A sample (N = 428) of university students was introduced to a stranger that fit the public persona of either John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy in a vignette. The meetings between students and strangers in vignettes were similar to those in which serial killers might entrap victims. In addition to varying criminal type (Gacy or Bundy), the race and gender of the strangers were also varied in the 2 x 2 x 2 experiment. Differences among subjects in their ratings of personality traits of the strangers and how subjects expected to behave toward these persons were examined by ANOVA. Focus group discussions provided further insights about how individuals size up and react to "respectable" strangers who fit the public personas of well-known serial killers. Results suggested that young adults in the 1990s are highly vulnerable to victimization by serial murderers. / Department of Sociology