Less Dead Victims - Victims of Serial Killers and Date Rapist

"Less Dead" Victims

Victims of serial killers and date rapist are considered "less dead" because predators choose their victims from groups that have been stereotype as less than suitable for society. Specific groups are looked at as low people of a community, those who have nothing going for them, the outcast, and the less desirable. "They are referred to as the "less-dead" because they were "less-alive" before their violent demise and now become "never-were". (Egger, K. 1996 p. 15, and S. Egger, 1998, p.6). Prostitutes, homosexuals, runaways, homeless, are some of the people that falls in this part of society.

Serial killers will choose victims they can have power over, people they can control and can easily dominate. These victims are prostitutes, homeless, missing children, run away teenagers, single women, elderly, homosexuals, and hospital patients. Serial killers will choose victims that they can have easy access to, people that will not draw attention to themselves.

Over the years serial killers have been made out to be heroes because of their victims being people that no one remembers, no one seems to care about. Society will separate from these less-dead victims because of what they represent. They see these types of victims as immoral, or a bad seed, drug addicts, prostitutes, people that the average person in a community does not want to associate with. Society will view these victims chosen life style as a reason they became a victim. Some will feel the victim got what he or she deserved based on the life style they were living.

Normally serial killers have no prior relations with their victim. Their victims may have similarities of other victims in that they are not able to defend themselves or not able to alert they are in danger, people that the serial killers can control. These victims are easy accessible and available; they are an easy target; they draw less attention to themselves and therefore draws minimum attention the crime itself. The "less-dead" victims are less likely to resist the predator, relatively easy to control and are the ones that no one will miss.

Society forgets to see these types of victims as human beings. They do not think about these victims being someone's daughter or son, a mother or father. Law enforcement fails to view these type cases as serious and they fail to follow through on any leads they may obtain. They do not spend much time on solving these type cases. If no family member pursues a continuance of the investigation, these cases are filed away as unsolved.

Part of the problem of not continuing to investigate the "less-dead" cases prior to 1987, was that there was not much time spent on missing person cases. There was not a system in place to track missing persons; therefore, they could not be linked to other cases