Killers usually don’t want to be caught, and abducting and murdering strangers typically isn’t an impulsive act.
It would be nice to think these twisted psychopaths could be deterred by fear of capture, but historically that wasn’t the case. Threat of consequences wasn’t enough to overcome their conscious and subconscious impulses. Studies showed even the death penalty didn’t deter murderers.
Anecdotes from medieval England of pickpockets working crowds at public hangings reinforce that point; obviously those executions didn’t deter thieves, but they prevented recidivism.
Could that change if capture was certain?
Whoever abducted and murdered Susan Wolfe, 25, a University of Texas nursing student, in 1980 probably thought he was in the clear. But detectives have matched crime scene DNA to a guy named Dick Brewer, now 78, who admitted being in Austin at the time before clamming up. (Read story here.) The law presumes him innocent until he’s convicted in a court of law.
In 1973 the husband of Nadine Fischer, 31, a California housewife, returned home from work to find she’d been raped and murdered. Her killer probably thought cops would never find him. But DNA tracing led detectives to an Idaho resident named Michael Mullen, now 75, who’s in jail pending extradition to California. (Read story here.) The law presumes him innocent until he’s convicted in a court of law.
The Long Island serial murders between 1996 and 2011 were one of America’s most publicized unsolved serial murder cases. New DNA methods identified the victims and led detectives to a suspect (read details here). That’s also how the Golden State series of murders and rapes between 1974 and 1986 were solved (details here).
The number of serial killers is dropping (story here and chart below), probably for various reasons (see story here). It’s hard to say if a higher probability of being caught will have any deterrent effect. But as these cases illustrate, from now on killers can never rest easy nor feel comfortable that knock on the door will never come.
