The Serial Killers the Media Doesn’t Talk About

Why do we not hear about them?

Why don’t we know the names of Black serial killers? Not because they don’t exist. But because we weren’t supposed to.

Watching a video the other day, the host mentioned how there are so few black serial killers and how rare it is for police to catch them. Which reminded me of an experiment I ran three years ago.

I asked my followers about serial killers, which is standard for a true crime writer. What no one expected was the direction it would take.

The Test

First, I gave them this list of names and asked if they recognised any:

• Henry Louis Wallace

• Chester Turner

• Samuel Little

• Craig Price

• Jonathan Carr

• Anthony Sowell

The response? Silence. Not one person had heard of any of them.

That’s shocking, and not because they were obscure cases. These six men are responsible for more than fifty murders in the United States. They were all active, dangerous, and prolific. And yet their names barely register. Why?

Because all six of them are black.

Then I asked the same group to name any American serial killer they could think of. The replies came fast:

• Joseph DeAngelo

• Gary Ridgway

• Ted Bundy

• David Berkowitz

• H. H. Holmes

Every single one is white. And every single one is a household name in the true crime world. Why? Because their stories were broadcast, glorified, turned into documentaries, podcasts, and even films.

The Media Blackout on Black Serial Killers

Some people might say this lack of attention is a good thing, that black men aren’t being stereotyped as serial killers. But that’s a shallow take.

The real reason these men aren’t known is that their victims were black.

The uncomfortable truth is that most serial killers target people of their race. That means black serial killers usually kill Black victims. And in a media landscape that feeds on tragedy, one thing has become abundantly clear: black death doesn’t sell. Poor, marginalised, and black victims aren’t “headline material.” Their deaths are quietly ignored. Their killers are barely mentioned.

Let’s take a closer look at the men you’ve never heard of.

The Men No One Heard Of

Henry Louis Wallace

Between 1992 and 1994, Wallace raped, strangled, and murdered ten young black women in Charlotte, North Carolina. Many of them worked with him at Taco Bell, where he was a manager. He was so brazen that he even attended some of their funerals.

The victims were dismissed as missing persons. Police failed to connect the dots, even after multiple women turned up dead under similar circumstances in the same neighbourhood. Why? Because they were young, black, and considered “high-risk.” Code for: the police didn’t care.

Chester Turner

Turner operated mostly in South Los Angeles, murdering at least fourteen women between 1987 and 1998. He was convicted in 2007, and later tied to more deaths through DNA evidence; possibly as many as twenty-two.

The vast majority of Turner’s victims were black or Latina, often sex workers or unhoused women. Their disappearances were largely ignored by law enforcement and the media. LAPD’s negligence allowed Turner to continue killing for over a decade.

Samuel Little

Little confessed to killing ninety-three people, and the FBI has confirmed at least sixty of those murders; making him the most prolific serial killer in US history. His killing spree spanned from 1970 to 2005 and covered more than a dozen states.

Almost all of his victims were vulnerable black women, often drug users or women involved in sex work. Law enforcement dismissed their deaths as overdoses or accidents. It wasn’t until 2012, when DNA linked him to three unsolved murders in Los Angeles, that he was finally caught. The sheer scale of his crimes, and the silence surrounding them, is staggering.

Craig Price

Price was just thirteen years old when he committed his first murder in 1987. By the age of fifteen, he had killed four people, all of them black, all of them neighbours. He stabbed his victims repeatedly and later admitted to the killings with no remorse.

Despite the shocking nature of his crimes, Price’s case got minimal national coverage. Once imprisoned, he racked up additional time for violent incidents behind bars. Unlike the glamorised tales of white killers with tortured pasts, Price was written off as a savage. No deep dives. No documentaries. No Hollywood treatment.

Jonathan Carr

Jonathan Carr and his brother Reginald committed the Wichita Massacre in December 2000. Over a single week, the brothers invaded homes, kidnapped people, raped multiple women, and killed five victims; including execution-style killings of four friends forced to kneel in the snow.

While the case did receive coverage, most articles fixated on the Carr brothers’ criminal pasts and the fact that some of the victims were white. What you rarely hear about is how their black victims were quickly swept aside in the narrative. Or how the event was later used politically to push the death penalty.

Anthony Sowell

Between 2007 and 2009, Sowell murdered at least eleven women and stored their decomposing bodies inside his Cleveland home. The stench was so bad that neighbours had complained for months, yet nothing was done.

Several women, including Gladys Wade and Vanessa Gay, went to the police and reported Sowell for sexual assault and attempted murder. One woman even claimed to have seen a decapitated corpse in his house. Police labelled them “unreliable.”

It wasn’t until Latundra Billups showed up at a hospital with evidence of assault and strangulation that police were finally forced to act. When they entered Sowell’s house in 2009, they found bodies in crawl spaces, shallow graves, and plastic wrap.

The victims had been reported missing. No investigations had taken place. Their lives didn’t register.

Why You Know Bundy But Not Wallace

The double standard is glaring.

White serial killers are rebranded. Ted Bundy? “Tortured genius.” Jeffrey Dahmer? “Complex and misunderstood.” They’re humanised, even sympathised with. Netflix gives them screen time. Hollywood gives them attractive actors. Viewers gave them fan clubs.

Black serial killers are something else entirely. They’re never “troubled.” They’re never “misunderstood.” They’re monsters. Predators. Animals. Their stories are not told in depth, and their crimes are rarely examined as societal failures. The terminology is completely different.

The Real Question

When I started this experiment, I was watching a programme about racism in schools. And I realised, I couldn’t name a single black serial killer. I’ve spent years writing about crime. How could I have missed that?

Because it was meant to be missed.

Our culture doesn’t mourn black death. It doesn’t elevate black pain. So the media doesn’t report it. And society doesn’t remember it.

The truth is simple. White privilege extends beyond the grave. It decides which victims matter and which killers become infamous.

If you couldn’t name one before reading this, ask yourself why. And who benefits from the silence?