Investigator Answers True Crime Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

I'm Jillian Peterson I'm a criminologist and former investigator let's answer some questions from the internet this is true crime [Music] support at becoming Jill asks isn't the spouse always the first suspect when it comes to women being murdered yes 35 to 50% of them are murdered by either a current spouse or partner or a former spouse or partner so if you can rule out things like a robbery gone back a drug deal gone bad a fight that escalated gang violence if you can rule all those things out definitely your next most likely suspect is going to be the spouse at Joi shei asked did you know that 1% of cold cases are solved our current clearance rate for murder in this country is only about 50% if you commit a murder it's kind of flip of the coin whether or not you get arrested for it our clearance weights are way down I think it has to do with we've seen such an increase in homicide the last few years and with that we've had a decrease just in the number of police officers we have it's a lot more than 1% of cases that are unsolved at brother grimbo asked did Jack the Ripper exist or was Victorian England just kind of stabby Jack the river did exist committed a series of really violent gruesome murders so as an example just to show what it was like during that period of time this is a news report from 1888 I think it really knows that Victorian in England was a rather stabby place during this period of time there's actually another serial killer who was operating at the time named Thomas cream he was convicted of poisoning nine or 10 people during the exact same period of time during his execution his final words are rumored to be I am Jack dot dot dot although he was actually in prison at the time of some of the murder so it really couldn't have been him and we still don't know exactly who Jack the Ripper is at MSL Simpson as my sister just sent me a message to say that she listened to a podcast and is going off to try to solve a murder who needs the police yes this is a thing where individuals listen to podcasts and they think I can solve this it's known as citizen sluth the January 6th riots a lot of the individuals who ended up being criminally charged or identified by cian sluth on social media trying to identify them in the case of the Gabby petito murder who was killed by Brian laundry her fiance she was missing for a long period of time it was really a group of young people on Tik Tok that started uploading videos of the park where she went missing the van was spotted and they were really able to locate her body and isolate where she was located however if you talk to most police officers they will say they do not like this movement of Citizen SLO that often times they can go down rabbit holes and end up accusing people who are truly innocent and that can really destroy lives at nurman man's 463 302 ask why do serial killers kill I want to study their brains so badly generally we can say there's three big categories one being power and control I think one example of a power and control serial killer might be somebody like the Zodiac Killer who was attacking primarily young couples it was really about murdering people who were kind of in the prime of their life one is a sexual motivation sexual fantasy the sexual fantasy category story is often people who are sexually aroused by violence or sexually aroused by having sex with bodies after they've killed them one example of somebody motivated by sexual fantasy would be Ted Bundy the third category would be a serial killer motivated by hallucinations good example of that would be like the Son of Sam killer who was motivated by delusions there has been some studies of mostly murderers brains we do see some differences particular particularly in an area called the amydala which is a part of the brain that controls things like fear and aggression it's hard to say that that's causal it's the brain that causes the behavior the behavior that causes changes in the brain but there does seem to be something there in some of these early studies at code Smith asks why have murders increased during the coid 19 pandemic we saw a massive spike in homicide during coid 19 the biggest year on-year increase in homicide we've ever seen since we started tracking this it was about a third increase or a 30% jump other forms of crime went down but homicide specifically spiked could be because people weren't working there was Financial strain there was stress there's also this thing that happened where George Floyd was murdered a lot of cities started pulling back their policing that's sometimes referred to as de policing so it's really hard to pull apart which of these factors was the main driver it was likely all of it at once at leap Perez Ray asks is # the best at murder in the whole world we are a standout when it comes to murder um if you look at other countries similar to ours so places in Europe Canada Australia most countries are under one homicide per 100,000 residents the United States is at 4.38 to we aren't the worst in the entire world there are other countries per capita in Latin America who do have a higher rate than places like Honduras Mexico Jamaica but when it comes to sort of similarly developed countries America really stands out at Trisha mckuin 13 ask could a psychopath grow through life without giving any sign or will there always be something that is a giveaway some we trait yes you can go through life and not know that someone is a psychopath you see high rates of psychopathy in Industries like the entertainment industry law enforce forcement law politics being a serial killer being violent committing crime is actually not one of the symptoms it's what we tend to think of when we think of psychopaths there really isn't anything like killing animals or setting fires that's going to be a tell if I was going to name one thing that might be a giveaway it would be a trouble reading other people's emotions and maybe mimicking back emotions without really feeling those emotions at thar yardi says okay can someone please tell me the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath please there's really no clear distinction sociopath is a word that was used more in the 80s and the 90s it's used less today it's used maybe by the media and in pop culture but as the criminology field we've really moved towards psychopathy being the thing that we look for that we can Define clinically that we know how to test for and so the field had just gone more in the direction of using psychopath as opposed to sociopath at David 7598 3862 asks so since the early 90s why have gun murder rate gone down while the number of guns has significantly increased I might disagree on this one our murder rate in the 90s was extremely high then we did see a big dip in the 2210 so it was sort of high in the 90s it went down and then the last five years and particularly last two years we've really seen it spark back up again during that period of time gun ownership increased in this country over time particularly the last couple of years so we now have more guns than people in this country about 120 Americans are killed by guns every day that would include homicides suicides accidents police shootings but about 120 people total at the flying nipple ask terrifying I wonder how many unexplained missing persons there are it's about half a million people a year go missing that is down from maybe a million a year back in the '90s but estimates are about 90% of them are found most of them are young people running away from home but 10% of that half million missing still leaves 50,000 people who are missing and unaccounted for every year CC1 ask real question what percentage of mass Shooters are male the answer is 98% of mass Shooters are male at truth or dare ask my question about these Mass Shooters is this why schools whether it's an elementary middle or high school what attracts you to kill children about 9919 2% of them are actually students at that school so this is people targeting their own school or they might be former students but most likely they're current students they're 15 16 years old my own research shows that these perpetrators come from homes with lots of violence and abuse they tend to study other perpetrators who are like them and feel like they're a part of them and then they target their own school because that's where they have the grievance against those are the people that they blame for their misery school shootings are designed to be final acts so perpetrators go in knowing they're not going to come out of it and in fact they want to be known for this they're craving that notoriety they want their name in the history books at snack time ask Murdoch murders is such a crazy series on Netflix like how in the world did these people get away with all of this Alex Murdoch has been convicted of killing his wife and his child and there's also other murders that he may or may not be guilty of including a housekeeper I think this is a good example of how in these small communities it can be really hard to have an independent criminal investigation especially if somebody who has a lot of status and Power in the town and it's really important that who's ever investigating a crime has absolutely no relationship with any of the suspects because once that starts getting mixed you see mistakes getting made and it could be a conscious bias but often times it's just unconscious because of the preconceived notions that you have about people at book marquinn asked do you not worry that all the criminology television programs that are on these days that the criminals will learn from it and avoid detection we've seen television programs having an effect on the everyday public we refer to this as the CSI effect in the criminal justice system where people sitting on juries have this expectation that they'll be you know carpet fiber from some foreign place that will help them identify the body and if that doesn't exist then they're more likely to acquit there's been one study that looked at this and they did not find a similar CSI effect for criminals it did not seem like they were learning from these programs and getting smarter at committing crimes likely because a lot of crime is maybe impulsive and not that well planned out so far we are not seeing that next question who was America's most prolific serial killer America's most prolific serial killer was named Samuel little he conf Fess to killing over 90 people this is a series of mug shots of Samuel little he was arrested by the police for various crimes but it was never put together that he was the one murdering all of these women he committed murder from about 1970 until 2005 his victims tended to be sex workers women addicted to drugs women living on the streets and his method was he tended to strangle these women it wasn't in until they eventually pulled Samuel Little's DNA that they were able to go back and connect him to all these previous crimes and then he confessed all of them he can be connected to for sure 50 or 60 or so of them but they think that all 90 of his confessions are legit puppet combo asked what kind of job would a serial killer have and if we look at patterns in the data there are some jobs that emerge as maybe over represented things like mechanics machinists you see a number number of truck drivers and police officers where it's maybe easier to get away with the crime the data on serial killers Is Not Great generally across the board just because there's so few of them and it's hard to study at tabas asks in light of the recent case of the nurse are female serial killers more likely to be in caring professions than not there's not that many female serial killers but of them there have been quite a few nurses a study recently published that looked at 16 different nurs is who had committed serial murder across the globe and across centuries and they did find that it tended to be poisoning and it tended to be go undetected for a long period of time because of the profession that they had this recent case I believe is referring to the British nurse who was just sentenced for killing seven newborn babies another example of a serial killer nurse is Kristen Gilbert who is an American nurse who was convicted of murdering four of her patients that were in her care I would not extend that to other caring professions I don't think there's a lot of Social Work serial killers but certainly when it comes to nurses we see it at Pat doc five ask what age do serial killers typically start killing people it's actually older than other forms of violence when it comes to serial killing they start mid to late 20s so it tends to be a bit of a later onset at dther 715 asked two questions who was the Zodiac Killer and why was it Ted Cruz ever caught there's a lot of people who have been accused of being the Zodiac Killer over time Ted Cruz is not one of them the Zodiac Killer committed a series of murders in Northern California in the 1960s at least five that they know of there may have been more this is a composite sketch of what they think the Zodiac Killer looked like based on a couple of the victims who actually survived there was one suspect that was named Arthur Lee Allen was a school teacher teacher but there was never enough evidence to actually link him to the crimes it was all circumstantial he did several years in prison for molesting children and then died in the early 90s so nobody was ever convicted of these crimes there was a number of unique things about the Zodiac Killer he sent letters that he demanded be printed in the newspaper he created these mathematical ciphers which were like these coded puzzles that he wanted people to spend time on trying to unravel one was was cracked about a week after it was published two are still unsolved and one was actually only cracked a few years ago 60 years after the crime a team of mathematicians cracked it the ciphers didn't give away his identity they basically just said I like killing all my victims will become my slaves and an afterlife it didn't give any additional Clues he was interested in making the public a part of these murders drawing people in forcing them to sort of play with these codes that he was publishing at big ball 0 179335 asks why do serial killers in prison get tons of marriage proposals from women this is a phenomenon I have worked on capital murder cases with people facing the death penalty and the more media coverage the case got the more letters those individuals would receive I think women who write these letters are romantically drawn towards this very dangerous person who has done these scary dangerous things I don't think these women are looking to themselves to get harmed but they are drawn to the fact that this person is capable of doing that level of harm at Colleen Ben asked does it seem like family annihilators are happening more often there was a spike of family annihilations in 2019 where we saw record levels and then it's come back town I think we hear about them more often through media and through social media and our exposure so it can feel like they're happening more often family Annihilation is when a man kills typically his wife his children and then usually himself all in one act we have about to 10 to 20 of those per year Family annihilations unfortunately are always something that has happened in history family annihilators are typically men they're a bit older 40s maybe 50s Elementary School aged children they tend to have a history of domestic violence and suicidality they are suicides in addition to being homicides but they're these kind of angry suicides where it's I'm not just going to kill myself I'm going to make sure my wife and children come with me so they don't get to exist without me so there's a level of I think control that comes with committing that sort of violence at Dana blankenhorn asked why did Jeffrey dmer eat people he was a serial killer who after he had killed someone he would take apart their bodies body parts were found in the freezer in various states of Decay and then he would actually admitted to eating their bodies Jeffrey dmer has been asked about this on a few different occasions and I think there's one theory that this is really about complete dominance and control over your victims you can't be more dominant over something than to consume it then there's been some recent reports lately that said it was maybe more about actually connecting with the victims that he was very lonely and consuming his victims allowed him to kind of be a part of those victims at ml tanova asks if Ted Bundy were killing in this gen he wouldn't make it too far everyone has phones that have emergency features drones and satellites could track him cars are traceable today's forensics and DNA tracing is incredible Etc serial killing really peaked in the 70s 80s and early 90s then we've seen just this massive fall where there are now very few serial killers today that's because of advances in all sorts of Technology primarily DNA also we've just changed our Behavior not a lot of people are going going hitchhiking these days and getting in cars of strangers and if you did you'd certainly text someone to say you were there so I agree that Ted Bundy would not get away with serial killing these days at metal dad asks who else thinks missing hikers isn't Just A Series of Unfortunate accidents most of those cases are people who fall or there's accidents but a number of people are not recovered and there is actually a number of serial killers of murders where it took place while somebody was hiking it makes me think of the Gabby petito murder who was killed by her fiance Brian laundry when they were out hiking and this makes me think about this theory of crime it's called routine activities and it's where you have a motivated offender a suitable Target and then a lack of capable Guardianship and so hiking is kind of your perfect example of a total lack of guardianship there's nobody around for Miles there's no cameras often time there's no cell coverage you can easily dispose of a body you can make it look like an a in those are all the questions for today those were some great questions thanks so much for watching True Crime [Music] support

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Keywords: crime, crime faq, crime questions, crime support, crime tech support, criminal law, criminologist, criminology, detective, innovation, jillian peterson, ott tech support, science & technology, tech support, true crime, true crime questions, true crime shows, true crime tech support, true crime tv, true crime wired, wired, wired tech support, wired true crime

Id: 5iTZ_jZ63_Q

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2023