An expert in understanding why people commit brutal murders has revealed the most common thing serial killers do to target 'weaker people'.
Investigative criminologist Christopher Berry-Dee is no stranger to being around murderers and has been face-to-face with plenty of dangerous people throughout his career.
The former Royal Marine 'Green Beret' Commando - who has published his findings in a number of books - claims that many killers use the same 'hunting ground'.
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He's likened these types of serial killers to John Edward Robinson, who was found guilty in 2003 for three murders committed in and around Kansas City - he received the death penalty for two of the murders.
And then in 2005, he admitted responsibility for five more homicides in Missouri as part of a bargaining plea to avoid more death sentences.
Robinson has been dubbed as 'the Internet's first serial killer', after using online chatrooms to target innocent victims.
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"A lot of men [are] like the serial killer John Edward Robinson, the first killer to use the internet for serial killing purposes," Berry-Dee told The Sun.
"[They go] into chatrooms particularly as someone else, a businessman, luring lonely women back to his place and killing them.
"People underestimate the internet. It becomes a trawling hunting ground for predators.
"Whether it's scammers or men who pray on lonely hearts [of] women... it goes way back."
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The criminologist says the internet is a 'dangerous place' and used the example of John Wayne Gacy, who raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 young men and boys in Norwood Park Township, Illinois.
He explained: "Gacy knew where to look. He knew where these weaker people are in these chatrooms.
"[Killers] have a hunting ground like an animal, like a lion or something, they know where the prey is or they know where the fish swim and that makes it easier for them to cast their net because these people are like-minded and he used that as his bait.
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"They know where their intended prey swim in shoals, they sniff it out and they’ll watch and they’ll wait and then they’ll select the weaker one of the herd or the one who has left the group, the one who is walking to a taxi in the rain and he’s waiting.
"They’re patient and they’ll strike and that’s it, they’re dead.”
Berry Dee's 2008 book, Murder.com, details about how 'evil roams the internet'.
The book 'takes an unflinching look into the darkest recesses of the world wide web from cannibals ordering a human meal by email to mail-order brides whose quest for better lives end in grisly murder'.
Topics: Crime, True crime