What is serial murder?
Ed Mitchell, in his thesis, University of Cambridge, UK. The aetiology of serial murder: towards an integrated model. Said: “Definitions of serial murder / homicide differ between authors, but most agree that to qualify as a serial killer / murderer an offender must kill at least two victims in temporally unrelated incidents This temporal criterion is usually satisfied by a “cooling off” or “refractory” period between killings, ranging from hours to years. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines serial murder as the killing of several victims in three or more separate incidents over weeks or an extended period. Others argue for a higher number of victims (Dietz [1986] requires a minimum of 5 victims), but such a distinction is rarely useful and merely serves to further a “body-count” mentality. Indeed, the only difference between an offender who kills 1 victim (but who might have killed 100 if he had been able) and another who kills 30 may be the latter’s good fortune in evad
