ANDREI CHIKATILO THE SERIAL KILLER

Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo (October 16, 1936 - February 14, 1994) was a Russian serial killer, nicknamed the Rostov Ripper. He was convicted of the murder of 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990.

Early life of Andrei Chikatilo

Chikatilo was born in the village of Yablochnoye in 1936. His childhood was quite traumatic, particularly as the USSR was soon at war with Germany and Stalin's plans of agricultural collectivisation had recently caused a devastating famine. Chikatilo later heard rumours that he had an older brother who died in the famine and whose corpse had been cannibalised by starving neighbors. Although it is not known if this story was true, there certainly were some alleged instances of cannibalism during the famine. In World War II, Chikatilo witnessed some of the devastating and horrific effects of German bombing raids. Chikatilo had many fantasies of leading German captives into the woods and executing them, a fantasy that - although common of Soviet children at the time - had parallels with his murders.

With his father at war, the young Chikatilo had to share a bed with his mother. He frequently wet the bed, for which his mother brutally beat and humiliated him. He did well at school, but failed the entrance exam for Moscow State University. After finishing national service in 1960, he moved to Rodionovo-Nesvetayevsky and worked as a telephone engineer. Chikatilo's only sexual experience in adolescence was when, aged 15, he leapt on a young girl and wrestled her to the ground, ejaculating as the girl struggled in his grasp. This incident helped to foster in him a lifelong association between sex and violent aggression.

Chikatilo married in 1963, the marriage virtually arranged by his younger sister, who set him up with one of her friends when she took pity on her brother's inability to obtain a girlfriend. Although he suffered from impotence and had a barely existent sex life, Chikatilo did father a son and daughter. It is said that he fathered the children by ejaculating and inserting the semen into his wife's vagina manually. In 1971, he completed a degree in Russian literature by a correspondence course and tried a career as a teacher in Novoshakhtinsk. He was a poor teacher, unable to command any respect from his pupils, but he remained in that profession, moving from school to school as complaints of indecent assaults dogged him. He eventually took a job as a clerk for a factory, and he used the many business trips around the Soviet Union to carry out his crimes.

Murder Spree of Andrei Chikatilo

In 1978, Chikatilo moved to Shakhty and committed his first documented murder. On December 22, he lured a nine-year-old girl to an old shed and attempted to rape her. When the girl struggled, he stabbed her to death. He ejaculated in the process of knifing the child, and from then on he was only able to achieve sexual arousal and orgasm through stabbing and slashing women and children to death. Despite evidence linking Chikatilo to this first killing, a young man, Alexsandr Kravchenko, was arrested and later tried and executed for the crime. Chikatilo lost his teaching job in 1981 and became a clerk at a local firm.

He did not murder again until 1982, but in that year he killed seven times. He established a pattern of approaching runaways and young vagrants at bus or railway stations and enticing them to leave. A quick trip into a nearby forest was the scene for the victim's death. In 1983, he did not kill until June, but then he murdered four victims before September. The victims were all women and children. The adult females were often prostitutes or homeless tramps who could be lured with promises of alcohol or money. Chikatilo would usually attempt (consensual) intercourse with these victims, but would usually be unable to get an erection, which would send him into a murderous fury, especially if the woman mocked his inability to perform. He would achieve orgasm only when he stabbed the victim to death. The child victims were of both sexes, and Chikatilo would lure them away with his friendly, talkative manner by promising them toys or candy. In the USSR at the time, reports of crimes like child rape and serial murder were often suppressed by the state-controlled media, as such crimes were regarded as being common only in "hedonistic capitalist nations." Consequently, with little knowledge of the growing body count, parents did not know to warn their children to be wary of strangers. As news of the savage killings leaked out during the 1980s, albeit with little official information about the details, wild rumours spread through the communities in Ukraine, such as the idea that foreigners were killing Soviet boys in preparation for an invasion, and even talk of werewolves.

Six bodies (out of 14) had been uncovered. This brought a response from the Moscow police. A team headed by Major Mikhail Fetisov was sent to Rostov-on-Don to direct the investigation. Fetisov centred the investigations around Shakhty and assigned a specialist forensic analyst, Victor Burakov, to head the investigation in that area. The investigation concentrated on the mentally ill and known sex offenders, slowly working through all that were known and eliminating them from the inquiry. A number of young men confessed to the murders, although they were usually mentally handicapped youths who had admitted to the crimes only under prolonged and often brutal interrogation. At least one suspect hanged himself in his cell while under arrest.

When boys began to make up a majority of the later victims, a frequent (and ineffective) ploy was to round up and interrogate homosexuals, the gay community being particularly clandestine in the USSR, where sodomy was illegal at the time. The police spread their search wider and wider. Over 150,000 people were interviewed and filed before this approach was abandoned. In 1984, another 15 murders took place. The police took to additional patrols and posted plainclothesmen at many public transport stops.

First arrest of Andrei Chikatilo

Chikatilo was identified behaving suspiciously at a Rostov bus station. He was arrested and held. It was found he was under suspicion for other crimes, which gave the investigators the legal right to hold him indefinitely. Chikatilo's dubious background was uncovered but provided insufficient evidence to convict him of the murders. He was found guilty on other matters and sentenced to one year in prison. He was freed in December 1984 after serving three months.

It was later revealed that Chikatilo had been originally ruled out as a suspect in the murders because his blood type was tested as different from semen samples left by the killer. The forensic scientists later claimed that Chikatilo must be a unique individual whose blood type differed between a blood sample and a semen sample. No other scientists at that time took this theory seriously and it was generally regarded that the samples had been mixed up or the tests simply botched.

Unfortunately, this theory of non-secretors proved true some time later after his final arrest when it was found out that "a secretor status refers to blood protein antigen/antibody markers, which were used in the "classical" serological methods of blood identification in the days before the advent of DNA analysis. "Secretors" secrete these bloodmarkers into their other body fluids (saliva, tears, sweat, milk, etc.) while "non-secretors" do not. Therefore, the blood type of a "secretor" can be determined by testing body fluids other than blood, but would need actual blood to confirm the blood type of a non-secretor. About 80% of the population are secretors, and about 20% are non-secretors. Secretor status is of rapidly diminishing relevance today. Few labs (in the USA at least) do antigen/antibody analysis anymore, because DNA methods are so much more definitive. Secretor status is irrelevant in DNA analysis."

As reported contemporaneously, the Soviet authorities involved were ignored and dis-assessed as to the theory of differing blood versus seminal fluid typing; and when later caught, tried, and convicted, these tests were not in fact done, as sufficient alternative evidence was regarded as complete, testing being expensive for these or DNA sequencing as of that date. Sadly, no biological samples were taken or kept.

Chikatilo found new work in Novocherkassk and kept a low profile. He did not kill again until August 1985, when he murdered two women in separate incidents. He is not known to have killed again until May 1987 when, on a business trip to Revda in Ukraine, he killed a young boy. He killed again in Zaporozhye in July and in Leningrad in September.

The moribund police investigation was revived in mid-1985 when Issa Kostoyev was appointed to take over the case. The known murders around Rostov were carefully re-investigated and there was another round of questioning of known sex offenders. In December 1985, the police renewed the patrolling of railway stations around Rostov. Chikatilo followed the investigation carefully, and for over two years he kept his desires under control. The police also took the step of consulting a psychiatrist, the first such consultation in a serial killer investigation in that country.

In 1988 Chikatilo resumed killing, generally keeping his activities far from the Rostov area. He murdered a woman in Krasny-Sulin in April and went on to kill another eight people that year, including two victims in Shakhty. Again there was a long lapse before Chikatilo resumed killing, murdering seven boys and two women between January and November of 1990.

Capture and trial of Andrei Chikatilo

The discovery of one of the bodies near Leskhoz station led to increased police patrols. On November 6 Chikatilo killed and mutilated Sveta Korostik. He was stopped by police returning from the woodland scene of the crime but allowed to go. However, a report on this suspicious encounter returned Chikatilo's name to the investigation. On November 20, 1990, after police again observed his suspicious behaviour, he was arrested and interrogated. Between November 30 and December 5, Chikatilo confessed to and described 56 murders. Three of the victims had been buried and could not be found or identified, so Chikatilo was not charged with these crimes. The number of crimes Chikatilo confessed to shocked the police, who had listed only 36 killings in their investigation. A number of victims had not been linked to others because they were murdered far from Chikatilo's other hunting grounds, whilst others were not linked because they were buried and not found until Chikatilo led the police to their shallow graves.

He went to trial on April 14, 1992. Despite his odd and disruptive behaviour in court, where he was famously kept in a cage in the center of the courtroom, he was judged fit to stand trial. The trial ended in July and sentencing was postponed until October 15 when he was found guilty of 52 of the 53 murders and sentenced to death for each offence. Chikatilo defended himself by pointing to his childhood experiences in the notorious famine which took place in Ukraine in the 1930s. (However, it should be noted that Chikatilo's birth in 1936 occurred after the Ukrainian famine, which occurred in 1932-1933.)

He was executed by shooting to the back of the head on February 14, 1994.

Andrei Chikatilo in popular culture

• The childhood story of Andrei Chikatilo bears striking similarities with that of Hannibal Lecter from the Thomas Harris novels, in that both experience a sibling being cannibalised during a famine.

• The events served as a loose inspiration for an episode of CSI:Crime Scene Investigation, where a serial rapist/killer initially is set free because his blood didn't match his semen.

• A movie, Citizen X, was made in 1995 about the investigation of the "Rostov Ripper" (as Chikatilo was nicknamed in the press) murders. It starred Jeffrey DeMunn as Chikatilo, with Stephen Rea as Viktor Burakov and Donald Sutherland as Mikhail Fetisov. The film followed the true story very closely, but came under scrutiny in Russia, where the portrayal of the Russian police as arrogant and incompetent proved to be more than a little controversial.

• The 2004 film Evilenko (starring Malcolm McDowell and Marton Csokas) was loosely based on Chikatilo's murder spree.

• The 2004 song Ripper von Rostow by German Black Metal band Eisregen describes Chikatilo's murder of Sveta Korostik.

ALLAN LEGERE THE SERIAL KILLER

Allan Legere (1948 - ) is a Canadian serial killer, also known as the Monster of the Miramichi (not "of Miramichi": at the time this nickname was first applied to him, the City of Miramichi proper did not exist, and so it referred to the region along the Miramichi River).

He escaped custody in April of 1989 (while serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of a shopkeeper, John Glendenning) and remained free for seven months. During this time he committed four more murders, arson and multiple rapes, before he was recaptured. Rewards of $50,000 were collected for his capture.

His trial featured one of the first Canadian uses of DNA fingerprinting during which his lawyers argued that the relatively shallow gene pool of the Miramichi region could easily lead to false positives.

Legere was convicted for a second time in 1991, and is currently one of only 90 prisoners held in Canada's maximum security Special Handling Unit(SHU).

ALBERT FISH THE SERIAL KILLER

Albert Hamilton Fish (May 19, 1870 - January 16, 1936) was an American serial killer and cannibal. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria and the Brooklyn Vampire.

Early Life and Crimes

He was born in Washington, District of Columbia as Hamilton Fish, to Randall Fish (1795-1875) of Kennebec, Maine and his wife, Ellen (1838-?), of Ireland. His father was 43 years older than his mother. Albert Fish later stated that his family had an extensive history of mental illness. He was the youngest of four, accompanying siblings Walter, Annie and Edwin. Randall Fish died in 1875 in Washington D.C. Albert claimed much later that his mother, unable to care for him, put him into an orphanage where he was ruthlessly whipped and beaten. He said that he was the only child who looked forward to the beatings. By 1890, Albert had arrived in New York City as a house painter. In 1898, he was married to Anna, nine years his junior, with whom he had six children: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John and Henry. He also, bigamously, married on February 6, 1930 at Waterloo, New York to "Mrs. Estella Wilcox" and divorced after one week. Fish had been arrested in May 1930 for "sending an obscene letter to an Negro woman who answered an advertisement for a maid." He had been sent to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in 1930 and 1931 for observation, following his arrests.

Fish, a painter, claimed to have drifted across the United States, murdering at least one person in each of the twenty-three states he had visited as well as various other victims along the way, although this claim is not supported by any of the known documents on his life. Doctors examining him for his later trial claimed that he was a sadomasochist, indulging in self-mutilation, driving needles into his body, mostly around his genitals. He said he tried sticking a needle in his scrotum but it was too painful, and there were needles in his pelvis that were permanently embedded. He would stuff cotton balls soaked with lighter fluid into his rectum and set fire to them. He is said to have consumed not only the flesh of his victims but also their urine, blood, and excrement. He attributed these tendencies to the abuse he suffered in childhood. He also claimed God sent him on "missions" to kill. His murders often involved slow torture. He would tie children up and whip them with a belt cut in half with nails sticking through to tenderize the flesh for cooking. Fish called his weapons "implements of hell." The term boogeyman was at the time in reference to him.

Grace Budd

On May 28, 1928, Fish, then 58 years old, visited the Budd family in Manhattan, New York City. He was responding to a work wanted ad placed by 18-year-old Edward Budd. At the Budd's apartment, Fish met Edward's younger sister, ten-year-old Grace. Fish promised to hire Edward and send for him in a few days, and in the meantime he convinced Mr. and Mrs. Budd to let Grace accompany him to a party that evening at his home. Fish left with Grace Budd that day, but never came back.

The letter from Albert Fish

In November of 1934, an anonymous letter was sent to the girl's parents which led the police to Albert Fish. The letter is reprinted here, with all of Fish's misspellings and grammatical errors:

Dear Mrs. Budd. In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt. John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1-3 per pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak-chops-or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl's behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys, one 7 and one 11. Took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them-tortured them-to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 year old boy, because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except the head-bones and guts. He was roasted in the oven (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried and stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 St. near-right side. He told me so often how good human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday June the 3, 1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese-strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How she did kick-bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her though I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.

Trial of Albert Fish

At his trial, which opened on March 11, 1935, Fish pleaded insanity. He claimed to have heard voices from God telling him to kill children. Several psychiatrists took the stand to talk of Fish's many sexual fetishes, including coprophilia, urophilia, pedophilia and masochism, but there was disagreement as to whether these activities necessarily meant someone was insane. The defense's chief expert witness was Frederic Wertham, a psychiatrist with a focus on child development who conducted psychiatric examinations for the New York criminal courts; Wertham stated flatly that Fish was insane. The trial lasted for ten days. The jury found him to be sane and guilty, and the judge ordered the death sentence.

Execution of Albert Fish

Fish was executed on January 16, 1936, in the electric chair at Sing Sing. It is believed by some that he spoke of the prospect of electrocution as the "supreme thrill" and even helped the executioners fasten the straps that held his body in place. A Daily News reporter who covered the trial wrote that Fish's "watery eyes gleamed at the thought of being burned by a heat more intense than the flames with which he often seared his flesh to gratify his lust," though others thought that Fish did not want to die.

His last words are said to have been "I don't know why I'm here". It was reported that the first jolt of electricity did not kill him, and that a second jolt was needed. A few wrote, facetiously, that the twenty-nine needles Fish had inserted into his body over the years, including his scrotal area, had caused a short circuit, causing him to remark, "Is that all you've got?" However, this is generally considered to be erroneous, as guards insist that the first jolt did indeed kill him and that all executed prisoners receive a second jolt as a precaution.

He was buried in Sing-Sing Prison Cemetery.

Paraphilias

Paraphilia - which literally means "abnormal love" - is the technical term for sexual deviation. According to the psychiatric experts who examined him, Albert Fish had spent his life indulging in every known form of paraphilia, plus a few aberrations that were unknown at the time. For example, he would insert a long-stemmed rose into his penis and look at himself in the mirror, then he would remove the rose and eat it. His other sexual deviations included sadism and masochism, flagellation, exhibitionism, voyeurism, piquerism, pedophilia, coprophagia, fetishism, urolagnia, and cannibalism.

Legacy of Albert Fish

• Fish's crimes are recounted in Harold Schecter's Deranged and The Serial Killer Files.
• He is mentioned in Stephen King and Peter Straub's novel Black House, and some of his letters are quoted.
• Marilyn Manson drummer Ginger Fish's stage name was derived in part from Albert Fish.
• The Weasels (who have recorded a series of songs over the past two decades about various notorious killers) memorialized Fish in their song titled "A Fish."
• 'Murder metal' band Macabre have written three songs about him, namely "Albert was Worse than any Fish in the Sea", "Mr. Albert Fish Was Children Your Favorite Dish" and "Fishtales".
• The Blood Duster song Albert is a reference to Albert Fish.
• Grind band Dahmer have written a song about him, "Albert Hamilton Fish".
• House of 1000 Corpses references Fish during the murder ride scene.
• The lyrics for the song "Document. Grace Budd" by The Number Twelve Looks Like You are the last lines from the letter to Grace Budd's parents.

ALBERT DESALVO THE SERIAL KILLER

Albert Henry DeSalvo (November 3, 1931 - November 25, 1973) was a serial killer active in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, in the early 1960s. Dubbed the Boston Strangler, DeSalvo confessed to the murders of thirteen women in the Boston area.

Biography of Albert DeSalvo

In November of 1943 at age twelve, DeSalvo was arrested for assault, battery and robbery. In December of the same year he was sent to the Lyman School for Boys. On October 1944, he was paroled and started work as a delivery boy. In August 1946, he returned to the Lyman School for stealing an automobile. After completing his second sentence, DeSalvo joined the U.S. Armed forces upon his parole. He was honorably discharged after his first tour of duty. He reenlisted and, in spite of being tried in a Court-martial, DeSalvo was honorably discharged.

Between June 14, 1962, and January 4, 1964, thirteen single women (between the ages of 19 and 85) were murdered in the Boston area. All thirteen women were sexually assaulted in their apartments, then strangled with articles of clothing. Without any sign of forced entry into their dwellings, the women were assumed to either know their assailant or voluntarily allowed him into their homes.

While the police were not convinced that all of these murders were the work of a single individual, much of the public believed so. Despite police efforts to solve the case, it was DeSalvo who caused his own capture.

On October 27, 1964, a stranger entered a young woman's home posing as a detective. He tied his victim to her bed, proceeded to sexually assault her, and suddenly left, saying "I'm sorry" as he went. The woman's description led police to identify the assailant as DeSalvo and when his photo was published, many women identified him as the man who had assaulted them. Earlier on October 27, DeSalvo had posed as a motorist with car trouble and attempted to enter a home in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The homeowner, future Brockton police chief Richard Sproles, became suspicious, and eventually fired a shotgun at DeSalvo.

DeSalvo was not initially suspected of being involved with the stranglings. It was only after he was charged with rape that he gave a detailed confession of his activities as the Boston Strangler. He initially confessed to a fellow inmate George Nassar who reported to his attorney F Lee Bailey who took on Desalvo's case.The police were impressed at the accuracy of Desalvo's descriptions of the crime scenes. Though there were some inconsistencies, Desalvo was able to cite details which had not been made public. However, there was no physical evidence to substantiate his confession. As such, he stood trial for earlier, unrelated crimes of robbery and sexual offences. Bailey brought up the confession to the stranglings as part of his client's history at the trial in order to assist in gaining a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' verdict to the sexual offences but it was ruled as inadmissable by the judge.

DeSalvo was sentenced to life in prison in 1967. In February of that year he escaped with two fellow inmates from Bridgewater State Hospital triggering a full scale manhunt. A note was found on his bunk addressed to the superintendent. In it Desalvo stated that he had escaped to focus attention on the conditions in the hospital and his own situation. The next day he gave himself up. Following the escape he was transferred to the maximum security Walpole state Prison where he was found murdered six years later in the infirmary. The killer or killers were never identified.

Doubts about Albert DeSalvo

Lingering doubts remain as to whether DeSalvo was indeed the Boston Strangler. At the time that he confessed, people who knew him personally did not believe him capable of the vicious crimes. It was also noted that the women killed by "The Strangler" came from different age and ethnic groups, and that there were different modi operandi. Former FBI profiler Robert Ressler noted "You're putting together so many different patterns [regarding the Boston Strangler murders] that its inconceivable behaviorally that all these could fit one individual."

In the case of Mary Sullivan, murdered January 4, 1964 at age 19, DNA and other forensic evidence gathered nearly 40 years later by her nephew Casey Sherman and published in his book A Rose for Mary (2003) suggested that DeSalvo was not responsible for her death. For example, DeSalvo confessed to sexually penetrating Sullivan, yet the forensic investigation revealed no evidence of sexual activity. There are also suggestions from DeSalvo himself that he was covering up for another man, the real killer. In his criminal encyclopedia, "Bloodletters and Badmen" Author Jay Robert Nash refused to list Desalvo, due to these doubts.

Albert DeSalvo in fiction

• DeSalvo was the subject of the 1968 Hollywood film The Boston Strangler, starring Tony Curtis as DeSalvo, and Henry Fonda and George Kennedy as the homicide detectives who apprehend him. The movie was highly fictionalized: it assumed DeSalvo was guilty, and it portrayed him as suffering from multiple personality disorder and committing the murders while in a psychotic state. DeSalvo was never diagnosed with, or even suspected of having, that disorder.

• DeSalvo was one of the serial killers whose murders were recreated by the killer in the movie Copycat.

• The spirit of DeSalvo is summoned by sheriff Lucas Buck to destroy the ghost of Caleb's sister on the American Gothic episode Strangler.

Albert DeSalvo Trivia

• The Boston Strangler is briefly mentioned in the song "Dirty Water" by The Standells. The song centers around the singer's love of his home town of Boston, and in an aside towards the end of the song the words, "Have you heard about the Strangler?" are heard.

• The song "Midnight Rambler" by the Rolling Stones (from the album Let It Bleed) was inspired by and almost mentions the Boston Strangler. The word 'Boston' is used, yet what follows is obscured by music.

• In 1971, Texas legislator Tom Moore, Jr. introduced a measure to demonstrate the lack of legislative scrutiny. The measure's passage effectively meant that DeSalvo was commended by the Texas House of Representatives as being "officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology."

• British power electronics group Whitehouse have a track called "Dedicated To Albert De Salvo" (album: Buchenwald, 1981)

• Japanese doom metal band Church of Misery has a song titled "Boston Strangler (Albert DeSalvo)" on the album of the same name. Its lyrics are from the Strangler's point of view.

• The song "Boston Strangler" appears on the Macabre album Sinister Slaughter (1993).
  

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MASS MURDERERS AND SERIAL KILLERS

In both mass and serial killer cases, victims die as the offender momentarily gains control of his or her life by controlling others. But the differences between these two types of offenders far outweigh the similarities. First, mass murderers are generally apprehended or killed by police, commit suicide, or turn themselves in to authorities. Serial killers, by contrast, usually make special efforts to elude detection. Indeed, they may continue to kill for weeks, months, and often years before they are found and stopped-if they are found at all. In the case of the California Zodiac killer, the homicides appeared to have stopped, but an offender was never apprehended for those crimes. Perhaps the offender was incarcerated for only one murder and never linked to the others, or perhaps he or she was imprisoned for other crimes. Or the Zodiac killer may have just decided to stop killing or to move to a new location and kill under a new modus operandi, or method of committing the crime. The killer may even have become immobilized because of an accident or an illness or have died without his or her story ever being told. Speculation currently exists that the Zodiac killer is stalking victims in the New York City area. The Zodiac case is only one example of unsolved serial murders, many of which will never be solved.

Second, although both types of killers evoke fear and anxiety in the community, the reaction to a mass murder will be much more focused and locally limited than that to serial killing. People generally perceive the mass killer as one suffering from mental illnesses. This immediately creates a "they"/"us" dichotomy in which "they" are different from "us" because of mental problems. We can somehow accept the fact that a few people go "crazy" sometimes and start shooting others. However, it is more disconcerting to learn that some of the "nicest" people one meets lead a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde life: a student by day, a killer of coeds by night; a caring, attentive nurse who secretly murders sick children, the handicapped, or the elderly; a building contractor and politician who enjoys sexually torturing and killing young men and burying them under his home. When we discover that people exist who are not considered to be insane or crazy but who enjoy killing others for "recreation," this indeed gives new meaning to the word "stranger." Although the mass murderer is viewed as a deranged soul, a product of a stressful environment who is just going to "explode" now and then (but of course somewhere else), the serial murder is seen as much more sinister and is more capable of producing fear.

Third, the mass murderer kills groups of people at once, whereas the serial killer individualizes his or her murders. The serial killer continues to hurt and murder victims, whereas the mass murderer makes his or her "final statement" in or about life through the medium of abrupt and final violence. We rarely if ever hear of a mass murderer who has the opportunity to enact a second mass murder or to become a serial killer. Similarly, we rarely if ever hear of a serial killer who also enacts a mass murder.

The mass murderer and the serial killer are quantitatively and qualitatively different, and disagreement continues about their characteristics just as it does about the types of mass and serial offenders that appear to have emerged in recent years. Perhaps the single most critical stumbling block that today stands in the way of understanding serial murder is the disagreement among researchers and law enforcement about how to define the phenomenon.

DEFINING SERIAL KILLERS

In February, 1989, the Associated Press released a story about a serial killer who preyed on prostitutes in the same area of Los Angeles that harbored the Southside Slayer. He was believed to have killed at least 12 women, all with a small handgun. The news story referred to the victims as "strawberries"-young women who sold sex for drugs. Farther north, the Green River Task Force in Seattle, Washington, continues to investigate a series of murders of at least 45 young women over the past eight years. When the corpses of boys and young men began appearing along the banks of the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta, Georgia, during the early 1980s, police became convinced a serial killer was at work in the area. The preceding cases are typical of homicides one might envision when characterizing victims of serial killers. The media quickly and eagerly focus attention on serial killings because they appear to be so bizarre and extraordinary. They engender the kind of headline that sell newspapers: "The Atlanta Child Killer," "The Stocking Strangler," "The Hillside Strangler," "The Sunday Morning Slasher," "The Boston Strangler," ad infinitum. The media focus not only on how many victims were killed but on how they died. Thus they feed morbid curiosity and at the same time create a stereotype of the typical serial killer: Ted Bundy, Ed Kemper, Albert Desalvo, and a host of other young white males attacking unsuspecting women powerless to defend themselves from the savage sexual attacks and degradations by these monsters.

But what is the reality? For those in law enforcement, serial killing generally means the sexual attack and murder of young women, men, and children by a male who follows a pattern, physical or psychological. However, this definition fails to include many offenders and victims. For example, in 1988 in Sacramento, California, several bodies of older or handicapped adults were exhumed from the backyard of a house where they were supposed to have been living. Investigators discovered the victims had been killed for their Social Security checks. It was apparent the killer had premeditated the murders, had selected the victims, and had killed at least six over a period of several months. Most law enforcement agencies would naturally classify this case as a serial killing-except for the fact that the killer was female. Because of rather narrow definitions of serial killing females are generally not classified as serial killers even though they meet the requirements for such a label. One explanation may simply be that we rarely if ever hear of a female "Jack the Ripper." Women who kill serially generally use poisons to dispose of their victims and are not associated with the sexual attacks, tortures, and violence of their male counterparts.

Although many offenders actually fall into the serial killer classification, they are excluded because they fail to meet law enforcement definitions or media-generated stereotypes of brutal, blood-thirsty monsters. The "angels of death" who work in hospitals and kill patients, or nursing home staff who kill the elderly, or the "black widows" who kill their family and relatives also meet the general criteria for serial killing except for the stereotypic element of violence. These men and women do not slash and torture their victims nor do they sexually attack them; they are the quiet killers. They are also the kinds of people who could be married, hold steady jobs, or simply be the nice man or woman who lives next door. They are rare among serial killers, just as serial murders are rare compared with other types of homicide.

To include all types of serial killers, the definition of serial murder must clearly be as broad as possible. For instance, Hickey (1986), by simply including all offenders who through premeditation killed three or more victims over a period of days, weeks, months, or years, was able to identify several women as serial killers. However, there exists such confusion in defining serial killing that findings can also easily be distorted. In addition, current research presents some narrow operational definitions of serial murder without any documented assurances that the focus does not exclude pertinent data. To suggest, for example, that all victims of serial killer are strangers, that the killers operate primarily in pairs, or that they do not kill for financial gain is derived more from speculation than verifiable evidence, given the current state of serial killer research.