A spree killer is someone who embarks on a murderous assault on two or more victims in a short time in multiple locations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders".

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the general definition of spree murder is two or more murders committed by an offender or offenders, without a cooling-off period; the lack of a cooling-off period marking the difference between a spree murder and a serial murder. The category has, however, been found to be of no real value to law enforcement, because of definitional problems relating to the concept of a "cooling-off period". Serial killers are different in that the murders are clearly separate events, happening at different times, while the attacks of mass murderers are defined by one incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders.

Another term, rampage killer, has sometimes been used to describe spree killers, but it does not differentiate between mass murderers and spree killers.

Charles Raymond Starkweather (November 24, 1938 – June 25, 1959) was an American teenaged spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming during a two-month road trip with his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate. The couple was captured on January 29, 1958. Starkweather was executed seventeen months later, while Fugate served 17 years in prison.

Starkweather was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the third of seven children to Guy and Helen Starkweather. The Starkweathers were a respectable family with well-behaved children of working class background. The family always had shelter and other resources. Guy Starkweather was by all accounts a mild-mannered man; he was a carpenter who was often unemployed due to rheumatoid arthritis in his hands. During Guy's periods of unemployment, Starkweather's mother supplemented the family income by working as a waitress.

Starkweather had attended Saratoga Elementary School, Irving Middle School, and Lincoln High School in Lincoln. In contrast to his family life Starkweather possessed no kind remembrances of his time of going to school. Starkweather was born with genu varum, a mild birth defect that caused his legs to be misshapen. He also suffered from a speech impediment, which led to constant teasing by classmates. He was considered a slow learner and was accused of never applying himself, although in his teens it was discovered that he suffered from severe myopia that had drastically affected his vision for most of his life.

Daniel Harold Rolling (May 26, 1954 – October 25, 2006), also known as The Gainesville Ripper, was an American serial killer who murdered five students in Gainesville, Florida. Rolling later confessed to raping several of his victims, committing an additional 1989 triple homicide in Shreveport, Louisiana, and attempting to murder his father in May 1990. In total, Rolling confessed to killing eight people. He was executed by lethal injection in 2006.

Rolling was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. He had a difficult upbringing. His father, James Rolling, was a Shreveport Police officer who abused him, his mother, Claudia, and later his brother, Kevin. In one incident, Danny's mother went to the hospital after she claimed that her husband, James Rolling, tried to make her cut herself with a razor blade. His mother made repeated attempts to leave her husband but always returned. In another example of James Rolling's cruel sense of discipline, he pinned Danny to the ground and cuffed him, then had police come to take him away like a criminal because his father was embarrassed by Danny. The idea that Danny was an unwanted child was reinforced ever since birth by his father.