In 1977, FBI Special Agent Robert Ressler first used the term ‘serial killer’ after a visit to Bramshill Police Academy, near London, where someone referred to a ‘serial burglar’. The inspired coinage was soon in general use to describe killers such as necrophile Ed Kemper (ten victims), schizophrenic Herb Mullin (14), and homosexual mass murderers Dean Corll (27), and John Wayne Gacy (32). Then in 1980, in Colombia, Pedro Lopez, the ‘Monster of the Andes,’ confessed to murdering 310 prepubescent girls; three years later, a derelict named Henry Lee Lucas claimed to have killed 350 victims. Clearly, these sprees were on a scale beyond anything known in the history of crime – even the French ‘Bluebeard,’ Gilles de Rais, executed in 1440, was believed to have killed no more than 50 children. In more recent years, the American ‘Pee Wee’ Gaskins killed an estimated 110, ‘Red Ripper’ Andrei Chikatilo 56, his fellow Russian Anatoly Onoprienko 52, and the British doctor Harold Shipman between 215 and 260. There was an obvious need for Ressler’s new term to describe this horrific phenomenon.
