The Radford database, maintained in collaboration with Florida Gulf State University, has identified 5,000 serial killers from 1900 to today. Photograph: Andrew Brookes/Getty Images/Cultura RF All we know for sure is there has been a decline in the number identified.”Īdvances in DNA science may have helped in the reduction in documented serial killers. “I’m careful to say there has been a decline in the number of serial killers we can identify – there could be thousands of serial killers that we don’t know about and for some reason we’re not identifying today as well as we did in the 70s, 80s and 90s. “There’s no question that there has been in a decline since the 80s in the number of identified serial killers,” he said. He agrees there has been a clear downward trend, but urges caution. The best database of serial killers was developed by Mike Aamodt, emeritus professor at Radford University in Virginia. Either there are less serial killers or we have gotten better at catching them earlier.” So yes, there seems to be a decline in American serial killing. If DeAngelo’s long-awaited appearance in court suggests a reckoning is coming for serial killers, long-term trends indicate that such mass killers and their impact might already be in decline in American society.Īuthor Peter Vronsky, who has just published a new history of serial killers, said in a Guardian interview last month: “It appears that we’re arresting and apprehending less serial killers, and when we do apprehend them they have a much smaller victim list, per killer.

Taylor Serial Killer