Why do we obsess over serial killers but tune out war crimes?

7NEWS

12 hours ago

It is often said that an average person unknowingly walks past 36 murderers in their lifetime — a chilling statistic that fuels Reddit threads, true crime podcasts, and Netflix documentaries.
From the likes of Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, society has developed a near-obsessive fascination with serial killers.
But while these individual criminals captivate millions, mass atrocities and war crimes — such as Israel's devastating war in Gaza, the civil war in Syria, the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar, the mass internment of Uyghur Muslims in China, or the ongoing violence in Sudan's Darfur region — often receive far less emotional engagement from the public.
So why does a single killer enthrall us more than state-sanctioned violence that claims thousands of lives?
University of Sydney criminologist Helen Easton the says the answer lies in cultural proximity and perceived relatability, not just of the killer but of the victims too.
'Part of our culture'
'We tend to be fascinated by serial killers who are part of our culture,' Easton told 7NEWS.com.au.
It feels close to home because victims of serial killings are people who live in the same cities and cultures as us.
'There's this idea of proximity, they feel close to us. They might look like us, live where we live, or share our language.'
Easton said victims of serial killers — particularly when perceived as 'random' or middle-class — generate public empathy. In contrast, victims of war crimes in distant or less culturally familiar regions often do not.
'There's a subconscious way we categorise people's value. In the case of the Rwandan genocide or violence in parts of Africa, there's often a language and cultural barrier that distances us,' she said.
Easton said with Palestine and Israel, the engagement is higher because of Israel's connection with the western world and strong ties with the US but, even then, it lacks the sense of sensationalised focus we see with serial killers.
Even fewer people know or are interested in learning about what's going on in Sudan.
But serial killers such as Bundy and Dahmer — whose crimes sprees rocked suburban America in the 1970s — continue to fascinate even years after their deaths and captivate the public through documentaries, books, and movies.
Bundy kidnapped, raped and killed dozens of young females — many of them students he abducted from their homes., college campuses or from public places by pretending he needed help — across Washington, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Florida from 1974 to 1978.
Serial killer and sex offender Dahmer — known as the Milwaukee Cannibal — killed and dismembered 17 young males from 1978 to 1991, with many of his horrendous crimes taking place inside his suburban home.
The enduring interest in both those cases compares with UK serial killer Steve Wright, whose five victims in 2006 were sex workers.
Easton's own research into Wright, who was convicted in 2008, underscores this selective attention — saying in many cases, it is the worth of the victim rather than the brutality of the crimes that shapes public interest.
'He fits the definition of a serial killer but there was no morbid fascination,' Easton said.
'That tells us something, we care about who the victim is. Prostituted women are seen as vulnerable and society often blames them for their victimisation.'
This phenomenon also extends to how justice is pursued. Serial killers, who often lack social or political power, are easier targets for legal accountability. War criminals, on the other hand, are frequently shielded by political and economic interests.
'Serial killers tend not to be powerful people,' Easton explains.
'War criminals often are, and that structural power protects them. While a serial killer may have power over their victims, they don't have power in the broader sociopolitical system.'
Psychological fatigue is also something to consider, Easton says. The scale and horror of genocide and war can be emotionally overwhelming, causing many people to disengage. In contrast, serial killers offer narratives that are both terrifying and digestible — and sometimes hit close to home.
'We get fatigued hearing about war and genocide, it's so horrific that I think that we can't grasp it,' Easton said.
'Serial killers are close to us, they're culturally similar to us, physically, perhaps in the same countries, but they're also distant enough from us for us to be interested in them. The chance of being killed by a serial killer is very low.'
Despite the disturbing nature of serial killings, many reports on them are packaged for entertainment — from bingeable documentaries to Halloween costumes.
Meanwhile, ongoing conflicts involving mass suffering are frequently reduced to headlines or statistics or buried in global news cycles.
These media trends reveal deeper truths about our collective empathy and its limitations.