A New Class of Multiple Murderer: Gang and Contract Killers

Due to appear as a 'new idea in forensics', in support of Steve Daniels' proposal to create a new class of multiple murderer:

To date, the majority of criminologists protest the inclusion of gang killings and professional murders in serial homicide offender databases because these offenses typically occur alongside functional or instrumental violence.1,2 If killing is a means of conflict resolution, endorsed by others, motivated strictly by financial gain, the byproduct of provocation or is committed out of convenience, revenge or survival, the offender is often deliberately excluded from serial homicide offender research samples.1,3,4,5 Because these offenders have understandable, conventional and logical motivations6 they are erroneously viewed as being different than killers yearning to repetitively relish in causing death.7

Gang related murderers are often considered to be ordinary criminals who happen to kill more than one person due to extenuating circumstances.8 To most researchers, killing serially implies that murder must be the primary outcome of a killer’s quest towards psychological gratification9,10 and not used as a response to situational factors.11,12 It has been said that a significant aspect of the offender’s life is dedicated to the process of serial killing with an emphasis placed on fantasy, planning, predatory victim selection/pursuit and rumination.13 Most criminologists argue that gang members and contract killers do not engage in these activities (at least not in an overtly observable manner) and maintain the antiquated viewpoint that an offender must display a sexual component at the crime scene to qualify for a serial killer classification.14,15 To them, the terms ‘sexual murder’ and ‘serial murder’ have become indistinguishable over the years13,16,17,18,19 while they fail to acknowledge that the serial sexual killer is but one of many subsets of multiple murderer.20,21 Since criminologists have been overly restrictive in their narrow interpretations of what constitutes a serial killer, we have overlooked the evolving nature of serial homicide and ignored how serial killers are molded by real-world social conditions, cultural changes and external pressures.22,23

In 2014, authors such as Adjorlolo and Chan24 and Osborne and Salfati25 and Allely et al.26 are taking the field in new directions by deconstructing the long standing definition of serial murder, reimaging the “cooling off period” as time intervals and applying a large dataset to the study of neurodevelopmental disorders and serial homicide. Establishing another class of multiple murder is essential to the advancement of the science of serial homicide and would have the full support of the ‘Serial Homicide Expertise and Information Sharing Collaborative’.

Citations

1. Ferguson (2003) Defining and classifying serial murder in the context of perpetrator motivation

2. Culhane et al. (2011) Self-Reported Psychopathology in a convicted serial killer

3. Jenkins (1988) Serial Murder in England 1940-1985

4. Gorby (2000) Serial Murder: A Cross-national Descriptive Study

5. Trojan and Salfati (2010) A Multidimensional Analysis of Criminal Specialization Among Single-Victim and Serial Homicide Offenders

6. Jenkins (2002) Catch Me Before I Kill More: Seriality as Modern Monstrosity

7. Skrapec (2001) Defining Serial Murder: A Call for a Return to the Original Lustmörd

8. DeLisi & Scherer (2006) Multiple Homicide Offenders

9. Myers (2004) Serial Murder by Children and Adolescents

10. Myers (2006) The Motivation Behind Serial Sexual Homicide: Is It Sex, Power and Control or Anger?

11. Fox (2014) Extreme Killing 3rd edition

12. Hickey (2014) Serial Murderers and Their Victims, 7th edition

13. Brantley & Kosky (2005) Serial Murder in the Netherlands

14. Geberth and Turco (1997) Antisocial Personality Disorder, Sexual Sadism, Malignant Narcissism, and Serial Murder

15. Beasley (2004) Serial Murder in America: case studies of seven offenders

16. Quinet (2007) The Missing Missing Toward a Quantification of Serial Murder Victimization in the United States

17. Harbort (2001) Serial Murderers in Germany from 1945 to 1995

18. Kerr (2013) Sexual Homicide: Definition, motivation and comparison with other forms of sexual offending

19. Homant & Kennedy (2014). Understanding serial sexual murder: A biopsychosocial approach

20. Petee & Jarvis (2000) Analyzing Violent Serial Offending

21. McNamara & Morton (2004) Frequency of Serial Sexual Homicide Victimization in Virginia for a Ten-Year Period

22. Warf (2002) Heinous spaces, perfidious places the sinister landscapes of serial killers

23. DeFronzo et al. (2007) Male Serial Homicide: The Influence of Cultural and Structural Variables

24. Adjorlolo & Chan (2014) The Controversy of Defining Serial Murder: Revisited

25. Osborne & Salfati (2014) Re-Conceptualizing “Cooling-Off Periods” in Serial Homicide

26. Allely et al. (2014) Neurodevelopmental and psychosocial risk factors in serial killers and mass murderers

Collecting and Transforming Serial Homicide Data: A Decades Long Adventure

This post was compiled using my responses to John Paul Titlow's questions about data transformation for his Fast Company piece The Productivity Snag That Keeps Data Scientists Up At Night:

After separately compiling serial killer databases for James Alan Fox and Eric Hickey, I built a community where serial homicide experts could share information in a digital workspace: the Serial Homicide Expertise and Information Sharing Collaborative (SHEISC). I act as the data coordinator for the SHEISC initiative, the goal of which is to synchronize and standardize all serial homicide data collection efforts so the stereotypes, myths and lore that surround the study of serial murderers can be addressed. The following folks contributed their entire datasets to the project - Ronald Hinch, Brigadier Gérard Labuschagne, Janet McClellan, Bryan Nelson, Kenna Quinet and John White. It was my job to collect and then merge these data files together with the Fox/Hickey data and make sense of the sometimes disparate layouts.

Mike Aamodt of Radford University manages the Serial Killer Information Center. Since 1992, Mike and his students have been amassing information on serial killers in what is now a database of 3,000 offenders. Mike and I partnered together to combine all of our data to create the first national serial homicide database for use by law enforcement officers and academic researchers.

Aside from the seamless merging of the SHEISC and Radford data, almost all other aspects of this joint data project were challenging. First and foremost, convincing folks who operated in information silos to share data that they had a vested interest in keeping private took the better part of two years. Since it was an ongoing process, we would receive large datasets over a spaced out period of time. This caused the current work that we were doing to the main database to be put on hold while we examined the new data file for new offender names and inconsistencies. As I previously mentioned, the setup of each file was different. Some files were messy while others were pristine. Misspellings caused several duplicate records that had to be removed before further research was done. Most times, an author would have a unique variable that we would then add to the main database. This would require us to revisit every unique offender in the main file and search for information on the new variable to fill in the gaps. We also had to take into consideration the author's motivations for including or excluding certain pieces of information or why variables were categorized in a certain manner. What we discovered was that the addition of offenders was a subjective process with higher priority given to those offenders who received greater amounts of news coverage.

Some authors I contacted lost their original datafile due to computer issues and sent in paper records that had to be transcribed into Excel. I also manually copied data from both of Michael Newton's editions of The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers.

Due to lack of access to primary sources like police records and FBI files, information across all databases was gathered from secondary sources and as a result we often encountered conflicting records. None of the databases contained the source of the information so it was impossible to verify which record was accurate. Differences in how we each defined the term serial killer was a consistent problem that led to incredible variety in not only the number of offenders contained in each dataset but the types as well. We have just assembled a 'Serial Homicide Data Expert Panel' to discuss which classifications of offenders can be included in the main Radford dataset. The inclusion of hitmen and gang members has been an ongoing point of contention among folks in the field for decades (coming to a head now because of Aaron Hernandez). We hope to resolve this issue once and for all with the outcome of the expert panel.

The scrubbing was all a manual (and tedious) process. I accomplished the de-duping task by copying all offender names into one excel file and assigning a color to all the names from a specific dataset so that I could track who the data came from. We discovered over time that data from specific authors was more reliable than others. We found that the data gathered by teams of folks was more likely to contain faulty data versus that compiled by one person alone. My theory is that it was difficult to maintain "version control".

But...since we got new data on a rolling basis, this color scheme process had to be repeated at least five times. After a while, I began to recognize names and could recall which records would be duplicates before I did the color coding function. The issue was determining which records to exclude. We resolved to combine the duplicates and refer to our trusted source when deciding which piece of information to keep when we encountered conflicts over the 160 variables.

One of the most difficult aspects was determining the offender's race. Oftentimes, news reports would not include a photo of the offender. Some authors would make assumptions based on the region of the country where the crimes occurred and coupled that information with the offender's name. Other folks looked at the race of their victims since the grand majority of these offenses are intraracial.

In regards to cleaning, some authors coded race by spelling out the entire word or using either a W for White or a C for Caucasian, AA for African American or B for Black. All of those records had to be recoded to match the primary selection which ended up being W, B, H (Hispanic), A (Asian) and O (Other). The use of 'Other' varied as well. Some offered a few examples (such as Native American) and most lumped Hispanic and Asian into 'Other'. Most of the time, the datasets did not include a legend so those records tagged with 'Other' had to researched further.

As for gender, most authors used M, F or O while others spelled out Male, Female or Other. The use of 'Other' in this case was reserved for the one instance of a transgendered offender.

Another frustrating aspect of the cleaning was that most datasets had all the information for 'victim type' lumped under one cell. Others broke the victim types down into separate columns for men, women, children etc. and marked the relevant selection with either an X or a 0/1 (no/yes) scheme. The information from the single cells had to be parsed out following the 0/1 (no/yes) scheme. Each X was converted to a 1 and the gaps got a 0.

An offender's record is never truly complete since new information about additional victims (or false claims) is sometimes discovered. In order for this information to be incorporated into the database, it must first be found by one of the researchers (I have a Google alert set up and run the terms "serial killer" and "serial homicide" through LexisNexis once a week).

In the end, we used SPSS to run the statistics.

The SHEISC's role is to use data to present an accurate depiction of serial murderers so that the public can be educated about these threats to their safety since there are approximately ten television shows on the air at the moment that exist merely to exploit this phenomenon and often misinforms their audience.

A Special Dedication to Leonard Morgenbesser

An edited version of this dedication is due to appear in the seventh edition of Eric Hickey's Serial Murderers and Their Victims:

In the wake of recent tragedies, instances of gun violence command national attention. Leonard Morgenbesser categorized the use of handguns as conflict resolution tools to be a threat to public health, a stance that preceded our collective response of outrage. Leonard considered injuries and homicides wrought by these recurring incidents to be at epidemic levels and characterized the reliance on such weapons as a disease whose devastation fractures communities.

As a social scientist, Leonard addressed this issue by tracking gun-related crimes perpetrated in his city of Albany and amassing an exhaustive list of these events. He chose to combat this scourge empirically by compiling information gathered from newspaper reports and television newscasts, instilling in others that something was being done about a seemingly hopeless plight.

After meeting at a conference, I detailed my own efforts to catalog serial murderers and became known to Leonard as “the data guy”. Now, realizing the breadth of his collection endeavors, this label constitutes the ultimate compliment.

Leonard taught me that data should be not only accurate, but actionable. Armed with statistics, Leonard advocated for Albany to be a SNUG program pilot city and helped to secure funding for this critical anti-violence initiative. A member of Albany’s Gun Violence Task Force, Leonard is credited with saving lives through his ceaseless, epidemiological approach.

To come to a greater understanding of serially violent criminals, we co-founded the ‘Multidisciplinary Collaborative on Sexual Homicide and Violence’. Leonard’s unwavering encouragement infused our cause with gravitas, inspiring all involved to work cohesively.

The impact of Leonard’s passing is still being measured, more than a year later. While Leonard’s legacy is the tenacity and persistence he dedicated to raising awareness about gun violence, his sponsorship and facilitation of innovative collaborations must be recognized. Without Leonard’s guidance and foresight, our group would surely not have coalesced.

Leonard possessed qualities I strive to emulate in my quest to utilize data for good. Perhaps our connection arose because Leonard saw in me some aspect of himself. Moving forward, I implore that we all reflect introspectively and embrace that facet of Leonard that exists within ourselves.

Pulling Back the Veil of a Serial Killer Suspect

Pulling Back the Veil of a Serial Killer Suspect:

An Analysis of the Investigation, Arrest and Statements of Felix Vail 

(An edited version of this post appears on Michelle McNamara's blog True Crime Diary.

Five decades before Louisiana became the setting for Nic Pizzolatto’s True Detective, the bayou served as a backdrop to serial killer suspect Felix Vail’s continual narrative of domination, degradation and control. Much the same as Pizzolatto’s killer, Vail operated in plain sight and was unknowingly aided by a peripheral political connection; the late District Attorney Frank Salter Jr declined to prosecute family friend Vail for the death of Mrs. Mary Horton Vail in 1962. Vail strove to maintain his accustomed standard of living, one untethered to obligations. His veiled dangerousness arose from the unabashed and ruthlessly-pursued philosophy that life should be unaffected by the turmoil caused by lesser people. This viewpoint contributed to Vail’s aspiration to escape the commitment of becoming a second-time father, allegedly resulting in the murder of his wife, Mary Horton Vail.

While Pizzolatto’s killer purposefully baited authorities to flaunt his self-assumed superiority, Vail, consummately self-aware, understood that unveiling one’s innate supremacy requires a measure of practiced latency. Vail’s adoption of a well-crafted, honed veneer assisted him in exploiting the unassuming qualities of his counterparts in a mostly furtive and non-violent style. These parasitic behavioral traits ensured that not all those that stood as obstacles met an untimely demise. On his quest to master and command all things, Vail did encounter resistance once his partner’s monetary resources were totally consumed. His allegedly murderous response dictated that Vail’s nomadic lifestyle, originally a byproduct of his evident shortcomings, would repeatedly be a mixture of cowardice and calculated deceit.

*

My exposure to Vail began innocuously in October 2012 when Northeastern University’s Jack Levin connected me with investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell in an effort to locate Jim Bell, a former Major Case Specialist (MCS) with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Bell investigated Vail as a serial killer suspect briefly in 1993 before retiring from the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP). Gregory M. Cooper, a member of the Serial Homicide Expertise and Information Sharing Collaborative, supervised Bell and suggested contacting the FBI.

FBI MCS Wayne Koka liaised between Acting FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit-4 Unit Chief Armin Showalter, Jerry and myself. Coupling Jerry’s extensive Gone exposé with my knowledge of serial killers, they were convinced of Vail’s potential. By January, Showalter had spoken with Detective Randy Curtis of Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Office who summarily reopened the Mary Horton Vail cold case. Koka later modestly labeled their assistance as “routine”, but we understood it to be a vital intervention. After Vail’s arrest that May, I dubbed it the ‘oldest of a serial killer suspect in the nation's history’.

Since Jerry suspected Vail of the 1973 and 1984 disappearances of his longtime girlfriend Sharon Hensley and another wife, Annette Craver Vail, we continued to delve into his past. We consulted with Dr. Henry Lee about DNA evidence, contacted Thomas A. DiBiase and the folks at NamUs about other no-body murder prosecutions, reached out to a jewelry expert to identify earrings that Vail retained, and emailed the Internet Adult Film Database to inquire about a triple X film in which Vail may have participated.

During several visits to his residence, private investigator Gina Frenzel surreptitiously audio recorded Vail and photographed thousands of pages from his journals. It is from the analysis of Vail’s utterances and the content of his writings that the following vignette is offered. Since we are not psychiatrists, this evaluation is based strictly on how Vail compares to previous offenders in the Radford Serial Killer Database. A trove of this magnitude of a serial killer suspect’s intimate thoughts has never been available for examination. For that reason, it is difficult to approximate exactly how Vail fits into the grander spectrum of serial homicide offenders.

*

Vail, a detached observer, refers to himself primarily as a scientist studying the anatomy of the ego; an entity whose mission is to overtake our electrical life force, or spirit, which is labeled as the limiting factor of the human species. Intending to triumph over the ego by subverting and then neutralizing it, Vail hopes to reach a state of “free brain awareness” where total autonomy, self-governance and spiritual enlightenment can be attained. Suppression of the ego requires isolation, discipline and focus as one must instruct the mind to overcome bodily functions like breathing and hunger. Through periods of fasting, “elimination”, “simplification” and the “ceasing of verbalization”, all toxins can be purged and unwanted aspects abandoned.

The undercurrent of eccentric flair that Vail exudes is accented by his existential leanings and esoteric beliefs. A cerebral being, Vail is handicapped by a preference for abstract thought, an immensely inflated sense of self-worth and a tendency towards megalomania. Vail boasts a range of abilities that have surpassed those of his peers from an early age, granted by being privy to the brain’s remaining “ninety-percent”. Vail evidently places a high degree of importance on intelligence, considering it a cherished attribute. His desire to tap into the consciousness of strangers to access information within their minds signifies Vail’s lifelong quest for absolute omniscience. To anticipate underlying motives, Vail has conducted body language research and has become a student of psychology; measuring and profiling in an effort to determine when the truth is falsified. To Vail, the most detrimental event is to be undermined.

The strangeness of the adult world, namely the undefined distinction between what is thought and what is spoken, has confused Vail from a young age. This dissonance manifested as a schism between intellect and emotion and an inclination to understand the concept of dualism that has dominated his existence and decisions. To Vail, it is upsetting that we are “in and out of synchronicity” with ourselves. While discussing Waiting for the Galactic Bus and The Little Prince, two works that describe extraterrestrials’ observations of the human condition, Vail highlights his disdain for the mainstream and reflects upon the parallels of his journey with those of the characters in the stories.

Vail takes pride in thinking “outside the social parameters” to which others are programmed. Ignoring “social ethics” and “religious morality” affords Vail the ability to realize his ultimate potential. Fitting into the social order is hampering, according to Vail, and requires putting the mind “in neutral”. He cares not for what is deemed permissible by society and openly disregards the illegality of prior actions. Although Vail relishes his outsider status, he is keenly aware that perception is afforded more attention than actuality. To avoid sending “red flags”, he pretends to be influenced by the disapproval of others, thriving on the cons that he perpetuates.

 

As humans are amalgams of environmental and situational occurrences, some events have impacted Vail’s capacity to maintain enduring relationships. Growing up on a farm with sharecroppers and orderlies instilled in Vail a penchant for dehumanization and the opinion that some are subhuman. As no woman could equal him emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, they existed merely to be used. The search for a “mother substitute” for his son during their travels was based specifically on what she could provide. Vail admits to a sexual addiction and claims to have slept with “hundreds and hundreds” of women. In reminiscing about trading “electrical energy” with his mother during nursing, Vail demonstrates that his view of normal sexual relations was warped from childhood.

While awaiting his trial, Vail is undoubtedly contemplating the paradoxical nature of recent happenings. The image of a supreme being yearning for complexity has now been forcibly juxtaposed with the fallible man undone by weakness. Frenzel presented Vail with an opportunity for connection using distrust abatement and defense reduction – tactics Vail once employed for similar ends. As a consequence of his presumption that no one else could possess these nefarious capabilities, the all-seeing Vail failed to recognize Frenzel’s ruse. Although this deception seemingly validates Vail’s long-held paranoid thought patterns, being exposed as invariably human is, to Vail, a far more debilitating fate than any achieved at trial.

Researching Serial Murder

I have been keeping track of cases of serial homicide for the past thirteen years. Researching serial murder requires not only psychological fortitude but a daily commitment to ensure that offenders that are not labeled as serial killers by the media are captured in the data rolls. As opposed to conducting a Lexis Nexis search when you need information for a publication that spans several years, daily searches help to attribute a measure of validity to the data since the likelihood of missing a case is greatly diminished.

There are a few sources that I utilize to locate the names of offenders who are otherwise not identified as serial killers in my daily Google Alert. Twitter is a valuable resource in that it allows the researcher to search for keywords amongst thousands of user generated updates. Unfortunately, most users (like the majority of media outlets) do not label offenders who murder two victims serial killers. A work around to this problem is searching for keywords such as "two victims" or "two homicides". Although Twitter does a fairly good job in searching for variations of words, researchers should search for as many variations as possible. This method, however, can contribute to repetitive results, information overload and search fatigue.

I also search the Innocence Project website and the National Registry of Exonerations website once a month since some serial killers have been responsible for the murder that an innocent individual was accused and incarcerated. Once the court system acknowledges this error, the guilty party is typically identified. Since these cases are usually very old when the true killer is identified, they infrequently make the news. This requires the researcher to read each case to ascertain the circumstances surrounding the offender's background and if they were responsible for any additional homicides.

Law enforcement agencies are beginning to address their backlogs of untested evidence in the search for perpetrators of violence. As such, cold case blogs are another great source of information on the status of cases that had been placed on the shelf until advancements in DNA technology could catch up to law enforcement's needs. Researchers should be aware that, although new instances of serial homicides are in decline, there has been an influx of cases involving killers responsible for murders that occurred in prior decades. When these killers are uncovered, they are rarely included in the data rolls of new editions of the books that catalog serial killers.

We may begin to see an uptick in unsolved homicides due to the dwindling numbers of seasoned detectives dedicated to the investigation of major felonies, the reprioritization of the FBI's primary function from law enforcement to national security, the amount of time that DNA evidence takes to be processed (from 97 days in 2009 to 161 days in 2013 in NY) and the massive backlogs of uncompleted autopsies at medical examiner's offices.

Your Friendly, Neighborhood Serial Killer

Soon after the capture of "The Grim Sleeper", one of California’s most elusive serial killers, an all too common portrait of the perpetrator emerged. Unbeknownst to most, Lonnie David Franklin Jr., the friendly mechanic who volunteered around his neighborhood, does indeed fit the mold cast by scores of killers before him. A local man, Franklin held menial jobs, had a criminal record, chose marginalized victims, lived in the vicinity of the crimes, and was snared by DNA. The façade he delicately concocted to conceal these facts was shattered to reveal his true nature, shocking his neighborhood. These are all hallmarks of the average, modern day serial killer.

On Fear and Loathing, an episode of the popular television show Criminal Minds, the FBI agents asserted that the offender was African American to which the Mayor of the suburban town responded, “I’ve never even heard of a black serial killer.” The Mayor was echoing the sentiment of the real world news media, true crime aficionados and criminologists who consistently perpetuate the widely held misconception that serial killing is an endeavor engaged in solely by Caucasian males. 

In 2002, upon learning that the D.C. Snipers were African American, the killers were regarded as outliers; a rare occurrence among rare occurrences. But those perplexed by The Grim Sleeper’s race must only briefly examine our storied history of serial murder to discover that a plethora of African American serial killers do exist. Chester Dwayne Turner and John Floyd Thomas, two of the most prolific serial killers in California history, were both African American. Missouri’s Lorenzo Gilyard and Ohio’s Anthony Sowell each amassed victim counts and time lines commensurate with those of Franklin’s. Derrick Todd Lee gathered friends together for sermons and barbeque, much the same as Franklin offered his services around the neighborhood. These are all regular, common men who share an irregular, uncommon pastime; each living dual lives until the full breath of their atrocities become known. Time and again, these killers compel us to assess societal constructs and question how well we truly know our neighbors.

Franklin earned “The Grim Sleeper” moniker due to his seemingly self imposed hiatus between murders, the unique aspect that garnered him national attention. So how was Franklin able to out-maneuver the police for decades? Some may purport that Franklin is an uber-intelligent, stealthy, cunning loner with unique insight into police tactics. Hardly. The ballistic matches, eyewitness account and lack of forensic knowledge relegate Franklin to the careless killer’s club. Franklin did, however, purposefully capitalize on people’s willingness to trust others, a trait common to almost all serial killers. After all, who among us would like to think their neighbor is capable of such abhorrent crimes? Those who knew Franklin find it difficult to juxtapose his outward genial behavior with his brutal private actions. This dissonance, in concert with police missteps, victim selection, luck, neighborhood dynamics, and a failing criminal justice system also ensured Franklin’s longevity.

Franklin perfected the ability to remain infamous and concurrently surreptitious by being a prototypical, common man; a pizza eating, blue collar worker with a daughter attending college, the nice guy willing to go out of his way to fix your car and stop to chat with passersby. Conversation ranged from basketball to police procedurals and often veered towards his favorite subject, women. According to news reports, Franklin was not especially shy about sharing details of his sexual exploits with his male neighbors, invariably counting on them to overlook or dismiss this subtle red flag as simply “guy talk”, a tenant of normalcy. Comparably, the same is true when men congregate and discuss sports as a means to find commonality and fit in.

Arguably, the most intriguing aspect of the Grim Sleeper case is the controversial method with which he was located; familial DNA. Currently, the majority of serial offenders are detected using DNA taken from victims and matched to the killer’s own genetic material, a concept unknown to murderers, like Franklin, who were operating in 1985. But, as law enforcement tactics evolve, killers find new resolve. Today, competent serial killers either take forensic countermeasures or realize that eventually they will be apprehended; their inevitable capture a mixture of good science, persistence, and luck. For these reasons, today’s killers rarely contact the media or engage in the shrewd cat and mouse days of old. Rather, modern offenders hope to prolong their freedom’s fragility by constructing a delicate façade, either by staying married or being involved in the community, all while praying they remain unchallenged. In the future, however, a killer’s unsuspecting relative may unwittingly be responsible for bringing them to justice through a familial DNA match. This new technique, if nationally accepted, would render many serial killers’ attempts to cloak themselves as a futile exercise and undoubtedly expose many more average, friendly, neighborhood serial killers.