Serial Killer Victims Characteristics

Serial Killer Victims

 

We know that a serial killer is a person who commits a series of unlawful killings of two or more victim, in separate events,  often with no apparent motive and typically following a characteristic, predictable behaviour pattern.

But what do we know about their victims? How does a serial killer select his victims? This question is a very broad one as each serial killer selects his victims differently. Some motivated by hate, revenge, childhood trauma and so many other reasons.

There are extensive articles and researches done on the victim typology. One of the most extensive research is done by Dr Aamodt, M. G. (2016, September 4)

What is easy to extract is of course race, gender and age.

 

Victim Race

 

We often hear about the most famous serial killers (i.e Ted Bundy, Golden State Killer, Green River Killer, Jeffrey Dahmer etc) which even if they had a very diverse victim typology, the victims’ race was white. However, research shows that serial killers target every race, although white victims have a much higher percentage. Bellow you can see the breakdown of serial killer victims by race for the last century and only United States as researched by Dr Aamodt from Radford University.

Race	Number of victims	Percentage %
White	6678	67,41%
Black	2345	24,94%
Hispanic	670	7,22%
Asian	166	1,80%
Native American	48	0,52%

Source: Radford University/FGCU Serial Killer Database

 

Victim Gender

 

Historically, victim gender has been examined in two different ways:

1. counts of known victims by gender
2. counts of the number of cases resulting in female and male victims (i.e., counts of the number of offenders who killed females, males, or both)

Based on Dr Aamodt’s research, studying known serial killers and victims, you can see bellow a pie breakdown of number of victims by gender. You can see that per total, though it is a popular belief that women are the ones mostly targeted by serial killers, the numbers are actually almost the same. Yikes!

Serial Killer Victims By Gender

Source:  Dr. Mike Aamodt Radford University/FGCU Serial Killer Database

 

Victims by Race and Gender

 

When we look at the data available and combine these two characteristics: gender and race, the breakdown looks like this:

 Serial Killer Victims By Gender & Race

Source: Dr. Mike Aamodt Radford University/FGCU Serial Killer Database

 

But if we look at the data starting first with the race and then by gender, the breakdown looks like this:

Serial Killers Victims By Race and Gender

Source: Dr. Mike Aamodt Radford University/FGCU Serial Killer Database

You can see that when it comes the Hispanic and Asian victims, both have higher male victims. For black victims, numbers are almost equal, and as for white victims, there are more female victims than male.

 

Victim Age

 

When it comes to age, we can definitely say that no age is excluded. As per the table bellow, you can see that victims at the hand of serial killers range from 1 to 100. Yes. That’s right. No one is safe.

Victim Age	Number of Victims	Percentage %
<1	147	1.35%
1	50	0.46%
2	55	0.51%
3	56	0.52%
4	54	0.50%
5	51	0.47%
6	52	0.48%
7	55	0.51%
8	62	0.57%
9	90	0.83%
10	68	0.63%
11	72	0.66%
12	103	0.95%
13	121	1.11%
14	157	1.45%
15	214	1.97%
16	245	2.26%
17	280	2.58%
18	343	3.16%
19	363	3.34%
20	321	2.96%
21	335	3.09%
22	363	3.34%
23	289	2.66%
24	302	2.78%
25	282	2.60%
26	286	2.63%
27	278	2.56%
28	216	2.99%
29	262	2.41%
30	255	2.35%
31	199	1.83%
32	199	1.83%
33	180	1.66%
34	189	1.74%
35	211	1.94%
36	192	1.77%
37	171	1.58%
38	178	1.64%
39	149	1.37%
40	156	1.44%
41	129	1.19%
42	139	1.28%
43	122	1.12%
44	119	1.10%
45	130	1.20%
46	123	1.13%
47	109	1.0%
48	99	0.91%
49	82	0.76%
50	112	1.03%
51	85	0.78%
52	100	0.92%
53	93	0.86%
54	76	0.70%
55	75	0.69%
56	69	0.64%
57	69	0.64%
58	66	0.61%
59	70	0.64%
60	79	0.73%
61	57	0.53%
62	63	0.58%
63	60	0.55%
64	59	0.54%
65	76	0.70%
66	43	0.40%
67	57	0.53%
68	53	0.49%
69	56	0.52%
70	33	0.30%
71	36	0.33%
72	62	0.57%
73	42	0.39%
74	39	0.36%
75	44	0.41%
76	37	0.34%
77	29	0.27%
78	38	0.35%
79	42	0.39%
80	37	0.34%
81	46	0.42%
82	37	0.34%
83	34	0.31%
84	21	0.19%
85	33	0.30%
86	24	0.22%
87	23	0.21%
88	13	0.12%
89	17	0.16%
90	15	0.14%
91	12	0.11%
92	5	0.05%
93	2	0.02%
94	4	0.04%
95	4	0.04%
96	0	0.00%
97	3	0.03%
98	1	0.01%
99	1	0.01%
100	1	0.01%

Source: Dr. Mike Aamodt Radford University/FGCU Serial Killer Database

So there you have it. Serial killer victims by gender, race and age.

If you are interested in more serial killer statistics, you can visit this page: Serial Killer Statistics