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Crime News Serial Killers

Would You Swipe Right On A Serial Killer? Take Our Interactive Quiz To See If You Can Even Tell

Can he make eye contact? Does he insist you ride in the trunk?

By Gina Tron

Dating is hard. 

You know what else is hard? Trying to decipher the difference between the good guys and the bad ones. By bad, we're talking serial killers, here.

Scott Bonn, criminologist and author of “Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World's Most Savage Murderers," tells Oxygen.com that there are millions of psychopaths in the United States. That doesn't mean that they are a serial killer, necessarily. But, they could be. 

How can you tell if someone is a psychopath?

"Most of them have superficial glibness," he says. "The ability to appear charming but it’s usually fake and forced. So there’s a lack of empathy, emotion and depth often in their interactions. They appear to say the right things but they don’t appear to feel the right things."

A psychopath is incapable of feeling genuine empathy.

"Bundy is everybody’s worst nightmare when it comes to a potential dating situation," Bonn says of serial killer Ted Bundy. "He was handsome. He was intelligent. He was extremely charming but it was all faked and forced because it was all based upon his own selfish desires and needs which was to capture and kill and rape these women. He would be extremely difficult to identify in advance."

Peter Vronsky, who has Ph.D. in criminal justice history and is the author of several books about serial killers, says, "a serial killer’s personality, without the killing part, already makes for a bad date."

He pointed out the seven veils — or signs — of a bad person to date:

1.  Is he punctual/reliable?

2.  Does he make eye contact?

3.  Is he interested in you or a total narcissist only into himself?

4.  Does he lie?

5.  Does he have a depth of personality beyond his surface charm?

6.  Is he kind and considerate to others (to restaurant staff, etc.)?

7.  Does he have a physically aggressive and/or controlling personality?

"That is often enough," Vronsky says. If you're still not sure, Vronksy came up with a second set of indicators especially for Oxygen.com (and true crime super fans).

8.  Does he have dried blood under his fingernails?

9.  Are there unpleasant odors coming from his basement/attic or are there strange crusty dark brown stains on the car upholstery and carpeting?

10.  Does he go on endlessly how he hates his mother/loves his mother?

11.  Does he refer to a woman with as an inanimate “it” while referring to himself in the third person?

12.  Does he keep insisting that you constantly stir the drink he brought to your table so that it “tastes better”?

13.  Does he keep duct tape, handcuffs and a saw in his car trunk?

14.  Does he insist you ride in the trunk?

Now it's your turn. Take a shot at choosing your date for the following romantice activities. The serial killers will reveal themselves in texts below. 

[Photo: Getty]

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