ABSTRACT
The most significant aspect of the recent work is that finally there have been attempts
to quantify the activity of such offenders. The need for such research has been amply clarified by the recent media panic about this topic, in which quite reputable authori ties placed the number of serial murder vic tims at anywhere between one and twenty percent of American homicides. The Justice Department study suggested that during the 1970s and early 1980s there might have been about thirty-five serial killers active at any given point. The figure can be challengedeither as excessive or too conservative-but the attempt to quantify this activity was an important innovation. Fox and Levin (1985) attempted to examine all cases of multiple homicide in the United States between 1974 and 1979, in a project whose detailed conclu sions remain to be fully published.
