Technically it’s anything over three, which means there is at least a fourth that the feds know about and a fifth that they don’t. Getting to five means you have a system down that works. A formula. You aren’t dumping bodies off a rowboat in Sanremo, you’re feeding them to the organic free-range pig farm. You’re turning the evidence into next month’s twenty dollar a pound bacon at Erewhon. An AI startup founder’s hungry carnivore diet toddler will handle the rest.

Not everyone makes it to five. Most killers are caught after just one or two. It requires long hours and meticulous planning to get things right. You can’t slip up. Gone are the days when you could just stalk victims in a public park. Cameras are everywhere. Police have facial recognition drones that will follow you home before you even have a chance to uncoil your piano wire.

Then there are the ones who give up before five. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. You have to get up and go to work, networking offsites on Thursdays, your D&D game on Friday, your HOA only lets you mow on Saturday between 6am and noon, then your friends invite you to dinner at a brewery filled with screaming kids and barking dogs. By the time it’s dark out enough to go on a killing spree you’re wiped out.

Does that mean the world is a safer place? For the fifth victims of the world out there it is. But those serial killers who make it to five are the ones who get a Netflix documentary made about them. They are the ones a fashionable author follows around during their trial and writes a best-selling book about. The ones who don’t have to have their costume name rebranded to avoid a lawsuit at Spirit Halloween. Just make it past five.