Humanosity says… 40% of homicides in the USA now go unsolved. This article explores if our modern lives have made things easier for serial killers to indulge their homicidal urges…
Serial Killers are notoriously difficult to catch and it seems the rate for solving cases involving serial killers is falling. Many believe that serial killers are responsible for many of the unsolved murders in the US. Data of these has revealed that the number of unsolved cases is going up and serial killers may be responsible.
According to the Atlantic Magazine “Thomas Hargrove, the founder of the Murder Accountability Project, a nonprofit that compiles data on homicide, has examined how many unsolved murders are linked by DNA evidence. He believes that at least 2% of murders are committed by serial offenders—translating to about 2,100 unidentified serial killers.”
The case of Samuel Little is enlightening. The 78-year-old was sentenced to life in the 1980s for three murders. However in the last six years police have linked him to at least 60 murders and he himself has confessed to 33 more, drawing pictures of the victims from memory and then giving them to the police.
Why is There a Falling Clearance Rate?
The Atlantic article quotes Michael Arntfield, a retired police detective and the author of 12 books on serial murder.
He feels that there are some 3,000 – 4,000 currently active serial killers in the US and the reasons why more aren’t being caught is down to the following factors.
increased expertise (killers have studied other murderers’ mistakes and know how to fool cops, for example by planting false evidence), constrained resources (thanks to stagnant salaries, detectives in some areas may be less qualified than their predecessors), growing social isolation (which can make potential victims more vulnerable), and greater geographic mobility (which can make dots harder to connect).
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