Silence of the Lambs

Let me start by saying that Anthony Hopkins absolutely deserved the Oscar he won for his performance in Silence of the Lambs. No matter how many times I watch this movie, he still creeps me out and amazes me at the same time. Truly phenomenal, but that is beside point. This movie so very interesting to me. I went in think this movie was a “scary movie,” but really, it is more of a psycho-thriller in theme. There are so many psychological aspects present in this movie that it will be hard to keep this blog brief.

I think Silence of the Lambs really popularized the concept of criminal profiling in entertainment. Now we have tons of shows and movies that portray the area of profiling in all of its unvalidated glory. In the opening of this movie, Clarice Starling--a student at the FBI Academy--is sent to a Federal Prison to speak with well-known psychologist Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Starling is told she is working to complete Hannibal’s psycho-behavioral profile. She attempts to have Lector complete a survey on different personality traits and other psychological aspects. Soon, she finds that he has twisted the conversation to be about her, as well as the on-going investigation for serial killer Buffalo Bill. Lecter uses his past profession to turn the interview around on Starling and her past. His sharp skills of perception enable him to profile Starling and Buffalo Bill as well. Starling and Lecter both use their observations to draw conclusions about the psychological traits present in an individual. The goal of profilers is to create a description that will be helpful in investigations or in categorizing criminals.

In their conversation about Buffalo Bill, Lecter pushes Starling to think about what the perpetrator does with his victims and why. Starling uses what she knows to conclude that he is excited by the acts he commits and most likely removes their skin to keep as a trophy. She is able to put this information together based on information about serial killers in the past. It is thought to be common of serial killers to keep trophies of their victims--though Lecter points out that he did not.

Back with Crawford, Starling works on the geographical profile for the open case. As we read in Chapter 5, geographical profiling takes into consideration the sites where victims are abducted and dumped. These locations are often helpful in determining where the perpetrator lives, works, or commits his/her crime. Observations of geographical evidence lead to pinpointing specific areas of interest. This is useful to Starling and the other agents of the FBI in their search for Buffalo Bill.

Crawford asks Starling to provide her rough profile of the killer they continue to track. Each aspect she presents comes from other evidence that has been collect and critical thinking about the actions. She speculates that the perpetrator is a white male, because he would need the physical strength to subdue each of his victims. Since serial killers tend to hunt within their own race and all of the victims have been white, she can conclude that he is white as well. With every profile, we must be careful not to draw conclusions that would leave the actual perpetrator out of the pool of suspects. Starling concludes that the killer is not likely to be a drifter, because he would need sufficient space to keep and kill his victims unnoticed to the public. She believes him to be in his 30s or 40s because of the self-control the acts would take. She also speculates that he will never stop now that he has a taste for killing.

Starling and Crawford continue to gather information about the case from the evidence and from conversations with Lector. Lecter, who knows the identity of the serial killer at large, continues to push Starling to speculate about his psychological state and gives her clues as to what she should direct her attention toward. His analysis of the information she provides him gives Starling more to consider. Ultimately, the clues and information from Lecter lead Starling into the home of the perpetrator. He questions Starling about the acts performed with each of the victims. There must be apparent needs that are satisfied by his actions.

There are many other psychological concepts present in this movie that are worth mentioning. Profiling is a large part of the movie, but we can also look at the psychological motivations of both serial killers discussed in the movie. Buffalo Bill has serious issues with his identity and the way he and others see him. His desire to change his identity, no matter what it takes, drives him kill and create a “people suit.” The use of perception is crucial in gathering all types of evidence involved in the investigations and completion of criminal profiles. The movie as a whole is very psychological. I don’t know a psych major who hasn’t seen and loved this movie. So many of the topics are relevant to the things we discuss in our classes.

Terms: perception, motivation, profile, serial killer, personality, geographical profile

This movie got under my skin. I hate to say that I actually had a nightmare about it after I watched it. I found Dr. Hannibal Lecter to be creepy as well as fascinating. Even though this was a movie I found it interesting how he could tell so much about Buffalo Bill just by reading some general information about the murders. This launches me into my discussion of profiling.

Profiling is used to make inferences about a criminal in order to help capture them. One instance of this in the movie is when Jack Crawford hands Clarice a paper about the murders and asked what she can tell about Buffalo Bill from that information. She then answers with: a white male, between 30 and 40 years old, who owns his own home because the murders would be too hard to do in an apartment. While this information was true of Buffalo Bill it could also be true of thousands of other people. The characteristics were very general and vague; although they were correct they did not help in the narrowing down on suspects since the possibilities of people were so wide.

A more trusted form of profiling that they used in the movie was geographical profiling. This form is more reliable than criminal profiling because it has less to do with inferences and more to do with mathematics. In Silence of the Lambs this type of profiling was used to map out where Buffalo Bills victims were found and from this they could find a pattern and thus help predict where the next murder might take place.

Not only was Clarice trying to profile Buffalo Bill by consulting Hannibal the Cannibal, Hannibal was also trying to profile her. He inferred things about her that were very specific, such as she was orphaned and that she was not happy living with her aunt and uncle. These kinds of answers usually do not happen in real life. In reality profiling is only correct about three percent of the time. And characteristics inferred are not that specific. This was an exaggeration that made for a good movie but is not necessarily how it works in real life investigations.

Both Buffalo Bill and Hannibal can be classified as organized killers. They stalked their prey and calculated precisely when they were going to strike to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. Buffalo Bill hid in the bushes watching his victim and then when the time was right he lured her to his van by pretending to need help loading a couch. The maneuver was planned and calculated, he was not acting on impulse. The very last scene was Hannibal stalking his previous doctor before he was transferred. He was waiting for the perfect moment to strike in order to avoid getting caught.

Along with both being organized killers they could also be classified as mission oriented killers. In the last scene Hannibal was going after his doctor in order to take revenge on all the things that he had to endure while he was in his doctor’s care. He could also maybe be classified as hedonistic because he would eat his victims and took pleasure in causing them pain such as biting them. Buffalo Bill did not kill because he thought people were unworthy to live but he did have a specific purpose in mind. He was building a human suit made of women so that he could transform himself into a women. Both killed with a purpose in rhyme.

Each of these serial killers also had a signature that could link them to a murder. Hannibal was known for eating parts of his victims, which is how he acquired the nick name Hannibal the Cannibal. Buffalo Bill on the other hand stuffed a mouth into the throat of the victims after they were dead. This later helped in is capture because the moths were a rare breed not found in the United States. These signatures helped in the process of case linkage, the process of linking to murders to the same perpetrator. Based on these signature items they were able to tell which murders were committed by Hannibal and Buffalo Bill as opposed to being killed by other people.

Another aspect in the movie was sexism. Clarice was a woman in a predominately male profession and it showed. She was sent to try to get Hannibal to answer a survey. When she arrived at where he was being help one of the guards made a comment that she was sent there because Hannibal had not seen a women in years so she could probably get the answers out of him. He attributed the fact that she was the investigator sent not because of her skill but because of her gender. Another example is when she arrives at the autopsy of one of Buffalo Bills victims. Crawford tells another investigator that they should talk in a different room because the natures of the crime were too graphic to talk about in front of a woman. This later sent the president for how the team should treat her. She later than had to yell in order to get everyone’s attention to get them to leave so that she could do her job. This showed sexism in the fact that they thought she was weaker than they were (could not handle all the information of the crime) and that they did not need to listen to her like they would someone else in her position.

Terms used: Organized killers, case linkage, criminal profiling, geographic profiling, sexism, signature, mission-oriented, hedonistic

First, I just want to say thanks for making sleeping last night a very difficult thing for me. This movie was creepy. No, actually this movie was beyond creepy. Although I found this movie creepy, I love suspense and this movie gave me just that. Not only was the movie full of suspense but it was also full of criminal profiling whether all instances were correct or not, it still gave me a good ways I can come The Silence of the Lamb to aspects of legal and forensic psychology.
Profiling was clearly used throughout the movie in order to find the serial killer, Buffalo Bill. The definition of profiling in the book states, “profiling is the process of drawing inferences about the criminal’s personality, behavior, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence (Costanzo &Krauss 2012).” The movie draws inferences about the criminal’s personality in a way that is not necessarily used in actual crime scene investigations. A lot of the inferences used in the movie were made from relying on a serial killer who had already been locked away for 8 years Dr. Lector. In cases today, we wouldn’t trust a psychotic serial killer’s judgments in order to track down our victim. I think that is one of the biggest misconceptions the movie makes about profiling. Although the information Dr. Lector gave the investigators was relevant to information that a profile might conclude, you still wouldn’t ask a convicted serial killer for the information.
Something else I learned from the reading in Chapter 5 was about the aspect of a signature. While watching the movie I noticed that there was a signature being used by Buffalo Bill. We learn from Dr. Lector that Buffalo Bill is interested in being a homosexual, and his target is larger women. We don’t find out until later in the movie that the reason he targets such women is because he is trying to make a women suit out of human flesh from his victims. His form of torcher was skinning his victims in order to use their flesh later.
In the movie Buffalo Bill is portrayed as an organized killer. An organized killer is someone who is careful at selecting their victims, by stalking them and planning out what they will do to their victims. The first victim he went after he knew. And the senator’s daughter he watched and stalked as she came home to her apartment before he kidnapped her. His killings we not spontaneous and the killings he committed were planned.
In the movie the investigation team also tries to use geographic profiling as a way to find clues towards where to locate Buffalo Bill. The way the portrayed geographic profiling in the movie seemed accurate to what I read about in our textbook. They took all the locations they knew of such as where the bodies were found when dumped into the river and also where the victims lived. However in this situation it didn’t help them because of the fact that the bodies were dumped in various rivers and one of the bodies didn’t surface for a few days so they didn’t know where it specifically came from.
When doing an autopsy on one of the victims’ body, they found a piece of evidence lodged in the women’s mouth. We talked about earlier, and read in a manual a few blogs back about the importance of keeping and taking care of evidence. This piece of evidence ended up being pretty crucial in the case. They placed the evidence which was seen as a cocoon of some sort into a class vile so it would be preserved until it was looked at. After getting the evidence reviewed they found out that it was a form of a butterfly, which was a great lead for the rest of the case. This proves, like a read in the manual earlier how important it is to get every piece of evidence possible in order to solve a case.
When Clarisse is in the back of the car heading back after they went to the funeral to take a look at the victim’s body, Dr. Crawford asks her what she thinks about Buffalo Bill. She lists off the profile that she thinks is accurate and Dr. Crawford tells her she did a good job. I believe this is an accurate viewing in the movie of what an actual profile would sound like. She mentioned that he has to live in a home because what he does to the victim’s takes privacy, which she was dead on about. Like we read in the book, a lot of times movies get the profile of a criminal dead on, whereas in real life that isn’t the case and usually they are many times not very accurate. “When researchers examined the actual profiles created for the police, they found that most profiles were “riddled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies (Costanzo & Krauss 2012).” So although Clarisse’s profile seemed pretty dead on, it isn’t that easy in “real life” cases.
The movie didn’t really mention a lot about Buffalo Bill’s background at all. Often times serial killers experiences some sort of sexual, psychical of psychological abuse in their childhood. Although we don’t know if Buffalo Bill related to the serial killer stereotype in that way, he does fit perfectly with the idea that most serial killers are white males with average intelligence and he also tortured his victims before killing them, which we see in the scene where the senators daughter is stuck in what looks almost like a well hole.
Key terms: signature, profile, organized killer, geographic profiling, evidence, serial killer

Using the information chapter five has provided us about criminal profiling and psychological autopsies, the movie Silence of the Lambs becomes a relevant movie for analysis regarding various psychological topics.
The movie demonstrates clearly two separate serial killers; one who is currently in prison and the other who is continuing to carry out his “work”. Through the investigations of FBI and other personnel they are able to profile and located the killer who is still on the loose and save a girl from the horrible outcome that the serial killer has been linked to carrying out on previous victims.
The process of profiling is drawing inferences about a criminal’s personality, behavior, and motivation based on characteristics at crime scenes along with other types of evidence. Hannibal Lector, a character in the movie, was profiled as a serial killer (serial killers are murders who kill more than one victim, specifically more than three, in separate events using some sort of signature to distinguish them apart from other killers) who ate his victims and had high intellectual abilities. The other serial killer in the movie who primarily had all the focus, “Buffalo Bill”, was also profiled. Agent Clarisse Starling did the profiling and characterized him as being a white male (using racial profiling due to his victims being white) in his early to late 30’s with a moderate level of strength and executed his murders in an organized and precise manor. She also concluded that he had to have owned a house in which to carry out the murders allowing him enough time to cut the skin off of his victims and dump them somewhere in the vicinity. In this instance she used geographic profiling to locate approximately where Buffalo Bill might have lived. Geographic profiling relies on maps and mathematics to record key locations that are associated with serial crimes as well as places where bodies have been dumped or where suspicious activity seen by witnesses have occurred. This data allows investigators to compute data and estimate the general vicinity of a criminal’s home, place of work or the potential location of his next crime. It is safe to say based on patterns seen by criminals that they are likely to stay within a certain geographic comfort zone. The technology behind geographic profiling heavily on key terms to help determine different kinds of locations on the map. The term “anchor point” is used to visualize where attacks are likely to happen and “buffer zones” are the areas around a criminal’s home where he or she is less likely to commit a crime. The geographic profiling system also operates on a principle called distance decay; the probability of a crime happening decreases as the distance from past crime locations increases. During the scene that was shown in the car with agent Starling and Crawford while they were on their way to where the bodies had been dumped, you could see on a map where they had located anchor points and buffer zones. These were dictated by colored areas probably generated by a computer to indicate where an attack is most likely to occur in the future from data entry on previous attacks.
Due to the fact that Buffalo Bill did cut the skins off of his victims and then dumped them in a remote location, investigators were able to link each murder to one another using case linkage making it so all of the killings were thought to come from one person. With each killer, Hannibal and Buffalo Bill, they both possessed a signature aspect to their murders. A signature is a distinctive, personal aspect of the crime that reveals something about the personality of the killer. With Hannibal, his signature was that he ate his victim’s body parts during the process of killing them as well as post mortem. Buffalo Bill on the other hand cut sections of skin from his victims’ bodies post mortem which made each of his victims easily identifiable. I believe that both killers however were Hedonistic type killers because of the fact that they both killed for the fun and thrill of it. There were a couple parts at the end of the movie where I thought Hannibal could also be classified as a Mission type killer. While on the phone with Clarisse it was suggested that he was planning on killing the doctor whom, throughout the movie, exhibited less than desirable traits as a doctor and had some serious moral boundaries; Hannibal regarded this man as unworthy to be a doctor. Also while on the phone with Clarisse, Hannibal told her that he wasn’t coming after her because the world was a much more interesting place with her in it. This suggests that he only kills people who are unworthy of their places in this world.
Terms: profiling, analysis, behavior, motivation, evidence, signature, personality, characteristics, serial killer, case linkage, racial profiling, geographic profiling, witness, anchor point, buffer zone, distance decay, Hedonistic type, mission type.

In Silence of the Lambs, there are a lot of psychological methods used throughout the movie that made watching it for the second time a lot more interesting. One of the major methods used is criminal profiling. 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. In the movie, the FBI is searching for Buffalo Bill, and uses their basic form of profiling to determine his characteristics as a serial killer. Starling determines that Buffalo Bill is a white make, who hunts within his own ethnic group, not a drifter, owns his own house, needs privacy to do what he does, in his 30’s or 40’s, real physical strength, along with an older man’s self control. She concluded all of this just by reading over his actual criminal record. This is an example of setting up a criminal profile. By setting up a profile, the police can eliminate suspects and possibly areas to search for this criminal. The elimination of criminals and areas are crucial to the search because they reduce time and resources spent searching because there might be a life on the line like in the movie. From my point of view, making such an accurate inference about a criminal based only on some information from a criminal record and a crime scene would be ridiculously hard. The method is correct, but the end results are too fictional so I believe this is pretty inaccurate.

Another psychological method used in the movie is geographic profiling which refers to where serial crimes have happened, such as crime scenes or where bodies have been dumped. An example from the movie is when Starling and Crawford pin the locations of the bodies Buffalo Bill had dumped. Though they didn’t do much with any information they concluded, but Hannibal Leckter insists that the answers lay within the criminal profile she has of Bill. Geographic profiling can be very beneficial because it can help determine a possible radius that the killer has traveled to dispose of a body or to commit a crime. This can all be done through computers, and can estimate a relative location on the criminal’s home

Buffalo Bill had a very obvious signature, in which he would place a moth cocoon in the mouth of the victim he had just killed. The signature of a criminal is the distinctive, personal aspect of the crime that reveals the personality of the killer. I think what he did revealed that he was mentally unstable. Lecter tried explaining the significance of the moth cocoon, but was cut off by Starling asking what Buffalo Bill’s name was. His other signature was cutting the skin off of the women he would kill. Without know his background, you wouldn’t know what this signifies. Since Lecter told us that he ad applied to have a sex change, it gives us insight to the fact that he was probably putting together women’s skin so he could feel more like a woman.

I would argue that Buffalo Bill is an organized killer because he meets many of the characteristics found in the table in Forensic and Legal Psychology. Buffalo Bill planned his crime, showed control of situation, hid the body, weapons/evidence were absent, and transported the victim to where ever he hid it. You could also argue that Hannibal Leckter was disorganized in his murders because they were sporadic, but since Dr. Leckter was very intelligent, and had a controlled mood during crime.

Overall, I believe that this movie was a pretty decent representation of criminal profiling. The methods were spot on, but the outcomes were extremely fictional and not really believable. Starling follows all of the guidelines given in the book about how the FBI does profiling. All of the profiling techniques help uncover clues in solving crimes.

Terms: profiling, serial killer, geographical profiling, signature, organized killers, personality,

The Silence of the Lambs was one of the very first movies that really portrayed the true aspects of criminal profiling as it applies to the legal system. Most of the aspects shown are accurate. For example, as illustrated in the beginning chapter of the text book, the conversation between Clarice and her boss where Clarice points out that most serial killers tend to pray on specific types within their ethnic groups. That is then portrayed accurately with both the characters of Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lector. Buffalo Bill preyed upon young, white women, who were of a larger build so that he could achieve his ultimate goal of making a suit out of them. In the case of Hannibal Lector, we do not find out the whole nature or motivation for his crimes, however we do gather that he prayed upon his patients and when he was finished killing them, he ate parts of their bodies.
The goal of Buffalo Bill to make a suit out of women is another accurate portrayal of serial killer behavior, and the finished product would result in a souvenir from all of his victims collectively. This need stems from his desire to become a woman, and although many and most serial killings are fueled by sexual desires, this is not altogether an accurate portrayal of general serial killer motives, but instead is focusing on a specific case. In Hannibal Lector’s case, when he is speaking to Clarice from inside his jail cell he asks her why she believes that Buffalo Bill cuts off the skin of his victims, and as she answers correctly it is indeed a simple act of keeping a trophy, to which Lector replies that he did not keep trophies, however his act of eating his victims is part of trophy keeping. Much like in the case of Jeffery Dahmer, he reported to having kept and in some cases eaten parts of his victims in order to keep them with him for longer. Dahmer’s crimes were sexually motivated, and he dominated his victims making his actions nearly text book for a serial killer.
One aspect that the movie did not portray quite accurately was Lector’s intelligence. As our text informs us, most serial killers are of only average intelligence, and have some other motivation for killing that is not intellectually stimulating. Serial killers usually fall into one of four categories: Visionary, where they have visions and often have audible hallucinations, often aligned with a mental disorder; Mission-oriented, who kill those that they regard as evil or unworthy; Hedonistic, who kill for thrills and take pleasure in the torture of victims, and finally Power-oriented, who find the most satisfaction from the capture and control of the victim before killing them. To me it would seem that neither of the two serial killers in the movie quite fall into any of these categories, however since we do not know much about Lector’s crimes, but find out a lot about his personality I would say he was probably either power-oriented or hedonistic. You can see some of the aspects of his need for power and manipulation merely in his conversations with Clarice and the air of significance he holds even while in the most secure of cells.
Another interesting profiling aspect portrayed in the movie is determining whether the suspects are organized or disorganized killers. Buffalo Bill is definitely an organized killer, he carefully selects, seeks out, in some cases stalks, and then lures in his victims in an organized and patient manner. Hannibal Lector however seems to have aspects of both the organized and disorganized killer. He is organized because he waits for the perfect opportunity to strike while incarcerated, yet once he is in the ambulance and his organized plans have been carried out, he shows aspects of a disorganized killer and simply murders everyone in the ambulance and escapes. At the very end of the movie we find out that when free to act of his own volition he has waited for the director of the first prison he was in, therefore showing us that he is an organized killer likely an attribute of his high intelligence.
Something interesting that the movie doesn’t necessarily show is that profilers tend to use a lot of their instincts and general psychology knowledge of how people act and think, it isn’t solely the facts of the case and the victimology. This movie does make it look like one only needs to understand the facts, and then they can accurately profile and ultimately catch the culprit. This is especially apparent when Dr. Lector and Clarice have their penultimate discussion and he hands her the case file saying that she has all she needs to discover his identity within those pages.

Terms: criminal profiling, serial killers, souvenir from his victims, keeping a trophy, Visionary, Mission-oriented, Hedonistic, Power-oriented, audible hallucinations, mental disorder, organized or disorganized killers

The movie the “Silence of the Lambs” was a very interesting film. The film is about a criminal profiler in training who is called in to catch the serial killer “Buffalo Bill.” The criminal profiler in the movie is named Sterling. She is told by the captain to analyze the serial killer Hannibal Lecter to see if there were any similarities between Hannibal and “Buffalo Bill.” The movie has many concepts that we have talked about in class, as well as the book “Forensic and Legal Psychology.” The movie has things are true about criminal profiling, as well as some that are false. Some of the aspects of criminal profiling that are true are the fact that the character Sterling looks through old cases to see if there is any similarities between the killer, “Buffalo Bill,” and other serial killers; Hannibal Lecter in the case of the movie. This is something that criminal profilers actually look at when trying to solve cases. They look for similarities that are can be found by looking at what other serial killers have done. Another true thing about criminal profilers that can be found by watching the movie is the fact that Sterling was called in to look at a serial killer. A serial killer, according to the book “Forensic and Legal Psychology,” is anyone that kills three or more individuals in a separate event with a cooling off period between the murders. In the case of the movie, “Buffalo Bill” would be considered a serial killer because he stalked his women, and killed the women days/weeks apart. Also, the killer in “The Silence of the Lambs” killed five individuals. That would put him in the category of a serial killer. Another aspect of profiling that was accurate in the film was a term called the signature. A signature is something that distinctive for the serial killers that the profiler looks for when examining a serial killers killings. This is something such as a certain form of torture or particular sexual activity that the serial killer commits during the crime; the reason why profiler’s look at this information is because it can help them understand the personality of the serial killer. In the case of the movie, “Buffalo Bill” cuts part of their skin off. The women are always found with skin removed from their body. The women were also not sexually assaulted and were kept alive for a couple of days before being killed. Why would the killer do this? That was the question that Sterling is trying to figure out and answer. Another aspect of profiling that was incorporated into the movie was the different type of killers. There are two types of killers according to our textbook. Those textbooks are Organized and Disorganized killers. In the case of the movie, the serial killer is an organized killer. According to the textbook an organized killer is someone that carefully selects his victims. He plans out the crimes ahead of time, and transports the victim. In the case of the movie, “Buffalo Bill” planned out his crimes ahead of time. He made sure that he selected the right women for the killing because he needed a certain type of women for his needs. He also transported the victim to a secret location where he could control them. What does all of this have to do with profiling? Basically, a profiler can look at the type of killer and create a hypothesis about who they might be. For example, in the movie, Sterling says that he is probably a male, local because he needs privacy to kill his victims, as well as saying that he is probably white because killers normally only kill within their own ethnic group. These are some pretty accurate claims. In the textbook, organized killers can be hypothesized to follow media accounts of what he/she is doing. In the case of the movie, “Buffalo Bill” had been keeping newspaper clippings of his killings and hanging them on the wall. The reason that they do this is because he probably liked all the attention that he was getting for his crimes. Another thing that the text book talks about is that organized killers tend to have high geographic mobility. Geographic mobility basically means that the killer moves around and kills people in different locations or drops the body off in different locations. In the case of the movie, the serial killer kills and abducts people from different locations and drops their bodies off at different parts of different rivers. Another aspect of profiling that was seen in the movie was called Hedonistic Type of killer. This means that the serial killer was killing people because he needed to fulfill some sort of sexual thrill or sexual pleasure. In the case of the movie, this could be used to explain why he needed to kill women because he needed to make an outfit out of their skin because he needed to feel sexually like a women. The final aspect of profiling that I say in the movie was geographic profiling. Geographic profiling is the aspect of profiling that looks at the locations that victims were abducted and were their bodies were found to look for some clues as to the motives of the serial killer or the location of the serial killer. The example given in the book is when a profiler found out that the victims were being discovered near rail road crossing. After looking into this further, it was found out that the serial killer was killing people and jumping from train to train. This helped solve the case. In the case of the movie, they look the areas where the bodies were being dropped. Each time a body was dropped, it would be in a different river or area. However, because the bodies and places where the abductions took place were so close to a similar area, Sterling was able to figure out that the serial killer was probably a local person because the crimes were committed far apart. The film did however have some aspect of profiling that weren’t all that accurate. The biggest thing was the profiler in the movie. Sterling seemed to be able to figure out exactly who the serial killer was by looking into the mind of another serial killer. The reason that this isn’t exactly the truth is that the textbook tells us that profiling is based off assumptions, and we all know what happens if we assume things. (If you don’t know what happens when we assume things…ask someone). In studies explained in the book, it did show that profilers did sometimes accurately describe the serial killers, however, so did random college students. The only real difference between the professional profilers and the college students was the fact that the professional profilers gave much more detailed reports about what they thought the serial killer would be like. The problem with profilers isn’t directly shown in the film, but you could imagine the problems that could arise if the profiler would have told police that the serial killer was probably an African America man. This could have led police on a completely different route. So you can probably see the problems with profiling, they are based off assumptions which are based off what other criminals have done. However, not all criminals are the same. This leads to another problem with profiling which is called Tunnel Vision. Tunnel Vision is the process by which police focus on the description that the profiler gives them instead of looking at the evidence. For example, if the profiler says that the person is white, but it turns out the killer might actually be African American, police will look for white criminals that fit the description and ignore the African American suspects. Another aspect of the film that I didn’t think accurately betrayed profilers was the use of a cadet for the profiling as well as talking with a serial killer in person. First off, the police probably wouldn’t have called in a cadet to take lead in the case. Second, Sterling if in real life probably would have examined readings about the serial killer, and would have never made him deals or anything of the sort. The final aspect of profiling that I would like to talk about is the Utility of Inferences. The Utility of Inferences basically asks the question about how useful profiler’s information can be. For example, if the profiler says that the criminal is a lone wolf type, masturbates a lot, and is in his mid to late thirties; that describes a majority of people. Also, how are the police going to know if an individual masturbates a lot? Basically, the information that the profiler gives might not be as helpful as it could be. In the case of the movie, Sterling gives the description of a man who is white, and who is local. That can describe a lot of individuals. So in the real world, how helpful can this information actually be? Overall, the movie was a great film, and gave me insight into criminal profiling.
Terms: Utility of Inferences, Tunnel Vision, geographic profiling, Hedonistic Type, geographic mobility, signature, profiling, serial killer, Organized and Disorganized killers.

In the movie the Silence of the Lambs there are many references to many terms used in the book. One term that was used widely throughout the book is criminal profiling. For example, Catherine made up a criminal profile for Buffalo Bill. She stated that Bill was a white male in his forties who was very physical fit and strong. She stated that he was not a drifter and lived in a house, not an apartment, because he needed the privacy of a house to commit his murders. Some other things that she speculated about and found out about Buffalo Bill by looking at the evidence was that he kept his victims alive for three days before he killed them. This can also be tied to the idea that most every serial killer has a signature. Buffalo Bill’s was that he cut up his victims blouses from the back, kept them for three days to starve them until their skin was looser, shot them in the head, and then skinned them post mortem. All of these things were found by examining the victim’s bodies and the evidence that was present.
Hannibal Lector also made a profile for Buffalo Bill. He stated that Bill likes bigger girls and the reason he is killing is that he covets something. When a bug cocoon is found inside one of the victim’s mouths, Lector says that it is a moth cocoon and it signifies change. Bill wants to change himself because of past sexual abuse.
Another term that can be used from the book is the idea of geographical profiling. In the movie, Jack Crawford and the other investigators made a geographical profile of where all the places Buffalo Bill’s victims were found. The area around that would be considered the anchor point. By the end of the movie they realized after looking the profile that Buffalo Bill’s killings were not random, but were ‘desperately random’. Buffalo Bill knew the first girl he killed, but after that the girls were random.
Some other things that can be tied to the book are based on Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lector themselves as serial killers. In each crime the investigators were able to find out that the crimes were connected to each other, which is called case linkage. Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lector were both organized killers in that they both were very careful in their killings and were patient in making sure they didn’t do anything impulsively. Hannibal Lector and Buffalo Bill both would be considered power-oriented killers, in my opinion. They both get satisfaction from capturing and controlling their victims before killing them, but like the book says, they both have characteristics that could fall into the other categories.
Something else I found throughout the movie was clinical psychology. Hannibal Lector himself was a psychiatrist, but he obviously has some type of mental illness. Miggs was another example of someone who definitely had a mental illness, I kept thinking maybe schizophrenia. He was clearly insane and was not able to distinguish right from wrong. In my opinion it seemed that Buffalo Bill suffered from antisocial personality disorder, he was very withdrawn and didn’t have any relationships with people around him; he was also quick to anger and didn’t have any realization of guilt.
Another aspect of psychology I found in the film was the idea of regression and flashbacks when it came to Clarice. Whenever she was in certain situations, such as at the funeral home, she would have flashbacks from her childhood, such as seeing her father in the casket at his funeral. She did not like to willingly bring back those memories, and Dr. Lector used his psychiatry skills in getting her to retell the memories from her past.
I had watched the Silence of the Lambs before in the past, but I had never tied it to exact terms that could be used in the legal system. I found it really interesting to look at certain ideas from the movie and then see how the related to ideas that we had learned in the book. It was surprising to see how much was taken from psychology and the law, because normally people don’t think of that when watching a movie; they just watch it for the entertainment factor.

Terms: organized killers, power-oriented killer, clinical psychology, regression, flashback, psychiatry, criminal profiling, signature, geographical profiling

Silence of the lambs is a movie that is completely immersed in psychology. Not only is the main actor a brilliant psychiatrist, but even the FBI agent has a background in psychology, and even attempts to banter with dr. lector throughout the movie. I find this funny too because Dr. Lector just basically laughs off the feeble attempts for her to pry into his mind and reverses the psychology back on her.ill come back to those. But on to profiling.
So the main focus of this week was about profiling. The movie itself has some very obvious profiling techniques and ones that I personally think were a bit harder to catch.
First major one would be when Starling has to give a basic profile from the crime scene notes. She states that most likely he is male, older because of control, strong able to subdue some thicker women, white. Now as we know that most serial killers are white and male those were some obvious ones. The being strong is actually a fairly common one too as a lot of serial killers have to subdue their victims. However I do believe that while she does get it right in the movie(because it’s a movie) the guess that he is older based on his self control would more than likely be wrong in an actual case. I would gesture to say that if you are a serial killer and you have killed multiple people it matters not what age you are. I mean look at Jeffrey Dahmer. He was I believe 16/17 when he first killed. So age would for the most part have nothing to do with self control.
Now throughout the movie and what is mainly the point of it is Starlings interactions between her and Dr. Lector. Now Lector from the beginning knows who Buffalo Bill is, but he wants to see if Starling can come to that conclusion with the occasional tip from him. Now while there are some basic selfish needs of his own he wants aka a room with a window etc. he seems to want to know about starling. Im guessing from the way other police and fbi agents interact with her a female fbi agent is not that common at the time of the film. So maybe Dr. Lector is testing out the waters with a female FBI agent. Now It doesn’t directly say anything about this but I believe Dr. Lector is very into the psychoanalytical theory. He mentions quite often references about sexual tensions between her and her boss, or the person who owned the ranch etc. He also drills her in a manner that is more common in pscyhoanalytical theory and Clinical Psychology. I find this interesting because the more I learn about psychology you learn that psychiatrists done usually deal with their patients in this manner, however he does, as do most psychiatrists in movies. Now seeing as Hannibal knows who the killer is, he already knows the profile of him. With that in mind the movie focuses around him pushing Starling in the right direction to find the motives, and reasoning behind Buffalo Bills thinking. Which would lead her to a better profile as well as being that much closer to catching him. As the story progresses Starling learns more and more about the character that buffalo bill is and therefore makes more inferences into what kind of person he is. After she finds a victim of Buffalo Bills in a warehouse that lector led her to she understands that Bill wants to be a transvestite which with that knowledge lets them focus the hunt down remarkably to people with failed or denied operations. Also Throughout the movie especially right away Dr. Lector attempts to profile starling, instantly recognizing that she is from west Virginia, she doesn’t like to speak about her dad, among other things.
Another thing we talked about in class was bugs. To briefly mention the kind of bug that was found in the throat of a victim. The moth that was found was a very rare type of bug and therefore they were able to search for people who would have ordered or owned that particular moth.
Now later, after Lector was moved to a different jail Starling visits once again. With the knowledge that everything she needs is in the case files that Lector gives to her she ponders and eventually realizes that Buffalo bill knew his first victim. Before she came to this conclusion however, she had been using a form of profiling known as Geographical profiling. That is they map out where the victims were found and try to base where the killer would be operating out of based on the map. Now because the first victim had been tied down the map seemed completely random but Starling then comes to the conclusion that Bill knew the first victim and saw her fairly often. That leads to the neighborhood of the killer, which eventually after exploring the victims house realizes that with the wanting to be a transvestite and a dress she found that he is making a human suit out of his victims. Eventually she is led to the killers house albeit she doesn’t know that until she is in the house and his actions and house alert her to that fact. Im assuming part of that was the ability to match her profile with the person she was talking to.
Because the main theme was Profiling Behaviorlism was huge in this movie.
Now Clinical psychology plays a huge part in this because Buffalo bill had been denied his operation due to psychological problems and even saw Dr. Lector during that time. Dr. Lector recognized what was wrong with buffalo bill and found bills first kill hence knowing who he was.
Also Psychoanalytical theory is brought into this movie as well as I stated earlier between Dr. Lector making Starling recall her own childhood through what the movie believes is repressed memories. Throughout the movie Starling attempts her own psychological attempts towards Dr. Lector however they don’t really work as he knows what she is trying.
Both of the serial killers in the movie could be classified as organized mission orientated killers. That being said there was a certain degree and finesse that can be awarded to Dr. Lector in the way he did his. Also Buffalo Bill kept Trophies (the suit) while Dr. Lector said he did not. Both of them also had trademarks that they did. Bill stuffed moths down the throats which ultimately was one of the reasons they found him. And Dr. Lector became known as the cannibal for his eating certain body parts of his victims. Also I found it interesting that they stated that Buffalo Bill wouldn’t want to get to attached (lack of a better word ) to the victim as it makes them harder to kill. So Bill when loweing the lotion stated it shall put the lotion on its skin not referring the girl as a she but as an it to disassociate himself form her. Whereas the Senator mentioned her name very often so he would be aware more of what he was doing. Also from Chapter 5 was the ability to use case linkage to link the victims to the same killer. They used this with both Hannibal Lector and Buffalo Bill.
Psychoanalytical, Signature, Behaviorlism, Clinical psychology, Case linkage, Trophies, Mission orientated, organized, serial killer, repressed memories, recall, Profiling, Psychiatrist, Psychologist,

I had never seen this movie before, but I have heard other people reference it before. I have heard from different films about Hannibal Lector and Buffalo Bill, but I never knew if they were real people or just characters made up for a movie. Both of these serial killers, have very unique traits that separate them from others. Watching this movie helped me to view some psychological concepts that we have been reading and learning about in Psychology and Law.

One of the first things I noticed was when it showed Buffalo Bill kidnapping Catherine; It showed him as an organized serial killer, because he did not kidnap his victims from impulse, instead, he stalked his prey and planned out how he was going to attack. The way he got Catherine into his van showed that he had it planned out quite well. He also knew what size she was so it was not like he just chose a random person at a random time.

The next thing I noticed was when they found the body in the river, and Sterling is explaining the killers' profile. She says that there is no trace evidence because the bodies are disposed of into random rivers. She also explained that Buffalo Bill was in his 30's or 40's, had a lot of physical strength, he was cautious, and he had to have a house not an apartment for privacy. They could tell from the autopsies that Bill kept them alive for three days before killing them. I thought this was odd because we have learned that some serial killers, rape, or abuse their victims to get some sexual arousal or pleasure before and/or after killing them, but Bill did not do any of that. Later in the film we found out he kept them alive to starve them so their skin would loosen up. I also observed when Sterling said Bill keeps the skins of his victims as a "trophy". The trophy would be the signature of Bill's crimes. I also believe that the placement of the moth down the throat is also a signature, because it is something that only BIll does, that I know of. I also saw, that while after Sterling shot Bill, he had newspaper clippings of the killings he was responsible of. The book described how serial killers tend to do this because it is like a trophy. Just like how people like to clip out articles about them, serial killers do too, because they are proud of their killings. I am not sure if Bill fits into any of the four types of murders, if I had to choose one that best fit I would say he was a power-oriented killer, because he did not take sadistic sexual pleasure, although I feel he might have gotten pleasure from wearing the skin so it could have been hedonistic. I think it would be either power-oriented or hedonistic because he was certainly not a visionary or mission-oriented killer.

I thought it was interesting when Sterling was meeting with Hannibal because he could remember every detail about Bill. He knew the exact year that Bill was referred to him by Bill's worried "lover", whom Bill later killed. He explained that Bill had a transvestite disorder, that was motivated by physical violence when he was younger. He also explained that was the reason he was denied surgeries to get a sex change.

I noticed that before Sterling was going to Buffalo Bill's house, she talked to her special officer that was in charge of the case, and he said they were on their way to the house where Buffalo Bill lived. He said the name Hannibal gave was wrong but the details were correct, and their was evidence he had received the same type of moth that Buffalo Bill used. This was an example of how profiling can be misleading. Just because there are some matches in the profile, it makes it easy to target a suspect, and detectives can think they have the perpetrator, but in actuality it could just be a person that fits the description and is not connected at all. This is similar to the example in the book about the Olympic Bomber, where Richard Jewell fit the profile so he was suspected to be the perpetrator but later they found it was actually Eric Rudolph.

Hannibal also appeared to be a organized killer, because he at the end of the film he was stalking the man that was studying him at the first prison that Sterling visited. I thought it was a good way to end the movie, showing Hannibal going after another victim that he had known and been able to track down.

Terms: serial killer, organized killer, signature, trophy, profile, trace evidence, visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, power-oriented, and perpetrator.

What an interesting movie. It creeps you out, makes you think, and keeps you on the edge of your seat, all at the same time. And I found myself constantly picking out terms and discussions from the textbook that can clearly be seen in Silence of the Lambs, combining aspects of both psychology and law.

First, the obvious one: profiling. While this is Starling’s job in the movie, I believe Lecter was the true profiler. While this is mostly used by investigators for catching serial killers and other more severe criminals, Lecter had mastered it with everyday people because of his previous occupation as a forensic psychiatrist. His careful observations led him to make inferences about people he came in contact with, which really was quite genius of him. This is shown when he first meets Clarice. Only knowing her for a few minutes, he had already discovered things about her past.

A large part of this movie was the emphasis on a serial killer’s signature. It can really be seen in almost every part of the investigation. Obviously, Buffalo Bill’s signature was the skin removal. This mutilation gave investigators clues into his personality and motive for committing these crimes. We can see this towards the end of the movie, as Starling realizes that he’s taking these skin grafts to create a woman’s suit. Profiling further, investigators could probably take that new information and learn even more about Buffalo Bill, maybe inferring that he is a loner, and has some sort of deeper obsession with women if he’s trying to make a suit out of them to wear. Maybe an estranged relationship with his mother? A serial killer’s signature can really reveal a lot of information about them and their motives.

Going further, a signature can also help tremendously with case linkage. Case linkage is shown in the movie while the investigators use the information at hand to determine whether this newly discovered crime was committed by Buffalo Bill. They can already make an educated guess on this before seeing the body, because of it’s location and the environment it has been dumped in. After seeing her, they can fully confirm this because of skin taken from the victim’s back, however, there are some inconsistencies, including the fact that she was the only victim he took the time to weight down to the bottom of the river. Weighing all of these facts and ultimately deciding that she was murdered by Buffalo Bill shows the process of case linkage.

Next, I wanted to discuss aspects of organized and disorganized killers that were shown in Silence of the Lambs. Table 5.1 in the book talks about characteristics of the killer and the crime scene that distinguish them as organized or disorganized. Buffalo Bill can be classified as organized, because of both his crime scene and his personality. The basement where he keeps his victims obviously took some premeditation to prepare. The empty well, the maze-like layout, and the tools we see in the movie all suggest an organized killer. In his personality, we see that he is careful in his skin removal and has at least an average intelligence level. I also noticed that in the background of many basement scenes in the movie, there are newspaper clippings hung on the walls, furthering suggesting an organized killer, because he has followed the media accounts of his murders.

In the case of Lecter, it’s a little more difficult to classify him. I’m sure that he was an organized killer before being apprehended, but the crimes we see him commit in prison suggest some form of disorganization. His personality in general (high intelligence, controlled mood during crimes) suggest a highly organized killer, but because he is in a prison, I feel there are also some aspects of the opposite, especially in the crime scene (spontaneous, sloppy, body and weapon left at scene). I’m thinking that this may just be because of the situation that Lecter is in, but I’m not sure. I guess he still has some premeditation with the pen and the planning, etc.

Another big thing I read from the book that showed up clearly in the movie was the four types of serial killers (visionary, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and power-oriented). I tried to classify Buffalo Bill into one of these categories, but it was difficult. I’m thinking he fits best into the hedonistic type killer, because, in some ways, he seems like he is killing for a thrill. I first noticed this during the scene in the movie where he abducts the woman helping him load that couch into the van. The way he reacts to seeing the bare skin on her back makes me think he is somewhat sexually motivated. Maybe he gains some sort of pleasure from hunting down and skinning women to create a suit for himself? I’m not sure, but that is my best guess.

In the case of Hannibal Lecter, I believe he is power-oriented. His previous occupation, as a forensic psychiatrist, allowed him to have great power and control over his patients, which I believe he enjoyed. And the way he acted while discovering Starling’s worst childhood memory leads me to believe that he gets some sort of pleasure out of feeling powerful. He was much easier to categorize than Buffalo Bill.

Another thing I wanted to discuss was the geographic profiling in this movie. It’s significance in this movie was pretty straightforward: the map showed the abduction and dumping locations of each body, which revealed an inconsistency in one victim, which went on to reveal that Buffalo Bill had known this woman before becoming a serial killer, eventually leading Starling to some vital profiling information (the tailor inference) and a large break in the case. Nothing too in-depth here, but it just goes to show how important geographic profiling is to a case.

The very last thing I wanted to touch on regarding this movie: the book talks about how profiling really doesn’t help much in catching a serial killer; it’s usually a slip-up by the criminal getting lazy or leaving a vital clue behind. In this movie, that wasn’t the case. A combination of profiling Jame Gumb (the tailoring equipment sitting around) and noticing the exotic moth in his house helped Starling stop Buffalo Bill. It makes me wonder how often (or how scarcely) profiling really is the deciding factor in a case.

Key Terms: Profiling, Serial Killer, Signature, Case Linkage, Organized Killer, Disorganized Killer, Visionary Killer, Mission-Oriented Killer, Hedonistic Killer, Power-Oriented Killer, Geographic Profiling

I had seen this movie before, but I have to say I view it in a completely different way after watching it in a psych/law point of view. It was so interesting and very creepy, but I really enjoyed watching it. This movie expresses several concepts that we have read about as well as discussed in class. Right away I thought it was weird and very unlikely that a student in training was going to be in charge of a major serial killer case. In real life this probably would not have happened until the student had their official FBI badge.

Of course the topic of profiling came up when FBI agents were trying to find Buffalo Bill. Before this occurred investigators had to decide whether the crimes were related. Case linkage is the process of determining whether two or more crimes were committed by the same person. Next they attempted to make a profile based on previous victims, and similarities they had, but they were not able to make a complete profile without help. Thus reasoning as to why Lector became part of the investigation. In real life it is probably very unlikely that a psychopath would be used in a serial killer investigation because how reliable and valid is the information. FBI agents thought he would be able to help because he too was a serial killer, and later they found out he knew Buffalo Bill. The profile that FBI agents came up with was; white male in his 30’s or 40’s, strong, murders occur in his own home for privacy reasons because he keeps the victim for a long period of time, he is cautious, and his possible signature is a moth placed somewhere in the body. From analyzing the victims FBI agents infer that he is an organized killer as in he carefully selects, stalks, and plans out what he will do with his victim. Another tool they used was geographic profiling, which is using maps and math to figure out where the individual is located. The profile was accurate however it did not help Clarisse and the other FBI agents find Buffalo Bill, as they relied on information from Lector.

It was interesting to see how Lector was attempting to analyze and get in Clarisse’s head while she was trying to learn more information about Buffalo Bill. This expresses some clinical problems lector has. His is a very odd individual that obviously has some major problems. As in mental, social, sensation, and cognitive Lector does not act similar to other individuals who are in prison for long periods of time, he seems to enjoy it because he is still able to affect other people. He seeks out situations that can cause harm to other people whether it’s physical or mental. An example of physical occurred after he had been moved and he killed two officers. While psychological would be when he was asking Clarisse about aspects of her childhood that basically haunted her.

Another topic that arises is the idea of memory and how effect it was thought the entire movie. For example Lector has been in prison for a very long time; therefore what he knows about Buffalo Bill may not be completely accurate. Lector seemed very convincing when he was explaining what Buffalo Bill was like, in the end he was accurate, but would have happened if he had confused two people. During the part where Lector escapes and kills the two cops the police officers memory was challenged, as Lector was carried out by the police officers. They all had orders to make sure he would stay in his cell on a certain floor, yet when he was right by them they had no idea it was him even though they knew he was crazy and that if he ever got free he would do anything. It was obvious that none of the police officers knew exactly what Lector looked like as when they saw the police uniform they assumed it was their friend. Overall memory was tested and expressed in several scenes.

Obviously Buffalo Bill had several problems of his own it was so interesting to see how he acted with his victim. He tried as hard as he could to make sure that he did not view his victim as a person. He wanted to view her as an object so he would not feel any remorse for what he was doing. This was challenged when she refused to put on the lotion; he kept calling her “it” when he was telling her what to do. At this part we see him begin to break down and feel a little remorse however this did not stop him. Buffalo Bill was committing these murders because he wanted to have a sex change, however he was denied several times. Thus causing him to find other ways to satisfy his need, it appears that he had a personality disorder of some kind. Personality disorders can cause crime due to disorder traits; it is possible that his problems may have influenced his actions.

Overall I found this movie to be very interesting to watch from a psych/law point of view. I learned a lot more about the topic in the book as I was able to apply them to specific scenes.

Terms: serial killer, profile, geographic location, personality disorders, sensation, perception, cognitive, social, clinical, memory, signature, case linkage.

Silence of the Lambs is a good movie to demonstrate the various concepts that were explained in Chapter 5 of our textbook. The movie demonstrates the process of criminal profiling many times, shows a brief view of geographical profiling, and demonstrates examples of the different categories and characteristics of serial killers.

First off, I would mention how the movie addresses the subject of criminal profiling. The primary characters demonstrating this throughout the movie are Clarice and Lecter. Both of the characters profile Buffalo Bill at various points in the movie and Lecter even profiles Clarice a few times while they are having conversations. I feel that the movie does a good job demonstrating the process of profiling and how it is based on inferential leaps and how a lot of the information (particularly the parts that Clarice infers) is interesting, but not particularly useful in finding Bill. I feel that the movie does a poor job demonstrating how unreliable criminal profiling can be though, having everything that the two characters infer about Buffalo Bill end up being completely correct. In actuality, criminal profiling is fairly unreliable, only leading to the suspect being caught about 2.7% of the time.

Early on in the movie, it also demonstrates the process of geographic profiling. The FBI are using the evidence of where the girls bodies are found, how long they were predicted to be in the river, and when they were reported missing to try and determine where Buffalo Bill may be and if there is a pattern to where he kills. This part of the movie is very brief but I feel that it is a much more accurate portrayal than criminal profiling.

Both of the serial killers portrayed in the movie (Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill) fit various characteristics of serial killers, as explained in Chapter 5. Both killers seem to be organized killers. This means that they plan out who their victim will be carefully and choose the right time to strike, so that they take as little risk as possible of being caught. Buffalo Bill makes sure to hide his first victim, weighing her down in the river, but then gets sloppy and doesn’t repeat the process for the rest of his victims. He also owns his own house so that he won’t be disturbed when torturing his victims and doesn’t run the risk of someone stumbling on them. Bill also demonstrates the characteristic of high geographic mobility, shown in the scene of where the sites of the girls bodies have been found. Lecter is more difficult to judge, due to the fact that he is imprisoned during most of the movie. However, once he has the opportunity, he shows how well thought out his plans are to continue killing. Lecter also shows the characteristic of waiting for the correct time to strike at the end of the movie, when it is shown that he is stalking Dr. Chilton, most likely for the chance to kill him as payback for the torment he caused while Lecter was in prison. I would also say that Lecter fits the power-oriented type, due to the fact that his victims included his patients back when he was initially killing. Lecter may also fit the mission-oriented and possibly hedonistic types as well. He seems to gain pleasure from the suffering of people that he feels are beneath him or have mistreated him, such as Dr. Chilton. I feel Buffalo Bill best demonstrates the power-oriented or mission-oriented types. Bill demonstrates that he enjoys controlling his victims when he is commanding the girl he has captured in the pit he dug in his basement this could also be part of why he keeps his victims alive for a while before killing them and skinning them.

Overall, I feel that Silence of the Lambs best demonstrates the various aspects that serial killers tend to portray and the basic concepts of criminal profiling and geographic profiling but does a poor job at showing how unreliable criminal profiling can be. The movie is very interesting and I can see why it was referenced at the beginning of Chapter 5.

Terms: criminal profiling, geographic profiling, organized killers, geographic mobility, mission-oriented type, hedonistic type, power-oriented type

This movie is absolutely amazing. I think that for the most part, it did a nice job of portraying profiling in a movie sense but there were obviously some things that were inaccurate regarding the actual reality of profiling. People definitely get a different idea of what profiling is really about from movies, and this movie is no exception. Movies tend to make profilers look like psychics when that is not even close to what they are doing or how they operate. Personal judgment is huge for profilers. They must go off of their instinct 90% of the time and they will make mistakes. That’s just how it is.

One of the main things that really stood out that chapter 5 also mentions is the scene where Starling is riding in the car with Campbell. Campbell asks her to look at pictures from a crime scene and create a profile of the offender and it takes her probably 30 seconds to come up with a dead on profile. Chapter 5 asks us if this is possible. I say no. You would need more information and research in order to make assumptions like hers. Also, photos alone are not able to tell you personal characteristics of the offender. Next, taking data and moving it into a useful profile is not considered to be systematic. It requires a lot of personal judgment along with analyzing of facts/ figures and instinct. I feel that Starling did use personal judgment but it almost seemed as if her decisions were very easy for her to come to. She didn’t seem to be utilizing all of the key components of a good profiler. Starling also didn’t seem to get into the minds of the victims as much as she was the killer. There was a scene towards the end of the film where she visited the father of one of the victims and looked around their home, but this was the only scene that really showed her trying to make an effort towards getting inside the victim’s minds. Chapter 5 states that trying to decipher how the victim was feeling at the time of the crime is just as important as trying to understand the killer’s mindset. Understanding both will give you a much better picture of what happened. Starling also seemed to skip over some very important aspects in order to really be able to narrow down who may have committed the murders. Chapter 5 discusses that profiling is unvalidated and that it requires a lot of inferential leaps (meaning you start with “What?” which then helps you move on to “Why?” and then follow it all up with “Who?”). In reality, it would be almost impossible to be able to skip from “What?” to “Who?” without having an understanding of why the crime happened. Starling discussed reasoning behind the crimes in small detail with Hannibal when she would visit him, but a lot of the focus seemed to be on the “What?” and the “Who?”

Profiling is not considered a very accurate form of investigation. As all movies do, the plot of the film was made to be successful and with a happy ending. This is just not the case. Profiling requires a lot of trial and error and is by no means fail-proof as the movie made it out to be. As mentioned above, movies (and this one in specific) really make profiling out to be a lot easier than it really is. A lot more goes into it than people are lead to believe. Also, profiles usually tend to include a lot of speculations that are interesting but of little use to the investigators. Every bit of Starling and Hannibal’s information on Buffalo Bill throughout the movie seemed to be of great importance to the investigation and they were spot on with a lot of it. Again, this is just not accurate. Going along with that, I found it interesting that all of the details Starling provided to investigators with her profile seemed to be things that would be very hard to observe just as an eye-witness. You would really need to see the intimate details of the offender’s life in order to observe the details she gave. Chapter 5 also discusses this point by saying that many things a profiler can determine are not able to be seen by the eye of a person just simply observing the offender. You would need to see them in their personal routines most of the time.

Lastly are the use of the very important geographic profiling and psychological autopsies in the film. Starling and her colleagues mentioned the mapping of the different rivers the bodies had been dumped during the scene focused on the discovery of a female body in a river with the true tail signs of a Buffalo Bill homicide. This, however, was the last mention of any kind of mapping of evidence. There were plenty of other scenes where they could have been mapping the different crime scenes such as when they would discover the shirts of the victims with the cut up the back. They could have been mapping the different places where each of the shirts were discovered. Geographical profiling could have been huge in a real life case of this kind for helping to narrow down the radius of areas to look. As far as psychological autopsies, I kind of mentioned above that Starling didn’t seem to do much in regards to getting inside of the victim’s heads. With the right amount of information available, a psychological autopsy could have very well been of use in the film.

There were some areas of the film that were more accurate regarding profiling. Starling was seen studying police reports to gather information on the murders. She was also present for the autopsy and used an audio recorder to make notes about the body. These two things would be good for a real life profile. Also, the film not only chose to use a serial killer for Starling to create a profile on but the serial killer also had a signature in the skinning of his victims. Chapter 5 mentions that profiling is most used for serial killer cases and those serial killers are sometimes known to have signature aspects of their crimes. On a related note, while Hannibal was in the cage, Starling seemed to be pretty accurate in her description of Buffalo Bill’s signature in that it was the emotional reason he was committing the crimes. Chapter 5 states that a signature will remain constant because it is why the killer is killing; it is the thing that fulfills him emotionally.

Psychology was very prevalent in this film. First there was the presence of clinical psychology. Hannibal was clearly suffering from probably more than one mental illness. His mental illness was the driving force behind why he was a murderer in my opinion, and it definitely facilitated his actions throughout the movie. Psychology of personality was also present. The whole film itself was centered on trying to figure out Buffalo Bill’s personality. There were also many different strong personalities in the film that made it what it was. Sensation and perception were present as well. Starling was constantly detecting stimuli and having to determine what the stimuli were/what they meant. As a profiler, I think sensation and perception would be a part of your everyday life at a very high level. Lastly, I think social psychology was very important for the film. Starling was constantly interacting with Hannibal, and these interactions had an influence on not only her but the stimuli as well.

Terms: profiling, psychology, signature, serial killer, geographical profiling, psychological autopsy, clinical psychology, sensation, perception, psychology of personality

Chapter five in the book forensic and legal psychology opened up with the script from Silence of the Lambs between Starling and her Boss. When watching the movie, and hearing the quote, I had knew I heard it from somewhere, and ironically it was from the book! This movie was had a lot to do with psychology and also profiling. When the movie first started I automatically tuned into the suspicious sound which is related to sensory psychology.
Starling is pretty much the main character in this movie. She is a young student in the FBI academy who takes over the role of a profiler. She was assigned to talk to Hannibal Lecter who was a former forensic psychologist and also a serial killer. Serial killers are murderers who kill three or more people in separate events with a cooling off period between murders. She was ordered to give him ma VICAP questionnaire, etc. Then write a report on him and give it back to the behavioral services unit. While writing the report she was supposed to include things such as how he acted, what his cell looked like, the decorations he had up, and more; this to me is also a form of profiling. When she visited Hannibal she was given orders by several people to not touch the glass, do not give out any personal information, and not to accept anything from him. During her visits he had started to turn their session/interview around and using his skills as a psychologist to profile her. At that time she had also offered him a deal that she said was signed by the senator, where he would be transferred to New York and have a view, but only if he would help her find Buffalo Bill and profile him.
Starling used her skills of profiling in order to figure out and create a certain image of a suspect for other police to find. Starling had helped create a profile for the killer stating that he lived alone, because he needed the privacy to do what he did. He was a white male in his thirty to forties with real physical strength. She also said that he was a very cautious and precise person who was impulsive. She had hit the nail on the head with this profile; he turned out to be all of those things which linked him to being an organized killer. Organized killers are described as carefully selecting and stalking their victims and planning out what they will do to their victims. They are the types of people who have planned crime, the body is hidden, and at least average in intelligence. This surprised me because the man who played this character looked like he had more of the characteristics of a disorganized murderer.
The Buffalo Killer had signatures, which is a distinctive, personal aspect of the crime that presumably reveals the personality of the killer. In this case his signatures were things such as cutting their skin off and putting moths down their throats, and also women of a particular size. The FBI later found out that the Buffalo Killer was killing girls about the size of 14 and starved them so their skin would get loose. Then he would kill them and started sewing their skin together in order to make a women outfit. This was because when he was at an earlier stage in his life he had a relationship with a man and went to three different hospitals requesting a transgender change. They all denied him of this surgery; this is all according to Lecter. The killings all had the same characteristics; they were normally found in a river a few days after they went missing. By using these details police and investigators were able to use case linkage, which is the process of determining whether two or more crimes were committed by the same person, to link them to Buffalo Bill.
Not only that, but they also used geographic profiling, which used maps, computer systems, and mathematics. The Federal Bureau of Investigation plotted the points of where the victim was abducted and also where they were found. The computer did not pick up any pattern to the crimes but Starling took this to Lecter and he said something about the randomness of the map and maybe it wasn’t random at all. The maps lead them to know that Buffalo Bill had known one of the victims before the killings had started.
Overall, I thought that this movie was freaky and kind of scary. I am glad that I was able to watch it though because it is such a well-known movie of our time.
Key terms- sensory psychology, profiling, signature, serial killers, organized killers, disorganized killers, case linkage, geographic profiling

After watching the movie Silence of the Lambs I can see many similarities between the movie and chapter five of our book. Chapter five deals with criminal profiling and psychological autopsies that were very prevalent in the film. Two serial killers were the main focus of this movie, Dr. Hannibal Lecture and Buffalo Bill. The main character, Clarice, an FBI trainee, was using Hannibal to profile Buffalo Bill in hopes to catch him before he kills again.

Starting off with Buffalo Bill, chapter five would classify him as an organized serial killer. Bill is an organized killer because he was smart in avoiding capture so long by leaving little evidence and dumping his bodies away from the crime scene. He had murdered multiple people so he is absolutely seen as a serial killer. Buffalo Bill's signature to his killings was that he would cut of sections of skin from his victims after they were deceased. This was thought to be because he was confused about his sexuality and wanted to become a women, so he was making a suit out of people's skin. I also see Buffalo Bill as a power-oriented killer, because he seemed to gain pleasure from capturing and controlling his victims in the well in his basement.

Dr. Hannibal Lecture was the other serial killer in this movie, and although he did much of the profiling himself of Buffalo Bill, we could see what kind a killer he was as well. Hannibal is definitely an organized serial killer. We don't really know much from his murders besides the fact that his signature was to eat parts of his victims, but by seeing how he escaped his prison by switching places with the police man he murdered, I can tell he was very organized and thought of all his details ahead of time. Hannibal seemed more of a hedonistic type killer in that he gained pleasure from the torture and killing of his victims. I draw this conclusion from the fact that he would bite people's faces and kill them slowly. However, Hannibal might also be seen as a mission-oriented killer due to the fact that in the end of the movie he tells Clarice on the phone that he is going to kill the doctor at the prison because Hannibal deems him to have unfit morals. He also tells Clarice he won't be coming after her because the world is a more interesting place with her in it. This shows signs of mission-orientation in that Hannibal kills those who he deems unworthy.

In addition to the profiling itself, we also see some of the methods that the investigators used to catch Buffalo Bill. First off, they conducted psychological autopsies of his murdered victims, in an effort to figure out and examine the victim's psychological state prior to their death. We also see them using geographic profiling when they map out where the bodies were found and the crime scenes. They locations the bodies were found were marked down as anchor points and the surrounding areas were the buffer zones. They knew Buffalo Bill had to be in that area because distance decay tells us that the probability of an attack would be less likely farther away from that area. We also see an instance of tunnel vision, when the investigators receive the profiling information and name of Buffalo Bill from Hannibal, and the go and search a random house with no one in it. They were fixed on that location while Clarice was at the murderers home alone. After seeing the moth, Clarice had enough probative evidence to try and make the arrest.

All in all I liked watching this movie because it is a classic and I have never seen it before. It made a lot of sense watching after gaining all the knowledge of killers and profiling techniques.

Terms: Criminal Profiling, Serial Killers, Signature, Organized Killers, Mission-oriented Killers, Power-oriented Killers, Hedonistic Killers, Geographic Profiling, Psychological Autopsy, Distance Decay, Anchor Point, Buffer Zone, Tunnel Vision, Probative Evidence

This is a great movie and I had not seen it in a while. The Silence of the Lambs is an investigative thriller that portrays how police and FBI agents profile do find criminals. I think it is pretty amazing the fact that these agents are capable of getting inside the minds of criminals just by reading about them. Clarice was majoring in Psychology and Criminology, the perfect majors for profiling.

The first time Clarice went to see Hannibal Lecter, who was a insane, one astound Psychiatrists, there were many questioned asked between one another. This was the first time meeting each other, but they instantly knew each other just by looking and listening to what each other was saying. Lecter was a serial killer, but very intelligent. When Clarice asked Lecter questions, he would answer them, but only if he knew more about Clarice. He seemed to want to know about Clarice to answer questions about Buffalo Bill. Lecter could have told Clarice everything she needed to know, but he knew that he could get a deal if he continued to prolong the investigation on Buffalo Bill. He was planning his escape the entire time.

Clarice profiled Buffalo Bill without even knowing who he was. She looked at photographs and described Bill almost perfectly. She said he was a white male who was a serial killer. She also said that these people tend to hunt within their own ethnic groups. She figured he had his own house because of the awful things he did and how much privacy he needed to do what he did. She figured he was strong, cautious, and not impulsive because he would never stop because he was getting better at what he did. The signature aspect of what Bill did was skinning his victims. After killing the victims, he would skin them because he wanted to out on their skin.

I thought that most of what Clarice did was accurate. She profiled accurately, but it might be hard to get Buffalo Bills profile exactly right though. When talking to Lecter, she answered his questions to get her own. She made fake deals with him to get more information on Bill also. She figured out the case linkage to other victims because of the similarities of death. When she tried to geographically profile Bill, it was hard because he had scattered around areas in no kind of pattern.

Clarice Starling tract down Bill by being an investigator and asking questions to everyone. She went to Bill's first victims family, who knew Bill, and found out he was a tailor. Then she let the agency know that he was trying to make a women's dress and cross-references Lecters notes and finding hospital records of a man named Jame Gumb who had been unsuccessful in receiving a sex change.

I think throughout the movie the accuracy of profiling was very correct from what I have read from the book. I thought that she invested a lot of her time investigating and researching anything she could about Bill. When they did an autopsy over one of the victims they found a bug place behind the soft-palate of the roof of her mouth and that is where it all begin. That is something that could have happened in real life I believe. They find other bugs in other victims also and that was another one of Bill's signatures. It seems like most serial killers who leave signatures like these want to get caught without even knowing it. It is like it gives them more of a thrill. But there are people that are experts in psychology and criminology like Starling, who use their investigative skills and their psychological skills to find killers like these.

Terms: case linkage, geographic profiling, profiling, serial killers, signature aspect of the crime

First, I am going to have to take the time to praise this movie. As someone also said in the blog, it deserved the Oscars it received, which were 5, including best picture, best actor, best actress, best director, and best screenplay. This movie is a classic, but until you are watching it with the intent to dissect the psychology involved, you really don’t realize the amount. I think any of us girls can say that Clarice is a very inspiring female figure, and we would love to have the strength and courage to take on her job.
Before I jump to profiling, I would like to point out another theme I discovered throughout this film. I recently learned in my Psychology of Gender Differences class that women are afraid to succeed because of negative consequences associated with the gender role, and are often times more nervous and can perform worse when working with men. I saw this when Clarice was often talked down to and treated unfairly by the other police officers and FBI agents she worked with, who were men. She got many weird looks and stares, and was even left out of entire conversations. Although I thought she handled it gracefully, this negativity made her more nervous and made her want to prove herself even more. Women who work in a male dominated field seem to have to work harder to gain the same respect as men do. This is getting better today, but when this movie came out 20 years ago, there was still a long way to go.
Okay, now on to profiling. First of all, there is definitely a serial killer involved in the crimes in Silence of the Lambs. As the FBI, specifically Clarice, begins profiling him, we learn that he is definitely an organized killer, as he stalks his victims and plans exactly how he will abduct them (such as moving the chair into the van with the senator’s daughter). He also keeps them alive for approximately three days before killing them, which also shows us he is organized. I personally believe the serial killer in this film is hedonistic because he gains sexual satisfaction in removing skin from the victims and placing it on himself because he has transgender tendencies. Yet, I also think he is power-oriented too because he feels better in controlling and over powering his victims and getting what he wants from them to over-compensate his jealousy. We can definitely pin-point that his signature is abducting and killing heavy-set women in order to cut off their skin to place on himself.
There was a point in the movie that really surprised me. The killer had one of his victims in the well, and he was instructing her to put lotion on herself, but he would only say things like “it puts lotion on itself” and “it places the lotion back in the basket” as if he had to call her “it” so he wouldn’t get emotionally involved. When the girl began saying things like, “I want to see my mommy”, he even began to tear up a little bit. This just goes to show you that not all psychopaths are the same, as the text book even states. I learned from the text that there are three myths to psychopaths, and the one I think is relevant is the myth that “all psychopaths are psychotic”. This man knew that what he was doing was unacceptable, sad, and wrong to society, but because of being a psychopath he was able to keep going.
As I stated earlier, I believe that this movie provides good examples of profiling, but in my opinion, some were unrealistic. Although the FBI is good at their job, things seemed to go a little too easy for Clarice. As the text states as well, some people have a real knack for profiling, and they really go on their gut feelings and intuition. That being said, I definitely don’t think people like Hannibal Lector exist in terms of his almost “psychic” abilities. He could read Clarice like a book, and knew things about her based on the type of shoes she was wearing and the smell of her lotion. It is very hard to analyze a character like Hannibal because he is so complex. He is very courteous, proper, and not violent one minute, and the next minute he is biting someone’s face off. I also found it funny that he would try to profile anyone he could, but when it came to himself, he wouldn’t do it. It was almost as if he thought of himself so highly that he was an exception to any type of social structure, like he had it all figured out.
In closing, this movie provided good examples of what serial killer profiling is and also what it is not. There were many techniques involved, such as geographic profiling, interviewing, and investigating crime scenes. I believe the system of the FBI is very complex and has come a long way in twenty years since even this movie came out. I also believe that even though it is a struggle, we have come a long way in investigating every option and not developing tunnel vision so we can catch the right guy the first time.
Terms: profiling, gender role, FBI, serial killer, organized killer, hedonistic, power-oriented, transgender, signature, psychopath, psychotic, geographic profiling, tunnel vision

Movie analysis "Silence of the Lambs"

Even now as I begin to write my head is flooded with the different aspects and sections of our book, Psychology and Law and this movie have in common. My bedroom looks like a movie theater with popcorn and candy; my eyes were glued to the screen as if I was watching it for the first time. Actually, I was because this time I was an investigator not just a movie goer. I had to watch every frame, every moment and I didn't want to miss a thing. I was not only dissecting the characters but the music and the sounds. It was all very psychological. How did this movie involve our book, our class and which section? Let’s go through it:

Straight from Chapter One, that is, psychology tell us how people actually behave, and the law tells us how people ought to behave, clearly that is the foundation of this movie. Psychology can be defined as the study of human behavior which is also the starting point of profiling, which is what section we are currently on now and is also a main aspect of the movie.

The first concept of the movie that I would like to compare to our book is over the forensic psychology part as well as the psychological autopsy that occurred only once in the movie because I feel that the two are intertwined with one another. According to Chapter One in our book, Psychology and Law, the definition of forensic psychology is considered to be in the process of “working” and is defined as “the use of psychological knowledge or research methods to advise, evaluate, or reform the legal system.” That is exactly and absolutely how I see this movie and that can almost be a great description of it if you ask me. This movie is about how much psychological knowledge does one person have over another? What makes this kind of marking and why did they do this or that? These are all questions that only someone involved in forensics, psychology and/or law could even begin to answer. Truly the basic definition of Psychology is the study of human behavior and this movie was a perfect fit.

There were no interrogations or confessions to examine or reflect though in this movie but there was some lie detection involved from several of the characters and that is covered in Chapter three. Can we really tell when other are lying? I believe so. In the movie the character played by Anthony Hopkins, Hannibal Lector made sure that Clarisse knew he would be able to detect whether she was lying to him when he began asking her questions and she knew he would be able to detect it so she went ahead and was perfectly honest with him. Plus, she was putting the safety of the girl that was missing ahead of her own feelings. Deception is all around us and the movie was of no exception. There were a lot of “looking into each other’s eyes” during this movie as I now reflect over it. And that is also covered in Chapter three, telling lies through the eyes and it also talks about facial expressions and how they correlate to whether or not someone is telling the truth or not. I was not only looking at every detail from the movie but I was looking at their facial features and the sounds of everything. It is definitely a new experience now trying to watch any movie after doing two of these types of analysis. You begin to notice things on a deeper lever and with even more psychological reference.

The main point of this movie as well as the chapter that we just finished is over the profiling aspect. The whole movie is over the FBI agent played by Jodie Foster, Clarisse, getting a profile of the killer that they are looking for. Even though it is just a movie, the whole concept is quite fascinating to me and it truly must be an art. I was very surprised to read through our book that there are not as many real profilers as one would think. This movie if not inspired me more to look into a field similar if not that exact one. Chapter 5 is about profiling and even begins with a short clip from the movie and the two really do go hand in hand with one another. From the way the movie talks about the trace evidence and how it relates to what our book describes in the context. There is also the relation between the measure and meaning in the forensic identification. The scientific foundation of how it all began in the movie and how Hannibal’s character knew from the beginning the identity of the killer but he had to let this whole thing play out the way it did for his own benefit. The error and bias on the parts of the doctor and the police are definitely portrayed in the movie because as one killer gets caught an even more dangerous one gets away, a true psychopath. The definition of profiling is once again completed and utterly portrayed to the fullest and how the use of intuition is used is also very real. I know that this was just a movie but there has to be some truth to the way the real world is. Just as there are true horrific crimes with unspeakable killers, there must be those law enforcement officials who are trained and have that gut feeling or those years of experience to rely on.

Once again this film went over so many psychological references and still has me thinking if that is something that I could possible still do with my life. Can I really be a forensic psychologist or a criminal profiler? I don’t know but as I read more through our book and do these assignments I know that I am getting closer to what I will aspire to be.

Terms: Criminal, profiler, law enforcement, killers, police, error, bias, crimes, intuition, psychopath, trace evidence, relations, questioning, identity, forensic identification, forensic psychology, analysis, forensic psychologist, lies, safety, interrogations, confessions, experience, officials, gut feelings, deception, truth, detect, psychological, legal system, behavior, field, investigations, law, and psychology.

Silence of the Lambs is one of those movies where you do not want to stop it until the movie is over with; it is that good of a movie. In this movie a training FBI agent Clarice Starling is given a particular task to find the serial killer Buffalo Bill and with this task she must talk to the famous Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Dr. Lecter was a psychiatrist and also a violent psychopath who is now serving life in prison.

Dr. Lecter I believe is a huge clue to finding Buffalo Bill, just because he brings so much to the table and give indirect information to Starling so all she has to do is piece things together and use her knowledge from school to figure out where he is at, and in the end of the movie she puts all of these pieces together to figure out where he has been hiding out at.

Criminal profiling is not physically stated in the movie but with our knowledge from reading chapter 5 we can put together some information that leads us to believe what kind of killer Buffalo Bill was. With how he captures and kills his prey, B.B would have to be move along the lines of a hedonistic killer just because he likes to toy with his victims before killing them so he does it for a thrill. We can see in one of these scenes that he asks a young gal around a certain size of clothing; I believe it was a 9, and asks them to help him move some things into his truck. While the young girl has no idea what he has planned she loads the couch up first and lets him push it into the bed, he then ends up removing her clothing and making sure she is the size that he needs and takes her back home with him to then later throw her in an opening of the floor and let her starve. He starves his prey so he can wear their skin; he gets joy and pleasure from this, this is where he becomes a hedonistic killer.
Also in this movie they go into geographic profiling, even though the detectives knew that a body was not placed in the river, they checked there anyway because they knew it might have had some type of evidence to help them link pieces together to find B.B.

Another thing in this movie that is mentioned is the aspect of autopsies, both psychological and body. The detectives working on this case use old information and old records to help them solve this mystery of where B.B is hiding and capture him. They looked back at old killings that he had done. The detectives looked at a body autopsy of a young girl that B.B had killed and looked at the different marks that he had left on her body and they also looked deeper, they had found a moth/butterfly deep in her airways. They found out that this type of bug is only located in a certain part of the world and could only be living here by replication or breeding in some person’s home.

All of these different clues going from one case to another would be case-linkage. Evidence that is traced and is also found in another case goes along the lines of case-linking.

KEY TERMS: Case-linkage, criminal profiling, geographical profiling, hedonistic killer, serial killer, psychiatrist