Yes Virginia There Is A Boogeyman

Serial killers weren’t just “true crime” to us. They were a constant hum in the background of growing up: news anchors saying names like Bundy and Gacy, parents warning about strangers, and that sinking feeling that danger could look normal. We start with our usual Gen X catch-up (pollen season, the revived “The More You Know” vibe, and why April Fool’s pranks are a crime), then we jump into the big question: why did serial killing peak in America from the 1960s through the early 1990s?

From there, we break down the conditions that let serial offenders thrive: fractured law enforcement across jurisdictions, the lack of centralized databases, and a culture that didn’t always treat every missing person as urgent. We talk about how media coverage and the rise of true crime books and TV didn’t just reflect public obsession, it helped shape it, sometimes turning violent criminals into twisted celebrities. We also get honest about why the psychology of serial murder is so fascinating, and why the “genius killer” myth falls apart when you look at what really happened.

Then we get into what changed everything: DNA profiling, CODIS, better data sharing, cell phone records, and surveillance everywhere. We also explore how modern violence has shifted toward spree killers, mass shootings, and online radicalization, plus the uncomfortable reality of human trafficking. Finally, we dig into the lead crime hypothesis and the Pacific Northwest “killing fields” idea, asking whether toxic exposure helped fuel aggression and crime trends in ways we’re still reckoning with.

Listen, then tell us what you think actually drove the decline. Subscribe, share Like Whatever with a friend, and leave a rating or review so more Gen X weirdos can find us.

Transcript

Spring Pollen And Catching Up

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Two best friends we're talking the fast From Mystic to our case We're having a blast Teenage dreams clicking on screens It was all bad or like you know like whatever forever Ever never never laughing sharing our story forever we'll take you back whatever Welcome to Like Whatever a podcast for by and about Gen X I'm Nicole and this is my BFFF Heather Hello So spring has sprung spring or summer is here well I say spring has sprung because this was the first day that my car was covered in yellow powder.

SPEAKER_04 0:51

Um the pollen is out of control, it's so bad. The other um I want to say Monday. My allergies for me, when they get really bad, I get body aches as if I'm sick and I'm really tired and my eyes are burning and watering, and that's how I was on Monday.

SPEAKER_07 1:08

But today the pollen So fun fact about Delaware, for all of you not living on the East Coast or know where Delaware even is. Uh we are like 99.9% pine trees here. Yes, and pine trees put out this lovely pollen that turns everything yellow. Literally. I'm when I say it turns everything yellow, I mean you can see it caked on everything. When you run a hose anywhere, it's just like it's like the yellow brick road.

SPEAKER_04 1:39

It is, it is, yep, and yeah, and when I say that my car is covered in yellow, I'm not lying. I have a blue car, but it looks yellow.

SPEAKER_07 1:47

It is, it's it's everywhere, it is, it is horrendous. Yeah, and we have to live like this for another month.

The More You Know Returns

SPEAKER_04 1:54

Oh yeah, yay, yeah, but yeah, um, I'm glad it's warm outside. I don't like the winter, so I'm happy that it's here. I hate it. I know. So I have had a few observations this past week. First of all, do tell. Have you noticed the that they're redoing the um the more you know commercials? I did not. So they have it's the same thing. Somebody stands up there and says a little something, then the more you know, and the rainbow goes across like that. Uh-huh. But it's people our age talking about things that we need to know. Like the one guy is like, um, is it rude to hang up on a family member? Yes. Is it rude to hang up on someone who claims they're your family member? No, that's how you stay safe. You hang up and then you call back to see if it is actually that person. And then it's the more you know. And I'm like, how fucking brilliant is this? This is how we all learned. That is great. You know, stranger danger, all that good stuff. So yeah, I've and I've seen a couple other ones. I can't think of them off the top of my head, but I just thought that was just genius marketing. It really is genius marketing. It's so smart, and I love it so much. They know they know us. It counteracts them using our music in commercials now, because it's that really bothers me.

SPEAKER_07 3:17

I can't even well, you're listening and you're like, wait a minute.

True Crime Mistakes And Walmart

SPEAKER_04 3:22

Like, I don't mind hearing it in the grocery store. I'll I'll dance my way through the grocery store. But when it's some new agey revamp of one of our songs, I'm like, no, no, no, no. And Walmart's the worst culprit for that. Walmart. I agree. Speaking of Walmart, something, another observation. Right. If you're going to commit a murder, don't buy anything at Walmart. Why would you do that? Every single episode Walmart's involved. Everyone, whether they see you parked in the parking lot, they see you actually buying the things, they see you walking around the store stalking someone, Walmart is going to catch you.

SPEAKER_07 4:04

Shop local, people. Shop. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 4:07

And don't buy everything in one place.

SPEAKER_07 4:09

Do not do not buy duct tape, a tarp, and a shovel all in the same spot. Right, exactly. Unless it's some mom and pop place that still has like the little push buttons on the register. They don't have cameras, so you're good there.

SPEAKER_04 4:21

Yeah, exactly. But but don't if you buy a murder kit all in one spot.

SPEAKER_07 4:26

Yeah, don't dress crazy when you do it. Just dress like a normal person so that so that Aunt M there can't wear like a hood.

SPEAKER_04 4:32

Don't look around to see if anybody's watching you.

SPEAKER_07 4:36

There are many things that people should know about murdering people.

SPEAKER_04 4:41

I know it it happens so many times. My biggest one still is why do you take your cell phone with you? Leave it at home.

SPEAKER_07 4:47

Oh, why do you Google how to poison someone and then poison someone?

SPEAKER_04 4:50

How long does it take for a body to start smelling?

unknown 4:53

That's another one.

SPEAKER_07 4:55

Pretty soon, you know. Like if you don't know that by now, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:59

I mean have your finalization plan in place before you do the murder.

SPEAKER_07 5:05

Do your research well in advance. Yes. Like the rest of us. Yes. Watch the true crime shows. Nobody would ever be suspicious of you because we all watched all the true crime shows. Exactly. Exactly. Ridiculous.

iHeart Awards And Mellencamp

SPEAKER_04 5:20

Yes. So last week I watched um the iHeartRadio Awards. I heard. Only because I think we all know why. Taylor was going to be there, and I was so hoping that she would bring Travis, and she did, and I was so happy it was their first appearance together. Yes. At an uh award show. Not my favorite award show. It was pretty obnoxious, actually. It looked like a New Year's Eve, you know, when they're doing like the Rock and U.S. Yeah, New Year's Eve and they pan away to another location or stage. That's kind of what it looked like. Kind of generic. But um they did have John Mellencamp on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 6:04

He has to be 507 years old.

SPEAKER_04 6:07

Yeah, he's either like 78 or 87, I can't remember, or somewhere in there, but he's going back on tour, so maybe 78. But they did he won an award, some sort of award. And they did like this montage of all his music. I was like, man, I forgot how much I really do like John Melling Camp. Like, he did have some bangers out there, but his daughter was the one who like talked about him and presented the award, and to hear her talk, he must be a really awesome guy because she just and she was crying and he was crying, and it was good though. I mean, he he and then he performed. Yeah. But the funny thing when he were performed is um they have all these young twits around the stage, you know, for all the performances. They probably pulled them all in off the street and said, Come watch this. Not a one of them was singing along, not a single solitary one was even trying to move their mouth. They were just smiling and like waving their hands in the air. And I was like, These children have never heard these songs before. They don't know who the fuck John Mellinkamp is. It was crazy. They'd have to go like way out into the audience and find like older musicians that were singing along. But I was like, that must be so awkward for him because they're literally right there, and they're all just like we don't know who you are.

SPEAKER_07 7:28

Who's Jack and Diane?

SPEAKER_04 7:32

I was like, Yeah, that that's a really bad look. But yeah, like Luda hosted it, he was alright, then he won an award, so he performed. It was alright. Seriously, I'll never watch it again unless Taylor's gonna be there again.

April Fools And Moon Launch

SPEAKER_07 7:45

But yeah, yeah, I won't watch it again. No, I didn't even watch it then. The only thing I wanted to talk about is today, Wednesday, April 1st. April Fool's Day. I fucking hate April Fool's Day. I hate it. I hate shenanigans.

SPEAKER_04 8:01

I do too. And the thing I hate most about April Fool's Day is if somebody tries to pull a prank on me, I'm gonna be fucking pissed.

SPEAKER_07 8:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:07

Like, don't fuck with me. Don't tell me my shoes untied. Don't tell me you're pregnant. Don't there's I was in a meeting today for a student, and the mom was sitting next to me and she's like, We got my boss really good last year. Like, we all got to the store or something, I think she said she works at, and one called her and said she was sick and couldn't come in, and somebody else hadn't shown, and she was freaking out and starting to call other stores to try to get help in, and then they were like April Fools. I'm like, what's funny about that? Like, there's literally nothing funny about that. You poured caused that poor woman a panic attack first thing in the morning. Like, why do you think that's funny? It's not funny. I know. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_07 8:50

I hate to break it to you, but this whole podcast is just a giant joke that I have been playing on you. April Fools, you've just been sitting here for a year and a half talking in a microphone. Well, that was pretty elaborate. I'll just give you that. It goes nowhere. It just goes nowhere. Everybody that comments on it, they're all right. Yep, yep, yep. Sorry. April Fools. Just for this moment in time that I didn't even know we were gonna be on a Wednesday, because usually it's a Tuesday, but the last few weeks it's been Wednesdays.

SPEAKER_04 9:29

Oh, the gods. But see, that's how I planned it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You knew I was gonna have a work thing last night, not be able to come here tonight.

SPEAKER_07 9:36

I I a year and a half ago I spoke to your bosses about this exact day.

SPEAKER_04 9:43

So do pet and free nights and weekends exist? No. Oh, okay. Sorry.

SPEAKER_07 9:48

Wow, that's that's all a figment of your imagination. It's fucking impressive. I couldn't be mad at that if I tried. No, but for reels, I hate April Fools. Um, but today they're supposed to be, and I'm a bit skeptical that it's gonna happen today, but I'm optimistic. Uh they're gonna um shoot a rocket off at six something this evening. Um, so those of you listening now will know if it went off today or not. Um, and it is going to the moon. Well, it's gonna loop around the moon, but it's gonna go to the dark side of the moon, though. I will see you on the dark side of the moon. Um first woman, first black man to to uh yes, to orbit the moon. Yes. It's pretty exciting for those of us that are space nerds.

SPEAKER_04 10:41

Yeah, I saw this morning. I think it takes off and it goes around the earth um in the lower atmosphere around, and then it goes out further and does another loop around, and then it shoots out there.

SPEAKER_07 10:54

It's a slingshot.

SPEAKER_04 10:55

Gotcha. I knew you would know. Yeah, but they gotta wound it up. It's just showing you I was paying attention.

SPEAKER_05 11:00

Like they're gonna wind it up.

SPEAKER_04 11:03

Like that.

SPEAKER_07 11:05

And then it whips around whoop and the comes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:09

It is crazy it's taken this long to go back, though.

SPEAKER_07 11:12

It's just really been no need.

SPEAKER_04 11:13

True. The funding's been going to well, other things.

SPEAKER_07 11:17

It's been because the private sector had to take over, so they have bigger and better plans. They all want to go to Mars, which you can't go to Mars without the moon. Sorry, but it's my opinion on things. Um so I wanted to say, you know, good luck and godspeed to uh our astronauts headed to the moon.

SPEAKER_04 11:38

It's very exciting to the moon, Alice. They said, but what obviously, but when they get to the other side, they will be able to see the moon and in one shot. And that's gonna be pretty, pretty cool. It's flat though, you know.

SPEAKER_08 11:56

Yeah. Yeah. Um, what else did I want to say?

SPEAKER_04 11:59

Well, if it turns up brown, then we'll know that this moon mission was fake. Well, obviously it's fake.

A Plea About Privatization

SPEAKER_07 12:06

That's why they're doing it on April 4th. Oh. Yeah. I mean, at this point I would not put it past any part of the universe. I've had a a weekend. Been all up in my I just love my job. You need your job. I need my job. Correct. Um, I'm gonna say this again as a plea to everyone out there. Call your local congressman or congressperson. Um yeah. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I really think that there is something going on here that needs to be investigated.

SPEAKER_08 12:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 12:57

So that's all I'll say about that. Just call, don't let them privatize it. Call your congressperson starting now, and do not let them privatize it. It is a service, not a business. That's the thing I can't get, man.

SPEAKER_04 13:13

Why why would it be expected to make money? Anyway. Yeah.

unknown 13:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 13:24

All right. So before we get this episode going.

SPEAKER_07 13:28

I was because I was gonna, yeah. Go ahead. Forgot about that part.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

We ask that you like share rate review, whether that's on one of our socials. Yeah. Um, anywhere that you listen to a podcast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 13:42

Um we've had it quite an influx of listeners the last we really have.

SPEAKER_04 13:47

We really have. I feel like um we've we've we're taking a little leap to the next next level, whatever that means. But um, it's fun.

SPEAKER_07 13:57

Yeah. Um seems like Wednesdays for some reason we get like this crazy surprise when because it tells you how many downloads you have in a day, and it's like uh again, starting a year and a half ago, we've been obsessed with that little number.

SPEAKER_04 14:11

Oh, yeah, every day. Yeah, still. I mean, I don't think it's quite as bad. When we first started, we were both checking it like 20 times a day, and we'd text each other if we saw one, just in case the other one wasn't looking at that very often. But we also figured out the little widget things on our phone. So widgets. Is that what they're called? Yeah. Oh, okay. Widgets. Widgets. We got a widget. Yep, yep, yep. So yeah. Uh yeah, the website www.likewhateverpod.com. Yeah. The email is likewhateverpod at gmail.com. It sure is. I think that's it.

SPEAKER_07 14:55

Although lately, I don't know what is happening with that email. Like I have email set up on my phone, right? So it tells me, hey, you got email. But for some reason, because I have two Gmails and it's that one and then my personal Gmail, I don't know why it refuses to tell me it, but it goes back and forth between them. So I look and it says you have email and it's my personal email. So then I have to like log back in. Guys. Really? Yeah. It's a lot of work. You can't just flip from one email to the other. I don't know why it won't let me.

SPEAKER_04 15:25

That is so stupid. Stupid. Because I don't have any of my emails, so I don't get notifications, but yeah, I can click on my regular one or I can click on.

SPEAKER_07 15:35

I can't I have to like physically go into the like whatever one and re-sign in. Who's that from?

SPEAKER_05 15:43

Oh look at that. We have an email.

SPEAKER_07 15:48

Oh nothing good. No, nothing. It's sales.

SPEAKER_04 15:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 15:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 15:54

I already pay enough people to pretend like they're listening, so shit. Okay. Was that all we needed to talk about? I think so. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

If you grew up in the 80s, you remember the music, the malls, the mixtapes. But some of us also remember something else. Feeling alone, feeling unseen, trying to survive things. No one should have to survive. My Hearts of Glass book series by Pat Green isn't just a love story set under neon lights. It's about survivors trying to find each other. It's about found family. It's about the kind of love that doesn't fix the past, but helps you build a future. If you've ever needed a reminder that you are not broken, that healing is possible, that love can be safe. Come visit the world of Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World and its sequel, Hearts of Glass Fade Away and Radiate. Find the books, paperback, ebook, or audiobook on PatGreenauthor.com. Because your story did not end in the eighties. It's still being written.

The Golden Age Of Serial Killers

SPEAKER_07 17:02

It's funny that you brought up true crime because I know it's because a Heather had a weekend. Uh I did. She's been wanting to murder people all weekend. I had this script already done, and so I was like, you know what? We're just gonna fuck around and find out about serial killers.

SPEAKER_03 17:18

Yes! Serial killers for spring!

SPEAKER_07 17:22

My favorite. Yay! Um my sources were time.com and history.com. Okay. The specter of the serial killer was not confined to horror movies. It was on the evening news, paperback, true crime bestsellers, and whispered about at whispered about at sleepovers. From the 60s through the early 90s, America experienced what many criminal all criminologists and cultural critics call the golden age of serial murder. Man was it ever. It really that's I know. That's why I was like, yes. We lived it. That's why we're so obsessed with that. Names like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer became household words, not just for their crimes, but for the media frenzy that followed. By the late 90s, the phenomenon began to fade. The question is, why did serial killing peak during this era and what led to its decline? The term serial killer wasn't coined until the 1980s, but the architect archetype emerged much earlier. In the post-World War II era, America was grappling with rapid social changes, urbanization, the breakdown of traditional family structure, and the rise of mass media. These shifts created fertile ground for both the emergence of serial killers and the public obsession with them. The 60s saw the rise of notorious figures like the Boston Strangler and the Zodiac Killer. These men were not just criminals, they were enigmas. They taunted police, left cryptic clues, and seemed to operate outside the bounds of re rationality.

SPEAKER_04 18:59

Well, I'll tell you how they got away with it. There was no DNA back then.

SPEAKER_07 19:03

I'm gonna get to it.

SPEAKER_04 19:04

Well, I'm just saying specifically about the Zodiac Killer, because if he had been writing and licking envelopes and stamps, they would have had him in a heartbeat.

SPEAKER_07 19:14

Well, and that's you know, that's that is a lot of it. That it's pretty hard to get away with a murder at this point. And there's fucking ring cameras everywhere. Everywhere. I'm sure I am splashed over the internet everywhere, falling up people's steps and falling down people's steps.

SPEAKER_04 19:30

And the funny thing about that is like because this case is really upsetting me. Nancy Guthrie. Yeah. You know, in that nice neighborhood, everybody had nice cameras, and that's all you got is him there like the day before walking around, and then something very fishy is happening. Something very, very fishy, and it's just devastating. Like Savannah rips my hair my heart out every single time.

SPEAKER_07 19:56

Yeah, something something's not right there.

SPEAKER_04 19:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 20:00

Um their crimes topped into tapped into Cold War paranoia, the fear that evil could be hidden in plain sight, and that your neighbor could be a monster. The 70s were a perfect storm. Violent crime rates soared, law enforcement was fragmented and under-resourced, and the media was hungry for sensational stories. Enter Ted Bundy, a handsome law stool student who raped and murdered dozens of women across multiple states. Bundy's trial was televised, turning him into a twisted celebrity. John Wayne Gacy, the killer clown, buried 29 boys beneath his house while performing at children's parties. That's a crazy ass story. A crazy, crazy story. David Berkowitz, the son of Sam, claimed to be possessed by a demon dog. These killers weren't just committing crimes. They were crafting personas, and the media played along, turning them into icons of terror. For us, these stories were ambient noises always present, always unsettling. Before the widespread use of DNA profiling, law enforcement relied on fingerprints, eyewitness accounts, and confessions. Serial killers exploited these gaps. They moved across jurisdictions, changing methods and often target targeted marginalized victims, sex workers, runaways, and queer youth whose disappearance were less likely to be investigated thoroughly, also known as the less dead. Um since we're here, uh uh I want to add in that the missing or murdered indigenous women, niwrc.org, or no tour not our daughter.org. Not our daughters dot org. So if you wish to um put them a dollar in a horrible situation, too, it's they are still going missing.

SPEAKER_04 21:54

It's just unreal and this thing we're talking about. Right now reminds me of a murder show I was watching yesterday because that's all I watched. Um there is but it was nuts. This it was I think it was in the 80s. This lady, she and her husband married at 19, everything was wonderful. He was a good provider, they had a baby, uh, and then his evil started coming out, and he was beating her and threatening to kill her and pulling guns on her. And um, one night she was in bed. Uh, she heard him come in. She pretended like she was asleep, but she heard him get in the gun cabinet in the living room. So, and then so she got up to kind of peek and see what he was doing. So um he was going around strategically taking every light bulb out of every light socket, just making the house darker and darker. At that time, her daughter just happened to call her and was like, I don't feel right about something. And she was like, He's gonna kill me. I know he's gonna kill me right now. And the daughter was like, get out of that house now. And so the daughter came and got her. Um, so the woman wants to file a restraining order against him. They she goes to court, she has to sit with him in front of a judge and say what's going on. And he had also confessed to his wife that he had murdered his cousin, and he bragged about it to everybody, and she told the judge that. And the judge looked at the guy and he was like, Is this true? Are you a murderer? And the guy was like, Have you found a body? And the judge looked at her and said, I don't believe a word you said, and sent them home. Like, I'm like, I what like she's sitting there visibly shaking and crying and telling the story, and because he's a little arrogant, the judge is like, meh, yep, she's lying. It blows my mind. All right, it's it's yeah, believe women, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 23:58

Um, also while we're there, just not only just the indigenous women, um, again, niwrc.org and not our daughters.org, yes, but also the Jane Doe project. Yes. If you got extra money laying around, I know gas is like$500 million a gallon, but you know, it's not it's not the missing indigenous women's fault. They didn't want the want us fucking here. So we should go back to where we came from. Yeah. Anyhow. Um, the lack of centralized database meant that patterns went unnoticed. Bundy's cross-country spree might have been stopped earlier if police departments had shared information. But in the 70s and early 80s, that infrastructure did not exist.

SPEAKER_04 24:44

Not only did it not exist, but they were all like, I have information, you don't have nanny nanny boo-boo.

SPEAKER_07 24:49

Like it was a fight over whose jurisdiction it was.

SPEAKER_04 24:53

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_07 24:54

We can't all, they just could not all get along. They could not. The rise of 24-hour news cycles and tabloid journalism in the 80s turned serial killers into household names. True crime books like Helter Skelter and The Stranger Beside Me became bestsellers. TV specials, documentaries, and even dramatizations fed the public's appetite for horror. The killers became uh mythologized less like criminals and more like the dark folk heroes. I mean, I know I am weird, so I don't know, but I have always been obsessed with serial killer, like the whole concept of a serial killer has been fascinating. And and I think for me, more not so much on a like they kill people, cool, but like the whole I think I've said this before, the whole psychology of being murdering someone so brutally and then just being like, hey, how are you? Like, how's it going? Wanna come over?

SPEAKER_04 25:54

Nice weather, huh? Yeah, great weather we're having here.

SPEAKER_07 25:57

I just brutally murdered someone.

SPEAKER_04 25:59

Yeah, that part is the scary part. Yeah. There's a lot of things that scare me about like serial killers, like the ones who say once they've picked you, that's it. Yeah, it's you. Yeah, and you have no idea they were there until they're in your bedroom murdering you in your bed.

SPEAKER_07 26:16

Oh no, don't murder me. Man, that'd be great. I sorry. That's not what I want. If I die by serial killer, you better make sure that that is in every obituary that I have everywhere. It's gonna be the first sentence. She was murdered by a serial killer. She lived the dream.

SPEAKER_04 26:39

She died loving what she did.

SPEAKER_07 26:44

Oh no, don't kill me, Mr. Serial Killer.

SPEAKER_04 26:49

That would just be awful. I'd always like to think that if well, obviously it would never happen, but I plan for scenarios would be a murder by a serial killer. So one, I know that they love the fear. Yes.

SPEAKER_07 27:04

And I'm like, if you could be my problem, stay calm. I think number one, my problem is I don't make a very good target.

SPEAKER_04 27:13

You would you would be able to stay calm.

SPEAKER_07 27:16

I would seriously be able to handle it like a pro. Yeah, yeah. And if you start stabbing me, I'm not, I'm gonna be like, I don't I don't know what you're doing, but it's the wrong spot.

SPEAKER_04 27:28

And I'm trying to sleep.

SPEAKER_07 27:30

Yeah. Like hop off for a minute. Like if you're not gonna do it right, don't fucking do it. Right. Like that's my issue is as I do not possess the flight. Correct. I possess the fight. So when I am scared, if that's even a thing that happens, I'll have in snakes.

SPEAKER_03 27:50

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_07 27:51

If I get I I am like, I'm about to like unleash every bit of rage I have ever had on you. Yeah, then I have proven it to myself over and over again, and I understand that it is going to get me killed because it's a bad way to be. But I feel like if I was in a situation with a serial killer, I don't make a good target because I don't walk with an air of fear. I walk with a like, come please, for the love of God, fuck with me. Like, just do me the solid.

SPEAKER_04 28:23

Um Yeah, but I I have bad anxiety. I don't think I would be able to stay calm enough and fake that I wasn't scared. Like you'd probably just end up sitting there having a conversation with them.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

So tell me, what brought you here?

SPEAKER_07 28:38

First, did you Google any of this? Because you're gonna need to get rid of you're gonna need to dump your laptop somewhere in water. Second, do you have your cell phone on you? Do you know how long it takes to strangle someone? God, it's so long. I get it. You want to watch the light leave my eyes. First, I don't have any light to leave, so right.

SPEAKER_04 29:01

That's what a lot of the murderers say that strangling takes a lot longer than they thought. That's why a lot of them end up going to some sort of garage. Yeah, yep, because it's just their hands get tired.

SPEAKER_07 29:12

It's gotta be exhausting.

SPEAKER_04 29:14

And I have bad arthritis, like, there's no way I could hold somebody's neck for like four minutes.

SPEAKER_07 29:18

And that's just it. Like, I don't know that I would fight you.

SPEAKER_04 29:21

That's what I mean. I think he would just be like, uh, this one wants to die. No, what do I do? No.

SPEAKER_07 29:28

No, you gotta be friends. Like poking me. No, you have to fight back. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. You're gonna need to hold that tighter. I can still breathe.

SPEAKER_06 29:39

You suck at this. God, give it to me. Don't quit your day job. Just let me do it.

SPEAKER_07 29:47

Fucking do everything around here. You want to get murdered by a serial killer? You gotta do it your goddamn self. And don't worry, I'm not gonna scratch you and get your DNA under my nails. I don't have any number one. Yeah. Number two, I don't want anybody to know. Yeah. So if you're a serial killer listening, I mean you could try, but I don't think I'd make a very good victim. Yeah. Yeah, me neither.

SPEAKER_04 30:14

Wink wink.

SPEAKER_06 30:15

April Fools, she would.

SPEAKER_07 30:21

Oh god. Uh the media saturation didn't just reflect public interest, it shaped it. The more coverage a serial a killer received, the more others sought notoriety. Some experts argue that media attention acted as a feedback loop, encouraging copycats and escalating violence. I agree with that, and I don't agree with that. Um I mean, first, if you're gonna be a serial killer, you're gonna be a serial killer.

SPEAKER_04 30:49

That is true. I don't know if I agree with it in this case, but I do agree with it in like school shootings. Yes. Because they used to show the picture and the name, and it was on the news for days and days and days. And now you might hear on the six o'clock news there was a shooting at the school. If anybody died, that's it. They don't show a picture, they don't say who did it, um, and they don't continue to just keep on talking about it. And I think that is useful because the teenage brain is like, I'm gonna be famous because I'm gonna be on TV for five days.

SPEAKER_07 31:22

And I do think that there are some serial killers where yes, that that is true, that that they did they were trying to go for the no the zodiac killer for sure. I feel like though the true pardon expression, die hard serial killers, your Dahmer's, your uh Bundies, Gacy.

SPEAKER_04 31:40

Yeah, live a perfectly normal life.

SPEAKER_07 31:43

They tried to stay under the radar. I mean, look who they were murdering. And I think especially with Dahmer, I hold a lot of sympathy for Dahmer. I know I know I I get it. Um because Dahmer didn't want to kill. He just couldn't help himself. Right. He had to get drunk to do it.

SPEAKER_04 32:12

Right. Um he just wanted somebody there. Yeah. He was lonely.

SPEAKER_07 32:18

He was trying to make slaves and then they kind of just died. So and then he ate them. And so I get it, like that part, not great. It's not a good look. But I I almost get him and sympathize with him the most. Should you kill people? No. Is there better ways to make friends? Absolutely. But but I sympathize with him because I don't think he wanted to be a killer, but I don't think he knew how to stop it.

SPEAKER_04 32:47

Right. I find myself sympathizing with with some people too. And Dahmer was really the first one. Like, I don't remember a time in my life I didn't love Ted Bundy. Right. So, whenever, whatever age that was, I found out who he was. I've loved him that long. Uh Gacy, of course, has always been around, but Dahmer was the one that really was like, wow, like I could not get enough. That was the 90s too.

SPEAKER_07 33:13

So it was like we weren't kids anymore.

SPEAKER_04 33:16

And like the whole like kind of coming out for the gay community was happening, like it was starting to like erupt a little more, and that was part of that story, and and it was just so I mean, it was cannibalism, which is just gross to me. Like, even if I hear about some ancient thousand-year-old tribe that eats people, it's it grosses me out.

SPEAKER_07 33:41

Here's the funny thing I'm an extremely picky eater. You are, but I would try people. I probably shouldn't say that.

SPEAKER_04 33:49

April Fools.

SPEAKER_07 33:51

No, I've often I've often wondered, like I feel like they would taste like bear and be really greasy because we eat the same basic things as bear. Mm-hmm. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 34:01

Yeah, and it would depend on the person how muscular they are. Well, exactly. Like if you're a vegan, you probably taste like cows.

SPEAKER_06 34:07

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 34:08

Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_07 34:09

Or pigs. Oh, but pigs are omnivores. Yeah. I feel like if you're a vegan, you're gonna taste like cow. And if you're a baby, that's veal, baby. That's veal. That is veal for sure.

SPEAKER_04 34:20

For sure. But I've often wondered, like, and obviously it's a hypothetical, you could never answer unless you were in this situation. But if you were adrift in the ocean with eight people, and as they started dying, you had to eat them.

SPEAKER_07 34:35

I feel like I could do that over killing a rabbit.

SPEAKER_04 34:39

I know that sounds horrible, but well, if they're yeah, if the human's already dead. It's already dead. Because my thing is the purpose of eating them is to try to stay alive until you can get rescued. But now when I get rescued, I have to live the rest of my life knowing I eat a human being who's probably my friend.

SPEAKER_07 34:56

If I was I mean, I'd give you permission that if we're trapped somewhere that you can't eat me. Um I probably don't taste oh, I actually probably taste really good. Probably tastes pretty good because I'm pretty fatty. So if you cooked me right, like the fat would melt down. Yeah. I probably am pretty tasty anyhow.

SPEAKER_04 35:14

And I eat a lot of sweets. You're muscular too, though.

SPEAKER_07 35:18

I know. The DNA told me that I am an elite athlete.

SPEAKER_06 35:27

My DNA actually did tell me that. It did. It's a total lie. She has the body composition of an elite athlete. An elite athlete. It's not true.

SPEAKER_07 35:36

I don't know, man. You're a postal worker. That shit's hard. There's so much fat over top of it.

SPEAKER_04 35:41

Oh, we got another lesson.

unknown 35:42

Oh.

SPEAKER_07 35:44

Um, anyway. I feel like I would be able to live with the fact that I ate somebody over I murdered a rabbit.

SPEAKER_06 35:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 35:54

I would have trouble. I don't I honestly don't think I could do it. I really don't. I don't think I could kill like a bird or an animal or anything. First, I couldn't kill a snake because I couldn't come anywhere near it.

SPEAKER_04 36:05

Right. I don't even like killing bugs. Yeah. The only bugs that I will kill are mosquitoes if they're biting me, because fuck you. You brought that on yourself.

SPEAKER_07 36:13

You did.

SPEAKER_04 36:14

Flies if they come in my house, because flies stand on everything gross and then stand on your food and spit in it so that they can eat it, and that's gross. And you've come into my territory now. Like if I'm outside, I'm pretty sure mosquitoes are the only thing I'll kill. Because I'm out in your space, man. I'm fair game. Yeah, exactly. But if you're a mosquito and I keep swishing you away and you keep coming back, I'd I'm sorry. You brought that on yourself. Yeah, you did. You did. And your bites are itchy. I were wearing like what you were wearing. You deserve it. But yeah, I mean, I I try if it's like a bee or a wasp in the house, I try to catch them or swish them out back outside or something. So total.

SPEAKER_07 36:59

Uh so the media saturation didn't just reflect public interest, it shaped it. The more coverage a killer received, the more others sought notoriety. I already said that. Um, the peak of serial killing coincided with a period of intense urban anxiety. Cities were seen as dangerous, chaotic, and morally decaying. The killer became a symbol of that decay, a predator lurking in the shadows of modern life. Movies like Taxi Driver, Halloween, and Friday the 13th reflected this fear, turning the serial killer into a cinematic archetype. For us growing up, it meant learning to navigate the sphere. Stranger Danger campaigns, neighborhood watch programs, and Halloween candy inspections were all part of the cultural response.

SPEAKER_04 37:43

The more you know. Yes, the more you know.

SPEAKER_07 37:46

The serial killer wasn't just a news story, it was a the boogeyman. By the late 90s, the tide began to turn. While serial murder hadn't disappeared entirely, its cultural dominance had waned. Several factors contributed to the shift. Okay, hold on. Listen to some music first.

SPEAKER_04 38:27

Oh man, I spelled Wednesday wrong again. What in the act? But I spelled it different than the last one than the last one. I l I spelled Wed Wednesday. Wed because there's an E between the N and the S, right? I have no idea. You were asking.

SPEAKER_07 38:44

You are asking the wrong person. All right, whatever.

SPEAKER_06 38:47

11-year-old B was an idiot, apparently. I cannot spell to save my soul.

SPEAKER_04 38:52

All right, so it's April 25th on that day of the week that starts with a W. Um today. I had to go to Blah with a capital B L A A school. Yeah. Dawn was absent. Nobody goes to school. I swear to God. Like I'll say it again. I've never said it before. I go into high schools to meet with high schoolers, and I'm astonished by how many of them are absent all the time. And I was like, that didn't happen when I went to school. It sure shit did. It sure did. I have I have documented proof right here. Um, Miss Anthony and Mr. E were absent.

SPEAKER_07 39:36

It's because no one is in school. Yeah. And it's it's the middle of April, so Mr.

SPEAKER_04 39:40

E was my math teacher. We're out of flu season.

SPEAKER_07 39:42

We're out of cold and flu season at this point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:45

There's no excuse.

SPEAKER_07 39:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:47

Uh when I got home, I did homework as I did every day. Yeah, gross. Took killer outside. Killer was my um main coon cat. Um, my mom made my animals live outside then, but sometimes I could bring them in. Right. So yeah, me and Killer would play outside. He used to eat ice cream out of my mouth. I would take a bite of ice cream and then hold my mouth open and he would go, I didn't eat the ice cream out of my mouth. He was so cute. That's really sanitary.

unknown 40:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:14

Both sides of it. And I helped my sister skate. Oh. Mm-hmm. Um, she was six years younger than me, so she would have been three.

SPEAKER_07 40:22

That seems dangerous.

SPEAKER_04 40:23

Well, yeah. Um I had high goals for her. Um, then I went to Girl Scouts and came home. Uh, did more homework, had a snack. Yeah. Uh, and went to bed. Yeah. Wait, did you eat dinner? I did not. Oh my god. I went to Girl Scouts. I guess that took up dinner time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 40:50

That's why I had a snack. You're supposed to have a snack in addition to dinner.

SPEAKER_04 40:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 40:57

Well, are you really shocked knowing the things that you know?

SPEAKER_04 41:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 41:00

I'm not.

SPEAKER_04 41:01

In a little bit. All right. That was I mean, at my house, it's just snacks all the time. Oh my god, the first time I came to your house was like heaven. Yeah. I opened up your pantry and literally, like, this glow came out, and angels went, oh look, my dad smokes a lot of pot.

SPEAKER_07 41:17

So there is a lot of snacks. A lot. And the best kind. And the name brands. Because you know why, right? Because I would go grocery shop, because she didn't like to go grocery shopping by herself. And I would volunteer because I enjoy grocery shopping, number one. And number two, I got to pick the food. And because I'm a picky eater and will not eat generic. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

unknown 41:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:42

Yeah. My love for chocolate fudge Pop Tarts definitely came from your mom. God, they're so good. And they were always in your pantry. That's because I always ate them. And I try not to buy them. I try to buy them like three or four times a year and space them out because I really couldn't live off them. It's really good.

SPEAKER_07 41:59

But hands down, the best Pop Tart.

SPEAKER_04 42:02

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_07 42:03

And if you just melt them just a little tiny bit, like you don't cook them all.

SPEAKER_04 42:06

Like I do like a little crispy burnt edge sometimes, though.

SPEAKER_07 42:11

I'm not a fan of the burnt edge.

SPEAKER_04 42:12

Yeah, I'm a I'm a burnt yeah. I like almost burnt cookies. Weirdo. Dark, really well done English muffins.

SPEAKER_07 42:20

Oh, I like mine. Like I like raw things. It's come to my attention. Okay. Like I can eat eggs. Like literally any way you want to make an egg, I can eat it. Uh-huh. But like my scrambled eggs, I call them the way I make them for myself, I call them buffet eggs where they're cold and wet. I can eat them where they like just slide down. I can eat them poached, up, over, anyway. I want my eggs well done.

SPEAKER_04 42:48

And anytime I get um um eggs benedict, because I love eggs benedict, I get it with scramble eggs. It defeats the porco. But I love the Hollandaise sauce. Defeats the purpose.

SPEAKER_07 43:03

Anyway, let's get back to cereal pork. Anywho, yes. Speaking of breakfast. Yes, yes. I'm a big cereal killer myself. I have to have a bowl of cereal every night before dinner. Mm-hmm. It's a rule.

SPEAKER_04 43:18

My daughter has um cereal every night before bed.

unknown 43:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 43:22

And I have a picture of her at Halloween stabbing a cereal box with a knife. And she's giggling because she said she was a cereal killer. I told her young.

SPEAKER_06 43:32

Yeah. Well.

SPEAKER_07 43:34

Is that the youngest one?

SPEAKER_08 43:35

Mm-mm. Oh, I was gonna say that one.

DNA Databases And Modern Policing

SPEAKER_07 43:38

No, surprisingly, it's the other one. You would think it was the other one. That's the youngest one. Yeah. Uh okay. The introduction of DNA profiling in the late 80s revolutionized crime investigations. Suddenly, cold cases could be reopened and suspects could be identified with unprecedented accuracy. Databases like CODIS allowed law enforcement to track patterns and lengths. Crimes across jurisdictions. The technological leap made it much harder for serial killers to operate undetected. Many were caught after just a few murders before they could build the kind of mythic status their predecessors enjoyed. The FBI's behavioral science unit, popular popularized, that is not something I can say today, by shows like Mindhunter, developed more sophisticated methods for identifying and tracking serial offenders. Geographic profiling, victimology, and psychological analysis became standard tools. Police departments began sharing data more efficiently, uh closing the gaps that Caly once exploited. And as a side note, um, as a federal worker, I can have access to federal jobs. Um not that I was looking or anything, um, but there are some jobs that so when you're a federal employee, you are put there's a hierarchy and it's veterans first, okay, inter-office. Well, no, inter-office moving, whatever that's called. Yes, veterans, and then federal employees, and then the general public. So you're in a hierarchy of so it is easy to hop jobs in your same pay level.

SPEAKER_04 45:25

I did not know that.

SPEAKER_07 45:26

I did.

SPEAKER_04 45:28

The problem with a federal job is they can cut off your pay for no good reason sometimes.

SPEAKER_07 45:32

So when I was looking at federal jobs, there's a lot of FBI jobs available currently. You have to have an education, which I don't have, which by the way, when I was in, I don't know, high school, and you have to take the aptitude tests to see what you can be when you grow up, it was in fact a librarian for the FBI. Very specific, I know, but that was the thing that came back was an FBI librarian. And I was like, I mean, that is correct. That would be amazing. That would be like the greatest job. And I was like, well, how do you do that? Yeah, but you don't have to go into the FBI, which I don't think I would make it. Yeah. Number one, I'm 50 fucking two years old, so yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:20

So you mentioned um how with the 90s DNA, communication, technology all started improving. Can you even imagine these poor serial killers back in like the 60s and 70s? And now they've lived their whole lives. I know. And they're just like, nobody's ever gonna know.

unknown 46:43

I know.

SPEAKER_04 46:43

And then they start seeing on the news, oh, we arrested this guy because we still had DNA from 1971 on him. And they're like, oh shit. It's and it's crazy because you'll either see it on the news or I see it in a lot of the murder shows that I watch. These men are like 80 years old. Well, like what the Green River killer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they're just they're like or no, Golden State, Golden State killer. That's right, that's right. Yeah, he I was kind of disappointed in who that was. Yeah, I don't know. I thought it would be more glamorous.

SPEAKER_07 47:16

Did you know that they also found out who Jack the Ripper was? I have heard is not right for sure, for sure. Pretty for sure. Okay. Okay. Pretty for sure. Yeah. I mean, I don't think they could ever be a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_04 47:32

Well, I know that I heard something like a month or so ago. Um I have also heard it with a wh all the other theories, because there's like a hundred theories of who it is.

SPEAKER_07 47:44

Um one of them is one of my favorite serial killers. Uh, they think it one of the theories is that it was H. H. Holmes. It's not, because he was never in London at the same time, but H.H. Holmes. Yeah. My favorite serial killer.

SPEAKER_04 47:58

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

SPEAKER_07 48:02

I mean, they all have their value, but he's my favorite. I mean, I like John, I know uh John Wing Gacy also, just because of the whole clown thing. Yeah.

unknown 48:10

Yeah. Yeah.

Spree Killers And New Threats

SPEAKER_07 48:11

Modern. How about I go with he's my favorite modern serial killer. Okay. And my old timey is um H. H. Holmes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Merks. Now we got that out of the way. I know. We were worried that I wouldn't know what my old timey serial killer was. Some criminologists argue that the nature of violent crime crime has changed. Mass shootings, domestic terrorism, and organized crime have taken center stage. The lone predator has been replaced by the spree killer, the incel extremist, the radicalized shooter. These crimes are often more public, more chaotic, and harder to predict. In a way, the serial killer's decline reflects a shift in societal fears. We're less afraid of the quiet neighbor with a secret and more afraid of the angry stranger with a gun. So I don't know if I go into I there's a lot in this that I'm probably gonna have to because we're getting anyway. Um so the difference between a serial killer is there is a cooling off period. You have to kill, I think it's two or more. Yes. And there has to be a which I think is lame.

SPEAKER_04 49:16

I think two is too few.

SPEAKER_07 49:18

Um there has to be a cooling off period. Yes. A spree killer just goes out and just spree kills like all at once. Yep. And then what was the other one? Mass murderer. Mass murderer is all.

SPEAKER_04 49:30

They're trying to get as many as they can all at once. Yeah. And I would like to beg to differ.

SPEAKER_07 49:35

And then there's family annihilators. Yes. That it did not bring up because that's a whole nother whole nother one.

SPEAKER_04 49:41

We'll do another one on that someday. But uh it does I I mean this the 70s, 60s, 70s, 80s were definitely the the high point for the serial killers. But I don't necessarily agree that it's declined. Because I watch a lot of shows where a lot of people have killed a lot of people. And the thing of it now is it's not I it has changed in the fact that it's not so public. These are people that um live out in the middle of nowhere, yeah. Um have a job, like work in construction. We're currently working in like Louisiana right now. Works in um like somewhere where there's desert around somewhere. Like I see a lot of shows where there are people going around and and some of it is random. They're just going and ripping screens and going in, and so I mean, I guess to it's not necessarily correct to say that it's not declined, but they are for sure still out there. They just have to stay a lot more hidden now than they used to back in the day. I don't think we're gonna although the Long Island killer, he's pretty stereotypical 70s. Yeah, he had a wife and kids and a bit job and was a very respected businessman, and he was out picking up prostitutes and taking them out to the beach and killing them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 51:10

Well, and I think that's the other thing. Because we know about all of these serial killers and we know where they operated at this point, but the sheer amount of the unhoused population and the um the not not dead, the un the less dead, less dead, um, with human trafficking and what have you. I mean, at this point, I don't want to sound crass, but you can pretty much door dash a victim at this point.

SPEAKER_03 51:46

Oh, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_07 51:47

So you don't even need to leave your house to be a serial killer.

SPEAKER_04 51:50

I'm not gonna lie, the place where I stay, the my roommate typically just leaves everything unlocked, which is not my thing. Yeah. Um and her address is um, but if I get like a food delivery or I'm outside in the evening, and I, you know, there's not a lot of people in the neighborhood I'm in it. It's um pretty isolated, but I'll lock the doors at night. Yeah. I'm like, especially if I'm sitting watching my murder shows. And once in a while, my roommate can I I usually try to go around and unlock them all in the morning, but sometimes I forget and she gets there and I'm like, oh shit, I'm sorry. I I got freaked out last night and I locked the door. And she just looks at me like, why? And I'm like, like, I will never sleep with windows open and unlock. That's how they get in, man.

SPEAKER_07 52:43

See it. That's I've always been the opposite. It up until living in this apartment, it was a struggle to remember to lock the door. Well, see, and I mean, when I in the house I grew up in, we didn't even have a key. When they moved out, they had to tell the people who bought their house we don't even have a key to the house.

SPEAKER_04 53:00

So well, my mom actually leaves her house unlocked too, but her theory is if they want to get in, they're gonna get in anyway. I disagree with that because there are people that go around checking for unlocked doors. That's true. Or open windows. That's true. And if that's not unlocked, then they'll just move to the next one.

SPEAKER_07 53:17

Who was it? It was the one that was traveling across the country that said if your door was unlocked and he could that meant you just were ready. That was the sign. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 53:26

There's no sign of entry, there's no nothing. It's just easy peasy. So at least if I get murdered, they really wanted to come in the house and get me.

SPEAKER_07 53:41

By the 2000s, the serial killer trope had been thoroughly mined by pop culture. Shows like Dexter, Criminal Minds, and American Horror Story turned murder into entertainment. The shock value diminished, the career killers became caricatures, their crimes stylized and sanitized. For younger generations, serial killers are less real and more fiction. The emotional impact that haunted Gen X, those grainy news reports, those missing kids on milk cartons, has faded. For us, the serial killer era left a deep imprint. It shaped how we think about safety, identity, and evil. It taught us that monsters don't wear masks, they wear suits, drive Volkswagens, and live next door. It also gave us a strange kind of resilience. We learned to navigate fear, to question authority, and to seek truth and chaos. The serial killer was a symbol of everything that could go wrong, and surviving that era made us skeptical, savvy, and emotionally complex. Even today, the fascination lingers. True crime podcasts, documentaries, and TikToks loose keep the stories alive. But for Gen X, it's not just entertainment, it's memory. It's a feeling of watching the news and wondering if the killer was in your town. Oh, the emotional residue of growing up in a world where evil felt personal. The rise and the fall of serial killers is more than a crime trend, it's a cultural arc. Um, it reflects our fear in the media. Today the serial killer has been replaced by new threats and new monsters. We still flinch at the sound of the basement door creaking. I never had a basement. I was at the beach, we don't have basements. Too much water. Um So why did this this is why it's gonna take me forever. Why why was the 70s saw a notable rise in serial killers across the United States? It this decade stands out as a dark period in criminal history with many infamous murders active. The number of documented serial killers spiked significantly from 1970 to 1999. Changes in society, such as an increase in drug use and the hippie movement, created opportunity for predators. Damn hippies. Yeah. The aftermath of World War II also played a role with some veterans struggling to readjust to civilian life, which was also um if Vietnam. Yeah, was yeah. And that was Vietnam, was the whole vanin. If you want to check out vanning life, turn listen to Dragon's Dream. Yes. Um law enforcement faced challenges in catching killers due to limited technology. Uh no, no, no. Um the media's fascination. The 70s saw major changes in society and technology that set the stage for an increase in serial killers. More women entered the workforce, divorce rates went up, people moved around more, and it this this these trends made it easier for killers to find victims. New tech also played a role. Interstate highways let criminals travel further. The rise of TV news spread, fear about violent crime, police didn't have DNA. Uh attitudes about sex and drugs became more open. Hitchhiking was common. That's a big one. Yeah. I know it's crazy to me. Like, I remember seeing people hitchhiking all the time when we were kids.

SPEAKER_04 56:56

Oh, yeah. When I was 16, a friend of mine, she's female. She was driving back roads because that's where we live. And she had picked up a male hitchhiker. And shortly into the ride, he started. I think he touched her leg or something, and she pulled over and told him to get out. And thank God he did. Yeah. But I was just my mind was blown. I was like, why on earth would you have picked him up? But she was trying to be nice. She thought she was doing somebody a favor.

SPEAKER_07 57:25

See, it's harder to get nowadays. Also, I mean back then you had so many options if you had. Look, I would love to get a serial killer in my car. I have been like begging for someone to try and hide hijack my car. I I should probably get a better car. Yeah. If you want it.

SPEAKER_04 57:42

I think Toyota Camry is the most stolen.

SPEAKER_07 57:44

Yeah. So you need to get it. You should get one of those. Yeah. Um, because especially back then, I mean, if you hit something, they don't usually wear seatbelts. But then again, back then, I didn't either. So we were both gonna go through the windshield at the same time. But that's what you're fun fact, everybody. If you're getting carjacked, take a curve at like fast as you can and just plow into a a post or something because that person did not put their seatbelt on and they are going through your windshield.

SPEAKER_04 58:12

Yeah, you might break your legs, but you'll still be uh not murdered.

SPEAKER_07 58:15

And you can just sit there while they're hanging out your windshield and be like, ha ha ha, how now?

SPEAKER_04 58:21

Who's the murderer now?

SPEAKER_07 58:23

Good luck. I'm not you see my phone? I'm not calling 911. No, no, yeah. Wait till you take your last breath, and I'm gonna sit here and watch. I should not say these things. April Fools. The 60s shaped the next decade in key ways. The Vietnam War left many veterans with trauma. Some turned violent. Anti-establishment feelings from the 60s carried into the 70s. This made people less trusting of authority. Serial killers took advantage of this mindset. The hippie movement promoted free love. Drug use became more widespread, and these trends created vulnerable targets for predators. Social norms were changing fast. The upheaval may have affected unstable individuals. It possibly pushed some towards violence.

SPEAKER_04 59:06

No, I think if you're a serial killer, you're gonna be a serial kill. I mean, you're not gonna go your whole life like, man, I have this urge, but it's just not right. I'm not gonna do it.

SPEAKER_07 59:14

Maybe someone serial killers often share certain traits and backgrounds. See, the problem is I have so much about serial killers living inside of me that I just was like, this is gonna be a four-hour episode. Let's buckle up, kids. Um, no, no. These factors shape their psychology and influence their choice of victims. Many serial killers have a history of childhood trauma, abuse, neglect, or unstable homes. Home lives can lead to mental health issues. They may include anxiety, depression, or personality disorders. Some killers show signs of psychopathy, they lack emotional and they lack empathy and feel no guilt for their crimes. Others have narcissistic traits or struggle with impulse control. Brain differences might play a role too. Some studies suggest serial killers may have abnormal brain structures. This could affect their behavior and decision making. And I think we all know, unless you don't, uh most serial killers got a bump to the noggin. So I'm gonna go on a lemon gas. CTE is a problem.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:18

Yeah, but I feel like it's definitely in your DNA to be a serial killer. Because some of them didn't yeah, they had shitty childhoods, but nothing really remarkable. Um and then there are people who have had absolutely insanely awful childhoods and they don't grow up and kill people. So I think it is in your brain. Um it's the same way that I feel about pedophiles. I think um the death penalty should be for more than murder. Agreed. Because if you are a pedophile, you can't change. There, I learned that in college. I think there's a 2% cure rate, and that's probably being um generous. Um so if you know for a fact, and and there have been people who have said in prison, I will do this to children again when you let me out. But their sentence is up, so they let them out. So, you know what they they they are a harm to society. And anyway, I'm on my soapbox, but yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:18

Uh serial killers are often young men, typically start their crimes in their 20s or 30s. Women can be serial killers too, but it is less common. Victims are usually chosen based on vulnerability. Young women are frequent targets. Um, there are some really great female serial killers, though, not just Eileen Warnos. Um, there is a uh oh, it's a family in Wisconsin, and I can't think of her name right off the top of my head. Uh Belle Gunnis. Belle Gunnis. Oh, yeah. Look her up. She's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:55

Not really, but I mean they are like women are bitches be tripping, man.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:01

Like other groups at risk include sex workers, runaways, elderly people, and children. Some killer pick some killers pick victims who remind them of someone from their past or choose based on opportunity or specific traits. Killers may have a type they prefer, but their victim selection can also evolve over time. The 70s all oh, so we don't need to probably go into. I went into, you know, Ted Bundy killed 30 women. Um, known for his charming good looks. He escaped custody twice before his final arrest in 1978. John Wing Gacy murdered 33 young men, which they are still um IDing his victims now. I think it was like maybe like a year ago they they identified another one of his victims. Wow. Yeah. Uh he was worked as a clown at children's parties and buried many victims under his house. He ran out of room. Yeah. Gacy's crimes came to light in 1978. That's what got him caught. Um both men were executed for their crimes, Bundy in 89 and Gacy in 94. Their cases highlighted the need for better communications between law enforcement agents. Uh the zodiac killer terrorized Northern California in the late 60s and 70s. He killed at least five people, but claimed to have murdered 37. The killer sent taunting letters and complex ciphers to the press. His identity remains unknown today. The Hillside Strangler turned out to be two men, cousins, uh Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Bueno. They killed 10 young women in Los Angeles in 19 in 77 to 78. The pair posted police officers to gain their victims' trust.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:39

And it's very rare for there to be a pair of serial killers. Very rare.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:44

Um, do you remember uh oh, quick. If you want to know about another pair of serial killers, that we did an episode about um true crime songs. And we did the Morrissey song, uh Supper the Little Children. So we should go back and find that one, but I don't remember what it's called or what episode it was. Just go back and listen.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:07

Find that one. You'll just have to listen to them all.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:10

You have to figure it out. Because I don't know. Once I listen to this, when I'm done editing, it leaves my brain forever. Yep. Um these cases led to increased public awareness of serial killers. They also spurred advances in forensic techniques. Police faced major hurdles. Um, Via Cap, the violent criminal apprehension program, was launched in 1985. It helped link similar crimes across the country. Forensic science made big leaps in the 70s and 80s. New techniques helped solve cases that were once considered hopeless. DNA testing was a game changer. First helped convict a killer in 1987. Since then, it had I'm not gonna go on about who it didn't convict. This has become a critical tool for catching serial killers. I'm not a serial killer. Family annihilator. Uh oh, chase upset. Um ballistic database. Oh, I don't know. Other advances included, improved fingerprint analysis, ballistic databases, blood spatter, which is now a junk science. Blood spatter is a now considered a junk science. That must be really upsetting to blood spatter analysts investigating.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:29

Yeah.

unknown 1:05:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:32

These tools raised the homicide clearance rates. They also helped solve old crime, old cases, bringing justice to victims' families years later. The rise of serial killers in the 70s left a lasting mark on American society. Television played a big role in spreading news, like America's Most Wanted, brought these crimes into people's homes and led to a boom in true crime stories. Books about serial killers became very popular. Writers like Herod Scheck. Wrote detailed accounts of famous cases. These books helped create a new genre of literature. Movies and TV shows started featuring more serial killer characters. The trend continued for decades with shows like Dexter becoming hits. The idea of random violent crime scared many people. It made them feel less safe in their own neighborhoods. Some changed their daily habits out of fear. People became more aware of personal safety. They started locking doors and watching their surroundings. Parents may became more protective of their children. The language people used to talk about crime change. The term terms like serial killer entered everyday speech. Many viewed the 70s as a time when violence increased. The perception lasted long after the decade ended, shaping how people thought about crimes and safety. Oh, I did that. Role of technology, computer databases, better cameras and video tools, cell phone records. Number one mistake.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:05

I watched one the other day. Sorry, real quick. This is a real quick story. The lady drove to the lady's house she was gonna kill, like somewhere far away. Uh-huh. Shut off her phone when she got there. Stupid. Went and killed her, and drove back home and then turned her phone back on. Leave your phone at home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:24

Go buy a burner.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:25

Yeah, that's my whole thing there. Like 15 bucks.

unknown 1:07:29

That's funny.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:30

I thought that was me.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:32

Um, the murder accountability project tracks unsolved murders. It uses computer programs to find patterns. This helps spot serial killers and cops that cops might miss. Uh police can now link murders across different areas. It makes it harder for killers to avoid being caught. Digital records make it easy to study crime trends. Experts can look at a lot of cases. Um the 70s and 80s saw surge in serial killers. I don't call them the Golden Age Age. Nearly 770 serial killers were active in the U.S. during the 80s. Damn. The number stayed high in the 90s with about 670 active killers. Wow. But a big change came after 2000. The rate fell below 400 in the early 2000s. And by 2016, there were just over 100 known serial killers. All right. Well, I stand corrected. The reason for the decline are complex, uh less hitchhiking, uh, societal changes, DNA cameras, cell phones.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:33

Yeah, I mean, a lot of them had histories, and nobody had any way to look them up back then. Now, if you're dating a guy and he seems a little weird, you can Google his ass and be like, oh no.

The Lead Crime Hypothesis

SPEAKER_07 1:08:44

Yeah. Uh profilers looked at patterns. Um, the techniques, the DNA uh that helped catch the golden state killer, uh, the family DNA. Yep. Um, that's what I'm talking about. Uh uh serial killer era led to tougher sentencing laws in many states. Some reinstated the death penalty while others added life without parole for multiple murders. Parole policies became stricter for violent offenders, uh, partly due to cases where release killers committed new crimes. Uh yeah. Victim advocacy advocacy groups gained strength. They pushed for better support services and changed to the justice system. Oh, so the um the golden age also had a um golden era or golden area, the Pacific Northwest. The nickname after all is America's killing fields. Mm-hmm. Um, theories about how and why the area produced a disproportionate amount of murders. I knew this was in there. Psychopaths, among them Ted Bundy, the Hillside Strangler, Green River, I5 Killer, um, have included everything from Eisenhower's 1954 hitchhiker happy interstate highway system to post-World War II child abuse by traumatized soldiers to sensationalized media coverage. Any or all above have contributed to the era's serial killing surge as some less obvious explanations like poisonous chemicals, specifically lead, copper, and arsenic that leached into the air from industrial smelters.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:25

That's what I was gonna say. It was in the water somewhere.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:28

ASAR CO in Tacoma, Washington, for example, regularly reduced a cloud of lead and arsenic that floated down as a white ash that killed pets and eroded paint off cars.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:38

So imagine what kind of effects that was having on pregnant women and the babies inside them.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:43

The air was literally the color of lead, and the pungent aroma of Tacoma lingers to this day. Killers Gary Ridgway, Israel Keyes, and Ted Bundy all live nearby. So too did Pulitzer Ted. I know. Prize winner, writer Caroline Frazier, just seven years old and merely miles away during Bundy's 74 Summer Murder Spree. In her new investigative book, Murderland, Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, she thoroughly explores the so-called lead crime hypothesis, a theory that circulated first with academics before entering the mainstream in the early 2010s. Through her unique position of coming of age in Seattle during the era, Frazier's bookmarks the largest and most in-depth examination of the controversial theory so far. From her home in New Mexico, Frasier explains why she's convinced toxic chemicals help cause a sudden spike in serial killers, why she got so obsessed with them to begin with, and why serial killers really aren't as smart as they think they are.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:43

So the lead theory is a theory I can get down with. Because that's science. And that is what they that is what they made pain out of back then. So pretty much every house was leaded. Lead, right? And then what 90s they decided lead was bad. Yeah. And kids shouldn't be eating paint chips off the wall anymore. So um, yeah, that that's a theory I can get I can get down with.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:12

Oh, so she says, uh, this this book has been in my mind for a long time. I was born and raised in Seattle. I remember growing up with the presence of Ted Bundy, even though I wasn't touched by the case directly, just having it happen so close to where I lived was a big deal.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:24

Lucky.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:25

Buddy Bundy kidnapped and killed two women on the same Sunday afternoon from Lake Samish, Samamish, just six miles from me. After that, people knew that his name was Ted. So there were posters, drawings, and police composites of his face all over the place.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:39

That's one of the best parts of that story. They knew his name was Ted.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:42

And they knew what he drove, and they knew what his face looked like. And they he would still be like Ann Rule sat next to him the whole time and knew all of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:49

Yep. And he would still be like, No, it wasn't me. And they were like, Okay, it wasn't me. They're like, Oh, you're a white man. You must be telling the truth. You drive a beetle. Um, I remember once somebody said it was like a beige beetle, but it was actually like gold. And they were like, Oh, it can't be him.

unknown 1:13:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:09

Beige and gold or nothing.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:12

Um, certainly by the time of Ramirez in the mid-80s, people were thinking, what the hell is going on here? It's striking to me that nobody was asking why. Nobody was looking at the larger pattern and asking why there are more killers than before. Because there's something about the Pacific Northwest. The FBI was presenting themselves as the experts, but they weren't explaining anything about the phenomenon. Serial killers have always been with us in some fashion, but certainly not in those numbers. Um, many theories. So they asked her, uh, how did she arrive at hers? I figure it's got to be a combination of things. First of all, and all kinds of things can make a serial killer. Physical and sexual abuse was the leading theory of FBI profilers for a long time. A lot of these guys grew up in a very, very poor environment. They often have a missing father or an abusive father, or they didn't know who their father was at all, which they blame their mothers for. As we learn more about the brain, we thinking more about the effects of concussions and brain damage. Some people think forceps by doctors delivering babies in the 50s caused brain damage in infants.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:12

And what was that shot that women were getting where they had that little scar on the not polio? No, it was um thalidomide was the medication that they were putting in, and that was causing birth defects. Yes. And that was the time these people would have been being born because I think it was the 50s and 60s they were doing that.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:32

Uh certain vitamin deficiencies when you're in utero or an infant can produce real deficits in terms of your brain development. The lead crime hypothesis uh posits a direct correlation between crime and lead. During the post-war period, an enormous amount of lead was in the air from mainly two sources: lead and gas, which everybody used for decades, and heavy industrial like smelting. People are still debating the numbers, but it pretty well accepted that now that between 20 and 50 percent of the sharp rise in the crime in the 80s and 90s is attributed to lead. You've sold me. We know I'm gonna tell the whole world that's what happened. We know lead causes aggression. We know lead damages the brain in developing children. I don't think anybody thinks lead isn't at least a factor. In the 50s and 60s, geochemist Claire Patterson proved that lead exposure had caused what was he what he called a loss of mental acuity, but the effects of lead are all over the map. Besides intelligence, it can affect personality. Many studies connect lead exposure to a particular kind of frontal cortex damage that leads to heightened aggression.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:41

Now I may have to do some research on lead. You've got me all kinds of fascinated.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:48

Um it's true, there were smelters all over the country. Tacoma is particularly interesting because its smelter sits right in the middle of the city. All the emissions were being spread over not just Tacoma, but the entire Pacific Northwest in this plume that was up to a thousand square miles. They measured it all the way up to British Columbia. Crime was up in all of America, but it was up in Washington State by almost 30%, three times the national average. That said, and this is one of the reasons she focused on him. A lot of the idea about the plus the Northwest Pacific comes right from Bundy. Uh, he was early in the phenomena. He eventually talked a lot to the point that he was mythologized, almost glamorized. The media described him as terrific looking and Kennedy-esque. I agree. Serial killers care a lot about their reputations and are known to have obsessions with one another.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:42

And they don't want anybody else getting credit for their work, you know.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:45

Israel Keyes, for example, was a big fan of Ted Bundy. I'm trying to paint a very different portrait of Bundy than very attractive genius, in part by in part by the Hannibal Lecter phenomenon. There's this idea that serial killers are fiendishly clever, smarter than anybody else. That's really not true. The truth is we build these people up in our minds. We have an idea of what they like and the power they have. Then when they're finally unveiled, they're these sad, pathetic losers. The public should see that. But would any of these make someone taking up serial killing in the first place?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:17

Well, I think a lot of them are narcissists. Um, so of course they're going to create a persona about themselves that make them seem so awesome. I mean, they're not all like that. Like, I don't think Jeffrey Dahmer was a no narcissist, but definitely Ted Bundy. I think Gacy was definitely um, yeah, there's a number of them that are narcissistic.

Why Violence Looks Different Now

SPEAKER_07 1:17:40

So almost done, guys. This is fascinating. Paragraph and a half. Um, the these crimes are all sexual in nature, and something has happened that makes them sexually excited by violence and terrorizing their victims. The prevalence of necrophilia during this period is very weird. It all points to something that has gone wrong with the wiring of the brain. Yeah, necrophilia is a whole different beast, I think. Yeah. Um, America's serial killer database counted. As I said, 669 serial killers in the 90s, 371 in the 2000s, and 117 in the 2010s. Get on it, guys. Come on. A police officer will probably tell you that we're better at catching them now because of increased resources given to police departments. Proponents of mass incarcerations will tell you they're in jail earlier and longer. Certainly, forensic evidence, specifically DNA, makes identifying serial killers far easier than before, as does technology and video surveillance. But uh much like cars that we have built that are safer to drive, we've also improved health outcomes to build better humans. Pregnant mothers take prenatal vitamins, and we raise our children very differently, and mental health services have greatly improved. Thanks largely to um American football. We better understand the connection between repeated blows to the head and later degradation of cognitive increased ingression.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:08

I'm surprised I don't have CTE as much as I got smacked upside the head as a kid.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:14

Toxic chemicals, including lead, were phased out and banned, and then the crime rate took its largest plunge in record in recorded history. I don't think serial killers are going anywhere as much as we didn't grow them to begin with.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:29

That was amazing and scene. No, but seriously, like because the psychology about psychology and the psychology and the science behind um anything to do with humans is what fascinates me. That's why I love these shows so much. I love to see what's going on in their brain, what makes people work. That's why I got my degree in psychology. Like I am fascinated with it. And you just really hit on a lot of things, and man, this lead things really got me thinking.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:07

I mean, that there are a lot of crime has gone down all the way around. You know, violent crimes have gone down. Um obviously, no one thing is the factor so much as it is a um a mix of everything together. That is true.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:29

There are things that I don't buy into. Like, I don't think because you were in Vietnam that you became a serial killer when you came home. No, you you don't have that in you. You may kill because your brain's broken now, because you were forced to do things that you didn't want to do. But I don't know. I maybe I have a different definition of a serial killer. Like killing two people is not a serial killer. I agree. So I'm talking about yeah, Monday game as well.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:01

Yeah. Um, yeah. I think that I think a lot of it is, you know, of course times have changed. And of course it is harder to commit multiple Well, DNA alone. DNA, the cameras everywhere. Yes. Um Are we catching them earlier?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:23

True.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:23

Are we catching these kids?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:25

True.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:26

When they're torturing animals as young Unfortunately, no, we are not.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:30

Um I mean, you hear so many times with these school shootings that it has been reported by other students that this kid is either threatened to bring a gun or has had a gun, or and the parents are buying guns for these kids, knowing and on their social media they're posting that they want to blow up a school. Like that, I'm so glad that father just got prosecuted and sent to jail for buying his son a semi-automatic when his son was writing on social media that he was going to go to his school and kill people, and then he did.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:05

And and that I mean, there you have it again. Are we catching them younger? And by I mean, are we catching them younger? Are they catch are they catching themselves? Exactly. Are they going into a school, shooting up uh the school and then shooting themselves?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:21

And the problem with everything everywhere is there are not enough resources. People don't get enough paid enough money for the jobs that they do. There are not enough positions in those jobs to be able to. I mean, I'm I just said that, you know, the schools knew that this kid was a threat, but they've also got a thousand other students they have to worry about in the day. And they probably hear that threatening things from other kids too, and nothing ever happens. But it I don't know. I don't know how to fix it.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:55

Um I mean, the thing of it to me is back when we were kids, it was stranger danger. I mean, stranger danger, stranger danger, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, that was put, you're gonna end up on a milk carton. Yep. Well, today their stranger danger is active shooter drills. Yeah. So maybe the crime is happening in a different way. It's just changed. It's changed because of the societal change. Because you couldn't go if you were Ted Bundy, you're not you can't go on the internet and be like, hey, I'm gonna go to this sorority house and kill everyone in it. And everybody's like, no, don't do that, or whatever, you know. Oh, you're so cool, or whatever. Now you can say, Hey, I'm gonna go into the school, I'm gonna shoot it up, and if nobody stops you, and everybody's like, he's attention seeking, then you're gonna go do it, and then you kill yourself because you don't want to get in trouble.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:49

That's the sad thing.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:50

Instead of moving, like these. I don't want to say that this the lone serial killer is a I don't I just feel like the the crime has changed the situation. Like I agree with that.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:07

I actually think serial killers have moved into being spree killers, yes, much more and um human trafficking too, I think has has really kind of taken over a lot of things. I mean, that's my big fear. Um, my youngest went to Puerto Rico a few months ago, and the night before she left, I was like, do not leave your boyfriend's side when you are out and about in in town. I was like, I don't care if you guys had a fight, I don't care if you're drunk, I don't care what's going on, do not leave his side. Because you know how you well, you know how I was get drunk and wander off somewhere. Yes, to like go take a nap. Um, yeah, and I just picture her walking off a beach bar somewhere and going in the sand because she's pissed off at him because she's drunk, and boom, she's gone.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:56

So those are my fears, is like and and like I said, I mean, serial killers maybe they're young, these mass murders, the spree killers, they're all young, very, very young now. So are we catching them because of the societal change and because serial killing is hard? And we all know that these kids today don't want to do anything fucking hard.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:20

Exactly.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:20

So this is a lot easier to just walk into school and mow down, you know, the 30 people than to have to plot out and stalk and do all that. So, you know, is that what's happening here? Is it the technology? Is it all of these things all out all together wrapped up in a big giant ball?

SPEAKER_04 1:25:40

Yeah, and I don't think, and I hate to sound like an old person here, but I don't think kids are taught resilience these days. Um, everything's just pretty easy for them, and they don't really have to follow the rules kind of thing. Um, like that kid just a few days ago, a teacher got shot, and luckily she's in the hospital and she's supposed to be all right, and then the student turned the gun on himself and killed himself. It was because he was failing classes. Are you fucking kidding me?

SPEAKER_07 1:26:08

Like and what does that resolve? Also, you have to wonder, is it because and I'm I'm not trying to disparage the younger generations coming up?

SPEAKER_04 1:26:16

No, I think a lot of our young people are amazing. I love working with teenagers, but it's I'm more so blaming parenting and the shortage of funding for schools to be able to have the staff they need to properly take care of these kids and not just cross the T's and dot the I's because they'll get in trouble with the federal law if they don't. Right. That's my argument.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:39

I I just feel like maybe that's the instead of you know, back in the day it was, you know, you back when Ted Bundy was doing his thing, you had to be uh you had to work and keep a family because that's what you were supposed to do. Exactly. You don't have to do that now. Now you can be a lone person on the internet all the time and then just hating the world and hating the world and hating the world and hating the world. And that translates into but instead of doing it over, you know, uh ten years and you know, letting out the rage here and there, and letting out the rage here and there, you go big and you do it all, you shoot your load.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:34

Yeah, it is information overload. I mean, you can go on the internet and find as many people as you want that feel strongly as you do, and you know how I mean it's it's the um group mentality, but you used to have to be in person for that. Yeah. You used to have to be together and then kind of rise up and create something. Now you can get online, get fucking furious, and then find a hundred other people that are just as pissed off as you. Exactly. And then you're the hero you think, going out there and killing some Jewish people or shooting up a school or burning down a black church, you know, you think these people that are your people are gonna see you as this hero.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:15

Whereas if you're tedious twisted. Ted Bundy, you can't go online and be like, Hey, I would like to kill, you know, 30 some people. No. Or John Lingacy, hey, I'm a clown and I like to kill people.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:26

And back then too, men didn't have to explain to anybody where they were. No. Their wives didn't ask why they came home late or where they were going at nine o'clock at night. You you took care of the house and that's what you did. So they could come and go, go kill, come home, go to bed. Easy peasy.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:43

Nobody And we have cleaned up the environment some mostly, you know, a lot. There's not as much, you know, toxic shit. And you know, I mean, let's be honest. It was nothing for women to smoke while they were pregnant, to drink while they were pregnant. Absolutely. To to do whatever the fuck else they were doing, you know. Yeah. Crock pots, spew in, you know, toxic chemicals.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:05

Remember when it was a big deal that women ate hot dogs when they were pregnant? When I got pregnant, that was kind of like an old, old thing, like you shouldn't eat hot dogs. Oh whatever the fuck I wanted when I was pregnant.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:19

But prenatal vitamins and you know, um going to the doctor services so that people are not growing up in in the poverty that a lot of these these some of these serial killers. I don't know. It's I think it's like a conglomeration of the thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:33

It's a whole bunch of things. Yeah, you're making a whole lot of sense. Um, yeah, but I blame lead.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:39

I'm stuck on that. You can blame lead. It's all lead's fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:42

I am okay. Damn lead. Anyway, that's my serial killers. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:47

I didn't mean to go on for an hour and a half, guys.

Final Thoughts And Listener Question

SPEAKER_04 1:29:49

That was so much fun. And with all the um serial killer stuff that's out there, I felt like this was unique information and conversation. Thank you. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, because so many times, like I will watch anything, and I'll be like, oh yeah, I've seen that. I've seen this story a thousand times, but I'm gonna watch this version of it anyway. But um, yeah, but yeah, you did lost the job.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:15

Currently, I'm on this Nazi, like I'm on a Holocaust. I watched Schindler's List last night.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:21

My ex so went through a Nazi thing for a while. It's it is it's it's a lot. And just like Walmart is in all the killer stuff, um the Nazis were into everything. Yeah, if you watch any American history show, the Nazis will come up. I promise you at some time.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:40

I'll tell you, if you really want to hear a great rundown, um, so my favorite podcast, last podcast on the left, um, they did they they started, was it this year? Yeah, last year. At some point last year, they decided that they were gonna do the Mount Rushmore of evil. And their first one, they did, I don't remember how many parts was, but it was a lot on um Himmler. Fucking fascinating. Because you hear the Hitler, but Himmler was really the one that was pulling the strings there. So um, I I really urge you to listen to their their um I forget how many parts it is, but it is very well researched.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:24

Hitler was an idiot, yeah. Much like someone else that we know, yeah. But yeah, so uh there, yeah, it's it is it's it all that's again the psychology of it. Like, why? Why do you want so what? So now you have more countries. Who fucking cares? Like, who cares? Yep, I will never ever be able to wrap my head around that.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:47

Well, we're living it. Yeah. Oh, you know what? It's almost time for that rocket. Oh, what time is it?

SPEAKER_04 1:31:55

Well, we better get done and get you out of here so that you can go home and stare at a countdown.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:00

Yeah. Uh thanks for listening, everybody. Thank you all so much. Thanks for indulging my serial killer. Same z. Um, you can uh like, share, rate, review. Uh-huh. You can find us where you listen to podcasts on all of the things. You can follow us on all the socials at Like Whatever Pod. Please do. Um, we have a website. We do. There's some W's at Likewhateverpod Anna.com. You can send us an email about how what factor you think is what has led to the decline in serial killers.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:40

Please share it.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:41

Fascinating topic that we'd love to hear your it really is. To likewhateverpod at gmail.com or don't like whatever. Whatever. Bye.