Serial killers find prostitutes easy prey -experts

By Staff
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LOS ANGELES, Dec 16 (Reuters) Serial killers have preyed on prostitutes at least since Jack the Ripper, but two being hunted in England and America are likely murdering them because they are easy marks -- not to fulfill some twisted moral vision, criminologists say.

Since Jack the Ripper emerged from the Whitechapel fog to slit throats in 1888, the world's oldest profession has also earned a reputation as one of the most dangerous.

But criminologists largely dismiss Hollywood's portrayal of serial killers as acting out of hatred for prostitutes whom they see as impure.

''Some men believe they are cleaning up the streets and making them safe by killing prostitutes, but the typical serial killer tends to target prostitutes because they are simply easy to get and plentiful,'' said Joseph Diaz, a criminology professor at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina.

''Prostitutes are often seen getting in and out of strange vehicles, they are more willing to go with someone they don't know,'' Diaz said. ''Sometimes they go missing for a few days and people assume they are on a binge of drugs.'' The naked bodies of five young women have been found in the past two weeks around the English town of Ipswich, all of them prostitutes, and police were searching for a serial killer who has already been compared in the media to Jack the Ripper.

On the outskirts of Atlantic City, New Jersey, four shoeless women, at least three of them known to have been prostitutes, were found dead in a marshy ditch behind several low-rent hotels, their faces turned toward the east.

YORKSHIRE RIPPER, GREEN RIVER KILLER Jack the Ripper, who killed women working as prostitutes in and around London's Whitechapel in 1888, was never caught.

Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, killed 13 women, mainly prostitutes, in northern England between 1975 and 1980.

In 2003, truck painter Gary Leon Ridgway pleaded guilty in Seattle to killing 48 women, many of them prostitutes, a haunting series of murders attributed to the ''Green River Killer.'' Only two of the Atlantic City women, who police believe were murdered by a serial killer, had been reported missing before their corpses turned up in November.

''Because who is going to report them missing? Only another prostitute and she may not be believed,'' said Steven Egger a professor of criminology at the University of Houston Clear Lake who has written four books about serial killers.

''Prostitutes are what I would call the throwaways of our society,'' Egger said. ''They are less alive because they are marginalized. They don't have power or prestige. He (the serial killer) knows they are vulnerable. He knows they aren't going to be missed right away.'' Serial killers are typically men, Egger said, and usually murder women out of a need for power and control. Most women do not walk city streets alone in the middle of the night and are wary of strangers, unlike prostitutes who often work alone and will approach strangers.

REUTERS MS KN1842

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