WK4 Discussion: Victim Vulnerability

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chapter 1

Victims of Serial Killers The “Less-Dead”

Kim and Steve Egger

“I were just cleaning up the streets.” PETER SUTCLIFFE, the Yorkshire Ripper

Introduction: The “less-dead”

When the novel The Silence of the Lambs was published, it became a best-seller. When the movie was made, it packed the theaters and received numerous Acad- emy Awards. People flocked to the cinema to see the riveting performances of Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. The character of Dr. Hannibal Lecter was suddenly known everywhere, parodied on television comedy programs and the talk of the town. Hannibal Lecter, as portrayed by Hopkins, captured the public’s imagination.

Why? Americans, Brits, and Russians, along with nearly all of the rest of the world, have made heroes out of not only fictional serial killers but the real serial killers among us. While their numerous victims lie in their graves, serial killers can still send the press into high gear. They are still remembered years after their crimes. Books, articles, and the press continue to produce copious amounts of ink, hanging on every word these killers say, every court action that is held on their behalf, and every excuse they make for their behavior.

Why? Why is it that we are so fascinated by these aberrations of the human race while ignoring their victims? Part of the answer may be, particularly in Ameri- can society, that we secretly admire the “cowboys,” who are part of the myth of the American West, and the “bad boys” who are being produced by our modern society.

The so-called bad boys and cowboys of the United States helped settle this country. Even in the earliest days of U.S. history the serial killers were there,

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except they were not recognized for what they truly were; instead, they became the heroes of the new nation. Perhaps, then, the key to this problem lies not within the serial killer, but rather, within the victims whom he or she generally chose. Throughout our country’s history, serial killers have murdered the people who were the least powerful. Some killers had the official sanction of their com- munities (searching out and murdering Native Americans and so-called witches), and others worked without sanction (murdering undesired settlers, outcasts, and those who deviated from societal norms), but with praise nonetheless. We still can hear the ballads of Billy the Kid and Bonnie and Clyde (Newton, 1992). It is the victim’s status in society that gives us part of the answer to the question of why we continue to make serial killers heroes. The fictional Dr. Lecter is only the latest in a long line of heroes.

It was not only the brilliant acting of Hopkins as Lecter that transformed this fictional serial killer from a cruel, sadistic animal into a hero. The public is preprogrammed to identify with or even laud the role of the serial killer in our society and to forget the victim. The victims, who are viewed when alive as a devalued stratum of humanity, become “less-dead,” since for most of society they were “less-alive” before their death and now become the “never-were.” Their demise becomes a ritual of social cleansing by those who dare to wash away these undesirable elements. Just as the psychopathic serial killer deperson- alizes his victims, society dissociates these victims from the human race because of the irritant symbols they represent. Victims become those who “had it com- ing” or whose fate was preordained.

The serial killer is seen by many as possessing courage, individuality, and a unique cleverness lacking in general society. His skill in eluding police for a long time transcends the very reason he is being hunted, overshadowing the killer’s trail of grief and horror.

It is only when the “less-dead” are perceived as above the stature of prosti- tutes, homosexuals, street people, runaways, or the elderly that our own at-risk vulnerability becomes a stark reality that we can no longer ignore. Even as we begin to identify with the killer’s prey, we shrug off such feelings and intellectual- ize the precipitant behavior of the victims and their lifestyles as the reason for their demise.

Once caught, the serial killer doesn’t look abnormal on our television screens or the front pages of our newspapers, and his “less-dead” victims become less and less real. Their similarity to our own lives and their demise, which should alert us to our own risk, loses clarity as our self-manufactured reality excludes us from ever being a victim of a serial killer.

Our ability to feel compassion for serial murder victims is diminished by the excessive brutality displayed on Hollywood movie screens. The wide-screen realism and appeal of a serial killer becomes a metaphor of our future morality, whereby the “less-dead” victims are dropped from perceived reality.

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Serial Murder Victims

In most cases, the victims are selected solely because they crossed the path of the serial murderer and became a vehicle by which hypo-arousal occurred for his pleasure at a particular point in time (S. Egger, 1984). Victims are self-selecting only inasmuch as they happened to be in a certain place and point in time, or because of their symbolic significance to the killer. These are the only known precipitating factors. Unlike in other homicide cases, the presence and availabil- ity of the serial killer’s victims are the only reasons they are chosen; they have little responsibility for their victimization.

There are, however, some strong commonalities among victims of serial killers. There is generally no prior relationship between victim and killer. If there is a prior relationship, it is one in which the victim has a subjugated role. Victims may have symbolic value for the killer and/or be perceived as prestigeless and, in most instances, unable to defend themselves or alert others to their plight. In many instances, the victims are perceived by the killer to be powerless because of their situation in time, place, or status within their immediate surroundings. Examples of serial killers’ most common victims are prostitutes, vagrants, the homeless, migrant workers, homosexuals, missing children, single women (out by themselves), elderly women, college students, and hospital patients. Levin and Fox (1985) appear to concur: “Serial killers almost without exception choose vulnerable victims—those who are easy to dominate. . . . The serial killer typi- cally picks on innocent strangers who may possess a certain physical feature or may just be accessible” (pp. 75, 231). They list as examples of these vulnerable and frequent victims of the serial murderer prostitutes, hitchhikers, children, derelicts, and elderly women (pp. 75–78).

In discussing the susceptibility and vulnerability of victims, Karmen (1983) states,

The vulnerability of an individual or group to criminal depredations depends upon an opportunity factor as well as an attractiveness factor. People who appear at the “right time” and the “right place,” from the offender’s point of view, run extreme risks. Hence certain lifestyles expose individuals and their possessions to greater threat and dangers than others. (p. 241)

Karmen provides examples of these high-risk lifestyles: homosexuals cruising downtown areas and public rest rooms; cult members soliciting funds on side- walks and in bus stations; and released mental patients and skid row alcoholics wandering the streets at odd hours (pp. 241–242).

Maghan and Sagarin (1983), in discussing homosexuals as victimizers and victims, note that “the offender’s rage against society is deflected and targeted on

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those who are victimized as the offender is. . . . Victimization appears to produce a rage that feeds an offender mentality, and offenders then choose victims who are the most vulnerable, closest (spatially and socially), and offer the greatest opportunities” (p. 160).

If Karmen’s (1983) discussion of vulnerability and Maghan and Sagarin’s (1983) discussion of victim–victimizer are combined, an extrapolation is possible in examining the victims of the serial murderer. If many serial murderers were victimized in childhood, as case studies and research suggest, and vulnerable because of their childhood situation, they may in fact choose victims like their earlier selves or from the same general lifestyle. Karmen states, “One common thread that emerges from most victim/offender studies is that both parties are usually drawn from the same group or background” (p. 242). However, it must be noted that there are no empirical studies of victim–offender relationships in serial murders in the literature, other than anecdotal material or conclusions based on a very few cases. Therefore, no valid conclusions can be drawn from the literature regarding victim–offender relationships in this context. The literature does suggest, however, that many of these killers have been abused, neglected, and victimized in their childhood and indicates the possibility that some serial killers may victimize persons who remind them of themselves as children.

Some blame the mobility of U.S. society for making victims more available to serial murderers. “It’s not unusual for people—especially if they’re drug users—to just up and leave home,” says Commander Alfred Calhoun of the Oua- chita Parish Sheriff’s Office in Monroe, Louisiana. “Many become victims because they’re hitchhiking or wandering in deserted places” (Gest, 1984, p. 53). Robert Keppel contends that since many serial murderers are charismatic, they can convince their victims to go with them using some pretext. “They pick peo- ple they can have power and control over, small-framed women, children and old people” (Lindsey, 1984, p. 7).

Psychiatrist Helen Morrison contends that the look of the victims is signifi- cant. She states, “If you take photos, or physical descriptions of the victims, what will strike you is the similarity in look.” The physical appearances of the victims of some serial killers do bear a striking resemblance to one another, but this may hold few implications for investigators. Morrison also theorizes that some non- verbal communication exists between victim and killer: “There’s something unique in that interaction” (McCarthy, 1984, p. 10). Morrison believes that the victims of serial murderers were symbolic of something or someone deeply sig- nificant in the murderers’ lives. Some psychologists contend that the victims rep- resent cruel parents on whom some murderers feel they cannot directly take revenge (Berger, 1984).

Morrison believes serial murderers do not distinguish between human beings and inanimate objects (Berger, 1984). In this way they may be similar to contract killers, whom Dietz (1983, p. 115) describes as depersonalizing their victims. Lunde (1976) found that sexual sadist murderers dehumanize their vic-

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tims or perceive them as objects. He concludes that this “prevents the killer from identifying with the victims as mothers, fathers, children, people who love and are loved, people whose lives have meaning” (p. 61).

Hickey (1997) analyzed the cases of 2,526 to 3,860 serial murder victims between the years 1800 and 1995. He found a marked increase in the number of victims between 1975 and 1995. The annual rate of victims during the time between 1975 and 1995 was 0.02 per 100,000, compared to the annual homicide rate of 9.6 per 100,000 population for the same time period. He notes, “We run a greater risk of being a victim of domestic homicide and an even greater risk of being a victim of other violent crimes than we do of dying at the hands of a serial killer” (p. 102). However, we must remember that these statistics represent the deaths of human beings.

As S. Egger (1984) observed, if one loses a family member, loved one, or friend as a result of a killing in which victim and attacker had a prior relationship, the relationship tends to mitigate the loss for survivors in that it provides some sense of rationality for the act. In other words, some form of interaction between the victim and attacker has taken place prior to the point of fatal encounter. When the relational distance is great, as is the case in most serial murders, no sense of rationality can be found for the act, and the tolerance levels of survivors or society at large approach zero.

To kill a stranger not only defies an understanding of the rationality for such an act but accentuates a general level of fear because of the apparent random- ness of victim selection. Lundsgaarde (1977) states the problem for the survivors succinctly: “The killer who chooses a stranger as his victim overtly threatens the preservation of social order” (p. 140).

Hickey’s (1997) data reveals that between 1800 and 1995, population den- sity rather than regionality accounted for the numbers of victims of serial killers, except in California, which had double the number of cases with multiple victims than occurred in New York, which ranked second in victim count. In 337 serial murder cases that occurred between 1800 and 1995, the number of victims was between 2,526 and 3,860, depending on how the researchers or police count the victims. This means that the average number of victims of each serial murderer is between seven and eleven. Hickey’s data further reveals that in 19 of America’s most populous states, the number of victims per case was six or more victims. In the remaining 31 states, Hickey found a range of one to five cases in which one or more victims were killed.

Serial killers seem to instinctively recognize the vulnerabilities of the indi- viduals they select. The runaway teenager, the homeless man, or the woman who sells her body on the street all share several distinct characteristics: They are vul- nerable, available, and easy for the serial killer to target without incurring the wrath of society. In 1994, S. Egger conceptualized the idea of the “less-dead” (K. Egger, 1996) to account for the majority of the victims of serial killers. It seems as if the would-be serial killer is aware of the public disdain for these

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people, the most vulnerable in American society. It is not a strictly American choice, however. Across international boundaries, the weakest members of soci- ety are the most frequently targeted by serial killers.

Society’s Throwaways: A Low Priority for Law Enforcement

Unfortunately, there is a great deal less pressure on the police when the victims of a serial murder come from the marginal elements of a society or a community. People are much less incensed over a serial murderer operating in their area when they have little or no identification with the victims. The victims seem unreal, and little attention is paid to their demise.

As can readily be seen from press reports in newspapers and on television news programs, victims and survivors receive little attention in mass media accounts of crime. Unless the victims are well-known celebrities or people of power and wealth, the central focus of the media is on the crime and the offender.

PROSTITUTES: VICTIMS OF CHOICE The data available on serial murder investigations indicate that one of the most common victims of a serial killer is the female prostitute. Seventy-eight percent of all victims of serial killers in the United States from 1960 to 1995 were prosti- tutes (K. Egger, 1999). From the killer’s perspective, these women are simply available in an area that provides anonymity and adequate time in which to make a viable selection. It is highly probable that the serial killer selects prostitutes most frequently because they are easy to lure and control during the initial stages of what becomes abduction. Potential witnesses of this abduction see only a pickup and transaction prior to paying for sex. They are programmed to see what they expect to see when a woman gets into a car with a john. The attitude of soci- ety also makes the prostitute a desirable target. Women who are prostitutes are perceived by society as drug-addicted, friendless failures. They are viewed as “less-dead” because few see them as human beings and even fewer as the daugh- ters and sons or mothers and brothers of people who love them. And after all, who will miss one less prostitute plying her trade on the streets?

A search of major newspaper reports of prostitutes as victims in serial mur- ders cases that were either unsolved or under active investigation between Octo- ber 5, 1991, and October 5, 1993, revealed that 198 prostitutes were identified as victims of serial killers involving 21 distinct serial murder patterns (S. Egger, 1998, p. 79). This is an average of more than nine prostitutes as victims per serial murder case. No other group was as frequently identified as victims of serial

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murders during that period. For the female prostitute, lifestyle most certainly plays a part in her being at-risk prey for a serial killer.

A careful selection of vulnerable victims does not mean the serial killer is a coward; it means that he or she has the street smarts to select victims who will not resist, will be relatively easy to control, and will not be missed. Such careful selection protects the killer from identification and apprehension. In many cases, selection of prostitutes ensures that the killing may never be revealed, and may not even be identified as a related series of crimes, and that the perpetrator may go on killing, fueling the need to kill again. Or if such a victim’s remains are found, she will be difficult for the police to identify, given her lifestyle and lack of close ties to family, relatives, or the community.

The “less-dead,” as applied to the victims of serial murder, can be defined as follows:

The “less-dead” comprise most of the victims of serial killers. They are referred to as the “less-dead” because they were “less-alive” before their violent demise and now become “never-were.” These victims are the devalued and marginalized groups of society or community. They are the vulnerable and the powerless. For example, prostitutes, migrants work- ers, the homeless, homosexuals, institutionalized persons, and the elderly who are frequently the victims of serial killers are considered the “less- dead.” These groups lack prestige and in many instances are unable to alert others to their plight. They are powerless given their situation in time, place, or their immediate surroundings. (K. Egger, 1996, p. 15, and S. Egger, 1998, p. 6)

The prostitute, marginalized and devalued by society, is the “victim of choice” for the average serial killer. This choice can be traced to numerous sources, fundamentalist religious attitudes toward women and sexuality being two of the most prominent.

The “grandfather of serial murder” is Jack the Ripper (Caputi, 1987). Jack the Ripper chose prostitutes as his victims for sound reasons. The socioeconomic status of his victims greatly affected his choice. The murders attracted attention because of the nature of the crimes, not the victims. The Ripper murders in Vic- torian England caused an uproar because of their heinous nature, but the deaths of today’s victims of modern-day Jack the Ripper fail to cause the same response. Because society has placed little value on their lives, law enforcement officials often follow suit. The public outcry for justice may be loud when the killings are first recognized, but regardless of the initial reaction, the “less-dead” can expect to be forgotten in death just as they were forgotten in life.

The Green River killings took place between 1982 and 1984, in Seattle, Wash- ington, and heralded the beginning of the present-day slaughter of prostitutes. The

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total number of victims may never be known. Authorities know that at least 50 women met their deaths at the hands of the yet-unidentified Green River Killer. However, there may still be bodies around Seattle and in other areas that have yet to be found and attributed to this killer.

The Seattle Times coverage of the Green River killings fueled the investiga- tion and propelled the case to national prominence. In their coverage of the killings, Tomas Guillen and Carlton Smith had to fight the attitudes of law enforce- ment officials and the public to push police officers to “do their jobs”(Griffiths, 1993). In Seattle it became a battle for public sentiment and will to pay for the costly investigation that would span decades. It is, after all, the public who pays for a serial murder investigation, and the public had to be continually convinced that the deaths of prostitutes were worth the cost. Although they worked to educate and inform the public, after the reporters moved on to other endeavors, the case fell slowly into obscurity.1

Asked about the role of the media in the investigation of the Green River Killer, Guillen responded,

Briefly, police would say they investigate every case in the same manner. I believe otherwise. The less coverage a case gets, the easier it is for police to cut back. We go into this issue in our book, The Search for the Green River Killer. Kraske, who ran the first task force, clearly said the media played a role on police response. I still can’t believe the task force was dismantled. The task force still had plenty of work to do. I have to think the task force would have continued if the victims were outstanding citizens. We tried to humanize the victims by writing a feature about their lives when they were found dead. We wanted to mention that they were children once and had dreams. I have to be honest, though, I think journalistic practices routinely brought out the negative side of the victims. I still can’t believe the public— Seattle and the Pacific Northwest—let police and the politicians scale down the investigation to one investigator. There was no outcry. There were no protests. Nothing. Everyone just went home. What a sad commentary! (Tomas Guillen, personal communication with K. Egger, November 2000, emphasis added)

Joel Rifkin was another man who preyed on prostitutes. His arrest, like that of his predecessor, Ted Bundy, was the result of a patrol officer’s routine traffic stop, and his instinct that something was not right after he spoke to the driver. That something turned out to be the body of one of the prostitutes Rifkin had killed, which he had placed in the back of his station wagon and was taking to dump somewhere in New York. CNN reporter Jeanie Moos, reporting in 1993 after Joel Rifkin was convicted and sent to prison, made this observation about Rifkin’s most common victim, the prostitute:

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Time after time, serial killers have zeroed in on prostitutes. Forty-nine dumped along the Green River in Washington; 11 killed by this man in the Rochester, New York, area; a string of murders of truck-stop prosti- tutes; even six red-headed prostitutes strangled in five states. Every pros- titute you talk to knows of others who are missing. (CNN News, July 2, 1993, reporting from New York)

After the Rifkin conviction, the New York Times also looked at the problem of prostitutes being victimized by violent criminals.

Many prefer to ignore it. Even as the authorities were sorting out Mr. Rifkin’s murderous stories, prostitutes were going about their business throughout the city, in force, as usual. For them, serial killers are just another occupational hazard. Violence is the nature of the beast. And working girls, as prostitutes like to be called, often disappear, never to be heard from again.

“The women we see are resourceless,” said Allannah Thomas, a proj- ect manager for the Foundation for Research on Sexually Transmitted Diseases, which distributes condoms, conducts H.I.V. testing and pro- vides other outreach services to prostitutes throughout New York City. The women are hurt by dates, by their personal partners and in the course of drug transactions. A lot of times people come up to us and ask us to dress wounds.

Richard Ayala, an outreach worker for the foundation, said that in the two years since he began driving the foundation’s van, distributing con- doms and testing women for H.I.V., he has noticed that many women simply disappear.

“Sometimes the girls tell us about the ones that disappear,” he said. “They tell us this woman moved, this one died, this one was killed. But you never really know.” (“Easy Prey,” 1993, p. 23)

When the killer is preying on prostitutes in poor or minority communities, the people in the community may be the first to recognize that a serial killer is at work, while the law enforcement community does not. It is sad that the public is sometimes aware of a serial killer at work in their community long before the police are. A case in point is that of Hubert Geralds Jr., who was killing in the Englewood area of Chicago, Illinois. In 1995 the community organized to pre- sent local law enforcement officers with information to support their contention that a serial killer was at work in their neighborhoods. Law enforcement officials denied it. They had sent the cases in question to the FBI, who failed to find any connection between the murders. A call from the sister of Geralds, however, led to his arrest for the murder of six women, all of whom were prostitutes and drug

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users and all of whom were strangled in the same way. He was tried, convicted, and later sentenced to death.

Working at the same time and in the same area of Chicago was Gregory Clepper, a black man who had killed 14 women beginning in 1991. He managed to remain undetected; it was only because he confessed that the murders were finally linked to him. Because his crimes were linked to drugs, police failed to see what the neighborhood already knew—a serial killer was at work, targeting young, black women who used drugs and sometimes worked as prostitutes.

Chicago authorities finally admitted that there were at least three serial killers working in the area in the 1990s, all targeting young, black women who sometimes worked as prostitutes and were using drugs. However, this admission came only after the arrests of two suspects, one of whom was Geralds. The com- munity felt that because they were black, poor, and living in a high crime area, the cases were not given the attention they merited (“Serial slaying scandal,” 1995, p. 1).

These crimes have forced law enforcement agencies to confront one of the most commonly accepted myths of serial killers: that they are white, middle- aged, middle-class men who prey on victims much like themselves. This myth has probably allowed many serial killings in the black community to go unde- tected by law enforcement. As the number of black and minority males who are arrested and charged with serial murder continues to rise, this miscon- ception will have to change. When black people in predominately black neigh- borhoods start turning up dead, police need to take a closer look at these crimes. If you don’t look for the connections, you cannot find them. Black-on- black crime includes serial murder and probably always has. Racism, bigotry, and ignorance have almost certainly allowed a number of black serial killers to kill with impunity over the past century. Hickey (1999) agrees that black serial killers are simply not as readily acknowledged by law enforcement or the public. “We just don’t talk about them as much. They’re killing their own, often killing black prostitutes, and they just don’t get the attention” (“Southside slay- ings defy myths about serial killers,” 1999, p. 1). This lack of knowledge gives black serial killers unprecedented freedom to kill repeatedly without fear of apprehension.

By the official FBI count, the black serial killer is a rarity. Only Hickey (1997) has recognized that black serial killers are actively killing in the United States and have been doing so all along. The sad fact is that when a serial killer’s work is detected, it is nearly automatically assumed that the killer is a white male. The black serial killer can remain undetected, particularly when he preys on those in his own community. The Atlanta, Georgia, child killings were thrust into national prominence only because of the public’s natural sympathy for children and because many people believed that a white supremacist was at work in the

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neighborhoods of Atlanta. Preying on black prostitutes is nearly always a sure way of getting away with murder.

In our nation’s history, the status of African Americans has progressed from being little more than that of a possession, to struggling to be recognized in the 1950s and 1960s, to fighting the systemic racism of U.S. society today. It was only in the last 50 years that the presence of black serial killers was noted and in the past 10 years that researchers recognized that the number may be higher than originally thought.

This is true not only for the African American community in the United States, but for all minority communities.

Prostitutes of all backgrounds seem to bring out the worst in the serial killers who routinely target them. The fact that their deaths are often seen as a result of their own making makes them the victim of least risk to the serial killer and thus puts them at high risk of becoming prey. When prostitutes are killed, the public perception is that they are responsible for their own deaths. The flurry of arrests in the 1990s is evidence of the atrocities being committed against them.

Even more recently, Eric Armstrong, a 26-year-old white male and former sailor on the U.S.S. Nimitz, was arrested for the deaths of three prostitutes in and around Detroit, Michigan. His arrest resulted not from police work but from a mistake by the killer: He came to the attention of local authorities when he reported seeing a body. It was the body of his latest victim, and DNA evidence linked Armstrong to her death. In addition to the 3 Detroit-area deaths, police say the suspect has confessed to committing at least 11 other killings since 1992: 3 in the Seattle area, 2 in Hawaii, 2 in Hong Kong, and 1 each in North Carolina, Virginia, Thailand, and Singapore. He may also be linked to the deaths of several prostitutes in Japan, Korea, and Israel.

Robert Yates Jr. killed at least 11 prostitutes in the Pacific Northwest. His brutal assaults began in 1996, and it was not until two years later that Spokane authorities admitted they were dealing with a serial killer. Yates, the father of five, was seen by all, including his wife and father, as simply living the American dream, and then he was identified by the police as a serial killer. Yates was arrested in April 2000 because of the long, hard work of Spokane detectives and the help of his potential victims, the prostitutes of Spokane. In addition to these murders, Yates pled guilty to two killings in Walla Walla, Washington, in 1975 and another killing, that of Stacy Hawn, in 1988. The first case, the murder of a college couple, had remained unsolved for a quarter of a century. The case of Stacy Hawn had also gone unsolved. No one, including the police, suspected the involvement of Robert Yates Jr., and his admission to these killings came as a shock to the relatives of the victims, who had never imagined that the Spokane prostitute-killer they had read about in local newspapers for many months had been their family member’s killer. The authorities suspect that the modus

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operandi of these early crimes may have established Yates’s pattern of future killings (“Yates whet his taste . . .” 2000, p. 1).

It was only because Yates admitted to the three prior murders that the Spokane County prosecutor allowed him to be sentenced to life in prison with- out parole (“Authorities are shocked . . .” 2000, p. 1). His father, his wife, and the families of the victims still don’t know why he killed.

How long could Yates have continued his killings? After a quarter of a cen- tury, he was finally caught. Caught because in the final two years of killing he made mistakes that police recognized and were able to use to identify him as a serial killer, and these led to his apprehension and conviction.

CHILDREN The “less-dead” are also often children. Serial killers typically target runaway, homeless, and/or minority children in the United States, and in other countries. This is particularly true in countries where many children have to resort to beg- ging to survive. Street children in South America are often left to their own devices by families that can’t support them and societies that don’t acknowledge them. These children are forced to prostitute their bodies or abilities to survive. Two cases that illustrate this are those of Pedro Lopez in South America and, more recently, Javed Iqbal in Pakistan.

In January 2000, Javed Iqbal was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, for killing 100 young boys, ages 6 to 16, and dissolving their bodies in a vat of acid. All of his victims were street children, or children turned out on the streets by their par- ents to beg. What brought Iqbal to the attention of the Pakistani authorities was a letter that he sent to the newspaper bragging about his crimes.

Pakistan is a predominately Islamic country where prostitution is for all intents and purposes nonexistent because of religious law. Thus instead of the prostitutes who are selected in other countries, young male street children are often targeted by serial killers.

The BBC World News described the situation of the young boys:

And one pundit has taken Pakistan’s conservative sexual mores to task as a trigger for the murders. “The abuse of young boys is an unspoken but rampant aspect of everyday life,” the pundit writes. “This is one result of the gender segregation prevalent in traditional societies like ours that nobody wants to talk about.” (BBC World News, 2000)

The case in South America remains one of the most unimaginable on record in modern times. In this particularly gruesome case, Pedro Lopez, nicknamed the “Monster of the Andes,” killed at least 400 children in Colom- bia, Peru, and Ecuador beginning in the late 1970s. His self-confessed killings were viewed with skepticism until he began taking authorities to the graves of

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his victims. Lopez finally quit talking to authorities when informed that he could be sentenced to death for the murders of the Colombian girls. Ecuador con- victed Lopez of 110 murders and sentenced him to life. In Ecuador, the usual life term amounts to 16 years, making Lopez eligible for parole in 1990. Because of the Ecuadorian law, Colombia awaited his release and planned to try him for the murders of at least 100 girls and to seek the death penalty. Frighten- ingly, Lopez was released in the summer of 1998 (“Pedro Lopez freed,” 1998, p. 19). Despite the best efforts of Colombian authorities to take him into cus- tody to stand trial, Lopez disappeared into the Ecuadorian rainforest without a trace. He has since seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. Is he still killing? If he is still alive, it is almost certain that he has claimed as yet unidenti- fied victims.

Other countries are not alone in offering their children for victims. One of the most terrible homicide cases in U.S. history is that of Dean Corll in Texas. In the 1970s, a serial killer was at work in the Houston suburb of Pasadena. Young boys of the working-class poor began disappearing. The police wrote off the dis- appearances as runaways and were not inclined to investigate further, despite the attempts of alarmed parents to make them do so. This continued throughout the early 1970s, as the number of missing young men rose to 27. The mystery of their disappearances was solved on August 8, 1973, when police received a fran- tic phone call from Elmer Wayne Henley, saying that he had just killed Dean Corll. What followed was the discovery of the work of a serial killer who had sys- tematically murdered at least 27 young boys in three years. Henley insisted that there were more bodies buried in the Houston area, but police were no longer interested in pursuing the case when they exceeded the victim count of the Cali- fornian serial killer Juan Corona, who was convicted of killing 25 migrant work- ers (Olsen, 1974).

And there is a new trend developing in the war-torn countries of the world: Children who prey on other children. Recently the BBC reported the arrest of a nine-year-old boy in Rwanda for the crime of serial murder. There are three known victims, all children (BBC Worldwide Monitoring, January 28, 2000). This may be only the beginning of a new tide of very young serial killers, created by the unstable politics and socioeconomic devastation of the Third World.

Amnesty International recently called for the end of torturing children. Children in war-torn and Third World countries are the most at risk: “Armed opposition groups also must be encouraged not to further their causes by abus- ing children. By allowing violence against children to continue, we put at risk our futures” (Amnesty International, 2000, p. 35). Politics, religion, and poverty are combining to create potentially deadly behaviors in many underprivileged popu- lations. North America and Europe have been fortunate to date, but as violence and poverty spread, Western countries may find themselves under siege by people with nothing to lose by violence.

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HOMELESS PERSONS The homeless are also often targeted by serial killers as victims of low risk. Cases involving the homeless that have been solved have occurred in California and New York. The names Michael Player, Patrick Kearney, Joseph Danks, and Charles Sears are included in any list of serial killers who murdered the home- less and were apprehended. The sad fact remains, however, that many other cases involving the homeless are unsolved and unnoticed by the public.

One of the most recent happened in Denver, Colorado, where it was reported in October 1999 that five homeless men had been beaten to death by an unknown assailant. Even when the body count rose to five, authorities were still reluctant to admit that there was a serial killer at work in their midst. “We can’t rule it out—a serial killer—but we don’t have enough evidence to say that it is,” said Detective Steve Shott. “It’s obvious whoever’s responsible for this is tar- geting the homeless.” Even a former FBI agent was hesitant to say that there was a serial killer at work. Former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary agreed on the possi- bility of a serial killer—but cautioned against jumping to conclusions. “It’s suspi- cious, just on the face of it,” he said. But a researcher in the area of serial murder for many years was unambiguous in his assessment of the killings: “Clearly it seems that there is little chance otherwise,” said James Alan Fox of Northeastern University, the author of three books on serial killers. “You have five people killed in a short period of time in a similar fashion in the same general area fitting the same general description. It’s far too similar to be coincidence” (“Transient deaths linked? 5 slayings,” 1999, p. B1).

To this date, the case remains unsolved.

PATIENTS Patients in hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes are also likely to be targeted by serial killers. Their vulnerability and helplessness seem to bring out the “killer instincts” in medical personnel who use their patients to exorcise their personal demons. Patients of the so-called angel of death are frequently the elderly. Doctors, nurses, and even nursing assistants have all found victims close at hand.

A number of these cases have been reported in the past 25 years. One recent case was in Indiana. Orville Lynn Majors was linked to at least 130 deaths in the Vermillion County hospital in which he worked, although he was tried and convicted on only 6 of those deaths. He was sentenced to 360 years. His reign of terror lasted from 1993 until a nursing supervisor finally realized what he was doing in 1995. The deaths of his patients were not easy deaths.

Prosecutors said Majors gave his victims fatal overdoses and that some of the injections were witnessed by their loved ones. Investigators said he

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used the potentially heart-stopping drug potassium chloride, vials of which were found in his home and car. During the trial a former room- mate, Andy Harris, testified that Majors told him he hated old people and said “they should all be gassed.” (BBC World News, 1999)

Patients become members of the “less-dead” because of their power- lessness and the absolute and unquestioning trust people place in medical per- sonnel. The serial murderer who is also a physician is even more difficult to detect than nurses. The medical community is a closed society and protects its own.

The year 2000 saw the end of a career of murder by a physician who had been killing in the United States and in Zimbabwe, when Michael Swango was finally arrested in New York, on his way to Saudi Arabia to practice med- icine. Swango was sentenced to life imprisonment on October 18, 2000, for the deaths of four persons. Authorities believe that the victim count is much higher.

Swango has pleaded guilty to killing four people: McGee at Ohio State University Hospital and three men who were patients at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Northport, N.Y., where Swango was a resident in 1993. But Swango long had been suspected in a number of deaths involving patients at hospitals since he was dismissed from a residency program in neurology at Ohio State University Hospital—now OSU Medical Cen- ter—in early 1984. After leaving Columbus, Swango was imprisoned in 1985 in Illinois for the nonfatal poisonings of several paramedics. Upon his release in 1987, he worked at hospitals and clinics in Virginia, South Dakota and New York and abroad in Zimbabwe, often using false names and histories and leaving suspicious deaths in his wake. Local authorities had investigated the death of McGee, as well as four other suspicious deaths that had occurred at OSU Hospital in the mid-1980s. But they said there was never enough evidence to charge Swango. “If they really knew how many he has killed, I think he’d be recognized as one of the biggest mass murderers of all time.’’ In fact, according to author James B. Stewart, who wrote a recent investigative history of Swango called Blind Eye, the “evidence suggests’’ that Swango killed at least 35 people. (“Swango admits,” 2000, p. 1A)

The FBI says McGee may be one of some 60 victims of Swango’s, which would make him the most prolific serial killer of the past century. But in court in New York, where Swango was sentenced to life without parole, he showed no remorse or emotion. “It was like all this suffering meant nothing to him,” says Stewart. “I’ve never encountered a human being like that.” (“Rx: Life behind bars,” 2000, p. 74)

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The Killing Fields: Where Are the Victims Found?

Serial killers are found in the peaceful neighborhoods of the affluent; in the pop- ular bars of cities; at bus stops; public parks, and shopping malls; and simply roaming the interstate highways of the nation. Serial killers hunt in all these places and more. They are in our colleges, hospitals, and workplaces. They live among us and kill, all while continuing to be the husbands, fathers, and friends we trust. None of us is guaranteed of safety, just as none of us can truly know the mind of another. Their hunting grounds are everywhere.

The hunting grounds vary a great deal among serial killers, but many select their victims from the same general areas, where they feel comfortable, have control over those frequenting the area, or know that the area is infrequently patrolled by local police. They hunt in areas where they will not be noticed or appear different from others. They seek anonymity.

Hickey (1997) developed a mobility classification of three types of serial killers. The first is the place-specific killer, who murders within his or her own home, place of employment, or other sites. An example of this type is Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed 16 of his 17 victims in Milwaukee. Fourteen of these victims were killed in his apartment. A second type is the localized serial killer, who seeks his victims within a state or urbanized area. An example of a local serial killer is Robert Yates Jr., who recently admitted to killing 16 people in the Spokane, Washington, area. All of his victims were abducted from a red light area of the city. The third type is the traveling serial killer who kills while travel- ing through or relocating to other areas of the country. An example is Andrew Cunanan, who began his killing spree in May 1997, and committed murders from Minnesota to Florida.

Using his mobility classification, Hickey found that 20–23% of victims were killed in specific places, 36–43% of victims were killed by local killers, and 36–42% of victims were killed by traveling killers. Further, Hickey found that men and women who generally stayed close to home killed 59–63% of all victims in his database. However, the victims of these serial killers were more likely to be killed away from home. Hickey also found that place-specific serial killers were responsible for the smallest percentage of victims but had the highest number of victims per case.

Most victims from Hickey’s (1997) database were women and children. This group could certainly be considered weak, helpless, and without power and control. Hickey found that “in general, serial killers have victimized female adults (65%) consistently more than male adults, but half of all offenders sur- veyed had killed at least one male adult” (p. 112). Hickey also noted an increase in the number of elderly victims per case. However, this could simply be the result of our aging population.

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There appear to be a number of favored hunting grounds for the serial killer. The different areas in which serial killers search for their prey reflect the different types of victims sought out by the killer. The red light areas of the larger urban areas are probably the most favored hunting grounds for the serial killer, given the large number of prostitutes who are victimized each year. Here, the killer can blend in with all the other johns, and have rela- tively little fear of drawing attention. Another urban area where these killers hunt is where homosexuals cruise for sex. Many serial killers have lured and abducted their victims from business establishments that provide short-term services to people in transit, such as convenience stores or service stations near interstate highways. These locations appear to provide very attractive hunt- ing grounds to the serial killer, given the almost guaranteed anonymity of the stranger-to-stranger interaction that occurs there and the likelihood that witnesses remember little of their brief time there. One unique and attrac- tive characteristic of these points of prey, from the killer’s perspective, is that stranger-to-stranger interaction is the norm and to be expected. No one takes any notice.

The Quick Dismissal of the Investigative Value of Victim Information

U.S. criminal law defines a criminal offense as an offense against the state and specifies that it is the state, rather than the victim, who prosecutes the charged offender. The criminal justice system focuses on the crime and the criminal offender. Little formal attention is paid to the victim, other than as a source of evidence to strengthen the state’s efforts in prosecuting the offender. The needs, comfort, and convenience of victims (in the case of serial murder, the surviving relatives and loved ones of the victims) become insignificant in a system that emphasizes crime control and prosecution.

Criminologists have only recently turned their attention to crime victims. Much of this research has focused on lifestyle and victimization, victim charac- teristics, and victim precipitation (the ways victims contribute to their own vic- timization). Seldom has criminology studied victims’ or survivors’ responses or ways to provide assistance to them.

Ironically, the criminal investigation literature depicts a similar disinterest in the victims or survivors. Once the physical evidence and other information gathered begin to point toward a suspect or a type of suspect, the victims or sur- vivors quickly become only names on a police report for entry into a master name index file, to be retrieved at a later date only if they are considered valu- able in the prosecution of the defendant.

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In the investigation of a number of homicides believed to have been com- mitted by the same individual, victim information may be the most important information collected by criminal investigators. For in many serial murder inves- tigations, physical evidence from the crime scene is scarce or nonexistent. In most of these homicides (as noted earlier), the victim and killer previously had not been acquainted. In other words, the victims may be the only major source of information on which the investigation can proceed.

As sociologist David Ford has indicated, in the investigation of gay murders committed in the Indianapolis, Indiana, area in the early 1980s, the Central Indi- ana Multiagency Investigative Team initially discounted the value of a victimo- logical approach to the investigation (Egger, 1990). Ford argues that this early exclusion of a valuable investigative strategy was a major problem for the team’s effectiveness.

Early attention by investigators to the targeted victims is essential in serial murder investigations, which typically reveal a very elusive killer. Sufficient analysis of targeted victims and their networks will inevitably yield greater insight into the victim’s role in the crime setting, and permit inferences regard- ing the killer’s decision-making process in selection of intended victims.

Ford argues that an applied victimological approach consists of five general tasks to assemble social characteristics of victims and circumstances of the crimes.

1. Identify the category or type of victim. 2. Delineate the victim’s social networks. 3. Determine the personal factors contributing to risk. 4. Describe the situational factors affecting risk. 5. Identify routine victim activities and expected behaviors related to

contact with predators (Egger, 1990, p. 116, adapted).

Ford, a sociologist and the only non-sworn member of the Indiana inves- tigative team, argues for the importance of analyzing the ecology of possible con- tact settings (between killer and potential victims) to help narrow the focus of the investigation to promising areas for locating witnesses, including surviving victims.

Much of the research on serial murder has concentrated on finding similar- ities among these murders. With few exceptions, the victims of serial killers have been ignored. However, one of the greatest similarities among serial killers is their consistent choice of victims. As discussed earlier, many of the victims of serial murderers are vagrants, the homeless, prostitutes, migrant workers, homo- sexuals, missing children, single women out by themselves, elderly women, col- lege students, or hospital patients. In other words, the serial killer preys on people who tend to be vulnerable or those who are easy to lure and dominate.

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Part of these victims’ vulnerabilities may be that they frequent certain locations, or that they are powerless, or that they are considered the throwaways of our society. Many are not missed or reported missing. A good example of this, noted earlier, is the arrest of Joel Rifkin in New York on June 28, 1993. After a lengthy interrogation, Rifkin confessed to killing 17 prostitutes during the previous three years. After his confession, the police investigation concentrated on finding and identifying Rifkin’s victims. This was indeed difficult, since it was found that few of these victims had been reported missing. In instances where victims had been found, they were yet to be identified when Rifkin was arrested. No one had missed these women until Rifkin stumbled into the hands of a New York state trooper.

Little else is known regarding the victims of serial murderers other than that they are almost always a stranger to the murderer. In a preponderance of cases, the victims are young females, presumably chosen to satisfy the domi- nance craving of the mostly male serial murderers. The victims are sometimes young males, as in the serial murder cases of John Wayne Gacy, Dean Corll, and Jeffrey Dahmer. It has been estimated that 50% of unidentified bodies in county morgues or medical examiners’ offices across the country are young children or adolescents (Wingo, personal communication, July 1983). Unfortunately, we don’t know how many of these bodies represent victims of serial murder.

In a number of cases it appears that the victims were selected solely because they crossed the path of the serial murderer and became a vehicle for his hypo-arousal and pleasure (S. Egger, 1984). Victims may be self-selecting only in that they existed at a certain place and point in time. This and possibly the physical appearance of the victim, which may hold some symbolic significance for the killer, are the only known precipitating factors for their selection. Lack of prestige, powerlessness, and membership in a lower socioeconomic or minority group are common characteristics of serial murder victims. Levin and Fox (1985) seem to agree that “serial killers almost without exception choose vulner- able victims—those who are easy to dominate” (p. 75). “The serial killer typically picks on innocent strangers who may possess a certain physical feature or may just be accessible” (p. 231).

Predatory stranger offenses may be particularly dependent on the availabil- ity of vulnerable victims at a particular geographic location. Also, victim precipi- tation, the extent to which the victim’s actions contribute to his or her demise, is considered a major cause or certainly a contributing factor of homicide by many criminologists. However, the extent to which victim precipitation occurs in serial murder can only be speculated on since little information is usually available regarding the interaction between the killer and the victim prior to the point of fatal encounter.

There are a number of high-risk lifestyles that make a person prone to becoming a victim: homosexuals cruising downtown areas and bathrooms; cult

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members soliciting funds on sidewalks and in bus stations; and released mental patients and skid row alcoholics wandering the streets at odd hours (Karmen, 1983). In some instances, it may simply be that an individual is alone. Females out by themselves are particularly vulnerable, given the high proportion of female serial murder victims. Prostitutes are almost certainly at risk. But for most women, there appears to be strength in numbers in reducing the risk of a serial murderer attack.

In many cases, serial murderers may be attacking mirror images of them- selves. If sexual child abuse and neglect are contributing factors in the production of a serial killer, the killer may be choosing victims like his earlier self or from the same general lifestyle. Many victim–offender studies indicate that both parties are usually from the same group or background (Maghan & Sagarin, 1983).

Some blame the mobility of American society for making victims more available to serial murderers. We are indeed a transient culture. Robert Keppel, chief investigator, Attorney General’s Office in Washington state, contends that since many serial murderers are charismatic, they can convince their victims to go with them for some reason: “They pick people they can have power and con- trol over, small-framed women, children and old people” (Lindsey, 1984, p. 7).

Many psychiatrists and psychologists believe that the victims of serial mur- derers are symbolic of something or someone deeply significant in the murder- ers’ lives. Some psychologists have said that the victims represent cruel parents against whom some murderers feel they cannot directly take revenge. The alter- native for the serial murderer is to indirectly take revenge, by killing others who resemble or represent this parent.

Typically the serial killer doesn’t think much about his victims, has little empathy for loved ones of the victims, and exhibits no remorse. When asked about his victims, Ted Bundy responded, “What’s one less person on the face of the earth anyway?” Australian serial killer James Miller, charged with the murder of seven young girls and women, stated while testifying, “They weren’t worth much. One of them even enjoyed it” (Wilson, 1983, p. 81).

A number of researchers have found that children and young women are the prime targets for serial killers. These groups are certainly considered victim prone, primarily as a result of their vulnerability. Hickey (1997) found 93 serial killers, 24% of those he studied, who had killed at least one child, and as indi- cated earlier, young females comprise a majority of serial murderers’ victims.

Conclusion and Future Implications

Law enforcement agencies and their homicide investigators must begin to real- ize that by allowing victims of serial killers to remain “less-dead,” they are in effect placing a lower value on victims’ differences. The more “less-dead” a vic- tim is, the less emphasis will be placed on identifying and apprehending the

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killer. After a short time the police will simply move on to other cases, unless they receive pressure for resolution from politicians or the news media. Without an outcry from the survivors (in many cases involving the “less-dead,” there are no survivors), little pressure is placed on law enforcement agencies to solve these cases. The cases rapidly become cold and personnel move on to other homicide investigations. This is an indictment not of law enforcement but of how we as a society view certain segments of our society. Law enforcement is a part of that society and provides a service to it. The intentional killing of a human being, whether she or he is identified as belonging to a specific group in that society, is still a death that must be addressed.

One tool of law enforcement that must be enhanced is the psychological profile, which is an attempt to provide investigators with more information about an unidentified serial killer. The purpose of this tool, sometimes referred to as investigative profiling, is to develop a behavioral composite, combining sociolog- ical and psychological assessments of the offender. Profiling is generally based on the premise that accurate analysis and interpretation of the crime scene and other locations related to the crime can indicate the type of behavioral patterns; knowledge and an understanding of the patterns can lead investigators to poten- tial suspects. The problem with profiling is that it frequently overlooks or places little emphasis on the victims. The focus is on the offender, and the victim seems to be lost in the analysis.

One remedy for enhancing the psychological profile is to conduct a psycho- logical autopsy on serial murder victims. Psychological autopsies are used to determine the reasons and rationale of individuals who commit suicide. We sug- gest that the technique in determining why a person commits suicide be adapted to an analysis of the victims of a serial killer. This would require an investigative analysis of the last hours or days of the victim prior to his or her point of fatal encounter with the serial killer. Such an analysis might tell criminal investigators why the serial killer selected the victim, or whether the serial killer had stalked the victim because of the victim’s lifestyle or actions.

Another area that needs to be immediately addressed is educating the public about the value of all the members of our society, including the “less- dead.” No chain is stronger than its weakest link, and no society is stronger than its most disadvantaged members. The “less-dead” are devalued for a number of reasons, including their lack of education, economic resources, and social resources necessary to live in a manner acceptable to most citizens. Are we going to continue to justify their deaths out of our own fear and loathing for these, our fellow human beings? Is it because of these deficiencies that we continue to rationalize and ignore these cases and have low expectations of law enforcement to solve them? We need to honestly look at the role that preju- dices play in the public’s and law enforcement’s response to serial killers. We, as a society, need to stop sending subtle signals to serial killers that as long as they choose victims in the category of the “less-dead,” their murders are

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somehow more acceptable and we will continue to accept their victims’ deaths with little note. Does the public perception of these victims and their lifestyles account for the treatment that their deaths receive in the popular media? Are we going to ignore the horrible waste of human life and poten- tial while allowing the serial killers to continue to become the “heroes” of to- morrow?

Victims of serial killers are for the most part ignored by investigators and society. This appears to be the case whether the victim falls in the category of the “less-dead,“ or could be classified as “more-dead,” on the basis of her or his higher socioeconomic standing in the community. We must remember that when victims are ignored, the survivors are also ignored.

Robert Yates’s wife, Linda, sent a Spokane newspaper a public letter, asking for forgiveness and understanding, when her husband was arrested. (“Yates’ wife,” 2000). In Augusta, Georgia, the wife of another man charged with serial murder publicly apologized and begged the families of her husband’s victims for forgiveness and understanding for herself and her children (“Wife’s letter,” 2000). The parents, siblings, spouses, and children of serial killers are also vic- tims. Their initial disbelief and final horrified acceptance of his or her crimes are in some ways more devastating than the trauma of the victim’s families. The per- son they thought they knew is still alive, breathing, and imprisoned, with the answers to all their questions locked away, inside his or her mind. The man or woman they loved, shared a life with, looked to as a parent, has suddenly become a stranger, a monster in the eyes of the world, and they are left to attempt to rec- oncile the two. And the children are once again victimized. They are left with all the questions and doubts, without the maturity and understanding of their adult counterparts. Without the assistance, love, and support of their families, friends, and society, they are alone, filled with questions, and left to grow up to exorcise their own demons; they are also the victims of their loved one who is a serial killer.

In the future we need to change the way we treat these families. The rela- tives and loved ones of the victims must also be considered victims and treated accordingly. As can be seen in numerous media accounts of serial murder cases, the survivors are almost never mentioned and quickly forgotten by society and the criminal justice system. The survivors of a serial killer’s acts should be afforded the same consideration that his or her victims deserve but too often do not get. This means that survivors should be offered grief counseling and victim compensation, and be made aware of their rights as victims.

Endnote 1At the time of this writing (December 2001), an arrest has been made in several of the Green River killings. Guillen and Smith continue to follow and comment on the case for the Seattle Times.

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