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city’s bloodiest, most gruesome
crimes began to be documented,
disseminated, and commercially
exploited. The Penny Dreadful,
a cheap 19th-century publication
featuring sensational stories of
the most grisly murders, appeared
in weekly instalments and was
devoured by the British public.Diaries and records
By the 1950s, cameras and
recording devices were widely
affordable, and serial murderers
could create their own record of
their crimes. Aroused by the
images of bound, scantily clad
women on the covers of detective
magazines, serial murderer Harvey
Glatman abducted, tied up,
photographed, and then murdered
at least three women in California.
Once apprehended, Glatman’spictures were reprinted in the
very detective magazines that had
nurtured his own deviant fantasies.
Similarly, in England, in the 1960s,
“Moors Murderers” Ian Brady and
Myra Hindley, became the first
known compulsive killers to make
audio recordings of a victim. The
recording was played at their trial
and the court listened in silence to
harrowing evidence of the pair’s
torture and abuse of 10-year-old
Lesley Ann Downey.
Serial killer cases continued
to be covered in the media. Shortly
after this, on the West Coast of the
US, a killer calling himself “the
Zodiac” sent proof of his crimes to
newspapers in the San Francisco
area, accompanied by strange
codes and letters threatening to
commit further carnage if he did
not receive front page coverage.Five years after the Zodiac’s last
letter in 1974, the televised trial
of Ted Bundy – the superficially
charming killer of American college
girls – shattered popular notions
of serial killers as ugly monsters.
Bundy looked like the kind of
upright, young man many parents
would want their daughter to meet.
Bundy’s trial overlapped with the
pioneering research of the Ressler-
era Behavioral Science Unit in
Virginia, which began to offer serial
killer profiles to police agencies
across the western world.
By the 1980s, serial murder
rates were at an all-time high. The
most notorious cases of the late-
1980s and 1990s included Andrei
Chikatilo in Russia and Jeffrey
Dahmer in the US, as well as Fred
and Rosemary West and Harold
Shipman in the UK. ■SERIAL KILLERS
1971–78
1971
1968– 69 1998
1990
1983– 86
1978– 81 1999
In northern California,
seven people are
murdered at the hands
of the Zodiac,
an unknown serial
killer who sends
cryptic messages.English doctor Harold
Shipman is arrested for
murdering elderly
patients by injecting
them with lethal
doses of drugs.In Russia, Andrei
Chikatilo is arrested after
initially being
discounted as the
culprit in dozens
of murders.DNA evidence links
local baker Colin
Pitchfork to two
separate murders in a
small English village.Fred and Rosemary West
sexually torture and
murder their first shared
victim at their home in
Gloucester, England.Jeffrey Dahmer
murders and
dismembers 17
young men in Ohio
and Wisconsin.Sadist John Edward
Robinson commits the
last of eight murders,
luring women through
online chat rooms.Using various
disguises, Ted Bundy
targets female
college students
across seven
US states.260-261_Timeline_7.indd 261 13/01/2017 15:36