December 14, 1901 - Jake Bird
Bird operated across multiple states over nearly two decades, leaving a trail of at least thirteen known victims before his arrest in 1947. His case drew the attention of criminologists partly because he confounded prevailing assumptions about who serial killers were — assumptions that have since been recognized as skewed by racial bias in both research and law enforcement attention. The gaps in the historical record likely reflect how long he went undetected, moving through communities where his crimes received limited scrutiny.
From Wikipedia
Jake Bird (December 14, 1901 – July 15, 1949) was an American serial killer who was executed in Washington for the 1947 murders of two women in Tacoma. He is also known to have murdered at least eleven other people across several states between 1930 and 1947. Prior to his execution Bird had implicated himself in up to 46 murders.
In 1991, criminologist Eric W. Hickey, Ph.D., Director of Alliant International University's Center for Forensic Studies, wrote about how the Bird case challenges stereotypes of serial killers, who are mostly thought to be Caucasian males, whereas African-American killers typically are associated with urban violence.
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