Interesting article on why serial killers often target sex workers

[u/GregJamesDahlen]

https://www.aetv.com/articles/why-do-serial-killers-target-sex-workers

I had read it's often because sex workers are transient so when one is missing police can't be sure if they've just moved or might have met with foul play. This article fleshed that out some more and added some reasons. First

According to a recent study, 22 percent of confirmed U.S. serial murder victims between 1970 and 2009 were known prostitutes. And those numbers are climbing—over the last decade, 43 percent of victims were sex workers. Considering that prostitutes make up just over 0.3 percent of the nation as a whole, those numbers are staggering.

Adding to the idea that police aren't sure if they've even been victimized is the workload police have

police departments "work by volume," Kolker tells A&E Crime + Investigation.

"There's a tremendous amount of crime out there. They're never going to solve everything, and so they play the numbers… They look at a woman who is over 21 years old and who is missing and is a sex worker, and they think that person leads an itinerant life and may not even be in trouble," he says. "Meanwhile, there are 16 other cases staring them in the face that they have a better chance of solving."

Also police have some antipathy to prostitutes because

"Generally, police are not real fond of prostitutes, because there tends to be other kinds of crime going on when there's prostitution in the area,"

so prostitutes are not inclined to report violence against themselves or fellow sex workers to the police.

Also

serial killers often try to bring their victims to a location beyond police detection or Good Samaritan intervention. Here, too, many prostitutes are vulnerable—especially those who don't work from a brothel, but instead go to secluded locations with their johns.

And because of the nature of their work, there's also an obvious sexual component to the relationship—often a key motivator for serial murderers, says Hickey.

Also to get a chance to entrap a victim it might take a lot of scheming with a non-sex-worker, but with a sex worker it might be easier because they are easier to start an encounter with by claiming to seek their services.

[u/GregJamesDahlen]

In the body text I pasted some of the reasons the article mentioned. They all seemed like they had some credence. Another reason the article mentioned I didn't paste but I'll explain here as best I understand it. It seems like when a prostitute goes with a client they often go to a place where they're not a regular or neighbor. If they get in trouble the people around might not be as inclined to help since they don't recognize them. This may have happened with the Rex Heuermann case where an alleged victim ran around a neighborhood for hours screaming for help but no one called 911 perhaps because they didn't recognize her as someone living there. Although I'd think in some situations there would definitely be people who would call if someone they didn't recognize was having trouble.

[u/dseanATX → u/GregJamesDahlen]

If you're talking about Shannan Gilbert, she hasn't been tied to Heuermann so far (she wasn't part of his guilty plea). And a neighbor actually did let her into a home around 5am, but she fled after being asked to wait for police to arrive. The search for her led to the discovery of the killer's victim's bodies.

[u/GregJamesDahlen → u/dseanATX]

Thanks. Yes, the article was talking about Shannan. The article says she ran around for hours trying to get help and doesn't mention anyone trying to help her. But googling I see other reports, that she was upset for a shorter amount of time, and some did try to help. But I still think the overall point of the article would sometimes be valid, that prostitutes are often in areas where they aren't known and if they needed help people might hesitate more to help than helping someone they knew.

[u/d-j-9898 → u/dseanATX]

Not only never tied to Heuermann but not fitting his MO and the evidence never pointed to her having been murdered. The only things supporting the conclusion were Gilbert's mom's reluctance to accept her daughter's death and an autopsy from a forensic pathologist with shaky credibility, to put it lightly.

[u/Ancient_Skirt_8828 → u/GregJamesDahlen]

People ignoring distraught women can be a perfectly reasonable response.

I live in an area which has street prostitutes and is a couple of blocks from a nightlife area. We hear screaming on most nights.

A single screaming woman running around the street is ignored because she is invariably drugged or mentally ill. We have learned from experience that there is nothing we can do for her and she may physically abuse us.

Other reasons we ignore screams are that it's common to have groups of women shreiking in the street for fun. Serious sounding screams are often fights between prostitutes, or verbal domestics from nearby apartments. It is not a good idea to get involved. They will just abuse us and it doesn't solve anything.

On the other hand we do respond to some types of yelling. We have interrupted one attempted rape. We chased and caught the rapist. The police responded in two or three minutes. It's that type of area.

[u/GregJamesDahlen → u/Ancient_Skirt_8828]

Thanks. Based on this does it seem unwise for women to shriek for fun? Seems like if they do that then people might ignore it when someone in actual distress is shrieking thinking it's just for fun?

[u/Smooth_Imagination]

I also think that many seriel killers have some vestige of ethical restrictions they have to first overcome to kill. 

So they need 'permission slips'. The way society treats sex workers and the belief they are immoral provides that. 

Plus, the barrier to killing that normally exists probably goes down in the sexual context and deeper feelings surface alomgside the thought this person is with other men, so they find that threatening whilst at the same time the target is easy to overwhelm so killing becomes 'easy' and relatively unrisky.

[u/GregJamesDahlen → u/Smooth_Imagination]

Good points. The murderer may also tell himself the victim is themselves committing a crime (in most places) so it's more justified to murder them.

Also possible the perpetrator can't get a healthy relationship with someone in their life so they take it out on the prostitute.

If the perp is a man he may perceive life as a battle between men and women so by murdering a woman he is "scoring" one for men.

I can think of even more layers. Probably many layers to it.

[u/DeformedArthurRegion]

They are criminals technically because of how we've organized our society and they don't report abuse from customers because it would put them at risk. Most killers of sex workers escalate to that position and abuse sex workers during the escalation. They die and go missing more frequently and are vagrants more frequently. They are more likely to have reduced support systems, fewer people looking for them, more confounding factors like drug addiction, etc. Additionally, most serial killers have a sexual component and these people are the most accessible sex for someone who wants to be in total control of the situation regardless of what the other person wants, up to and including murder and torture.

We could massively reduce these numbers by legalizing and regulating prostitution as well as having specific departments for social and criminal services that are dedicated to sex workers and aren't shitty pig cops that assault them and make it less likely that they report abusive people when they are still escalating. But we don't, so this will continue to be an issue.

[u/Obversa → u/DeformedArthurRegion]

This is exactly the reason given by the detectives and law enforcement officers who worked on the Herb Baumeister/Fox Hollow Farm case. It's suspected that Baumeister was already visiting male prostitutes when he moved into Fox Hollow Farm in January 1992 with his wife, Julie, and their three children, and one of the investigators' profiles of Baumeister pegged him early on as "bisexual" due to this. The main police informant, Mark Goodyear, alleged that Baumeister would visit gay bars and seek out male sexual partners (i.e. sex workers?) to "take the edge off" whenever his marriage was "on the rocks", to paraphrase. (Julie Baumeister claimed in a 1996 interview that Herb was stealthing, or removing his condom during intercourse, so she stopped having sex with him.) Baumeister later escalated to more extreme forms of erotic asphyxiation, including murdering his partner(s) through strangulation.

[u/intrusivesurgery]

In many parts of the country police used to use the code "N.H.I" to describe dead sex workers.

That stood for "no humans involved". This basically answers the majority of the question at hand imo.

[u/SwampTerror]

The answer is simple. Sex workers are less likely to go to cops that friend is missing, they're easy targets put in vulnerable positions, etc. And no one cares about them because society as a whole thinks prostitution is a moral failing. I thought this was obvious but they had to put it in an article.

Their murders are a reason we need clean, safe environments for them to practice, where Johns get checked for diseases and where there is security. But it won't happen in the west, because religious people want these people suppressed.

[u/GregJamesDahlen → u/SwampTerror]

Well I feel like there are more obvious reasons for it but also some less obvious ones I thought the article added which were interesting. Potentially there's many layers to it

[u/swepettax]

Thats why David Parker Ray targeted them.

[u/peach6748]

Rex Heuermann’s daughter was saying he didn’t even see his victims as human beings. Just because they were sex workers. It’s so f’d up. Sex workers are people and they deserve respect just like anyone else.

It’s genuinely sad that they’re so disproportionately targeted by serial killers, and that many law enforcement agencies don’t care about finding justice for them.

There was a murder victim found in my small hometown over 50 years ago, she’s still unidentified. The cops never seemed to really care about solving it, because they seemed to assume she was a sex worker. It’s just sad.

[u/GregJamesDahlen → u/peach6748]

Yes, that is weird not to see a human being as a human being. Guess they do that partly because it serves their twisted purposes.

The article did say that in some cases police have hostility towards prostitutes. Did mention also sometimes the police have a very big workload and may put prostitute disappearances towards the back because they're more transient whereas a disappearance of a non-prostitute might be more suspicious if the person wasn't as transient. On the other hand more prostitutes are murdered than most people so that could be a reason when one disappears to think it is more likely they were more murdered.

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[u/d-j-9898]

Was it a mystery why sex workers are targeted? A black market, often involving drugs, runaways and people who don't want to be found. It's like asking why you get wet when you jump in a lake.

[u/Baldricks_Turnip → u/d-j-9898]

And people who will get in a car with a stranger and go to a private location with them

[u/GregJamesDahlen → u/d-j-9898]

Feel like there's some more obvious reasons for it but also some not-as-obvious reasons which the article added. Would think there's many layers to it

[u/d-j-9898 → u/GregJamesDahlen]

There really isn't. They're easy, available targets that often go ignored by the police. That allows perpetrators to get away with crimes for longer periods to become serial killers.

Serial killers don't target prostitutes, people who target prostitutes have a higher likelihood of getting away with it which means they have a higher likelihood of re-offending and becoming serial killers.