Eric Hick's Point Of View Of Serial Killing

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Throughout the late twentieth century serial killing has become a “potent public symbol’ in society. Serial killing is a form of homicide which occurred when an individual has killed more than two people in different locations who are unknown to the serial killer, in between each homicide the serial killer will take what is known to police as a ‘cooling off’ period. This term is also excepted by academic researchers, this term also allows both parties to have a useful frame of referencing when making a framework of each death. Eric Hickey describes s a serial killer as an individual ‘who through premeditation killed three or more individuals over a period of days, weeks, months or years’ (Hickey 1999:56).

However it also narrows the analysis of such crimes. For example many police and researchers ignore that serial killers such as Dennis Nielson or Fred and Rosemary West knew most of their victims and they also killed them in the same location. Dennis Nilson killed all his victims in north London and Harold Shipman, who is Britain’s most prolific serial killer who killed many elderly patients who he had known professionally has he was their doctor for many years. According to Mark …show more content…

For example Eric Hickey believes their has been a huge increased in serial killing in England since the 1960s because of ‘true crime’. Leyton has different views and believes that explosion in the ‘rate of production of these most modern killers’ in the late 1960s (Leyton 1989: 363). Leyton carries on to say that the statistics on serial killers in England are false and there has been no increase in the numbers of serial killers. Other researchers such as Jenkins believe that there are some exaggeration in the statistics on serial killing in England as there are some murders that are counted twice. (Jenkins 1994:

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