Posted on 02/26/2005 5:16:30 PM PST by AntiGuv
Even as I was writing that last post, I was hoping you wouldn't point out my glaring logical flaw (ie. body count vs. number of serials).
Well...you did.
How's this for an Internet first: I concede your point.
/beer makes me friendly.
I honestly don;t know why I felt the need to argue otherwise. I'm going to write an angry letter to Anheuser-Busch.
Ahhh, he was a Lutheran. That explains it.
Thank you, and it was a good idea on your part because I was about to charge you with finding comparable rates to the UK in China (you'd need 540 killers) and India (you'd need 443 killers) and non-UK Europe (you need 279 killers).
I found the killer's email address, i'd send him a message telling him that he's going to rot in hell, but something tells me he's not checking his email any more.
Oh my gosh, I just saw your map. Three of the victims and the intented victim surround my house. I hadn't realized. I've only been here eight years, but we've been so worried this past year about our niece. She just turned twenty and got her first car and it's so hard to keep them home at that age. She did have a good, healthy fear of this guy though.
The question has long fascinated me as well but I haven't seen a very good explanation. A couple of suggestions I've come across have to do with (1) urbanization and (2) a sort of cultural glorification - but these seem very inadequate to me.
My explanation might not even be in the ballpark, but that's the best I've come up with so far.
Enlightened societies with a strong middle class and an interest in disseminating the news (like W. Europe and the USA) tend to shine a spotlight on their aberrent citizens. Monsters that can hide in the Andes or the Urals for years.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
There could be many reasons that such a lists don't exist or are hard to come by, beginning with the common sense observation that records are not as complete in second and third world countries and that a great many more deaths go uninvestigated or are incompetently investigated in such places.
Non-UK Europe is not a third world country. We need 279 serial killers over the past few decades to match the UK's rate. They didn't have a problem identifying them in the 17th century. What happened since then?
PS. Japan is hardly a third world nation either. Where is their list of 50?
Let me be very clear about one thing: I am not saying that there are not people in these other nations that would not be serial killers if they were in Anglo societies. I am saying that for whatever reason they seem to be less likely in those societies to become serial killers of the type that we are familiar with. They may even very well be killers, but of a different type (say, like those paramilitary murderers in Sudan, or Islamist terrorists). In other societies, (like urban Eastern Asia and Western Europe) it simply appears undeniable that the rates are much lower for whatever reason.
There are probably a number of factors that also vary depending on which culture/region you're looking at, but it's very difficult to argue that the serial killer phenomenon that we're familiar with seems to be a peculiarly Anglo-centric one. That does not mean that there aren't exceptions, which are often so notable for precisely that reason.
Maybe it's the beer (and it probably is), but is that a triple negative? I honestly have no idea what you're saying here.
/Wormwood. Just trying to keep up.
You should send him the email. A number of prisons do allow inmates to access the internet to some very limited extent. His inbox might already be full by now, though.. ;^)
Umm.. Yes, I think it is.. What I'm basically trying to express is that there very well may be just as many people in these other nations that are of the same "type" as those who end up being serial killers in the US and the UK, but that for whatever reason they seem for the most part to not act out their impulses in the same pattern.
Ah. That makes more sense.
Well his first known crime was 30 years ago.
Yes. I was contemplating his lifetime of pure evil.
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