Serial Killers Still Active in 2025: What Law Enforcement Actually Knows Versus Internet Rumors

# SEO-Friendly Podcast Episode Description

## Title Options:
**"Active Serial Killers 2025: Separating Fact from Fear in Modern True Crime"**

or

**"Serial Murder Cases Still Unsolved: Detective Analysis of Global Patterns and Missing Evidence"**

---

## Description:

Detective Emily Em Carter examines the most pressing serial killer cases and rumors circulating in 2025, separating confirmed evidence from internet speculation. This episode breaks down what the FBI knows about active serial killers operating worldwide, explores recent headlines including the New England cluster theory, the Nairobi quarry murders, Mexico's "Toy Car Killer," and unresolved cases like the West Mesa Bone Collector.

Learn how criminologists assess whether multiple deaths indicate a true serial offender, the role of victimology and offender signatures in case linkage, and why marginalized victims—Indigenous women, sex workers, and homeless individuals—are disproportionately targeted yet receive fewer investigative resources.

This episode covers:
- FBI estimates of 25-50 active serial killers in the US
- The New England serial killer theory—myth or reality?
- The escaped confessed killer in Kenya still at large
- Global unsolved serial cases in Europe, Africa, and Latin America
- How genetic genealogy and data-driven algorithms are changing cold case investigations
- The difference between rumor-driven narratives and evidence-based serial murder patterns
- Highway serial killings and missing Indigenous women across North America

Perfect for true crime enthusiasts, criminology students, and anyone seeking expert-level analysis of active investigations and emerging patterns in serial murder cases.

**Keywords:** serial killers 2025, true crime podcast, unsolved murders, FBI, cold cases, criminology, active investigations, missing persons

This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Listeners, pull up a chair and keep your back to
the wall. I am Detective Emily M. Carter, and tonight
we are going to walk straight into the dark intersection
where breaking news, pattern recognition, and the ugliest corners of
human behavior collide. We are talking about the latest serial
killer stories and rumors from around the world, the cases

(00:20):
making headlines and the ones that are just whispers on
message boards and in late night group chats. And as
your resident rookie cop with a criminology degree and way
too many bookmarked case files, I am going to take
you through what we actually know, what is still speculation,
and how investigators try to separate fear from fact. Let
us start with something that sets the tone for everything else.

(00:42):
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there may be
somewhere between about twenty five and fifty active serial killers
operating in the United States at any given time, and
Anne Lists believe there are many more worldwide that we
simply have not identified yet. One recent overview of serial
killers Still on the Loose in twenty twenty five cites

(01:04):
that Federal Bureau estimate right up front, and then proceeds
to lay out several cases and patterns that remain unresolved
or only partially solved in the United States, Europe, Africa,
and Latin America. One channel that summarized these cases pointed
out how we only ever see the tip of the
iceberg because those are the killers who were caught or

(01:26):
at least recognized as serial offenders in the first place.
That leaves a potentially large number of others who simply
look on paper like scattered unsolved homicides with no clear
link between them. One video essay on serial killers, still
active in twenty twenty five, emphasizes just that we know
some of the patterns, but our data only reflects the

(01:48):
cases we have managed to string together so far. Now,
if you are a true crime junkie like me, you
probably grew up on the classic American serial killers, the
so called Golden Age rahm the nineteen seventies through the
nineteen nineties, when statistically serial murder was at its peak.
But modern research from sources like World Population Review and

(02:11):
others has documented that serial killings now make up less
than one percent of all homicides in the United States
and have been declining since the nineteen nineties. Still, the
country has recorded well over twelve thousand serial murder victims
from the early nineteen nineties through twenty nineteen, and California
alone accounts for more than one thousand, seven hundred known

(02:34):
serial killer victims in that period, with Texas and Florida
not far behind. Those are historical tallies, not news, but
they give us the background radiation behind every new rumor
of a pattern. When you hear that there might be
a serial killer on the loose, that history is humming
in the background, reminding investigators that these offenders are rare,

(02:56):
but they are very real. So let us move from
the broad stats to the fresh headlines and active investigations.
One of the biggest talking points this year has been
the wave of online speculation that there might be a
serial killer stalking young adults across parts of New England.
Social media has been buzzing with claims that a specific

(03:19):
cluster of bodies found in waterways, parks and remote areas
must point to a single predator. News outlets have reported
on at least seven different cases scattered around the region
that have captured public imagination. One national broadcast segment summed
it up this way, seven bodies different states in New England.

(03:40):
People online connecting dots, while law enforcement officials insist they
have not formerly linked the deaths as the work of
one offender. Here is where the criminology brain kicks in.
Northeastern University recently sat down with well known criminologist James
Allen Fox to impact those rumors. He has been studying

(04:00):
mass killings and serial offenders for decades. Fox and other
experts pointed out something that is a seed amiss when
you are scrolling late at night. Most of those New
England deaths, based on what is publicly known, do not
display the consistent behavior pattern that we usually see in
true serial killing series. There is not a clear signature,

(04:23):
meaning a stable ritual or behavior that the offender repeats
because it satisfies some psychological need. There is also no
simple victim profile that lines up meatly from case to case.
According to that Northeastern analysis, some of the deaths that
social media users are linking together do not share a
common method, a common dump sight pattern, or a shared

(04:45):
lifestyle risk factor, and some are more likely accidents or
single offender homicides rather than the work of one roaming predator.
Investigators are not ruling anything out, but they are stressing
that rumor is running way ahead of confirmed evidence. That
gap between what the public imagines and what the data
actually supports is a constant headache in modern policing. I

(05:07):
see at every time a rumor hits our own precinct
group chap, a flory of screen shots, then a sergeant
stepping in to say, slow down, what do we actually
have here? If you are wondering what investigators look for
when they are assessing the possibility of a serial offender,
here is the crash course academy style. They examine common

(05:28):
elements in victimology, age, gender, life style, high risk behavior
like hitch hiking or sex work, homelessness, addiction. They compare
methods shooting, strangulation, stabbing, blunt force trauma. They analyze disposal
patterns and geography same road, same waterway, same type of location.

(05:52):
They look for a consistent time pattern or cooling off period.
And then comes the psychological side, trying to determine whether
there is a single motivation profile that could plausibly fit
all of the deaths in the New England situation. Experts
say the cases that people are grouping together do not
yet show that kind of clean overlap that is not
the same as saying there definitely is not a serial

(06:15):
killer in New England. The Federal Bureau of Investigation Data
reminds us that