The quote in the headline comes from a 1996 comment made by Colin Wilson, the celebrated and derided British writer who passed away earlier this month. It can’t be true, can it? In the interview, he claims that no crimes of a sexual nature were committed before Jack the Ripper, citing how during the Victorian Era, inexpensive prostitutes made sex crimes “unnecessary.” But I’m sure there was plenty of cheap sex to be had at the time of the Whitechapel slayings, and there certainly was during Ted Bundy’s life, so that couldn’t be the motivation. Wilson further claims that so-called “self-esteem killings” began in the 1960s, but I think you can fit Leopold and Loeb in the category without too much of a stretch. At any rate, Wilson was at the time promoting his book, A Plague of Murder.