question: Why was there an increase/collection of serial killers in the 1970’s/1980’s and specifically concentrated on the West Coast/Pacific Northwest?
comment: I'm not sure there is a simple explanation. There are some theories but the true cause isn't known. Some of the theories include: * More places to hide (forests without extreme weather, even near large cities) * Easier to hide- very short days in winter mean more darkness--contrast to colder but brighter states in the Northeast * The last-stop theory (people go west and north until they need a passport; this is also part of the theories around our homeless population being so large proportionally) * When the murders where happening most frequently, Oregon and Washington in particular were newly urbanized and did not have the same sophisticated criminal tracking teams that bigger cities had * Copycat behavior * Culture of minding your own business was cited, perhaps because it would lead to less observation and reporting of strange behavior None of these are "true" explanations of why this was happening so frequently in the Pacific Northwest. It may be the case that more serial killers are identified here, and are just ignored or not found elsewhere, but I haven't heard that proposed as an important theory. As for the time period, that is when the baby boom reached maturity (1945-65 + 20 = 1965-85). Early 20s is when mental illness becomes most pronounced in males. So there were just a lot of young men around that time, compared to the total number of police and authorities. There was a crime wave in general. This happened again when Millennials came of age, but less pronounced, I suppose because they had Baby Boomers around to put them in jail (boomers just overwhelmed the generations before them for a variety of demographic reasons like war, immigration etc.).
passages: Having by this stage determined a definitive link between many of the murders committed within the previous year, investigators from the various jurisdictions where victims had been abducted or discovered had themselves begun sharing information in their collective hunt for the perpetrator. Six officers from three of the jurisdictions in which the Freeway Killer had most regularly either abducted or deposited the bodies of his victims formed a task force dedicated to the apprehension of the suspect or suspects who, as one of the officers upon this assembled task force later recalled, was striking at an average rate of once every two weeks in the spring of 1980.
   Several months after the McGowen shooting, a prolific burglar and serial rapist, then called the East Area Rapist and now dubbed the Golden State Killer, began invading and attacking people in their homes roughly north in Sacramento County, California. Based on witness descriptions of the Rapist and the method of operation used to carry out his crimes, Detective McGowen attempted to link the Ransacker crimes to the sexual attacks in the Sacramento-area. Both the Ransacker and the Rapist were described as young-looking, physically fit white males in their twenties.
   In 1985, a prosecutor in a neighboring county who had been dealing with a murder case, initially thought to involve SIDS, was told by one of his experts, Dr. Linda Norton, a forensic pathologist from Dallas, that there may be a serial killer in his area of New York. Norton suspected it after reviewing Steinschneider's report on the Hoyt case in which the Hoyts were not identified by name. When the prosecutor became the district attorney in 1992, he tracked the case down and sent it to a forensic pathologist, Michael Baden, for review. Baden concluded that the deaths were the result of murder.
   The third section centers around techniques that are used by the authorities to help them investigate serial killers. Offender profiling was employed in the Brian Arp, Paul Bernardo, and the still-unsolved Edmonton serial killer cases, while advances in DNA analysis resulted in cold case murders being positively attributed to Ronald West, Gerald Thomas Archer, and Alan Craig MacDonald. Crime-solving methods pioneered by Canada are then showcased; metal detectors were used to uncover Michael Vescio's discarded shell casings in what was the first instance of the devices being used to assist with a criminal investigation, while bite-mark analysis was used to help convict Wayne Boden in what was one of the earliest usages of forensic dentistry in North America. In 1998, Kim Rossmo used geographic profiling to discern the presence of a serial killer operating in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Rossmo's data, which the Vancouver Police Department refused to look into, was later vindicated by the arrest of Robert Pickton in 2002.
   In January–May 1988 police had recorded 349 calls to the Link Valley area, while in January–May 1989 they recorded 194 calls, a decrease by 44%.
   Despite such a record of violence, McGhee had received surprisingly little attention from the national media before this point, with barely any coverage in Southern California. In 2002, there would have only been 11 individuals alive in the United States who had committed more than 12 homicides. As "Los Angeles Times" reporter Jack Leonard put it many years later, "even in a city with more than 150 gang slayings a year, Timothy Joseph McGhee's murders stood out."
   The Capitol Hill massacre was the worst mass killing in Seattle since the 1983 Wah Mee massacre in which 13 died. While Seattle and the Pacific Northwest in the past half-century have had numerous serial killers—most notoriously Ted Bundy, "Green River Killer" Gary Ridgway, and Robert Lee Yates—mass murder is not as common, although the area has had several of them.
   David Meirhofer
  
  David G. Meirhofer (June 8, 1949 – September 29, 1974) was an American serial killer who committed four murders in rural Montana between 1967 and 1974 — three of them children.
  
  At the time of the crimes committed by Meirhofer, the FBI had actively been in the process of refining a method of psychologically profiling criminal offenders, and Meirhofer would be the first serial killer to be actively investigated using this technique.
   Mellor researched seventy-five cases for the book, but at the behest of the editors at Dundurn Press reduced the number of them included in it to sixty due to spatial constraints. Mellor later included two of the excised cases—the Montreal child murders of 1981-92 and the "Headless Valley" murders 1908-46—in the third issue of his online magazine "Serial Killer Quarterly".
  
  Section::::Synopsis.
   At this point, investigators began examining prior homicides in the area and found two previous cases, in 1978 and 1981, that further reinforced the presence of a burgeoning serial killer. At the peak of the investigation, and after additional homicides and one non-fatal attack, investigators noted similarities in M.O., often-used dump sites, and specific wound patterns that linked many of the murders, suggesting a common perpetrator.
  
  Section::::Murders.
   Reports of the six missing women and Sparks' brutal beating appeared prominently in newspapers and on television throughout Washington and Oregon. Fear spread among the population; hitchhiking by young women dropped sharply. Pressure mounted on law enforcement agencies, but the paucity of physical evidence severely hampered them. Police could not provide reporters with the little information that was available for fear of compromising the investigation. Further similarities between the victims were noted: The disappearances all took place at night, usually near ongoing construction work, within a week of midterm or final exams; all of the victims were wearing slacks or blue jeans; and at most crime scenes, there were sightings of a man wearing a cast or a sling, and driving a brown or tan Volkswagen Beetle.
   The first section showcases four of Canada's earliest serial killers—Edward H. Rulloff, Joseph LaPage, Theodore Durrant, and Gordon Stewart Northcott—and then delves into the nature versus nurture debate by scrutinizing the lives of Russell Johnson, Doug Moore, Peter Woodcock, and Clifford Olson. Modus operandi and signature crime are then discussed by looking into the crimes committed by Léopold Dion, William Patrick Fyfe, Earle Nelson, Serge Archambault, Sam Pirrera, and William Dean Christenson, with victimology then being explored through examination of John Martin Crawford, Donald Sherman Staley, and Allan Legere, as well as the unsolved Toronto gay village murders of 1967-68 and the Highway of Tears murders of 1969-2011.
   H. H. Holmes was one of the first documented modern serial killers in the United States, responsible for the death of at least nine victims in the early 1890s. Here as well, the case gained notoriety and wide publicity through possibly sensationalized accounts in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. At the same time in France, Joseph Vacher became known as "The French Ripper" after killing and mutilating 11 women and children. He was executed in 1898 after confessing to his crimes.
  
  76% of all known serial killers in the 20th century were from the United States.
  
  Section::::Characteristics.
   Section::::Arrest and trials.
  
  By February 28, the investigation was now focused on Woodfield, but by then the I-5 Bandit had struck three more times: in Eugene on February 18 and 21, and with another sexual assault in Corvallis on February 25. Detectives in Marion County assembled a call log showing Woodfield had placed calls via calling cards at pay phones near the murder sites around the times they were committed.
   In Eric Hickey's "Serial Murderers and their Victims," a major analysis of 329 serial killers in America is conducted. As part of Hickey's analysis, he categorized victims as high, low, or mixed regarding the victim's facilitation of the murder. Categorization was based upon lifestyle risk (example, amount of time spent interacting with strangers), type of employment, and their location at the time of the killing (example, bar, home or place of business). Hickey found that 13–15% of victims had high facilitation, 60–64% of victims had low facilitation and 23–25% of victims had a combination of high and low facilitation. Hickey also noted that among serial killer victims after 1975, one in five victims were at greater risk from hitchhiking, working as a prostitute, or involving themselves in situations in which they often came into contact with strangers.
   Serial offender hunting patterns
  
  Studies have been made of the "hunting patterns" of serial offenders, mainly serial killers and those committing repeated sex crimes. By hunting patterns are meant the interaction of time, space, and activity of a serial offender's criminal behavior. The attempt is made to ascribe rational motives to the offender's choice of places and times; investigators may invoke routine activity theory and rational choice theory in relation to the location of crimes.
  
  Section::::Factors considered.
   Noting the passage of time between periods of activity when bodies of young males had been found discarded near mass transportation with alcohol and/or pharmaceuticals in their blood stream in Oregon, investigators there theorized that their killer resided in another state and struck in Oregon only when there on business. Following the murders of Silveira, Whitcher and Taggs, Oregon investigators relayed details of the murders to police in other states, describing the "modus operandi" of the killer they were seeking and requesting feedback from any police force who had unsolved murders of young males on their files with similar characteristics. A response from southern California counties was swift: the pattern of killings was identical to victims linked to the unknown killer in California. The six Oregon murders committed by Kraft were thus linked to the murders he had committed in California.
   Historian Joy Wiltenburg identifies two important, occasionally overlapping, patterns of crime reports relative to "serial" killers in Early Modern Germany:
  
  BULLET::::1. Reports on robber-killers
  
  BULLET::::2. Reports on witches (for example: mid-wives) or cannibals targeting infants or even fetuses cut out of their mothers' wombs for use of their body parts in feasting and/or in rituals of black magic.
  
  Genipperteinga fits pattern 1, hoarding his ill-gotten gains in his cave. As Wiltenburg further remarks, however:
   Mansfield was also the prime suspect of the Burns Detective Agency of Kansas City and Detective James Newton Wilkerson, who suggested that he was a cocaine-addicted serial killer. According to contemporary news reports, Wilkerson believed Mansfield was responsible for the axe murders of his wife, infant child, father-in law, and mother in law in Blue Island, Illinois on July 5, 1914 (two years after the Villisca murders), the axe murders committed in Paola, Kansas, four days before the Villisca murders, and the murders of Jennie Peterson and Jennie Miller in Aurora, Illinois.
   The "military theory" has been proposed as an explanation for why serial murderers kill, as some serial murderers have served in the military or related fields. According to Castle and Hensley, 7% of the serial killers studied had military experience. This figure may be a proportional under-representation when compared to the number of military veterans in a nation's total population. For example, according to the United States census for the year 2000, military veterans comprised 12.7% of the U.S. population; in England, it was estimated in 2007 that military veterans comprised 9.1% of the population. Though by contrast, about 2.5% of the population of Canada in 2006 consisted of military veterans.
   Already mentioned was the task force, FBI 2008, Keppel 1989 which provides for a flexible, organized, framework for jurisdictions depending on the needs of the investigation. Unfortunately due to the need to commit resources (manpower, money, equipment, etc.) for long periods of time it can be an unsustainable option.
   BULLET::::- The 1984 documentary "Murder, No Apparent Motive", about serial killers and FBI Profilers, mentioned that the (then-ongoing) Green River Killer's murders were one of the latest examples of serial murders that go on in America without any apparent motives.
  
  BULLET::::- "Unsolved Mysteries" Season 8, episode 11, Green River Killer segment.
  
  BULLET::::- The ninth episode of the 2010 American documentary show "Who the (Bleep) Did I Marry?" features his story and his third wife's side of it.
   Section::::Suspects.:Ted Bundy.
  
  After his capture for similar crimes in Washington, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, Ted Bundy was suspected in the murders. Bundy had spent time in neighboring Marin County, but was ruled out by a Sonoma County detective in the 1970s and again in 1989. Detailed credit card records and known whereabouts of Bundy reveal he was in Washington on the dates of some of the disappearances.
  
  Section::::Suspects.:Fredric Manalli.
   The task force was created during the Fall of 2005 in order to investigate a series of unsolved murders and disappearances along BC's Highway of Tears, and determine whether a serial killer or killers is operating there. In 2006, the Task Force took ownership of nine investigations. In 2007 the number of cases doubled from nine to eighteen.
  
  The criteria for case selection was changed around this time to more precisely define E-Pana victims.
  
  E-Pana consists of 13 murder investigations and 5 disappearances, ranging in date from 1969 to 2006.
   Along with Paul Cheney, Peterson was a treating physician at Incline Village during an outbreak of chronic fatigue syndrome that began in 1984 in the Lake Tahoe region. From 1984 to 1987, the illness was recorded in 259 patients in the area by the two physicians. The Lake Tahoe outbreak became the subject of several studies by Peterson and others. In 1995, Peterson and other investigators started conducting a 10-year follow-up study on patients seen during the outbreak. The study results were published in 2001 by the "Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome". In the 2000 CFS documentary I Remember Me, Peterson was interviewed about some of his experiences during the Lake Tahoe outbreak.
  