How we assign monikers has always fascinated me.

We give certain famous people nicknames that almost everyone in the country knows… Think “The King of Pop”, “The Greatest”, or “The Chairman of the Board”. Sometimes, the nicknames we give people even become as ubiquitous as their real names – if not more.

Peculiarly, we often reserve this type of moniker – a true nickname – for men. Outside of “The Queen of Soul” there aren’t too many women with nicknames that surpass their real names in terms of notoriety. Maybe “J-Lo” but that is just a condensed version of her full name.

Another type of nicknaming convention (which we do use for women) is the “one name” handle. A single word that, when spoken without context, conveys who is being talked about… “Kobe”, “Oprah”, and “Beyonce”. This differs from the celebrities that intentionally give themselves one name, like “Cher”, “Prince” or “Bono” in that most people know their real, full name but choose to go with the moniker. In addition to its gender neutrality, the “one name” handle is also more occupationally based. We tend to reserve it for our most famous entertainers, athletes, musicians, etc.

Then there are the “three-name” people… Those that are known by their first, middle and last names – all spoken together. This is almost exclusively reserved for one type of person: a killer.

But not just any type of killer… an assassin.

John Wayne Gacy aside (and we’ll get into this one in a bit), people that are known by three names are most often of the assassin ilk. “John Wilkes Booth”, “Lee Harvey Oswald” and “James Earl Ray” all come to mind.

For the run-of-the-mill murderer of Joe Schmo, we know them like we know most people (by their first and last names).

That is, until they become really notorious. Then they move into that “one name” category and stay there.

Manson. Bundy. Dahmer. Berkowitz.  

Without any context, most people react to these single names. Just as they would with “Kobe”, “Oprah” or “Beyonce.”  

But Manson, Bundy and Dahmer aren’t entertainers… In fact, their craft is probably as far away from “entertaining” as something can be. So why do we christen them like we do our most famous movie stars, athletes, and pop singers? Is it just because we hear their names on the news and other forms of media so often?

Maybe. But there are a lot of famous people that basically live on the news and their names aren’t so engrained in our psyche that they only need one. Furthermore, a lot of the serial killers that we only need a single name for did have other nicknames at one point, like the “Son of Sam” or the “Milwaukee Monster”. Eventually, though, their fame grew so much that their one name moniker eclipsed these nicknames in notoriety.

Even the only exception — “John Wayne Gacy” — makes sense because his first two names are the same as one of our legendary entertainers, so it naturally worked.  Nevertheless, the single word “Gacy” probably still stirs up the same emotions as his full name.

So, maybe there is more to it…

It’s no secret that true crime and investigative shows/movies are in a golden age. It seems like Netflix, Prime, and any other provider is putting out new “murder porn” every week (with each new show becoming more graphic than the last). And for good reason, the viewing numbers in the US for these types of shows are insane. We love them.

It’s also no secret that serial killing is a fairly “American” phenomenon. Sure, there are isolated cases and killers all over the globe, but the numbers don’t lie… most serial killers (both now and in the past) are American. Right now, it is estimated that world-wide there are around 5,000 serial killers still at-large, with over 2,000 of those residing in the United States.

Taking all of this into consideration, it’s pretty safe to then say that as a country: 1) we look at our serial killers of yesterday the same way that we do our most cherished celebrities; 2) we have an affinity for the drama that is serial killing and are inundated with murder porn content all the time, and; 3) we still have a lot of serial killers.

So why don’t we give modern serial killers the same treatment as Bundy, Dahmer or Berkowitz?

Why don’t we even know their names, much less know them so well that they just need a one-name moniker?

Where did the serial killers go?

Although 2,000+ serial killers may seem like a lot, data suggests that this is a reduction.

In the past 40 years, the number of serial killers – defined by the National Institute of Justice as those who commit two or more murders, often with a psychological or sexual motive – has fallen by nearly 85%. The FBI now claims that less than 1% of all killings are committed by a serial killer.

This flat reduction in counts may explain where the serial killers went… it also may even account for why we don’t fear (or revere) our serial killers like we used to. Perhaps there just aren’t enough out there for us to collectively fear (or admire) them.

However, when taking into consideration the recent wave of interest in this macabre profession, one would think that we would relish the few serial killers we do still have.

We should have a modern Bundy or Manson.

But we don’t.

Another explanation is that we have a much more limber news cycle today than we did during the reigns of Manson in the 1960s or even Ramirez in the 80s.

Today, it’s not even a 24-hour news cycle. That is almost an eternity – it’s more like a 4-hour news cycle. Maybe we don’t have the attention spans to follow a serial murder case (that can often take months or even years to crack)?

Again, this may be true, but we still have those “stop what you’re doing and watch” news moments… Events that captivate us beyond the typical news cycle. Some of them even involve killers, like our mass shootings. At the very least, the names of these perpetrators should be etched into our psyche.

We should have a one name moniker for mass shooters.

But we don’t.

In fact, we don’t even remember most of their names, we just know the location of their killings, i.e. Columbine, Las Vegas, Newtown, etc.

Maybe it’s just as simple as something like improvements in law enforcement and technology are making it more difficult for modern killers to get to the old “serial” levels. Perhaps they are caught before they can match Bundy’s body count.

Well, Samuel Little begs to differ… He was only recently apprehended in the mid-2010s after a multi-decade spree that left 60 dead. A number that more than triples Bundy’s body count and nearly tenfold that of the Manson family. It also took a lot longer to find him.

Likewise, the closest thing we have to a modern, infamous serial killer (who even has a nickname!) – the “Long Island Serial Killer”, or “LISK” – is currently still at-large and sitting around 20 victims. The police are nowhere close to finding him.

But this is where it starts to get a little worrisome…

Because it is, in fact, easier for serial killers to get away with their crimes today.

As the number of serial killers has fallen, so too has the rate of murder cases that have been solved (or “cleared”). In 1965 the national clearance rate for murder cases was 91%. Today it sits around 60%. In other words, serial killers get away with a murder about 40% of the time, as opposed to just 9% of the time when some of our most infamous killers were on the prowl.

Modern serial killers, like Little and LISK, have benefitted from this drop in clearance rate which can be attributed to a number of factors: increased expertise (modern serial killers have studied their predecessors’ mistakes and know how to fool the police), constrained resources (stagnant budgets make for a less talented detective hiring pool, particularly in low budget jurisdictions), increased social isolation (makes potential victims more vulnerable), and easier geographic mobility (which can make tracking killers more difficult and creates jurisdictional issues).

With more true crime content than ever before, municipal budgets shrinking, technological advances creating social isolation (not to mention a global pandemic) and more means of travel than ever before, it appears these factors will only metastasize.

Despite leaps in case-cracking technology, the clearance rate will only decrease.

We might not ever find out where our serial killers went.

We might not even learn their names.