Serial Killers In The 1980s: How They Impacted The Federal Investigation System

The 20th century was a time of major events and a wide variety of progression. Specifically, in the 1980s, there was a wide increase in violent crimes, and mass murders. The number of active serial killers in America hit an all-time high during this period. As these murders were becoming very common, many people in America developed a strange admiration for them and their lifestyles. Some of that admiration stemmed from the variety in appearance that these people had. Previously, mass murders were known to have a similar look and psyche, but that image began to transform into a myriad of combinations. As serial killers evolved, their tactics progressed as well, and police officers were not initially prepared to stop them from successfully murdering such a large number of people. There was a lack of highly advanced materials to track down these criminals, which in turn made it easier for serial killers to escape from the crime scene. While there were many crimes taking place, there was an insufficient number of available tactics to fight them. The high number of known serial killers and an even higher number of unsolved murder mysteries made way for a more secure investigation system to be put in place for society today.

In the 1970s, the new generation of mass murders arose and took America by surprise. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was an increase in criminal activity, but from the sixties to the nineties there was a major peak. Some of the well-known serial killers included Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Aileen Wuornos, Gary Ridgeway and more. Before one can truly identify a serial killer, they must know the true definition of one, Leryn Messori the author of “Frequencies between Serial Killer Typology and Theorized Etiological Factors” discusses the term in her work. She said, “Dietz (1986) referred to cases as serial murder when they consisted of a single offender killing in five or more separate incidences with a “cooling-off-period” between homicides” (5). While the term ‘serial killers’ was newly coined in the seventies, it was important to understand what that term meant and who exactly fell under that newly discovered category. Now that the definition of a serial killer had been finalized, the next question is why such an increase in people was there committing these crimes. There are theories suggesting that the cause of the increase in serial killers is due to the political state America was in at the time. Because of the continuous wars internationally, there were many domestics problems in America. Between the Vietnam War which had recently ended, and the Cold War, which was going on, it is said that they may have contributed to the psychological damage of individuals growing up during this period. So, the psychological development of the people growing up at the time was most likely caused by all of the drama in America and led to such a major increase in crimes altogether. Studies show that America houses a large percent of the serial killers in the world, in “The Guys Who Shoot to Thrill: Serial Killers and the American Popular Unconscious” it states “The United States houses just over 5% of the world’s population and 75% of its serial killers… No less than three hundred killers were working the highways, suburbs, and starched white campuses…” (Conrath 3). While America had many of the world’s serial killers it the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 also made it easier for killers spread out. It was easier for them to not only commit crimes in more areas but also run away from the places that they go to do it.

In the 1980s there many people in America had an outstanding admiration for serial killers and their identities. The typical idea of what a serial killer should ‘look like’ was being changed significantly in the eighties. Individuals such as Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos did not exactly fit the look of a typical serial killer to many, and in some ways perplexed Americans. The idea that someone that looked like Ted Bundy would ever commit such heinous crimes seemed almost unheard of. The idea is that bad people generally have a bad aura and it naturally lingers around them in the way of appearance, personality, socioeconomic status, etc. For example, when a woman walks down the street, she will not fear the man she sees in a nicely fitted suit and looks properly groomed. But the man that looks a bit on the dirty side wears raggedy clothes, and simply looks mean is who she will fear. As mentioned in Simpson’s Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture he states “Schmid traces the cultural elevation of Ted Bundy to the iconic 'straight' celebrity serial killer in particular as emblematic of a project designed to exonerate heterosexual men from the taint of sexual violence. In this project, Bundy's normality and apparent similarity to many straight men are configured as only a surface layer-a mask that hides the deviant monster beneath. Thus, the focus is shifted away from troubling issues of social gender construction of violence onto the aberrant personality that is supposedly the essence of Bundy” (282). But in the eighties, America had begun to realize that the conclusion that serial killers are easily identifiable was incorrect. Because of the sudden obsession, there was a lot of publicity tracking these killers, and what they did. Their whereabouts were a major concern, and people wanted deeper looks into what they did with their time. While they were obsessed over for the simple fact that they were ‘different’ the media added to the desire to know about them. There a lot of heavy metal groups that in some ways promoted the serial killer behavior. Some of these groups included Sons of Sam, the Psycho Killers, or Cracks in the Sidewalks. There were also killer novels and Hollywood movies highlighting it like American Psycho, which was published in 1991 by Bret Easton Ellis. The variety of media outlets that emphasized the serial killers, did nothing but make them even more popular.

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While the typical American originally thought all serial killers had similar traits, the average police officer had the same preconceived notions and lacked the knowledge required to seek these individuals out. All serial killers were thought to have similar backgrounds or mindsets, causing investigators to not always look at every possible suspect. Although a lot of serial killers were eventually caught, there were still many murders that were still unaccounted for “… law enforcement may still be unaware of the presence of many serial killers… Egger (1984) termed “linkage blindness,” investigators are not always able to connect homicides, separated over time and space…” (Fox, Alan, and Levin 411). The linkage blindness was a combination of the insufficient knowledge and technology. Investigator was almost oblivious to some of the connections that could have easily pointed out serial killers’ identities sooner. But as they were slacking in that area, there was also an insufficient number of advanced materials available to track these mass murderers down. Because of this problem, it was a little easier for serial killers to successfully get away with their crimes. As shown in the film “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” directed by Joe Berlinger, Ted Bundy escapes his jail cell and goes on to kill two more women at a sorority house. Although he was eventually caught, because the technology of this time was not progressive, it was sometimes difficult to contain people like himself. Some of the tools that would have prevented this included reliable security cameras, if there were things such as fingerprint systems, facial recognition, or gel electrophoresis (used to identify a criminal by separating large molecules and matching it to the ones at a crime scene). In the case of Bundy, facial recognition would have helped identify him sooner, since the change in his appearance seemed to confuse people into believing that he was a different person. When he would go in disguise, he would almost change his entire persona, leading citizens to believe that he was not himself. So, if a technology such as face recognition existed it would have been able to identify him beyond the surface appearance. The amount of effort it took in order to finally catch people like Ted Bundy was entirely too much. If technology had been better than the peak that was reached at that time it would have been much lower and a lot fewer people would have lost their lives or more cold cases would have been solved.

Because there were so many mass murderers and an even higher number of unsolved murder cases, there has been a need to improve the methods used to catch criminals, causing the investigation process to be way more efficient than ever before. The first major change to take place was in what investigators would look at when searching for a mass murderer. Since the eighties, the idea of what a serial killer’s psyche would be like has changed. The initial idea of their appearance, socioeconomic status, and overall persona had been proven to be a bad generalization. For example, as mentioned before, Ted Bundy shocked America with his appearance and actions. At one glance, he looks like a nice, handsome man, throwing many people off. Because of the high increase, in 1983 there was a meeting held to create the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC). It would be designed as “a resource center to help agencies deal with violent crimes by assisting with training, research, and criminal profiling . . . At that same hearing, the Bureau introduced the concept for the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP)—a data information center to collect, analyze, and provide reports on violent crimes from local agencies” (Osowski 7). Prior to the eighties, police officers never felt the need to create such secure, and complexed protocols to catch serial killers. In society today, there is a multitude of methods taken to record and identify homicidal patterns. Since there was an increase of about 388 serial killers from the sixties to the eighties, FBI agents started to consider the psychological aspect of serial killers. Technological systems to track people using things such as fingerprints have been heavily incorporated in investigations. In the 1980s, highways allowed for killers to spread further around America, so the watching of cars on the roads has made a huge impact. Although there weren’t many steps taken to secure the roads, as time went by there were street cameras installed around America.

Due to the many mass murders and the many operations that took place to stop them, there are many ways to solve crimes in the twenty-first century. All of the serial killers from the twentieth century allowed for a new aspect of investigation to be discovered and implemented in one way or the next. Between the increase in people committing such heinous crimes and the large following they had, investigators needed to find new and innovative ways to catch them. They gave a variety of things to look for when trying to identify an active serial killer. Since they all varied in characteristics, they helped figure out that serial killers come in different shapes and sizes and could be anywhere. The lack of highly advanced materials to track down criminals made it easier for serial killers to get away with their crimes. While there were many crimes taking place there was an insufficient number of available tactics to fight them. The high number of known serial killers and even a higher number of unsolved murder mysteries made way for a more secure investigation system to be put in place for society today. So, there has been a wide variety of tools and methods invented to be more efficient. A lot of the new methods used include advanced technology that could have been a major help but simply did not exist in the eighties. If it wasn’t for the peak in serial killers at this time the things that the federal government now uses regularly would have never been thought of.

Works Cited

1. Conrath, Robert. “The Guys Who Shoot to Thrill: Serial Killers and the American Popular Unconscious.” Revue Française D'études Américaines, no. 60, 1994, pp. 143–152. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20872423.
2. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Directed by Joe Berlinger, COTA Films, 2019.
3. Fox, James Alan, and Jack Levin. “Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial and Mass Murder.” Crime and Justice, vol. 23, 1998, pp. 407–455. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1147545.
4. Messori, Leryn R. Frequencies between Serial Killer Typology and Theorized Etiological Factors, Antioch University, Ann Arbor, 2016. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.montclair.edu:2048/login?url=https://searchproquest.com.ezproxy.montclair.edu/docview/1858816396?accountid=12536.
5. Osowski, Kaylee. “Investigating a Serial Killer: The Development of the FBI's Role Told Through Public Documents.” DttP: Documents to the People, journals.ala.org/index.php/dttp/article/view/6892/9271.
6. Simpson, Philip L. 'Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture.'English Studies in Canada, vol. 34, no. 2, 2008, pp. 277-283. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.montclair.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/205835443?accountid=12536.