Serial Killers Existed Long Before the Label
Serial killers have been around for centuries, but law enforcement and the media commonly referred to serial killers as “mass murderers” before the 1970s.
As the use of the phrase “serial killer” became more common to describe those who had at least three victims at different times and locations, the definition of “mass murderer” took on its own meaning as someone who kills three or more victims in a single event in one location.
The term “serial killer” likely dates to the 1930s, when the head of Berlin criminal police in Germany, Ernst Gennat, used “serienmörder,” or “serial murderer,” to describe Peter Kürten, the “Vampire of Düsseldorf.” Kürten was sentenced to death in 1931 for a series of sexually motivated crimes, resulting in his conviction on nine murder counts and seven counts of attempted murder.
Nicknames for serial killers were just as common in the United States. In the early 1930s, Albert Fish, whom authorities believe murdered up to 10 children and ate their remains, was called the “Moon Maniac” because his son testified that he ate raw steak when there was a full moon.
The term "serial killer" continued occasionally popping up into the 1960s, Schechter says. It became mainstream with the formation of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in the early 1970s.
New FBI Unit Studies Serial Violent Offenders
Until the 1970s, the FBI focused more on violent and organized crime as opposed to crimes of murder or rape, says Ann Burgess, professor of psychiatric nursing at the Boston College Connell School of Nursing. Burgess worked with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in its early days to develop a foundational methodology for modern-day criminal profiling.
The gruesome cases involved stabbings, shootings, torture and messages written in the victims’ blood, stoking widespread fears amid the U.S. counterculture movement.
“Back in the counterculture days, the philosophy was, if it feels good do it, which didn't take into account that, for some people, what feels good to them is abducting and torturing helpless victims,” Schechter says.
FBI investigator Robert Ressler is widely credited with popularizing the term “serial killer” in the 1970s. He reportedly said it reminded him of “serial adventures,” short film series released in chapters and shown on weekend afternoons in the 1930s and 1940s, because the killings happened in episodes. He started using the term to describe “the killing of those who do one murder, then another and another in a fairly repetitive way,” Ressler wrote in his 1992 memoir.
Criminal Profiling and Typical Serial Killers
Criminal justice expert and American Serial Killers author Peter Vronsky estimates that more than 80% of known serial killers in the United States were active between 1970 and 1999. According to data analyzed by Radford University’s Mike Aamodt, the number of U.S. serial killers peaked in the 1980s, with nearly 770 active during the decade.
The accounts of so many serial killers during that period may partly be attributed to improved data collection and investigative techniques. But cultural conditions—including rampant drug use, the popularity of hitchhiking and the opening of the Interstate Highway System—made it easier for killers to target and abduct victims.
“It had something to do with the sexual revolution—the ease with which they could pick up victims,” Schechter says.
The FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit sought to identify common personality traits and criminal patterns among so-called “lust murderers” who killed for sexual pleasure. Working closely with Burgess, FBI profilers John Douglas and Ressler in the late 1970s interviewed 36 of these convicted offenders, including 25 serial killers.
Profilers found that many serial killers experienced sexual abuse as children. The profilers distinguished between “organized” killers, who typically planned their crimes in advance, exhibited anti-social behavior and targeted strangers as victims and “disorganized” killers. The latter criminals usually killed spontaneously, left behind evidence and targeted people who lived near them.
“Agents became proficient at looking at crime scenes and finding personality factors that would then identify a possible suspect,” Burgess says.
As a picture of the American serial killer became better defined in the media, the archetype seeped into slasher films like Friday the 13th (1980) and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), and true-crime TV series like Unsolved Mysteries, which first aired in 1987, and thriller novels like The Silence of the Lambs (1988), which was turned into the 1991 Oscar-winning movie of the same name.
“The terror and fear that they generated was way out of proportion to any threat they really represented to the average person,” Schechter says. “So the serial killer, at one point, became the mythic monster of the age.”
The Demise of the American Serial Killer
By the end of the 20th century, the number of American serial killers appeared to have sharply declined. And the serial killer trope began to fade.
Some researchers say DNA testing and improved communication across police jurisdictions may have deterred criminals from engaging in serial killings, leading to the apparent demise.
At the same time, people became less vulnerable to dangerous encounters as security cameras became nearly ubiquitous in cities, cellphones made it easier to notify authorities in emergencies and home security systems became common.
But the American fixation on serial killers was replaced by a new obsession: the mass murderer, Schechter says. The Gun Violence Archive, an independent research group that provides near real-time data, reported 503 “mass shootings” in the United States in 2024, defined as an incident in which at least four victims, aside from the shooter, are shot and either killed or injured.
“You can tell a lot what’s in the back of a culture’s mind, what their nightmares are, what their dreams are, by looking at the kinds of crimes that obsess people,” Schechter says.
