Unsolved serial killers serial#
The period of time is what separates a serial murder from a mass murder a mass murder is typically described as “a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders.” Today, the FBI defines serial murder as “the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events.”Īnd honestly, it’s not just horrifying that so many of the perpetrators of these crimes are never caught - it’s also enormously sad. What most of these many definitions had in common, though, were these two factors: There must be more than one murder (of course - you can’t classify something as “serial” if there’s only one of it), and there must be a period of time between murders.
But the Zodiac Killer (who - I hate to break it to you - is probably not Ted Cruz) is far from the only American serial killer who evaded capture indeed, the mystery of who Zodiac is just scratches the surface.Īs the FBI notes, for a long time, there wasn’t actually a set definition of what a serial murder was depending on who you spoke to, you could end up hearing something entirely different. You probably already know about the Zodiac Killer, who I would argue is the most notorious unsolved modern serial murder mystery, at least in the United States. Perhaps it’s that uncertainty, though, that keeps us reading up about all those unsolved serial murder cases still on the books - cases like the five seen here. Bustle’s Gabrielle Moss explored the topic last year, and although she’d previously nailed down the number of serial killers who are active literally right now (25 to 50, for the curious), she later made a somewhat horrifying realization: Not only are some of those active serial killers never caught, we don’t actually know how many will never be caught. serial killers were never caught, I have some bad news for you: We don’t really know. If you’ve ever idly wondered - as one does - how many U.S.