One Less Monster

Em Carpenter

Em was one of those argumentative children who was sarcastically encouraged to become a lawyer, so she did. She is a proud life-long West Virginian, and, paradoxically, a liberal. In addition to writing about society, politics and culture, she enjoys cooking, podcasts, reading, and pretending to be a runner. She will correct your grammar. You can find her on Twitter.

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8 Responses

  1. Brandon Berg says:

    Interesting article here on the apparent rise and decline in serial murder in the United States:

    https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/what-explains-the-decline-of-serial-killersReport

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Brandon Berg says:

      I edited this comment and it didn’t get sent to moderation. Has there been recent change to the spam filter?Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Brandon Berg says:

      Besides there being more helicopter parents, there seems to be fewer dysfunctional families. Many serial killers and victims of serial killers seem to have come from dysfunctional backgrounds. So where you had a lot of kids kicked out of there homes in the past for being LGBT or being just different, this doesn’t happen as frequently anymore.Report

  2. Brandon Berg says:

    Huh. Now it’s in moderation. I definitely saw my link comment in an incognito window after I edited it, though.Report

  3. Oscar Gordon says:

    It’s telling that if a person is murdered and police can not link a motive to that death, the chance of the murderer getting caught is pretty low. Avoid creating a pattern and the chance of being caught drop even further.

    Also, for all the power of forensic science, it still has glaring flaws and it depends initially on humans finding evidence to test. If those humans are not motivated to find that evidence…Report

    • Em Carpenter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Yeah. I didn’t want to include this in the piece because I hate that it matters, but he chose were mainly marginalized women who he assumed wouldn’t be missed, sex workers and addicts. In his interview with The Cut he says so explicitly.
      The fact that several remain Jane Does sadly proves him right.Report

  4. Jaybird says:

    This is one of the things that we want police *FOR*.

    A sufficiently motivated and sufficiently insightful actor can easily figure out how to game the system, I guess.Report