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Sensationalized news content attracts a wide audience and a large audience attracts highly coveted advertising revenue." It must be remembered that the entertainment news media have a vested interest in tantalizing and even scaring the public. "The crime news coverage of so-called monsters is typically stylized and exaggerated in order to entice a wide public audience," he wrote. "Journalistic hyperbole makes them appear to be much more threatening to society than they actually are. In a 2017 Psychology Today article he authored, Bonn says he believes that the media has a “vested interest” in scaring the public by hyping up such killers, thus turning them into "celebrity monsters." “It has to do with gaining traction with the audience, so part of the packaging and promotion process is giving these individuals their names.” “It has nothing to do with the meat of the case,” Vronsky told. A 2011 Slate piece notes that it’s typically members of the press that come up with such sticky monikers. Given their experience with headlining and framing news stories, it’s not surprising that members of the media play a role in the naming process.
WHAT MAKES A SERIAL KILLER A KILLER TV
"How a moniker sticks often is similar to how a brand name sticks - the more papers the moniker sells, the higher the TV ratings it gets, the more likely it becomes the chosen moniker," he told. Serial killer expert and author Peter Vronsky agrees. “It’s essentially advertising, it’s promotion,” Bonn said of our culture’s tendency to give killers such monikers. , the way he operated.”īonn echoed Skolnick’s sentiment that the name was a form of branding.
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‘Night Stalker’ really identified his M.O. “He was a thrill-killer, who randomly picked homes and broke in,” Bonn explained. For Ramirez in 1984, the “Night Stalker” moniker did just that. “Does it really capture the essence of this individual and what they are doing, and is it packaged in a slick way?” Bonn asked rhetorically. Scott Bonn, author and criminologist, told that this particular nickname resonated with the public because the term “really nailed what he was.” Paul Skolnick, a producer at KNBC, explains in the docuseries that the Examiner’s creation “was the branding that stuck.” But why exactly does a name stick with the press and the public?ĭr. It was when The Herald-Examiner dubbed him “The Night Stalker,” that Ramirez’s identity was solidified in the media. Then, the moniker “The Valley Intruder” gained some traction. Ramirez was originally dubbed “The Walk-In Killer” by KNBC.
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“Journalists wanted to give this unknown monster a name,” Laurel Erickson, a reporter at Los Angeles news station KNBC, told the producers of the new docuseries.įascinated By Serial Killers? Watch 'Mark Of A Killer' Now Who would he attack next - and how? As fear increased, the media clamored to find the proper name for the man stalking the region. Once detectives were able to pin all of the seemingly disparate crimes on one suspect, much of Los Angeles County went into a panic. They varied in gender and race and ranged in age from 6 years old to 82. Not only did he vary his weapon of choice - guns, knives, and blunt objects were used - but the victim profile was all over the place. The so-called “Night Stalker” would beat, molest, rape, and sometimes murder his victims in a manner that seemingly had no through line. Netflix’s new docuseries “Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer” dives into the creation of the alias given to Richard Ramirez, who began stalking Los Angeles County in 1984, breaking into homes and committing a wide array of vicious crimes. But, how are these ominous nicknames determined? And what does the widespread use of these monikers reflect about Western society? These nicknames - “The Golden State Killer,” “Jack the Ripper,” “Boston Strangler,” “Night Stalker” - often lead the public to envision these killers as monsters who stalk victims like a mysterious cloud of smoke - particularly if they have yet to be identified. The monikers ascribed to history’s most notorious serial killers can cast an ominous shadow over these men in the public’s mind.