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  • Ted Bundy, Dennis Rader, Harold Shipman, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ian Brady, Myra Hindley, Gary Ridgway...

  • John Wayne Gacy, and The Zodiac Killer, are probably the most iconic serial killers of the 20th century.

  • But can you name a serial killer from the last 20 years?

  • Unless you're a serial killing nerd, probably not.

  • The 70s, 80s and 90s were the heydays of American serial killing.

  • Now, I'm using America as an example in this video, nearly every Western country follows a similar pattern, it's just that you guys have the biggest data set and if I may say so, a penchant for serial killing.

  • America has 4% of the world's population and 67% of the world's serial killers.

  • Here's the yearly average for the number of operational serial killers in the US for each decade.

  • It exploded in the 1970s, peaked in '87 and has been on a steady decline ever since.

  • We rarely hear about modern-day serial killers.

  • Either there's just a lot less around, they don't get reported on, or we've gotten really good at catching them.

  • Technology has made us traceable.

  • You try secretly eating 17 people today without using a credit card, phone, or the internet.

  • All while avoiding CCTV. Jeffrey Dahmer had it easy.

  • The ability to map a suspect's movements over the course of an investigation has radically changed policing, as has DNA profiling.

  • California had a spree of unsolved crimes between 1974 and 1986.

  • The police were looking for the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, the Diamond Knot Killer, and the original Night Stalker.

  • But DNA breakthroughs in 2001 linked all 170 cases to the same man.

  • Now dubbed The Golden State Killer.

  • DNA allows police to connect unsolved crimes. Let's say they're investigating 5 murders.

  • This is their search area. But if all the crime scenes are found to contain the same DNA...

  • The killer is now likely to live somewhere in this smaller area.

  • With a decent chance of them being fairly central.

  • Connecting the crimes helps catch the murderer sooner, saving lives.

  • The Golden State Killer remained unidentified for over 40 years.

  • Eventually police created a fake profile on a genealogy website, uploading The Golden State Killer's DNA.

  • They found a handful of third and fourth cousins, built up a family tree.

  • And were able to narrow it down to just a few suspects.

  • In April 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo was finally arrested.

  • In connection with 13 murders, over 50 rapes, and 120 burglaries.

  • The term serial killer only entered popular usage during the case of Ted Bundy.

  • Between 1974 and 78 he murdered over 30 young women across 7 states.

  • Multiple states had separate investigations, all looking for a man of similar description.

  • With the same car, same victim profile, committing murders in the same way.

  • These investigations didn't combine forces until after he was arrested.

  • It was a hard lesson in the importance of communication.

  • Departments of the FBI were set up to tackle these new types of murderers, using centralized databases.

  • If police suspected a serial killer they would now submit...

  • A Violent Criminal Apprehension Program Report, or ViCAP.

  • This asked for information about the types of victims, witness descriptions...

  • Locations, the time between murders, staging of the crime scenes

  • Anything that could be characteristic to an individual killer.

  • All reports from across the country would be compared to each other.

  • Looking for patterns and similarities between cases.

  • ViCAP was pretty successful and is still used today.

  • Although it's changed a lot and has been plagued with issues technical and political.

  • Nevertheless, it taught us that combining resources and intelligence is vital to catching serial killers.

  • Organizations like Interpol now share data across multiple countries, widening the net even further.

  • Police aren't the only ones to change. So have we.

  • Hitchhiking has all but died out, people speak to strangers less.

  • And young women rarely walk alone in the woods anymore.

  • The thought of maybe being murdered by that guy behind you, has become increasingly common.

  • We take more precautions and less risks.

  • Yet ultimately, serial killing declined because technology, science...

  • And police procedure are catching murderers sooner.

  • Potential serial killers are being caught and imprisoned immediately after their first murder.

  • Or for a different crime, before they even have a chance to start killing.

  • And once they're in prison, they're more likely to stay there.

  • Prison sentences for violent crimes have gotten longer and parole has been reduced.

  • Dr. Mike Aamodt from the Serial Killer Database says...

  • "Not quite 20% of our serial killers were people who had killed, gone to prison...

  • Been released and killed again."

  • By the way, the Serial Killer Database is fantastic.

  • They have a report comparing IQ scores to killing methods. I'll link it with the sources below.

  • Since 1987, there's been a 85% reduction in the number of US serial killers.

  • There's still plenty around, between 20 and 30 are caught a year.

  • But when they are caught, they have a lot less victims.

  • If Ted Bundy was around today, he wouldn't have been able to kill so many women, and he wouldn't have gained the same notoriety.

  • To be a famous serial killer now, you've really got to push the boat out.

  • Your common old garden serial killer just doesn't make national headlines anymore.

  • There have been lots of key developments, evidence, and change of procedure

  • that you can directly point to, to explain the reduction in serial killing.

  • But the real mystery isn't "where did all the serial killers go?"

  • It's "where did they come from?"

  • A key difference between serial killing and your average homicide,

  • is that victims and their killers are usually strangers.

  • Serial killers often seek out areas where they're unlikely to know people.

  • Kevin Haggerty and Ariane Ellerbrok make a case for the 'Society of Strangers.'

  • The idea being that the 50s and 60s saw unprecedented migration to urban areas.

  • People went from growing up in small towns where everyone knew everybody,

  • to cities were the vast majority of the people they met were unknown.

  • This provided potential serial killers with a wide pool of victims,

  • while at the same time granting them anonymity.

  • Another theory is that serial killers just began copying each other.

  • The 60s also saw the popularization of TV news, true crime documentaries, books, and magazines.

  • Mass communication allowed stories about the latest murder to spread, gripping the nation like a TV soap.

  • By the time Ted Bundy appeared on the scene, a celebrity culture had grown around serial killing.

  • A young would-be serial killer may have found the potential glory and attention intoxicating.

  • In summary:

  • the 60s saw huge societal shifts that led to a monumental increase in serial murder,

  • and it took 40 years for science, technology, and police to catch up.

  • It would be arrogant to think we now have serial killing under control,

  • many countries around the world are still seeing continued growth.

  • The recent decline is a Western phenomenon.

  • There's no reason it couldn't increase again. After all, we're currently undergoing our own huge societal shifts.

  • More and more serial killers today find their victims online

  • and are able to be a lot more careful about their movements and meeting places.

  • The serial killer handbook is constantly changing, and we need to change with it.

  • In this video I said the word "sewial killer", "serial killer" 34 times, "murder" 13 and "rape" twice.

  • There's no way it isn't getting demonitised by YouTube.

  • So I would like to say a big thank you to Joe Chamberlain and all my supporters on Patreon,

  • who are the only reason I'm able to make videos like these.

  • If you want to support the channel, check out the link, and thank you for subscribing.

Ted Bundy, Dennis Rader, Harold Shipman, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ian Brady, Myra Hindley, Gary Ridgway...

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