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Ted Bundy, Dennis Rader, Harold Shipman, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ian Brady, Myra Hindley, Gary Ridgeway...
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John Wayne Gacy, and The Zodiac Killer, are probably the most iconic serial killers of the 20th century.
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But can you name a serial killer from the last 20 years?
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Unless you're a serial killing nerd, probably not.
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The 70s, 80s and 90s were the heydays of American serial killing.
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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.
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America has 4% of the world's population and 67% of the world's serial killers.
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Here's the yearly average for the number of operational serial killers in the US for each decade.
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It exploded in the 1970s, peaked in '87 and has been on a steady decline ever since.
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We rarely hear about modern-day serial killers.
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Either there's just a lot less around, they don't get reported on, or we've gotten really good at catching them.
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Technology has made us traceable.
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You try secretly eating 17 people today without using a credit card, phone, or the internet.
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All while avoiding CCTV. Jeffrey Dahmer had it easy.
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The ability to map a suspect's movements over the course of an investigation has radically changed policing, as has DNA profiling.
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California had a spree of unsolved crimes between 1974 and 1986.
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The police were looking for the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, the Diamond Knot Killer, and the original Night Stalker.
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But DNA breakthroughs in 2001 linked all 170 cases to the same man.
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Now dubbed The Golden State Killer.
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DNA allows police to connect unsolved crimes. Let's say they're investigating 5 murders.
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This is their search area. But if all the crime scenes are found to contain the same DNA...
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The killer is now likely to live somewhere in this smaller area.
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With a decent chance of them being fairly central.
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Connecting the crimes helps catch the murderer sooner, saving lives.
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The Golden State Killer remained unidentified for over 40 years.
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Eventually police created a fake profile on a genealogy website, uploading The Golden State Killer's DNA.
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They found a handful of third and fourth cousins, built up a family tree.
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And were able to narrow it down to just a few suspects.
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In April 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo was finally arrested.
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In connection with 13 murders, over 50 rapes, and 120 burglaries.
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The term serial killer only entered popular usage during the case of Ted Bundy.
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Between 1974 and 78 he murdered over 30 young women across 7 states.
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Multiple states had separate investigations, all looking for a man of similar description.
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With the same car, same victim profile, committing murders in the same way.
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These investigations didn't combine forces until after he was arrested.
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It was a hard lesson in the importance of communication.
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Departments of the FBI were set up to tackle these new types of murderers, using centralized databases.
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If police suspected a serial killer they would now submit...
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A Violent Criminal Apprehension Program Report, or ViCAP.
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This asked for information about the types of victims, witness descriptions...
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Locations, the time between murders, staging of the crime scenes —
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Anything that could be characteristic to an individual killer.
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All reports from across the country would be compared to each other.
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Looking for patterns and similarities between cases.
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ViCAP was pretty successful and is still used today.
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Although it's changed a lot and has been plagued with issues technical and political.
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Nevertheless, it taught us that combining resources and intelligence is vital to catching serial killers.
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Organizations like Interpol now share data across multiple countries, widening the net even further.
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Police aren't the only ones to change. So have we.
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Hitchhiking has all but died out, people speak to strangers less.
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And young women rarely walk alone in the woods anymore.
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The thought of maybe being murdered by that guy behind you, has become increasingly common.
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We take more precautions and less risks.
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Yet ultimately, serial killing declined because technology, science...
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And police procedure are catching murderers sooner.
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Potential serial killers are being caught and imprisoned immediately after their first murder.
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Or for a different crime, before they even have a chance to start killing.
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And once they're in prison, they're more likely to stay there.
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Prison sentences for violent crimes have gotten longer and parole has been reduced.
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Dr. Mike Aamodt from the Serial Killer Database says...
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"Not quite 20% of our serial killers were people who had killed, gone to prison...
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Been released and killed again."
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By the way, the Serial Killer Database is fantastic.
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They have a report comparing IQ scores to killing methods. I'll link it with the sources below.
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Since 1987, there's been a 85% reduction in the number of US serial killers.
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There's still plenty around, between 20 and 30 are caught a year.
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But when they are caught, they have a lot less victims.
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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.
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To be a famous serial killer now, you've really got to push the boat out.
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Your common old garden serial killer just doesn't make national headlines anymore.
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There have been lots of key developments, evidence, and change of procedure
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that you can directly point to, to explain the reduction in serial killing.
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But the real mystery isn't "where did all the serial killers go?"
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It's "where did they come from?"
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A key difference between serial killing and your average homicide,
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is that victims and their killers are usually strangers.
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Serial killers often seek out areas where they're unlikely to know people.
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Kevin Haggerty and Ariane Ellerbrok make a case for the 'Society of Strangers.'
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The idea being that the 50s and 60s saw unprecedented migration to urban areas.
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People went from growing up in small towns where everyone knew everybody,
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to cities were the vast majority of the people they met were unknown.
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This provided potential serial killers with a wide pool of victims,
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while at the same time granting them anonymity.
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Another theory is that serial killers just began copying each other.
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The 60s also saw the popularization of TV news, true crime documentaries, books, and magazines.
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Mass communication allowed stories about the latest murder to spread, gripping the nation like a TV soap.
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By the time Ted Bundy appeared on the scene, a celebrity culture had grown around serial killing.
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A young would-be serial killer may have found the potential glory and attention intoxicating.
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In summary:
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the 60s saw huge societal shifts that led to a monumental increase in serial murder,
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and it took 40 years for science, technology, and police to catch up.
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It would be arrogant to think we now have serial killing under control,
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many countries around the world are still seeing continued growth.
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The recent decline is a Western phenomenon.
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There's no reason it couldn't increase again. After all, we're currently undergoing our own huge societal shifts.
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More and more serial killers today find their victims online
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and are able to be a lot more careful about their movements and meeting places.
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The serial killer handbook is constantly changing, and we need to change with it.
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In this video I said the word "sewial killer", "serial killer" 34 times, "murder" 13 and "rape" twice.
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There's no way it isn't getting demonitised by YouTube.
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So I would like to say a big thank you to Joe Chamberlain and all my supporters on Patreon,
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who are the only reason I'm able to make videos like these.
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If you want to support the channel, check out the link, and thank you for subscribing.