We all know who we refer to as a killer or murderer, a person who takes other people’s lives. But how much do we really know about murderers?

Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. The person who commits the murder is called a murderer or killer. But there is not just one type of killer. Some people kill out of pleasure, some out of habit, some  in self defense and some even on accident, but those are not the people we usually think about when we say killer. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy…those are the people that pop in mind when we say killer, but why?

All the forementioned killers along with many many more are what we call serial killers. What makes serial killers different from just killers is the number of victims and time. For a person to be clasified as a serial killer the required number of victims is 3 or more in the timespan of over a month with significant periods of time between each murder. But what if that time is not met? What if the murder’s time span is less than a month and there is no significant time period between them? Well that is a completely different type of killer. A person that commits 3 or more murders in a short period of time and in different locations is classified as a spree killer. Now, what if the spree killer actually kills their victims all in close proximity of one another? Then we thread in mass killer territory.