Name: 犯罪学者だけど「殺人事件」について質問ある？ | Tech Support | WIRED Japan
Uploaded: 2025-03-12T08:45:54.000Z
Duration: 19 min 9 s
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I'm a criminologist and former investigator.

Let's answer some questions from the internet.

This is True Crime Support. ["True Crime Support"] At Becoming Jill asks, isn't the spouse always the first suspect?

When it comes to women being murdered, yes. 35 to 50% of them are murdered by either a current spouse or partner or a former spouse or partner.

So if you can rule out things like a robbery gone bad, a drug deal gone bad, a fight that escalated, gang violence, if you can rule all those things out, definitely your next most likely suspect is going to be the spouse.

At Joji Shi asks, did you know that 1% of cold cases are solved?

Our current clearance rate for murder in this country is only about 50%.

If you commit a murder, it's kind of flip of the coin whether or not you get arrested for it.

I think it has to do with we've seen such an increase in homicide the last few years.

And with that, we've had a decrease just in the number of police officers we have.

It's a lot more than 1% of cases that are unsolved.

At Brother Grimbo asks, did Jack the Ripper exist or was Victorian England just kind of stabby?

Jack the Ripper did exist, committed a series of really violent, gruesome murders.

So as an example, just to show what it was like during that period of time, this is a news report from 1888.

I think it really shows that Victorian England was a rather stabby place during this period of time.

There's actually another serial killer who was operating at the time named Thomas Cream.

He was convicted of poisoning nine or 10 people during the exact same period of time.

During his execution, his final words are rumored to be, I am Jack, dot, dot, dot.

Although he was actually in prison at the time of some of the murders, so it really couldn't have been him.

And we still don't know exactly who Jack the Ripper is.

At MSL Simpson asks, my sister just sent me a message to say that she listened to a podcast and is going off to try to solve a murder.

Yes, this is a thing where individuals listen to podcasts and they think I can solve this.

The January 6th riots, a lot of the individuals who ended up being criminally charged were identified by citizen sleuths on social media, trying to identify them.

In the case of the Gabby Petito murder, who was killed by Brian Laundrie, her fiance, she was missing for a long period of time.

It was really a group of young people on TikTok that started uploading videos of the park where she went missing, the van was spotted, and they were really able to locate her body and isolate where she was located.

However, if you talk to most police officers, they will say they do not like this movement of citizen sleuths, that oftentimes they can go down rabbit holes and end up accusing people who are truly innocent, and that can really destroy lives.

Atnermanman46302 asks, why do serial killers kill?

Generally, we can say there's three big categories, one being power and control.

I think one example of a power and control serial killer might be somebody like the Zodiac killer, who was attacking primarily young couples.

It was really about murdering people who were kind of in the prime of their life.

One is a sexual motivation, sexual fantasy.

The sexual fantasy category is often people who are sexually aroused by violence or sexually aroused by having sex with bodies after they've killed them.

One example of somebody motivated by sexual fantasy would be Ted Bundy.

The third category would be a serial killer motivated by hallucinations.

Good example of that would be like the Son of Sam killer, who was motivated by delusions.

There has been some studies of mostly murderer's brains.

We do see some differences, particularly in an area called the amygdala, which is a part of the brain that controls things like fear and aggression.

It's the brain that causes the behavior or the behavior that causes changes in the brain, but there does seem to be something there in some of these early studies.

At Codesmithio asks, why have murders increased during the COVID-19 pandemic?

We saw a massive spike in homicide during COVID-19, the biggest year-on-year increase in homicide we've ever seen since we started tracking this.

It was about a third increase or a 30% jump.

Other forms of crime went down, but homicide specifically spiked.

Could be because people weren't working, there was financial strain, there was stress.

There's also this thing that happened where George Floyd was murdered.

A lot of cities started pulling back their policing.

That's sometimes referred to as de-policing.

So it's really hard to pull apart which of these factors was the main driver.

At Lee Perez Ray asks, is hashtag America the best at murder in the whole world?

We are a standout when it comes to murder.

If you look at other countries similar to ours, so places in Europe, Canada, Australia, most countries are under one homicide per 100,000 residents.

There are other countries per capita in Latin America who do have a higher rate than us.

But when it comes to sort of similarly developed countries, America really stands out.

At Trisha McEwen 13 asks, could a psychopath grow through life without giving any sign or will there always be something that is a giveaway?

Yes, you can go through life and not know that someone is a psychopath.

You see high rates of psychopathy in industries like the entertainment industry, law enforcement, law, politics.

Being a serial killer, being violent, committing crime is actually not one of the symptoms.

It's what we tend to think of when we think of psychopaths.

There really isn't anything like killing animals or setting fires that's gonna be a tell.

If I was gonna name one thing that might be a giveaway, it would be trouble reading other people's emotions and maybe mimicking back emotions without really feeling those emotions.

At Thacker Yardy says, okay, can someone please tell me the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath, please?

Sociopath is a word that was used more in the 80s.

It's used maybe by the media and in pop culture.

But as the criminology field, we've really moved towards psychopathy being the thing that we look for, that we can define clinically, that we know how to test for.

And so the field had just gone more in the direction of using psychopath as opposed to sociopath.

At David75983862 asks, so since the early 90s, why have gun murder rate gone down while the number of guns has significantly increased?

Our murder rate in the 90s was extremely high.

Then we did see a big dip in the 2000, 2010.

So it was sort of high in the 90s, it went down.

And then the last five years, and particularly last two years, we've really seen it spark back up again.

During that period of time, gun ownership increased in this country over time, particularly the last couple of years.

So we now have more guns than people in this country.

About 120 Americans are killed by guns every day.

That would include homicides, suicides, accidents, police shootings, but about 120 people total.

At The Flying Nipple asks, terrifying, I wonder how many unexplained missing persons there are?

It's about half a million people a year go missing.

That is down from maybe a million a year back in the 90s, but estimates are about 90% of them are found.

Most of them are young people running away from home, but 10% of that half million missing still leaves 50,000 people who are missing and unaccounted for every year.

CC Joe One asks, real question, what percentage of mass shooters are male?

The answer is 98% of mass shooters are male.

At Truth or Dare asks, my question about these mass shooters is this.

Whether it's an elementary, middle, or high school, what attracts you to kill children?

About 91, 92% of them are actually students at that school.

So this is people targeting their own school, or they might be former students, but most likely their current students.

My own research shows that these perpetrators come from homes with lots of violence and abuse.

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犯罪学者だけど「殺人事件」について質問ある？ | Tech Support | WIRED Japan

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