What’s Wrong with Philip Markoff’s Serial Murder Case

1. No sex

Ted Bundy had sexual relations with the corpses of victims, both John Wayne Gacy and Dennis Rader (the BTK killer) tortured their victims as part of their pre-murder routine. All the truly horrible serial killers have the sexual angle to their murders, it’s a part of what makes them monstrous in the eyes of the public. The taboo subject of sex makes the case tantalizing and intriguing even if in the bloody car-wreck way. Note how the media has been stressing the fact of one victim being a masseuse, and the possibility of Markoff having collected his victims’ underwear. This is to get people to pay attention, and perhaps even proves that your average citizen has more in common with the perverts than they think. 

Image via Wikipedia

2. No dismemberment or cannibalism

This story contains none of the grisly details that allow people to feel like they have put a monster behind bars and are thus safer. Without bizarre and outlandish details as with Jeffrey Dahmer or Ed Gein, nobody gets to feel morally superior to some evil, “sick” predator. A big part of tabloid-news appeal is the moral certainty, being able to presume judgment on somebody else. Tabloid newspapers tell you who is bad, and do their best to ensure that you, the reader, are able to feel better than somebody else on the basis that you are not them. 

Image via Wikipedia

3. He isn’t weird-looking

Apart from Ted Bundy, all the major serial killers were creepy-looking, creepy-acting people. Gacy used to dress up in a clown costume, possibly the creepiest get-up known to man. Markoff, who has not yet been found guilty by a jury, does have an odd, vacant look on his face in recent photos, but for the most part he seemed to have been fairly normal in appearance and behavior. Child molesters, also, tend to be easily stereotyped by appearance. It is possible that due to being ostracized for their looks all these men turned to anti-social behavior. 

Image via Wikipedia

4. He is not an old guy

Gacy, Rader, along with Gary Leon Ridgeway and Dahmer were all over 30 at their respective killing peaks. Serial-killing in America, and mid-life, tend to go hand in hand. It could be that these men just had different symptoms for the same crises that other men face at the same period in life. Markoff, however, is a young man with a promising future. Some men have their mid-life crisis early, though, so I am not ruling him out, but his youth makes him seem less menacing, more like somebody’s kid, and thus robs the case of some sensation-value.

5. He used a gun

Guns are loud and dramatic in movies, but commonplace in American crime. Guns seem to belong to the tamer robbery-scenario than to the much-hyped, mysterious serial-killer one. It does things quickly without the blood-spatter and weirdness that sociopathic killers are supposed to provide to rubberneckers. Serial killers are supposed to use axes and scalpels and spend long hours in a basement with their victims talking to them making bizarre threats and taking breaks only to go dance around naked in front of a mirror.