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We know that true crime about serial murder is dark and disturbing – so… why do we love to watch? And are there real-life consequences for this genre’s explosion?
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00:00We know that true crime about serial murder is dark and disturbing, so why do we love to watch?
00:06And are there real-life consequences for this genre's explosion?
00:09Welcome to WatchMojo series, The Evolution of True Crime.
00:13For this episode, we're looking at how true crime media turns serial killers into celebrities.
00:17To say a serial killer is a celebrity is not to say he's an admirable character.
00:33It's to say the way we talk about them, think about them, and represent them in media is comparable to how we talk, think, and represent other famous figures in pop culture.
00:41But how does this impact our understanding of crime and justice?
00:44In an era so saturated by media, does the line between actual crime and true crime start to blur?
00:51Every news organization across the country was now interested in Ted Bundy.
00:57Serial killing has pretty much existed everywhere and always, but the English term was coined in the 1970s.
01:03While there is some debate about who exactly named it, what's important for us here is what it describes.
01:09Monster, right?
01:11But what do you really know about him?
01:13A serial killer is generally understood to be a murderer with three or more victims, with a time gap between so-called killing events.
01:21This is what separates them from spree and mass killers.
01:25Spree killers operate in a short time frame, and mass murderers are more interested in scale.
01:30Pop culture interest in serial killers is generally thought to have started with Jack the Ripper in the 1890s.
01:35These killings in the Whitechapel neighborhood of London generated tons of pulp media, rumors, stories, and general cultural hullabaloo.
01:43But the fact that the term serial killer entered the law enforcement lexicon in the 1970s is not random.
01:50This marks the beginning of what has come to be known as the golden age of serial killing in the United States, 1970 to 1999.
01:57It's happened in New York.
01:59The Son of Sam killer terrorized the city for months.
02:05With a .44 caliber revolver, he shot couples in parked cars.
02:09Famously, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, the Golden State Killer, David Berkowitz, a.k.a. Son of Sam, Jeffrey Dahmer, BTK, Richard Ramirez, the Zodiac Killer, and others were all active during this period.
02:22Investigative historian Peter Vronsky claims that over 80% of American serial killers were active during this golden age.
02:29Why?
02:30There is no one definitive answer, but this era generated a huge proportion of the true crime stories we consume today.
02:37So let's start with this.
02:39What makes a serial killer?
02:41You have to kill Eileen Morris because she'll kill again.
02:45Quick facts.
02:4692% of serial killers are male.
02:48Most commit their first murder between the ages of 25 and 34.
02:52Serial killers rarely target victims outside of their ethnic group, but often target the opposite sex.
02:57Psychopathy and sociopathy are real conditions, but those living with them do not necessarily become serial killers.
03:05And not all serial killers are necessarily psycho or sociopaths.
03:09Like an addiction, you keep craving something which is harder, harder.
03:13Something which gives you a greater sense of excitement.
03:20But experts say that people who could be predisposed to violent impulses, like psychopaths are, can be socialized into acting upon them.
03:27For example, if a kid with psychopathy is exposed to physical abuse at a young age, they may be more likely to reproduce this behavior themselves.
03:35And since empathy might not come naturally to them, they may struggle to identify this behavior as wrong.
03:48Children who experience severe trauma can also develop patterns of emotional suppression that can lead them to victimize people later in life, struggling to feel empathy or remorse.
03:58As I'm sitting there with a severed head in my hand, talking to it, I say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute.
04:02I see old paintings and drawings of Viking heroes talking to severed heads and taking them to parties, old enemies in leather bags.
04:11Part of our heritage.
04:13If we go back to this ironic term, this golden age, let's look at the timing.
04:18Men aged 25 to 34 in the 1970s were born in the 1940s and 50s.
04:23World War II and the Korean War destabilized many young families across the United States during these decades, as many people returned from war with immense trauma.
04:33Many men did not return at all, leaving behind young families with their own trauma, higher rates of poverty and so forth.
04:40Experts have pointed to this wave of destabilized homes as one factor potentially leading to the rise of serial killing in the generation that followed.
04:47Because these children were more frequently neglected or exposed to violence and abuse.
04:52Experts have also pointed to the Great Depression as having a similar effect.
04:56There are, of course, many, many different experiences of war and returning home.
05:01But, for instance, Dennis Rader, a.k.a. BTK, Richard Cottingham, the Torso Killer, and Joseph D'Angelo, the Golden State Killer, all had war veteran fathers in deeply unstable family homes.
05:13When he drank, he was almost like a different person.
05:15My dad struck all of his children all the time.
05:20It's a gross oversimplification to say that one thing directly leads to the other.
05:24But given the high rates of abuse and childhood exposure to violence reported by convicted serial killers of this era, a connection begins to emerge.
05:32Violence and trauma can cycle across generations.
05:35When Richard's father would get mad, he would get the hammer and hit his own head.
05:40He got mad and Richard, he beat the hell out of him.
05:43He would get my dolls, I remember, and he would always act like he was going to poke out their eyes.
05:48Other factors that experts point to when examining the Golden Age are the massive cultural shifts of the 1960s and 70s.
05:55Rising youth and countercultures led to more transience among young people.
05:58More runaways, more recreational drug use, more hitchhiking, more women traveling alone.
06:04In other words, the pool of potential victims simply grew.
06:08There were suddenly a lot of young people wandering the world alone, linking up with strangers, going on adventures, not necessarily wanting to be found.
06:16Draft dodging during the Vietnam War is also a factor here, as a lot of young people were traveling under fake names, using fake backstories.
06:24This made it harder to identify them once they were found, or to have them labeled missing in the first place.
06:30The construction of the interstate highway in the 1950s is also a factor.
06:34Increased mobility, hitchhiking, isolated roads, lack of surveillance.
06:38All of these social and cultural factors made this generation more likely to kill, and more easily killed.
06:44I just stabbed to death and cut the throat of an innocent young woman.
06:47She was 19 years old, and her roommate in the trunk who died right after that was 18.
06:52This era is the basis of the true crime frenzy we're living in now.
06:55Because while serial killing itself has sharply declined in the 21st century,
07:00we are still producing and consuming media about this era of killers.
07:04Mindhunter, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, The Good Nurse, and Monster, The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,
07:10are all examples of this fascinating nostalgia.
07:13As these stories keep coming back into circulation with younger actors, cooler aesthetics, and more violence,
07:19these real-life figures become further immortalized in pop culture memory.
07:23That's so hard.
07:27But the relationship between serial killing and celebrity culture doesn't just live in legacy.
07:37Serial killers, like the rest of us, are conscious of pop culture, Hollywood, politics, history, and so forth.
07:43These are the cultural factors that shape our social world, and celebrity culture is a part of that.
07:49The showboating, performative Bundy trials where he represented himself and got married in court.
08:06The Tate-LaBianca murders being deemed the end of the 60s.
08:15In a scene described by one investigator as reminiscent of a weird religious rite,
08:19five persons, including actress Sharon Tate, were found dead at the home of Miss Tate and her husband,
08:25screen director Roman Poljanski.
08:27These are pop culture moments as much as they are major criminal cases.
08:30And even during this golden age, serial killers themselves were aware of their notoriety,
08:46their overlap into celebrity culture.
08:51During his peak as a celebrity murderer, Richard Ramirez signed his artworks Richard Ramirez Night Stalker,
08:59reinforcing his public persona, his brand.
09:02Do you think it's a little strange that these women are coming to see you?
09:07No, because the majority is not necessarily correct.
09:11Dennis Rader suggested his own title, an acronym for Bind, Torture, Kill, in his infamous letters to police.
09:17As Dahmer's murder pad was discovered by police in 1991,
09:21media rights were allegedly being sold within the hour.
09:24Exceptional acts and personas, public panic, and explosive media coverage converged to make killers into celebrities.
09:32Why were you in the courtroom today?
09:33I just wanted to see what he looked like. I think he's cute.
09:36In the early 1990s, several factors came together to bring serial killing to the center stage of media.
09:41First, as we've already seen, the actual real-life problem of serial killing during this era.
09:47Second, the increasingly sensationalized coverage of these crimes,
09:50with identifiable figures and personas attached to them.
09:54The third is actually the release of The Silence of the Lambs,
09:57the book in 1988, then the movie in 91.
10:00The 25-year-old daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, listed first as a missing person,
10:05is now believed to have been kidnapped by the serial killer known only as Buffalo Bill.
10:10Thomas Harris' characters and Anthony Hopkins' portrayal were largely responsible
10:13for a resurgence of pop culture interest in serial killing in the 90s,
10:17coinciding with the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer and Eileen Wuornos,
10:21two super-publicized cases.
10:23This is when the golden age of serial killing starts to transition into a golden age of serial killer media.
10:29It creates a loop.
10:30Serial killing is happening.
10:32The media reports on it.
10:33Serial killing becomes the thing everyone is talking about.
10:36The media capitalizes on the social trend by releasing increasingly bold, sensational stories,
10:41which in turn increases the social stock and marketability of real-life crimes and criminals.
10:46Taking my life like this and getting rich off it all these years.
10:51It was used for books and movies and shit.
10:53Bladder climbs, re-election, everything else.
10:56I'm not giving you book and movie info.
10:58Reality and storytelling blend together in non-fiction media,
11:02amplifying the persona of the killer in the public imagination.
11:06What separates a serial killer movie from a slasher flick
11:09is who the audience is meant to identify with,
11:12the killer or the victim.
11:13Slasher movies are all about the terror of the victims
11:16and how we imagine ourselves in the scenarios we see on screen.
11:20Don't go into the basement.
11:21Why doesn't she call the police?
11:23Et cetera, et cetera.
11:24I'm calling the police.
11:27A serial killer movie is different.
11:29It is about the persona and the mind of the killer.
11:33This is who we identify with.
11:35Hannibal Lecter is a perfect example.
11:37Hannibal the cannibal is not some guy in a hockey mask
11:40stumbling around with a machete.
11:42He is cunning, calculating, a master manipulator.
11:46A genius in his fields, both psychiatry and psycho killing.
11:49Crime media often paints these killers as exceptional,
12:04almost superhuman, terrifying no doubt,
12:06but also impressive, set apart from regular criminals.
12:10Hannibal, for example, is certainly a monster,
12:12but he's also a genius who outwits those who try to contain him.
12:16He is the opposite of so-called degenerate serial killers like Buffalo Bill,
12:27who is cast as incoherent, queer-coded, living in squalor, incompetent.
12:32Put the f***ing lotion in the basket!
12:34A similar dichotomy can be seen in non-fiction coverage of crimes during the 80s and 90s.
12:39Murderer celebrities are often guys next door,
12:42middle class or affluent, active in their communities.
12:45Jeffrey Dahmer is intelligent and articulate.
12:48That is what makes him so frightening.
12:50The angle of their story focuses on their cunning,
12:53their ability to disguise their true form and walk among us,
12:57be part of our communities.
12:59Dennis Rader, for instance.
13:00Rader was out there in the community, hiding in plain sight.
13:03In my mind, there was two people in that body.
13:07One of them was a husband and father, the Boy Scout leader.
13:11The other one was an absolute animal.
13:13On the other side of this dichotomy,
13:15during the same era, we see a massive wave of reality and non-fiction media
13:19about the police cracking down on lower-level crimes.
13:23Cops, for example, was shot overwhelmingly in low-income neighborhoods,
13:26showcasing arrests of mostly people of color and immigrants.
13:40Celebrity criminals are often given an aura of exceptionality and genius,
13:43while the common criminal is anonymous,
13:46a symbol of moral weakness in opposition to the officers who arrest them.
13:50There are some serial killer celebrities,
13:52like Eileen Wuornos or Ed Kemper,
13:54who do not fit into the Walks Among Us mold,
13:56but they are exceptional.
13:58Wuornos, because female serial killers are rare,
14:00and Kemper, because of the particular savagery of his crimes.
14:04But media coverage of their story still reinforces the pattern.
14:07There is an angle to their stories
14:09that allows them to transcend common criminal tropes.
14:12I am an American, and I killed Americans.
14:17I am a human being, and I killed human beings.
14:20And I did it in my society.
14:22They're not mastermind geniuses.
14:24They are chaotic, tragic figures.
14:26My mother Diane, let me tell you something,
14:28she plopped me out of her belly,
14:31left me with my grandparents,
14:32and we never knew her.
14:34I'm leaving, I'm glad.
14:36Thanks a lot, society, for railroading my ass.
14:38But this is also a trope that allows serial killers
14:42to enter into pop culture history.
14:45If a woman humiliates her little boy,
14:47he will become hostile and violent and debased, period.
14:51In the 2000s and 2010s,
14:54we see characters like Dexter appear,
14:56a cool and sympathetic serial killer
14:58who audiences welcome as their protagonist.
15:00Having become accustomed to the shocking
15:02and sensational tone of serial killer stories,
15:05we come to accept them as a part of pop culture.
15:07Shows like Mindhunter and Dahmer
15:09push this even further,
15:10featuring real-life serial killers as written characters
15:13with snappy dialogue and engaging personas.
15:16Charles Manson, the most dangerous man alive.
15:19Hippie cult leader who programmed people to kill.
15:22In that book, he's got me so powerful
15:24and looked for him, he stopped his watch.
15:26On screen, they are no longer real people
15:29who committed real crimes,
15:31but personas and concepts that become vehicles
15:33for the filmmaker's story, icons.
15:35Another essential piece of the celebrity system
15:38is this, profit.
15:40And not just how media companies generate profit
15:43from covering tragic and traumatic events,
15:45but the concept of murderabilia.
15:47Murderabilia is an umbrella term for collectible items
15:50connected to violent crimes and their perpetrators.
15:52This can be artwork by murderers,
15:54their possessions,
15:56non-evidentiary items related to their crimes.
15:58The more famous the killer,
16:00the higher the price tag.
16:02For example, a painting by John Wayne Gacy,
16:04a colorful portrait of his own Pogo the Clown character,
16:07sold at auction for nearly $13,000 in 2022.
16:11After the release of Monster,
16:13the Jeffrey Dahmer story in 2022,
16:15Dahmer's actual aviator glasses went up for auction
16:18at $150,000 US dollars.
16:21Like Marilyn Monroe's lipstick,
16:22the items are only as valuable as the image they conjure,
16:26as the ghost of their previous owner.
16:28Marketability is an essential part of celebrity culture.
16:31And while there are laws passed in the United States
16:33that prevent criminals from profiting financially from their crimes,
16:36it doesn't mean that other people can't.
16:39This feeds into and incentivizes further celebrity worship of murderers.
16:43Of course, Mr. Ramirez.
16:45My pleasure to welcome you to the Hotel Cortez.
16:48Let me show you your room.
16:50Now, viewers who lived through these historic events
16:52might have a more nuanced reading of these true crime retellings.
16:55Maybe you watched those explosive trials on TV,
16:57or you remember seeing it on the news,
16:59so there's a clearer connection to real events.
17:02But for younger viewers who are learning about these events
17:04for the first time through aestheticized,
17:06bingeable, identifiable content,
17:08it may have a different effect.
17:10It was very realistic,
17:12but props to Evan Peters because he did so well.
17:14In the sea of docuseries and Dexters,
17:17we become more distanced from the understanding
17:19that these events are real.
17:21Real people died.
17:22Real families were destroyed.
17:23The pain that you caused my family.
17:28That was my baby boy that you took away from me.
17:32Many of those survivors are living and reliving their trauma
17:35whenever new content is released.
17:37Every time I think that I'm done with the story,
17:43new stories come out.
17:45Beyond that, it's essential to consider
17:47that there's a well-documented mental health crisis
17:49among today's young people.
17:50And treating real murderers as characters
17:53with their own misunderstood stories to tell
17:55can feed dangerous impressions about power and notoriety.
17:59The pressures of social media,
18:00an increasingly polarized political landscape,
18:03and a bleak outlook for the future
18:04have contributed to higher rates of depression
18:06and general hopelessness among young people.
18:09And although serial killing has declined substantially
18:11in the 21st century,
18:13mass shootings have increased dramatically,
18:16particularly in the 2010s.
18:17While news media has been developing best practices
18:20for covering such events
18:22to avoid giving notoriety to the perpetrators,
18:24it's essential that we apply the same critical thinking
18:26to the true crime and serial killer media
18:28we produce and consume today.
18:30It's our responsibility to make sure
18:32that the stories of the other victims
18:33are not lost in the shuffle.
18:36It's not just a movie.
18:37It's real.
18:40Check out this other recent clip from WatchMojo.
18:42And be sure to subscribe and ring the bell
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