Criminal justice specialists call for new approach to identify emerging type of murderer with no prior convictions

The rise of “0 to 100” killers who go from watching torture, mutilation and beheading videos in their bedrooms to committing murder suggests there could be a link between extreme violence online and in real life, experts have said.

Criminal justice experts advocated a new approach, inspired by counter-terrorism, to identify an emerging type of murderer with no prior convictions, after cases such as Nicholas Prosper, who killed his mother and siblings and planned a primary school massacre.

Jonathan Hall, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said there was a “new threat cohort” combining terrorists who were radicalised online and those who had “gone down a rabbit hole and into a dark world”.

He said: “There are quite a lot of similarities: they are isolated loners, boys rather than girls; the internet is obviously central; quite a high proportion have neurodivergence.

  • FoxyFerengi@lemm.eeEnglish
    61·
    2 days ago

    My ex was into watching people die. I didn’t know about it being a explicit thing he searched for until a couple years into dating. I found out because he showed me two videos of people being shot in the head, and when I asked him why he did that he said, “I didn’t think these were that bad, they lived”. Less than a year later he started following me around the house cocking his weapons and pointing them at me or my dog. I think I’m lucky I got out