Is serial killing a ‘black and white’ issue?

With the discovery of the murders in Ohio allegedly committed by Michael Madison comes speculation that a new type of criminal has emerged – the African American serial killer.

Even though at least one out of every two serial killers is African American (Yaksic, 2006; Hickey, 2013), one of the most recurrent stereotypes in the field of serial homicide research is that the majority of serial killers are Caucasian. It is now known that several African American serial killers – Kermit Gosnell, Lonnie Franklin, Lorenzo Gilyard, Carl Watts, Chester Turner and Vincent Groves – rank among the most prolific in their respective states. Even by conservative estimates, African Americans have historically been overrepresented among serial murderers based on their share of the population (Kuhns and Coston, 2005). Despite these facts, African American serial killers have enjoyed some measure of freedom to commit their crimes in the absence of consistent intervention from law enforcement, rigorous study by academic researchers or intrusion by the news media.

Fortunately, much has been done in recent years to curtail the pervasive belief that the race of serial killers is a ‘black and white’ issue.

Several researchers have documented the African American serial killer’s ability to operate with impunity. Since the public has perceived black murderers that produce black victims as merely ‘urban homicide’, such offenders can be easily ignored and overlooked (Jenkins, 1993). The false perception that black sexual serial killers are rare makes it easier for them to go undetected for a longer period of time (Geberth, 2012). Serial killings of black victims, especially those who are impoverished and marginalized politically, are less likely to be connected, prioritized for investigation and subsequently solved (Fox, 2012). Little has been done to bring cases dealing with African American serial killers to the public’s attention (Hickey, 2013).

In order to understand why the prevalence of African American serial killers has been misrepresented among law enforcement, one must consult a 1985 report titled The Men Who Murdered that summarized the findings from interviews conducted by two FBI profilers with twenty five predominantly Caucasian serial killers (Ressler and Burgess, 1985). Subsequent criminological concepts and law enforcement techniques were based on that non-random sample and are currently still in use. Although the FBI recently stated that serial killers are a diverse group (Morton and Hilts, 2008), the ramifications from the agent’s findings in 1985 are still continuously affecting cases.

Countless hours were dedicated to hunting a Caucasian man for the murders of seven mostly Caucasian women in the Baton Rouge area between 1993 and 2003. Since law enforcement agents were operating under the assumption that murders are typically intraracial events, it came as a surprise when Derrick Todd Lee, the African American man responsible for this string of murders, was apprehended. This case highlights the dangers of abiding by a profile based on outmoded data. In their research on the sexually sadistic serial killer, Warren et al. (1996) erroneously proclaim that Caucasians are over represented in fantasy driven sexually sadistic serial crimes because of a different process of development of sexual identity among the two groups, a different potential for developing paraphilic preferences, or both. Leach and Meloy (1999) state that what is unusual in the case of Ray Shawn Jackson is that most sexual sadists in published studies are Caucasian males, making Jackson "racially unusual" as a sexual sadist. Unbeknownst to most, there have been several examples of offenders – Calvin Jackson, John Floyd Thomas, Jake Bird and Carlton Gary – who murdered victims outside of their own race and for sexually sadistic purposes.

During the hunt for the ‘DC Snipers’ in 2002, most criminologists believed that a "white, lone-wolf type” offender was responsible for the atrocities that were carried out by two African American men. The Lee and ‘DC Snipers’ cases demonstrate that there can never be a behavioral profile that accurately determines an offender's race since African American and Caucasian serial killers behave in strikingly similar ways. Both kill for the same reasons and both become killers due to a comparable mix of biological and psychosocial elements. Obstinate poverty and plight may play a role as a causal factor in African American serial killings, but it is rarely the offender's sole motivation to commit serial murders. While African American serial killers do more often than Caucasian serial killers target elderly victims (Safarik et al., 2002), kill those known to them, use recreational drugs to lure their victims and arson to conceal their crimes, the underpinning desire to dominate and control others is shared by both sets of murderers (Yaksic, 2006).

Over the last decade, law enforcement agencies have continually improved their response to instances of serial homicide involving African Americans. The allegations of racial prejudice that have been leveled at one time against police organizations for taking crimes involving white victims more seriously have declined in recent years mainly because the demographics of today’s police force better reflect those of the community (Jenkins, 1993). Police regularly attend conferences and trainings that deal with techniques to pursue and apprehend serial homicide offenders and the impact that such offenders have on the community. Police are also now better equipped to link unsolved homicides due to better communication mechanisms and advances in DNA technology.

Those who report on the instances of serial homicide have been accused of ignoring matters that involve race due to its demonstrative and controversial nature. In response to these claims, researchers have collected hordes of empirically collected data on African American serial killers in recent years (Jenkins, 1993; Walsh, 2005; Peterson, 2006; Yaksic, 2006; Branson, 2012; Cottrell, 2012; Fox, 2012; Aamodt, 2013; Hickey, 2013; McClellan, 2013; Lester and White, 2014). Others have highlighted case studies detailing the crimes of African American serial killers (Keppel, 1995; Kreuger, 1998; Leach and Meloy, 1999; Beasley, 2004; Kuhn and Coston, 2004; Morton, 2010; Reavis, 2011). The lives of two serial killers, one African American and the other Caucasian, have also been compared and contrasted (Wolf and Lavezzi, 2007).

It has been said that, in issues related to police and criminal psychology, it seems that people want simple answers and the media are happy to oblige this desire (Aamodt, 2008). Once the race of the ‘DC Snipers’ became known after weeks of national television coverage, media outlets realized the capabilities of African American serial killers and have covered these cases more liberally than in the past. The apprehension of Anthony Wayne Smith, the former Oakland Raider who stands accused of four Los Angeles area murders, ushered the media into concluding that serial killers can be of any race or occupation. The wide coverage received by suspected serial killer Darren Deon Vann alludes to a slow disintegration of the old adage that the media ignores black killers with black victims. In these instances, the media has determined, rightly so, that there are no simple answers when race and criminality intersect.

Coupled with the discovery of long dormant serial killers due to advances in DNA technology and the newfound interest from the news media, the sudden emergence and juxtaposition of Anthony Sowell and Michael Madison in Ohio has contributed to the appearance of a surge in murders committed by African American serial killers. After analyzing empirically collected serial homicide data, the results indicate that not only have African American serial killers existed alongside their Caucasian counterparts for all of history, but that the occurrence of serial murder itself is in decline (Fox, 2012; Aamodt & Surrette, 2013). Academic researchers agree that we are not in the throes of an African American serial murder epidemic. Rather, more attention is being paid to a once neglected subset of killer.

To refute and invalidate the persistent claim that African American serial killers are disadvantaged by inferior intelligence which dissuades them from engaging in serial murder campaigns, one must only analyze the recent case of Jason Thomas Scott. Scott's crimes are regarded as one of the "most complex" cases that Maryland law enforcement officials had seen as he engaged in a series of forensic countermeasures to ensure that he would remain at large. African American serial killers are every bit as capable as their Caucasian counterparts but they are also aided by societal stereotypes that benefit their longevity as killers. The acknowledgement of the presence of African American serial killers and their abilities will inevitably deliver with it better methods of detection and new measures of safety for the public.

References

Enzo Yaksic (2006) Can a Demographic Make you Psychopathic? (archive.org)

Eric Hickey (2013) Serial Murderers and Their Victims

Joe Kuhns and Charisse Coston (2005) The Myth That Serial Murderers are Disproportionately White Males in Bohm and Walker's Demystifying Crime and Criminal Justice

Philip Jenkins (1993) African Americans and Serial Homicide

Vernon Geberth (2012) Black Serial Killers: The Perception Versus Reality

James Alan Fox (2012) Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder

Robert Ressler and Ann Burgess (1985) FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin The Men Who Murdered

Robert Morton and Mark Hilts (2008) Serial Murder: Multidisciplinary Perspectives for Investigators

Janet Warren, Robert Hazelwood and Park Dietz (1996) The Sexually Sadistic Serial Killer

Gordon Leach and John Reid Meloy (1999) Serial Murder of Six Victims by an African American Male

Mark Safarik, John Jarvis and Kathleen Nussbaum (2002) Sexual Homicide of Elderly Females : Linking Offender Characteristics to Victim and Crime Scene Attributes

Anthony Walsh (2005) African Americans and Serial Killing in the Media: The Myth and the Reality

Veronique Anitra Peterson (2006) The Emergence of a New Phenomenon:

African American Serial Killers in the United States, 1935-2005

Allan Branson (2012) African American Serial Killers: Over-Represented Yet Underacknowledged

Justin Cottrell (2012) Rise of the Black Serial Killer: Documenting a Startling Trend

Michael Aamodt (2013) Radford/Florida Gulf Coast University Serial Killer Database Research Project

Janet McClellan, In Press, African American Serial Killers

David Lester and John White (2014) A Study of African American Serial Killers

Robert Keppel (1995) Signature Murders: A Report of Several Related Cases

Linda Lou Kreuger (1998) in Steve Egger’s The Killers Among Us: An Examination of Serial Murder and Its Investigation

James O. Beasley II (2004) Serial Murder in America: Case Studies of Seven Offenders

Joe Kuhn and Charisse Coston (2004) Lives Interrupted: A Case Study of Henry Louis Wallace, an African American Serial Murderer in Rapidly Expanding Southern City

Robert Morton (2010) Cross-Cultural Comparison of Two Serial Sexual Murder Series in Italy and the United States

James Reavis (2011) Serial Murder of Four Victims, of Both Genders and Different Ethnicities, by an Ordained Baptist Minister

Barbara Wolf and Wendy Lavezzi (2007) Paths to Destruction: The Lives and Crimes of Two Serial Killers.

Michael Aamodt (2008) Reducing Misconceptions and False Beliefs in Police and Criminal Psychology

Michael Aamodt and Michael Surrette (2013) Is the decline in serial killing partially explained by the decrease in “free range kids?” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology, Ottawa, Canada