Scrolling through a number of these accounts, it seems that an overwhelming amount of followers are young women—some as young as 16. Confusingly, many of them identify as feminists in their Twitter bios. I couldn't work this one out; generally, feminism has little to do with lionizing men who are famous for killing women.

Back in the old days, before the internet and stuff, if you had a thing for a serial killer it was tradition to send him a love letter in prison. But times change. Men are allowed to cry. You can use telephones to look at people's vacation photos. You can proclaim your love for serial killers on social media, and join thousands of others in following fan pages dedicated to some of history's most notorious names.

The answer was: mostly young women. Many with bios that contained the word "feminist" alongside things like "Ted Bundy's no.1 fan" or "serial killer enthusiast." I decided to contact some of them to hear what they had to say.

After a short debate with my girlfriend, who wanted to report the page, I instead decided to look at the people who had retweeted and liked the photos. I needed to know what kind of person clicks the "heart" button under pictures of murdered young women.

Let's start with @DailyKillerFact, an account based in Canada with 8,000 followers and infamous serial killer and rapist Richard Ramirez's face as the profile pic. A short scroll through its feed, I found a tweet that showed photographs taken at the crime scenes of victims of the Hillside Stranglers, a pair of cousins who murdered ten women in Los Angeles between 1977 and 1978. The women in these photos were naked and had been dumped at the side of the road after being raped and killed.

This kind of thing has gone on across Tumblr for years, but even there identities tend to be better concealed. On Twitter, photos and sometimes full names are out in the open for everyone to see (although I've withheld the identities of those I spoke to for this piece).

But I wanted to understand. What is it about serial killers that appeals to these young women? Why are they comfortable showing off their obsessions on Twitter, the most public forum of them all, when previous digital generations lurked in the darkest depths of anonymous forums, discussing the raw physical appeal of Fred West with other anonymous avatars?

The first person to respond was a 17-year-old who goes to high school in a town of 1,200 people in rural America. While some of her friends know she's interested in serial killers, she said, they don't know that her obsession is of a sexual nature.

"I'm sexually attracted to people who have committed violent crimes," she told me, off the bat. "I think my favorites are the ones who were into necrophilia. There's a word for [deriving sexual arousal from being with a partner known to have committed crimes such as rape or murder]—hybristophilia."

VICE: That's good to know. Do you remember who or what first turned you on to murderers?

I was watching a documentary about Jeffrey Dahmer and I thought he was attractive, even though he was gay. It took me a while to realize I actually liked him because he killed and ate people.

Just to be clear: you wouldn't actually want a serial killer to kill and eat you, or to kill and eat anyone yourself?

I don't want to kill people, but if someone I knew started killing people, I would probably want to screw them regardless of any other part of their personality.