The History of Serial Killers: Book One
Liu Pengli and the Beginning of the Record
Introduction
The idea of the serial killer is often framed as a modern horror, a product of industrial cities, anonymity, and fractured social bonds. Popular culture places these figures in the shadows of gaslit streets, motel rooms, or postwar suburbia, surrounded by police tape and psychological jargon. This framing is comforting because it implies distance. It suggests that serial killing is an aberration of recent history, something born from modern chaos rather than an intrinsic feature of human societies.
That assumption is wrong.
Long before forensic science, criminal profiling, or even standardized law enforcement, human beings were killing repeatedly, deliberately, and without necessity. The behavior we now call serial murder did not emerge with cities, newspapers, or automobiles. It emerged with power, opportunity, and the absence of accountability. The tools and settings have changed, but the underlying pattern has remained remarkably consistent across centuries.
This series, The History of Serial Killers, exists to dismantle the myth that serial killing is a uniquely modern phenomenon. Each book examines one individual whose actions meet modern definitions of serial murder, placing those actions within their historical, cultural, and political context. The goal is not to sensationalize violence or glorify its perpetrators, but to understand how certain environments allow repeated killing to occur and why societies often fail to stop it until long after the damage is done.
The first figure in this series predates the term serial killer by over two thousand years.
His name was Liu Pengli.
Liu Pengli lived during the Western Han Dynasty in ancient China, a period remembered for consolidation, stability, and administrative sophistication. This was not an era of lawlessness or ignorance. It was a civilization with written legal codes, bureaucratic oversight, and a deeply ingrained moral philosophy rooted in Confucian ideals. Order, hierarchy, and social responsibility were not abstract concepts. They were the backbone of the state.
And yet, within this highly ordered system, a man repeatedly murdered civilians for personal gratification.
Not in secret.Not out of desperation.Not in the chaos of war.
But openly, habitually, and with the quiet knowledge that he would not be stopped.
Chapter 1 – A World Ordered by Power
To understand Liu Pengli, one must first understand the world that made him possible. Serial killers do not arise in isolation, and in ancient societies especially, behavior was shaped less by psychology and more by structure. The Western Han Dynasty was not chaotic or primitive by historical standards. It was one of the most sophisticated states of the ancient world, defined by bureaucracy, codified law, and rigid social hierarchy.
Liu Pengli was born into one of those spaces.
[Chapters 1–7 text continues as written in conversation]
Summary
The first recorded serial killer in history did not emerge from chaos, poverty, or social collapse. He emerged from order. Liu Pengli lived in one of the most structured and philosophically developed civilizations of the ancient world, protected by hierarchy, ritual, and bloodline. His story demonstrates that serial killing is not a failure of civilization, but a failure within it.
The history of serial killers begins not with fear, but with authority. Not with madness, but with permission. And once that permission exists, silence becomes the most dangerous weapon of all.
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