Stuff You Should Know - What makes a serial killer?

Episode Date: May 25, 2010

Serial killers are notorious for their grisly crimes and disturbing behavior, but what makes a serial killer a serial killer? Josh and Chuck discuss the history, psychology and methodology of serial killing and serial killers in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. Actually, I should probably try it. Hey and welcome to the podcast. This is about serial killers, right? Yeah.

Actually, I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to mention that we have a lot of fun in the show and we joke around and we will probably do that in the Serial Killer podcast. You know we will. And I find them fascinating, but we always remember that there are real victims here and we don't want to misfire that or anything. Yeah, no. But the serial killers are so grisly and their acts are so monstrous that it almost is easy

to just detach and be like, hey, what's your favorite serial killer who is, and they actually have serial killer trading cards, huh? Yeah, but we don't play that game. No, we don't. We play Old Maid. So, I'm Josh Clark. The guy you just heard talking is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. If this is your first time to Stuff You Should Know, there is a goodie bag that we have for

you. If you'll check under your seat, it should be taped under there. I'm creepy with that. Send us an email and we'll try to see what we can come up with as a replacement, probably just a response saying sorry. You know what they get? They get 215 free podcasts. Oh, that's a good deal.

Automatically. That is nice, Chuck. So what are we talking about today? Serial killers. Oh yeah, that's right. Yes. Chuck. Here's the intro.

Yeah. If you can't tell, I'm a little twitchy, a little jumpy, you may even hear a little bit of gum in my mouth that I probably should take out being a professional podcast. You're shaking it vehemently. He just spit out his gum. Okay, so my gum is out, but the reason I'm doing this and acting all twitchy is because I have quit smoking. For the first time in 20 years, I'm actually doing it.

I've tried a couple of times, but we all know that it was half-hearted at best. But I'm actually quitting smoking. Very proud of you, buddy. Thank you. Like I told you in the email you didn't reply to, that's a very brave and terrifying thing you're doing. You have all my support. Thank you very much.

I want to keep you around. And by proxy, I imagine I have Jerry's support, too. So if I do seem a little weird, it is because of that today, and I apologize. Plus you're flying in Japan tomorrow, so you're all weird right now. Yeah, I am. Perfect. Perfect time to do serial killers. Let's talk serial killers, Chuck, Chuck, where in the name of God did the term serial killers

come from and the middle of what decade did it come from, come in? It was Coyne Josh in the mid-70s by Robert Restler, and he was a former FBI director of the Violent Criminal Apprehensions Program, which I imagine is a pretty fun laugh-a-minute job. And apparently he chose serial because the English police called those crimes in a series. And we find in the article written by Shannon Freeman, pretty good one, too, that he was also a fan of serials that you would watch at the movies, like The Lone Ranger or something like that.

Which I thought was a little weird. I love The Lone Ranger, so I'm going to give a little shout out to him by coining this term. They used to call them mass murders before that, or my favorite, it sounds like a personal's ad, Stranger on Stranger Crime. Yeah. I like that. Yeah.

But it is true. I mean, it is Stranger Crime, and it kind of underlines one of the, I guess, the riveting and most characteristic aspects of serial killers is that they lack what would appear to any of the rest of us, a motive. They're not killing for money. They're not killing to get rid of a problem or because they're a jilted lover. The key hallmark of a serial killer is that they kill for the pleasure of killing or for the sake of killing.

And there are subcategories we'll get into within that, but yeah, totally right on the money there. And there's a couple of other kinds of murderers that people often confuse serial killers with. So let's just clear the air right now. Let's start with mass murderers, right? What do you have to do to become a mass murderer? You have to kill four or more people at the same time or roughly the same time in the same place.

So like a school shooter would be a mass murderer. Right. Right. Right. Okay. And then of course you've got the spree killers. Those are like office shooters who go from their house, say, after killing their family. Right.

And they're like, I got one more problem place I want to take care of. They go to the office, shoot that place up, kill some more people, and then drive off to a gas station and blow their heads off in the van. Right. Yeah. Yes. And a serial killer officially defined by the FBI means it has to be three or more victims. And like you said, the hallmark is there's got to be a cooling off period in between.

So like I killed somebody and then like in Jeffrey Dahmer's case, I think he waited years and years before he killed his second victim. And then another long period in between. He was like 18 when he started. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. And then he waited.

And I think, and this is all from memory. It's not in the article. And then I think he waited a long time between second and third. And then they, you know, as usual, it starts picking up in succession that kind of off the cliff. They go the further off the cliff. They go. And boy did he go off the cliff.

We're going to talk about some famous serial killers later. Right. Yeah. Okay. We got to, we got to mention him. As a matter of fact, I think we would be professionally irresponsible if we didn't mention Jeffrey Dahmer in depth. I think you're right.

Chuck, there's, I think, been approximately 400 serial killers in the US in the past century by estimates, right? And strangely, there's been a, I think, an increase of some vast percentage, but 80% of those have come about since 1950. And they actually think the earliest one, the most widely cited first serial killer in the US was a guy named H H Holmes. Yeah. He, the Holmes murder castle in Chicago at the world's fair.

He built this hotel basically. And it was literally like you check in, but you don't check out type of situation. Yeah. And remember on the urban planning podcast, we talked about the, the guy who came up with the, the city beautiful movement. Right. And that's where he debuted. It was at that, at that world's fair.

Right. While people were getting off at a hotel nearby. Yeah. So he's the first one they say, I think, 27 confessions, but they, they, as always, almost with all these serial killers, they say, well, they tagged this many, but there may have been hundreds. Right. And then sometimes most of the time it's the, they can get them for like two or three,

which is really all you need. Sure. And then they'll confess to about, you know, X number more. And then people will suspect that, yeah, there's, they actually, you know, killed a hundred or so people. Right. But in other cases, it's actually, they'll confess to more than they actually did kill like Henry Lee Lucas has come into question over the, over the years as to how many people

he actually killed. Like they know he killed his mother and they were pretty sure he killed at least one other person. But if he only killed two, he's technically not a serial killer. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Well, and then the, also the other thing in like the case of Wayne Williams, the Atlanta

child strangler, yeah, he, uh, or I don't think he strangled Lynn, a child killer. He, uh, they kind of tacked on a bunch of murders onto his rap that they wanted to close cases on. Yeah. Did you ever hear about pretty hinky case? Yeah. Yeah. I remember it kind of came back around in like 2005 or something, he was up for parole

or something. Yeah. The case, the case was, um, it sounds like he's innocent if you, if you start investigating the case. Yeah. Big time. Yeah. That's potential.

Um, that's our opinion. Uh, so Chuck, Josh, how do you classify a serial killer? Well, there's a couple of ways, uh, you can classify them based on motive or you can classify them based on, uh, social patterns, organizational patterns. Right. So if you're talking motive, um, you're talking about Holmes typology named for Ronald and Stephen Holmes. Right.

Holmes. No. You, you become a serial killer. You're not allowed to actually classify any of your ilk strangely enough. That's true. And now there are authors of textbooks on violent crimes and, um, they came up with this from anecdotal data. So a lot of people poo poo it, but when you're talking serial killers, a lot of times all

you can do is interview these people and compile it and try and draw, you know, conclusions based on that. Right. And what they came up with was, um, there's two kinds of, um, I guess, motive based. Sure. Uh, there's act focus and process focused focus. So act focus means like you're, you're, you're killing quickly and you're usually killing for a reason.

There's a larger reason and the killing is kind of a means to the end of achieving that reason. Right. Process focused is kind of the, um, that's the serial killer who enjoys killing, enjoys taking someone's life, will likely torture the person over a period of time. Right. Uh, will kill them kind of brutally, uh, there's, it's not quick and it's messy. Right.

Yeah. And there's, there's subcategories within each of those. The act focus killers are visionary or missionary. Visionary means they hear voices and have like a vision saying like go kill. I think son of Sam was one of those. Yeah. He did his neighbors dog. Tell them to quite a vision and, uh, missionary murders, um, believe they're on like a mission

to get rid of like prostitutes, like the green river killer or Jack the Ripper. Right. Um, oh, and you could also, um, make the case that, um, uh, John Wayne Gacy was a mission focused or missionary act focused serial killer because he had said after he got caught, like they're going to give me an award for getting rid of these, you know, lousy bag kids that I killed. Right. But there's also a distinction among serial killers that they, uh, often rationalize what

they're doing by justifying it to a larger authority. Right. Like they were providing society a service. So depending on exactly how he was saying that it could go either way. Did you hear to see what the green river, uh, killer said in his plea statement to the jury? I just hate prostitutes. I hate prostitutes.

It's like, all right. Yeah. Remember, um, Van Nostrand was reading a book about that. Oh, that's right. You remember? Yeah. So these categories for the processed focus, slow killers are, uh, fall into three groups. Um, lust killers.

That's pretty self-explanatory. Yeah. Dahmer for sure. Um, but not Jack the Ripper. Right. Yeah. Dahmer. Yeah.

We'll get into him. Uh, I'm sorry. Thrill and gain killers. And that means they either get a kick out of killing or they think they're going to profit in some way. And then the power seeking killers who, those are the guys who like to play God. And we say guys a lot because it's mostly white men. I think 80% more than 80% is what I said.

Yeah. Uh, it's very infrequent that you have a serial killer who kills outside of his ethnic group, meaning that it's white on white crime. Right. Uh, very rarely do you have a female serial killer. Right. Although there's a pretty prominent one, um, named Charlize Theron, have you heard of her?

Yeah. Boy, they uglyed her up for that movie. Boy, they did a good job. That's hard to do. There's a picture of, um, Eileen Warnos in this article and by God, she doesn't look just like Charlize Theron and monster, but she killed, uh, she was convicted of killing seven men and probably killed more. Yeah.

Uh, but she was one of the very few real female serial killers. Yeah. There's a couple, we have a list that, you know, how Josh loves this list. So we have a list later on. We want to get the ladies there due because we called the task for not naming female geniuses. And Chuck, there's another way to classify serial killers and that's by, um, their level of organization. Right.

Yeah. Organized or disorganized. Right. So organized, e.g. Dexter, you've got somebody who like, um, drives a flashy car. Smart. Uh, smart. Um, actually there, he would be considered non-social, which we can't quite wrap our heads around that, but it's, um, I think it's ex being excluded from society, but still

being capable of existing or appearing to exist in society. Gotcha. Sure. Okay. So they may also taunt the police. They're probably educated. Right. Um, and, uh, they follow the news, right?

Keep up with modern, uh, events. They have, uh, daytime habits. They is interesting. They may show up, um, as a, uh, like, uh, somebody who can help the police as a witness, right? Crime or something like that. Right. Just to kind of get a thrill out of that as well.

Um, and then of course you've got disorganized, right? Yeah. This is like Ed Gein or Robert Picton. Yeah. Just basically like the, like, the guy you can look at and be like, you're a serial killer, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah.

And that's pretty, they're pretty much the opposite. Like everything we said, and there's a list of like 25, uh, things here for, for organized and disorganized, and they're all pretty much opposite. So disorganized means you live alone. You don't date. You have no interest in the news. You have nighttime habits. You aren't interested in the cops and police work.

Uh, you're kind of dumb. You usually don't dismember, whereas, uh, organized person dismembers. Which is weird because again, Robert Picton, um, hung his victims on, uh, meat hooks in his barn and disemboweled them. Yeah. It was bad. Um, but he had nighttime habits and was just a disorganized killer. Right.

So it's kind of weird. I don't think anything's exactly cut and dry when it comes to serial killers. Yeah. Well, they said the majority of them are organized and non-social, but they're like, you know, we said plenty of the others as well. Yeah. Um, and the other thing I thought was interesting was the McDonald triad. Had you ever heard of this?

I have, but I'd never heard of it. I'd never heard it called that. Yeah. They said that serial killers often exhibit, uh, these three behaviors in childhood and it's known as the McDonald triad. Um, formerly the Ray Kroc triad. Um, bedwetting, arson and cruelty to animals. Yeah.

And I surprised Josh with the fact that I was nearly on the path myself, I guess, because famously I was a late bedwetter as I have admitted. Famously. And, uh, well, whoever listens to us and, um, I was kind of into like fires. I wasn't an arsonist, but I love playing with fire, but I love animals like crazy. So you had the McDonald diad, not crazy, crazy, but I love animals. That's funny that you bring that up, Chuckers, because a lot of people assume that serial killers are in fact crazy, right?

That's really far off base, at least legally speaking, right? So there's a lot of debate now actually more than ever, um, between psychology and sociology. It won't get into that a little further, but let's talk about, um, you know, the kind of psychological motives, but as a little bit of foreshadowing, take it with grain of salt because there's a whole school of thought out there that thinks psychology has totally dropped the ball on explaining criminal behavior, specifically serial killing, right? So standard stuff that's been around for decades is, um, that serial killers are the result of a combination of neglect and abuse, right?

Yes. They've done studies, FBI has done studies and interviewed dozens and dozens of killers serial killers, all kinds of killers, and they found a similar pattern in most of them of childhood abuse and neglect. Yeah. And it makes sense because when you're a kid, you're growing up, you're developing as a normal, normal child, there are very important periods when you learn about things like empathy and trust and love and being nice with your fellow man, just very basic

rules of humanity. And if you don't have those, then it's not imprinted on your little kid brain and you may not be able to learn it later on in life. That makes it a little tougher. Yeah. Which is really sad. It is sad. And actually, again, like I think it's appropriate that Jeffrey Dahmer is off to the side in

that little section because it's really weird because I was thinking about it today. I've realized that I've always kind of felt bad for that guy because of the life that he had. Right. Like he was abandoned by his family. Right. And just like his parent, like one parent left, like I think his dad left and then his mom was like, I'm going to go look for a boyfriend and take the younger ones with me.

You stay here. Right. And he was like 17. Right. And just left to live the rest of his life on his own. Yeah. I think that played a huge factor in it, I imagine, neglect. Yeah.

Right. And then you have abuse. Right. So usually they're finding when they study serial killers that there is that combination of neglect from the parents and either direct abuse, whether it's physical, emotional, sexual, or witnessing the abuse of others or the sibling or both, I imagine is probably worse. And they've actually seen in rats with neglect, not with the abuse part, but with neglect. Rats that are basically neglected or rejected by their parents, by their mother, actually

show symptoms of rat sociopathy as they get older. I feel so bad for the rats. I know. It's like, does someone actually abuse the rats to see how they react? Kind of, yeah. Like flick them and stuff? If you put on a white lab coat, you can pretty much do whatever you want to a rat and legitimize it.

So sad. Yeah, it is. Oh, the other thing that you mentioned, Dahmer. It was so disturbing and just oddly fascinating was when he was a teenager, I think, one of the first really odd acts he did was he saw a dead deer in the woods. Did you ever hear about that? And he laid down with a deer and cuddled with it. It's like Johnny Depp in Dead Man.

In the forest? Oh, yeah. You're right. And then before he killed, I know he knocked a jogger out cold in the woods and laid down with his unconscious body to try and stave off this desire to kill. Yeah, and well, I don't even know if it was to stave off the desire to kill as much as if he was tired of people leaving him alone. He wanted to be with people.

One of the things that he was famous for was an attempt to make a zombie who would stay with him. Right. So he would lure young prostitute boys back to his house or his apartment and then attack him. There was one kid that he drilled a hole in the guy's head and was able to pour Drano into it. Right.

And I stayed alive like that for a few days and Dommer, I guess, said I just didn't want him to leave. Yeah, he wanted companionship. Yeah. So he was trying to make a zombie using Drano. And I think that probably also accounts for the cannibalism as well, is trying to ingest something and keep it as a part of himself. This is all just armchair psychology.

Yeah, sure. But we could pretty much charge for this with the level that psychology has contributed so far. Drano? I wonder if match.com would have been around if he could have found like a mate if that never would have happened. Maybe so. Or maybe he would have killed the mate and then use match.com to find his victims.

Oh, yeah. So Chuck, we are talking about whether or not serial killers are insane. And if you look at the U.S. code for the insanity defense, they don't fit the bill almost ever. Want me to read the definition? Yeah. At the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, the defendant as a result of a severe mental disease or defect was unable to appreciate the nature and quality

of the wrongfulness of his acts. Mental disease or defect does not otherwise constitute defense. Right. So you don't understand what you're doing. You don't. Is right and wrong. Is right and wrong. Right.

And you also aren't, you're not, you're not taking a life like that's not your goal. You're not thinking about that. Yeah. This flies in the face of serial killing. Well, that's why only two have only gotten off with that plea of insanity. Right. And he was a gene and he wore people's skin. Yeah.

He was the inspiration for Buffalo Bill and leather face. Yeah. And Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yeah. Do the dance for me, baby. Was that a Texas Chainsaw Massacre summer school reference when they were watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Okay.

So it was a reference in a reference. Wow. I thought you were going to do the like, uh, will you help me with this couch? Get in the band. Are you a size 14? You do a way better Buffalo Bill than me. We should, I don't know. No way was you a big fat girl.

That's so disturbing. It is. Great movie though. Yeah. And we liked that one picture. Yeah. Sure. Did I ever tell you my silence of the lambs story?

No. I went to an Athens in college. I went to see dances with wolves and they said, and if you want to stay after for a free screening of silence of the lambs with Jody Foster and Anthony Hopkins, and I was like, I'll stay. And I heard silence of the lambs, Jody Foster, Anthony Hopkins, I thought it was going to be like a merchant ivory thing, like cut to 30 minutes into the movie when I have my, you know, hair glued to the ceiling of the theater.

I was like, holy crap. Yeah. That was a good movie. It still is too. But when it came out, it was like groundbreaking. Yeah, definitely. It's good stuff. Um, but yeah, Buffalo Bob and Buffalo Bill, you know, that one and a leather face are

both based on a gene who is one of, I think, two serial killers in the U S to ever get off on an insanity plate. Yeah. And he was rough, dude. He was. And he looks like it too. He's wearing like flannel and he's just standing on his porch like, I'll kill you. Right.

I'll kill you. And I will. And I think Psycho, um, uh, Anthony Hopkins character is based on a gene as well. Yeah. He made a big splash when he came up because again, I think he was in the forties or early fifties. Yeah, he was early on. And this was way before people had, before the term serial killer was ever around.

For sure. So, um, what serial killers have as far as psychology can come up with as far as the DSM for soon to be the DSM five, right, right, which coincidentally, not coincidentally comes out in 2012 because it's going to be the end of the world. And, um, but they've come up with is that serial killers suffer from a personality disorder, anti-social personality disorder, um, AKA psychopath. Right. And I have a buddy who's a sociologist at the University of Alberta that I first ran

across and I was writing an article on sociology and serial killing. And he says, of course they have a personality disorder. It's like they're serial killers. Is that really the best you can come up with after literally decades of intense research. People have, have pinned their entire careers onto the study of serial killers from a psychological standpoint. The best you can come up with is a personality disorder. And that's sad, but true.

My, when I, when I, uh, interviewed this guy first, I, I imagine him to, he was going to be like, well, you know, we think we can kind of help psychology out, like maybe to understand or hash it out. He's like, no, psychology is utterly and completely failed at this. And it's time to take another look at it. Interesting. Yeah. Um, well you were talking about the, uh, APD though, the, um, anti-social personality

disorder. There's seven factors that determine that. Uh-huh. And if you have three of them, if you're diagnosed with three of them, then I think you are considered technically as having APD. Okay. Let's see what you have. I'm a little nervous right now.

I know. You playing at home. See which applies to you. Uh, number one, a failure to abide by the law or to conform to social norms. Ding. Um, number two, deceitfulness that is often found in the form of habitual lying or multiple aliases. Dot, dot, dot.

Ding. Number three, your aliases, a failure to plan ahead or acting on impulse. Uh-oh. Yeah. Ding. Number four, repeated physical fights or assaults that indicate irritability or aggressiveness. No. No, you're not a fighter.

Number five, a reckless disregard for safety of others or self. I do love bumper cars, so we'll call that a ding. Okay. Number six, a repeated failure to sustain a job or an ability to honor financial obligations. No, you've got to get that maybe a third of a ding, a previous life, Josh, but current Josh is very responsible. That is true. And number seven, uh, they are indifferent to suffering from, uh, suffering of another.

So basically you don't have the mirror neuron that gives you empathy like we were talking about with synesthesia. Okay. So what did you have to have to have, uh, APD? Um, three out of seven. Okay. I had five everybody. I have, uh, antisocial personality disorder.

Yes. Thank you for that. The good news is Josh, you are not insane. No, I know. I know it because I know, uh, right from wrong. Right. And, uh, if I were a serial killer, I'd just really, really like to kill or like Gary Ridgeway. I just really, really hate prostitutes, you know.

You turned out to be a serial podcaster, thankfully for all of us. Right. Because they occur in a series. Right. Um, Chuck, can you tell a little bit of disdain here in my voice? Yes. So I thought it was a smoking thing. No, it's part of it for sure.

Um, but it's back to sociology. Okay. Cause this really makes sense to me. Right. Um, the, but it's such a radical departure from how we've always viewed serial killers. You view them as crazy. There's some sort of psychological problem with them. Right.

Um, sociologists say, yeah, they have any social personality disorder, but it doesn't mean that that's a problem psychology has to tackle. It's not a mental flaw. It's a character flaw. Right. And yeah, I'm sure that the neglect by parents didn't help. I'm sure the abuse really made it worse. Right.

But people can go through that and never become a serial killer. Right. And it's, it's actually the, the movement of this organism we call society and it's current mood that can produce serial killers. Right. And basically since 1950, there's a lot of people who, who point to this post 1950 era as a time when there's just been such social change that you could conceivably call it a societal breakdown.

Like degradation, morals, violent films, video games where you kill people in the first person point of view. Right. And Kevin Hagerty told me this, um, apparently in the late early modern era, so say like the 19th century, prostitutes were actually much more a part of the community than they are now. Right. Right.

So we're actually a little more puritanical toward prostitution than we were like a hundred or so years ago. Interesting. Uh, and he's saying that as a result of prostitutes becoming more and more and more outcasted by in society, um, they have become more and more of a target, a target of serial killers who love the act of killing. They don't hate the person that they're killing unless you're Gary Ridgway. Right.

But you're just looking for somebody you can kill and get away with cause you're not crazy. You know what you're doing is wrong. Gotcha. Right. Yeah. Um, and then that combined with society, turning its back on prostitutes, making them basically live out these very dangerous lives has allowed the rise of serial killing to come up because of these changes like that.

And that's just one of many changes. Right. The really disturbing part of all this is that in sociology's view, we're all serial killers. Right. There's just society hasn't changed quite enough to trigger that behavior in us. Well, let's hope that never happens. Yeah, let's hope indeed.

Yeah. That's interesting. Isn't it? Yeah. It's like a totally different way to look at it. Totally. And it makes a lot more sense to me actually. Well, you know, another way to look at it.

A lot of people think that, uh, you know, these serial killers are so far gone and that something is up with their brain. They can't help it. Right. They've got a brain malfunction going on and they've done a lot of studies on brain damage. And, um, one I came across found that 20, 20 of 30 confessed killers, not necessarily serial serial killers on death row are mentally ill and 64% of that 20 had frontal lobe abnormalities.

Sure. No accident. I don't think. And 46% of all confessed serial killers have no brain damage. So 54% do. So that's, I mean, that's almost down the middle. So I think there's a variety of factors, one of which definitely could be brain injury. Sure.

What was that? Um, oh, what was Bobby Joe Long? He has the best quote in this whole article. You want to read it, but you have to read it like a hick. Okay. Okay. Bobby Joe Long, he was convicted of nine murders and he stated in his quote, uh, after I'm dead, they're going to open up my head and find that just like we've been saying,

a part of my brain is black and dry and dead. So yeah, that, I mean, that's, that hits on the head, man. That's creepy. It is creepy. And that's basically him saying, you know, something is wrong with my brain, dudes. And after I died, you're going to check it out and you're going to see that I'm right. And what's interesting is anytime you say a quote like that, you automatically attract people who are waiting for you to die now.

Right. This is like, well, you just threw it out in the gauntlet. I want to see if part of your brain is black and dry and dead. Right. Yeah. I personally want to know. Sure. Yeah.

So Chuck, we've got not insane, possibly brain damaged, in my opinion, definitely a product of society. Yes. Antisocial personality disorder people. Right. Abused and neglected. So how do you, how do you catch such a person, especially if there's 400 of them over the last century in the United States?

This is like a needle in a haystack, right? Yeah. Except a murderous needle. Yeah. Basically what you do if you're a fed or a copper working the beat, searching out the serial killer, you want to get a, you want to get a signature, you want to get a modus operandi and MO. And you want to combine those to come up with a profile.

And a signature is like, if you pose your victims in a certain pose, or if you always dump them in a certain spot, that's a signature that you can look at to help profile. Or even the, the way you dispatch your victims. Yeah. Well, that's part of the MO, the way you kill them, certainly the ritual of it. That's a big time giveaway. But what I found interesting was that the MO changes and evolves and actually grows more mature over time.

Basically it's the killer learning from past mistakes. So your MO is going to, so if like your early MO was, you know, luring somebody into a van in like a crowded area and you almost get caught a couple of times, then you may lure somebody into your van still, but it's not going to be in a crowded area anymore or something like that. So that's, that's an example of the MO changing over time. Or lure them into your El Camino in a crowded area. Yeah.

I think you can generally trust people who drive El Camino. Yeah. But the van, the abduction van, if you've got a tiny round window on the back rear side of your van and that's it, then you're in big trouble. You do not get in a van like that. I don't care. As a matter of fact, to stay out of vans entirely, it almost always ends up badly for the person who is lured in there.

Yeah. That's why they invented the minivan actually. What? That's why they invented the minivan because it just looks more family friendly and not like you're a serial killer. Yeah. That's what I heard. That makes sense actually.

So profiling Josh started in the 70s with Ted Bundy was one of the first ones actually. Yeah. And I guess they nailed him. Yeah. Like they had him down cold. Yeah. They said that his profile was almost perfect right down to the point where they predicted that he would have a step brother.

That's like pretty serious profiling if you're getting that detailed. Yeah. And they were right. Yeah. It makes you wonder though what all they missed though. Yeah. They had a step brother wrong but they are right but they got his address wrong. Right.

They were off by like a number. Right. And we thought he was Chinese. But he's not. He was Ted Bundy. His was really pretty. And we don't know what the whole skydiving thing was. They were just spitballing.

Right. Yeah. Bundy like he unraveled man. He killed people for years. He's known for the University of Florida deal in the sorority house. But that was like at the very end. He had killed people for years and years and years and then all of a sudden just flipped and walked into sorority house and started killing people.

That's crazy. Yeah. Pulled over for a traffic ticket. That's how they called him. Yeah. How did they catch him? Like they knew who they were looking for. You know.

Not exactly sure. Or did he have like a sorority girl in the back or what? I don't know. I think they had already had a profiler leads or something at that point. They tripped him up. And Berkowitz son of Sam they caught like they actually apprehended him and then let him go. And he was going to be like a witness to one of the murders that he committed.

Right. With the cops. And then they were like, wait a minute. You said that you were just talking to your neighbor's dog. Yeah. Exactly. And they were like, oh, yeah. And they're like, okay.

Well, he didn't talk back, man. That's what I would have said. Right. But he said, oh, yeah. And he talked back. Right. And he told me to kill people. Right.

Or BTK. We talked about the blind, uh, uh, tap dance killer. Right. This guy is the saddest serial killer ever. Yeah. He is terrible. He was terrible at it. He killed like three people over the span of like 26 years.

Yeah. And you know how he got caught, right? Yeah. I saw, um, I am sure it was on discovery. Our fine, fine parent corporation, right? Sure. Um, they were interviewing like one of the investigators who was working the BTK case and cracked it.

And he was taunting the police, but he wasn't a really smart guy. Uh-huh. So he sent a floppy disk, um, to the cops, taunting them with a Microsoft Word document. Yeah. And didn't understand that there's this thing called metadata, which has all sorts of very, um, specific information about the computer that you use that on. And he used it at the church that he, uh, was a deacon at and, um, they got him like a couple of days later.

But I remember one of the detectives going like, we actually thought it was like somebody trying to frame somebody else. Like we couldn't believe that somebody would be that sloppy or that dumb. Right. And sure enough, he was. I know. Dummy. Yeah.

And he, he wanted a position of authority, do anything for it. So he was like dog catcher for a while. Right. Anything that had a uniform he would do. Yeah. Uh, I should go ahead and point out before we get assaulted with listener mail. I know he wasn't called the bind tap dance kill. That's an inside joke between us and a super fan.

Yes it is. It was torture. Try to figure that out. Bind torture and kill. Um, the one I was fascinated with was, uh, Peter Woodcock, Canadian, uh, serial killer. You wouldn't think there's a lot of Canadian serial killers because they're. Picton was, I think, in my opinion, the worst serial killer ever, Robert Picton was Canadian. He was from, um, Vancouver.

Was he angry that he was an American farmer? He'd feed like his victims to his pigs. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Uh, he was angry. I'm not American. I'm going to kill everybody that's American. Yeah.

We're just kidding. Canadians. We love you. But Peter Woodcock was a Canadian and he spent 35 years in a psych hospital in Canada after he had killed, uh, three people. He was, what they thought was rehabilitated, which is the point of this is that you can't rehabilitate a serial killer pretty much. They thought he was rehabilitated.

They said, you know what? We're going to give you some leeway. We're going to let you out on like some weekend passes now. He got his first weekend pass, uh, and his supervisor for the weekend pass was a former patient who was also a former murderer and within the first hour that they let him off on his weekend pass, he and that his, his guy that was watching him killed a dude with a hatchet and a knife. Within the first hour of his first weekend pass, well, he and his chaperone killed another

patient. Wow. So that's a, that's a big guy. Yeah. That did not work out too well. So check. You got anybody else? Yeah.

We're like, uh, coming up against it. I have a big list and to keep Josh from eating it, I'll just go ahead and skip to the front of it to, um, Harold Frederick Fred Shipman is supposedly the most prolific serial killer in known history. And he is positively linked to 250 murders. What? He was Dr. Death. You ever hear that guy, Dr. Death?

No, was he a doctor? Yeah. He was a general practitioner and he targeted his female patients and this was like, you know, 2004 was when he hung himself in jail. So he's supposedly the most prolific of all time. What about the Colombian guy? Uh, Luis Alfredo Gabarito Cubilos, otherwise known as the beast or la bestia. He raped and murdered 140 boys, but they suspect as many as 300.

And in Colombia, you can only go to jail for 30 years, but they reduced that to 22 years. So he is out. He is out and his whereabouts, I believe, are unknown if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. So he is out. Yeah. And as Chuck said, can't cure a serial killer. I know.

Because they're not insane. Right. So if you want to know more about serial killers, there's a pretty awesome article on the site called how serial killers work. You can type that into the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com, which of course leads us to listener mail. Hold on, partner. Okay.

We have a little bit of admin work to get out of the way about our New York trip. Some announcements. Okay. Let me shuffle some papers here. Well, t-shirts first. Let's go t-shirts. The t-shirt contest is on and for reals. It's on and popping.

And it's popping and locking. The end of May is at midnight is the deadline. So get your submissions in if you submitted, resubmit within the window. Yeah. If you're not American, I'm really sorry. But are we excluding people? Yeah, you have to, dude. Really?

Yeah. So wait, Canadians can't enter? No, man. It stinks. But like I told everyone that wrote in, I can't win a contest in England either. What? Every country has their own rules. What?

And you gotta be a citizen of this country. Wow. Yeah. I had no idea. That's just the way it's gotta be. I gotta go back and read the fine print. I know. Huh.

Okay. Well, yeah. Sorry to everybody who lives outside of the US. I know. It's a bummer. But that's just... Yet another reason it sucks to be you. It's not our rules.

Yeah. No, no. We would never come up with something like that. It's the rules of the world. It's the planet Earth. The rules of the United States, apparently. Yes. Yeah.

We are coming to New York and we have two events, pending. One for sure. Ding. And one TBD. Ding. Uh, Monday night, June 7th. We will be at the Knitting Factory in scenic Brooklyn, New York. Yeah.

Super hipster central Brooklyn. That's right. I don't know that I'm gonna be able to... I cut skinny jeans for both of us, right? Yeah. I'm not wearing them. Um, yeah. Skinny jeans and the Iside Oxford don't really go, unless it's like three sizes too small.

And it kind of is. Yeah. So, uh, we're gonna be doing a little happy hour get together from 5.30 to 7.30. There will be a concert to follow that actually costs money if you want to get into that. It's like 12 bucks, I think. Yeah. And the onion is sponsoring that. Yeah.

And, uh, there will be folks from the onion hanging out with us too, so you can meet them. Yeah. Which will be super cool. I'm looking forward to meeting them in person. Yeah. So be there or be square. And then Wednesday night, June night, we are gonna do an All-Star Trivia challenge. And we are rounding out our All-Star Trivia team that Josh and I are on, and it's pretty

exciting. Yes. All special mystery guests. Yes. We, uh, tell you what, let's confirm one person. The editor-in-chief of the onion newspaper is on our team. Joe Randazzo. Joe Randazzo.

He's one of our buddies now. Yeah. And, um, the other people, uh, we don't want to announce just yet, because I'd hate to say that, you know, Mr. T is going to be there if he's not going to be there. I can't believe he just came in the way. So that is going to be, uh, you come, you challenge us for bragging rights at Trivia, uh, and it's going to be a lot of fun at Bar Trivia and, uh, location TBD, but that'll be Wednesday June 9th.

And coed. Yes. We can't leave them out. Spill the beans, Josh. Okay. So, um, if you have heard our two-part Guatemala series, you're familiar with coed. If not, um, they are a great organization that creates, um, self-sustaining textbook and computer centers.

Yep. Right? Um, and, uh, you can actually support these guys with a $5 donation by texting the word stuff, STUFF to two zero two two two. Yep. You'll get a, uh, text back saying, you sure you're sure about this and all you do is text yes, and it'll charge you five bucks and what'd you say off mic, some, what applies? Uh, text and data rates may apply.

Okay. Very nice. And, uh, if it's actually all these, this is another thing only for Americans because it's different cell companies in different countries. So if you want to give and you live outside of the United States, you can go to, uh, coeduc.org and they have a place where you can donate there wherever you live, even if you live on Mars. Uh-huh.

Well, all right. It's listener mail time. Indeed. Josh, we're short on time. I'm going to call this top 10 reasons to hate stuff you should know. Oh, I love this one. That's good. Yeah.

Um, number one reason to hate us, Josh and Chuck frequently butcher names and words during the podcast and misuse I and me in a gross perversion of English language. Check. Number two, we cause ordinary people to become inebriated while listening by saying if you key words. Number three, it is not released frequently enough and causes addicted listeners to moan and pain between Tuesday and Thursday. I can see that.

Number four, catchy theme music easily gets stuck in listeners' heads. Number five, Chuck and Josh swear in the podcast and the beeps can cause hearing damage. Number six, Jerry is seldom mentioned, not true, and has never been heard live on the air. And some fans postulate that Chuck and Josh keep her locked in a closet between podcasts. Number seven, uh, stuff you should know instructs on a wide variety of illegal topics, including nuclear weapons, money, long ring, and the pulse, the schemes. Number eight, Chuck and Josh use horrible plug similes.

Yeah. Number nine, the disillusioned listeners by stating that they record to every Friday when it's common knowledge that they record every Tuesday and Thursday instead. Uh, no, not true. And number 10, in addition to possibly keeping Jerry locked in the closet, we also torture her by going off on long-winded introductions. True. It's a bad one to put on the end of.

And at times getting completely off topic, way, way true. Always a huge fan, Noah thinks Noah, we appreciate that top 10 list. It's pretty awesome listener mail. Agreed. Yeah. If you have awesome listener mail for us, we want to read it. And if you have any crazy serial killer stories at Grizzly or otherwise, how about those? You want those?

Yeah. If you got some firsthand experience, obviously not. If you're not serial killer, but no Chuck, you know, of someone who was or like anything cool link. If you have something to say about serial killers, put it in an email, send it to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com Want more how stuff works? Check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com homepage.

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