The public has long had a morbid fascination with serial killers. Nearly 140 years ago, when Jack the Ripper’s brutal murder spree began in Whitehall, London, newspapers as far away as Chicago, Kansas, North Dakota and beyond covered the story in lurid detail. Widespread and insatiable interest in the crimes helped sell papers; readers wanted to make some sort of sense of it all.
As criminologist Scott Bonn, Ph.D. explains, the public was then (and remains) driven by empathy with the victims. The stories “scare the hell out of” people, he acknowledges. Learning more helps to assuage some of their fears. “I think there’s a psychological process going on,” he suggests. “Maybe even at a subconscious level, we think, ‘If I can just wrap my mind around it, maybe it won’t be so terrifying.’”
Bonn—author of Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World’s Most Savage Murderers—is currently touring the country, hosting a presentation that illuminates and entertains in equal measure. In his 90-minute talk, the celebrated expert discusses the factors that drive men (and, yes, women) to commit these savage murders, and he explores the ways that many avoid being apprehended. Notorious serial murderers like Dennis Rader (the “BTK Strangler”), David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) and Jeffrey Dahmer each had his own particular methods and signatures; Bonn explains how those and others were similar in some way, different in others.
In his former career, Bonn was an advertising and programming executive at NBC, so he brings to his criminology work a keen understanding of pop culture trends. Bonn points to the enduring popularity of shows like 48 Hours, Dateline and any number of programs on the Investigation Discovery and Oxygen networks. “They’re little morality plays,” he explains. A woman is abducted, and the unthinkable has happened. “But by the end of the hour, the perpetrator is apprehended and sent away. Truth and justice prevail.”
Real life isn’t always quite that tidy. As Bonn explains, criminal science has grouped serial killers into a taxonomy. One type is the organized serial killer. Bonn describes that type as “the meticulous, highly organized individual who targets an individual, follows them, and comes up with a plan including contingencies and escape routes.” He says that such murderers are “very careful about how they abduct and kill, and how they dispose of the body.” They often don’t make mistakes, and that makes them difficult to catch and stop.
Another type is slippery as well, but for very different reasons. “The disorganized killer is a blitz murderer,” Bonn explains. “They find someone seemingly at random, attack and kill them like a wild animal, and just leave them lying there.” By their very unpredictable nature, they, too, are a challenge to identify and apprehend.
There are several other types, each fascinating in its own can’t-look-away way; Bonn profiles each of those during his talk. He also debunks a number of widely held myths. One of those is that the serial killer is a relatively modern phenomenon. “They go back at least as far as recorded history,” he asserts. “The thing is, until the 1970s, we weren’t very good at understanding them.” Modern criminal science has done a good job of connecting the dots, establishing commonalities among seemingly unconnected murders. “If you don’t link the crime scenes,” Bonn says, “you don’t even know you have a serial killer.”
Bonn refers to the ’70s as “the heyday of serial killers,” but not for the reasons one might imagine. Thanks to the FBI’s launching of its Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia—popularized in TV series like Netflix’s Mindhunter—the authorities simply got better at identifying the killers. “There were 650 serial killers identified in the 1970s,” Bonn says. The number went up to around 800 or more in the ’80s. “But by the 1990s,” he says, “the numbers began to decline. And they declined because society got much better at understanding, identifying and apprehending these individuals.”
The news gets better. Bonn says that at the halfway point in the current decade, “only about three dozen” serial killers have been identified in the U.S. He believes the numbers have improved because first-time murderers with the internal drive to become serial killers are often being apprehended after their first killing. “So they don’t even achieve serial killer status,” he says.
The second half of the “Serial Killers with Dr. Scott Bonn” presentation opens the floor for questions. Bonn says that certain queries come up again and again. For example, “What’s the likelihood that there’s a serial killer in the audience this evening?” But occasionally he gets a left-field one. “My girlfriend brought me here tonight,” one man told him recently, adding, “Should I be concerned?”
Bonn says that in his conversations with Dennis “BTK” Rader, the serial killer likened himself to a great white shark. Bonn says that metaphor is apt for serial killers in general, not only because both are thought of as cold killing machines, but because of the similarly infinitesimal odds of falling prey to them. “The likelihood of any one of us becoming a victim of either one is more than 100 million to one,” he says.
That statistic may offer some solace when turning out the lights tonight before going to bed. But remember: they never did catch Jack the Ripper.
Dr. Scott Bonn speaks at 8pm on Sat., March 1 at the Heritage Theatre, 1 W Campbell Ave, Campbell. Tickets: $45–$55.
