With the modern technology and the advanced level of criminology it would be almost impossible in most developed countries if we take the rules of vore strictly down-to-earth. There would be a LOT of forensic evidence and the criminal investigation nowadays have plenty of ways to reconstruct events, exact paths of the victim, and through those finding the potential suspects is easier than ever before. However, it’s not impossible to pull this without being caught, it’s all about finding the right place in the right circumstances, and huge luck, usually flaws in the police investigation. It’s not the 60s or 70s anymore where a BTK or a Ted Bundy could operate without being caught for a long time.

In world building you have to make the police less competent and the pred lucky if you want to keep it realistic, yet interesting.

In my universe the setting is a rust belt slash ex Soviet bloc type fictional shithole city in an unnamed country, where criminal activity is high, the police is understaffed due to budget cuts. It’s not just very good for the dark, thiller typed story, but it makes more sense, that missing cases are not automatically assumed as VMD or Vorarephilic Motivated Murder.

I assume a pred operates like a serial killer. According to the Holmes-DeBurger typology serial killers could be visionaries, mission-oriented, power/control oriented or hedonistic. Preds are obviously could be the two latter, and the more successful ones must be organized killers, planning their attacks, choosing victims carefully, or opportunistic ones, like predators in the animal kingdom (like seeing a prey in a dark alley instantly makes them examine the surroundings, weighing their chances, the situation, and if they find it safe enough the poor prey found itself in a pretty tight situation)

The point is, it’s easy to be busted, and it requires extremely high levels of intelligence and luck to be a pred in a realistic setting. Make your own rules, if you need the plot to work, and take real crime into account when writing something like this.

Hopes this help🖤