For this week, read Ch 5 in C&K on profling
Summarize the chapter. Did you learn anything surprising? Were any of your own ideas about profiling debunked by reading this chapter? What is something you want to learn more about? Search on that topic and report on some additional information about that topic. Provide any links to resources.
Your posts should be getting progressively longer and more detailed. You should clearly link psychology to the legal context under evaluation.
This chapter talks about how profiling is used and how effective it is. In the beginning of the chapter it gives the definition of profiling: the process of drawing inferences about a criminal’s personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence. Profilers analyze the crime scenes, gather information about the victims, and study both police and autopsy reports. Profilers find it very important to come up with the serial killers, a murderer who kills three or more people in separate events with a cooling-off period between, signature. The signature of the serial killer has to do with his personality and distinctive aspects about him or her. Profiling isn’t very valid because it relies on intuition. Hollywood has used profiling in their movies and television shows to catch the audience’s attention, but in reality it isn’t that easy. Profiling is a type of forensic psychology because it has to do with crime.
Jack the Ripper is a famous case that is understood to be the first criminal profiling case. Jack the Ripper was a serial killer who mutilates bodies and in some cases took origins. He wasn’t ever caught, but this case showed the startings of profiling. Another famous case was the Olympic Bomber. The Olympic Bomber shows that profiling can be used in more than just serial killing cases. This case had to do with a bomber who bombed the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. It took them a long time to find the bomber and their original suspect didn’t do it. The Mad Bomber was also a very famous case. This man placed bombs in places, detonated them, sent letters to people, and called the police station a few times. This was a case that showed that profiling could be very precise since a psychologist gave the police a list of things to look for and the man arrested demonstrated most of the things on the list.
There are patterns that connect to most serial killers. Some of the patterns include: injury to the brain, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and psychological abuse. Most serial killers start off my being cruel to animals. They are usually white males with an average intelligence who are looking to dominate others. They stick to the same type of person in there killings, use more intimate weapons like knives, and are interested in violent pornography. Serial killers are either organized or disorganized. Ronald Homes came up with the idea that serial killers could be grouped into one of four types. The four types are visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power-oriented. All of these things are examples of behavioral psychology because it takes the behaviors or multiple types of serial killers and puts them together to come up with patterns.
Research on profiling is very slow going. Some assumptions that undergird criminal profiling have not yet been fully tested of validated. Most have been discredited by data. The data from a crime scene doesn’t have a particular characteristic that would than relate a perpetrator to a certain type of person. Another issue with profiling is that it doesn’t look at cross situational consistency. By this I mean that the profiler doesn’t look at how the perpetrator would act in all different kind of situations. Inferences also cause a problem because they can relate to so many people that it doesn’t really narrow down the search to a certain type of person. A persistent problem with profiling is that when a profiler gives information to the investigator than the investigator only look at the facts given to them and not realizes that the profiler may be way wrong.
Geographic profiling has to do with where they think the perpetrator will be geographically. A computer program takes the information like where the bodies were dumped and computes them to come up with a likely area of where the perpetrator will be. The computer programs often look for an anchor point for where attacks might be launched. It also assumes a buffer zone around the home of the criminal where he is likely to commit crimes. Many programs work of the principle of distance decay which is the probability of an attack decreases as distance from past crime locations increase. In probative evidence two questions are very important they are: should a defendant/s fit with a profile be considered evidence, and should information about whether a defendant fits a profile be admissible in court?
Psychological autopsies are an effort to dissect an examine the psychological state of the person prior to their death. The NASH system stands for natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. Those are the classifications of what the death of the person can be labeled. There is a 16- issue checklist that has been developed to assist psychologists in determining if someone committed suicide. Courts are open to psychological autopsies.
I was surprised to find out that only about twelve people in the FBI specialize in profiling. I thought that there would be a lot more than twelve people that specialized in it. I was really only debunked in the fact that it wasn’t as big as I thought. I am very interested in profiling and was really shocked to find out it isn’t as reliable as I was led to believe. Another thing that I found interesting is that most serial killers share the same patterns like killing animals when they were younger.
I wanted to learn more about the computer systems that help in the geographic profiling.
http://www.nij.gov/maps/gp.htm
This website gives some information about the system, and it said that in some cases it has worked, but there are also the cases where it was wrong.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/74418/title/Geographic_profiling_fights_disease
This was really interesting because it explains how the software used to find serial killers might also be used in finding infectious diseases.
This chapter discussed the aspects of profiling. They defined profiling as "the process of drawing inferences about a criminal's personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence" (97). Profiling is used by the FBI and police departments to help detect and find serial killers. Also profilers help the police by giving them leads, and letting them know who they don't need to worry about. Profilers look for a killers signature, which is the distinctive, personal aspect of the crime that presumably reveals the personality of the killer. Profilers believe the signatures stay the same throughout all of a serial killers murders because it is what fulfills them emotionally. Profiling is still highly unvalidated because it is largely based on the profilers judgement and intuition.
The chapter went on to discuss some cases where profilers help assist police in their investigations. The first serial killer discusses was Jack the Ripper. This was the first systamatic profile done to help police efforts. In this case the serial killer was never found. Profiling is also used in cases not involving serial killers. For example, a profiler assisted when deteriming the bomber if the 1996 olympics. In this case I don't think profiling helped very much because they accused Richard Jewell based on the profilers description when really Eric Rudolph committed the crime. Profiling was also used in great detail when trying to identify the Mad Bomber in 1950. This case had the most detailed description of the presumed bomber, and it helped capture him. The profiler gave the police a good place to start looking, when he suggested the bomber was probably an old employee from Con Edison Company. In the case profiling helped imensely to catch the criminal.
Serial killers can be organized or disorganized killers. Organized killers were defined as carefully selecting and stalking their victims and planning out what they will do to their victims. Disorganized killers are implusive, randomly picking victims, acting on sudden rage or following commands to kill from voices in their heads. Serial killers tend to have similar characteristics. They usually suffer from a brain injury and/or were abused. Serial killers can then be broken down between visionary(psychotic), mission-oriented(motivated to kill because they think they are evil), hedonistic(kills for thrills or sadistic sexual pleasure), and power-oriented types(find pleasure in capturing and controlling people before killing them). Studys have been done to prove there is no demographic resemblance between criminal who commit similar crimes. This whole section examines behavioral psychology because a criminals personality determines which type of serial killer they would be.
Research on profiling is not very detailed. People don't know how the inference process profilers use works, or how it should work. Profilers also need to consider case linkage when determining a criminals profile. This links with social psychology because they need to think of how the criminal would behave in a given context. I found it surprising that 80 percent of a profilers description is unsupported. This means it doesn't help the police very much because the traits given are usually unobservable. Since a profiler can give unaccurate information, police need to make sure they don't get tunnel vision and to examine all evidence even if it excludes suspects who fit a certain profile.
Geographic profiling relies on maps and mathematics. Geographic profiling can give police information on where the suspect might live/work becuase they probably wouldn't want to leave their comfort zone. This type of profiling often uses computer programs to help determine an anchor point, buffer zone, and distance decay. Geographical profiling tends to be more accurate than intuitive profiling. This is because geographic profiling is based on statistics and facts instead of a person's judgement. Police and detectives need to be careful not to put their own intuition into profiling when determining suspects because they could be wrong.
Psychological Autopsies are used to determine the personality, behavior, or the type of person somebody was before they died. This is used especially in equivocal deaths because they don't know what caused it. Also deaths can be categorized into natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide based on the Nash System. Psychology plays a role in this because police need to look at a death from every aspect to determine if it was murder or suicide. I think this is cognitive psychology because the police has to use information they get to determine the personality of the dead person. Psychological autopsies are not always allowed to be used in court.
This chapter was very interesting to me because I had no idea how a profiler worked, and now I have a pretty good idea of why they are used.
What I wanted to learn more about was geographical profiling. The first website I looked at talked about how more and more police departments are using software programs like Crimestat, Rigel, and Dragnet in determing locations of criminals. But the downfall to these softwares is that there is no way to evaluate the accuracy, reliability, or validilty in different situations. This means it might be useful for one crime, but then not at all help to solve a different crime. I learned these programs may help assist in cases, but police still need to be examining all evidenve to make sure the investigation is done as accurately as possible.
http://www.nij.gov/maps/gp.htm
This chapter begins with an excerpt from Silence of the Lambs giving an idea of what profilers do. It gave me a taste of what the chapter was going to go in depth explaining. The process of profiling followed after this introduction. I didn't ever have an idea of what profiling was before I read this chapter which described profiling as the process of drawing inferences about a criminal's personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence. FBI agents who have specialized in profiling mainly applied their techniques to serial killers. Profilers analyze a crime scene and gather information about the victims and study autopsy and police reports to provide leads for the police and investigators. I learned a profile may be used to lure in the criminal if the criminal seeks out certain types of people. Profilers emphasize the criminals signature which is the distinctive activity the criminal performs each time. The criminal may use different methods but it is the reason why he or she is committing the crime in the first place according to John Douglas. What I found very interesting from this part of the chapter is how John Douglas said the profiling process relies on the intuition and instincts of the profiler. This made me think some people are meant for this job and others would not be able to do it even with training because a person must have that natural intuition about profiling.
The chapter then proceeds into three famous profiles. Thomas Bond is considered to be the first person to create a criminal profile about a man referred to as Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper was never caught which doesn't allow us to see if he was accurate in his profile or not but it did assist the police in what characteristics to look for. I found the story of the Mad Bomber particularly interesting because the profile was pretty dead on to the criminal. what I also found interesting was the profile was a bit ridiculous in aspects of referring to the criminal loving his mother, penetrating females or castrating males when the bomber really wanted revenge on the company he used to work for. I feel like a lot of times people always refer to sexual things when really a person just might want revenge on something not having to do with sex.
There are recurring patterns of characteristics to serial killers. Most serial killers have some sort of brain injury inhibiting their rational thinking, leading them to act on these crimes. Abuse during childhood was also a recurring pattern found whether it be physical, sexual or psychological. Childhood is a very critical time in forming a normal life. One characteristic I found very interesting was serial killers tend to not use guns to kill because they would rather torture, stab or strangle for a more intimate pleasure. What is very disturbing is the fact most serial killers have violent sexual fantasies and replay past killings for sexual self-stimulation. I do not understand what possesses a person to ever think in a manner so disturbing and I never will understand that. This part of the chapter also described organized and disorganized killers which was pretty self explanatory to me stating organized killers carefully selected their victims and planned out the event while disorganized killers randomly pick victims and act on impulse. What I did not know were the four types of serial killers. 1) visionary - psychotic and believe to hear voices from spirits telling them to kill certain people. 2) Mission-oriented are motivated by a desire to kill people they regard as evil or unworthy. 3) Hedonistic kills for thrills and takes sexual pleasure in torturing their victims. 4) Power-oriented get satisfaction from capturing and controlling the victim before their killing.
I found the research on profiling to be very interesting in the fact only 2.7% of the cases led to identifying the criminal. This statistic proved to me I was wrong in the idea profilers were most important in obtaining the criminal, other aspects of the crime scene investigation are just as important. The profiler is not the only person who can find the perpetrator. I thought profilers were very accurate especially in the case of John Douglas and BTK which is the book I am reading now. The term case linkage interested me in this chapter as well. To determine whether two or more crimes were committed by the same person would be difficult because the characteristics of the victim, the setting and the state of the killer can change and this may lead to changes in the crime scene resulting in different profiles. The crime scene may not be exactly like ones before which makes a person believe the crime could have been committed by someone else.
Profilers makes many inferences which do not help investigators such as saying he is "unsure of himself" or "immature sexual history" which does not help an eyewitness. it is very hard for the statements to be verified. I learned psychological profiling isn't the only type of profiling that exists. Geographic profiling is relying on maps and math associated with serial crimes. Computer programs are used for this to estimate where the criminal's home is located or where he or she may commit his or her next crime. Geographic profiling is very helpful when a series of murders occur across states to link what types of areas the killer will go to or if the houses are located along highways or if the person is located near a railway for instance. Psychological autopsies are more difficult than I had imagined. Like the example the book provided, a simple car crash has four potential categories to land in: natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. Psychological autopsies rely on records left by the deceased such as letters, cell phone records, bank accounts, student/employee records, emails, etc) Psychological autopsies attempt to uncover the deceased person's emotional state prior to his or her death. The most surprising part of this chapter to me was also the part that debunked my ideas of profiling which was the accuracy and research on profiling. I figured it was very accurate otherwise the profession would not be around because no one would listen to the people coming up with the profiles if they were accurate 97.8% of the time.
Cognitive psychology is very evident in this chapter because a profiler attempts to get inside the head of the criminal to understand his or her thought processes to know where or who the criminal is going to strike next. Behavior psychology is also present in this chapter for the same reason because the profiler attempts to find patterns in the perpetrators behavior to try and catch the person by examining his or her behavior patterns.
I wanted to find more information on psychological autopsies and here is what I found:
http://www.deathreference.com/A-Bi/Autopsy-Psychological.html#b
I learned psychological autopsies provided risk factors for suicide which has helped many families going through tough times. Psychological autopsies have been used in criminal investigations of blame as well as finding literary interpretations of the deaths of famous people many years after. This site helped my understanding of psychological autopsies a little more.
http://www.suicidology.org/psychological-autopsy-investigator
This link leads to psychological autopsy certification training program. I did not know there were programs people could take to become certified in psychological autopsies. This site proved interesting to me that anyone can really take a course and become certified in this area.
This chapter is about criminal profiling and Psychological Autopsies. In it, the process of profiling is explained, we're given some examples of profiling from some famous profiling cases, we are shown the characteristics of serial killers, the problems that come about from profiling are pointed out and so on and so forth. Profiling itself is the process of drawing inferences about a criminal's personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence. Criminal profiling originated within the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. There are actually only around a dozen FBI agents that specialize in profiling. Made famous in the use of serial killer cases, profiling is also known as "retroclassification" or "criminal investigative analysis".
Profilers "analyze the crime scenes, gather information about the victims, and study both police and autopsy reports"(98). Profiling is used as an outlet for police to gain leads on cases of multiple offenses, such as rapes, murders, and even a combination of both. Profiling is actually a fairly un-validated process and its results can definitely vary. The "best" profilers follow some sort of intuition they are gifted with to come up with accurate and feasible depictions of an offender’s character, behavior, and hopefully future occurrences of their actions. It comes down to not just the profiler’s ability to analyze figures and facts but their judgment.
FBI profilers put emphasis on defining and following the signature of the criminal. Every criminal has a signature: the distinctive, personal aspect of the crime that presumably reveals the personality of the killer. The criminal's signature is the absolute reason why he/she does it. The way they transport, dipose of, or leave the body could change but their signature will always remain the same. When I read this it reminded me of some signatures used in fictional cop shows such as Law and Order: SVU where this particular serial killer would bite the necks and feet of the women he killed after he raped and mutilated them.
In the famous cases mentioned in this chapter, we're presented with the profiles of Jack the Ripper, The Olympic Bomber of 1996, and the Mad Bomber. Jack the Ripper was never caught but his profiling was speculated down to a "T". His profiling seemed to be one of the first to assist police in a criminal investigation. This example of profiling also shows that police can't rely solely on a profile to expect to catch a criminal. Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Bomber, was caught at the use of profiling but not right away. At first, this profiling pointed at the wrong man and the FBI ran with this. They basically ruined a man's life just because they assumed the profiler was correct. It took some years before they charged Eric Rudolph for the bombing. The Mad Bomber evaded authorities for nearly a decade before they relied on the help of a psychiatrist to come up with a profile on the bomber in order to come up with new leads. This profiling was one of the most detailed and correct in history but also initiated the profiling folklore we now know today.
There are two main types of serial killers: Organized Killers and Disorganized Killers. Organized killers are more on the planning side, carefully deciding how to kill, where to do it, and very relaxed. Disorganized killers as you might expect are the complete opposite. They're constantly paranoid, killing in the spur of the moment, and never having a plan. A much more differentiated classification scheme was proposed later which presented four more "types" killers. Visionary types tend to be psychotic. They believe there are voices or spirits, even from God telling them to kill certain people. Mission-oriented types aren't as psychotic but they kill people that they personally consider to be evil or wrong. Hedonistic types kill mainly for thrills and take out their sexual pleasures on their victims. Power-oriented killers like to completely over power their victims, rendering them helpless before killing them.
Research on profiling is very slow to develop despite the ever growing interest in the concept. It's mainly because it's hard to research and acquire data on such a subject where there is no data or numbers or calculations used to come up with its results and conclusions. Although profiling is sometimes heavily relied on, in a study done in England, only 2.7% of perpetrators were identified between 184 police detectives. The rest of cases were later looked at and the profiling conducted had many inaccuracies and inconsistencies. In a later experiment, four different mediums of producing profiles were studied; undergraduate college students, clinical psychologists without profiling experience, police detectives without profiling experience, and police detectives that had completed a profiling training session provided by the FBI. They studied two cases already solved: a homicide and a sex offense case. The experiment concluded to find that the trained police detectives were twice as accurate as the other three groups, but only for the sex offense case.
Geographic Profiling reminded me of the show Numbers, where a detective has a genius of a brother that uses mathematics and calculations to figure out where a crime could possibly occur taking into consideration where the other crimes have already taken place. That is exactly what is this process of profiling is. Geographic profiling uses computer programs to calculate patterns in a criminal’s ways to hopefully predict where he or she may strike next. It looks at the possible places the criminal may be stationed and all the places he's committed his crime and gives a relative guess to where detectives should be looking.
This chapter was very interesting and taught me a lot about profiling. I actually had no idea what a profiler did up until I read this chapter. I wouldn't mind being a profiler one day after getting my degree.
Profiling is a process based on inferring things about a criminal’s personality and other characteristics based on evidence such as crime scenes. The techniques for this were initially formed by the FBI and have been used across the world, though relatively few agents actually specialize in this field. This chapter surveys the pros and cons of profiling from its early beginnings to its more sophisticated tribulations, and everything in between.
John Douglas, one of the FBI agents who helped to create the system for making profiles states that judgment is the one thing absolutely necessary to be a good profiler-- it’s not always about looking at the facts and coming to a conclusion; instinct is very important as well. Depictions in the media put profilers on a pedestal that creates him/her as being someone who enters an investigation and suddenly comes up with a perfect profile that allows the police to find the killer.
Past cases throughout history have proven to be very interesting when looking at the usefulness of profiling. First listed in this chapter was the famous London serial killer “Jack the Ripper.” Dr. Thomas Bond formed the first known criminal profile when analyzing the cases of Jack the Ripper. Dr. Bond laid out a series of characteristics the killer would have, and seemed to have reasoning in solid ground for these conclusions. His accuracy in profiling will never be known, however, because Jack the Ripper was never captured. The next case given is that of the Olympic Bomber. After a bomb detonated at the 1996 Summer Olympics, the FBI created a profile of the likely traits of the bomber, which led police to target one man who specifically fit many of the traits in the profile. This man’s name a picture was shown across the country to assure people that they were safe; his life was forever changed because of this. In 1998, however, the FBI charged a different man with the Olympic bombing. The final case presented is said to be one of the most famous profiles, and it was that of the “Mad Bomber.” Police were at a standstill in the investigation and went to a local psychiatrist for help. He reviewed the case and created a profile that proved to be accurate and wildly precise in some aspects. In addition, however, there were some details that were inaccurate and some that were crazy speculations. Each of these cases shows a different side of profiling, good and bad. The main thing I took away from these examples is that much like with anything else, you can never be too careful or conscientious of hurting innocent people.
Murderers are organized into many different categories that group characteristics together. There are organized and disorganized killers, along with more specific visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power-oriented killers. Each of these classifications was created to help understand the personality of the person in question.
Research on profiling has been a very slow process to develop, though some studies have been done and indicated that while many police officers may think it is helpful, it doesn’t necessarily lead to identification very often. One study looked at the accuracy of profiles developed by four different groups of people: undergraduate college students, clinical psychologists not trained in profiling, detectives not trained in profiling, and detectives who had been trained in profiling by an FBI program. This study found that the trained detectives spent significantly more time with the materials but were only much more accurate on the sex offender case. I was somewhat surprised about the lack of studies done on profiling and the ability to do studies on it because with the media’s portrayal of profiling, it literally seems like it’s everywhere right now. In reality, I guess profiling isn’t as widely accepted as I had thought because of how much it really does rely on human judgment because no crime or killer is exactly the same. I was also surprised at all of the bad sides of profiling and the effects it can have-- I knew that there had to be some downfalls to it, but I had never thought about them so in-depth before reading this chapter. This entire chapter has essentially turned everything I had previously thought about profiling upside down-- it is a much more complex and controversial thing than a show like Criminal Minds would ever let on to.
Inferences given in profiles are often unsupported and cannot be proven even after conviction. While these parts of the profile can be interesting, they are often of little use to investigators and may only serve to confuse them when trying to identify the perpetrator. Incorrect information can easily waste the time of police and send them down wrong paths that lead to nowhere.
Geographic profiling has proven to be somewhat useful in identifying probable future locations of crimes or general location of a ‘home base’ for serial criminals. As the number of crimes goes up, the advantage of using a map does as well. These profiles may provide insight into good places for traps or even finding witnesses. The major benefit many see in this type of profiling is that it relies on statistics rather than human judgment.
Psychological autopsies are used when trying to look at the psychological state of a person before death. This has had various uses in the past to determine whether or not someone committed suicide. A checklist with various issues has also been created by psychologists to aid them in this process. In a study with 126 cases, distinguishing between accidental and suicidal death was shown to have 92% accuracy when using the checklist to aid the persons involved. Psychological autopsies are still a very touchy subject in the courtroom, especially in criminal cases. With civil cases, however, issues regarding the competency of an individual when creating a will are often allowed in court as a form of a psychological autopsy. One of the most interesting things I learned from this chapter was about the fine line people walk when deciding whether or not to admit profiles into evidence at trial. I would have guessed that a profile might be considered to be too much like circumstantial evidence and therefore not given very much weight, but I guess it may be useful in some cases. With psychological autopsies, however, though they too rely on human judgement, I think they would probably be more useful and have more of a basis in fact because you're dealing with the deceased and while it too is speculation, you have many people to interview and maybe a little bit more basis in fact.
I think psychological autopsies sound very interesting, so I did some research and found more information about them. The website I looked into talked about the basics of psychological autopsies, but also included things about past studies. In the 1970s and 1980s, studies were done using the methods of psychological autopsies to evaluate possible social influences of suicide along with other psychological factors such as depression. These autopsies are also not only used for legal use, but also for research and clinical use.
http://www.deathreference.com/A-Bi/Autopsy-Psychological.html#b
I also found this interesting pamphlet that talks about procedures for the Army Suicide Prevention Program and psychological autopsies. There are special guidelines that state a psychological autopsy may be performed to give more insight into the death and also provide research to better serve Army members in the formation of future prevention programs. Psychological autopsies are everywhere!
http://dmna.ny.gov/suicideprevention/p600_24.pdf
Profiling is drawing inferences about a criminal’s personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence. It was interesting to me that there are only a dozen FBI agents who specialize in profiling. These profilers provide leads to help investigators find the criminal who fits the profile. Profilers try to put themselves in the mind of the criminal, meaning using all the evidence and trying to think like the offender does.
Chapter 5 goes on to describe three famous profiles. The first one being Jack the Ripper who strangled and slit the throats of prostitutes in East London. Speculations about characteristics of the ripper were based on characteristics of the crime. One of the characteristics being that he is “A man of great coolness and daring” because he subdued his victims quickly and they didn’t escape. The second profile that the chapter discusses is the profile that was created after the bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics. The profile led to the investigation of what later proved to be an innocent man who had his reputation ruined by the agonizing investigation. Another man was later captured and convicted of the bombing. The third profile is one of the most descriptive profiles that assisted in catching the “Mad Bomber.” In this case a psychiatrist helped find new leads by reviewing the evidence which consisted of letters sent by the offender to the New York City Police and the New York Times after he had bombed several locations across New York City. The man who was caught almost completely matched the profile that the psychiatrist had constructed. However, he was not caught because of all the matches he had with the profile, he was caught because it was believed he was a former employee at Con Edison (one of the locations of the bombs) who felt he was mistreated by the company.
There are some patterns that serial killers display rather than a set list of characteristics. Sometimes murderers can be described as organized killers or disorganized killers. The majority of characteristics of an organized murderer and disorganized murderer are fairly self-explanatory. An organized murdered might have had inconsistent childhood discipline while a disorganized murderer might have had harsh childhood discipline. There has been some research on profiling and an experimental study was produced that compared the accuracy of profiles made by undergraduate college students, clinical psychologists with no profiling experience, police detectives without training in profiling, and police detectives who have completed profiling training. As expected the police detectives who had profile training had the most accurate profiles. However, the police detectives with profile training had much more accurate profiles when evaluating the sex offense case. This study only had 6 people in each group so it is not conclusive.
Context is important in murder cases. The consistency of an individual criminal across different crimes plays a role in profiling. Characteristics of the victim, the setting, and emotional state of the killer are all variable. Another issue is that profiles rely on speculations that aren’t very useful during the investigation. One study found that 80% of profiler’s statements are unsupported. Much of the statements made by profilers are not easy to find and can’t be used in a criminal database. A type of profiling that gets away from speculation is geographic profiling. Various locations associated with a crime are put on a computerized map. This type of profile gives investigations precise action to be taken; where to place stakeouts, where to set traps, and where to find witnesses. Another type of profiling called behavioral investigative advice (BIA) gives advice to investigators like how to use the media, what questions should be asked during police interviews, and if the crime is part of a series of crimes. The advice is based on research rather than trying to think like a serial criminal would.
Using profiles can create issues at trials. Should information about whether a defendant fits a profile be admissible in court and should a defendant’s fit with a profile be considered evidence are two key questions that need to be assessed.
When classifying deaths the NASH system is used. It consists of four categories; natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. A psychological autopsy examines the psychological state of a person before their death. Psychological autopsy’s rely on records that the dead person left behind as well as interviews with people who had contact with the person before their death. The deceased person’s intentions and emotional state just before dyeing are critical for the psychological autopsy. There is a 16 point checklist to help determine whether someone committed suicide. In one study researchers used the checklist to determine the cause of death in 126 cases in which the cause of death was already known. They determined the cause of death 92% of the time.
I had no real background knowledge of profiling before reading this chapter so I can’t really say that I had anything debunked. As I said before, I found it surprising that the FBI only has 12 profilers. It make sense that there are only 12 profilers because in all reality there aren’t that many crimes in which a profiler is of use but I would imagine there are a lot of people in law enforcement who want to be profilers.
I found the Olympic bomber case to be interesting and in particular the wrongful accusing of Richard Jewell. He was the main suspect of the bombing and at first was described by the news as a hero because he worked security near where the bomb went off and he helped evacuate people. That didn't last long because the next day he was interviewed by the secret service, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI. The FBI said he fit the profile and that he did it to be seen as a hero for saving people.
http://www.journalism.org/node/1791
This chapter talks about profiling. Now profiling is the process of drawing inferences about a criminal's personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence. Profiling is famously used in cases where there is a serial killer. Now a serial killer is someone who has killed 3 or more people with a cooling off period between the kills. Profiling comes in most effective when a signature has come into play. A signature is the distinctive personal aspect of the crime that presumably reveals the personality of the killer. Then it talks about three famous cases in which profiling has been used. These cases are Jack the Ripper (first time a profile was used), the Olympic Bomber(the profile was wrong), and the Mad Bomber (the profile was extremely accurate). Then it talks about characteristics about serial killers. These can be described as organized killer (killers that methodically plan, stalk, and execute their kills) and disorganized killers (people who tend to be impulsive, and pick up their victims at random). Then it goes on to tell us that serial killers can be catergorized in four groups, Visonary (people who have visions and think god or spirits are talking to them telling them to kill), mission oriented (motivated by a desire to kill people they regard as evil or unworthy), hedonistic (kill for thrills and get sexual gratification from torture), and power oriented (satifaction from capturing controling the victime before killing them). Then it talks about research on profiling which has come to tell us that it helps is some case but only contributed in 2.7 % of cases. Then it talks about problems and promise. Assumptions are a part of the profiling process but they have to look if it is discredited by the data. Then it talks about cross situational What this means if changing situations lead to changes in the crime scene. Then it talks about how inferences can help the case and can hurt the case by having to many or being selective. For example the BTK killer. Then profiliers can have tunnel vision from the profile because they are only looking at the profile and people who fit the description. Then it talks about psychological autopsies. These are used when trying to figure out a psychological state of the person upon death. A check list has been made to aid profilers in these situations. This check list in a study of 126 cases had a 92% accuracy rate. However these are still an issue in criminal cases, but are heavly used in civil cases. What surprized me the most was that profiling is not an exact science but is getting there. I had always though when properly trained in profiling it was always a matter of time till the killer gets caught once the signature is found, so you could say that my view on profiling has changed now. Im very interested in profiling. I looked up this subject and found more of a description of profiling on http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-criminal-profiling.htm
I learned that the crime scene and the profile go completly together because the profile comes from the crime and profile is an psychological sketch of the offender.
Chapter 5 gives a very interesting overview of Criminal Profiling and Psychological Autopsies. I love the quote that is given at the beginning of the chapter from Silence of the Lambs. That film is definitely a hallmark example of profiling even though I’m sure it’s not completely accurate. I know many people including myself have always thought is would be awesome to have a job as a serial killer profiler. After reading this chapter I am sure that the job is harder than it seems and requires a lot of training. This chapter highlights exactly what a criminal profiler does, how accurate they are, and the process of profiling.
Movies such as Silence of the Lambs have highly publicized the job of criminal profiler. The technique behind this kind of work originates from FBI’s behavioral science unit. However, despite Hollywood’s depiction, profiling is invalidated technique. Although agents are to follow a process when making a profile, it is obvious that every profiler has their own way of creating a profile.
The text gives an overview of three cases where criminal profilers where used. An example of a successful attempt was in the case of the Mad Bomber. The profiler had given accurate details as to the characteristics of the bomber and the police were able to find him and make an arrest. However, something to consider is that the profiler also gave the police some false information that was not true of the suspect. Who knows if this was just dumb luck. Unfortunately there have also been instances where profiler were wrong and have put an individual’s reputation in jeopardy. For this the book gives the example of the Olympic Bomber. In this case they found a man who matched the description of given by the profiler. They had highly publicized the arrest of a man who was not guilty and later admitted that they could not find any evidence to link him to the crime. This proves that having the police focus on a specific profile might make them blind to the real perpetrator.
The next section of the chapter interested me a lot. All though there is no set of characteristics that describe every serial killer there are some things that are likely to be present in most. Those include brain injury, physical, sexual, or psychological abuse during childhood, and displaying cruelty towards animals during childhood. It is also scary to think that most serial killers are white males. These characteristics don’t necessarily surprise me because Hollywood depicts most serial killers as white males with a rough childhood. It’s still interesting to know that the movies are true in that way. Researchers have been able to create a list of characteristics based on whether they are organized or disorganized. While I was reading the table provided in the chapter I could understand how these characteristics would fit their respective groups. This graph kind of gave me an idea of the thought processes a profiler has to go through.
Although some research has been done one the effectiveness of profiling in solving a case, most of this research faces some criticism. The text points out that more research is needed in order to make profiling a validated technique. Whether or not it is a reliable source of information is critical. Why would you want to waste your time on something that is proven to be inaccurate?
I wanted to do further research on the psychological autopsies that are performed on serial killers. I never knew that this could be done or had been done. Being able to correctly determine the psychological state of a person prior to their death can be extremely helpful in the legal and psychological field.
I found a pamphlet that was created for the Department of the Army. The pamphlet addresses the issues of suicide prevention and psychological autopsies. I found it interesting that they performed psychological autopsies on soldiers. Apparently there is a high rate of suicide among soldiers and psychological autopsies are frequently used. In this context the purpose of the autopsy is first to determine whether the cause of death was accidental or suicidal. Second the autopsy can tell us the degree of lethality, which is the likelihood that death would occur. The pamphlet also mentions that autopsies are useful for family members not only because they will now how their loved one died but also because they will have direct contact with a mental health specialists who can also provide them with counseling.
http://dmna.ny.gov/suicideprevention/p600_24.pdf
Chapter five was all about profiling which is the process of drawing inferences about criminals personality, motivations, behavior and demographic characteristics based on the crime scene and other evidence. To create the profile for the criminal the profilers analyze the crime scene, information about the victim, and the police and autopsy reports. Profilers also look for the signature of the crime which helps reveal the killers personality. This relates to cognitive psychology because the profiler must try to think how the perpetrator thinks and why to create an accurate profile. This information can help give police direction in their investigation. Hollywood has portrayed profilers in movies as psychic such as Silence of the Lambs. This technique is not validated because it relies mostly on intuition and judgment.
The first case in which profiling was used was in 1888, Jack the Ripper. He murdered and mutilated women's bodies in East London. Since he was never caught we don't know if his profile ever matched up correctly. Profiling is not only used in killings. It has been used in many other crimes including bombings such as The Olympic Bomber. In this case they were trying to determine who set the bomb at the Summer Olympic Games in Georgia. They ended up focusing on the wrong guy but eventually caught the man responsible years later. Another famous case when profiling was used was the Mad Bomber of 1957. This man would place bombs in the building, send letters, and called the police station. The profile created on this guy was so accurate that this new information helped set the police in a new direction finding an old employee from Con Edison that matched the profile who was eventually found responsible and arrested.
There are some characteristics that meet up with most serial killers. Many have some kind of brain injury and/or suffered from any type of abuse during childhood. They are typically average intelligence, seek domination over their victims before killing them. Their victims are usually of the same particular type light skinned, adolescent boys. Profilers have separated killers into two different categories: organized killers or disorganized killers. Organized killers can be distinguished by their self control, stalking, planning out what they will do. They also perform more torturing and dismembering followed by the clean up of evidence afterward. Disorganized killers act on impulse, randomly picking their victims, and often perform sexual acts with the body post mortem. Holmes says that serial killers fit into one of four different categories: visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power-oriented. Some serial killers overlap into multiple categories.
Research on profiling has been slow to advance because you can't connect characteristics at a crime scene to a particular kind of person. I found it interesting that in a study in England out of 184 police detectives said that profiling was helpful but only 2.7% made the correct identification. In another study it said that the profilers were better at guessing physical attributes but the others were better at guessing thought process and history of murderer on a multiple choice. Because behavior changes based on different situations case linkage is important in profiling. Case linkage is determining if multiple crimes were committed by the same person. This has strong links to social psychology because it requires being able to think of how two could connect. One problem with profiling is that they are often ambiguous and open to interpretation, for example lone wolf type of personality. Another problem is that researchers found that 80% of the statements profilers made were unsupported. Also after knowing the profile for the murderer investigators may start going in the wrong direction. Tunnel vision, diverting their focus from suspects who don't fit the profile is also a problem possibly letting the criminal get away if they didn't match up.
Geographic profiling uses maps and mathematics with previous locations where bodies have been found and suspicious behavior that has been witnessed and plots these locations on a map. The computer program then uses these points to estimate the vicinity of the perpetrators home and/or location of next crime. These programs look for an anchor point (where attacks were launched) and a buffer point (zone around their home where they are less likely to attack). Both intuitive and statistical approaches can make mistakes geographical profiling as been proved to be superior. In the United Kingdom behavioral investigative advice (BIA) has gained significance. Probative evidence gives information that is helpful in determining whether someone committed a crime or not. Two important questions are should information about whether a defendant fits a profile be admissible in court? and Should a defendant's "fit" be considered as evidence?
Psychological autopsies examine the psychological state of someone prior to their death. NASH system is used to classify death: natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. Psychological autopsies are commonly used in suspected suicides. Emails, cell phone records, interviews with friends and family are just a couple of aspects used to analyze the emotional state, lifestyle and personality of the person before they died. Researchers have created a list of distinquishing criteria to help determine if death could be self inflicted, accidental death, and if they were indications of intentions to die. Psychological autopsies may or may not be allowed in trials. If it is separating assets then experts are used to evaluate if the person was competent when writing the will, this will be allowed in court. If its a criminal case like Jackson vs. State of Florida courts are more reluctant.
The book that I chose to read for class was Mindhunter by John Douglas, who had a vital role in the formation of profiling. Thats why I was very surprised to read that there are only a dozen FBI agents who specialize in profiling. Another thing that surprised me was that profilers are not always accurate, in Mindhunter John portrays that almost every case he has worked on has been accurate on the most part. I wanted to learn more about profilers. At the site below it talked about how there is not a set "profiler" job title with the FBI. Also that besides profiling they assist law enforcement agencies. http://www.fbijobs.gov/611.asp
Chapter 5 is about profiling. The definition of profiling is a type of process where someone takes certain characteristics or known facts and brings all of those together to make an inference or an assumption. Some of these things that go into this profiling is the behavior the person takes place in, the area/location where the criminal commits his/her crimes and other characteristics about specific things involved in the crime scenes that can both be generic or unique. One unique area would be something to do with a criminal’s signature to their crime. This signature marks the crime so he basically gets credit for it so he might get certain euphoria from the publicity.
Later in the chapter our book goes into two different types of killers. This is where I wanted to research more about this area so I went on the web and found the information about disorganized killers vs. disorganized killers. Like the book the definitions of these two were very similar. With an organized killer that person methodically plans murder. Ways he does this is by choosing a victim and engaging with that victim. The main important part is that the crime scene is not sloppy, because they go to great lengths not to get caught. Now on the other hand the disorganized killer acts spontaneously or on impulse. He does not have the victim nor the location picked out. Now what I thought was very interesting where the specific characteristics of the organized murderer. Some of these that this website went into were that they had good intelligence, decent social status and competence, and that the majority used alcohol during the act of the crime. Now on the other side of things the disorganized killer only has average intelligence and is socially immature with low social status. But the main thing is that they are more likely to be psychotic.
http://www.deathreference.com/Py-Se/Serial-Killers.html
Then in the book it goes into more detail about the 4 categories of serial killers. The four include Visionary, hedonistic, mission oriented and finally power oriented. What I found interesting is that even though the serial kill is doing a bad deed by killing someone that they can somehow justify why they killed that person. Whether it has to do with a “mission from God” or even them trying to rid the world of evil. But the main thing I took from all four categories is that it gives them a certain euphoria from killing someone.
Chapter Five is titled "Criminal Profiling and Psychological Autopsies". This chapter begins by defining profiling as "the process of drawing inferences about a criminal personality, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence. It then discusses the three famous profiles of Jack the Ripper, the Olympic Bomber, and the Mad bomber. The chapter then moves on to a section covering characteristics of serial killers. In this section, the book provides differences between organized murders and disorganized murders. Later in this section the book discusses the four different types of serial killers proposed by Ronald Holmes and his colleagues. He describes the differences between visionary, mission-oriented, Hedonistic, and power-oriented types. Next this chapter goes on to describe the history of research on profiling. This section describes the beginning of profiling being studied. The chapter then turns to problems and promise in profiling. The first problem is assumptions. Some assumptions have not been fully tested or validated. Next in this section, the issue of cross-sectional consistency is discussed. Then the section moves to the utility of inferences. Finally the section discusses persistent problems including tunnel vision.The next section covers geographic profiling, also known as criminal spatial mapping. The next section discusses how stereotypes or vague profiles can create profiles at trial. The chapter ends by discussing psychological autopsies. This is an autopsy that tries to dissect and examine the psychological state of a person right before death.
I was most surprised about psychological autopsies. This connected forensics to psychology in a way that I had never heard of before.
I didn't have really any prior knowledge about profiling so all the information was new information.
I found Jack the Ripper to be most interesting so I decided to further research him. From the link I found, provided further profiling. It claimed "domineering mother and absent father, developed destructive emotions in younger years, expressed by lighting fires and mutilating animals, an asocial loner; quiet and shy, An occupation which enabled him to experience his destructive fantasies; possibly a butcher, or a hospital or morgue attendant, and unmarried." These are characteristics that while they are not obvious, in relation to the known physical evidence of the crime, all make sense.
http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/caseclosed.html
The chapter assigned to us deals with criminal profiling and psychological autopsies. I have always thought that it would be a lot of fun and very interesting to have this job, but after reading this chapter, I now realize that there is a lot more to the job than I originally thought. TV shows and movies often depict criminal profiling as a great job and they usually always are right in their profile...which always leads to the capture of the correct person. Unfortunately, that is not the case most times.
The chapter starts out with some quotes from Silence of the Lambs. I watched this movie for the first time last night in order to write the topical blog for this week, and I thought it was a really good movie. It does a good job at portraying what a profile is. I thought that the qoutes at the beginning of the chapter was a good introduction to the rest of the text. Three famous profiles were discussed. The first was that of Jack the Ripper. This was considered to be the first profile done of a killer. His signature was attacking women, killing them, and mutilating their bodies. The profile was never considered to be accurate because Jack the Ripper was never caught. The next case was that of the Olympic bomber. Profilers came up with a description and a man was arrested. The police wanted to assure the public that the Olympics were safe, so they announced that an arrest was made. After the Olympics were over, the police said that there was no reason for them to arrest the man they did. There was no evidence linking the man to the crimes. I have always thought that profiling was good and useful, but this case proves that there are flaws in everything. It is terrible that a mans life is now ruined because a profile was not accurate. The last case mentioned was of the Mad Bomber. I have heard about this one many times before. This was a celebrated case because the profile helped detectives to the man who was placing bombs around the city. Although the profile may have been helpful, it was not the full reason that the man was caught. It was through detective work and looking at his notes to the police that they were able to find out background information and that is what led them to the right man.
I found the section of "characteristics of serial killers" to be very interesting. Every serial killer is different, but the chapter discusses some things that have been found to be similar. Many serial killers may have a brain injury that may affect their thinking. They also may have suffered some abuse during their childhood. They also tend to be white males and typically have average intelligence. I also found organized and disorganized killers to be interesting. Organized killers are very careful and meticulous about their crimes. They stalk their victims and plan out carefully what they are going to do to them. When they plan everything so carefully, it shows a lot of self-control and patience. Disorganized killers, however, chose people at random for their victims and are impulsive. Geographic profiling was discussed in this chapter. This deals with where crimes have taken place, and also where the bodies of victims have been found. Detectives usually assume that criminals commit their crimes within a comfort zone. If this is true, then they can devote their time to searching in this area.
A psychological autopsy involves looking at the psychological state of the person prior to their death. I wanted to do more research on this topic. I found a very interesting website that discussed it. Psychological autopsies investigate a person's death by doing a reconstruction of their life, feelings, thoughts, etc. before they died. They can do this by looking at personal documents, interviews with families, police reports, as well as a number of other things. Gregory Zilboorg was perhaps the first person to use psychological autopsies. He was looking into 93 death cases in which there was an equivocal death, that is, no cause was known. He had talked to the victim's families, friends, colleagues, physicians, etc. His research has helped in the understanding of suicides.
http://www.deathreference.com/A-Bi/Autopsy-Psychological.html
Chapter 5 begins by recounting a scene from the film Silence of the Lambs. An FBI agent named Starling is analyzing a crime scene with her boss when she suddenly makes several assumptions related to the identity of a suspect solely based on information she obtained at the scene. This process is called profiling. Immediately, I was surprised to find out how widespread the use of criminal profiling has become (curious about the high adaptation rate exclusive to European countries). The most important thing I read in the first couple pages: "much of the mystique of the profiling process is that it appears to rely on the skilled intuition of a particular profiler" (CK 99). This reaffirms my belief that too often effective profiling techniques are utilized poorly (resulting in the technique wrongly being classified as infeffective). I don't know what could be done to prevent this. The instructors who provide this training simply need to realize how critical the education they provide really is.
The book quickly sums up the lives of three famous criminals: Jack the Ripper, Eric Rudolph, and George Metesky. Jack the Ripper is characterized as being the first criminal to be systematically profiled. Rudolph's case was unusual in that initially the wrong man was suspected (Richard Jewell) and as a result had his image/reputation smeared. The most fascinating thing about Metesky's case was that the profiler correctly predicted nearly everything concerning the physical apperance of the criminal. I chuckled when I heard that Metesky emerged from his room wearing a double-breasted suit - buttoned.
The next thing the book touched on was the characteristics of serial killers and the differences between organized and diorganized killers. Organized killers are of the stalking variety, electing to carry out a carefully planned agenda whereas a disorganized killer is more likly to be impulsive and sloppy. I was interested about the concept of tunnel vision. I am almost positive that the number of times this phenomena has reared its ugly head is largely misrepresented. I think tunnel vision is a very real and prevalent problem in profiling that needs to be addressed.
Finally, the book closes the chapter detailing geoprofling as well as psychological autopsies, both of which seem to be useful tools in solving crimes. I, however, am not so sure of their usefulness in the legal realm. There is just too much uncertainty when you are talking about someone's past mental state without the assistance of said person.
I wanted to know more about Jack the Ripper and if any progress has been made in recent years given technological advances. I found some interesting stuff, but unfortunately the identity of the Ripper remains a mystery to this day:
http://www.casebook.org/intro.html
"Much of the original evidence gathered at the time was lost."
The police commissioner at the time, Sir Charles Warren failed to even offer a reward for information leading to the capture of Jack the Ripper. He was supposedly ill-suited for his job according to most experts.
http://www.jack-the-ripper.org/
Police at the time had difficulty evaluating the crime scenes at the time because they were in labyrinth-like areas with small pathways and many corners/turns.
The name Jack the Ripper was most likely just thought up by a journalist at the time.
Criminal Profiling and Psychological Autopsies (5)
Profiling is the process of drawing inferences about a criminal’s characteristics (such as personality, motive, behavior, etc.) based on the crime scene and all the evidence they analyze. Profiling is mainly used to find serial killers but has also been used for other crimes as well such as rape cases and suspect bombers. One thing that surprised me was the link between the “signature” of the crime, to the reasoning behind the crime, or the “why” the person did what they did. The signature fulfills their emotional void. The chapter discusses how profiles can be organized into categories such as organized and disorganized based on the crime scene, but also goes on to explain that one’s behavior in a library is going to be different than one’s behavior at a bar—effectively taking away from the credibility of profiling. This entire chapter made me reevaluate my perception on profiling. I now think it should be used as a place to start of there is absolutely no other alternative because, as the text puts it, “We cannot rely on the confident claims of practitioners of profiling because those practitioners have a strong personal and professional stake in promoting the perception that profiling is effective”. Which is true: would you want to be taking advice from someone who is trying to prove to the professional world that their methods are valid, reliable and useful or would you rather take advise from someone who’s already proven themselves acceptable? Geographic profiling is when key locations are associated with serial crimes based on a variety of factors such as: If bodies have been dumped there before, eye-witnesses claims, and if it is within a geographic comfort zone of a suspected serial killer. This tool seems to be more informative than profiling ever could be. One thing that I sort of questioned was the aspect of a “buffer zone” around the home of the criminal—where they are supposedly less likely to commit crimes. I have seen in the media where dead bodies are found on the killers property so this seemed confusing. The characteristics of serial killers provided information about how they may have grown up to their demographic characteristics, as well as their behaviors and actions before they commit a crime (such as indulging in drugs and/or alcohol). I think one of the most useful tools profilers are able to use today is the classification scheme proposed by Ronald Holmes and his colleagues. Here he describes serial killers as fitting into one or more of these types: visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power-oriented. A serial killer is a psychopath, no matter how you spin it. The Scientific American Spotlight pointed out a few interesting myths though. The one that I found the most interesting was the myth reading psychopathy as untreatable.
Something I wanted to learn more about after reading this chapter was about psychological autopsies. Psychological autopsies are used in an effort to recreate the state of mind the deceased was in before they died to see if they committed suicide or not. They are used when someone has suffered an equivocal death, or one in which it is not clear how they died. I find these extremely interesting yet wonder how they can be considered any more reliable than profiling considering the lack of research to pursued otherwise. The 16-issue check list seemed to me like it was taking a few basic questions (such as were they depressed) and making them into more. I was curious as to whether these autopsies are used effectively in court and found a case where a woman jumped from a truck on the highway and the life-insurance policy did not pay out because of their suicide clause. Within the article they state, “It instantly became our most significant weapon in the case, as it revealed with clinical honesty what we believed was, in fact, the truth. We never faced a challenge to Dr. Lewis's opinions, as, shortly after disclosing her report, the case settled very favorably to our client in mediation. The psychological autopsy ultimately constituted precisely the "substantial countervailing evidence" we needed…..”http://www.halloran-sage.com/Knowledge/articleDetail.aspx?storyid=2648
In chapter 5 you learn about Profiling and how effective it is. The definition of profiling is the process of drawing inferences about a criminal's personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence. Dr. Thomas Bond fromulated what was said to be the first criminal profile. Dr. Bond described and created the profile of Jack the Ripper. However, Jack the Ripper was never caught. Therefore his assumptions couldn't be proven. So his assumptions remain a theory that I believe could be very accurate.
It was interesting to read about the three myths of psychopaths. The three myths are all psychopaths are violent, psychotic, and psychopathy is untreatable. However most psychopaths are not violent, and most violent people are not psychopaths. Also Reading that psychopaths are almost always rational. They are aware of there illegal actions and know that it is wrong to do in societies eyes. The media has a tendency to label serial killers with the wrong term. For example, Charles Manson and David Berkowitz who have shown symptoms of psychosis instead of psychopathy.
The most surprising thing I learned about was case linkage. Mainly because the killers personality at the time of the murder causes a change in their actions. Investigators mistakenly conclude that the same murder commited two crimes because the crime scene is so alike. Investigators also make the mistake that if two crimes scenes are so different then they assume that it was done by two different people when the crime could have actually been the same person in a different mood.
Geographic profiling is a more helpful tool than profiling. Investigators can map out previous attacks and potential future locations where they believe attacks may occur. For example a serial killer who killed women in many different states tended to kill his victims along major highway interstates. They used major trucking routes and the pattern of killings to eventually lead them to the truck driver responsible for the murders. The "Railway killer" was also a murder who was captured with the use of geographic profiling. His victims were found dead near railway tracks. Later he was found to be a person who hopped freight trains for transportation and did his killings along the way.
Profiling could lead to very inaccurate findings if racial profiling is abused. A profiler can shift an investigators case by saying that the criminal was black, white, asian, or mexican. Right away the investigator could be thrown off by labeling a race to a perpetrator they haven't seen yet. I feel that a profiler shouldn't even give the information about their race unless and eyewitness has seen the perpetrator. Even with an eyewitness there is room for error. Yes, there are crimes that are commited more often by certain races but that doesn't mean all the people of that ethnicity should be suspects.
The chapter about psychological autopsies made me want to search more information about the topic. This was an interesting website.
http://www.deathreference.com/A-Bi/Autopsy-Psychological.html
There was a case in my hometown where a man burned down his house in order to claim insurance money. The man left evidence that showed he attempted to burn down the house multiple times but failed. He finally got the fire to start but the firefighters put out the house before the evidence was burned completely. He was later arrested for arson. That's what you get for trying to burn down a house in a small town. The fire station was not even a mile away.
Here is another link that describes how a psychological autopsy was done on student who commited suicide.
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10337.aspx
Chapter Five talks about criminal profiling and psychological autopsies. Criminal profiling is the process of drawing inferences about a criminal's personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence. Before I read anything from the chapter, I was skeptical about the accuracy of profiling. I didn't think it was really all too realistic for a person to be able to describe someone based solely on the physical results of their behavior. It seemed a little too much like stereotyping to me.
One thing I was very surprised to find out was that there were only about a dozen FBI agents trained in criminal profiling. I thought that there would be a lot more, but maybe the FBI is just as skeptical about profiling as I am. It seems like it would be more beneficially analyzing evidence and looking for biological markers that can track down a culprit, instead of trying to "understand" the criminal based on the crime seen he/she left behind.
The book talks most about the use of profiling in the case of serial killers (as well as rapists and bombers. Three specific cases where profiling was used were included. The first was Jack the Ripper, which we don't know how accurate the profiling was because Jack the Ripper was never caught (which is really creepy to think about). The second talked about the Olympic Bomber, in which the profiling was completely wrong and ended up ruining an innocent man's life by claiming him as the bomber without any real solid evidence. Finally they spoke about the Mad Bomber, in which profiling was really useful to the case, but also seemed really weird. The profiler was a psychiatrist named James Brussel, who was insanely accurate with his description of the bomber, right down to the types of clothes he wore. Brussel's explanations for his description were strange and extremely Freudian-sounding. The important point that the profiling brought to the case was to look at former employees of Con Edison who might have something against the company. Such a thing seems like common sense to me, but then again that was 1956.
The chapter goes on to discuss more characteristics of serial killers and research that has been done on profiling. They also speak about some problems with profiling, most of which I had been thinking about when I had doubts about the field.
The chapter also speaks about geographic profiling which I thought was interesting. I had seen dramatized geographic profiling on the TV show "Numbers" previously. In the show, the math genius uses -you guessed it, math- to figure out where a serial killer will strike next. I thought the idea was interesting when I saw it on the show and even more so now that I know it is actually used or being developed for use in the real world.
Next, the chapter addresses one of the concerns I had about profiling which was if it was all just stereotyping or not. The section introduced the idea of probative evidence, which is basically an analysis of a profile trying to determine just how probable it is that someone would or would not commit a crime. This is supposed to be used as a sort of check on unscientific stereotype evidence.
The chapter finishes by speaking about psychological autopsies which are defined as an effort to dissect and examine the psychological state of a person prior to his/her death. These analyses rely on indirect forms of evidence like journal entries, letters, cell phone records and other "paper trails" left by the deceased as well as personal interviews from people that were close to him/her. Psychological autopsies are important in cases of equivocal deaths, or deaths where it is not clear whether the death was accidental, suicide, or homicide. However, these autopsies are not always useful, especially if the deceased didn't leave any clues behind. As such, courts have been reluctant to allow psychological autopsied in as evidence.
After reading the chapter, I wanted to read more about the profiler from the Mad Bomber case. His ideas sounded very Freudian, and I was curious to find out if he was indeed a follower. Turns out, his explanations were from the Freudian doctrine, though I never found if he was an actual student of Freud. I also found out that Brussel continued to profile after the Mad Bomber case and ended up helping the NYPD catch a serial sex murderer known as the Boston Strangler in 1972. He was known as the "Sherlock Holmes of the Couch."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offender_profiling
http://search.proquest.com/docview/207637718?accountid=14691
In chapter five the book looks at the field of criminal profiling and how it is used today to help solve crimes. The authors say that the field is often perceived to be more accurate and advanced then it actually is due to the media; for example show like C.S.I. I picked up from the reading that profiling is actually not very accurate at all and therefore not really usable by investigators and law enforcement to find the perpetrator of a specific crime. It describes profiling as not very detailed in describing the perp. Like for instance they might not do very well with women, and they will have some kind of anti-social problem. But in reality tens of thousands of people may carry these characteristics in their lives and are not the person that they are looking for. What i picked up from the book is that the authors think that profiling is waste of time and that is nearly impossible to guess what the perpetrator of a specific crime might look like or do in their free time.
One thing that really caught my attention is that it was mentioned on page 110 that there is no accepted educational requirements in criminal profiling and no ethical guidelines. This to me was amazing, my first thought if there isn't criteria like this that's needs to be met before one could be considered a profiler is why would police and other law enforcement look for help from criminal profiliers who don't have some kind of accreditation in that area? Then i thought about being involved in a case that was going know where fast; I would probably reach out to anything that had a chance at yielding any type of helpful evidence at all. I think that it should be required that before police decide to use a profiler they would have to find one that has had success in the area before instead of some self claimed expert that really doesnt know a thing at all.
None of my thoughts on criminal profiling has changed after reading this chapter and i have a few reasons for that. One is that if it were so easy and so inaccurate the F.B.I. would not have a whole department dedicated to criminal profiling, because that would just be a waste of money and resources. Second is that they used a lot of material, and talked mostly about cases and profiliers that were not involved with the f.b.i. but i did notice that the successful ones like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacey which were used in the chapter were in fact caught using help from the F.BI. my last reason is that the F.B.I cant just go solve cases they have to violate federal law or have to be asked my the people with jurisdiction over the case(s). They also don't usually get to see the actually crime scene with their own eyes,they have to use pictures that I'm guessing don't always have the best quality.
After reading this chapter I would like to learn more about the F.B.I. Behavioral Sciences Unit and just exactly how successful they are in doing their jobs. I have read a considerable amount this department over the last couple of years, including right now for my book report which is the book Mindhunters by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker which was quoted more than once in this chapter. I think that this chapter is almost completely opposite from all the the things that I have learned from reading all the other books like Profiles in Murder written by Russel Vorpagel who was also in the Bureaus Behavioral Science Unit. After my research I found that the Unit is actually pretty successful in doing what they are supposed to do considering caseloads and the number of people working with them. And that the book was wrong about educational standards on being an expert criminal profilier. In the Website listed at the bottom I found that Federal law mandates that Forensic Scientists must be board certified to practice and test as an expert.
https://webspace.utexas.edu/mae548/www/research/CJ/BSU.html
This chapter describes profiling and what a profiler all does. A profiler pretty much does what the word says it does – they create a profile for suspects. They come up with a personality for the perpetrator in order to predict their next moves and find them. They do come up with their predicted personality by analyzing the crime scene, talking with the victims and witnesses, etc. Most people when they think about psychology and law the first thing they think of are profilers. I’m sure this is due to the fact that most crime shows on television have a profiler working for them. I know my favorite show of all time, which happens to be a crime show, is “Bones”. On there they have an FBI psychologist who does profiling for the FBI. Unfortunately, profilers aren’t as prevalent as television and movies make them out to be. In all reality, most of what the profiler does is “rely on their gut instincts.” We’ve all seen in movies or television shows where the killer is in fact nothing like what the profiler’s profile described him to be. Though there is some accuracy in profiling, it definitely relies on too much guess work and estimation to be the only criteria cops and detectives look for in their perpetrators. However, it is important to note that profiling has definitely been useful and helpful. The book notes the famous case of “Jack the Ripper” in where profiling was used and helped close the case.
My site was very interesting. In the first site it gave a nice over view of profiling and what it actually means. It also discussed two different approaches profilers use when they create a profile. The two different approaches are called an inductive approach and a deductive approach. The first is an inductive approach. This is where the profiler examines the crime committed and compares it to other crimes committed similar to the one at hand. It then looks at those who have committed those similar crimes, and creates a profile based off of their characteristics, behaviors, etc. The other method is known as a deductive approach. This approach is a bit more complicated and is about the exact opposite of an inductive approach. In the deductive approach we don’t want to look at averages and generalizations, because we all know no two people are exactly the same. Here we want to focuses on looking at things extremely detailed. By looking at the little things we can find little things that stand out and could give us insight as to the characteristics of the perpetrators profile.
http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00206/nts_psychological_profiling.htm
Chapter five talks about profiling. I wasn't exactly sure what profiling was until I read this chapter. Profiling is basically taking all of the evidence from the crime scene and making a profile by the evidence they've found at the scene to make an idea about the suspect. The FBI and police use profiling to find serial killers. It is important for profilers to look for a specific mark by the serial killers. They leave their marks because it's a part of their personality and behavior and when they each have their own marks it can make it easier to locate the person committing the crimes. I think this job would be pretty sweet and interesting to have because you would get to look at a variety of things and try to fit things together in the crime. The profilers can make or break the crime.
After reading this chapter my thoughts on profiling changed a lot because I wasn't exactly sure what the job of the profiler did before I read this. I always thought that they just played a role in the crime scene and put all of the evidence together, I didn't think that they played such a vital role in solving the crime or finding the criminal like they actually do.
I'd like to learn more about psychological autopsies. I didn't even know this existed until I started reading about it. I think it's pretty cool that people can put together someone's life after they have already died. I 'd like to look more into it and maybe be apart of one sometime by putting events together after someone has already died. I want to know where or how they gather all of the information after the persons' death. I know that it is probably easy to get some of the memorable objects after someones death but I wouldn't think that it would be enough to put someones life together like their thoughts, likes, dislikes, and hobbies to pretty much picture the persons' life.
http://www.deathreference.com/A-Bi/Autopsy-Psychological.html#b
This website talks more in depth about psychological autopsies and gives a more detailed definition of it. I like this website because it's easy to read and gives a lot of good information about it like when the first autopsy took place.
http://people.howstuffworks.com/serial-killer6.htm
This website was very interesting. It talked about profiling and gave a little information about how a serial killer is found. It says that profiling is not one hundred percent accurate which is a good thing because they can't depend one hundred percent on the profiler to find the serial killer. They just have to go off of guesses and assumptions.
This particular chapter discusses the process of criminal profiling, famous profiles, and specific problems related to profiling. Criminal Profiling, or offender profiling is a very useful investigative tool that allows police to draw inferences about an unknown offender. Profiling is used in a number of countries including the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, and Germany. It was originally developed in Quantico, Virginia at the FBI Behavioral Science Unit. Profiling is also known as "retroclassification and criminal investigative analysis."
Profiling is used in a variety of cases but most notably in cases involving serial killers. Sometimes killers leave behind a “signature” which is a distinctive characteristic that identifies the killer as being a certain individual (sometimes unknown.) A great example of a signature that I thought of was a signature from the movie series “Saw.” After every victim, the “Jigsaw” killer would cut out a piece of their skin in the shape of a jigsaw. There have been several cases in history where profiling were very important. Some of these cases include the serial killers Jack the Ripper, The Olympian Bomber, and The Mad Bomber. Profiling is deciding what type of a person would commit the crime.
When police are looking for an unknown serial killer, they first look to see what kinds of people commit these horrific crimes. Many times, serial killers have been the victim of some sort of abuse as a child, whether it is physical, sexual, or emotional. Serial killers have also been known to demonstrate cruelty towards animals as well. In the past, most serial killers have been males and usually have a normal IQ. Many killers drink alcohol or ingest drugs before they kill so that they aren’t completely sober when they commit the crime.
One problem that comes into play during profiling is the issue of tunnel vision. This means that detectives have a certain profile engrained in their minds and they are not able to look past those certain characteristics while searching for a suspect. Another issue that has been the centerpiece to many lawsuits is racial profiling. In a case in San Francisco in 1997, San Francisco police detained more than 600 black men because they fit a very general profile. Racial profiling stems from stereotypes and can be the cause of many innocent people being harassed. If profiling is used correctly, it can be very productive, but if it isn’t used correctly it can be very counterproductive.
There are many things that I read in this chapter that I knew before. I knew that many serial killers were the victim of abuse as children, and that many serial killers displayed cruelty towards animals. One thing that I learned that I found very interesting and surprising is that there are a few different types of ways that a killer can be profiled. One type of serial killer is a visionary serial killer who believes that they have heard voices instructing them to kill someone. Hedonistic killers kill for the thrill and often like to torture their victims. I found it very interesting to read about the different types of killers.
Since I found the different types of killers so interesting, I decided to do a little research on these different types. The first type I found some information on was the Hedonistic Type serial killer. This type of killer enjoys killing for the thrill of it and is often sexually aroused while committing the murder. One killer famous for being a Hedonistic type killer was none other than Jeffrey Dahmer. He enjoyed killing his victims because it not only gave him a rush, but he was also homosexual and was sexually aroused by doing so. He also sometimes had sex with his victims after they were dead.
http://killermotives.blogspot.com/2011/02/hedonistic-serial-killers.html
Another type of killer is a visionary type killer. These killers are often psychotic and believe that they are doing the work of god. They follow the instruction of voices that tell them to kill another person. The person who killed Jeffrey Dahmer was probably a visionary type killer. He said after killing Dahmer that “god told him to do it.” Sometimes these people are schizophrenic.
http://www.bxscience.edu/publications/forensics/articles/psychologicalprofiles/killer.pdf
Psychology is clearly related to profiling because the profilers are trying to determine what type of personality the suspect has. Personality is a huge part of psychology. The profilers are also trying to determine what the person is thinking, which is much related to psychology. I would say that the most closely related field of psychology related to this chapter would be behavioral psychology. Profiling was even invented in a “Behavioral Science Laboratory.” Another reason that this chapter is related to psychology is because many times serial killers have many psychological issues or disorders. This relates directly to Abnormal Psychology. I think that abnormal Psychology is one of the most interesting fields in psychology. Sometimes psychology can be the answer to why people commit such horrific crimes.
This was a very interesting chapter to read. I really liked all of the examples and stories that helped explain the different aspects of criminal profiling. I learned that serial killers and profiling go hand in hand. I guess I never really made the connection before but it makes sense. The profilers have more to work with, like a signature. I also learned that the definition of serial killing involves a “cooling-off period.” Profiles of criminals are used to pinpoint a certain type of person who likely committed the crime and eliminate others. They can be used both to identify a perpetrator and set traps to catch them. The use of a signature is really important to profiling because it never changes and is it, essentially, the reason he/she commits the crime. Instinct and judgment are both important qualities for profilers to have. This helps them put themselves in the place of the killer and victim.
The three famous profiles were great examples of what profiling is really like, and what conclusion profilers can draw based on the evidence present. They also helped explain that profiles aren’t always correct and can lead to the wrong person. Although it was surprisingly accurate, I was shocked to read about the disturbing analysis of the Mad Bomber. These profiles suggested that, most of the time, the information concluded by the profile should be common sense.
A large number of serial killers have some sort of brain damage or they suffered a traumatic event or abuse as a child. They usually prefer to make the killing more intimate and drawn out. Their victims are usually similar, and they are usually abusing drugs or alcohol. Profilers use the crime scene and evidence to classify the killers as organized and disorganized, but most of the time they fall into both categories. There are four different types of serial killers; visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power-oriented. These can help determine the motive behind why they kill.
A number of research experiments have suggested that profiling is not always effective. In many cases, the trained profilers didn’t match the killers any better than the other participants. There were many questionable variables in these studies that made them not very reliable. Our behavior is situational and can change with different emotions or surroundings. Profilers use this knowledge in deciding whether two crimes are linked or not. Inferences drawn by profilers can be misleading too broad. They are sometimes even impossible to utilize. Tunnel vision is also a problem in profiling and can cause criminals to avoid being caught.
Another different form of profiling that uses maps and math is geographical profiling. A serial killer in likely to stay in a region that he is comfortable in, so profilers use certain software to map out important locations and determine things like where he lives, works, and is likely to strike next. Things they look for anchor points, buffer zones, and distance decay to predict those positions on a map. Even though this method relies on technology rather than human judgment also had its flaws. Behavioral investigative advice is becoming more and more popular. This focuses more on giving helpful and reliable information to investigators.
Police sometimes tend to fall back on typical stereotypes under intense situations instead of correctly utilizing a profile. During a trial the courts decide whether or not to allow a testimony based on probative evidence. To do this they ask both of the admissibility of the “fit” to a profile, and whether it should be measured as evidence. I really like the story about the man who killed his wife and made it look like a snowmobile accident. Discoveries like that are great if they are correct, but tragic if they are wrong.
Equivocal deaths come with three possibilities. They can actually be an accident, a suicide disguised as an accident, or a murder disguised as an accident. There are four different types of death. They are natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. Autopsies come in two different forms; psychological and physical. Psychological autopsies focus on the mental state of a person before death. These analyses can be very important in determining which category of NASH the deceased falls into. The psychologists examine whether the person had both a self-inflicted death and had an intention to die.
The part I most enjoyed reading about in this chapter was the characteristics of a serial killer. I thought it was interesting how almost all of them are white males and are power-oriented. I decided to research more on this topic. The website I found was very intriguing. It involved a study of 36 serial killers and different traits and behaviors that they had as children. The most common on, surprisingly, was daydreaming with 82%. Next were compulsive masturbation, isolation, and chronic lying. This is not to say, of course, that all children who exhibit these characteristic will become serial killers. http://serialkillr.tripod.com/SerialKillersExposed/characteristics.html
Chapter five summarizes the procedure of profiling and how it is used in cases. It starts out talking about three famous criminals, Jack the Ripper, the Olympic Bomber, and the Mad Bomber. Profiling was used in all three cases. Jack the Ripper was never caught, so we cannot accurately determine whether the profile given was correct or not. With the Olympic Bomber, the wrong man was targeted, and his reputation severely damaged due to it. The Mad Bomber was the case the held the most accuracy for profiling. The psychiatrist that did the profile was scarily on-point with his profile of the killer, as they found when he was arrested. Research on profiling however has failed to show any positive, over-bearing results on success on cases. A study in England that questioned 184 police detectives, all of whom had used profiling to gain leads in cases. Of the cases using a profiler, only 2.7% found the profiler helpful in identifying the perpetrator.
A few problems with profiling that I never thought about was the cross-sectional consistency of profiling. This "theory" of profiling concludes that not every criminal is going to act the same way towards every victim. A large part depends on the victim and the way they react, as well as the setting the crime takes place in, and how the criminal reacts to the victim's behavior. There is also the problem of speculations of criminals being too vague and generally stated. Things such as "unsure of himself" and "has problems with women" are things that profilers may say but these things are characteristics that could describe any man, not a certain type of man, especially a killer.
The movies make it seem like a killer can easily be profiled, caught, and convicted. The truth is, killers are not often easily profiled, and it is extremely difficult to come up with an accurate profile of someone you've never met. Another interesting thing is the idea of psychological autopsy, which is the process of trying to dissect and figure out the state of the victim prior to their death. This may help in trying to profile the killer because you can tell what type of person the victim was, therefore it may lead to clues about the type of person the killer would target, thus, leading to more about their personality.
This site talks further about psychological autopsies and the first time it was used. It is a great site that breaks down psychological autopsies and how they are done.
http://www.deathreference.com/A-Bi/Autopsy-Psychological.html
The second site below also explains psychological autopsies and gives excellent examples about how it is used in real cases.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/forensics/psych_autopsy/index.html
Overall, not a whole lot that I read surprised me, since I know that profiling is usually exaggerated in the movies. It was incredibly interesting to read about what they do, although it was also a little discouraging since only about a dozen are hired in the FBI and even less elsewhere. However, it still is something I find fascinating and am excited to learn more about it so I can try and do a great job on our case.
This chapter went over the very interesting process of profiling. Profiling is definged as, "the process of drawing inferences about a criminals personality, behavior,motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence"(97. Profiling is seen as useful within the justice system, though is is largely based on things that are not measurable such as inferences, and different levels of experience.
With that being said, one can imagine some speculation and or apprehension about the use of profiling because its' effects cannot be properly tested. Regaurdless of this profiling has caused quite a stir since its introduction in 1888. Some famous cases where profiles were created and used include: Jack the Ripper, The Olympic Bomber, and The Mad Bomber.
Profiling had done lots to help law enforcement understand criminals but not just on a personal level. With the help of profiling a general catergorization of criminals was created. Profiling helped to create the distinctions between organized killers, visionary types, mission-oriented types, hedonistic types, and the power oriented.
I was very surprised to learn that research shows that some of the basic principles and or practices of profiling have not been validated and that consequently the assumptions/inferences are trumped by actual data. I found this surprising because thinking from a psychological perspective you want to generalize everything(types of criminals) but inreality you cannot do that because everyone is not the same, circumstances are never always the same, and the frame of mind of the perp also affects this.
The topic that was new to me in this chapter was Geographic profiling, which in the book is described as being an alternative to traditional profiling because it does involve math and maps. It is used to calculate a speculated location where a serial killer may reside based off of where the crimes happened with respect to where the first crime happened. I wanted to learn more about it so I searched the internet and found and article explainging that this technique does not solve crimes directly it just somply allows the law enforcement to manage information about the case during a case.
http://txstate.edu/gii/geographicprofiling.html
This chapter was particularly interesting as it focused on the practice of profiling. The main components of profiling discussed included the actual processes involved, specific characteristics of serial killers, and different problems associated with profiling in detecting perpatrators. Additionally, further focus was given to alternative techniques of profiling (geographic profiling, what different psychological research has shown about the profiling process, and the involvement of psychological profiles and legal status of such analysis post-mortem. Profiling has been around for over a hundred years and still serves as a major approach for the accurate detection of both psychological and physical attributes of perpatrators.
Profiling is described as the process of assessing inferences about a criminal's personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on the nature of a crime. The major application of profiling is involved in cases that involve serial killers. Serial killers are perpatrators who kill three or more peoople in separate instances with the presence of a cooling off period in between. Generally, serial killers are white males with respectable intelligence who seek to dominate victims before killing them. The chapter begins with three famous cases that serve as cornerstones to the practice of profiling. These cases were Jack the Ripper, Eric Rudolph (the Olympic bomber), and George Metesky (the Mad Bomber). Although each case offers very different circumstances, the profile approach used in each served as a resourceful method to attaining the perp, except in the case of Jack the Ripper who was never apprehended.
Serial killers fall into two different types of categories known as organized killers and disorganized killers. Organized killers generally carefully select and stalk victims, demonstrate patience and a planned assault, use elaborate rituals such as torture before murdering their victims, and clean up a scene by disposing of weapons and the body. Disorganized killers are more sporadic and the demonstrate impulsive behavior. These types of serial killers pick victims at random, use available weapons, use the dead body for sexual purposes, and leave the body at the scene of the crime. Even more detailed a system of categorization of classification was proposed by Ronald Holmes. In this system Holmes placed serial killers into the four categories of visionary types, mission-oriented types, hedonistic types, and power oriented. Visionary types are generally psychotic because they hear voices or see things that motivate their deadly actions. Mission-oriented killers assault those they consider to be evil or undesirable. Hedonistic and power-oriented killers are more dangerous because of their severe sociopathic tendencies. Hedonistic types kill for thrills, taking extreme sexual satisfaction from the torture of their victims. Power-oriented take serious satisfaction from capturing and controlling victims before killing them. Categorizing serial killers can be helpful in identifying particular tendencies, but other types of profiling can also be helpful in apprehending perps.
The main alternative to intuitive profiling is the use of geographic profiling. Geographic profiling, also known as criminal spatial mapping, uses computer programs to plot crime scenes, body discovery points, and suspicious activity to form a geographic pattern that narrows down the possible location of a serial killer. This type of profiling is helpful for a couple of reasons. First off, serial killers often operate within a certain geograpic area, and geographic profiling helps to determine the anchor point, buffer zone, and probable distance decay of a particular serial killer. Additionally, geographic profiling uses statistical methods and techniques to determine a killer's patterns of movement and crime. Geographic profiling is quite resourceful and does not share many of the inherent problems with intuitive profiling.
Although intuitive profiling is a good method for identifying particular mental tendencies of criminal, there are several problems involved with this type of practice. The major problems with intuitive profiling are assumptions, cross-situational consistency, and the utility of inferences. Assumptions are problematic because crime scenes characteristics rarely can associate certain attributes about a criminal, and vague abilities should never be considered over solid explanation. Cross-situational consistency is an issue due to the fact that criminal behavior is just as prone to change with varying components of a situation as any other individual. Finally, it is farely obvious that the utility of inferences can be a problem because it can lead to tendencies for investigators to have tunnel vision. This means focusin on a particualr set of possible characteristics that could possibly be completely different from the actual perpatrator.
The part of the chapter that I found surprising was how involved the forensic process is after the occurence of any death. The psychological aspect involved was completely new to me, especially the process of a psychological autopsy. Even in cases of apparent accidental or natural death a psychological autopsy is intiated to determine the mental state of said person prior to death. This practice is essential in determining what classification the death fall into in the NASH system: natural, accidental, suicidal, or homicidal death. Performing this step is also important for other reasons such as determining insurance payments and funeral costs. Psychological examination post-mortem is crucial not only for executing legal procedures correctly but also in bringing final closure to family members of the deceased.
One part of the chapter that threw off my prior perception on profiling was the difference between organized and disorganized killers. I was never aware of such a split existing between categories of serial killers. In order to find out a little more about this I consulted a web source to provide some further information on the topic.
Organized serial killers are usually completely irrational, psychopathic, antisocial, but still sane. They are usually calculating and outwardly amiable because it serves their lethal objective. There is always a specific stressor in these individuals' lives that bring them to a murderous state. They use their personal fantasy, usually extremely elaborate, as a two way gateway into committing a crime and relishing in the moment to exert gratification afterwards. Organized serial killers are meticulous in controlling a crime and taking trophies to relive the feeling. Despite the media's potrayal of such individuals, it is important to know that they never want to be caught.
Disorganized serial killers are psychotic individuals who exhibit little to no social skills. They will kill aquaintances or random people at random moments without the fear of leaving behind a traceable path. These types of killers often are heavily involved with serious drug or alcohol dependencies. Disorganized killers will make use of whatever is conviently close as a means to kill the victim. This practice leaves the crime scene in a sloppy evidence filled condition. Interestingly, disorganized killers can evolve into organized calculating sociopaths if they are fortunate enough to evade authorities for whatever reason.
http://psychautopsy.weebly.com/organized-vs-disorganized.html
Summarize the chapter.
The chapter begins by defining profiling. Profiling, or retroclassification, or criminal investigative analysis, is being able to make inferences about the criminals personality based on a crime scene. A profiler can tell age, gender, race, living conditions, and more just by what is at the crime scene, they can do this buy putting themselves in the mind of the criminal and victum. Profiling is not a job anyone can do, in fact, there are only about 12 FBI agents who specialize in profiling. Profilers are used to provides leads for the police and help the investigators focus their efforts on certain things. When profilers are looking for the criminal they look for signatures, distinctive aspects of the crime that reveal the personality of the killer.
chapter 5 goes on to tell about 3 famous profiles. Jack the Ripper, The Olympic Bomber, and The Mad Bomber. The Ripper murdered at least 5 female prostitutes on public streets. The bodies were mutilated and some were missing organs. The man who performed the autopsies made some speculations about The Ripper based on the crime scenes he left. Jack the Ripper was never caught so no one knows if the profiling was accurate or not.
The Olympic Bomber set of a bomb in the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta Georgia. They created a profile that matched with Richard Jewel. They put his picture everywhere to reassure people that the Olympic venue was safe, they never found any evidence to convict Jewell and later charged another man.
The Mad Bomber planted bombs all across NYC in the 1940's and would send letters and make calls to the NYPD and the NY Times. During WWII he stopped placing bombs because of his patriotic feelings. The police called in a psych to help with the case. The psych made several inferences about The Mad Bomber and they soon had a suspect whom the arrested. Not all of the ideas the psych had about were not correct but he had a few key ideas that led the police to the arrest of George Metesky.
Research has shown that serial killers have several things in common. They are usually white males, like to dominate their victims, may have experienced childhood abuse, and tend to use guns.
profiling can tell the difference between organized and unorganized killings. Organized killers stalk their victims and will plan out with they will do to their victims. They are also patient and can wait for the opportune moment to have an elaborate murder ritual. Disorganized killers are impulsive and random and kill based on voices in their head. Some more in depth research found that you could group serial killers into 4 types; visionary who hear voices from a spiritual source to kill, mission-oriented who have a desire to kill people they see as evil or unworthy, hedonistic who kill for the fun of it, and power-oriented who get satisfaction from controlling the victim.
There has not been much research on profiling and what little has been done almost invalidates its practices. At lot of info gather from profiling has been discredited and say its not as simple as A or B but its rather some of A and some of B. Even the statements profiler's make can be discredited because their proposed characteristics can fit with almost anyone, and some of their statements can be hard to observe. Profiling can also create tunnel vision. This happens when police only search for a person that fits the profilers statements and disregards others.
There is another form of profiling known as geographic profiling which relies on mathematics and maps instead of intuition. A computer program maps out where crime scences take place and calculate a potential location of the next crime. The more the crimes the more accurate the calculation is. Its thought to be better than profiling because it uses statical techniques instead of human judgement.
Equivocal deaths can happen to people when the cause of the crime is unknown. In this case the death can fall into one of four categories; natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. A psychological autopsy is used to find the state of the victim prior to his death to determine what caused the death. A list has been created to help examiners decided between suicide and accidental death. Although these autopsies make judges skeptical they are still sometimes used in the courtroom.
Did you learn anything surprising?
Well I had not idea what profiling really was so the entire chapter was really fascinating to me. Something that really shocked me was that Jack the Ripper was never found. Before I read this chapter I had herd the name but never knew anything about it. I just assumed they had a face to go with the name. So to have someone so well known whose true identity really isnt known is really fascinating to me.
Were any of your own ideas about profiling debunked by reading this chapter?
Since I didnt know anything about profiling there was really nothing to be debunked except the fact that I found out that Jack the Ripper was never found or convicted.
What is something you want to learn more about?
Jack the Ripper
Jack is not dead, but he did a lot of his crimes in london. He got his name from an letter from an unknown man who was later to thought to be a hoax by the press to heighten the story. He was also known as "The Whitechapel Murderer" and "Leather Apron."
Letters were continusely received and they had gotten a "From Hell" letter which had a human kidney in it. A term "Ripperology" was coined to refer to the study of the Ripper cases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper
Why is he so famous?
His crimes werent the first nor the last. They did last for years, nor was he a prolific murderer. The first contributor was that this topic was so highly covered. Newspaper readers would get daily updates on what was going on with Jack the Ripper. His name also gave him recognition. It was catchy and easy to remember. Most people agree there are 5 victims of The ripper; although there could be more. One thing that made it hard to catch the ripper was the area he was committing his murders. It was a maze like area with lots of unlit alley ways. There have been more than 100 suspects for jack the ripper but weather they were him or not no one was ever convicted.
http://www.jack-the-ripper.org/
This chapter talks about profiling. Profiling is the process of drawing assumptions about a crime by looking at the evidence and crime scene photos and coming up with clues and ideas about what type of person would commit this crime. There are many different types of people that commit crimes and some people have their own signiture crime. A signiture is a certain aspect of the crime that reveals the personality of the criminal.
There are three famous profiles: Jack the Ripper, The Olympic Bomber, and The Mad Bomber. These three profiles are very famous and very detailed. These three cases were very tragic but also very different. The Olympic Bomber profile turned a man's life upside down and wrongfully accused a man of the bombing because of the poorly made profile. The profile matched the wrongfully accused man but the evidence did not. Profiles are essential but evidence to support the profile is even more important.
The characteristics of a killer are very interesting. Many killers often have suffered from a brain injury which impairs their rational thinking. Most killers have also been physically, sexually, or psychologically abused. Most killers are white males with average intelligence. I wouldn't think that it would be men with average intelligence. When I think of a serial killer I think of lower intelligent people. Many serial killers like to have power and control over their victims; they also do not use guns as a common form of killing them. Profilers distinguish crimes between organized murders and disorganized murders. Organized murders are more controlled, there is little to no evidence left, the victims' body stays hidden, they move their victim, and aggressive before killing their victims. A disorganized murder is more spontaneous and sloppy. Often the killer has sex with the victim after death, the body is left in view, evidence is left, and there is sudden violence upon the victim.
Psychological autopsy is an effort to dissect the brain of the criminal before they die. Profilers and psychiatrists and psychologists try to figure out what goes on in the mind of criminals. If we figure out why people act the way they do then we might be able to figure out how to prevent it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offender_profiling
This website talks about what a criminal profiler does and how they gather information and make assumptions about different types of criminals.
http://serialkillr.tripod.com/SerialKillersExposed/characteristics.html
This website talks about the different characteristics of serial killers, including how they act as children.
This chapter is about criminal profiling and Psychological Autopsies. In this chapter profiling is explained, some famous profiling cases are given as examples, the characteristics of serial killers is shown, and some of the problems that deal with profiling are observed and pointed out. Profiling is basically the process of drawing inferences about a criminals personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics that are based on the crime scene and the evidence that is found. Criminal profiling originally was involved with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. Only a dozen FBI agents truly specialize in the profiling business.
Profilers are the ones who analyze the crime scene, gather that information they pick up along with the evidence, they check into the victims background, and finally study the police and autopsy reports that were documented at the scene of the crime. Here is where a little of my ideas of what I believed was a profiler were debunked, because I honestly didn’t believe they had that much of a responsibility, but I was way wrong. The serial killers are one of the important roles the profilers come up with, they sometimes look for a signature that was left behind on or near the victim. The signature that the serial killer usually leaves behind might reflect on their personality and distinctive aspects about their personal life. Intuition is very key when it comes to profiling. In good ole California, a lot of movies and TV shows have used profiling to grab the audience’s attention, but once again, they make it look easier than how it really is in reality. Forensic psychology plays a role with profiling, especially since it deals with the crime scene and collecting the evidence.
Jack the Ripper was the first systematic profile that was done in police efforts. Sadly, this serial killer hasn’t been found. Along that line a profiler was used to help figure out the Olympics in Georgia back in 1996, this case dealt with a bomber. They accused the wrong guy, by his simple descriptions that were handed out, when really it was a completely different guy all along. The Mad Bomber in 1950 was a case where the profiler was able to give a good enough description to catch the actual guy who committed the crime.
What surprised me was that there are usually two types of serial killers, they can be either organized or disorganized killers. Organized killers are the ones who plan out their kill, possible even stalk their victims to get the details of how they go by with their lives. While a disorganized killer is randomly picking their victims, having action put upon a victim because of a sudden boost of rage or having impulses to kill from a voice inside their head. Usually serial killers have similarities in characteristics. In their past their might have been a possibility of brain injury, or they may have been abused. Visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power-oriented types are ways serial killers can be broken down. Behavioral psychology is involved with the serial killers because it describes the criminals personality that helps determine what type of killer they all are.
In order to determine a person’s personality, behavior, or the type of person they were before they died, psychological autopsies are used. Deaths are usually categorized into natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide which are based on the Nash System. However psych autopsies are not always going to be allowed to be used in the court. Cognitive psychology plays a role in this because the police are having to determine the personality of the deceased based on the information they are given.
Overall this chapter was very interesting and I wanted to look into more of the organized and disorganized serial killers.
In this article I read that serial killers in the organzized frame enjoy prolonging the pain and suffering of their victims, they love the power of knowing when and how their victim will be no more, and they will fantasize about their kill until it no longer bring them any amount of pleasure, which makes them then actually carry out their killings. Unorganized serial killers tend to have below average intelligent levels and are consider to be not all their when it comes to their social skills, often they are found living alone.
http://www.articlesalley.com/article.detail.php/10944/248/Psychology/48/Traits_and_Characteristics_of_a_Serial_Killer_-_Part_Two
Chapter 5 was all about criminal profiling. Profiling is the process of drawing inferences about a criminal's personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence. Today's techniques were originally pioneered by the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit in Virginia. There are only about a dozen FBI agents who specialize in profiling. I figured this number would be higher. Based on TV shows, it seems like every unit has there designated profiler. To create a profile of the serial they are searcher for, police use clues to determine the type of person they are looking for. Some killers have a "signature" or a distinctive, personal aspect of the crime that may give away a bit of their personality. There could be a commonality between the crimes that would be specific to a certain murderer. The book discussed three famous profiles of Jack the Ripper, The Olympic Bomber, and The Mad Bomber. Rarely are there characteristics that can describe all serial killers, but there does tend to be some similarities. Many suffer from some form of brain injury that impairs rational thinking. Most of them have suffered from some form of abuse as a child.The differences between an organized crime scene and a disorganized crime scene can potentially allow investigators to draw conclusion on the type of person they are looking for. organized crime scenes are usually reflective of a person who is competent, average intelligence, had inconsistent childhood discipline, follows media coverage of his crime, and has a high geographic mobility. a person who leaves a disorganized crime scene is more likely to be below average intelligence, sexually incompetent, anxious during crime, and lives/works near the crime scene. At this time, we are not sure how often profiles have been useful and how often they have been counterproductive. we don't have error rates or success rates. some profiles have led to the arrest of the correct people, but they have also led to the arrest of innocent people. Geoprofiling and Psychological autopsies appear to yield useful clues in solving crimes. The ability of these techniques to generate useful information completely depends on the quality and quantity of available data. Before we can geoprofile, we must first have several cases to compare data to. If we continue to research and practice these techniques, the more information we can gather, and the better they will work.
One part of the reading I found interesting was the three myths of a "psychopath": 1)All psychopaths are violent. 2) all psychopaths are psychotic 3) Psychopathy is untreatable.
I was also interested in reading about Jack the Ripper and was very surprised that he had never been caught, so I looked up more information about him. I found this website to be very interesting.
http://www.jack-the-ripper.org/
I also found this website. It gives more basic information on how investigators create a profile. It discusses the differences between inductive and deductive profiling.
http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00206/nts_psychological_profiling.htm
Chapter 5 discusses criminal profiling and psychological autopsies. I found it interesting to learn that techniques of criminal profiling originated in Virginia. To create a profile, profilers study crime scenes, gather info about the victims, and study police and autopsy reports. The profile leads investigators to look for a particular type of person. There is also an aspect called a signature that can be a part of profiling.
There are three famous profiles. The first is Jack the Ripper. This serial killer was never caught, so the accuracy of the profile provided cannot be determined. The second is the Olympic Bomber. A vague profile was created. A man of interest’s name and photo were placed in newspapers and television news programs. This man’s life was strongly affected by the accusations, but it turned out not to be him. The third profile is the Mad Bomber. A man placed bombs across New York City. The profile that was created was very accurate.
There are some recurring patterns among serial killers. Profiles sometimes distinguish between organized and disorganized murders. Organized killers carefully select their victims where disorganized killers are more impulsive.
There are some problems with profiling. For example, crime scene characteristics do not fit neatly into categories. Another issue involved the consistency of the criminal across crimes. Profiles would change based on the behaviors of a particular crime. Another problem is called tunnel vision. With tunnel vision, investigators may rely too heavily on the profile and not look at plausible suspects that do not fit that profile.
One thing I found really interesting was the technique of geographic profiling. Geographic profiling uses maps and mathematics. As the number of crimes increase, the maps become more useful. It suggests places for investigators to set traps, find potential witnesses, and stakeout. A part that I found surprising involved psychological autopsies, where they attempt to examine the psychological state of a person before her death. This is also something that I would like to learn more about.
http://www.all-about-forensic-psychology.com/psychological-autopsy.html
The most common source of psychological autopsy is interview data obtained from family and friends of the victim. One also neds to interview the doctor and examine medical records. The information that is collected generally includes biographical information, personal information (relationships, lifestyle, etc), and secondary information (family history, diaries).
http://www.suicidology.org/psychological-autopsy-investigator
There is no exact procedure for conducting a psychological autopsy. All psychological autopsies are based on possibly biased recollections. It is also one of the main investigative tools for understanding suicide and circumstances surrounding a person’s death.
I accidentally submitted my post before I was entirely finish. One aspect I would additionally like to include involves my your own ideas about profiling being debunked by reading this chapter. Due to shows such as criminal minds, I had some idea of what profiling consisted of. One thing that was debunked was the effectiveness of profiling. TV shows generally portray the first attempt at coming up with a profile leading to the capture of the perpetrator. I was surprised to learn that there is a lot to profiling, and that the profilers are not always correct(as in the case with the Olympic Bomber).
Another aspect I would like to add to my post is the link between psychology and law. I find a lot of the aspects of profiling having to do with cognitive psychology. Because I did additional research into psychological autopsies, I know realize how biased recollections can be. Family members of victims are interviewed, and that this particular point in time they may be so tramatized that all they can remember is the positive aspects of the deceased. This may cause bias in the results of the autopsies. Another aspect of psychology that I connected to this chapter is behavioral psychology. When looking at cross-situational consistency section, it is obvious that the behavior of the perpetrator may change due to a particular situation or circumstance. Behavioral psychology can help in this situation with examining the differences in crimes to see if one person was involved in various scenes or not.
This chapter discusses profiling to the full. It also gives a great relation with psychology and the impact it has on cases.
First, the chapter starts off with the process of profiling. Profiling relies on inferences to conclude a criminal’s personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics. This technique was derived from the FBI and heavily used for serial killers. Profilers pull information from many different things to create their profile such as analyzing the crime scene, gathering information about the victims, and so on. A profiler works hard to find the signature aspect of the crime, or distinctive aspects that may reveal specific characteristics and quirks of rthe criminal.
Next, the chapter discusses three famous profiles that describe their use of profiling. The first story was about Jack the Ripper. This serial killer strangled and slit the throats of prostitutes on the streets around the East end of London. Profiling was used during this case; however, the serial killer was never caught to compare the inferences. Nonetheless, it plays an important role in creating profiling in criminal investigations. The second case discussed was the Olympic Bomber. This case revolved around the bombs that were placed public events. In this instance, the profiling led detectives to the wrong man. An additional investigation was needed in order to discover the actual bomber. The Mad Bomber was the third case discussed. The Mad bomber terrorized New York City for years sending letters and phone calls threatening the bombing. The first bomb was placed in a windowsill of Consolidated Edison Company. When the profile created a profile for this potential bomber, he turned out to be correct to a large extent, even down to his attire of double-breasted blue suit that was buttoned. However, the profiler did miss a few personality characteristics.
Characteristics of serial killers are an important part of profiling. Research has showed some typical recurring patterns of serial killers. In more detail, serial killers can be broken into two types of killers. The first one being organized killers, or killers who plan out what they will do to their victims and take great care in selecting their victims. Disorganized killers are the second type of killers. Their characteristics are more impulsive, and attack at random using weapons that are left behind at the scene. Along with this, Ronald Holmes created his own group of characteristics. He has designed four types of characteristics that killers can fall under. The first group of killers is visionary types. They hold visions and hear voices directing them to kill others. Mission-oriented types are motivated by the desire to kill people that they see as evil or unworthy. Thirdly, hedonistic types find thrill in killing others. Lastly, power-oriented group experiences great happiness by capturing and controlling the victim before them being killed.
Many different studies and research has been done on profiling. One study used different groups of individuals such as undergraduate college students, clinical psychologist with no profiling experience, police detectives without training and police detectives with training. In the findings, it was discovered that the people with profile training were not much better than the ones without training. Another interesting discovery was on rapist profiling. It is almost better to not try and profile rapist because the accuracy is so low.
Although profiling can be helpful, it also brings some problems. The first problem is assumptions. Many times serial killers do not fit directly into specific categories. These assumptions are not always reliable. Another problem is the cross-situational consistency. Often times, people behave differently in different situations. Context, setting and the emotional state matter in looking at person personality. IT is hard to distinguish the many potential situations to apply a certain individual too. The third problem is utility of inferences. Inferences can potentially lead the detectives down the wrong path and end up long for the wrong person. Many inferences are hard to search for as well such as things like immature sexual history.
Geographic profiling is also used when locating people. This uses maps and mathematics in order to find individuals. Certain programs can be used to take data and locate a location relatively close. One limitation to this program is the no exceptions rule. The program is able programed to find specific things. If even if that characteristic does not apply in real life, the program doesn’t know that. IT is controlled by statistics and programming and not human judgment.
Psychological autopsy does also play a large role in determining the reason for someone’s death. Psychological autopsy allows profilers to determine the psychological state before the death took place. For instance, they use what is called the NASH system meaning that a death can be dictated to four different categories: natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. Researchers can use this information in order to determine the manner of death. A checklist with sixteen questions is presented when trying to determine the death of someone.
I found Jack the Ripper very interesting and wanted to learn more about him.
The first website I found was fully dedicated to jack the ripper. There are videos on Jack as well as a timeline. The timeline was intense. I found it interesting the amount of victims in such a small amount of time. I guess I expected him to have more months or even years between his killings. The map was also interesting. The spots of his killings were all so closely related. I would think that this area would start to keep a better eye out for these acts knowing the vicinity of the killings.
http://www.jack-the-ripper.org/
The second website I found discussed the different suspects that were questioned. I found it really interesting to read through the multiple suspects and the suspect’s description. There were also other pieces of evidence that was found at the scenes. For example, a bloodstained aproned was found in the doorway and a message from a murder was attached.
http://www.met.police.uk/history/ripper.htm
2/20/2012
Blog Chapter 5 C&K
Chapter five of C&K summarizes and gives examples of profiling. They utilize examples taken from famous cases throughout history. This chapter gave very interesting descriptions of what a serial killer/murderer would be characteristic of. Then they discuss the employment aspects of profiling. How many people chose this career, what their job entails (like accuracy of their descriptions, what happens after a profiler gives their opinion, etc.) Chapter five also talks about the demographic characteristics of a serial killer – what is likely to be the situation and what happens with distance (will explain further later). Then the chapter discussed psychological autopsies of the victims.
Profiling is when there is investigation about a criminal’s personality, behavior and motivation. They also take into account the location and demographic of where the crimes take place; as well as all the evidence that collected (i.e. crime scene, autopsy, etc.).
Profiling is traced back to ‘Jack the Ripper’ the case where the first where someone (the coroner) suggested things/characteristics that should be/might be true about the killer. There after the profiling was done by police, investigator, psychological experts, etc. The text also mentions the 1996 bombing of the Olympics when they were held in Atlanta, GA (I think). In this case the profiling was suggestive of the wrong person. Profiling was used in the case of the Mad Bomber and in this case the profiling helped police catch the man who did it.
There are many ways one can categorize a killer. There are many characteristics to consider. The book discussed being organized or disorganized. Organized killers are precise and careful when choosing their victims. They then stalk them and plan out just how they mean to kill them. A disorganized killer is random and impulsive and sometimes either act in rage when they kill; or they may be following direction (voices in their head).
There are four ways to defining/categorizing a serial killer visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic or power-oriented. A visionary is psychotic; a mission-oriented kill is committed because the victims are evil in their eyes; hedonistic is killing for pleasure or sexual pleasure; power-oriented is enjoyment in capturing and controlling people before they kill them. I really found it interesting that the majority of people that turn out to be serial killers abuse animal in their childhood. I just found it an odd behavior to be so common (researched this further and will talk about it at the end of this blog). I also looked more into their signatures. I found it interesting that this was a common trait to have- I thought this was mostly added in the movies to make them more interesting (again, I’ll discuss this further at the end).
Next we come to a discussed about geographic distance and how that plays into the habits of a serial killer. The text says the murders are likely to take place in the general area of the killer’s residence or areas they are familiar with. The farther you get from their home (or their comfort zone I should say) the less likely they are to kill someone. There are mapping techniques done to see if there is a pattern or common ground among kills. For instance in the places in which these murders take place are all in one general are or seem to span out from a given location then one could assume that the killer is from or familiar with that area. Or if the murders take place along a single highway or route then you could assume that is the link or the area that the killer is familiar with. I assume that it is rare that a serial killer would kill someone in New York, California, Oregon, and the Iowa. There is not common road (that I am aware of).
This chapter also discusses the victims and their psychological autopsies. This is where they are trying to figure out what this person had been doing before up until the crime. Then obviously they are trying to figure out what happened during the crime.
Lastly I will discuss the low number of people that are actually in this field. I think the text talked about only 12 persons from the FBI work or specialize in profiling. This really surprised me. I find this topic very interesting and I really enjoy the shows that address it, like Criminal Minds. I know that sound stupid, but it’s true. Then when I read how inaccurate a profiler can be and how little research has been done I realized why so few are in the field. It does make sense that once a profile is given it can be taken as fact for the remainder of the investigation, whether it is accurate or inaccurate. This is can really problematic when the profile is off (which it very well could be because of the lack or research /accuracy).
http://www.peta.org/issues/Companion-Animals/animal-abuse-and-human-abuse-partners-in-crime.aspx
This site discusses how often animals are abused by people that later start to abuse other people. They give accounts of several serial killers, famous murders, school shootings where the people/killers all had a history of abusing animals at some point prior. There are cases mentioned where children will have anger issues or be subjected to seeing an animal tortured or abused and later they will do it. After abusing animals they will progress into abusing people (I think this is an effort to increase control and power). They also mentioned several instances where animals will be abused or murder in front of intended or future victims in order to threaten them (that’s what is going to happen to them).
http://karisable.com/crserial1.htm
This site addresses a serial killer’s signature. They say that serial killer does not always have a signature. It is rare that a person will pose the bodies or put things in the dead bodies. Sometimes they may have one but that make it so that no one will find it. Signatures may include what weapon they use, what way, where they are killing this person, etc. however, sometimes the signatures are prominent from the beginning or become more prominent with each murder. I think this will be a way to draw attention to what they are doing. This site also talks about how serial killers, and those who use signature, are usually predominately white males. Now, this may be completely off the wall but I think this may be an identity issue (not the killing in general) but that fact that serial killers are white males. I have read, in regards to gender identity that African American females are less likely to have eating disorder because they find strength or identity in their culture, race or heritage. May be these white killers give more obvious signatures because they want people to recognize them; murderer, twisted genius could be part of their identity.