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There is no doubt that serial killers, this far, is a very American phenomenon. Three out of four serial killers, out of which we've gotten to know for the last twenty years, reside in
the U.S.A. and within the boundries of the U.S.A, Califonia seems to be the most popular state. After California follows N.Y, Florida and Washington. F.B.I. esimates that by the millennium, serial killers could be claiming an average of 11 lives a day.
A serial killer will continuously kill and not stop unless he/she is made to stop. Or unless an event occurs which stops the killer. For example, the killer is institutionalized, incarcerated or even dead. The killings will have a "cooling down" or "cooling off" period, but will continue. A serial killer may even wait years before claiming another victim; the point is though: there will, undisputedly, be another victim.
Serial killings are often committed by, for the victim, strangers and the victim has had none or very little contact with the killer . The murder is often premedditated, and so is the place for dumping the body (if it is to be dumped... Ed Gein was more into recycling his victims by making ashtrays, vests and other 'useful things'). The serial killer could be a mobile person, who commits his crimes in many different states and also with different timetables. It is of course always more difficult for the police to recognize a serial killer who works in many different states or even countries. Also the modus operandi isn't always as personal as it often is in films and can because of this be thought to be a gangmurder or something more common. Linkage blindness is a term that is often used in law enforcement. It involves a failure to recognize a pattern which links one crime to another crime in a series of cases.
A serial killer's motives are generally internal, which is the mystery that must be solved to figure out why one particular serial killer is killing. The studies of these killers are popularly called Criminal Personality Profiling or just Criminal Profiling. This will be dealth with on the following pages.
The typical serial killer is male, between the ages of 25-35, and white. The majority of the time, he will kill white victims. The ages of his victims will vary greatly, depending on his particular "interests". His intellect ranges from below average to above average. He doesn't know his victims or have any particular hatred for them most of the time. His victims never did anything to hurt him in any way...they are normally strangers to him. He doesn't come from one social class or another; he can come from Skid Row or Park Avenue...just as his victims. Like many of us, he is often married, has children, and works. This is probably the most fearsome part of it all. The killer could be our husband, our brother or even our father.
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