Anatomy of a Serial Killer

Marci Bachmann: At age two.  Courtesy Derek M. Bachmann

The Silent Missing

Debbie and Christy are far from alone, and the same may be said for the likes of Wayne Nance. In a recent issue of the scientific journal Homicide Studies, criminologist Kenna Quinet wrote that conventional calculations seriously underestimate the number of serial murder victims. “The problem may be 10 times worse than we imagined,” she says. Instead of 180 victims a year in the U.S., there may be as many as 1,800.

Quinet, a nationally renowned homicide expert at Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis, bases her conclusions on simple arithmetic. According to the Department of Justice, up to 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains sit in police-evidence lockers and medical examiners’ offices across the nation. If resolved cases are any guide, the majority are murder victims. Against this, Quinet factors the homicides suspected in a significant proportion—as much as 20 percent—of missing-person cases, more than 100,000 of which remain open at any time in this country.

Quinet bolsters her new estimates with evidence of the lengthy careers of the serial killers who are eventually caught and convicted. “Typically, these killers operate under the radar for years, even decades,” she explains. Studies show that male serial killers average six to 11 victims over a nine-year period. Female serial killers (primarily health-care workers) average seven to nine victims over the same window. And that’s just those who get caught. “I would guess that at any given moment,” she says, “there are at least two people in each state committing serial murder”—more than 100 serial killers on the loose. Washington State is currently tracking at least four: the so-called 22-Caliber Killer, the Index Killer, the Lewiston Valley Killer and the Snohomish County Dismemberment Killer.

Meanwhile, other serial killers are operating too randomly or infrequently to generate a pattern or are cunning enough to prey on those unlikely to be missed. Quinet calls these possible victims America’s “missing missing,” the tens of thousands whose disappearance is not taken seriously by law-enforcement agencies. They include those that law enforcement assumes to be “missing” by choice: runaways, transients, prostitutes, and anyone who has an outstanding bench warrant (the irony, Quinet notes, is that the warrant can be for the missing person’s failure to appear in court).

John Morgan, deputy director for science and technology at the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice, believes that part of the problem is the increasingly transient nature of American life. “We live in a more fragmented society,” he says. “A lot of homicides that occur involve strangers.” And for a greater number of the victims, living far from their hometowns and disconnected from a social network, their absence won’t be noticed, or they will be dismissed as having simply moved on. As a result, Morgan says, it’s now less likely “that a particular homicide will be resolved and the killer brought to justice.”

The first step in solving these crimes—even before a detective can start to connect the clues—is connecting the bodies to the missing. “After all,” Quinet says, “it’s hard to conduct a murder investigation when you don’t know who the victim is.”