True crime is a very popular media subject but he got caught, had shitty grades and was just a loser mama's boy. Stuff always describes him as this dreamy handsome genius but he got caught and came off as completely ingenuine.
>>18407426Smart by what metric
>>18407426Above average? Yes. Genius? hell no.
I'll add, his infamy as a serial killer carries him hard. I don't think his looks would carry him quite as far in 2026 as they did in the 70s. It's a completely different world
>>18407732who was the smartest serial killer?
>>18407735I dunno 70s style aesthetics are coming back in a big way. I bet zoomettes will start wearing bell bottoms any time now.
>>18407426He was white, and of the educated well-spoken type rather than white trash, and he wasn't a fag like Dahmer. This collection of traits makes him appear very sophisticated, calculated, and in-control. It's found in media as well for the 'psychopath who's always a step ahead' trope, see Hannibal Lecter, Hans Landa, Anton Chigurh, and the Joker.
>>18407753iirc Ed Kemper had genius IQ or something like that.
>>18407753I don't think IQ necessarily correlates with success at killing people. Some are incredibly dull but crafty and got high body counts.
>>18407426most successful serial murders are due to police incompetence
I think basically, people WANT his story to be that of handsome intelligent genius who is secretly a deranged psycho. That's how they want the story to be. In reality, and even one of the prosecutors I believe said the same thing - the guy was just a violent thug who preyed on sympathy and then just smashed them in the head with a hammer. It's not clever or interesting really. He's just a disgusting thug.
>>18408421>hadhe's still alive you know
>>18409173That's kind of the modern cope. The truth is he was very careful in his first few murders, I honestly don't think they would have been able to convict him in the first handful. They didn't have the physical evidence, he started confessing in the 3rd person later. He was barely on the radar till months later when he started using his real name in broad daylight at the lake (arrogance, stupidity, or just not caring, who knows).
>>18409173You only need two things to be a successful serial killer: mobility, and low priority targets. For example, if you are trucker, who likes prostitutes, but you don't like to actually paid them, you can get away with it for a long time. The police may actually suspect it was you all along, even after they caught you (because the killings stopped), but cannot link it to you because you were too mobile, the targets too isolated, shunned, and scorned.
>>18407426He was good at not getting caught while murdering people, seems like he did some research on how forensics were done. That's it though. He was not at all good at manipulating the police and court, and his escape was 100% on the judge:>He had elected to serve as his own attorney, and as such was excused by the judge from wearing handcuffs or leg shackles
>>18408421Eddie is my favorite because he really highlighted how serial killers just get away with it through police incompetence. He was incredibly successful and only stopped because he got so despondent that he turned himself in.
>>18407753Ted Cruz also known as The Zodiac Killer he could predict the assassinations of both Trump and Charlie Kirk on April 2024https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/search/image/3hJ1n-90Q2yqbq8Jc5tl4A/
>>18409165BTK was borderline retarded.
>>18410455He seems average in most regards. Married man with kids, He wasn't even in consideration as a suspect as far as I know, until he decided to start messing around again with the floppy disk.
