The Null Device

A data-mining technology developed for hunting down criminals, and used to identify backpacker killer Ivan Milat, is now being adapted to identifying consumer preferences by analysing their purchases and media choices:

"We know the people who drink a certain type of coffee will also eat specific types of chocolate bars and eat at particular food chains," said Torque's managing partner, Oliver Rees. "It's not only interesting for marketing those products to specific people but also for how store layouts are designed and how brand alliances should or could develop."

¶ data mining marketing serial killers surveillance tech 4

Did police turn a blind eye, allowing the Green River Killer to keep killing, out of a belief that he was doing a service to society by killing prostitutes?

Ridgway continued to have many close calls with police, evading and fooling officers and detectives all the while. Would Ridgway have been let go, time after time, had he been anything other than an "ordinary" looking middle-class white man who preyed on the vulnerable, the poor, and the powerless?

As a society, we still see prostitution as an infestation to be kept under control. Words like "eradication" used in tandem with street prostitution are not uncommon in law enforcement lingo, as if the women selling their bodies are no better than vermin.

¶ prostitution serial killers 0

A criminologist attempts to explain why Adelaide has so many bizarre murders. Allan Perry, a criminologist from Adelaide University, claims that the Snowtown killings and other crimes are symptomatic of a malignant subculture that exists in South Australia, and that Adelaide is a social hothouse that breeds psychopathic killers:

"We're seeing a sub-culture which has arisen out of family breakdown, economic deprivation, drug and alcohol abuse, unemployment," Mr Perry said.

That could also explain the Adelaide tradition of breaking into the zoo and mutilating the animals. I wonder how long until the local film industry clues in to this and starts setting teen-slasher horror films there, wallowing in the morbidity and social decay of our very own City of Ghouls?

¶ adelaide crime culture serial killers society 12

An article looking at the miasma of creepiness hanging over Adelaide, and in particular at its unusually generous proportion of grisly serial murders, and also the social phenomena that may amplify the cultural effects of such. No mention of zoo animal mutilations though.

¶ adelaide creepy serial killers 2

Lazy Slasher Leaves Trail Of Victims From Couch To Fridge. (new Onion)

¶ humour serial killers the onion 0