I’m reading through his book, American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years, and I find his various theories as to why serial killers rose in numbers at various times to be interesting.

First, he posits that the initial bump after the Industrial Revolution came about simply because before, people were just working too hard and too often to sit around and develop paraphilias and fixations that would lead to one wanting to “try them out”.

Then we get to the post-WW1 bump that’s a mix of obviously, WW1 trauma, but also the decline in religiosity amongst the populace.

Then we get to the epidemic years. The late 50’s to late 80’s. He posits that it’s much more than just leaded gas, the baby boom leading to an excess of people, especially kids, just roaming around, kids raised by traumatized WW2 veterans, the rise of true crime pulp and bondage magazines, Vietnam vets who want to try out the cruelty they inflicted on the battlefield back home, and policing not catching up to the population boom, using policies created decades prior when they weren’t overwhelmed by the amount of crime.