Compare And Contrast Radder And Ridgway

Although there has been a recent awareness of serial killers and development of entertainment using serial killers it is still a rare occurrence. Schmid states that Serial murders account for less than or equal to 2 % of all homicide (2005). In addition, since there are many types of murder one needs to know a proper definition of a serial killer. According to Culhane there are three different elements that define a serial killer these elements are (1) three or more victims; (2) three or more occurrences; and (3) an emotional ‘cooling off’ period in between the killings. Using the definition provided by Culhane two serial killers were chosen to be study in this paper. These two serial killers are Dennis (BTK) Rader and the green river killer,

As already stated Rader had a normal childhood and was loved by his parents which is a rare background for serial killers because most of them have horrible childhoods. For Ridgway though his childhood was typical of that compared with other killers. He was abused mentally, physically and sexually by one parent and abandoned by the other. The types of people that Dennis Rader and Gary Leon Ridgway targeted were different. BTK first targeted a family than switched to killing middle class females who were more likely to be reported missing. Whereas, the Green River Killer killed females who were less likely to be reported missing such as prostitutes, runaways, and drug addicts. Furthermore, the Green River Killer killed forty-two victims and BTK only killed ten. Another difference is that BTK stopped killing for several years and Ridgway only took short breaks from his killings. In addition, Rader was not caught until 31 years after his first murder and Ridgway was caught 21 years after his first murder. the police never suspected Rader until the end even though he taunted them and sent letters to them with hidden information about who he was inside. On the other hand, they suspected Ridgway for a while but never had enough evidence to arrest him besides that he cooperated with the