CLEVELAND—Authorities say Anthony Sowell lured women into his home in a busy neighborhood, killed them—most by strangulation—and scattered their remains throughout the inside and buried some in the backyard.

Such brazenness defies logic, but experts identify a narrow subcategory of serial killers, including the 1893 Chicago Fair killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes, and Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, who hunt from home.

“These types are so rare that you can’t make a summary estimation as to why or what went wrong or anything,” said Robert Keppel, a national serial-killer expert who investigated serial killer Ted Bundy in Washington state in the 1970s.

“There’s just not a whole lot of these folks running around the world,” he said.

Sowell had the perfect lair.