Jeffrey Dahmer - do people show more sympathy to the victims of the green river killer than to the victims of jeffrey dahmer?

do people show more sympathy to the victims of the green river killer than to the victims of jeffrey dahmer?

the green river killer murdered women, where dahmer murdered men. please explain your thoughts. yes, char i agree. but there was a task force working to solve the murders of the prostitutes targeted in oregon. yet dahmer's crimes went virtually unnoticed and were discovered by accident. i guess i was wondering why man/woman crime gets so much more exposure and sympathy than man/man crime.

Public Comments

I'm sympathetic to the families of the victims of both. We need to work towards reducing incidences of murder regardless of gender. EDIT: I think perhaps because men aren't victims of murder as often as women, the possibility seems to be overlooked. Raising awareness of cases like the Jeffrey Dahmer one may help people to realise that it can happen to anyone, and so more people can be protected.
well, men do have a higher pain tolerance (despite what the majority of women think), but murder is murder. sympathy should be equal.
It actually took a lot longer for the Green River killer to be identified and apprehended than it did Dahmer. And the Green River killer killed more people than Dahmer, as well. None of that has anything to do with the sympathy people feel for the victims, however. I don't know anyone that would say that they only feel sorry for the female victims. That's ridiculous. (Sorry, but it is.)
The death of women will always get a stronger reaction from men than the death of other men, that's just a rule.
Both Dahmer and the Green River Killer went undetected not because of the gender of their victims but because they were careful to select victims who lived at the fringes of society and whose disappearance wouldn't be a matter of urgency for police or other authorities. Both of these killers were evil criminals who used others as a way to derive the power they felt lacking in their own lives, and to feed their sick and bizarre fantasies. I would hesitate to call them mentally ill, although they were obviously mentally 'unbalanced' in some way, because of the degree of forethought which went into selecting their victims and the executions of their crimes. Which victims are more to be pitied? There is no question that both sets of victims died horribly, alone and afraid as a madman wreaked his terrible intent on them, it would be wrong and cruel to assume either male or female were 'better off'. As for a task force being formed to catch the Green River Killer, this task force was formed only after 49 women were killed and no-one brought to justice for their murders. It now appears this man may have killed up to 71 female victims over a THIRTY YEAR period, most of whom will never be identified ~ or even their remains found. Jeffery Dahmer used bizarre torture techniques to murder 16 or 17 (claims vary) victims over a 13 year period, with most of the crimes occurring within a two year period ~ it was this increase in frequency which led to him being discovered and arrested. I cannot imagine anything much more dreadful than knowing you have fallen into the clutches of a merciless psycopath whose only interest is in using your pain and fear to feed his hideous fantasies. Comparing the plight of the victims based on gender only serves to further marginalise people who were mostly already society's victims in some ways. Such comparisons trivialise the suffering of the victims and the grief of their families, and does nothing to support your rather facile argument. The fact is, most police resources, especially relative to serial killers, are expended on MEN, because MOST serial killers are men. And most violence towards men is done by other men. Thankfully, the number of such psycopaths as serial killers in our society is relatively few, although their 'cheer squads' are disturbingly numerous.
I don't think either set of victims get a lot of sympathy in comparison to other murder cases. Why would I say that? If the murdered or missing person appears to a young white girl or woman who is also perceived to be a "nice" or "moral" person then it seems like people are more likely to be sympathetic. Unfair, but that seems to be the case. Example: in 2005, there was a case of a missing Utah girl named Brooke Willburger. She was kidnapped in broad daylight while cleaning an apartment complex in a small Oregon university town. One of the police officers was quoted in the local paper as saying re: the urgency of her disappearance "She was Mormon. She didn't drink. She didn't smoke. She didn't party. This is not the kind of girl to "just disappear." I remembered that it caused a bit of outrage because it looked like her case was getting preferential treatment over other missing persons based on her perceived "virtue." While not many people come right out and condemn any of the victims as individuals, collectively they were and are often ignored because of racism in the former, homophobia in the case of the latter. Because the majority of the victims of the Green River Killer were women of color, and a number of them were known or suspected prostitutes, it seems like some people took the attitude well, that's what she gets for her "immoral" life style. Same with the victims of Jeffrey Dahmner. One of Dahmners victims, a Laotian boy, was clearly underaged and showed signs of sexual assault, yet the police ignored his pleas for help, and instead returned him to Dahmner assuming it was a "lover's quarrel!" The he ends up getting killed!
I've never heard of the Green River Killer, so maybe not. Char- Men are actually victims of murder 3 times as often as women, so that theory doesn't hold up. I'm not trying to start a fight or anything, just wanted to point that out. Actually now that I think about it, your theory makes sense, but from the other direction than you meant it, as to why women victims are often felt sorry for more than male victims.
No, I was sickened when I read about Dahmer's victims. One of the young men actually escaped and got to the police and the police returned him to Dahmer. I wanted to throw up when I read that.
I don't think so. If Dahmer's victims had been discovered, like the Green River killer's victims, somebody would have noticed. But we all know Dahmer 'disposed' of his victims differently.
I think it's telling that nobody has said the name of the Green River killer, yet Dahmer's name is virtually household. The real tragedy in the Dahmer case was how homophobic the cops were. In one instance, Dahmer had drilled a hole in a man's head and filled it with some substance that would supposedly render him semi-conscious. This man managed to escape while Dahmer went out to get food; a cop found him, half-naked and incoherent, just as Dahmer was coming back. Dahmer said something about a "lover's spat" and the cop who was at the scene laughed and just let it go. Dahmer went on to kill the man. If it weren't for the homophobic cop, that man would be alive. I know more about the life and death of Jeffrey Dahmer than I do of the nameless Green River Killer, and it has nothing to do with who the victims were. Any serial killer gets press...it's just that most serial killers tend to kill women.