This is part of a Right Wing News Blog interview with forensic psychologist Dr. Helen Smith about children and teenagers that murder:
There’s a perception that serial killers are almost always white males. Is that the case?
It is a myth that with few exceptions, serial killers are white males. Black serial killers make up about 13% – 16% of all serial killers which is slightly higher than the 12% of blacks in the population. Remember that John Muhammad and Lee Malvo, the DC snipers, were both black. The reason that we don’t realize there are black serial killers is probably because the media does not cover them as often:
“Criminologist Scott Thornsley theorizes that the popular image of a serial killer is Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, not Wayne Williams, because the entertainment media, when portraying heinous murderers for the mass market, are reluctant to cast minorities in the roles.
