Estimating the number of serial killers that were never caught

TL;DR

This paper estimates the number of serial killers in the 20th century who were never caught, using statistical distributions and life tables, concluding there were about seven such killers with some having over sixty murders.

Contribution

It introduces a novel estimation method combining murder count distributions, inter-murder intervals, and life tables to estimate uncaught serial killers.

Findings

Approximately seven uncaught serial killers in the 20th century.

The most prolific uncaught killer likely committed over sixty murders.

Method provides a new way to estimate hidden criminal populations.

Abstract

Many serial killers commit tens of murders. At the same time inter-murder intervals can be decades long. This suggests that some serial killers can die of an accident or a disease, having been never caught. We use the distribution of the killers by the number of murders, the distribution of the length of inter-murder intervals and USA life tables to estimate the number of the uncaught killers. The result is that in 20th century there were about seven of such killers. The most prolific of them likely committed over sixty murders.