We like to think cops are there to keep us safe — but it turns out a frightening number of serial killers are attracted to joining the police force.
That's one of the creepy findings of criminologist Professor Michael Arntfield, whose new book Murder in Plain English has revealed the most common career paths of the world's most notorious murderers.
After studying the patterns of serial killers from the past half century, Arntfield found these brutal criminals tended to be attracted to certain jobs which tend to either gratify their mental disorders — or because they made it easier to lure and kill victims.
He told IFLScience killers gravitated towards jobs due to a "combination of mobility, power (whether structural or actual), and the fact many jobs also simultaneously satisfy the underlying paraphilias, or sexual preoccupations, that also fuel killers' crimes".
He said "mechanophilia" — a sexual obsession with machines — was strongly related to both necrophilia and murder, which could explain why serial killers like Fred West were obsessed with tools and machines.
