How To Become An Undetected Serial Killer

by Mallory Ortberg · September 9, 2014

1. It has to be a stranger. It has to be. This is no time for settling old scores. This cannot be traced back to you in any way. You can’t see them during your daily routine; you can’t have mutual friends; you can’t live in the same county. You cannot research them online before you do it. Do you know how many killers get convicted who might have otherwise walked free because their goddamn browser history is full of “how to dispose of body” and “hire someone kill wife”? Don’t be one of them.

2. You have, roughly, a twelve-hour window to dispose of the body before the smells and sounds associated with decomposition and dismemberment start to give you away. Do you keep a small skin trophy? Do you carefully arrange the torso in a grassy meadow? These are deeply personal questions. For my money, you’re best off with a bone saw, a tarp, a lot of quicklime and twice as much bleach as you think you’ll need, as well as access to an empty house or warehouse with a large, preferably industrial-sized drain.

3. Pay for your materials in cash. Do not get a receipt. Do not buy them within a fifty-mile radius of your home or office. Use common sense. Have an alibi, but don’t go overboard. An overly elaborate lie has too many details you could potentially foul up. Keep it simple.

4. Alternately — if you want to make a bigger first impression or don’t think you can pull off disposing of a body in enough time — walk in, shoot twice, and walk out. Don’t move the body. Don’t touch anything. Even if you’re completely sure they’re dead, shoot them in between the eyes one more time, just in case.

5. Wash your clothes, then throw them away. Don’t throw them all away at once.

6. Resist the urge to write taunting letters to the police. That’s asking for trouble. Don’t send them cute little puzzles, don’t arrange the bodies of your victims in an interesting pattern, don’t write to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle asking if he’s guessed your name yet.

7. Repeat this at least three more times, with a month-long “cooling off” period in between, in order to qualify in all fifty states.

8. Never, ever get drunk again. You will want to tell someone for the rest of your life — this is a completely natural response to having godlike power over the lives and deaths of others — and it will take much less alcohol than you think to lower your inhibitions long enough to answer the probing questions of that mysterious stranger sitting next to you at the bar in damning detail.

9. Don’t keep to yourself. Make sure you’re not the kind of person your neighbors would describe as “quiet” or “keeps to herself, mostly.” Don’t draw undue attention to yourself, obviously, but attend a neighborhood party or two. Remember your coworker’s birthdays. That sort of thing.

10a. If you must marry, keep your spouse in the dark. Do not attempt to recreate, on a non-fatal scale, the psychosexual games you play with your victims with your husband or wife, no matter how into it you think they’d be.

10b. Avoid bigamy. Many a serial killer has been brought low by the desire to maintain multiple spouses in various parts of the country. This is like sending Al Capone to prison for tax evasion: a sheer waste. 

11. Don’t bring your serial killing into the house. No murder basements, no secret murder castles, no murder foyers. Keep your home a murder-free zone.

12. Never talk to any of your friends about current events. They will bring up the rash of disappearances that have plagued your corner of the state lo these several years, and you will start smiling into your drink and asking them leading questions until one of them says What are you trying to say exactly and you say Nothing, nothing and then one of them who’s never really liked you calls it in and everything falls apart and you might have well just murdered everyone you knew and sent a pictogram signed in your own blood to the local sheriff’s department. This is a long game. It’s not over until you die peacefully in your own bed, never breathing a word about your crimes to the family that loves and doesn’t know you.

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.


172 Comments

  1. +132

    You cannot research them online before you do it. Do you know how many killers get convicted who might have otherwise walked free because their goddamn browser history is full of “how to dispose of body” and “hire someone kill wife”?

    Well, now none of us can — oh, I see your clever plan.

    1. MayKatieMae +25

      But, I mean, if *all* of us read this, it becomes much harder to convict any *one* of us, right?

    1. anon210 +35

      I think we’re safe. Remember Rule 1–Nicole and Mallory will be the chief suspects if Toast commenters start getting picked off.

      1. littlehuntingcreek +54

        I don’t think it would be Toast Commenters who would get picked off. Hypothetically speaking, OF COURSE

        1. winterbymorning +118

          I know that’s probably just a typo, but I am now imagining that you didn’t get to type in the final R because Mallory had already snuck up behind you and was stabbing you in the neck.

          1. EPWordsnatcher +69

            I only gave it a thumbs up because I was sure it was not a typo, if that proves not to be the case I would like my thumb back.

          2. Absotively +70

            Ok, the problem is that it kind of got mixed into this pile of dismembered body parts, and even if I could find it it would be a teensy bit burned by quicklime.

            If you can wait a month, I can get you a different thumb, but you have to promise never to show it to anyone.

          3. maccrocodile +40

            We’d all like our thumbs back, but Mallory is on a roll, and there’s no stopping her now.

          9. Unreadaethel +20

            13. Make sure to remain behind long enough to impersonate your victim in order to warn concerned friends/neighbors/online commenters that there’s nothing to see here, this isn’t the mysterious disturbance they’re looking for, they can go about their business.

      3. miprisci +28

        I don’t think I’ll ever feel quite safe from Mallory’s wrath. Never safe enough to truly sleep, not soundly.

  3. aravisthequeen +101

    I read somewhere (oh, good citation, aravis, keep going) that there’s something like 12-25 undetected serial killers romping around at any given time. And we might not even KNOW about them. Not even taking into account whoever is murdering Aboriginal women on the Highway of Tears, or anything like that, just….random people. I mean, there is SO MUCH land in North America. So much. Just huge, huge swaths of land where nobody ever goes and nobody will ever find a body, and huge bodies of water, and an entire ocean on either side of the continent, and we may NEVER KNOW.

    This is why my mom is terrified of me driving long distances by myself, I just know it.

    1. EPWordsnatcher +30

      John Douglas, a former chief of the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit and author of “Mind Hunter,” says, “A very conservative estimate is that there are between 35 and 50 active serial killers in the United States” at any given time. Often, Douglas told me, they will, “kill two to three victims and then have a ‘cooling-off’ period between kills.” That period can be days and in some cases (such as the BTK Strangler, Dennis Rader, convicted of killing 10 people from 1974 to 1991) even years.”

      From Serial Killers: How Many Are There?”, a thing I just found on the internet that is probably not reputable or official at all.

      4. themegnapkin +23

        “‘A very conservative estimate is that there are between 35 and 50 active serial killers in the United States’ at any given time.”
        But how do they know, if they’re undetected?
        ETA: Never mind, it’s a dumb/privileged question. I live in a small but murdery city (so many murders per capita!), but it’s almost always clear whodunnit.

          3. msjinxie +15

            Not as low as you’d think, for having such a high crime rate, but it’s a very friendly, bikeable town and the weather is surprisingly California-like for being in “Maine”!

    2. ArsenioB_Ham +22

      Sometimes, authorities can’t find bodies even after the [captured] serial killers have admitted exactly where they disposed of them. (E.g. the Moors Murderers). So it doesn’t surprise me at ALL that there are bodies everywhere no one even knows about.

      1. aqueousmedium +48

        Well, and given that police departments are often resistant to even investigating reports of missing people from certain demographics (looking right at you with flames in my eyes, Vancouver PD), there are probably also a lot of bodies that no one official is even looking for.

        1. LeastBittern +20

          There’s a town a little north of my hometown where they found three bodies on the same plot of land over a couple of months. Sometimes they have the bodies!

          2. LeastBittern +13

            It’s right off I-5, it has a hiking trail with parking, and you can’t see the parking lot from the road. Also it’s near a Starbucks – the only one for fifty miles in any direction. (OK it’s near one of those “pull off the interstate and deal with the fact that you and the vehicle require fuel to continue” hamlets.)

          6. NotThatAmy +1

            Yes yes, let’s talk about the bodies, that’s way more fun than talking about the huge gold nugget heist or the science teacher turned armed robber. Move along folks, nothing to see here, just a sleepy mountain town filled with quirky….
            .
            .
            .
            …Oh. My. Glob. It’s a mystery novel series! They’ve been there forever, they don’t get out much, strange things happen and everyone just goes on with their lives. I hope the series ends before anyone I like ends up as plot-relevant, non-main characters (never a good thing, since your two options are inevitably “gruesome body” and “cleverly discovered villian”.

            I know, I know, some of you are thinking, “What about the manful, yet sensitive, love interest?” to which I say, “HA! Amateurs! Everyone knows that the love interest in book 5 is either dead in book 6 or the villain in book 7.”

    5. lauralizabethm +26

      The other night, my mom pulled into a gas station off the highway- and we were in farm country so there were no businesses nearby- and went in to get a bag of chips. I sat in the car, in the pitch-dark, and thought “you know, this is how the opening scenes in serial killer flicks ALWAYS GO.”

      I turned all the lights on, locked the doors, and didn’t move until my mom got back.

    6. threerings +36

      So when I was in college, for one of my psych classes we had an FBI profiler come talk to the class. And this was 2001 and this guy was really excited because the FBI just got a nationwide database of murders together so they could try to figure out where the serial killers were because prior to that point all the records were state-by-state only so if a serial killer moved from one state to another no one ever spotted it, even if the murders were completely identical.

      That was about the time I stopped worrying about government conspiracies, because these guys had just had the idea to put all the info about ACTUAL MURDERS in one place so they could actually see it.

      But yeah, he was pretty clear about how few serial killers even get noticed. And he did have some graphic body part slides, because he didn’t want to disappoint.

  4. bookwormV +24

    I just don’t understand the Googling thing. If you must research stuff online, at least do it in an internet cafe somewhere nobody knows you, or using a computer which you then dispose of. I saw a news story the other day (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29066732; be warned, it’s about child death) and spent the first half of it thinking, “Oh, that’s an accident that could happen to anybody” until I read about the suspect’s search history, which makes him look incredibly guilty. Why provide such damning evidence?

        1. sailorfaith +10

          (mostly joking but also a recent Criminal Minds spree has made me super bitter/paranoid/resentful regarding people STOP BEING SERIAL KILLERS NOT COOL GUYS)

          1. Unreadaethel +5

            If you must murder, murder well. Sloppy murder just makes you look foolish and lacking in respect.

  5. cateycates +11

    Has anyone seen God Bless America? This reminds me of that movie, only in a way that the people in that movie should have read this list probably. (it’s on netflix. I don’t recommend it. scarred forever.)

    2. dorianneemmerton +8

      I liked that movie for the first halfish of it, then it got pretty one note as “Bitching about, then gunning down, everything Bobcat Goldthwaite doesn’t like.”

      1. EPWordsnatcher +4

        That was my impression–“these characters are just acting as mouthpieces for Bobcat Goldthwaite to rant about the world.”

      2. cateycates +4

        Yes! I think it was going for some kind of uncomfortable-but-universal humor and instead came off as…mean and gross. Maybe mean and gross was supposed to be the humor, actually. Either way, not a movie I’ll revisit.

  6. littlehuntingcreek +88

    Mentioning to your mistress that “if only my wife would die ” is always a bad idea
    Eventually your 6th mistress will catch on and start wondering why 5 of your wives died suddenly from mysterious causes

      1. queenofbithynia +83

        tip #1: don’t keep all their bodies in the closet

        tip #2 ok you can keep all their bodies in the closet if you can’t afford a storage facility but when you go away on business don’t give your wife the closet key

        tip #3 ok ok give her the key but tell her not to look in there

        …

        I give up, Bluebeard, you are just terrible at murdering your wives, your sister-in-law will kill you and NOT PUT YOU IN A CLOSET because she is not a dude whose only idea for disposing of bodies is just shove ’em in a closet someplace

  7. CompleatEmDee +43

    And to take the opposite approach: don’t want to be killed by a serial killer? Don’t ever talk to a fucking stranger. Simple!

    1. EPWordsnatcher +85

      Don’t talk to a stranger. Don’t be seen by a stranger. Never have your blinds open so you cannot be stalked by a stranger from the roof of the building across the street. Do not allow anyone to be a stranger–be friends with everyone. Network with everyone. Connect with everyone on LinkedIn. If no one is a stranger, you cannot be killed by a stranger.

        1. 1sic1 +24

          So THAT’s why they’re hounding everyone with “reminder” emails: they’re desperately trying to save lives!
          Truly, the unsung heroes of the internet.

    2. lemonadefish +8

      This only works if the serial killers are following Mallory’s advice. Many of them don’t, and start with family, friends, or neighbors!

      1. EPWordsnatcher +11

        Yes, and then they get caught, which doesn’t really help you, but might be some comfort nonetheless.

  8. Frumiosa +81

    *whispers* So guys, what’s the over/under on how many dudes Mallory has buried in undisclosed locations?

    2. littlehuntingcreek +52

      Don’t forget,Nicole had that article about getting the perfect body.She SAID it was satire…but how do we KNOW?

  9. megmuoio +35

    There are cameras everywhere though. Even if you go to a Home Depot 50 miles from your house, there WILL be surveillance video of you buying a tarp and several oversize barrels in which to bury a body.

    Don’t think the parking lot is a surveillance-free zone either. Your license plate will be captured.

    1. aravisthequeen +65

      The clear solution here is to kill marginalized people nobody cares about! See, if nobody ever gives a shit that you killed a prostitute or a homeless man, nobody’s ever going to be hunting up surveillance records to see where you’ve been. This has been Serial Killer Logic.

      1. literaltrousersnake +20

        Just make sure you don’t own a pig farm to which you routinely invite local Hell’s Angels and very powerful politicians, and you’re set.

        Wait what?
        Oh. Oh, well then.

    3. littlehuntingcreek +26

      1 steal license plate
      2. do professional makeup job so you look like a different person
      3 wear shoes that make you look taller
      4 wear a hat or a wig so your hair color is not distinctive
      5 wear very bland colored clothes so you don’t stand out
      6 DO NOT TAKE YOUR REAL CELL PHONE AND YOUR BURNER PHONE WITH YOU – they can track that

  10. thecoppertop +103

    My mom and I have had the discussion several times of Why Men Are Bad At Being Serial Killers. Always getting caught by means of lesser crimes (theft, stalking, etc.), needing to brag to friends in ridiculous joking-but-not-joking ways, complete inability to just kill someone and get outta there, etc. Amateur hour all over the place.

  11. thebellewitch +61

    Relatedly, if you’re going to pull off some sort of Black Widow murder-your-husbands for their money scheme, try not to IMMEDIATELY go to Vegas with all his money 2 days after he’s dead, right after taking his dogs to the vet to be put down. It raises eyebrows. (Actual plot of last true crime show I saw while watching trashy TV on a business trip.)

    1. dakimel +15

      Pretty sure that was about my great-uncle. Or else pretty sure Black Widows the world over have the same pitfalls.

  13. queenofbithynia +163

    I used to think about this quite a bit and came to many of the same conclusions; in particular, I don’t want to murder any strangers (and never have done) but it did sort of eat away at me to think how easy it would be and how bad at it most actual criminals are. and here’s me, who would be so good at it, but has too many other things to do and too little real appetite for senseless bloodshed, what a waste of my intelligence and research skills, how sad.

    2. msjinxie +15

      Do you think that’s why Jessica Fletcher took up writing murder mysteries? Just think how different Murder She Wrote could’ve been!

  15. winterbymorning +68

    here is a terrifying, kind of hypnotic article by a man who unknowingly spent an afternoon with a serial killer: http://www.orangecoast.com/features/2013/09/23/ce…

    He said he was down from Canada. His speech, soft yet precise, and his general manner fit my stereotype of Canadians, and would have been disarming had my guard been up.

    Canadians: our politeness is just a front to hide our murderous intentions!

    4. cosmia +2

      See, now I’m kind of tempted to read that book by the woman who was friends with Ted Bundy for years without knowing he was a serial killer, except I hear that the book itself is fairly awful.

        1. jenavira +20

          Yeah, the writing is pretty meh, but the story is incredible. (Even better if you get one of the later editions and read all her addenda.)

          She met him working on a SUICIDE HELP LINE. TED BUNDY WAS A SUICIDE HOTLINE OPERATOR. I just. Imagine being one of those people who called that line during that time?

    5. ArsenioB_Ham +8

      That article is great!

      I’ve also read stories (unconfirmed, obviously) on sites like Jezebel and Reddit where people are like, “In college, my mom got approached by a guy whose arm was in a sling who was asking for her help, but she didn’t help him. TURNS OUT THAT GUY WAS TED BUNDY!” Obviously the veracity is…questionable, but nevertheless those types of stories give me chills.

      1. lauralizabethm +37

        I have one of those stories! Though it wasn’t my mom, it was my aunt. She was at a bar and noticed this dude staring at her. He offered to buy her a drink. She said no thanks. When she was getting ready to leave, the bartender came over and said “ma’am, I’d like to walk you to your car.” She was surprised but she said sure, okay. And when they got outside, that dude was STILL THERE waiting for her. So the bartender walked her to her car and she got in and drove away and . . . then she noticed another car following her. She turned onto a different street. The car followed her. She turned onto ANOTHER street. Car kept following her. So my aunt, who was a smart lady, looked in the rearview mirror long enough to get the license plate on the other car, then shook him off (I don’t quite remember how- I think she pulled a sudden turn?) and drove straight to the police station.

        The cops were polite (I mean, my aunt was a middle-class white lady) but kind of patronizing until she said “and by the way, I have the guy’s license plate.” They asked for it, and when she told them and they went to look it up, she says the cop’s face suddenly went from complacent to OH SHIT, and offered to get her a police escort to drive her home. She never did find out who this guy was or what came up when the cops ran his license plate.

        1. EPWordsnatcher +22

          And that’s why all states should require front-facing license plates as well as rear bumper ones!

          1. lauralizabethm +4

            Well this was in Canada, not the States- I don’t know what our laws are here re: front-facing license plates, but I assume they’re required. Either that or this guy was just a really stupid possible serial killer.

            (I don’t know what decade this all went down in- my aunt died years ago so I can’t ask her, and my mom doesn’t remember- but given that this was in the Niagara region, I’ve always wondered if it wasn’t Paul Bernardo.)

          2. EPWordsnatcher +2

            License plate laws vary by state, as do most other things. I know New York requires front-facing plates, or at least they used to, but my state and a good number of others around (Ohio Valley region) don’t. WE SHOULD TOTALLY HAVE THEM, THOUGH.

      2. catcet +6

        I’ve actually heard that exact story about my mom’s childhood babysitter. Not entirely sure about the veracity of the story, though they did live in the part of Washington where Bundy was active at one time. The fun part of the story is that the reason she didn’t stop to help him was that she was late for her job… babysitting my mom (dun dun DUN)!

    6. aqueousmedium +19

      Friends of mine used to live across the hall from Larry Fisher, who killed Gail Miller in 1969 though David Milgaard was wrongfully convicted of the crime. Fisher was polite and…friendly enough? If you consider “offering to lend you porn videos” friendly and not super fucking creepy.

  17. literaltrousersnake +48

    Canada has been widely described by many of my friends as “astonishingly big” and “just, you know, really easy to disappear into.”

    Also this site is everything I love and know to be true.

      1. tanaise +3

        Omg, bigfoot is a serial killer!!!

        (How to not get killed by an undetected serial killer, step whatever: do not hike the Appalachian trail.

  18. L.A. Fields +44

    #8 is either the reason I’ll never murder anyone, or the reason I’ll get sober. Bonus: my alibi can double as my AA hitting bottom and turning shit around story.

    P.S. Has the Toast hired an assistant editor yet because I am dying over here. I’ve got a whole new life planned for either outcome, my life is in Schrodinger’s inbox right now.

  19. yourbiggestfan +32

    I cannot believe you didn’t encourage minorities to get in the game. You’ve had all those reasonable-yet-funny things to say about race lately, but no helping hand here. No one suspects the little Filipino woman, after all.

  20. goodmaggie +65

    One of my professors in college was known for being the person who figured out who the Unabomber was. It was something you obviously Did Not bring up, but sitting through her Buddhist philosophy class, I thought about it often.

  21. dakimel +14

    as a medical student he took out insurance on corpses, staged “accidents” with the bodies and collected payments upon the cleverly staged deaths.

    Dibs! I mean, I know I should be talking online about how to recreate the scams of Murder Castle dude, but that’s so damn clever.

    brb gotta sign up for the MCAT

    1. winterbymorning +35

      I can’t even express how much I love the fact that Hannibal is so hellbent on always wearing fancy 3-piece suits that he would rather wear a plastic murdersuit than change into casual clothes when he’s dismembering people in his murderdungeon.

          1. Unreadaethel +6

            I’m fairly sure that he ordered several murder suits, then killed and ate the tailor who made them. Much the way he killed the contractor who was in charge of the drains and lighting for the murder basement.

          2. Redcrow +3

            Someone (most likely Fuller, but possibly Slade, I don’t remember) joked that there’s a whole team of people that helps local killers to assemble especially elaborate tableaux. Then they also get killed, probably.

            Bespoke murder suit tailors might belong to the same crew.

            I want a fanfic about those unsung heroes… erm, villains… whatever.

    2. popjunkie42 +15

      God I love that classy murder suit. I was just describing it to my husband the other day. “It has a COLLAR!”

  23. cosmia +28

    Seeing as I just read “The Devil in the White City”, I would say that H.H. Holmes had this shit on lock except for 10b and 11, but it was really the fact that he owed a bunch of people a shit-ton of money for stuff he put on credit and never paid for that got him investigated in the first place. #3b, don’t leave financial paper trails!

    2. dakimel +2

      Is that what that book’s about? I’m not normally a true crime person, but this guy has become fascinating to me just from the link above. Maybe I’ll pick it up! (Or wait for the movie? Maybe I’ll wait for the movie. What’s worse, reading the horror or seeing the horror?)

      1. cosmia +16

        Read the book! The movie’s only been a rumour for awhile, and it’s been in development hell so long I have a feeling it might not ever be a thing.

        The good thing about the book is that only half of it is about H.H. Holmes – the other half is about the Chicago World’s Fair, so if you’re not a true crime person, you have this whole other half to read about the invention of the Ferris wheel and belly dancing and a whole bunch of architectural clusterfucks.

        1. MilesofMountain +10

          I started reading it for the true crime, but by the end I was more fascinated by the fair stuff!

          1. EPWordsnatcher +5

            Yeah, I could’ve gone for about 40% more architectural clusterfuckery, but I’m biased, so.

      2. EPWordsnatcher +6

        It’s half super sensationalized H.H. Holmes story and half the story of the 1893 World’s Fair, so lots to do in that book. I enjoyed it but it’s best read as a novel rather than a true crime type thing.

        1. threerings +2

          For more factual info about H.H. Holmes I can recommend the book “Depraved” by Harold Schechter, which despite it’s title is quite reasonable and fact-based. There isn’t a lot of info about the Murder Castle, because frankly there wasn’t a lot of evidence about it, and Holmes himself didn’t talk about it. It does have a lot of info about what he did after he left Chicago and his trial, including his written confession. Fascinating, if this is your kind of thing.

      3. littlehuntingcreek +4

        Seeing horror is worse for me. I can read it with no ill effects but seeing it stays in my head forever and makes me anxious.

  25. eee +88

    Do not commit your crime in the Bones universe, where the magic computer can figure out who your victim is by scanning his throat and playing his voice and searching through their databases of voices until they find an audio clip of the victim identifying himself, and can identify you as the murderer because you broke your leg when you were 12

  26. themnemosyne +62

    So I have a background in forensic anthropology and taphonomy and my roommate works for a crime-scene cleanup place.

    We have discussed these things more times than I’m comfortable stating in public. Our friends have often remarked that it would be unwise to anger us.

    1. dakimel +60

      There needs to be a USA series about the two of you, and how you SEEM like you’re just doing your jobs but there’s also a few unexplained things happening, and for the first half of the season we’re sympathetic to y’all because the agent investigating you is portrayed as such a blowhard, and then to our dawning horror as the season finale approaches we can no longer ignore that the blowhard… is probably right. (The last episode before the break will be you guys inviting your cute niece to spend the summer with you or your roommate carefully packing the car with mysterious boxes in preparation for a “fun road trip” or similar. Dun dun dun!)

        1. dakimel +14

          I’ll write it, you be the consulting tech people, and now all we need is someone to hand us piles of money, plus actors, contracts, directors, props, and a glitzy title sequence. Maybe one or two other things, but I think that’s the basics.

  28. Linette +112

    13. Only kill white straight cis men.

    The police will never be able to discern a pattern to your killings, because white men are always default. You will be a serial killer of “people,” and no one would ever make the connection between the person killed in New Jersey and the one in Connecticut.

    I feel none of us would cry if you wanted to target the rapists and the wife-batterers, either.

    . . . is Mallory basically just training us for the misandrist revolution?

    1. littlehuntingcreek +29

      That’s how they caught Richard Ramirez, alias the Night Stalker. He started getting cocky and killing white guys and THEN the police got serious about catching him.

    2. blushingflower +20

      The flip side is that the murder of a white het cis man is much more likely to be investigated, so while they might not see the pattern, they might get you for ONE of the victims.

  30. stuffisthings +108

    Alternate take: The Toast just landed a big Clorox campaign and Mallory has great SEO game.

  32. betsymurgatroyd +5

    I follow this blog http://footprintsattheriversedge.blogspot.com/ (that I could embed, but lazy) that is full of missing young men. It’s sent me to a lot of serial killer conspiracy theorist sites that I am not sure I quite believe in, but am totally fascinated with. Also, I live in the PNW and many of these incidents happened in BC so it wouldn’t be too out there to think it was serial killers.
    The conspiracy theory that freaks me out the most is the Smiley Face Killer. Ugh *shudder* I’m just hoping that’s not a real thing and just internet creepypasta.

  34. sailorfaith +9

    Thinking about serial killers lurking in my basement or outside the house just waiting for me to let my guard down has at times sent me into bouts of anxiety that lead to either not sleeping (because I am quivering in bed twitching at strange noises), straight up anxiety attacks, or walking around the house holding a kitchen knife and now to calm myself down because debilitating paranoia is no fun I just think to myself, “Cross that bridge if you get to it.” And weirdly enough that totally works.

    1. sailorfaith +6

      also the decision to, once I’ve moved into my own place, strategically hide weapons everywhere also helps

  35. LeastBittern +26

    If you’re going to serial murder, definitely do it somewhere where the sheriff handles investigations and is also part of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, because then no one on the case will have any idea how to investigate shit, and no one is calling in the evil feds.

    Also someone in the county might be growing weed, you’ve definitely got to investigate that and not the guy who has dated three women who have gone perma missing in the last ten years.

  36. Frumiosa +55

    13. Write a disturbingly specific but obviously satirical blog post boasting about your achievements.

    I’m onto you, “Mallory” “Ortberg”.

    1. winterbymorning +41

      “Mallory Ortberg” IS an anagram of “By Garroter Moll” – a much more accurate byline!

      (Also of “golly, bra tremor” which describes how I feel when I read these posts.)

  37. scullymurphy +18

    Don’t ask Siri how to dispose of a body.
    Actually try it if you are not planning on killing anyone before you get a new phone. Her response is pretty funny/horrifying.

  38. carolinecrale +8

    So I shouldn’t constantly be reading true crime books and Wikipedia articles and making my book club read “Stiff” and watching murder documentaries on Netflix? Damn.

  39. emily_of_athens +16

    I’ve been watching a lot of Dexter lately, and it has started to drive me crazy how often he uses his REGULAR, PERSONAL CELL PHONE to talk to people that he does not want to be known to have any connection with.

  40. dorianneemmerton +10

    Don’t all of a sudden lose your murderous urges when you’re already got a guy captured and instead call your sister to arrest him so he shoots her instead and then your life is ruined.

  43. profsnootypants +16

    I just posted this to my facebook page to ensure that none of my friends will suspect me of being a serial killer.