Serial Killers

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Philip Simpson

Not all privately conceived acts of multiple homicide qualify as serial murders. Scholars now generally agree that mass murder forms a separate category. James Alan Fox and Jack Levin point out that mass murderers are generally caught at or near the crime scene, and that the crime is of horrific proportions but relatively short duration. Unlike serial killers, who typically target strangers and traumatize a community over an extended period of time, the mass murderer plans one ultraviolent assault upon victims who, more often than not, are known to him. The mass murderer category can include depressed people who kill their entire families before committing suicide, but more commonly refers to those who violently retaliate against a specific group or class of people because of a real or imagined grievance; for example, disgruntled employees gunning down supervisors and coworkers. Racism or sexism also often motivates this kind of killer, as was the case with James Huberty, who killed twenty-one people in California because of an obsessive hatred of Hispanics; or Marc Lepine, who killed fourteen women at the University of Montreal because he blamed "feminists" for his romantic and professional difficulties. Massacres in public places (restaurants, schoolyards, classrooms, the work place, the post office, commuter trains, campuses, etc.) typically involve one heavily armed killer who racks up a high death toll. However, the massacre is a one-time-only event that often ends in the death of the killer by the police. Charles Whitman, who opened fire on students from a clock tower on the University of Texas campus in 1966, is probably the best-known example of this kind of mass murderer.

The spree killer occupies an intermediate position between the mass murderer and the serial murderer, although it should be noted that some authorities see no real distinction between spree killing, mass murder, and serial murder. The spree killer does not operate in secret like the serial killer, but neither does he lay siege to one specific locale until a SWAT team cuts him down. Instead, he often drives cross-country, with a companion or two (what R. M. Holmes and S. T. Holmes call "disciple killers"), murdering randomly and noisily as he goes until he is captured or killed. His weapon of choice is the gun, as opposed to the serial killer's more intimate knife. He makes little or no effort to cover his tracks; instead, he exults in the sheer nihilism of destruction and relies on brute mobility to keep him free as long as possible. His crimes are very visible but generally of short duration because of their high profile. During the 1950s, for example, embittered garbageman Charles Starkweather and his young girlfriend Caril Fugate rampaged across the Midwest, killing eleven people before they were captured and arousing the nation to new heights of paranoia concerning the dangers of juvenile delinquency. The conspicuousness of the spree killer contrasts significantly with the serial killer, who wishes to remain undetected for a period of time, at least in identity if not in deed.