Criminologist States: Serial Killers Responsible for Nearly Ten Times More U.S. Deaths Than Records Show

A press release on Newswise.com from the University of Indiana states that criminologist Kenna Quinet has an article published recently in Homicide Studies journal. The article is titled The Missing Missing: Toward a Quantification of Serial Murder Victimization in the United States. Quinet states that current records that estimate the number of deaths in the United States committed by serial killers are wrong. According to Kenna, the correct figure is nearly ten times more than previously estimated.

Quinet is an associate professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. She believes the figure is incorrect because of the lack of data about groups of people such as: prostitutes, transients, and run-away teens. The estimates of the number of serial killer victims ranges from 67 to 180 per year. Quinet states that the conservative estimate should add 182 to those figures, but that her research shows that the number of victims could be as high as 1832. She also states that this figure represents a group of people like the ones above who have not been included in the previous estimates.

Quinet, who is a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, published research in 1990 that showed that previous figures had been grossly inflated. However, she nows says that the pendulum swung too far the other way and that incomplete data ( that leaves out the groups of people mentioned above) is distorting the estimate.

Part of the problem , according to Quinet, is that there is not enough investigation done to find the missing links. She believes that the missing links include: murder victims who are never found , victims who are found but not identified, and people who disappear but are never reported as missing.

Quinet's research was done by applying the data about serial killers and their victims to the data about missing persons, U.S. death figures, and hospital death census figures. She also uses data that she finds about the "missing missing", which is the term she uses for those people who were never reported as missing.

One of the largest groups of victims who are under-reported is the "misidentified dead". In this category are hospital patients and nursing home residents who are reported to have died from natural causes, but are actually victims of "medical murderers". There have been some instances of this discovered and reported in the news, but Quinet and her co-authors James Alan Fox and Jack Levin have written a book titled The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder, in which they state that they estimate 500-1000 people to die this way every year.

Another case mentioned in the press release involves a Washington Green River serial killer. In this case, one third of the serial killer's victims had never been reported as missing. Quinet states that the victims were removed from the police missing-persons databases or they were never identified. This is a sticking point for Quinet, who states that issues such as this "infuriates" her. According to Quinet, this is like saying that some deaths don't matter as much as others.

Quinet hopes that her research will help criminologists to design better surveillance systems and that it will be used to help police to prevent murders. She states that this could be done by police directing more of their available resources to "protecting forgotten groups such as prostitutes, runaways, and homeless people".

According to the press release, Quinet intends to develop a database detailing the known facts about the victims of serial killers. She hopes to discover what, if any, personality traits or details the victims have in common.

Another goal for Quinet is to use this research to make policy recommendations for the Department of Justice.

Sources Used:
Newswise.com
Serial Killers May Kill More Victims than We Think
www.newswise.com/articles/view/535869