Assassination, honor killing, negligent homicide. Consensual homicide, ritual murder, vehicular homicide. How do you feel like killing someone today? It seems that human beings never seem to be at a loss for words when it comes to establishing a two word phrase that for the most part describes yet another method of murdering other human beings. When you take into consideration the fact that we have all of these different words to describe a particular type of homicide, something quickly becomes apparent: people are fascinated by murders and killers.
Homicides are like snowflakes; none of them are exactly the same. Perhaps this is part of the appeal of putting time into the study of killers and their motives. Don't try to convince yourself that you aren't one of the people that is interested in this dark little cranny of esoteric knowledge; otherwise you wouldn't be reading a website dedicated to compiling a list of the best killers the world has ever seen. Either that or you are looking for someone or something to blame for the loss of your dearly beloved. You are in luck if that is the case because we are just as interested in the motives of murder as you are.
Many things need to be taken into consideration when trying to label an act of murder as a spree killing. Where was the murder committed? How many people were killed? How long did the killings take? Was the murderer motivated by political or religious reasons? Did the event occur in a war zone? Or did the perpetrator simply feel like killing as many people as possible?
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders." As you can see, this is a fairly ambiguous definition (especially the "almost no time break" part). For simplicity's sake, lets simply say that some person decides to kill as many people as possible in the fastest time possible.
The
International Committee of Competitive Spree Killing generally disqualifies the following from being listed as a spree killing on the Top 40 Killing Sprees:
- Killings perpetrated by more than one individual or with the assistance of another individual.
- Killings that are the result of an explosive device and nothing else.
- Killings conducted over twenty-four hours apart from one another.
- Killings conducted in a war zone.
We aren't going to encourage you to go out and kill all of these people. If perchance somebody does, the moral panic that results will mostly likely get word to us that we need to update the list.
