Who gets counted decides how long a killer lasts

What does less-dead mean?

In Steven Egger’s definition, the less-dead are the majority of serial murder victims, who belong to marginalized groups of society, lack prestige or power, and generally come from lower socioeconomic groups. They are considered less-dead, he writes, because before their deaths they virtually “never were,” according to prevailing social attitudes.¹

Steven Egger wrote the entry on the less-dead in the Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime.¹ He writes that they are essentially ignored and devalued by their own communities, and “generally not missed when they are gone.”¹ Police, he adds, feel a great deal less pressure when victims come from the marginal elements of a community.¹

His examples include sex workers, the homeless, migrant farm workers, the poor, elderly women and runaways.¹ The three cases below show what that difference in attention costs, and what happens when a disappearance is reported at once.

Were the Seattle-area victims reported missing?

The roll call of the dead read in a King County courtroom in November 2003 began with Wendy Coffield and Debra Bonner, both July 1982.² That day, Gary Ridgway, known in the press as the Green River Killer, pleaded guilty to 48 counts of murder in a case that began in 1982.^2,3

In his written plea statement, read in court by prosecutors, he said he chose sex workers partly because he was able to pick them up unnoticed, and because he expected they would not be reported missing soon, if at all.^2,4 Kenna Quinet, a criminologist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, later cited the case in a study of uncounted serial murder victims.^5,6 She pointed out that a third of the 48 victims then known had never been reported missing, were absent from police missing-persons databases, or were never identified.^5,6

Why were many deaths tied to Samuel Little not counted as murders?

Many were not classified as homicides. The FBI says many were originally ruled overdoses or attributed to accidental or undetermined causes, and that some bodies were never found. It says he chose marginalized and vulnerable women, whose bodies sometimes went unidentified and whose deaths sometimes went uninvestigated.^8,15

The FBI says the women Samuel Little chose were marginalized and vulnerable, often involved in prostitution and addicted to drugs.^9,15 Their bodies sometimes went unidentified and their deaths uninvestigated.^9,15 In its 2018 account, the FBI said many of the deaths were not classified as homicides but attributed to drug overdoses, accidents or natural causes.¹⁵

He was convicted in 2014 of three Los Angeles murders committed between 1987 and 1989, after Los Angeles police matched his DNA to the killings.^9,15 By the FBI’s account of October 6, 2019, he had confessed to 93 murders, and law enforcement had verified 50, with many more pending final confirmation.^7,9 A ViCAP crime analyst said that for many years he believed he would not be caught because he thought no one was accounting for his victims.^8,9

How fast did police act when Robert Piest went missing?

Within hours. Robert Piest, 15, was at work at a Des Plaines pharmacy on the evening of December 11, 1978, when he went to see a building contractor about a summer job. Police were investigating his disappearance that same day.^10,11,16

Robert Piest, 15, worked at the Nisson Pharmacy in Des Plaines, Illinois. On the evening of December 11, 1978, his mother came to drive him home, and he told her he was going to see a building contractor about a summer job.^10,16 He did not come back.¹⁰ A Des Plaines police lieutenant was investigating the missing-person report at the pharmacy that same day.^11,16

Des Plaines police suspected John Wayne Gacy, a building contractor who had spent much of the evening in the pharmacy.¹⁰ According to the Illinois Supreme Court’s 1984 opinion, a warrant to search his home issued on December 13, two days after Robert disappeared.¹¹ Another warrant for the house issued on December 21, ten days after.^12,13 A jury later found Gacy guilty on 33 counts of murder.^10,13

John Butkovich’s family got a different answer. According to Chicago magazine, he disappeared in 1975, shortly after arguing with Gacy, his employer, about money, and was later identified as one of Gacy’s victims.¹⁴ The Chicago Tribune reported in December 1978 that his parents had called Chicago police every week for more than two years to ask about him, and that police kept insisting he must have run away.¹⁴