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Serial killer

A serial killer (also called a serial murderer) is a person who murders two or more people, with the killings taking place over a significant period of time. The serial killers' psychological gratification is the motivation for the killings, and many serial murders involve sexual contact with the victims at different points during the murder process. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states that the motives of serial killers can include anger, thrill-seeking, financial gain, and attention seeking, and killings may be executed as such. The victims tend to have things in common such as demographic profile, appearance, gender or race. Although a serial killer is a distinct classification that differs from that of a mass murderer, spree killer, or contract killer, there are overlaps between them.

Etymology and definition
The English term and concept of serial killer are commonly attributed to former Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Robert Ressler, who used the term serial homicide in 1974 in a lecture at Police Staff College, in Bramshill, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom. Author Ann Rule postulates in her 2004 book Kiss Me, Kill Me, that the English-language credit for coining the term goes to Los Angeles Police Department detective Pierce Brooks, who created the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) system in 1985.

The German term and concept were coined by criminologist Ernst Gennat, who described Peter Kürten as a Serienmörder ('serial-murderer') in his article "Die Düsseldorfer Sexualverbrechen" (1930). In his book, Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters (2004), criminal justice historian Peter Vronsky notes that while Ressler might have coined the English term "serial homicide" within the law in 1974, the terms serial murder and serial murderer appear in John Brophy's book The Meaning of Murder (1966). The Washington, D.C., newspaper Evening Star, in a 1967 review of the book:

"There is the mass murderer, or what he [Brophy] calls the 'serial' killer, who may be actuated by greed, such as insurance, or retention or growth of power, like the Medicis of Renaissance Italy, or Landru, the 'bluebeard' of the World War I period, who murdered numerous wives after taking their money."

Vronsky states that the term serial killing first entered into broader American popular usage when published in The New York Times in early 1981, to describe Atlanta serial killer Wayne Williams. Subsequently, throughout the 1980s, the term was used again in the pages of The New York Times, one of the major national news publications of the United States, on 233 occasions. By the end of the 1990s, the use of the term had increased to 2,514 instances in the paper.

When defining serial killers, researchers generally use "three or more murders" as the baseline, considering it sufficient to provide a pattern without being overly restrictive. Independent of the number of murders, they need to have been committed at different times, and are usually committed in different places. The lack of a cooling-off period (a significant break between the murders) marks the difference between a spree killer and a serial killer. The category has, however, been found to be of no real value to law enforcement, because of definitional problems relating to the concept of a "cooling-off period". Cases of extended bouts of sequential killings over periods of weeks or months with no apparent "cooling off period" or "return to normality" have caused some experts to suggest a hybrid category of "spree-serial killer".

In Controversial Issues in Criminology, Fuller and Hickey write that "[t]he element of time involved between murderous acts is primary in the differentiation of serial, mass, and spree murderers", later elaborating that spree killers "will engage in the killing acts for days or weeks" while the "methods of murder and types of victims vary". Andrew Cunanan is given as an example of spree killing, while Charles Whitman is mentioned in connection with mass murder, and Jeffrey Dahmer with serial killing.

The FBI defines serial killing as "a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone". In 2005, the FBI hosted a multi-disciplinary symposium in San Antonio, Texas, which brought together 135 experts on serial murder from a variety of fields and specialties with the goal of identifying the commonalities of knowledge regarding serial murder. The group also settled on a definition of serial murder which FBI investigators widely accept as their standard: "The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s) in separate events". Serial homicide researcher Enzo Yaksic found that the FBI was justified in lowering the victim threshold from three to two victims given that serial murderers from these groups share similar pathologies.

History

Historical criminologists suggest that there have been serial killers throughout history. Some sources suggest that legends such as werewolves and vampires were inspired by medieval serial killers. In Africa, there have been periodic outbreaks of murder by leopard men. Liu Pengli of China, nephew of the Han Emperor Jing, was made Prince of Jidong in the sixth year of the middle period of Jing's reign (144 BC). According to the Chinese historian Sima Qian, he would "go out on marauding expeditions with 20 or 30 slaves or with young men who were in hiding from the law, murdering people and seizing their belongings for sheer sport". Although many of his subjects knew about these murders, it was not until the 29th year of his reign that the son of one of his victims finally sent a report to the emperor. Eventually, it was discovered that he had murdered at least 100 people. The officials of the court requested that Liu Pengli be executed; however, the emperor could not bear to have his own nephew killed, so Liu Pengli was made a commoner and banished.

In the 9th century (year 257 of the Islamic Calendar), "a strangler from Baghdad was apprehended. He had murdered a number of women and buried them in the house where he was living." In the 15th century, one of the wealthiest men in Europe and a former companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais, was alleged to have sexually assaulted and killed peasant children, mainly boys, whom he had abducted from the surrounding villages and had taken to his castle. It is estimated that his victims numbered between 140 and 800.

Between 1564 and 1589, German farmer Peter Stumpp killed 14 children, including his own son. He also murdered two pregnant women and had an incestuous relationship with his daughter. Stumpp claimed to have been granted the ability to turn into a werewolf by the Devil. As punishment for his crimes, Stumpp was put on a torture wheel and executed. His head was later severed and put on a pole next to the figure of a wolf to scare other people away from claiming themselves werewolves too.

The Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory, born into one of the wealthiest families in Transylvania, allegedly tortured and killed as many as 650 girls and young women before her arrest in 1610. Members of the Thuggee cult in India may have murdered a million people between 1740 and 1840. Thug Behram, a member of the cult, may have murdered as many as 931 victims. In his 1886 book, Psychopathia Sexualis, psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing noted a case of a serial murderer in the 1870s, a Frenchman named Eusebius Pieydagnelle who had a sexual obsession with blood and confessed to murdering six people.

The unidentified killer Jack the Ripper, who has been called the first modern serial killer, killed at least five women, and possibly more, in London in 1888. He was the subject of a massive manhunt and investigation by the Metropolitan Police, during which many modern criminal investigation techniques were pioneered. A large team of policemen conducted house-to-house inquiries, forensic material was collected and suspects were identified and traced. Police surgeon Thomas Bond assembled one of the earliest character profiles of the offender.

The Ripper murders also marked an important watershed in the treatment of crime by journalists. While not the first serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper's case was the first to create a worldwide media frenzy. The dramatic murders of financially destitute women in the midst of the wealth of London focused the media's attention on the plight of the urban poor and gained coverage worldwide. Jack the Ripper has also been called the most infamous serial killer of all time, and his legend has spawned hundreds of theories on his real identity and many works of fiction.

H. H. Holmes was a serial killer in the United States, responsible for the death of at least nine victims in the early 1890s. The case gained notoriety and wide publicity through possibly sensationalized accounts in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. At the same time in France, Joseph Vacher became known as "The French Ripper" after killing and mutilating 11 women and children. He was executed in 1898 after confessing to his crimes. The majority of documented serial killers in the 20th century were active in the United States.

Late 20th century

The serial killing phenomenon in the United States was especially prominent from 1970 to 2000, which has been described as the "golden age of serial murder". The cause of the spike in serial killings has been attributed to urbanization, which put people in close proximity and offered anonymity. The number of active serial killers in the United States peaked in 1989 and has been steadily trending downward since, coinciding with an overall decrease in crime in the United States since that time. The decline in serial killers has no known single cause but is attributed to a number of factors. Mike Aamodt, emeritus professor at Radford University in Virginia, attributes the decline in number of serial killings to less frequent use of parole, improved forensic technology, and people behaving more cautiously. Causes for the general reduction in violent crime following the 1990s include increased incarceration in the United States, the end of the crack epidemic in the United States, and decreased lead exposure in early childhood.

Characteristics
Some commonly found characteristics of serial killers include the following:
 * They may exhibit varying degrees of mental illness or psychopathy, which may contribute to their homicidal behavior.
 * For example, someone who is mentally ill may have psychotic breaks that cause them to believe they are another person or are compelled to murder by other entities.
 * Psychopathic behavior that is consistent with traits common to some serial killers include sensation seeking, a lack of remorse or guilt, impulsivity, the need for control, and predatory behavior. Psychopaths can seem 'normal' and often quite charming, a state of adaptation that psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley called the "mask of sanity".
 * They were often abused—emotionally, physically, or sexually—by a family member.
 * Serial killers may be more likely to engage in fetishism, partialism or necrophilia, which are paraphilias that involve a strong tendency to experience the object of erotic interest almost as if it were a physical representation of the symbolized body. Individuals engage in paraphilias which are organized along a continuum; participating in varying levels of fantasy perhaps by focusing on body parts (partialism), symbolic objects which serve as physical extensions of the body (fetishism), or the anatomical physicality of the human body; specifically regarding its inner parts and sexual organs (one example being necrophilia).
 * A disproportionate number exhibit Macdonald triad predictors of future violent behavior:
 * Many are fascinated with fire setting.
 * They are involved in sadistic activity; especially in children who have not reached sexual maturity, this activity may take the form of torturing animals.
 * More than 60 percent, or simply a large proportion, wet their beds beyond the age of 12.
 * They were frequently bullied or socially isolated as children. For example, Henry Lee Lucas was ridiculed as a child and later cited the mass rejection by his peers as a cause for his hatred of everyone. Kenneth Bianchi was teased as a child because he urinated in his pants, suffered twitching, and as a teenager was ignored by his peers.
 * Some were involved in petty crimes, such as fraud, theft, vandalism, or similar offenses.
 * Often, they have trouble staying employed and tend to work in menial jobs. The FBI, however, states, "Serial murderers often seem normal; have families and/or a steady job." Other sources state they often come from unstable families.
 * Studies have suggested that serial killers who got caught generally have an average or low-average IQ, although they are often described, and perceived, as possessing IQs in the above-average range. A sample of 202 IQs of serial killers who got caught had a median IQ of 89.  Some organized serial killers who got caught have a slightly higher IQ score averaging a little bit over 99, to where disorganized killers average just under 93 in theirs. The average IQ of serial killers who got caught is 94.7.

There are exceptions to these criteria, however. For example, Harold Shipman was a successful professional (a General Practitioner working for the NHS). He was considered a pillar of the local community; he even won a professional award for a children's asthma clinic and was interviewed by Granada Television's World in Action on ITV. Dennis Nilsen was an ex-soldier turned civil servant and trade unionist who had no previous criminal record when arrested. Neither was known to have exhibited many of the tell-tale signs. Vlado Taneski, a crime reporter, was a career journalist who was caught after a series of articles he wrote gave clues that he had murdered people. Russell Williams was a successful and respected career Royal Canadian Air Force Colonel who was convicted of murdering two women, along with fetish burglaries and rapes.

Development

Many serial killers have faced similar problems in their childhood development. Hickey's Trauma Control Model explains how early childhood trauma can set the child up for deviant behavior in adulthood; the child's environment (either their parents or society) is the dominant factor determining whether or not the child's behavior escalates into homicidal activity.

Family, or lack thereof, is the most prominent part of a child's development because it is what the child can identify with on a regular basis. "The serial killer is no different from any other individual who is instigated to seek approval from parents, sexual partners, or others." This need for approval is what influences children to attempt to develop social relationships with their family and peers. "The quality of their attachments to parents and other members of the family is critical to how these children relate to and value other members of society."

Wilson and Seaman (1990) conducted a study on incarcerated serial killers, and what they concluded was the most influential factor that contributed to their homicidal activity. Almost all of the serial killers in the study had experienced some sort of environmental problems during their childhood, such as a broken home caused by divorce, or a lack of a parental figure to discipline the child. Nearly half of the serial killers had experienced some type of physical or sexual abuse, and more of them had experienced emotional neglect.

When a parent has a drug or alcohol problem, the attention in the household is on the parents rather than the child. This neglect of the child leads to the lowering of their self-esteem and helps develop a fantasy world in which they are in control. Hickey's Trauma Control Model supports how parental neglect can facilitate deviant behavior, especially if the child sees substance abuse in action. This then leads to disposition (the inability to attach), which can further lead to homicidal behavior, unless the child finds a way to develop substantial relationships and fight the label they receive. If a child receives no support from anyone, then they are unlikely to recover from the traumatic event in a positive way. As stated by E. E. Maccoby, "the family has continued to be seen as a major—perhaps the major—arena for socialization".

Chromosomal makeup
There have been studies looking into the possibility that an abnormality with one's chromosomes could be the trigger for serial killers. Two serial killers, Bobby Joe Long and Richard Speck, came to attention for reported chromosomal abnormalities. Long had an extra X chromosome. Speck was erroneously reported to have an extra Y chromosome; in fact, his karyotype was performed twice and was normal each time. While attempts have been made to link the XYY karyotype to violence, including serial murder, research has consistently found little or no association between violent criminal behaviour and an extra Y chromosome.

Fantasy
Children who do not have the power to control the mistreatment they suffer sometimes create a new reality to which they can escape. This new reality becomes their fantasy that they have total control of and becomes part of their daily existence. In this fantasy world, their emotional development is guided and maintained. According to Garrison (1996), "the child becomes sociopathic because the normal development of the concepts of right and wrong and empathy towards others is retarded because the child's emotional and social development occurs within his self-centered fantasies. A person can do no wrong in his own world and the pain of others is of no consequence when the purpose of the fantasy world is to satisfy the needs of one person" (Garrison, 1996). Boundaries between fantasy and reality are lost and fantasies turn to dominance, control, sexual conquest, and violence, eventually leading to murder. Fantasy can lead to the first step in the process of a dissociative state, which, in the words of Stephen Giannangelo, "allows the serial killer to leave the stream of consciousness for what is, to him, a better place".

Criminologist Jose Sanchez reports, "The young criminal you see today is more detached from his victim, more ready to hurt or kill. The lack of empathy for their victims among young criminals is just one symptom of a problem that afflicts the whole society." Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of Gangster (2001), explains how potential criminals are labeled by society, which can then lead to their offspring also developing in the same way through the cycle of violence. The ability for serial killers to appreciate the mental life of others is severely compromised, presumably leading to their dehumanization of others. This process may be considered an expression of the intersubjectivity associated with a cognitive deficit regarding the capability to make sharp distinctions between other people and inanimate objects. For these individuals, objects can appear to possess animistic or humanistic power while people are perceived as objects. Before he was executed, serial killer Ted Bundy stated media violence and pornography had stimulated and increased his need to commit homicide, although this statement was made during last-ditch efforts to appeal his death sentence.

Organized, disorganized, and mixed

In the 1970s and 1980s, FBI profilers instigated a simple division of serial killers into "organized" and "disorganized"; that is, those who plan their crimes, and those who act on impulse. The FBI's Crime Classification Manual now places serial killers into three categories: organized, disorganized, and mixed (i.e., offenders who exhibit organized and disorganized characteristics). Some killers descend from organized to disorganized as their killings continue, as in the case of psychological decompensation or overconfidence due to having evaded capture.

Organized serial killers often plan their crimes methodically, usually abducting victims, killing them in one place and disposing of them in another. They often lure the victims with ploys appealing to their sense of sympathy. Others specifically target prostitutes, who are likely to go voluntarily with a stranger. These killers maintain a high degree of control over the crime scene and usually have a solid knowledge of forensic science that enables them to cover their tracks, such as burying the body or weighing it down and sinking it in a river. They follow their crimes in the news media carefully and often take pride in their actions as if it were all a grand project.

Often, organized killers have social and other interpersonal skills sufficient to enable them to develop both personal and romantic relationships, friends and lovers and sometimes even attract and maintain a spouse and sustain a family including children. Among serial killers, those of this type are in the event of their capture most likely to be described by acquaintances as kind and unlikely to hurt anyone. Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy are examples of organized serial killers. In general, the IQs of organized serial killers tend to be normal range, with a mean of 98.7.

Disorganized serial killers are usually far more impulsive, often committing their murders with a random weapon available at the time, and usually do not attempt to hide the body. They are likely to be unemployed, a loner, or both, with very few friends. They often turn out to have a history of mental illness, and their modus operandi (M.O.) or lack thereof is often marked by excessive violence and sometimes necrophilia or sexual violence. Disorganized serial killers have been found to have a lower mean IQ than organized serial killers, at 89.4. Mixed serial killers, with both organized and disorganized traits, have an average IQ of 100.9, but a low sample size.

Medical professionals
Some people with a pathological interest in the power of life and death tend to be attracted to medical professions or acquiring such a job. These kinds of killers are sometimes referred to as "angels of death" or angels of mercy. Medical professionals will kill their patients for money, for a sense of sadistic pleasure, for a belief that they are "easing" the patient's pain, or simply "because they can". Perhaps the most prolific of these was the British doctor Harold Shipman. Another such killer was nurse Jane Toppan, who admitted during her murder trial that she was sexually aroused by death. She would administer a drug mixture to patients she chose as her victims, lie in bed with them and hold them close to her body as they died.

Another medical professional serial killer is Genene Jones. It is believed she killed 11 to 46 infants and children while working at Bexar County Medical Center Hospital in San Antonio, Texas, United States. She is currently serving a 99-year sentence for the murder of Chelsea McClellan and the attempted murder of Rolando Santos, and became eligible for parole in 2017 due to a law in Texas at the time of her sentencing to reduce prison overcrowding. A similar case occurred in Britain in 1991, where nurse Beverley Allitt killed four children at the hospital where she worked, attempted to kill three more, and injured a further six over the course of two months. A 21st-century example is Canadian nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer, who murdered elderly patients in the nursing homes where she worked. William George Davis is another hospital nurse who was sentenced to death in Texas for the murdering of four patients.

Female

Female serial killers are rare compared to their male counterparts. Sources suggest that female serial killers represented less than one in every six known serial murderers in the United States between 1800 and 2004 (64 females from a total of 416 known offenders), or that around 15% of U.S. serial killers have been women, with a collective number of victims between 427 and 612. The authors of Lethal Ladies, Amanda L. Farrell, Robert D. Keppel, and Victoria B. Titterington, state that "the Justice Department indicated 36 female serial killers have been active over the course of the last century." According to The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, there is evidence that 16% of all serial killers are women.

Michael D. Kelleher and C. L. Kelleher created several categories to describe female serial killers. They used the classifications of black widow, angel of death, sexual predator, revenge, profit or crime, team killer, question of sanity, unexplained, and unsolved. In using these categories, they observed that most women fell into the categories of the black widow or team killer. Although motivations for female serial killers can include attention seeking, addiction, or the result of psychopathological behavioral factors, female serial killers are commonly categorized as murdering men for material gain, usually being emotionally close to their victims, and generally needing to have a relationship with the victim, hence the traditional cultural image of the "black widow".

The methods that female serial killers use for murder are frequently covert or low-profile, such as murder by poison (the preferred choice for killing). Other methods used by female serial killers include shootings (used by 20%), suffocation (16%), stabbing (11%), and drowning (5%). They commit killings in specific places, such as their home or a health-care facility, or at different locations within the same city or state. A notable exception to the typical characteristics of female serial killers is Aileen Wuornos, who killed outdoors instead of at home, used a gun instead of poison, and killed strangers instead of friends or family. One "analysis of 86 female serial killers from the United States found that the victims tended to be spouses, children or the elderly". Other studies indicate that since 1975, increasingly strangers are marginally the most preferred victim of female serial killers, or that only 26% of female serial killers kill for material gain only. Sources state that each killer will have her own proclivities, needs and triggers. A review of the published literature on female serial murder stated that "sexual or sadistic motives are believed to be extremely rare in female serial murderers, and psychopathic traits and histories of childhood abuse have been consistently reported in these women."

A study by Eric W. Hickey (2010) of 64 female serial killers in the United States indicated that sexual activity was one of several motives in 10% of the cases, enjoyment in 11% and control in 14% and that 51% of all U.S. female serial killers murdered at least one woman and 31% murdered at least one child. In other cases, women have been involved as an accomplice with a male serial killer as a part of a serial killing team. A 2015 study published in The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology found that the most common motive for female serial killers was for financial gain and almost 40% of them had experienced some sort of mental illness.

Peter Vronsky in Female Serial Killers (2007) maintains that female serial killers today often kill for the same reason males do: as a means of expressing rage and control. He suggests that sometimes the theft of the victims' property by the female "black widow" type serial killer appears to be for material gain, but really is akin to a male serial killer's collecting of totems (souvenirs) from the victim as a way of exerting continued control over the victim and reliving it. By contrast, Hickey states that although popular perception sees "black widow" female serial killers as something of the Victorian past, in his statistical study of female serial killer cases reported in the United States since 1826, approximately 75% occurred since 1950.

Elizabeth Báthory is sometimes cited as the most prolific female serial killer in all of history. Formally countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (Báthory Erzsébet in Hungarian, August 7, 1560 – August 21, 1614), she was a countess from the renowned Báthory family. Before her husband's death, Elizabeth took great pleasure in torturing the staff, by jamming pins under the servant's fingernails or stripping servants and throwing them into the snow. After her husband's death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80. Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted. In 1610, however, she was imprisoned in the Csejte Castle, where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later.

A 2010 article by Perri and Lichtenwald addressed some of the misconceptions concerning female criminality. In the article, Perri and Lichtenwald analyze the current research regarding female psychopathy, including case studies of female psychopathic killers featuring Munchausen syndrome by proxy, cesarean section homicide, fraud detection homicide, female kill teams, and a female serial killer.

Juvenile
Juvenile serial killers are rare. There are three main categories that juvenile serial killers can fit into: primary, maturing, and secondary killers. There have been studies done to compare and contrast these three groups and to discover similarities and differences between them. Although these types of serial killers are less common, oftentimes adult serial killers may make their debut at an early age and it can be an opportunity for researchers to study what factors brought about the behavior. While juvenile serial killers are rare, the youngest felon on death row is a juvenile serial killer named Harvey Miguel Robinson who was 17 at the time of his crimes and 18 at the time of his arrest.

Ethnicity and demographics in the United States
There is a myth that most serial killers are white males. However, according to the FBI, based on percentages of the U.S. population, white males are not more likely than other races to be serial killers. White males are actually greatly under-represented among serial killers in proportion to their overall numbers in the United States. According to a 2016 study, since the year 2000, African Americans accounted for roughly 60% of all serial killers in the United States.

Anthony Walsh found that the prevalence of non-white serial killers has typically been drastically underestimated in both professional research literature and the mass media. Black males were over-represented among serial killers by a factor of 2. Walsh argues that the popular media ignores black serial killers because of a fear of allegations of racism, and that this may enable black serial killers to operate more effectively, as their crimes do not get the same media attention as the crimes of non-black serial killers.

Outside the United States
In one study of serial homicide in South Africa, many patterns were similar to established patterns in the U.S., with some exceptions: no offenders were female, offenders were lower educated than in the U.S., and both victims and offenders were predominantly black. There are many more serial killers outside of the United States. Most notably is Jack the Ripper, a serial killer from the United Kingdom who was active in the autumn of 1888. He killed 5 women but it is believed that he killed more than that.

One notable non-American serial killer is Pedro Lopez, a serial killer from South America. He killed a minimum of 110 young girls between 1969 and 1980. However, he claims that the number is over 300. He was released from a mental facility in 1998 and his whereabouts are still unknown. He is commonly nicknamed the "Monster of the Andes". Another notable non-American serial is Luis Garavito who was a serial killer in Colombia. Garavito would kill and torture boys using various disguises. He murdered around 140 boys ranging in ages from 8 to 16. He would dump his victims' bodies in mass graves.

Motives

The motives of serial killers are generally placed into four categories: visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power or control; however, the motives of any given killer may display considerable overlap among these categories.

Visionary
Visionary serial killers suffer from psychotic breaks with reality, sometimes believing they are another person or are compelled to murder by entities such as the Devil or God. The two most common subgroups are "demon mandated" and "God mandated".

Herbert Mullin believed the American casualties in the Vietnam War were preventing California from experiencing the Big One. As the war wound down, Mullin claimed his father instructed him via telepathy to raise the number of "human sacrifices to nature" to delay a catastrophic earthquake that would plunge California into the ocean. David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam") may also be an example of a visionary serial killer, having claimed a demon transmitted orders through his neighbor's dog and instructed him to commit murder. Berkowitz later described those claims as a hoax, as originally concluded by psychiatrist David Abrahamsen.

Mission-oriented
Mission-oriented killers typically justify their acts as "ridding the world" of certain types of people perceived as undesirable, such as the homeless, ex-cons, homosexuals, drug users, prostitutes, or people of different ethnicity or religion; however, they are generally not psychotic. Some see themselves as attempting to change society, often to cure a societal ill.

An example of a mission-oriented killer would be Joseph Paul Franklin, an American white supremacist who exclusively targeted Jewish, biracial, and African American individuals for the purpose of inciting a "race war". Saeed Hanaei was a serial killer convicted of murdering at least sixteen women in his native Iran, many of whom were sex workers. He reported his goal was to cleanse his city of "moral corruption" and that his mission was sanctioned by God.

Hedonistic
This type of serial killer seeks thrills and derives pleasure and satisfaction from killing, seeing people as expendable means to this goal. Forensic psychologists have identified three subtypes of the hedonistic killer: "lust", "thrill", and "comfort".

Lust

Sex is the primary motive of lust killers, whether or not the victims are dead, and fantasy plays a large role in their killings. Their sexual gratification depends on the amount of torture and mutilation they perform on their victims. The sexual serial murderer has a psychological need to have absolute control, dominance, and power over their victims, and the infliction of torture, pain, and ultimately death is used in an attempt to fulfill their need. They usually use weapons that require close contact with the victims, such as knives or hands. As lust killers continue with their murders, the time between killings decreases or the required level of stimulation increases, sometimes both.

Kenneth Bianchi, one of the "Hillside Stranglers", murdered women and girls of different ages, races, and appearance because his sexual urges required different types of stimulation and increasing intensity. Jeffrey Dahmer searched for his perfect fantasy lover—beautiful, submissive and eternal. As his desire increased, he experimented with drugs, alcohol, and exotic sex. His increasing need for stimulation was demonstrated by the dismemberment of victims, whose heads and genitals he preserved, and by his attempts to create a "living zombie" under his control (by pouring acid into a hole drilled into the victim's skull).

Dahmer once said, "Lust played a big part of it. Control and lust. Once it happened the first time, it just seemed like it had control of my life from there on in. The killing was just a means to an end. That was the least satisfactory part. I didn't enjoy doing that. That's why I tried to create living zombies with acid and the drill." He further elaborated on this, also saying, "I wanted to see if it was possible to make—again, it sounds really gross—uh, zombies, people that would not have a will of their own, but would follow my instructions without resistance. So after that, I started using the drilling technique." He experimented with cannibalism to "ensure his victims would always be a part of him".

Thrill
The primary motive of a thrill killer is to induce pain or terror in their victims, which provides stimulation and excitement for the killer. They seek the adrenaline rush provided by hunting and killing victims. Thrill killers murder only for the kill; usually, the attack is not prolonged, and there is no sexual aspect. Usually, the victims are strangers, although the killer may have followed them for a period of time. Thrill killers can abstain from killing for long periods of time and become more successful at killing as they refine their murder methods. Many attempt to commit the perfect crime and believe they will not be caught.

Robert Hansen took his victims to a secluded area, where he would let them loose and then hunt and kill them. In one of his letters to San Francisco Bay Area newspapers in San Francisco, California, the Zodiac Killer wrote "[killing] gives me the most thrilling experience it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl". Carl Watts was described by a surviving victim as "excited and hyper and clappin' and just making noises like he was excited, that this was gonna be fun" during the 1982 attack. Slashing, stabbing, hanging, drowning, asphyxiating, and strangling were among the ways Watts killed.

Comfort (profit)
Material gain and a comfortable lifestyle are the primary motives of comfort killers. Usually, the victims are family members and close acquaintances. After a murder, a comfort killer will usually wait for a period of time before killing again to allow any suspicions by family or authorities to subside. They often use poison, most notably arsenic, to kill their victims. Female serial killers are often comfort killers, although not all comfort killers are female.

Dorothea Puente killed her tenants for their Social Security checks and buried them in the backyard of her home. H. H. Holmes killed for insurance and business profits. Puente and Holmes had previous records of crimes such as theft, fraud, non-payment of debts, embezzlement and others of a similar nature. Dorothea Puente was finally arrested on a parole violation, having been on parole for a previous fraud conviction. Contract killers ("hitmen") may exhibit serial killers traits, but are generally not classified as such because of third-party killing objectives and detached financial and emotional incentives. Nevertheless, there are occasionally individuals that are labeled as both a hitman and a serial killer.

Power/control

The main objective for this type of serial killer is to gain and exert power over their victim. Such killers are sometimes abused as children, leaving them with feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy as adults. Many power- or control-motivated killers sexually abuse their victims, but they differ from hedonistic killers in that rape is not motivated by lust (as it would be with a lust murder) but as simply another form of dominating the victim. Ted Bundy is an example of a power/control-oriented serial killer. He traveled around the United States seeking women to control.

Media influences
Many serial killers claim that a violent culture influenced them to commit murders. During his final interview, Ted Bundy stated that hardcore pornography was responsible for his actions. Others idolise figures for their deeds or perceived vigilante justice, such as Peter Kürten, who idolized Jack the Ripper, or John Wayne Gacy and Ed Kemper, who both idolized the actor John Wayne.

Killers who have a strong desire for fame or to be renowned for their actions desire media attention as a way of validating and spreading their crimes; fear is also a component here, as some serial killers enjoy causing fear. An example is Dennis Rader, who sought attention from the press during his murder spree.

Biological and sociological
Theories for why certain people commit serial murder have been advanced. Some theorists believe the reasons are biological, suggesting serial killers are born, not made, and that their violent behavior is a result of abnormal brain activity. Holmes believe that "until a reliable sample can be obtained and tested, there is no scientific statement that can be made concerning the exact role of biology as a determining factor of a serial killer personality."

The "Fractured Identity Syndrome" (FIS) is a merging of Charles Cooley's "looking glass self" and Erving Goffman's "virtual" and "actual social identity" theories. The FIS suggests a social event, or series of events, during one's childhood results in a fracturing of the personality of the serial killer. The term "fracture" is defined as a small breakage of the personality which is often not visible to the outside world and is only felt by the killer.

"Social Process Theory" has also been suggested as an explanation for serial murder. Social process theory states that offenders may turn to crime due to peer pressure, family and friends. Criminal behavior is a process of interaction with social institutions, in which everyone has the potential for criminal behavior. A lack of family structure and identity could also be a cause leading to serial murder traits. A child used as a scapegoat will be deprived of their capacity to feel guilt. Displaced anger could result in animal torture, as identified in the Macdonald triad, and a further lack of basic identity.

Military

The "military theory" has been proposed as an explanation for why serial murderers kill, as some serial murderers have served in the military or related fields. According to Castle and Hensley, 7% of the serial killers studied had military experience. This figure may be a proportional under-representation when compared to the number of military veterans in a nation's total population. For example, according to the United States census for the year 2000, military veterans comprised 12.7% of the U.S. population; in England, it was estimated in 2007 that military veterans comprised 9.1% of the population. Though by contrast, about 2.5% of the population of Canada in 2006 consisted of military veterans.

There are two theories that can be used to study the correlation between serial killing and military training: Applied learning theory states that serial killing can be learned. The military is training for higher kill rates from servicemen while training the soldiers to be desensitized to taking a human life. Social learning theory can be used when soldiers get praised and accommodated for killing. They learn or believe that they learn, that it is acceptable to kill because they were praised for it in the military. Serial killers want accreditation for the work that they have done.

In both military and serial killing, the offender or the soldier may become desensitized to killing as well as compartmentalized; the soldiers do not see enemy personnel as "human" and neither do serial killers see their victims as humans. The theories do not imply that military institutions make a deliberate effort to produce serial killers; to the contrary, all military personnel are trained to recognize when, where, and against whom it is appropriate to use deadly force, which starts with the basic Law of Land Warfare, taught during the initial training phase, and may include more stringent policies for military personnel in law enforcement or security.

FBI: Issues and practices
In 2008, the FBI published a handbook titled Serial Murder which was the product of a symposium held in 2005 to bring together the many issues surrounding serial murder, including its investigation.

Identification

According to the FBI, identifying one, or multiple, murders as being the work of a serial killer is the first challenge an investigation faces, especially if the victim(s) come from a marginalized or high-risk population and is normally linked through forensic or behavioral evidence. Should the cases cross multiple jurisdictions, the law enforcement system in the United States is fragmented and thus not configured to detect multiple similar murders across a large geographic area. Ted Bundy was particularly famous for such geographic exploitations. He used his knowledge about the lack of communication between multiple jurisdictions to avoid arrest and detection. The FBI suggests utilizing databases and increasing interdepartmental communication. Keppel suggests holding multi-jurisdictional conferences regularly to compare cases giving departments a greater chance to detect linked cases and overcome linkage blindness.

One collaboration, the Serial Homicide Expertise and Information Sharing Collaborative, was formed in 2010 and made serial murder data widely accessible after multiple experts combined their databases to aid in research and investigation. Another collaboration, the Radford/FGCU Serial Killer Database Project was proposed at the 2012 FDIAI Annual Conference. Utilizing Radford's Serial Killer Database as a starting point, the new collaboration, hosted by FGCU Justice Studies, has invited and is working in conjunction with other universities to maintain and expand the scope of the database to also include spree and mass murders. Utilizing over 170 data points, multiple-murderer methodology and victimology; researchers and Law Enforcement Agencies can build case studies and statistical profiles to further research the Who, What, Why and How of these types of crimes.

Leadership
Leadership, or administration, should play a small or virtually non-existent role in the actual investigation past assigning knowledgeable or experienced homicide investigators to lead positions. The administration's role is not to run the investigation but to establish and reaffirm the primary goal of catching the serial killer, as well as provide support for the investigators. The FBI (2008) suggests completing Memorandums of Understanding to facilitate support and commitment of resources from different jurisdictions to an investigation. Egger takes this one step further and suggests completing mutual aid pacts, which are written agreements to provide support to each other in a time of need, with surrounding jurisdictions. Doing this in advance would save time and resources that could be used on the investigation.

Organization

The structural organization of an investigation is key to its success, as demonstrated by the investigation of Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer. Once a serial murder case was established, a task force was created to track down and arrest the offender. Over the course of the investigation, for various reasons, the task force's organization was radically changed and reorganized multiple times – at one point including more than 50 full-time personnel, and at another, only a single investigator. Eventually, what led to the end of the investigation was a conference of 25 detectives organized to share ideas to solve the case.

The FBI handbook provides a description of how a task force should be organized but offers no additional options on how to structure the investigation. While it appears advantageous to have a full-time staff assigned to a serial murder investigation, it can become prohibitively expensive. For example, the Green River Task Force cost upwards of $2 million per year, and as was witnessed with the Green River Killer investigation, other strategies can prevail where a task force fails. A common strategy, already employed by many departments for other reasons, is the conference, in which departments get together and focus on a specific set of topics. With serial murders, the focus is typically on unsolved cases, with evidence thought to be related to the case at hand.

Similar to a conference is an information clearing-house in which a jurisdiction with a suspected serial murder case collects all of its evidence and actively seeks data that may be related from other jurisdictions. By collecting all of the related information into one place, they provide a central point in which it can be organized and easily accessed by other jurisdictions working toward the goal of arresting an offender and ending the murders. A task force provides for a flexible, organized, framework for jurisdictions depending on the needs of the investigation. Unfortunately due to the need to commit resources (manpower, money, equipment, etc.) for long periods of time it can be an unsustainable option.

In the case of the investigation of Aileen Wournos, the Marion County Sheriff coordinated multiple agencies without any written or formal agreement. While not a specific strategy for a serial murder investigation, this is certainly a best practice in so far as the agencies were able to work easily together toward a common goal. Finally, once a serial murder investigation has been identified, the use of an FBI Rapid Response Team can assist both experienced and inexperienced jurisdictions in setting up a task force. This is completed by organizing and delegating jobs, by compiling and analyzing clues, and by establishing communication between the parties involved.

Resource augmentation
During the course of a serial murder investigation, it may become necessary to call in additional resources; the FBI defines this as Resource Augmentation. Within the structure of a task force, the addition of a resource should be thought of as either long-term or short-term. If the task force's framework is expanded to include the new resource, then it should be permanent and not removed. For short-term needs, such as setting up roadblocks or canvassing a neighborhood, additional resources should be called in on a short-term basis. The decision of whether resources are needed short or long term should be left to the lead investigator and facilitated by the administration.

The confusion and counter productiveness created by changing the structure of a task force mid investigation is illustrated by the way the Green River Task Force's staffing and structure was changed multiple times throughout the investigation. This made an already complicated situation more difficult, resulting in the delay or loss of information, which allowed Ridgway to continue killing. The FBI model does not take into account that permanently expanding a task force, or investigative structure, may not be possible due to cost or personnel availability. Egger (1998) offers several alternative strategies including; using investigative consultants, or experienced staff to augment an investigative team. Not all departments have investigators experienced in serial murder and by temporarily bringing in consultants, they can educate a department to a level of competence then step out. This would reduce the initially established framework of the investigation team and save the department the cost of retaining the consultants until the conclusion of the investigation.

Communication
The FBI handbook (2008) and Keppel (1989) both stress communication as paramount. The difference is that the FBI handbook concentrates primarily on communication within a task force, while Keppel makes getting information out to and allowing information to be passed back from patrol officers a priority. The FBI handbook suggests having daily e-mail or in-person briefings for all staff involved in the investigation and providing periodic summary briefings to patrol officers and managers. Looking back on a majority of serial murderer arrests, most are exercised by patrol officers in the course of their everyday duties and unrelated to the ongoing serial murder investigation.

Keppel provides examples of Larry Eyler, who was arrested during a traffic stop for a parking violation, and Ted Bundy, who was arrested during a traffic stop for operating a stolen vehicle. In each case, it was uniformed officers, not directly involved in the investigation, who knew what to look for and took the direct action that stopped the killer. By providing up-to-date (as opposed to periodic) briefings and information to officers on the street the chances of catching a serial killer, or finding solid leads, are increased.

Data management
A serial murder investigation generates staggering amounts of data, all of which needs to be reviewed and analyzed. A standardized method of documenting and distributing information must be established and investigators must be allowed time to complete reports while investigating leads and at the end of a shift (FBI 2008). When the mechanism for data management is insufficient, leads are not only lost or buried but the investigation can be hindered and new information can become difficult to obtain or become corrupted.

During the Green River Killer investigation, reporters would often find and interview possible victims or witnesses ahead of investigators. The understaffed investigation was unable to keep up the information flow, which prevented them from promptly responding to leads. To make matters worse, investigators believed that the journalists, untrained in interviewing victims or witnesses of crimes, would corrupt the information and result in unreliable leads.

Memorabilia
Notorious and infamous serial killers number in the thousands and a subculture revolves around their legacies. That subculture includes the collection, sale, and display of serial killer memorabilia, dubbed "murderabilia" by Andrew Kahan, one of the best-known opponents of collectors of serial killer remnants. Kahan is the director of the Mayor's Crime Victims Office in Houston. He is backed by the families of murder victims and "Son of Sam laws" existing in some states that prevent murderers from profiting from the publicity generated by their crimes.

Such memorabilia includes the paintings, writings, and poems of these killers. Recently, marketing has capitalized even more upon interest in serial killers with the rise of various merchandise such as trading cards, action figures, and books. Some serial killers attain celebrity status in the way they acquire fans and may have previous personal possessions auctioned off on websites like eBay. A few examples of this are Ed Gein's 150-pound stolen gravestone and Bobby Joe Long's sunglasses.

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title: Serial killer


text:
1968 Democratic National Convention

The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held August 26–29 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Earlier that year incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced he would not seek reelection, thus making the purpose of the convention to select a new presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. The keynote speaker was Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine were nominated for president and vice president, respectively. The most contentious issues of the convention were the continuing American military involvement in the Vietnam War and voting reform, particularly expanding the right to vote for draft-age soldiers (age 18) who were unable to vote as the voting age was 21. The convention also marked a turning point where previously inert groups such as youth and minorities became more involved in politics and voting.

The convention of 1968 was held during a year of riots, political turbulence, and mass civil unrest. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April of that year following his opposition to the Vietnam War further inflamed racial tensions in addition to the draft and popular opposition to voter suppression. King assassination riots in more than 100 cities followed. The convention also followed the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5. Kennedy's assassination further derailed the convention, paving the way for the pro-war Humphrey. The Humphrey–Muskie ticket, competitively failed to win the confidence of the democratic voters and so failed to unite liberals or attract anti-war voters. They would be defeated in the presidential election by the "silent majority" Republican ticket of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.

Before the convention
The Democratic Party, which controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House in 1968, was divided. Senator Eugene McCarthy entered the campaign in November 1967, challenging incumbent President Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination. Senator Robert F. Kennedy entered the race in March 1968.

Johnson, facing dissent within his party, and having only barely won the New Hampshire primary, announced on March 31, 1968, that he would not seek re-election. The Wisconsin primary was scheduled for April 2, and public opinion polls showed Johnson as third in the race, behind McCarthy and Kennedy. For an incumbent president to come in third in a primary would be unprecedented humiliation, and for Johnson it was better to drop out of the race on March 31 rather than to come in third in the Wisconsin primary. In his television address announcing his withdrawal from the presidential race, Johnson also announced the United States would stop bombing North Vietnam north of the 19th parallel and was willing to open peace talks. On April 27 Vice President Hubert Humphrey entered into the race but did not compete in any primaries; instead he inherited the delegates previously pledged to Johnson and then collected delegates in caucus states, especially in caucuses controlled by local Democratic bosses.

Peace talks had begun in Paris on May 13, 1968, but almost immediately became deadlocked as Xuan Thuy, the head of the North Vietnamese delegation, demanded that the U.S. give a promise to unconditionally stop bombing North Vietnam, a demand rejected by W. Averell Harriman of the American delegation. Right from the moment Operation Rolling Thunder started in 1965, the North Vietnamese had demanded the U.S. unconditionally halt the bombing as the first step towards peace. Though the North Vietnamese had agreed to talk in 1968, it soon became apparent that no progress would be possible in Paris until the U.S. promised to unconditionally cease bombing, as the talks floundered on that issue all through the spring, summer and fall of 1968.

After Kennedy's assassination on June 5, the Democratic Party's divisions grew. At the moment of Kennedy's death the delegate count stood at Humphrey 561.5, Kennedy 393.5, McCarthy 258. Kennedy's murder left his delegates uncommitted. Support within the Democratic Party was divided between McCarthy, who ran a decidedly anti-war campaign and was seen as the peace candidate; Humphrey, who was seen as the candidate representing the Johnson point of view; and Senator George McGovern, who appealed to some of the Kennedy supporters.

Convention
Before the start of the convention on August 26, several states had competing slates of delegates attempting to be seated at the convention. Some of these delegate credential fights went to the floor of the convention on August 26, where votes were held to determine which slates of delegates representing Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina would be seated at the convention. The more racially integrated challenging slate from Texas was defeated.

The convention was among the most tense and confrontational political conventions ever in American history. The convention's host, Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, had refused permission for "anti-patriotic" groups to demonstrate at the convention, and had the International Amphitheatre, where the convention was being held, ringed with barbed wire while putting the 11,000 officers of the Chicago Police Department on twelve-hour shifts. In addition, there were 6,000 armed men from the Illinois National Guard called up to guard the International Amphitheatre, giving the feeling that Chicago was a city under siege. Todd Gitlin, one of the leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) protest group, was highly worried about the potential for violence, and at a speech paraphrased a lyric from a song, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)", saying: "If you're going to Chicago, be sure to wear some armor in your hair".

Johnson had wanted the Democratic convention to be held in Houston, but Daley had successfully lobbied the president to have the convention held in Chicago, as he wanted the convention held in his city to showcase to the national media how successful he had been since he started serving as mayor in 1955. Daley, a man who ruled Chicago in an extremely authoritarian style, felt very strongly that the protesters were going to ruin what was supposed to be his moment of triumph and was determined to stop them. One of Daley's aides told the media that the anti-war demonstrators were "revolutionaries bent on the destruction of America". The mayor attempted to impose restrictions to keep protesters as far away as possible from the convention, on their numbers, and on their activities, making it very clear that he much preferred that no protesters come to his city. Two of the SDS leaders, Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis, had planned to keep their protests peaceful, but the lack of permits for protesting together with thinly veiled threats that the Chicago police would beat demonstrators made it clear that there would probably be violence. When the media reported that Daley had given orders to the police to restrict the activities of Democratic delegates loyal to McCarthy, Daley was enraged, giving a rambling press conference saying, "This is a vicious attack on this city and its mayor".

The leaders of the Yippies (an acronym for Youth International Party), Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, specialized in outlandish, bizarre rhetoric that attracted maximum media attention, and Daley took many of their more outrageous threats seriously. To sabotage the convention, Hoffman and Rubin announced that they were sending "super-hot" hippie girls to seduce the delegates and give them LSD; that they were going to put LSD into the water supply of the International Amphitheatre; and were sending well-endowed hippie "studs" to seduce the wives and daughters of the delegates. In a typical press release, Hoffman and Rubin stated about their plans in Chicago: "We are dirty, smelly, grimy and foul...we will piss and shit and fuck in public...we will be constantly stoned or tripping on every drug known to man". Daley took all of this seriously, and much of the excessive security was due to his belief that the Yippies were going to disrupt the convention in the manner that they had proclaimed they would. Daley's heavy-handed security measures incensed the media. Walter Cronkite complained of "a totally unwarranted restriction of free and rapid access to information". With the convention taking place days after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Eric Sevareid stated that Chicago "runs the city of Prague a close second right now as the world's least attractive tourist destination". Intelligence agents had infiltrated the protesters, including agents from the Central Intelligence Agency, who – contrary to American law – had been sent to spy upon Americans in the United States. Just before the convention started, Hoffman and Rubin showed up at the Civic Center Plaza to free the pig named Pigasus whom they had nominated as the Democratic candidate, leading the police to seize Pigasus while arresting Rubin and five others. The Pigasus incident was captured live on television. Over 10,000 people had arrived in Chicago to protest against the Vietnam War, and the city in late August was much on the edge. The Chicago police raided the mostly black neighborhoods of South Chicago to stage mass arrests of the Blackstone Rangers, a black power group that was alleged to be planning to assassinate Humphrey. When Humphrey arrived in Chicago, Daley was not at the airport to greet him, instead sending a police bagpipe band to welcome him. As Humphrey was driven to his room at the Conrad Hilton hotel, he noticed that no one in the streets cheered him, in marked contrast to the arrival of McCarthy who was greeted by 5,000 cheering supporters when he landed in Chicago.

Within the convention itself, tensions were much evident between pro-war and anti-war Democrats. One of the principal issues at the peace talks in Paris was the North Vietnamese demand that the U.S. unconditionally cease bombing North Vietnam as an essential precondition before discussing other matters. The more dovish Democrats favored accepting the North Vietnamese demand while more hawkish Democrats demanded the North Vietnamese promise not to send any men down the Ho Chi Minh Trail as their precondition for a bombing pause, a demand that the North Vietnamese rejected. Humphrey, confronted with a divided party, attempted to craft a party platform that would appeal to both factions, writing a platform calling for a bombing pause that "took into account, most importantly, the risk to American troops as well as the response from Hanoi." Humphrey's platform held out the possibility of a complete bombing pause without explicitly saying so, though Humphrey's statements suggested that if elected president he would order a complete bombing pause. Anticipating the "Vietnamization" strategy later carried out by Richard Nixon, Humphrey's platform called for the "de-Americanization" of the war as it called for the U.S. to gradually pull out American troops from South Vietnam and to shift the burden of fighting the war back to the South Vietnamese.

Humphrey previewed his platform to two of Johnson's more hawkish advisers, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Advisor Walt Whitman Rostow. Rostow very reluctantly gave his approval while Rusk told Humphrey, "We can live with this, Hubert." Johnson, despite not attending the convention as he had chosen to decamp to his ranch in Texas instead, maintained a very tight control over the proceedings and angrily rejected Humphrey's compromise peace plank as a personal affront, telling Humphrey in a telephone call to change his plank at once. When Humphrey protested that, "Dean Rusk approved it," Johnson shouted over the phone: "That's not the way I hear it. Well, this just undercuts our whole policy, and by God, the Democratic Party ought not to be doing that to me, and you ought not to be doing it. You've been a part of the policy." To put further pressure on Humphrey, Johnson called up General Creighton Abrams, the commander of the U.S. forces in Vietnam, to ask if a complete bombing pause would endanger the lives of American soldiers; Abrams, unaware that Johnson's question was really about an intra-Democratic dispute, replied that it would. Johnson, who also received Abrams's answer to his question in writing, passed on a copy to Hale Boggs, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), who in turn showed it to various leading delegates to show how reckless and "unpatriotic" Humphrey was in contemplating a bombing pause. Faced with Johnson's fury, Humphrey gave in and accepted a plank that was more to Johnson's liking. Johnson always had a strong contempt for Humphrey, a man whom he liked to bully, telling Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford that he would respect Humphrey more if only he "showed he had some balls". Though some of Humphrey's advisors counseled him to defy the lame-duck president, Humphrey resignedly stated: "Well, it would not look like an act based on principle or conviction; it would seem like a gimmick. It would seem strange. And it would enrage the president."

The platform that Humphrey had written on Johnson's dictation was introduced onto the floor of the convention and prompted a passionate three-hour long debate on the floor, as anti-war Democrats were unrelenting in their objections. The platform was passed with 1,567 delegates voting for the platform and 1,041 voting against it, a division of 60% to 40%. When the platform was passed, the delegation from New York put on black armbands and began to sing "We Shall Overcome" in protest. Humphrey later stated that his biggest mistake of the 1968 election was to have given in to Johnson, contending that if he stuck to his original platform it would have differentiated himself enough from Johnson to give him a lead in the polls. Humphrey always believed that if he gave the speech that he planned to give in Chicago and later gave in Salt Lake City on September 30, 1968, calling for an unconditional bombing pause of North Vietnam as "an acceptable risk for peace", that he would have won the election.

Humphrey also complained that the convention had been held in late August to coincide with Johnson's birthday, which cost him a month to organize, and would preferred to have the convention held in July. Complicating the election was the third party candidacy of Alabama governor George Wallace, who ran on a white supremacist platform promising to undo all of the changes wrought by the Civil Rights Movement. Traditionally, conservative whites in the South had voted as a bloc for the Democrats, but in the 1960s many were starting to move away from the Democratic Party. Nixon had embarked upon his Southern strategy of wooing conservative Southern whites over to the Republicans, but Wallace (who had the advantage of always appearing more extreme on racial questions than was possible for Nixon) threatened to upend the Southern strategy. Johnson had wanted Humphrey to nominate as his running mate a conservative white Southern Democrat who might prevent Southern whites from voting for Wallace or Nixon, bringing back to the Democratic Party a group who had been one of the most loyal Democratic voting blocs for over a century. Humphrey managed to muster up the courage to defy Johnson and choose as his running mate Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, a dignified, centrist Democrat.

Humphrey had been well known as a liberal supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, and he felt that with Nixon and Wallace competing for the conservative white Southern voters there was no realistic opportunity for him to appeal to that group. In 1948, Humphrey, at that time the mayor of Minneapolis, had first come to national attention when he delivered a speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention denouncing racial injustices in the South. However, over the protests of liberals, Humphrey did not resist Johnson's decision to seat several all-white delegations from several Southern states despite the complaints that Black Americans (and in the case of the Texas delegation, Mexican-Americans) had been consciously excluded.

Johnson distrusted Humphrey and had the Federal Bureau of Investigation illegally tap his telephones to find out what the vice president was planning to do. At the same time, though Johnson had announced that he had dropped out of the election, he sent his friend John Connally, the Governor of Texas, to meet with other Democratic governors of southern states attending the convention to inquire if they would be willing to support nominating Johnson to be the Democratic candidate after all. Daley, a strong Johnson supporter, was enthusiastic about having Johnson re-enter the election. Daley, who was apparently oblivious of the depth of the antagonism between Johnson and the Kennedy family, favored having Senator Ted Kennedy serve as Johnson's running mate, saying that a "LBJ-TEK" ticket would easily win the election. Daley was so committed to having Johnson re-enter the race that he had secretly printed up signs reading "We Love LBJ" to be waved about by the delegates when he was to announce that Johnson return to the race. He also called up Kennedy to discuss his plans, but Kennedy, who was seriously depressed after the assassination of his brother Robert, was not interested in attending the convention nor in being a candidate. It remains unclear if Johnson was actually serious about re-entering the presidential race, or if he was merely using the prospect of running again as a way to keep Humphrey from straying too far from his policies. Regardless of what Johnson was intending, Connally had to tell his fellow Texan that general feeling about Johnson being the Democratic candidate in 1968 was, "No way!"

The security measures imposed by Daley had been so intense that it was not possible to walk across the convention floor without jostling other delegates, which added to the tensions as dovish and hawkish Democrats fiercely argued about whether to accept Johnson's war plank to the platform. All of it was captured live on national television. Pro-war Democrats challenged the right of the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who was serving as the floor manager for McCarthy, to be there and sought to have him expelled from the convention. Inside the convention hall were televisions showing the police beating and clubbing demonstrators outside, which increased the tension. Robert Maytag, the chairman of the Colorado delegation asked: "Is there any rule under which Mayor Daley can be compelled to suspend the police state terror being perpetrated at this minute on kids in front of the Conrad Hilton [hotel]?" Daley's face flushed with anger while his supporters began to boo Maytag. On the convention floor, Senator Abraham Ribicoff rose to give a speech nominating McGovern as the Democratic candidate. During his speech, Ribicoff pointed to Daley and said: "With George McGovern, we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago." Pandemonium broke out in the convention hall, with some delegates praising Ribicoff while others denounced him. Daley rose up to scream at the top of his voice at Ribicoff: "Fuck you, you Jew son of bitch! You lousy motherfucker! Go home!" Despite Daley's foul-mouthed antisemitic tirade, Ribicoff merely said: "How hard it is to accept the truth. How hard it is." Four Chicago city officials, known Daley loyalists, jumped on the stage to usher Ribicoff away, and Daley's bodyguards surrounded him, though from what threat they protected him remained unclear.

The convention was noteworthy for leading to a significant change in the rules governing delegate selection, largely overshadowed at the time by the rioting in Chicago. The McGovern–Fraser Commission, chaired by Senator McGovern, officially known as the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, was appointed to examine how delegates were selected. The commission documented that in many places in America the Democratic Party was "an autocratic, authoritarian organization" that engaged in the "shameful exploitation of the voter".

Nomination
In the end, the Democratic Party nominated Humphrey. The delegates had defeated the peace plank by $1,567 3/4$ to $1,041 1/4$. The loss was perceived to be the result of Johnson and Daley influencing behind the scenes. Humphrey, who had not entered any of the thirteen state primary elections, won the Democratic nomination shortly after midnight, and many delegates shouted, "No! No!" when his victory was announced. The nomination was watched by 89 million Americans. As a sign of racial reconciliation, Humphrey had intended for his nomination to be seconded by a speech by Carl Stokes, the Black mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. Stokes's speech was not shown on live national television as planned, as the networks instead broadcast live the "Battle of Michigan Avenue" that was taking place in front of the Conrad Hilton hotel. Humphrey went on to lose the 1968 presidential election to the Republican Richard Nixon.

Dan Rather incident
On the second night of the convention, CBS News correspondent Dan Rather was grabbed by security guards and roughed up while trying to interview a Georgia delegate being escorted out of the building. CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite turned his attention towards the area where Rather was reporting from the convention floor. Rather was grabbed by security guards after he walked toward the delegate who was being hauled out, and asked him, "What is your name, sir?" Rather was wearing a microphone headset and was then heard on national television repeatedly saying to the guards "don't push me" and "take your hands off me unless you plan to arrest me".

After the guards let go of Rather, he told Cronkite:"'Walter ... we tried to talk to the man and we got violently pushed out of the way. This is the kind of thing that has been going on outside the hall, this is the first time we've had it happen inside the hall. We ... I'm sorry to be out of breath, but somebody belted me in the stomach during that. What happened is a Georgia delegate, at least he had a Georgia delegate sign on, was being hauled out of the hall. We tried to talk to him to see why, who he was, what the situation was, and at that instant the security people, well as you can see, put me on the deck. I didn't do very well.'"An angry Cronkite tersely replied, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan."

Richard J. Daley and the convention
Daley intended to showcase his and the city's achievements to national Democrats and the news media. Instead, the proceedings became notorious for the large number of demonstrators and the use of force by the Chicago police during what was supposed to be, in the words of Yippie activist organizers, "A Festival of Life." Rioting took place by the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois National Guard against the demonstrators. The disturbances were well publicized by the mass media, with some journalists and reporters being caught up in the violence. Network newsmen Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, and Edwin Newman were assaulted by the Chicago police while inside the convention hall.

The Democratic National Convention had been held in Chicago twelve years earlier. Daley had played an integral role in the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960. In 1968, however, it did not seem that Daley had maintained the clout which would allow him to bring out the voters again to produce a Democratic victory as he had in 1960.

On October 7, 1967, Daley and Johnson had a private meeting at a fund raiser for Johnson's re-election campaign, with an entry fee of one thousand dollars per plate (approximately $7,200 in 2016 dollars). During the meeting, Daley explained to the president that there had been a disappointing showing of Democrats in the 1966 congressional races, and the president might lose the swing state of Illinois with its 26 electoral votes if the convention were not held there. Johnson's pro-war policies had already created a great division within the party; he hoped that the selection of Chicago for the convention would eliminate further conflict with opposition. The DNC head for selecting the location was David Wilentz of New Jersey, who gave the official reason for choosing Chicago as, "It is centrally located geographically which will reduce transportation costs and because it has been the site of national conventions for both Parties in the past and is therefore attuned to holding them." The conversation between Johnson and Daley was leaked to the press and published in the Chicago Tribune and several other papers.

In preparation for the convention, Daley had walls erected along the roads to the Amphitheatre through his own neighborhood of Bridgeport to obscure from sight rundown housing in the neighborhood.

Protests and police response

In 1968, the Yippies and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE) had already begun planning a youth festival in Chicago to coincide with the convention. They were not alone, as other groups such as the SDS would also make their presence known. When asked about anti-war demonstrators, Daley repeated to reporters that "no thousands will come to our city and take over our streets, our city, our convention". 10,000 demonstrators gathered in Chicago for the convention, where they were met by 23,000 police and National Guardsmen. Daley also thought that one way to prevent demonstrators from coming to Chicago was to refuse to grant permits which would allow for people to protest legally.

After the violence at the convention, Daley said his primary reason for calling in so many Guardsmen and police was reports he received indicating the existence of plots to assassinate many Democratic Party leaders, including himself.

While several protests had taken place before serious violence occurred, the events headed by the Yippies were not without satire. Surrounded by reporters on August 23, 1968, Yippie leader Rubin, folk singer Phil Ochs, and other activists held their own presidential nominating convention with their candidate Pigasus, an actual pig. When the Yippies paraded Pigasus at the Civic Center, ten policemen arrested Ochs, Rubin, Pigasus, and six others. This resulted in a great deal of media attention for Pigasus.

A peaceful demonstration was held in Lincoln Park led by Rubin and Hoffman, with the Yippie leaders calling the demonstrators to respect the 11pm curfew. The Beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg ended the demonstration by chanting "Om". The next day was supposed to be the "Festival of Life" in Lincoln Park, but the police confiscated the truck upon which a rock band was to play. The mood soon turned ugly with the demonstrators calling the police, "Motherfuckers!" while the police shouted, "Kill the Commies!" The police fired tear gas into the crowd while beating up the photographers and journalists present. Tom Hayden, one of the leaders of the SDS and co-organizer of the protests, was arrested for the first time.

The next day, what was billed as "Unbirthday Party" for President Johnson was planned to be held in Lincoln Park. Hayden, who had been freed on bail after his arrest the previous day, attended the "Unbirthday Party". He was recognized by a policeman, Constable Ralph Bell, who beat him and then arrested him for violating his bail conditions. Also attending the "Unbirthday Party" were Rubin and Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, who both called for "roasting pigs" in their speeches. In the evening, a demonstration was held at Grant Park opposite the Hilton Hotel, which was peaceful as bands such as Peter, Paul and Mary played folk music. When 600 Illinois National Guardsmen appeared, Hayden, who had been bailed out a second time, picked up his megaphone to shout that everybody should go home.

Riots
On August 28, 1968, around 10,000 protesters gathered in Grant Park for the demonstration, intending to march to the International Amphitheatre where the convention was being held. At approximately 3:30 p.m., a young man lowered the American flag that was at the park. The police broke through the crowd and began beating the young man, while the crowd pelted the police with food, rocks, and chunks of concrete. The chants of some of the protesters shifted from, "Hell no, we won't go!" to, "Pigs are whores!"

Hayden encouraged protesters to move out of the park to ensure that if the police used tear gas on them, it would have to be done throughout the city. The police soon gained the upper hand after firing tear gas and chased the demonstrators down the streets, beating them with clubs and rifle butts before arresting them. The amount of tear gas used to suppress the protesters was so great that it made its way to the Conrad Hilton, where it disturbed Humphrey while in his shower. The police sprayed demonstrators and bystanders with mace and were taunted by some protesters with chants of, "Kill, kill, kill!" The police responded by shouting, "Get out of here, you cocksuckers!". Police indiscriminately attacked all who were present, regardless if they involved in the demonstrations or not. Dick Gregory, the comedian who attended the protests, told the crowd that the police were merely following the orders of Daley and "the crooks downtown".

The MOBE leaders then decided to march down Michigan Avenue to the Conrad Hilton hotel, where many of the Democratic delegates were staying. The Illinois National Guard guarding the hotel fired tear gas while the police moved in to beat the demonstrators. The police assault in front of the hotel during the evening of August 28 became the most famous image of the Chicago demonstrations of 1968. The entire event took place live under television lights for seventeen minutes with the crowd chanting, "The whole world is watching". Samuel Brown, one of the organizers for Senator McCarthy, lamented the violence, saying: "Instead of nice young people ringing doorbells, the public saw the image of mobs shouting obscenities and disrupting the city". Brown stated the demonstrations at Chicago had been a disaster for the anti-war movement, as the American people saw the protesters as the trouble-makers and the heavy-handed police response as justified. The general feeling at the time was the hippies were intent upon destroying everything good in America and the Chicago police had acted correctly in beating such dangerous anti-social types bloody. In a telephone call to President Johnson on Saturday, September 7, 1968, Daley described some of the activity undertaken by the elements of the protesters, which he described as "Professional Trouble Makers", these activities included the burning of the American Flag, raising of the Viet Cong flag and throwing both manure and urine at the police.

In its report Rights in Conflict (better known as the Walker Report), the Chicago Study Team that investigated the violent clashes between police and protesters at the convention stated that the police response was characterized by: unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence on many occasions, particularly at night. That violence was made all the more shocking by the fact that it was often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat. These included peaceful demonstrators, onlookers, and large numbers of residents who were simply passing through, or happened to live in, the areas where confrontations were occurring.

The Walker Report, "headed by an independent observer from Los Angeles police – concluded that: 'Individual policemen, and lots of them, committed violent acts far in excess of the requisite force for crowd dispersal or arrest. To read dispassionately the hundreds of statements describing at firsthand the events of Sunday and Monday nights is to become convinced of the presence of what can only be called a police riot.'"

Senator Ribicoff used his nominating speech for McGovern to report the violence going on outside the convention hall and said that, "With George McGovern as President of the United States, we wouldn't have to have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago!" Daley responded to his remark with something unintelligible through the television sound, although lip-readers throughout America claimed to have observed him shouting, "Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch!" Defenders of the mayor would later claim that he was calling Ribicoff a faker, a charge denied by Daley and refuted by Mike Royko's reporting. Ribicoff replied: "How hard it is to accept the truth!" That night, NBC News had been switching back and forth between images of the violence to the festivities over Humphrey's victory in the convention hall, highlighting the division in the Democratic Party.

According to The Guardian, "[a]fter four days and nights of violence, 668 people had been arrested, 425 demonstrators were treated at temporary medical facilities, 200 were treated on the spot, 400 given first aid for tear gas exposure and 110 went to hospital. A total of 192 police officers were injured."

After the Chicago protests, some demonstrators believed the majority of Americans would side with them over what had happened in Chicago, especially because of police behavior. The controversy over the war in Vietnam overshadowed their cause. Daley shared he had received 135,000 letters supporting his actions and only 5,000 condemning them. Public opinion polls demonstrated that the majority of Americans supported the mayor's tactics. It was often commented through the popular media that on that evening, America decided to vote for Richard Nixon.

After the convention, which had very publicly exposed the fault-lines between hawkish and dovish Democrats, Humphrey was 22 points behind Nixon in the polls. By contrast to the violence and chaos in Chicago, the Republican convention in Miami had been a model of order and unity, which made Nixon appear better qualified to be president as even Humphrey himself conceded in private.

On September 30, 1968, Humphrey gave a speech in Salt Lake City that he had intended to deliver at the convention in Chicago, saying he was willing to unconditionally stop the bombing of North Vietnam to break the deadlock in the peace talks in Paris. At this point, Humphrey, who was behind in the polls, saw his numbers began to rise; Nixon was certainly concerned in October 1968 that he might lose the election. By late October 1968, Humphrey had a slight lead with 44% intending to vote for him compared to 43% for Nixon. The election of 1968 was one of the closest ever in American history with Nixon winning 31.7 million votes, Humphrey 31.2 million votes and Wallace 10 million votes.

Chicago Seven
A grand jury charged eight defendants with conspiracy, crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot, and other federal crimes following the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The defendants became known as the Chicago Eight: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, and Lee Weiner. During the trial, the case against Bobby Seale was declared a mistrial, and the Chicago Eight then became the Chicago Seven. Demonstrations were held daily during the trial, organized by the MOBE, the Young Lords led by Jose Cha Cha Jimenez, and the local Black Panther Party led by Chairman Fred Hampton. In February 1970, five of the seven defendants were convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot, and all were acquitted of conspiracy. Froines and Weiner were acquitted on all charges.

While the jury was deliberating, Judge Julius Hoffman sentenced the defendants and their attorneys to jail terms ranging from $2 1/2$ months to 4 years for contempt of court. In 1972, the convictions were reversed on appeal, and the government declined to bring the case to trial again.

The McGovern–Fraser Commission
In response to the party disunity and electoral failure that came out of the convention, the party established the 'Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection' (informally known as the 'McGovern–Fraser Commission'), to examine current rules on the ways candidates were nominated and make recommendations designed to broaden participation and enable better representation for minorities and others who were underrepresented. The commission established more open procedures and affirmative action guidelines for selecting delegates. The changes imposed by the commission required that the number of delegates who were Black, women, Hispanic and between the ages of 18 and 30 reflected the proportion of the people in those groups in every congressional district.

In addition the commission required all delegate selection procedures to be open; party leaders could no longer handpick the delegates in secret. The changes brought about by the commission ended the ability of local bosses who headed political machines such as Daley to ensure delegations that were subservient to them attended conventions. The rule changes brought by the commission also marked the beginning of end of the Democratic delegations that were almost entirely male and usually entirely white, ensuring in the future Democratic delegations would be more diverse. An unforeseen result of these rules was a large shift toward state presidential primaries. Prior to the reforms, Democrats in two-thirds of the states used state conventions to choose convention delegates. In the post-reform era, over three-quarters of the states use primary elections to choose delegates, and over 80% of convention delegates are selected in these primaries.

title: 1968 Democratic National Convention


text:
Talk:Price revolution

Untitled
I don't think you did disagree, David -- just vastly improved an extended stub! Since I'm not thrilled by economic history, I certainly don't mind someone much more interested doing the revising -- hope it wasn't all that awful, though. I just wanted to contribute something new, and this was off the top of my head. JHK
 * It was just the downplaying of the urbanisation aspect I was thinking about - it is a fascinating topic: I'll add a bit on geopolitical impacts (including English erm... appropriation of Spanish booty) later when I've formed a better idea of the related economic implications. DP
 * I'd like to note that we are experiencing a rather strange price revolution with the vast decreases in prices of many industrial goods . The relative price of of things not easily or

appropriately mass produced eg law, education, etc is causing some strange and perhaps dangerous imbalances. Oth the ease of production of wealth has created a surplus of labour which may be deployed for bizarre and largely unproductive ends.
 * Marx wrote in Capital, with great eloquence and dispair, on the enclosure of the commons, the primitive formation of capital, the birth of the proletariate etc. The enclosure ( as a verb ) relates to privatization and changes in the established nature of title.

 * Further there are those who attribute the collapse of the Roman Empire to the slow loss of specie to luxury imports and backbreaking imperial taxes to maintain bread and circus's for the dispossed ( by competion with patrician owned slave farms subsequent to the Punic victory ) Italians over several hundred years and a concominant price revolution. Thus the rise of fuedalism, the 'fascist' version of 'christianity' etc.

 * There doesn't seem to be an article on the enclosure movement.

 * Thanks for the article. Wblakesx

more people = higher prices?!

 * Demographic factors also contributed fundamentally to upward pressure on prices, with the revival (from around the third quarter of the 15th century) of European population growth after the century of depopulation and demographic stagnation that had followed the Black Death.

I think that sentence is a bit confusing. A priori, and certainly fundamentally, population growth does not contribute to higher prices. In fact, since the currencies we're talking about here were silver-based (fractional-reserve banking not having been introduced) and had a slow and probably nearly constant circulation velocity, you'd expect deflation, in the absence of new silver (which is excluded from the discussion in that paragraph).

In this case, there are certainly other factors that have to be included: settlement structures limited the available arable land;  adjusting the economy to a larger population might have resulted in extra cost. However, I would think it's impossible to discern those comparatively minor factors after all those years, most data having been lost.

I'll remove "fundamentally" now, but I'm not sure I'm smart enough to salvage anything from the rest of the paragraph.

RandomP 23:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

this really has been debunked, that is the spanish importation of american bullion and the burgeoning population, to be attributed to the price revolution. the revoluiton according to jack goldstone, was fuled by the increase in the velocity of market transactions, therefore inflating price: p=mv/t where p=goods at sale price,m=stock of money, v= velocity of circulation, and t= the volume of goods sold. the bullion was traded from lima through the nw to asia, india and china, or hoarded by and large. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.210.90.37 (talk) 17:53, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

MV=PY. When population goes up Y goes up (though less than one for one, by diminishing returns). Assuming velocity doesn't change, and money stock remains constant, higher population will lead to LOWER prices. Now. An increase in population MIGHT change the RELATIVE price of food (vis a vis other commodities) but that 1) is not guaranteed, and 2) is not what is meant by "inflation". Volunteer Marek 05:31, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

But Goldstone's story of the change in V should be included in the article (though AFAIK, it's PART of the story). Volunteer Marek 05:36, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Capitalisation?
Shouldn't this be titled the "Price Revolution" in capitals as e.g. in Hughes' Early Modern Germany? It surely is a proper name. --Bermicourt (talk) 18:50, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Merge in information from AfC
An WP:AfC has been written called European Price Revolution. I suggest merging the information from that article into this one, rather than creating a separate article? Jonpatterns (talk) 09:57, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Merge information from European Price Revolution and Spanish Price Revolution proposal
I propose that European Price Revolution be merged into this article Price revolution. I think that the content in the former article is about largely the same topic.Jonpatterns (talk) 18:22, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Ditto on Spanish Price Revolution

 * SUPPORT the merge. The articles are clear content forks.  N2e (talk) 21:41, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Support - yes, it's all the same topic ("Spanish Price Revolution" is a bit WP:OR too).Volunteer Marek (talk) 22:58, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

I've done the shorter easier merge of European Price Revolution and Price Revolution Jonpatterns (talk) 15:44, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Makes sense, but maybe change the title, the 'Spanish Price Revolution' is slightly misleading, as the influx of goods effected all of Europe's economy. Mention in the first few sentences the inflation was due largely to the Spanish, but refer to it simply as the Price Revolution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.31.36.235 (talk) 03:07, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Support - I do think we should change the name to encompass all of Europe as it was a European price change, but it is virtually all the same series of events — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ethangibson4 (talk • contribs) 14:00, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

So what?
The article doesn't really explain why the "price revolution" is interesting or important or worth having an article about. OK, so prices increased more than they had previously been increasing. . . so what?

Was it historically important in some way — for example, did it affect people in some way, or have important consequences? Or is it important primarily because of something that economists have learned from it? Or something else?

Were people aware of it at the time, or is it something recognized only in retrospect?

What makes it a "revolution"?

—Ruakh TALK 02:35, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

 * I see that the article has now been expanded to address this. Thanks! —Ruakh TALK 03:58, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

"Three bankruptcies"...
...seems to be missing two. Spain suffered defaults on sovereign debts in 1557, 1560, 1569, 1575, and 1596. — Llywelyn II   09:43, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

"Generally", "most historians"
This article contains quite a lot of inappropriate generalizations. The subject especially with respect to its causes is rather controversially debated, which is not really illustrated here. Danx de Mais (talk) 13:10, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Price revolution