the serial killer problem look worse than it actually is. He notes that the FBI claim intellectual ownership of the concept. This quite possibly is due to the fact that if this area is their area of expertise then such funding will be made available due to their "expert" knowledge. With such lack of agreement amongst academics, law enforcement agencies and government departments as to the prevalence of serial crime it is imperative and obviously necessary that more work be conducted between multidisciplinary teams responsible for analyzing this type of crime and to extend the limited amount of empirical research available. Conclusion Although in Australia serial murder is a statistically rare act of homicide it is a worrying factor for modern society. With the discovery of the eight bodies in a bank vault in Snowtown South Australia in 1999, public and media interest in serial murder in Australia has been refueled. There is a lack of comprehensive information about serial killing worldwide due to the fact that there is limited knowledge about the motives, methods and general mindset of serial killers. It is a very long process by the time a killer is apprehended, intensively interviewed, put on trial and sentenced and then the formal reporting completed. Add to this the dubious nature of self-report by the serial murderer especially with the capricious nature of such offenders and it becomes imperative that we focus energy on understanding and further researching the factors that attribute to the phenomenon of the serial