Rex Heuermann, a Long Island architect arrested this summer in the highly publicized Gilgo Beach murders, may go down as one of last in a vanishing species of American criminal.
Hundreds of serial killers roamed the nation in the 1980s and 1990s, captivating the public imagination and inspiring such popular culture brands as the film “Silence of the Lambs” and the television series “Dexter.”
America remains fascinated with its serial killers. Yet, in recent years, serial killings have plummeted. One scholarly study found that the number of active serial killers dwindled from 198 in 1987, the largest number on record, to 12 in 2018.
The number of victims dropped from 404 in 1987 to an estimated 36 in 2019, according to researchers at Radford and Florida Gulf Coast universities. They cautioned that the latest number may be low, however, because of the lag time in identifying serial killers.
Why the decline? Simply put, it’s harder than ever to get away with serial murder. Experts cite dramatic advances in crime fighting technology, pervasive video cameras and smartphones and a more safety-conscious public.
“Would-be serial killers, they might commit crimes, but they get caught before they achieve that status,” said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University. “It’s rather difficult to kill a series of strangers and not be detected.
“They still exist, people who have those thoughts and passions. But either they attempt to soothe them and they get caught, or they find other outlets.”
The decline of serial killers seems all the more striking because of the concurrent rise in “spree” killings, claiming multiple lives in a single violent episode.
This year is on track to yield a record or near-record number of mass killings, with 34 incidents and 167 victims to date, according to a database maintained by USA Today, The Associated Press and Northeastern University.
Many of the deadliest public mass shootings have happened in the past decade, including the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016 and the Uvalde school shooting in 2022.
In decades past, mass shootings were comparatively uncommon, and serial killers dominated headlines: Ted Bundy, who raped and murdered at least 30 girls and women in the 1970s; John Wayne Gacy, who raped and murdered at least 33 boys and men outside Chicago in the same era; Jeffrey Dahmer, of Wisconsin, who dismembered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991; and Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, who murdered at least 49 girls and women in Washington and Oregon in the 1980s and 1990s.
“The golden age of serial murders was in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” said Thomas Hargrove, founder of the nonprofit Murder Accountability Project. “At that time, serial killers were literally flying under the radar.”
These days, serial killings are many fewer and farther between.
The most notorious serial killer captured in the past decade is probably Joseph James DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, arrested in 2018 and linked to at least 13 murders and 50 rapes in California.
But DeAngelo’s known crimes took place in the 1970s and 1980s, peak decades of serial murder. Advances in DNA technology and genetic genealogy enabled police to identify him as the Golden State Killer using genetic samples from relatives, clearing murders from decades earlier.
Heuermann, the Long Island architect, was charged in July in the deaths of three women, whose bodies were found swaddled in camouflage-patterned burlap on a stretch of beach. The women went missing in 2009 and 2010. Heuermann has pleaded not guilty.
Advances in technology allowed investigators to track Heuermann, who prosecutors said had concealed his movements by using disposable cellphones and surfing the web incognito. Investigators said Heuermann betrayed himself with anonymous internet queries such as “Why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the long island serial killer.”
Apart from the Gilgo Beach case, casual readers may be hard-pressed to name many contemporary serial killers.
Anthony Robinson of Washington, D.C., is charged in the 2021 deaths of two women whose bodies were recovered in Harrisonburg, Va., and is suspected in three other cases. Police have dubbed him the Shopping Cart Killer, alleging that he moved bodies in shopping carts before dumping them in vacant lots.
Hargrove notes the case of Darren Deon Vann, convicted of killing seven women in Indiana in 2013 and 2014. Though Vann lacks the infamy of a Bundy or a Gacy, Hargrove believes he may ultimately rank among the nation’s most prolific serial killers.
After his arrest, Vann claimed to have killed “way more” victims in Illinois than in Indiana. Chicago media have questioned whether Vann may figure in some of the city’s many unsolved strangulation murders.
“He could actually be in the running for the most killings of all time,” Hargrove said.
Criminologists generally define serial murder as the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender in separate incidents, although some researchers set the bar higher: say, at three or four distinct killings. A spree murder, by contrast, is multiple murders by a single offender in a single event.
The rise of mass shootings and decline of serial killings has led some observers to speculate that inveterate killers are choosing to go out in a mass-murder spree. Yet, spree and serial murders are different acts, with different motivations.
“The predominant serial killer is a sexual sadist, or at least a sadist, who kills for the fun of it,” Fox said. “Spree killers don’t do it for fun. They have other reasons: revenge, against society, against employers.”
Many spree killers expect death or arrest. Serial killers, by definition, must evade capture to succeed. And that is becoming progressively harder to do.
“For one, people are more cautious,” Fox said. “People don’t hitchhike any more. People don’t let their kids play in the front yard. And then we have cellphones, so if we’re concerned about a situation or stranded in our car, you just make a call.”
Most pedestrians carry camera phones. “And, speaking of cameras, there are cameras everywhere,” Fox said. “It’s very hard for an offender to do something in public without being recorded.”
Advances in policing, like those that enabled DeAngelo’s capture, aren’t lost on prospective serial killers.
“Organized killers, they like to read about serial killers,” Hargrove said. “And they are paying attention, and they are aware that the science has gotten way better, and they recognize that they’re taking ever-increasing risks by doing what they do.”
Rather than kill, some with sadistic proclivities may find an outlet in violent pornography, which now proliferates online. “There are ways that sexual sadists can satiate their passions without having to use live victims,” Fox said. He notes, however, that the porn industry has victims of its own.
“The good news,” Hargrove said, “is serial murder is on the decline. The bad news is, there’s still plenty of them out there.”