While mass killings have been seen throughout American history, serial killing began to be recognized as a separate issue in the 1970s, while mass killings began to be designated separately because of high profile cases in the 1980s.
When Charles Whitman opened fire on a Texas university campus in the 1960s, it became the quintessential example of public, random killings in which being in the wrong place at the wrong time could be deadly.
In 1975, on Easter Sunday, James Ruppert decided to kill 11 of his family members. While it was the largest family killing in American history, it would not be the last.