Word: serializing
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Birnes and Norris have divided the serial-killer life into seven phases of activity, a repeating cycle that begins with desire and ends with morose feelings -- aura, trolling, wooing, capture, murder, totem and depression. They kill to satisfy some inner psychological and sexual pressure, and they favor such killing methods as hanging, strangling or stabbing, which put them in intimate contact with their victim. "The only time serial murderers have control is when they kill," says Birnes. "That's why they keep totems." For instance: the body parts Dahmer put in his refrigerator, the victims' jewelry that Rifkin kept...
Bookstores are swamped with books on killers, from encyclopedias and scholarly treatises to true-crime accounts and the just published A Father's Story by Jeffrey's dad Lionel Dahmer. A documentary featuring hitchhiker Aileen Wuornos, who has been billed catchily if incorrectly as America's first female serial killer for her murder of seven men, is playing theaters. There is also an unsavory but frenetic market in serial-killer collectibles. Fans are swapping trading cards of their favorite murderers. Dahmer T shirts are big sellers at heavy-metal concerts, and a comic book celebrating his exploits...
...many Americans, these modern-day ogres offer a perverse thrill. "Serial killers are the werewolves of the modern age," declares Hart Fisher of Champaign, Illinois, who published the Dahmer comic. "By day they walk around unassuming, then boom! By night they turn into monsters. People want to know why." The most fascinated seem to be the most nonviolent people of all, "the kind who would find a spider in the bathroom and take it outside with a tissue," says crime writer Ann Rule, who turned her experience on a suicide- prevention hotline alongside fellow volunteer -- and serial killer -- Ted Bundy...
...trial this month for the death of 17 young women, is just a garden-variety killer. The man- eating Dahmer is the pick of the crop. "People are getting very morbidly involved in violence, especially violent sexual behavior," says criminologist Robert Ressler, who says he first coined the term serial killer 20 years ago when he worked in the FBI's behavioral-research branch. Americans now wallow in the horror and gore and take a guilty delight in killers' eluding capture. (Indeed, it is a chilling emulation of Gacy's reaction to the film Silence of the Lambs: "When...
Some experts believe the number of serial killers is rising. "Going back to 1960, you had about 10,000 homicides a year in the U.S., and most of these were solved and very few of them represented multiple or serial killers," notes Ressler, now a forensic consultant in Spotsylvania, Virginia. "Today we're running 25,000 homicides a year, and a significant number of those homicides are going unsolved. We're seeing a great increase in stranger killing and in many of these cases, the victims are falling to serial and multiple killers." Still, the notoriety these killers enjoy...