True Crime's a Popularity Contest: How Serial Killers Become Household Names (Exclusive) By Eli Frankel

Here’s a pop quiz: how many of the following names do you recognize?

Jeffrey Dahmer, Larry Eyler, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Ronald Domanique, Patrick Kearney, Lonnie David Franklin Jr., Charles Manson, Ed Gein.

Unless you’re a fanatical true crime historian, I’ll bet you did not recognize Larry Eyler, Ronald Domanique, Patrick Kearney or Lonnie David Franklin, Jr. 

And yet those four names represent some of the most prolific, horrifying serial killers in U.S. history. Why do you instantly recognize Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed 17 young men and boys, and not Ronald Domanique, who killed 21 young men and boys? Why do some killers gain national recognition and become a symbol of our greatest fears, while others quickly drift out of the headlines, their faces and victims largely forgotten?

The answer is complicated. If the media chooses to extensively cover a story it will gain much more traction, creating lore and cementing the killer’s notoriety in the public mind. If a city is terrorized by an active serial killer for a lengthy period — New York City and “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz, Los Angeles and “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez — memories will linger for decades, ensuring the killer’s name is repeated until it hits critical mass. Sometimes a book or documentary will revive the public’s fascination with a dormant case. And sometimes celebrity is the driving factor: OJ, Sharon Tate, Robert Blake, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. 

But there is another reason certain killers grip the public’s gaze and never let go. And it strikes at the heart of the modern mass fascination with true crime.

Despite our technological and social advancements, humans remain biologically wired for a different era — our primitive, ancient past. The relative safety and comfort of modern society has created a new reality in which we expect and generally don’t come into contact with other people intent on murdering us. While gun deaths — specifically mass shootings — have had devastating effects on society and instilled a pervasive fear, close-range, violent deaths by other means remain unexpected and a distant threat. We don’t crouch and tiptoe into the supermarket in fear of a knife-wielding madman. We don’t go to a music festival expecting to be clubbed over the head and left to die. We don’t go to a dinner party on guard for violence during the dessert course.

The reality was far different in early human history. Murder was a common occurrence, for survival, for territory, for social competition, competition over resources and sometimes just because we felt like it. Even within close, trusted groups, interpersonal violence was common. Long before the development of courtrooms, judges and law enforcement, punishment was meted out haphazardly within tribes of humans who lived with murder, expected murder. Over hundreds of thousands of years, we were hardwired to fear not only nature, animals, disease and famine and floods, but also other humans. It is in our primal wiring.

And deep within that terror of what others around us are capable of, is the knowledge that looks are deceiving. Someone who appears “normal” can be hiding a monster behind the mask, ready to make the transformation to killer at just the right opportunity. Our primal wiring has kept us alive by our mutual suspicion of each other, our awareness that some humans may kill us for dominance, or for our food or because they simply want to. Even the ones who appear safe. Especially the ones who appear safe. The challenge has always been, and continues to be, determining who among us hides a killer within. It is as inherent to our survival mechanism as hunger or thirst.

This deep implant of suspicion within our brain is not dormant, but modern society has dulled it with the façade of “safety.” Most of us have cell phones that can dial 911 instantly. There are police stations blocks away, there are security guards, metal detectors, pepper spray, CCTV cameras, courtrooms to adjudicate serious disputes and comfort in the belief that vicious killers are far and few between.

The crucial component common to the infamous serial killers we all know and grew up fearing, is the combination of “normalcy” and horror. When the monster appears ordinary, socialized, comfortable among other people — just like us — we pay attention. When we are faced with “a seemingly normal guy on the block who buried 20 bodies in his crawlspace,” our primal wiring lights up, responding to that repressed fear of the people around us, the people we interact with every day, the people we walk by in our apartment building, or sit next to on the subway.

What is the headline of each widely known serial killer? Ted Bundy was a handsome, charming lawyer, but was secretly… John Wayne Gacy dressed up as a clown and entertained the kids, but was also … Charles Manson and his followers looked like just another hippie commune but then they … Rex Heuermann was an architect in New York City and went out drinking with his coworkers but in the basement of his suburban home … Jeffrey Dahmer was a lanky, soft-spoken nerd but in his plain, one-bedroom apartment … Every descriptor reads the same: the monster lurking among us, seemingly one of us, but hiding something terrible. 

Ed Gein appeared to be a mild-mannered farmer who did odd jobs around his Wisconsin small town in the 1950s. Everyone knew him. He even visited neighbors’ homes for dinner. He was also digging up graves, murdering local women and sewing a suit out of human skin. His bizarre activities shocked the nation, but it was the appearance of normalcy combined with that horror that is the intrinsic part of his legend. That’s what people remember — not only did he do unthinkable things, he appeared harmless for so many years by everyone in the community. 

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Ed Kemper murdered 8 people, including his own mother, in the early 1970’s. But for decades after his conviction, Kemper remained relatively unknown. Then, in 2017, the television series Mindhunter premiered on Netflix, and reintroduced the public to the 6’9” behemoth, sending his name and story into internet infamy. What fascinates so many about Kemper in Mindhunter and in a YouTube series of interviews he conducted a decade after his killing spree, is his self-awareness.

Articulate and coldly honest, he conducts a clinical dissection of his own serial killer’s mind in service of understanding the psychopathy of all serial killers. Kemper becomes his own psychologist, his own profiler, and his insights feel like a one-time backstage pass into the serial killer’s mind. Engrossing and eye-opening, his compelling insights lay in unsettling contrast to the senseless, tragic acts of murder he committed. Ed Kemper is the embodiment of the normal/monster duality which connects us to our most base fear.

True crime is our psychological wrestling with the innate knowledge of the human capacity for murder. Unlike other animals, humans don’t just kill. We have intent, we make moral choices. We murder. Every time a true crime podcast or documentary sends a chill down our spine, we are receiving an ancient signal from deep within. “Nobody suspected a thing,” the critical line that invades our mind, haunts our dreams and connects us to that base fear of the people around us. The more a killer’s profile presents both a façade we know and a horror we cannot begin to understand, the more popular they become. True crime fans are ultimately connected not to the capture of the killer, the trial and the imprisonment. They are connected to the profile of the killer themselves, the duality of normalcy and horror. 

So, the next time you watch a true crime documentary, download a podcast or read a book that makes your skin crawl, remember you’re not just responding to a disturbing story. You’re connecting to something that has been deeply implanted in you, a warning from your primitive ancestors to pay attention and learn.

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Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter by Eli Frankel is available now, wherever books are sold.