ABSTRACT
Serial killers kill serially: one murder after another, each a variation and continuation of the ones before and the ones to follow, each an episode in the serial. Then, the police and the media identify a number of apparently disconnected murders as in fact a connected sequence and the logic of seriality unfolds: the discovery of further corpses, the next instalments in the killing, the investigation, the culprit’s apprehension, trial and even their life in prison. In turn, each killer is fitted into the yet wider serial of serial killing itself, with its stars, fact, fiction or both (Jack the Ripper, the vampire of Düsseldorf, Henri Landru and M. Verdoux, Norman Bates, Ian and Myra, Jeffrey Dahmer, Hannibal the Cannibal, the Wests) and its featured players, the police, victims, witnesses and acquaintances. And then there are television serials about serial killers: Millennium, Touching Evil, Headless, Serial Killers.
