Before all of the technological convenience of surveillance, it was much easier to get away with murder. There was a “golden era” of serial killing that coincided with post-war bloodlust and paranoia and seems to have tapered off around the time when cell phones rolled out to the masses. DNA science was either nonexistent or in its infancy, and your average human wasn’t pinging nearby cell towers throughout the day. Capitalism’s daily grind continued to shove desperate human beings into dark alleys and onto dirty streets and predators hunted them down one by one. They looked like normal, “friendly” men while the police were looking for monsters.
Of 2,604 identified serial killers in the United States during the twentieth century, an astonishing 89.5 percent (2,331) made their appearance between 1950 to 1999, with 88 percent of those appearing in just the three decades from 1970 to 1999—the ‘epidemic’ peak years.
Peter Vronsky, American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years 1950 to 2000, 2021
Murder: No Apparent Motive is a 1984 documentary about the proliferation of serial killers in post-war America, and the FBI Behavioral Sciences Profilers who were trying to develop methods to catch them. It’s fascinating and chilling to hear the FBI’s assessment of the Green River Killer, knowing Gary Ridgeway wouldn’t be caught for another 17 years. Step back in time to the heyday of serial killers below…
