Why are many serial killers from the USA?

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ProvokesThinking
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03 Jan 2013, 10:06 pm

The most famous ones like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Ed Gein were from the US.

Wikipedia has such a long list of US serial killers that it has a seperate page, while other countries, big countries too, just have a few listed on Wikipedia.



Foxxtale
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03 Jan 2013, 11:23 pm

I sort of wonder this myself. But serial killers tend to share other traits as well. Why are they frequently in the united states? is the US really that hard on lower-middle class white males?

granted, some of the most prolific serial killers in history have been from other countries. Andrei Chikatilo was from Russia, Serhiy Tkach is Ukrainian, Moses Sithole is South African, Ahmad Suradji was from Indonesia... and then there's the most prolific serial killer of modern times - Harold Shipman from the UK, with at least 250 murders to his name (probably many more)

maybe it isn't so much the fact that we have more, but that we just have more ravenous media to publicize it? or maybe there is just something seriously wrong with this country....


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arthead
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03 Jan 2013, 11:26 pm

Foxxtale wrote:
maybe it isn't so much the fact that we have more, but that we just have more ravenous media to publicize it?


I would bet on the Media playing a big role.



naturalplastic
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04 Jan 2013, 2:12 am

The grandaddy and 'role model' for modern serial killers was Jack the Ripper, who was a Brit.

There were serial killers in the centuries before that.
There was even a middle aged Hungarian duchess who bathed in the blood of slain young maidens ( a non american AND a woman).

But-yeah the USA sure has alot of them.

But Britain still has many as well- there was that kindly looking village doctor who turned out to have murdered like 250 people over a long career whom they finnally caught in the 90's.Then there was that "Sutcliffe Strangler"(something like that) that they had roadblocks to search for in the 80's and finnally caught.



So relative to Britain's smaller population it may have as many as the USA.

American society is more mobile- more cars- more lonely highways. Maybe serial killers can get away with abducting people and then dumping their bodies more easily than in places with less mobile communities were everyone knows each other. Just a thought.
But Im not sure we really do have more serial killers than other countries of the same population size.



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29 Dec 2015, 9:37 pm

There are serial killers everywhere, it's just that more media hype surrounds them in the US because Americans think they are such a big screaming deal. :roll:



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29 Dec 2015, 11:41 pm

We've had our share of serial killers in Australia too.

Paul Denyer was one so was Ivan Malat there are a few others that I can't think of at the moment.



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29 Dec 2015, 11:50 pm

Probably doesn't help that out of 37 industrialized nations, we're the only one without single-payer/nationalized health care, we've shut down virtually all of our publicly funded mental heath clinics since the late 80's and as a society we consider mental illness to be a "morality failure" rather than something equal to physical illnesses.


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30 Dec 2015, 1:27 am

We are made of people kicked out of other countries and we choose to have the cost of more violence for the benifits of more freedoms and rights.


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30 Dec 2015, 1:41 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
We are made of people kicked out of other countries and we choose to have the cost of more violence for the benifits of more freedoms and rights.

We are also made of people who were not kicked out, but rather left of their own accord for the chance of something better. I find it interesting that we are a nation of people who did not feel as strongly compelled to stay as those they left behind...Now, was that because of their determination and resolve to improve their future and the future for the children...or was it because they had more greed and ambition than their neighbors?


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goldfish21
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30 Dec 2015, 2:04 am

Because excess is the American way! Even killers kill more people than they need to. It's science.


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awkward facepalm
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30 Dec 2015, 5:11 am

it is because they are american. the same reason why people with no talent are well known world wide just because they're american like justin biber ariana grande miley cyrus,etc

i mean no one can list some danish singers or musicians from thailand or côte d'ivoire



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30 Dec 2015, 9:15 am

ProvokesThinking wrote:
The most famous ones like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Ed Gein were from the US.

Wikipedia has such a long list of US serial killers that it has a seperate page, while other countries, big countries too, just have a few listed on Wikipedia.


Your mistake is to think that 'serial killers' are a departure from the norm

In fact 'serial killers' embodied as soldiers, kings and conquerors have always been seen as the epitome of the human
whatever...

height...pfft!

Wikipedia has such a long list of US serial killers that it has a seperate page, while other countries, big countries too, just have a few listed on Wikipedia.[/quote]

probably due to the fact that wikipedia is an American whatever


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30 Dec 2015, 9:22 am

arthead wrote:
Foxxtale wrote:
maybe it isn't so much the fact that we have more, but that we just have more ravenous media to publicize it?
I would bet on the Media playing a big role.
Maybe our law-enforcement people are just better at identifying and capturing serial killers than the law-enforcement people of other countries.

And maybe in places like Sicily and Syria, corpses full of bullet holes and stab wounds are deemed to have died of "natural causes"...


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30 Dec 2015, 11:38 am

awkward facepalm wrote:
it is because they are american. the same reason why people with no talent are well known world wide just because they're american like justin biber ariana grande miley cyrus,etc

i mean no one can list some danish singers or musicians from thailand or côte d'ivoire
Justin Bieber is Canadian actually.



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30 Dec 2015, 12:35 pm

I think there are serial killers are in every country. But I think you are finding a lot of US names for two reasons:

1. I think the US has better policing than some countries so more serial killers are caught.
2. Guns are easier to get in the US than in some places.



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30 Dec 2015, 12:38 pm

Because most other countries have smaller populations. The US has the third largest population in the world, therefore we would have more serial killers. You don't hear about them from India or China that often because they're third and second world countries that lack the organization that the U.S. has. They probably do have way more serial killers though. Ever heard of the Thuggee gang from India?