Last week I was reporting on the apprehension of the Golden State Killer, an old man who got busted after his DNA, or the DNA of a relative, turned up on one of those online genealogy websites. What puzzled me about the case was that the guy had stopped his killing spree in the mid-80s, with no obvious reason for it. He didn’t get sent to prison and he didn’t die. Usually it’s one of those two things. Otherwise, the serial killer keeps on killing, his crimes escalating, until such time as he gets pinched. Maybe he commits suicide. But he doesn’t just stop.
For every rule, however, there is an exception.
Turns out serial killers DO sometimes just wake up one morning and stop killing.
“Any number of factors can contribute to a dormant stretch,” says this article from THE NEW YORK TIMES. “In some cases, jobs and families might have stabilized and exacerbating sources of stress might have faded.” Still, this speaks of periods of cessation, perhaps prolonged periods, but not of a complete and total cessation, as seems to have happened with the Golden State Killer. He is still an anomaly, an anomaly of one, insofar as I know, a case of a killer who just quit killing. One theory put forward in the article: low testosterone. I kid you not.