Criminologist Kenna Quinet, associate professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said investigators not only undercount victims who are never reported missing, such as street kids, but also overlook murders committed in hospitals or nursing homes where deaths are expected.

"From a humanitarian standpoint, the idea that some deaths don't matter as much as others infuriates me, particularly if they could have been prevented," said Quinet, whose analysis was published in the journal Homicide Studies.

While it is estimated that between 67 and 180 people are killed in the United States by serial killers each year, Quinet's said the undercounting of marginalized victims could add between 182 and 1,832 victims to the total.

Quinet said some victims of serial killers, including prostitutes, transients, gay street hustlers, foster children and street kids, are never reported missing, and so go uncounted.

The article cites the case of the Green River serial killer in Washington as an example of how including the "missing missing" could change the numbers. One-third of the killer's 48 known victims were never reported missing, had been mistakenly deleted from police missing-persons databases, or were never identified.

But Quinet said an even larger pool of overlooked victims may be the "misidentified dead," including hospital patients and nursing home residents who are thought to have died from natural causes but were in fact victims of medical murderers.

Quinet in 1990 debunked inflated claims about the number of serial killer victims, but said recent more conservative calculations of victim numbers were also inaccurate.

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