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How Does The Fbi Profile Serial Killers: A Historical and Comparative Perspective



In 2004, the FBI launched the Highway Serial Killings Initiative to raise awareness of interstate serial killers.29 The victims in these cases are commonly transients and the suspects are often long-haul truck drivers. In 2009, the FBI used ViCAP, which includes information on homicides, sexual assaults, missing persons, and unidentified human remains, to create a national listing of murder victims along or near highways and potential suspects. According to a 2017 FBI podcast, more than four hundred suspects and seven hundred victims have been identified since the initiative launched.30


To profile serial murderers, it is first necessary to link crimes to a type of common offender. To accomplish this, the type of offender is determined based on classes of action committed at the crime scene.[9] This classification should be reliable and empirically tested in order to assign offenders to one particular group. The classification system should also meet the assumptions of a typology. To specify the characteristics that define a typology, the characteristics must occur together frequently, and be distinct from the characteristics specific to another type.[9]




How Does The Fbi Profile Serial Killers



This study, although dated, does provide limited support for the reliability of the FBI sexual-homicide classification system. However, this form of reliability contributes little to the usefulness of the offender profiling system if the classification is not effective. The FBI classification system is derived from a single interview-based research study with a small sample of apprehended serial killers who operated in North America.[11][12]


Serial offenders fall into a variety of categories. Behavioral analysis can assist law enforcement by providing insight into the motivations and psychological makeup of these individuals, whether they set fires, perpetrate sexual assault, commit theft or take life. Because murder is an extreme crime, serial killers may be motivated by all of these factors in addition to committing repeated murders. Often, they are brought to justice only through a keen understanding of behavioral patterns and traits common to crimes, which is a major component of criminal profiling.


William Heirens was arrested at age 17 and confessed to each crime, although today there are some serious doubts over the validity of his confessions. For Ressler, this case sparked his lifelong intrigue into the minds of serial killers and the opportunities psychological profiling presented.


Ressler pressed forward regardless and continued to focus his attention on serial killers, calling his methods criminal profiling. In 1974 he received a promotion to Supervisory Special Agent and was assigned to the Behavioural Science Unit at Quantico.


In total, they interviewed 36 serial killers and the data from this study formed the basis of their theories on organized and disorganized killers with personality types and behavioral traits also being gleaned from the information discovered during those interviews.


Serial killers who are organized tend to show planning, forethought, and cunning and are able to maintain full control over their lives and how they appear to those around them. A profile which very much fits the character and activities of John Wayne Gacy.


I am so sorry about the disappearance of your daughter. Being left with no answers and no information as to what has happened and why is a torturous and cruel position for any parent to have to endure. There seems to be no clear understanding on why some people will talk about what they have done to others and some refuse, and those with a total lack of empathy, in the case of many serial killers, can be the hardest to extract information from. I very much hope that one day soon you will get the answers you need and find the closure you deserve.


When Douglas revised the profile in 1984, he noted that the perpetrator was rare in that he killed people of many different races. (Apparently, most serial killers prefer to stick to one race with their victims.)


For example, Douglas insists that a killer like Hannibal just does not exist in reality. Although some of the serial killers he has encountered did have genius level IQs, he says they were not geniuses in the way that they carried out their crimes.


This original typology, that of the organized or the disorganized offender, was deemed overly simplistic and has since broadly expanded (Canter, 1994; Holmes & Rossmo, 1996; Turco, 1990). Recently, researchers have developed more sophisticated typologies including (1) visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power-control oriented killers (Holmes, De Burger, & Holmes, 1988); (2) thrill-motivated killers, murders for profit, and family slayings (Levin & Fox, 1985); and (4) travelling serial killers, local serial killers, and place-specific serial killers. Despite the development of refined typologies, research has found that there is no such thing as a prototypical serial killer, consequently limiting the usefulness of the typologies developed so far (Walters, Drislane, Patrick, & Hickey, 2015).


Additionally, results are incongruent with previous literature on typologies, as there was no consistent pattern for method of killing and disposal of the body within each typology. This supports the suggestion by Canter and Wentink (2004) that features of power/control typologies were consistent for serial killers rather than forming a distinct type. Thus, the reliability of isolated typologies is less mutually exclusive than previously believed, and more attention should be paid to what factors influence specific methods of killing than to the motivations of individual offenders. Indeed, it may be that the cross-sectional approach to typology defining could be developed to include temporal dimensions. The current analytical method can be used to show linkages between behaviours and events, over time, which may provide investigators with a clearer understand and method for developing typologies.


FBI profilers, also called behavioral analysts, are law enforcement officials who specialize in forming theories to build profiles of unidentified criminals at large, especially serial killers. Profilers may predict the age range, sex, race, marital status and occupation of an unknown predator, helping police to narrow their search for a suspect. This chart shows the requirements, job skills and salaries of FBI professionals, including profilers:


FBI profilers work in the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), studying evidence obtained by police in an effort to build theoretical profiles of serial criminals. Profilers develop psychological and real-world portraits of likely suspects to assist in directing investigative efforts. They may also consult with law enforcement officials nationwide to help solve crimes, sometimes offering advice on how to lure serial criminals out of hiding or how to attempt to communicate with them.


John E. Douglas, coauthor of Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit (1995), is a key founder of modern criminal profiling. An early member of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, Douglas developed protocols for criminal profiling and interviewed hundreds of imprisoned serial killers to better understand their motives and methods. The profiles developed by Douglas and his colleagues in several high-profile cases turned out to be correct. Douglas is the inspiration for the character John Crawford in the book and film The Silence of the Lambs, which greatly popularized a little-known profession.


Dennis Rader, the notorious BTK murderer who eluded capture for more than 30 years until his arrest in 2005, did not fit precisely into the FBI's method for profiling serial killers on the basis of crime scenes.


And Aileen Wuornos, the Florida prostitute executed in 2002 for slaying seven men during a two-year period in the early 1990s, did not fit at all because the database of convicted serial killers used by the FBI in developing their profiling method did not include women.


Scott discussed the way the bureau develops the personality profiles used by investigators in serial murder cases. He studies alternative profiling methods, such as one developed by a crime writer that uses motive to sketch a female offender's likely character traits.


The purpose of the panel discussion was not to critique the FBI, Scott said. Instead, it was to acquaint forensic psychiatrists with how the bureau profiles serial killers, defined as someone who has killed at least three times.


When the FBI develops profiles of serial killers, Scott said the bureau is relying on interviews its investigators have conducted with 36 convicted sexual or serial murderers. Scott said a shortcoming with the database is that it does not include a single female serial killer.


One popular theory points out the growth of forensic science, and especially the advent of genetic approaches to tracking offenders. In a recent high-profile example of these techniques, police used DNA samples from distant relatives to identify Joseph DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer, decades after he killed 12 women between 1976 and 1986. The higher prospect of capture may deter potential killers from acting out.


Pioneers such as former FBI Special Agent John Edward Douglas were able to master and develop a criminal profiling methodology that is still in use today. By interviewing serial killers, terrorists and other violent criminals, Douglas was able to research the psychopathologies and behavioral abnormalities of serious criminals, beginning the process of identifying patterns and correlating behaviors.


Throughout his incarceration, serial killer Ed Kemper has taken part in multiple interviews with journalists, psychiatrists and members of law enforcement to speak about his brutal, sexually charged murders. The most extensive of which are his conversations with FBI Special Agents John Douglas and Bob Ressler, who used Kemper's disclosures as the basis for their study on serial killers. 2ff7e9595c


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