What was the main reason the Golden Age of Serial Killers ended?

DNA didn't become widely advanced and used for criminal profiling until the early 90s. The serial killers had all but disappeared by the early-mid 80s. Many had their heyday in the 50s, 60s and 70s, so how can advanced DNA profiling alone be the reason?

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  1. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    the lack of community and increased atomization and probably no specific media attention anymore when a killer goes around
    serial killers were at their peak when boomers were young, thus the average age was young, hitchhiking was extremely common and normal and people all trusted eachother, hippie culture

  2. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    >The serial killers had all but disappeared by the early-mid 80s.

    Reagan

  3. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    police departments started to become more in contact with each other meaning it was much harder to commit a crime, ditch town, and start over again

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      This, plus computer based databases and the Internet, instead of having to trawl though thousands of physical cards and paper reports.

  4. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Cameras everywhere, better forensics, hippies and gangs hunted to extinction, massive increase in police forces

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      >and gangs hunted to extinction
      not including all the MS-13 members who have been walking across the US-Mexico border unhindered since January 20, 2021

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        meds. also Trump lost.

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        More like since 1990 dumbass gayet

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        Obama deported more illegal immigrants than Trump.

  5. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    CIA money dried up

  6. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    >It makes for an interesting sociological statement that at least 75% of all known serial killers in American history were active between the years 1969 and 1999. "It really was the golden age of the roaming serial killer," comments one FBI profiler.[3]

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      the golden age of the boomers youth.
      all serial killers were basically boomers.
      Is there nothing that's as evil as that generation?

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        >all serial killers were basically boomers
        Some Silent Generation as well.

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        By the same logic does that mean millennials and zoomies are evil because of the mass murderers?

  7. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    feminism was starting, meaning women were not being protected by male family members or husbands, and no dna, cheap gas and cars, liberal culture, etc

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      People were hitchhiking all over the place back then but most of them still operated on an innocous 1950s mindset where they assumed every stranger you met was a Leave it to Beaver character,

  8. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    One FBI profiler said that when a comparison was done of rape/murder cases from the '50s, they tended to just involve a basic veganal rape while such cases from the '70s more often had prolonged captivity of the victim, torture, anal sex, etc.

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      Did the increase of pornography within the general public cause an increase of more depraved cases?

  9. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Police got dramatically better at catching them after 1-2 kills instead of 10-20. The NICS database alone probably halved the number of serial killers out on the street because suddenly it meant that you couldn't just skip town if the police were on to you.

  10. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    A lot of that stuff was government experiments mixed with black market frickery (MK Ultra/Human Trafficking/Drug Trade/Snuff Films). Now they just do school and public shootings for the trials.

  11. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    phones

  12. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Internet probably played a big role. With it all the weirdos could go online and be as perverted as they wanted withouth the need of scalping anyone.

  13. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    ha ha oh my no, there are many serial killers still around. they just kill people nobody cares about like homeless guys and illegal immigrant vegetable pickers. you only draw law enforcement attention if you go Ted Bundy mode and kill attractive young white women.

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      >they just kill people nobody cares about like homeless guys and illegal immigrant vegetable pickers

      Friendly reminder there's an unreported rape epidemic in the United States and it's coyotes raping wetbacks

      https://www.reuters.com/world/migrants-are-being-raped-mexico-border-they-await-entry-us-2023-09-29/

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        >Friendly reminder there's an unreported rape epidemic in the United States and it's coyotes raping wetbacks
        also just Hispanics in large families where it's an uncle creeping on his neices or something similar.

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      >ha ha oh my no, there are many serial killers still around. they just kill people nobody cares about like homeless guys and illegal immigrant vegetable pickers. you only draw law enforcement attention if you go Ted Bundy mode and kill attractive young white women.
      Not even remotely close to being true. All the worst Serial killers weren't white, didn't kill whites and didn't live in America. They never would have been caught if nobody cared about the people they killed. Luis Garavito, Pedro López, Javed Iqbal etc

  14. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    (1) Feminism was big even in my grandmothers generation after WW2. More women walking around in public or hitchhiking without male protection. The Hippy movement greatly amplified this trend.

    (2) Police departments didn't communicate with each other anywhere near as much in the 1970's as they do today. Policing in America is way more centralized today and the FBI/CIA play a far more central role.

    (3) The criminal population IQ was way higher (mostly because a greater proportion of the American proportion was white or israeli). So more people had the opportunity to evade police and reach serial killer numbers. Having said this the most prolific serial killer in American history is Samuel Little. A black guy.

    (4) Younger population. More people within the primary criminal age bracket.

    (5) Police simply weren't as effective back then as they are today and forensic technology wasn't as advanced.

    (6) More people had disposable income and spare time to devote to the serial killer lifestyle. It's harder today to balance family/work life and serial killing.

    (7) There was a far greater underground market for CP, snuff, zoo and scat. Porn regulation was surprisingly lax.

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      >More people had disposable income and spare time to devote to the serial killer lifestyle

      Beg pardon? Many serial killers were not Dennis Rader, a lot of them were vagrants, outcasts, and other people on the fringe of society.

      >The criminal population IQ was way higher (mostly because a greater proportion of the American proportion was white or israeli)
      High IQ populations don't murder, they do white collar crimes.

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        >Beg pardon? Many serial killers were not Dennis Rader, a lot of them were vagrants, outcasts, and other people on the fringe of society.
        You're unlikely to be a serial killer in America if you can't even remember your own birthday anon.

        >High IQ populations don't murder, they do white collar crimes.
        Murderers exist in every society anon. There may be less in a higher IQ society but they themselves will also have a higher IQ and thus have a higher chance of evading police. So a higher chance of reaching serial killer status.
        This relationship obviously doesn't hold true in countries with grossly incompetent police though.

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        you didn't need to be rich to live back then, even with lapses in work you could always find a job easily

        and the money was worth so much you could own a car and a house just doing janitor work or something, you could afford to drive around all day between jobs looking for victims, I think that's what he means, cost of living was down and the economy was booming

        • 2 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          >even with lapses in work you could always find a job easily
          >and the money was worth so much you could own a car and a house just doing janitor work or something, you could afford to drive around all day between jobs looking for victims, I think that's what he means, cost of living was down and the economy was booming
          I dunno what era and economy you're referring to but it sure wasn't the 1970s.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            you didn't need to be rich to live back then, even with lapses in work you could always find a job easily

            and the money was worth so much you could own a car and a house just doing janitor work or something, you could afford to drive around all day between jobs looking for victims, I think that's what he means, cost of living was down and the economy was booming

            Crime usually increases when the economy is in the dumps. The 70s was an era with a stagnant economy and a lot of rootless young people who didn't have much opportunity so everyone was just kind of wandering around, having sex, and doing drugs, and a lot of them turned to crime as well. It wasn't until the Reagan years that middle class prosperity really came back.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            >even with lapses in work you could always find a job easily
            >and the money was worth so much you could own a car and a house just doing janitor work or something, you could afford to drive around all day between jobs looking for victims, I think that's what he means, cost of living was down and the economy was booming
            I dunno what era and economy you're referring to but it sure wasn't the 1970s.

            The 70s had a crap economy but it was also easy to live off gibes thanks to the Great Society. So you could be a roaming serial killer pretty easily; be a loser drifter but still collect welfare and be able to afford food and gas. When they de-Federalized welfare in the 90s it changed a lot of things and that was a factor in the decrease in crime during that era.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            not talked about enough but the War on Poverty was started in '65 and the Welfare Reform Act was '96. the era of high nationwide crime almost perfectly coincides with that.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            I'm a bit skeptical. That was generally a high crime era across the board in the West and a few non Western countries.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            [...]
            Crime usually increases when the economy is in the dumps. The 70s was an era with a stagnant economy and a lot of rootless young people who didn't have much opportunity so everyone was just kind of wandering around, having sex, and doing drugs, and a lot of them turned to crime as well. It wasn't until the Reagan years that middle class prosperity really came back.

            op said 50s 60s and 70s

            also I don't buy the the 70s were bad at all, literally cry me a river boomers, you had a house when you were like 24, give me a frickin break man

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            >also I don't buy the the 70s were bad at all, literally cry me a river boomers, you had a house when you were like 24
            Nobody bought a house until the Reagan years. And yes the 70s were pretty bad and the country was falling apart which was why Reagan got elected on a Trump-like make America great again message. A lot of crime, urban decay, trash everywhere, high unemployment, high inflation, drugs, downtown areas filled with porno theaters, terrible cars etc.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            Drugs and in particular violent crime weren't much better in the 80s.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            Crime was down a bit in the 80s from a late 70s peak only to accelerate again in the early 90s.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            Other than music and Hollywood everything in the 70s seemed stagnant and low effort.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            The Reagan administration spent almost two years trying to fix the economy and middle class prosperity didn't really start to return until 1984.

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        >Beg pardon? Many serial killers were not Dennis Rader, a lot of them were vagrants, outcasts, and other people on the fringe of society.
        American popular culture has a weird almost-respect for serial killers. They are (wrongly) seen as these evil geniuses who deceive the police for years, blend into the crowd, play mind games with the victims etc.

        • 2 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          >American popular culture has a weird almost-respect for serial killers. They are (wrongly) seen as these evil geniuses who deceive the police for years, blend into the crowd, play mind games with the victims etc.

          They aren't geniuses at all but it is definitely harder to get away with ten murders rather than just one.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            >but it is definitely harder to get away with ten murders rather than just one
            It's plenty easy, just don't kill white females under 45.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            >They aren't geniuses at all but it is definitely harder to get away with ten murders rather than just one.
            Part of what feeds into the evil genius mythology is a (wrong) belief that the cops are at least competent at their jobs.

            >but it is definitely harder to get away with ten murders rather than just one
            It's plenty easy, just don't kill white females under 45.

            >It's plenty easy, just don't kill white females under 45.
            Most serial killer victims are just prostitutes, addicts and vagrants that no one gives a shit about, which was a big reason that they could get away with it for so long.

          • 2 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            >Part of what feeds into the evil genius mythology is a (wrong) belief that the cops are at least competent at their jobs.

            Cops today are getting dumber and less effective at solving crimes than they were in the 70s. The tough gumshoe detectives they had back then are dead or retired now and you have a generation of morons who think technology will solve crimes for them and they don't need to do detective work anymore.

  15. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    >dude you can see that little girl's underwear. isn't that pic technically CP?
    No, because the child isn't having sex or purposely posing suggestively for the camera.
    Well done for outing yourself as an autistic pedophile though.

  16. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Psychiatrists were really fricking stupid back in the 60s-70s and would often pronounce psychopaths rehabilitated.

    >Robert Black
    >rapes a 7 year old and chokes her
    >psychiatrists be like "naw it was just a teenage mistake he'll grow out of it."
    >~~25 years passes
    >four little girls dead before he's finally caught

  17. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Dunno, I just hope the golden age of mass shooters ends soon.

  18. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    They're still around, it's just that they target people who nobody cares about. If some homeless tweaker ends up being found dead or goes missing nobody cares.

  19. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    It never ended. The 24 hour news cycle just meant something is old news within 1 week or less, and people have worse attention spans.
    Nobody is going to remember Billy Joe strangling 10 hookers now because his parents were mean to him.

  20. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    >The serial killers had all but disappeared by the early-mid 80s
    1989 was the peak year for serial killers,with 193 operating.

    Killers are not being released on parole was quickly as before,and the majority of serial killers are black, usually killing for an organization

  21. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    guys guys

  22. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    i still say ala did it

  23. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    i wonder if porn has played a role in pacifying people like this. i'm not a very ideological person, so i don't have strong feelings one way or another. in fact, in some cases, i could see it having a stimulating effect that encourages certain types.

  24. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    From what I understand it was mainly because the golden age of serial killers (in America at least) was when police departments were highly regionalised.

    Evidence. Files. Reports etc were simply not shared station to station. Let alone across cities, or even states

    One of the reasons this became standard practice is largely because of the few major serial killer trials that happened. The errors revealed and changes made as a result.

    Even without dna. If you were a budding serial killer today you likely committed some violent/sexual assault crime prior to someone in a similar way in a close area.

    So when dead body A turns up it wouldn’t be long before they ask to talk to you at least. Ask if you have an alibi

    Meanwhile killers like Bundy were so open they literally knew what car he was driving and he still succeeded for ages just walking up to people and trying to bait them into his car. At which point their friends would have an accurate description of him and his car that their friend was last seen with before their corpse was discovered

    Likewise earlier more impulsive crimes that serial killers typically commit as a young person are recorded and mean you’re kept an eye on.

    Back in the day moving to another state would mean you’d basically have a clean slate

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      >Back in the day moving to another state would mean you’d basically have a clean slate
      My grandpa still uses the phrase "across the border" to refer to other states instead of other countries.

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        >responding to Reddit spacing posters
        No.

        • 2 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          Cope

          Seethe

          Dial8

  25. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    The media stopped reporting on serial killers as much and glamorizing them. Instead they just glamorize mass shooters.

  26. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    im still amazed by chessboard killer in 2000s moscow, dude killed 60 people in one park and nobody cared lol not even victims i suppose

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      Unfortunately that was <25 years ago so it cannot be discussed on IQfy.

    • 2 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      He was killing homeless drunks and bums iirc, probably the easiest type of victim to get away with

      • 2 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        he switched to kids and women later, but yeah no one really cares about them too

  27. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    mass killings became the predominant meme because of 9/11

  28. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    - banning leaded fuels
    - dropping crime rates in general (largely due to less lead in the air), so police could focus more resources on one murder case.
    - better communication between police departments, just better forensic and policing methods in general
    - CCTVs

  29. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    the media switched focus on cults and also the strong but mentally ill types that would be serial killers got drugs and pills and turned weak

  30. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    They don't report on them anymore, not to scare the taxcattle overmuch

  31. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    During the 2000s the media was obsessed with pedophiles and it led to a lot of copycat crimes as well as self-described pedo killer/avenger Sheila LaBarra.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_in_the_United_States

    Also did someone remove her from the list? She was here and now she's not.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20230131114214/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_in_the_United_States

  32. 2 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Most would be serial killers just become zogbots and get sent overseas where they can kill and also get paid for it

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