by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Serial murder has been around for a long time, but for the first time there is a class focusing on the role of serial killers in mass communication - and it is offered at UNM.
About 75 students registered for the class offered in the Communication and Journalism department.
Professor Dirk Gibson teaches Serial Killer Communication and wrote the book Clues from Killers: Serial Murder and Crime Scene Messages, which is the class textbook.
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"I told them the first day it's not a skills class," he said, jokingly. "I'm not going to teach them how to do serial murder."
Student Matt Munoz said he signed up for the class after seeing a flier describing the course. He said the class was interesting the first day, because they read letters from Jack the Ripper, a London serial killer in the 1880s.
"I've never had this professor before, and he is awesome," he said. "He really engages us."
In the syllabus, 27 kinds of communication used by serial killers are listed. They include wall writing in blood, videotapes, crime scene notes, body part transmissions, letters and phone calls.
"Letters and phone calls are the most common," Gibson said. "Eighty percent of them call. They'll call the police and taunt them, tell them where the victims are buried; they'll call the family of victims and tell them what they did to their daughter or son."
A serial killer is characterized by communication, Gibson said. A few serial murderers don't kill to communicate, but because they have hopeless lives and want someone to go down with them.
"About a quarter are sex killers, regular freaks, different things, but for the most part these guys like the attention, and that's why they keep killing," he said.
He said the media love these stories.
"The press prays for serial murder because 'it bleeds, it leads,' and it's continuing," Gibson said. "The serial killer story from last week is still on your plate. And there's considerable evidence that there are interactions. The murderer is motivated by the media; the media is motivated by the murderer."
Gibson said he allows students to pick their curriculum from several different programs in his class. Students can choose to take exams, or write papers, or do class presentations, or mix it up and do some of each, he said.
"Or option five would be to do something completely different," he said. "Already two people have come up with things I haven't envisioned. One young man wants to write a screenplay, and a young lady wants to go visit a guy in prison and do interviews."
Students are also invited to help him with research projects.
"There's a bunch of them," he said. "When I research an area, I like to hit it and hit it big. I gather whatever information I have, and I like to do things collaboratively."
Student Charisse Montoya said the reason she took the class was the unusual subject. Montoya said she likes the idea of students getting to choose their curriculum.
"I've never done it before, so I think it's interesting," she said.
