There’s one thing you’ve probably never noticed about serial killers… and it’s freaking people out
THERE’s one thing you've probably never noticed about serial killers – and it’s freaking people out.
Many of the most notorious mass murderers in recent criminal history wore very similar glasses.
From infamous cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer to killer necrophiliac Dennis Nilsen, wide-rimmed aviator-style specs have become synonymous with the faces of evil.
For Dahmer – who raped, murdered, dismembered and partially ate 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991 the frames became a signature part of his look.
In fact, when a classmate of his visited the set for a movie about him My Friend Dahmer, he revealed he had trouble talking to the actor playing him because of the distinctive specs.
He recalled in an interview last year how he told the actor: “Dude, you HAVE to take off those glasses or I can’t talk to you.”
Dennis Rader, Rose West and Harold Shipman also count themselves among the ranks of savage killers to wear similar frames.
And the terrifying trend has started to become noticed.
Urban Dictionary has a page dedicated to the definition of “serial killer glasses”.
The site describes them as “eyeglasses with heavy or severe frames that live somewhere between fashionable and creepy”.
And pop culture website TV Tropes talks about how the simple prop is given to an evil character in many shows “to quickly tip off the audience to his personality”.
Crime writer Tori Telfer speculated in an article for the that the image of the specs perched on the end of a killer’s nose becomes a metaphor for the mask they wear in public.
She said: “They become a threat, too – after all, the serial killer who wears glasses is apparently someone who can see us better than we can see them.
“Someone who’s always watching.”
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But the trend might not really be all it appears.
It has been suggested that serial killers are no more statistically likely to wear specs than anyone else.
Instead, it could just be a case of a few famous examples like Dahmer and the coverage they have generated being enough to engrain the look in popular culture.
Either way, it has been enough to freak people out.
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