Professor James Alan Fox says the known evidence doesn’t support theories that a single murderer is responsible for 12 human remains found recently in three states.
Growing speculation that a serial killer is on the loose in New England — triggered by the recent discoveries of 12 human remains in three states — appears to be driven by rumors spread via social media.
James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist, is skeptical of the speculation. He says the known evidence fails to suggest the presence of a serial killer.
Police have also dismissed the likelihood that a lone perpetrator is responsible for the deaths.
And yet rumors of a serial killer persist — driven in no small part by more than 70,000 users in a private Facebook group who have been offering conjecture and theories about the mysterious deaths. An anonymous confession on the group page resulted in a futile search for bodies by police in Rhode Island.
The known evidence doesn’t corroborate with behavior common among many serial killers, says Fox, who has been studying mass killings for four decades.
Fox says there appears to be little to no connection among the deaths.
“Most serial killers have some commonality in their victims,” says Fox, a research professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern. “Usually it’s the sex, race, age or physical features of the victims. That’s not always true, of course, but they tend to have a particular preference for the victim type.
“But in these cases there are so many dissimilarities,” says Fox, adding that some of the deaths may not be the result of murder, according to known evidence.
The remains were discovered in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts in March and April, resulting in ongoing police investigations. Although a man in Connecticut was charged last month with the murder of his roommate, a woman whose dismembered remains were found in a suitcase in March, Connecticut State Police said no evidence has been found to connect this killing with the other unresolved deaths.
The 12 remains have been found in 11 cities and towns, which Fox says further diminishes the likelihood of serial killings.
“There’s no pattern to the dump sites,” says Fox, who manages the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database and is the author of “Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder.” “A lot of serial killers will have a particular dump site where they dispose of their bodies. So when police do find evidence from a serial killer, they tend to find multiple bodies because the killer feels comfortable about disposing of bodies in that location. More than 70% of serial killers kill in one locale, typically around their home or workplace or somewhere where they know the roads and the escape patterns.
“It’s much safer for them to kill in a place where they know the terrain. Plus they tend to have jobs and families, which means they kill part time — literally, they have some free time to kill. And in general they can’t spend weeks and months traveling around finding victims.”
The speculation has mushroomed despite a drop nationally in serial murders. Improvements in forensic science, policing, criminal justice and technology have been responsible for a significant decline in serial killings since the 1980s, when more than 250 active killers accounted for 120 to 180 deaths annually. By the decade of 2010 there were fewer than 50 known active killers.
Fox acknowledges that police commonly do not release all details of ongoing investigations. That relative vacuum of information has contributed to the online speculation, says Laurie Kramer, a Northeastern professor of applied psychology.
The Facebook conjecture should not be casually dismissed, Kramer adds.
“When people have beliefs that they feel very strongly about and that are being responded to with some pushback, then those beliefs can become even more strongly held,” Kramer says. “People can become more entrenched in their thinking. And over time a situation can escalate and become much more intense.”
For some people the worst-case scenario of an active serial killer may be a product of other fears, Kramer says.
“Those beliefs can become reinforced by meeting other people who share those same ideas,” Kramer says. “Sharing these beliefs with others may help them feel safer as they realize that there are other people who are also concerned and are trying to make our world safer and less confusing.”
And then some other users may view their online participation in trying to solve the mystery of the recovered bodies as a kind of reality entertainment.
“This sort of conversation reinforces beliefs that the world does feel unsafe, that our leaders may not be totally transparent or sharing everything with us, that there may be other explanations for what’s happening that they may not have considered,” Kramer says. “In many ways it may reflect the national feeling right now.”
If the cases are resolved, Kramer hopes that the authorities present a convincing array of facts to ease public skepticism.
“Counteracting the beliefs of a group of 70,000-plus people who are developing their own interpretation and understanding of the facts is going to be really important,” Kramer says. “Maybe it will turn out to be one perpetrator. But whatever is discovered, people are going to need evidence to accept it.
“People are going to need to be shown the facts. Something will need to happen within that group to help this mass of people to accept the evidence — or at least to think critically about the information that they are receiving. Hopefully they can move forward together to understand and accept whatever the evidence shows.”