rtured and killed thirty three little boys and stored their remains under his house. David Berkowitz, a.k.a. the Son of Sam, stalked New York City from nineteen-sixty-seven to nineteen-seventy-seven. He claimed to have been following a voice from his dog that told him when and where to kill. Ted Bundy, who is believed to have killed at least thirty-four people, was charged for only three under his own defense- and in fact, he was commended by the judge for his own defense. He was put to death.
             With the combination of a very powerful media and a society fascinated with gruesome, sadistic crimes, modern serial killers have been put in the spotlight.
             Serial killers are a development of the industrial world; they really didn't "come about" until the late eighteen-hundreds when society was becoming modernized and the threat of the new age sort of displaced some individuals so much they felt they had to kill to get their point across to society. Jack the Ripper is probably the most notorious killer in history because he established the serial killer profile. Ripper set up a pattern for the new line of mass murderers who would follow in the tradition of a truly organized killer. He had a sexual obsession with prostitutes that led him to target complete strangers for a days work. When he was done, he laid his victim out in a ritualistic manner with various disemboweled items placed strategically on or around the victim's corpse.
             Of course, murder has been around for centuries, committed by under-educated thieves. No one was interested in meeting, and hearing about a poor peasant that slit someone's throat in a dark alley. But ever since the introduction of serial killers into our society, with their precision and strategy of the murder, the media became fascinated with these people, and so did society. So instead of killing or punishing these horrible people, we now have television networks arguing over movie rights to the killer&...