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The content of Serial killers still at large was merged into Serial killer on 30 November 2013. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

Is it still a serial killer if the person is killed multiple people but under different circumstances 2601:40F:4000:66F0:A87B:2173:B958:F83E (talk) 21:01, 27 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the article, which answers your question. General Ization ^Talk 21:06, 27 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it does 197.188.234.242 (talk) 06:32, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yesterday, an IP made two edits to this page: this one, and this one. I wanted to make a note here on why I reverted them, in case someone tries to reinstate the content.

I'll deal with the edit second first. It relies on two sources: I'll call them newspapers.com 1 and newspapers.com 2. Both of these are clippings from the North-West edition of the Daily Post. At the top of the page, they say '1966', but off to the right they say '1996'. Digging a bit deeper to confirm the dates, it is very obvious that they are both from much later than 1966 - one of them is a review of a 1993 film, the other one is right above a review of a programme on Channel 4, which didn't start transmitting until 1982. They were both clipped by the same person, shortly before the edits were made - this could be an elaborate hoax/sneaky vandalism, or it could be an honest mistake on behalf of that person.

The first edit relies on a source that is more convincing - newspapers.com 3. It does genuinely seem to be from a 1967 newspaper, the Anniston Star, and it does use the phrase ""serial" killer" (the word 'serial' is in inverted commas in the source). The clip was made by the same person. For the purposes of demonstrating an earlier use of the phrase it would be a primary source, and using (as the original edit did) to assert that the other sources are wrong would be original research, but it does genuinely seem to be the case that the phrase was used in 1967. Perhaps someone might want to use it and craft some appropriate language around it. Girth Summit _(blether) 21:07, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The second edit is completely using inappropriate clippings, wrong dare as mentioned. I did look in Brophy's 1967 book, and he did mention the phrase, "serial murderers", as well as a "serial seducer", but no "serial killer" phrase was mentioned.--☾Loriendrew☽ ☏(ring-ring) 21:43, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but we are including in the paragraph the 1974 use of the term 'serial homicide', which seems to be later than this book, so the book's use of 'serial murderer' seems equally relevant. Also, the review shown in the clip does use the actual phrase 'serial killer', albeit with inverted commas around the word 'serial'. It does look like there might be something in that, but how best to use it without a secondary source I'm not sure. Girth Summit _(blether) 22:12, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

e.g., Aileen Wuornos is the "rare exception" because she killed in the woods not in the home. Yeah duh she was homeless? This is just sloppy writing. Tried to clean it up. Dimestorekarma (talk) 04:14, 26 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately I can't post a screenshot here, but under the female killers section, there's a paragraph that ends stating "40% of women kill for financial gain." The immediate next paragraph contradicts and confused the previous numbers and the ones it introduces Dimestorekarma (talk) 04:39, 26 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find it. Slatersteven (talk) 10:12, 26 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

A serial killer is someone who kills two or more people with a period of time between each murder. Not three, the FBI changed this in 2005. Could someone with authority to edit semi protected pages please fix this? ~2026-30907-39 (talk) 11:07, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]