Providing serial homicide data in an open access format empowers users to increase data reliability by interacting with the information to supply edits and corrections. In response, serial homicide researchers – previously operating in ‘information silos’ – contributed information to the ‘Serial Homicide Expertise and Information Sharing Collaborative’ to build a comprehensive record of serial homicide offending in partnership with the ‘Radford/FGCU Serial Killer Database Project’.

Almost three decades ago, Kiger (1990) highlighted the limitations of employing then existing data to study the social problem of serial murder and called for the creation of new sources to allow for quantitative assessments that used empirical data.

This review will identify the challenges of utilizing data to study serial homicide and propose new methods to address these limitations. Conducting systematic research on serial homicide is complicated by variations in definition, sample size, data sources and collection procedures.

Radford fgcu serial killer database