There is, of course, another aspect of the culture at UW-LaX that contributes, she says, to the skepticism that greets the police every time they have tried to tamp down the speculation that a serial killer is at work. The bottom line, she said, is that the students simply don't trust the cops.

"There is an underlying tone here," Vogt said. "The chief has done an excellent job in the past ten years or so of focusing on community policing, but his relationship...with the university...with university students in particular has always been strained. There's a lot of enforcement and cracking down on under-age drinking. I think that's where a lot of students had the most contact with police and they don't perceive that as very supportive."

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Nor has Chief Kondracki effectively communicated his attitudes about the cases, she said. "Although the police chief, and I firmly believe this because I've talked to him about it, says he's open to any idea, I don't think that he said that very well early on."

Nor were the students the only ones who felt that Kondracki was belittling their concerns, she said. "The community too...think the police chief was being dismissive," she said. "That might have been his tone, but I don't think that's what he meant."

The result was that the police, the community and the students, all of them touched to some degree by grief and confusion and perhaps even some measure of fear were separated from each other by a great gulf of mistrust.

And that, she said, is the perfect spawning ground for boogey men.