SERIAL KILLER DISCOVERED? INDIANA

[Blindgreed1]

I understand and agree with a lot of what you just posted, Gunnar. Interesting thoughts.

Understanding why people do what they do -- criminal activity or otherwise -- is definitely a dynamic, rather than stagnant, study and pursuit. We're on the same page -- norms and abnorms change with the times -- variables will always be present within individuals and across the collective society.

I do, however, feel comfortable using statistics. It's valid and accurate to state the number of known/convicted serial killers and their races, so long as the statistics are derived from accurate tracking records/databases. Those "hard" numbers are not variables, they're objective pieces of data (even considering the unavoidable margin of error for wrongful convictions and record keeping mistakes).

It's my opinion only that there's now a large enough sample of the very small portion of the population that is "known" to serial kill to make the counts/percentages just one factor that can be legitimately considered in full profiling and suspect-narrowing efforts. Every statistical base, no matter what the subject of focus, is based on knowns -- just as some things that are currently unknown will later inevitably become known and eventually populate the sample base. That's true whether the subject of focus is serial killers, serial cheaters, secret cereal snackers, etc...

Where numbers and percentages are objective and can be easily validated, motives and drivers cannot, IMO. I'm with you there. Having said that, I too think it's useful and interesting to investigate and research commonalities, potential predictors, and increased psychological and biological understanding of criminal minds.

Anyway, we humans are complex interesting mofos; luckily, a very small percentage of us get off on killing other people. Still, anything that is done with the goal of reducing that small percentage of the population even further is very worthwhile to me.

Like I said, I haven't been keeping as close an eye on the whole SK scene as I used to. But 10 years ago the data was still horrible and just starting to get cleaned up. I'm sure the statistics are easier to run now but I still have to wonder (and question) how many mass murderers were included in the data due to the inability to distinguish between the two in years past.