The following excerpt is reprinted with permission from David Schmid’s article, “Why Americans Are So Fascinated by Serial Killers” on HISTORY.com. NOTE: The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of A+E Networks.
….Although the term “serial murder” had been around since the 1960s, it was not used with any regularity until the FBI took it up in the 1970s, and even then the term was used primarily in law enforcement circles rather than in the mass media. This would all change in October 1983, when the Justice Department held a news conference to discuss research that the FBI had been conducting into serial murder for several years. According to the FBI, at any given moment there were dozens of active serial killers at large in the United States who were responsible for thousands of deaths a year.
This information sparked a panic among the American public and suddenly serial killers were headline news coast to coast in a way they had never been before. Both law enforcement agencies and the mass media recognized they had an opportunity to capitalize on public anxiety: the FBI was able to acquire huge amounts of funding from Congress to fight serial murder, while a wide variety of popular cultural genres, including true crime books, film, television and even trading card companies quickly flooded the market with serial killer merchandise.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the scale and incidence of serial murder were grossly exaggerated during this period (it was, and remains, a statistically insignificant crime), but why exactly was the American public so receptive to what they were being told about serial murder? Read more on HISTORY.com.
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