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JAMESBJOHNSON
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What do you imagine the traits of uncaught serial killers are?
shereads
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I imagine they are the traits of caught serial killers, but with more variety in the wardrobe.
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JAMESBJOHNSON
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A true crime writer named Marilee Strong calls them ERASER KILLERS...they set the stage for police, etc. to destroy the evidence OR plant evidence to implicate others.
scheherazade_79
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And there'd be a touch of arrogance that they hadn't been caught.
jomar
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I'm reading a book where the killer for hire does things like let cigarettes burn down (he doesn't smoke) and drops ashes and food crumbs in rental cars so when he returns it they have to detail it, effectively cleaning it up for him and erasing his presence.
Daniellekitten
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Just remember the neighbor's comments when they get caught. He was so quiet, kept to himself. Not the kind I'd expect to be a killer.
Munachi
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no idea how true this is, but i once saw part of a tv show about serial killers in which it was claimed that they are often suicidal, and that (at least in countries with death penalty) getting caught and killed themselves, is part of the idea. must admit it sounded a bit far fetched to me though... i have no idea how serious that show was, i just found a part of it on youtube when actually searching for something else...
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JAMESBJOHNSON
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I've been looking at military assassins. I mean, theyre serial killers.
Comparing them to criminals, theyre disciplined, patient, and skilled at concealment. Theyre also emotionally stable, experience little or no anxiety, and are able to obsess about the target.
Organized crime likely uses the same sort of people for hits.
Comparing them to criminals, theyre disciplined, patient, and skilled at concealment. Theyre also emotionally stable, experience little or no anxiety, and are able to obsess about the target.
Organized crime likely uses the same sort of people for hits.
R. Richard
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The serial killer is, typically a person with deep emotional problems who's able to act and presetn a normal fron to the world.
The typical military assasin is a scab. They work for substandard wages, under substandard working conditions.
The hit man is a professional who does a job. The best are intelligent, skilled with the tools with which they work and emotionally uninvolved with the subject of their work.
Recidiva
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An uncaught serial killer is a smart chameleon.
I think the current public perception of all killers being insane is...dangerously inaccurate.
Wednesday Addams had it right with her Halloween costume:
"I'm a homicidal maniac, they look just like everyone else."
I think the current public perception of all killers being insane is...dangerously inaccurate.
Wednesday Addams had it right with her Halloween costume:
"I'm a homicidal maniac, they look just like everyone else."
dr_mabeuse
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I wonder if there is any "type". We'd like to believe that. We'd like to believe they're all alike in some way, as if they had something wrong with them that we could fix, like a particular screw loose or an extra Y chromosome or too much testosterone or something, and that would explain their abnormality.
But I wonder if there aren't as many types as there are serial killers, and that the only thing they have in common is that they're able to kill a bunch of people, one after another, each through their own method and rationale, as individual in their thinking as any human beings are.
Fact is, we don't know anything about uncaught serial killers at all, do we? But thinking about the ones who were caught after a long time, you think of people like the slick-talking Ted Bundy and the oafish John Wayne Gacy the birthday clown and it's hard to see anything they had in common.
But I wonder if there aren't as many types as there are serial killers, and that the only thing they have in common is that they're able to kill a bunch of people, one after another, each through their own method and rationale, as individual in their thinking as any human beings are.
Fact is, we don't know anything about uncaught serial killers at all, do we? But thinking about the ones who were caught after a long time, you think of people like the slick-talking Ted Bundy and the oafish John Wayne Gacy the birthday clown and it's hard to see anything they had in common.
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JAMESBJOHNSON
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Ten years ago I had 3 clients who were despicable sociopaths. They did nothing but strew chaos and despair wherever they went. And then they suddenly died. No one stabbed them or shot them, they just died.
I joked about it and said it was because I did the Noodle Dance. People believed me. And then they came around wanting me to do the Noodle Dance for some of their clients.
I joked about it and said it was because I did the Noodle Dance. People believed me. And then they came around wanting me to do the Noodle Dance for some of their clients.
xssve
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I'm not exactly what you mean here by traits - you mean how they act alone or socially? That depends a lot on the individual, just like anybody else - specifically motive, i.e., why they are serial killers. As in any criminal act, there are a number of activities they would be engaged in by necessity, to what degree and intensity depends largely on motive.
For some the act itself is the goal, and this type is either covering their tracks from the last incident or planning the next, again maybe both at the same time, and socially, this type will not be out to draw attention to themselves, they will seek to blend in and avoid drawing attention.
This type tends to like to relive previous incidents, I suspect they are often trophy takers or like to revisit the scene, and fantasizing about the last incident is part of the build up to the next, and they will also require privacy in order to gloat over their trophies.
The attention seekers will similarly, be doing one or the other or both: covering their tracks or planning the next operation, but they will tend to pay less attention to the former, i.e., concealment, since attention getting is the goal - they are probably less likely to dwell on previous kills, since the motive here is not as much the kill itself as baffling their opponents.
The big difference here is that the attention seekers are "breaking silence" - they are playing out the role in public, not just in private, i.e., communicating with the "opposition", leaving notes, etc.,
They both like to feel clever and the motive here is often that they feel unappreciated - the trophy takers however, revel in the control over their victims, whereas the players revel more in the game of hide and seek with their hunters. i.e., the reward can be either in the act itself, or in the resulting publicity, but most will lean more one way than the other.
The former are very good at covering their tracks, their weakness being the trophy taking - nobody really understood the scope of Dahmers madness until they saw his apartment, and while he enjoyed playing cat and mouse with the police, it seems to have been largely incidental rather than planned, trophy taking was clearly his primary obsession, same with Ed Gein.
In some cases, they may exhibit both traits, the BTK killer for example, and it may be that playing cat and mouse with the authorities simply adds to the psychological reward.
Naturally, the trophy takers will tend to be generally less socially facile, more solitary, whereas the thrill killers will generally be more glib and socially active, though again, this isn't hard and fast rule, Ted Bundy for example who fits the trophy taking profile better, even if he incidentally enjoyed the notoriety - they all like having others at their mercy and fooling people, it just depends on which satisfies their psychological needs better.
The third type is probably the hardest to catch, and that's the revenge killer: the motive is strictly vindication, and these types tend to prey on very low profile victims that resemble the object of their revenge, very often prostitutes.
There are fewer external motives for these, they don't seek attention and they don't need to take trophies, thus tend to leave fewer clues, they are usually only caught when enough bodies pile up through sheer process of elimination, because they tend to be creatures of habit rather than game players.
For some the act itself is the goal, and this type is either covering their tracks from the last incident or planning the next, again maybe both at the same time, and socially, this type will not be out to draw attention to themselves, they will seek to blend in and avoid drawing attention.
This type tends to like to relive previous incidents, I suspect they are often trophy takers or like to revisit the scene, and fantasizing about the last incident is part of the build up to the next, and they will also require privacy in order to gloat over their trophies.
The attention seekers will similarly, be doing one or the other or both: covering their tracks or planning the next operation, but they will tend to pay less attention to the former, i.e., concealment, since attention getting is the goal - they are probably less likely to dwell on previous kills, since the motive here is not as much the kill itself as baffling their opponents.
The big difference here is that the attention seekers are "breaking silence" - they are playing out the role in public, not just in private, i.e., communicating with the "opposition", leaving notes, etc.,
They both like to feel clever and the motive here is often that they feel unappreciated - the trophy takers however, revel in the control over their victims, whereas the players revel more in the game of hide and seek with their hunters. i.e., the reward can be either in the act itself, or in the resulting publicity, but most will lean more one way than the other.
The former are very good at covering their tracks, their weakness being the trophy taking - nobody really understood the scope of Dahmers madness until they saw his apartment, and while he enjoyed playing cat and mouse with the police, it seems to have been largely incidental rather than planned, trophy taking was clearly his primary obsession, same with Ed Gein.
In some cases, they may exhibit both traits, the BTK killer for example, and it may be that playing cat and mouse with the authorities simply adds to the psychological reward.
Naturally, the trophy takers will tend to be generally less socially facile, more solitary, whereas the thrill killers will generally be more glib and socially active, though again, this isn't hard and fast rule, Ted Bundy for example who fits the trophy taking profile better, even if he incidentally enjoyed the notoriety - they all like having others at their mercy and fooling people, it just depends on which satisfies their psychological needs better.
The third type is probably the hardest to catch, and that's the revenge killer: the motive is strictly vindication, and these types tend to prey on very low profile victims that resemble the object of their revenge, very often prostitutes.
There are fewer external motives for these, they don't seek attention and they don't need to take trophies, thus tend to leave fewer clues, they are usually only caught when enough bodies pile up through sheer process of elimination, because they tend to be creatures of habit rather than game players.
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Selena_Kitt
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xssve
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i.e., the hardest to catch would be either thrill or revenge killer who is socially and geographically mobile, who doesn't stay in one place long enough to establish a pattern, or have his/her trophy cache discovered if there is one.
Fortunately, as these people are mentally unstable, most tend to get sloppy eventually, Charles Sobhraj for example.
Ted Bundy also fits this profile, and appears to have gone through all three stages: he seems to have started as a revenge killer, turned into a thrill killer, and eventually into an attention seeker - and as in the case of Sobhraj, eventually became overconfident and sloppy through sheer arrogance.
Fortunately, as these people are mentally unstable, most tend to get sloppy eventually, Charles Sobhraj for example.
Ted Bundy also fits this profile, and appears to have gone through all three stages: he seems to have started as a revenge killer, turned into a thrill killer, and eventually into an attention seeker - and as in the case of Sobhraj, eventually became overconfident and sloppy through sheer arrogance.
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Corylea
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I'd guess that they're all sociopaths: people who have no empathy for others, who see other people as need satisfiers and not as human beings. Given the recent work on mirror neurons, I wonder if perhaps they're all deficient in mirror neurons.
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JAMESBJOHNSON
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XSSVE
Physical traits are things like eye color, hair color, height. Personality traits are things like anxiety, novelty seeking, aggression.
The FBI missed the boat with Dennis Rader and the DC sniper. I imagine theyre clueless about serial killers who avoid detection. So I'm thinking the serial killers who avoid detection have different traits than people like Bundy, Dahmer, and Gacy.
Physical traits are things like eye color, hair color, height. Personality traits are things like anxiety, novelty seeking, aggression.
The FBI missed the boat with Dennis Rader and the DC sniper. I imagine theyre clueless about serial killers who avoid detection. So I'm thinking the serial killers who avoid detection have different traits than people like Bundy, Dahmer, and Gacy.
xssve
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Then that trait would likely be that they don't fit a serial killer profile, i.e., a mafia hitman is technically a serial killer, but to him it may just be a job.
What sets a serial killer apart from a hitman is emotional involvement - that and the hitman has friends, a network who help facilitate his actions, intelligence gathering, logistics, infiltration and escape, etc.
Serial killers almost always work alone, or at most with one other person, usually someone they are in constant contact with.
Clearly, signal traits of serial killers are a lack of sympathy and and poor impulse control.
Revenge killers for example actively hate their victims, or whatever it is their victims represent, they attacks are swift and brutal, with minimal preparation, the bodies are often left where they lie with no attempt at concealment, i.e., they are simply discarded.
Thrill killers often make elaborate preparations, torture their victims, i.e., prolong the attack, transport of otherwise conceal the bodies, there is ongoing involvement with the victims, trophies, revisiting the bodies, etc. - they are by contrast, almost fond of their victims.
For the attention seeker, the victim is more of a means to an end, and their methods differ quite a bit, for example shooting which the other two types seldom do, it indicates a distance, a dispassion or contempt for the victim, it's very impersonal as opposed to stabbing or strangulation which are far more intimate, although the two can definitely overlap to greater or lesser degrees.
In any case, your best bet is to look at unsolved cases, and the only common factor here is that the killings stopped without anyone being arrested, which may only mean the killer him/herself died before they were caught.
Many of these unsolved cases resemble revenge or rage killings, Jack the Ripper, etc., i.e., notable enough in their sheer savagery that if the killer were simply moving around the pattern would still eventually be noticed.
To avoid detection indefinitely would require a level of impulse control that most serial killers clearly lack, he/she could never escalate, get in a rush, overhunt a given range, and take great pains to conceal any evidence, consistently, and without fail - i.e., and almost obsessive attention to to detail - dispassionate, and that is almost a contradiction since serial killing is all about passion and compulsion, they are impatient almost by definition.
Not to say that such people do not exist - I would be looking for a poisoner, an angel of mercy, etc. - some of these people do operate for year or decades without detection, often without even the suspicion that a serial killer is at work, and they're often discovered through sheer accident - it's much easier to get away with a crime if no one even knows a crime has been committed, but every crime increases the chances of getting caught by mere virtue of the law of averages.
Similar to pedophiles, they would tend to seek occupations that put them into contact with their victims, preferably a position of authority, facilitating both the crime and it's concealment, and I suspect part of the thrill is being in close, even daily contact with their victims for some extended period before killing them, combining the traits of both thrill killers and attention seekers, in this case the victims themselves serving as audience/opponent.
The Telltale Heart would be a good example of the sort of mindset I think, the madman derives much satisfaction from his ability to conceal his intentions from his intended victim.
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xssve
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^"What sets a serial killer apart from a hitman is emotional involvement - that and the hitman has friends, a network who help facilitate his actions, intelligence gathering, logistics, infiltration and escape, etc."
Second paragraph - which would apply to snipers and covert ops personnel as well, though I'm not sure about politicians, who tend to make the consummate mass murderers.
Technically, it's all murder, but we tend to reserve the title serial killer and mass murderer for those who operate unsanctioned outside of war zones, and prey gratuitously, primarily on non-combatants. Psychologically, the emotional involvement with the victim is what truly sets the serial killer apart from the professional.
If they are military, then it's atrocity or mass murder, certain NAZI's indulged in fairly well documented acts of gratuitous psychopathic torture and murder for nothing more than personal gratification - there is a line there somewhere between duty and depravity.
Objectification of the victim is a common trait among serial killers, and entire populations are objectified and systematically dehumanized in wartime to make it easier for our kids to kill them.
Certainly, it would not be difficult for a mass murderer to operate undetected in a war zone, assuming he was able to move about more or less freely.
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