Spree Killing

The commission of two or more murders by a person or people in a short span of time, typically at multiple locations, with no cooling-off period between the killings; the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics defines it as killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between the murders. This lack of a cooling-off period is the feature that distinguishes it from serial murder, in which a period of time separates each killing, and its occurrence across multiple locations during a single continuous event is what distinguishes it from mass murder, which is defined by one incident with no distinctive period between killings within it. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has questioned the practical value of the category for law enforcement purposes, noting that quantifying a cooling-off period is inherently arbitrary, and how to distinguish a spree killer from a mass murderer or a serial killer remains subject to considerable debate, with the terms applied inconsistently even within academic literature; the killer Andrew Cunanan, for example, has been classified by different experts as either a spree killer or a serial killer.