Do you honestly believe everyone would suddenly know about the Chicago Strangler if they were murdering only white meth addicts? This racial rhetoric is so tired.

Exactly. Just look at the Green River Killer. He’s not well known, but he killed 50 young women, mostly white, but also mostly runaways and sex workers.

I feel like the Green River Killer is quite well know...

But even if he's not as well known as Zodiac, again, look at the victim profile: runaways and sex workers. It's not just about skin color, although for some reason both of you zeroed in on that. I specified "marginalized groups" such as [mostly black] runaways. It's about being poor, unknown, and not white.

"Yet the Chicago Strangler [1], who is still active, still operating to this day, 50+ victims, few have heard of....because he attacks marginalized groups like black runaways rather than white people."

Your implication is that white people can't be marginalized. Economics cut across skin color.

But biased police judgement doesn’t...

LOL the green river killer is quite well known and I'd never heard of the Chicago Strangler.

No, not white meth addicts. But middle class or wealthy white people, abso-fucking-lutely.

In another comment in this thread, you mention that a condition of being marginalized is being non-white. The logical inverse of that is white people cannot be marginalized. Yet here, you acknowledge that white people can be marginalized.

So, which is it?

The common thread seems to be economic status as another commenter stated.

He never said that was a condition. He only said that that serial killer targets black runaways, and that that is a marginalized group.

> ... because he attacks marginalized groups like black runaways rather than white people.

That strongly implies that a white person couldn't be marginalized.

That isn't that clear to me, I feel that you are reading to much into it and seem to be looking for a fight where there is none?

Alright, my previous comment was too fuzzy, let me try to be more clear.

Directly contrasting a specific "non-white marginalized group" with "all white people" does, for me, evoke the impression as if the assumption was that there were no people among "white people" that could be marginalized the same way.

> He only said that that serial killer targets black runaways, and that that is a marginalized group.

This is the part of the comment I was replying to that I took issue with and felt I had to rebut, because it's simply a false summary. The original comment definitely was a stronger statement than that through the broad comparison it drew.

If the original post had been phrased "... rather than white middle class people" (which I believe was the intention), I would completely agree with it.

No it doesn't.

Yes. The police have had a long history of chalking up death in impoverished black neighborhoods to “gang violence” and closing investigations. Topically, Chapelle had a famous stand up bit about it.

The article said there are something like 40 murders possibly associated with the Zodiac killer even though only 5 are confirmed.

I'm not a student of serial killers but it's hard for me to even begin to formulate a motive for this particular guy. Men that kill women is common; women that poison men is pretty common. Let's theorize these people have a fetish for killing. Another category is those with automatic weapons that kill groups of people all at once. Just for notoriety knowing they will be caught or expect to commit suicide at some point in the process.

But Zodiac is killing couples he doesn't know at a distance with a gun (or a knife, likely because a gunshot would draw too much attention). He wants to be notorious but not personally notorious? He just has a hate on for anonymous couples? Are there (m)any more examples of this kind of killer? Hypothetically, if he could kill say a hundred couples from a distance with a bomb would that motivate him? I'm just not getting it.

There are many ways to be deeply evil, in some sense it’s just chance which style of evil any particular person grows attached to.