it” thing, back then a lot of LSD and mind-altering drugs were the norm.

I don’t see how someone on heroin could be a serial killer when they can fall asleep standing up.

R140 Snark away! Hitchhiking was before my time. I was just pulling that out my ass based in lurid hearsay.

You’re fantastic r143!

I like you.

While I agree DNA and CCTV has really helped with criminal investigations, aren't a lot of serial killers -- like BTK -- (a) never think they will get caught because they are so smart; (b) so disturbed they can't stop their impulses?

I just wonder if there is a natural time lag when serial killers are identified providing misleading assumptions there aren't that many

I think it was because people were bored back then. Didn’t have anything else to do.

[quote] (b) so disturbed they can't stop their impulses?

I think they must get caught for their "gateway" crimes now.

@ABC7

Police: Traveling carnival worker confesses to killing 2 women, teenager

took less than 3 months to catch him.

Someone upthread mentioned homelessness. I wonder if serial killers' focus has gone from abducting random people to a sitting duck population like the homeless. The homeless are some of the most vulnerable people in our country. They are of all ages, male and female; they have no family who can report them "missing" and have few connections to others. They sleep unprotected in dangerous areas unless they are part of a larger group who look out for each other. No CCTV where these folks congregate and live. Cops consider them nuisances and don't take their victimization seriously.

^Yes, I agree it's a combination of all of those plus I'll add a few 7) greater awareness/protection from parents ---helicoptering 8) Profiling--LE has a much greater understanding of who these people are 9) psych meds that flatten out emotions 10) the proliferation of certain street drugs that make people docile (heroin) instead of aggressive. They're too fucked up/zombie-like to ever be interested in or able to plan an elaborate killing spree.

^Ugh. R151 was reply to R128.

[quote]psych meds that flatten out emotions

This is a big factor. Children today who start showing red-flag behavior are immediately put on meds.

Back in the good old days, serial killers were a lot more interesting.

Because they are all at home all night chained to their internet porn.