Words for People Who Kill People. A Lot.

Can you name this killer?

They say that the Eskimo have 50 words for snow. Or is it 100? Here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan we have only the one word but achieve the same effect with the number and severity of the curse words we append to it. From 'oh darn, snow' to  't'ree d-mn f-ing feet of snow what's with that f--- f--- f---.'

And in the modern world we are developing quite the vocabulary to deal with people who kill. There are even distinctions to be made in the realm of people who kill multiple victims. Some of these terms are serial killer, mass murderer and spree killer, as well as a newer proposed term, rampage killer.

The term 'serial murderer' is first documented to occur in print in 1961. FBI Special Agent Robert Ressler is credited with sexing the term up by coining 'serial killer'

The National Institutes of Justice have a definition of serial killer which requires a series of two or more murders  with a 'cooling-off' period in between, often with psychological motives which may include sexual or sadistic overtones. The FBI definition requires a minimum of 3 murders.

It should be noted that people who kill others for a living, from executioners to soldiers to mafia enforcers to Nazi death camp officials do not fit the serial killer definition. The serial killer is marked by the fact that he does his killing for his own pleasure and not because he's hired to do so. 

The mass murderer on the other hand is a different fellow altogether. A mass murderer is someone whose life has become unraveled, and he proposes to fix that by amassing a body count. This killing occurs in a single location and usually ends with the death of the mass murderer, as in the case of Charles Whitman shooting from the Texas Tower in 1966.

The spree killer is psychologically the same as the mass murderer, with the exception that the spree killer is taking his act on the road. Think Charles Starkweather in 1957.

Because of the similarities between the mass murderer and the spree killer, it has been proposed that a new term, rampage killer, be applied to both.  Whether this new terminology will catch on and supersede the other terms is yet to be known. For writers, it's particularly important to be aware of the current terminology so you don't make the kind of mistakes that annoy the reader, such as calling Charles Whitman a serial killer.

Quiz: do you know the killer in the photo above? If so, which kind of killer was he? If you know, drop a comment.

Source:
The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World's Most Terrifying Murderers
By the well-known author of many classy historical true crime stories, Harold Schechter, this book is a great reference resource on serial killers, with extra emphasis on the ones Schechter has written books about. 


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