Whoever fights monsters...

Building a Profile

Profilers use information from the crime scene to put together a psychological profile of the offender. 

It is important to distinguish organized and disorganizedcharacteristics at the crime scene:

• If the crime scene suggests the murder was carefully planned and executed, then the killer may be a man of average to high intelligence who has a stable social network. He may be married with a family. He may also be employed. Living a “normal” life on the surface requires a degree of self-control, which manifests itself in the way the crime is carried out. Sometimes, though, the organized offender does lose control in the actual attack when the fantasy motivation takes over. In such cases, a violent or frenzied attack may occur, yet there may also be careful attempts to conceal or destroy evidence.

• The disorganized offender leaves a mess at the crime scene. He may use any weapon that is available to strike out and makes little effort to cover his tracks. This lack of planning and control often suggests low intelligence. He is likely to be unemployed and may be a bit of a loner with few friends. The attack may be marked by excessive violence and could also include sexual contact with the victim after death. The disorganized serial killer often turns out to have a history of mental illness.

A number of other factors can be added to the profile. Many serial killers are young adults in their twenties or thirties. Some crimes show a high level of experience and skill, and this could mean the killer is older and has had practice.

It used to be thought that serial killers were mostly white and that serial killers picked victims of their own race. We are currently noticing that more and more often, racial lines are being crossed.

Many start out killing close to their home or work, ie. in their comfort zone, an area they know well. Organized killers are likely to start to move farther away, and may be highly mobile, which can make the logistics of catching them difficult. Disorganized killers are more likely to stay close to home.

Of particular interest to those investigating serial killers is what is taken from the scene or from the victim. In most crimes, the perpetrator will take items of monetary value, like cash or jewelry. They may also take evidence, such as a weapon. The serial killer often takes something known as a trophy or souvenir, of no obvious value except to him in his fantasy world. The item is known as a trophy if it is seen as a symbol of achievement and a souvenir if it is to remind the killer of the crime.

Victimology, the study of the victim, can be crucial in tracking down a serial killer. The investigators need to know what it was about that particular person that attracted the killer. Was the victim truly chosen at random or had the person been stalked previously? The killer may have been searching for the one person who fit his fantasy and, if a common link can be found between the victims, this may be very revealing. For instance, nearly all of the victims of serial killer Ted Bundy had dark hair parted in the center.

The location of the serial killer’s crimes is also of significance. Geographical profiling is based on the premise that the killer will operate in a zone where he feels comfortable. This may be near home or, alternatively, far away from it, depending on his psychological make-up. Location is not just where the crime was committed, but is also where the victim was abducted and where the body was taken and left after the crime. Establishing a geographical profile can be challenging if the victim was a prostitute, for instance, or someone who might not be missed by relatives or co-workers for a while.

Source: World of Forensic Science, ©2006 Gale Cengage

(photo AND don’t even complain to me that Charles Manson is not a serial killer! It is still a cool montage!)

Psychological Linkage Analysis: Joseph Vacher, “The French Ripper”

An important aspect of profiling is that the profiler can often use the behavioral-psychological clues an offender leaves behind at a crime scene to link crimes together that are committed by the same offender. Sometimes it’s fairly obvious, and sometimes the clues are much more discreet.

A series of sexual homicides began in France in 1894. They were not immediately connected to one offender because of the distance between the incidents. Some people have offered that the offender was Jack the Ripper, having fled England to continue his crimes in France.

Most of these assaults occurred in rural areas. The victims were young men or women who were walking alone or tending to their sheep.

After the murder of a 17-year old girl in his district, a French magistrate, Louis-Albert Fonfrede began gathering information about reports of similar murders throughout France. He postulated that it was not a single offender responsible for the crimes (because of distance between the murders), but rather, it was a new crime epidemic.

Another French magistrate, Emile Fourquet, was passionately interested in police work. Fourquet heard about one of the murders, and then learned that Fonfrede had gathered information on multiple murders. Fourquet saw a connection between the crimes: the victims had been young shepherds, and all had been mutilated with a razor or knife and sodomized antemortem. A series of “hacking” type neck wounds was present on the victims, indicating that the killer had blitz-attacked the victim from behind. Witnesses from two scenes reported a vagrant with a twisted lip and droopy eye, but this man eluded police.

Fourquet organized the files, dividing them into two charts; one keeping track of information about victimology and Modus Operandi. He analyzed autopsy reports and police reports. Using this method, he determined that there were 8 connected murders, with the bodies being disposed of in the same way, the same type of weapon being used, the same wound patterns on the victims, and the presence of mutilation and a sexual attack. To him, the distance between crime scenes did not matter, the similarities were too many for there to be more than one killer.

Fourquet’s second chart contained his ‘profile’ of the killer. He based this information on eyewitness reports after interviewing as many witnesses as he could find. He extracted the common elements from the accounts to make a list of behavioral patterns, which he called the killer’s signature.

The attacks continued until one potential victim, a young woman, fought off the attacker and her husband was able to detain him until police arrived. The man’s name was Joseph Vacher. He was 29 years old and he apparently fit Fourquet’s profile, who arrived to interview Vacher  - and who was able to obtain a confession.

Vacher was apparently a former soldier who was discharged from the military due to “psychic disturbances.’ He admitted to all the crimes that Fourquet attributed to him - as well as a few more. Vacher reported that he had experienced these homicidal urges since he was a young teenager. He offered an excuse - that his blood was poisoned by a rapid dog bite he received as a child.

Vacher became known as the French Ripper, and was executed.

The Vacher crimes also prompted criminologist Alexandre Lacassagne to advance the field of forensic science by using evidence gathered at the crime scenes (such as molds of foot prints, using bone growth and teeth to determine the age of victims, and blood spatter analysis) to help convict Vacher.

“The First Profile”: Jack the Ripper

Dr. Thomas Bond, a surgeon who participated in the autopsies of some of Jack the Ripper’s victims is often credited with creating the first profile of an unknown offender.

Five victims are attributed to Jack the Ripper, though there is debate about there possibly being more victims. Jack was famous for eviscerating his victims - an aspect of his crimes which readily connected his string of murders.

On November 10, 1888 (two days after the last known Ripper murder, and after the famous “From Hell” note) Dr. Thomas Bond provided his assessment of who could have committed these crimes. He wrote:

“In each case the mutilation was inflicted by a person who had no scientific nor anatomical knowledge…the murderer must have been a man of physical strength, and great coolness and daring. There is no evidence that he had an accomplice. He must, in my opinion, be a man subject to periodic attacks of homicidal and erotic mania…the murderer in external appearance is quite likely to be a quiet, inoffensive looking man, probably middle-aged, and neatly and respectably dressed…he would probably be solitary and eccentric in his habits, also he is most likely to be a man without regular occupation.”

Dr. Bond also believed that the Ripper was responsible for the 1889 murder of Alice McKenzie.

Unfortunately, the killer was never caught, so we cannot know how accurate Dr. Bond’s assessment was or was not.

The Profiling Process

The profiling process is defined by the FBI as an investigative technique by which to identify the major personality and behavioral characteristics of the offender based upon an analysis of the crime(s) he or she has committed. The process generally involves seven steps.

• Evaluation of the criminal act itself
• Comprehensive evaluation of the specifics of the crime scene(s)
• Comprehensive analysis of the victim
• Evaluation of preliminary police reports
• Evaluation of the medical examiner’s autopsy protocol
• Development of profile with critical offender characteristics
• Investigative suggestions predicated on construction of the profile

The process used by the person preparing a criminal personality profile is quite similar to that used by clinicians to make a diagnosis and treatment plan: Data is collected and assessed, the situation reconstructed, hypotheses are formulated, a profile developed and tested, and the results reported back. Criminal personality profiling has been used by law enforcement with success in many areas and is viewed as a way in which the investigating officer can narrow the scope of an investigation. Profiling unfortunately does not provide the identity of the offender, but it does indicate the type of person most likely to have committed a crime having certain unique characteristics.

(from the paper Criminal Profiling: A Viable Investigative Tool Against Violent Crime by Douglas&Warren)

I know people will accuse me of being self-serving, but through God’s help, I have been able to come to the point, much too late, where I can feel the hurt and the pain I am responsible for. Yes. Absolutely! During the past few days, myself and a number of investigators have been talking about unsolved cases – murders I was involved in. It’s hard to talk about all these years later, because it revives all the terrible feelings and thoughts that I have steadfastly and diligently dealt with – I think successfully. It has been reopened and I have felt the pain and the horror of that. I hope that those who I have caused so much grief, even if they don’t believe my expression of sorrow, will believe what I’m saying now; there are those loose in their towns and communities, like me, whose dangerous impulses are being fueled, day in and day out, by violence in the media in its various forms – particularly sexualized violence.

Ted Bundy - the day before his execution

John Wayne Gacy - Doing Time

While in prison, Gacy claimed to be a quiet and kind person. He blamed some of the parents for the deaths of their own children because their sons were prostitutes. He said he was incapable of violence and allegedly received letters every day from “kind people”, most of them women. “90% of the writers are women, and I have 41 people on my visiting list. I’m allowed 3 visits a month”, explained Gacy. Although the prosecution portrayed Gacy as a skillful, competent torturer and killer who enjoyed the “God-like power” of life and death, Gacy said it was a lie: “How could I live on top of those bodies?” Yet, in a 1986 interview with author Tim Cahill, he remarked that if he could spend 15 minutes in a room with the parents of the people he killed, “they would understand”.

Gacy spent much of his prison time painting pictures and having them sold to the public. He loved the attention.

On May 10, 1994, John Wayne Gacy was put to death by lethal injection. Shortly after his death, several of his paintings were purchased at an auction for $20,000. The buyer, wanting to send a clear message to the public, burned Gacy’s artwork.

Serial Killers with Morbid Death Fascinations

• John Wayne Gacy - worked in a mortuary, sleeping in the embalming room, alone with corpses, but was fired after corpses were found partially undressed
• Dennis Nilsen - pretended he was a corpse and masturbated in the mirror to his own dead image
• Jeffrey Dahmer - loved the dissection in biology class, told a classmate that he sliced open the fish he caught because “I want to see what it looks like inside, I like to see how things work.”
• Ed Gein - grave robbing, lamp shades made from human skin, seat covers, and skulls used for drinking cups. He also made clothing and bracelets out of body parts

There are four common typologies of serial killers:

1. Visionary Killer: This killer feels compelled to kill because of ‘voices’ in their heads or visions that tell them to do so. For example, Herbert Williams Mullin claimed to hear voices that told him a disastrous earthquake was imminent, but he could save California through murder. Mullin killed thirteen people in an effort to ‘save California’. It was later determined that Mullin suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

2. Mission Oriented Killer: These individuals feel that it is their duty or mission to kill certain kinds of people. For example, Ted Kaczynski, commonly refered to as the Unabomber, started a bombing campaign in an effort to save the environment, which he felt was being destroyed around him. He targeted places that were creating ‘high technology’ such as universities and airlines. Kaczynski’s bombs killed three people and injured twenty-three.

3. Power-Control Killers: These killers seek complete control over their victims. Seuxal activity is almost always involved in these cases. John Wayne Gacy,“The Clown Killer”, would fall into this category. Gacy murdered and raped 33 teenage boys, burying 26 of them in the crawl space of his home.

4. Hedonistic Serial Killers: This is the most common type of serial killer. These individuals kill for the thrill and enjoyment they get from the act of killing. There are three subtypes of hedonistic killers:

• Hedonistic comfort killers: Killing victims provides the killer with some sort of comfort; usually money. Dorthea Puente ran a boarding house in California where she killed her elderly tenants and buried them in the backyard so she could claim their social insurance checks.
• Hedonistic lust killers: The serial sexual predator; fantasy plays a large role and their satisfaction depends on the amount of torture and mutilation they inflict on their victims. Jeffrey Dahmer is one of the best-known hedonistic lust killers. He searched for a beautiful, submissive, and eternal lover. Dahmer killed 17 men and boys in this search for his perfect lover; his murders involved rape, torture, dismemberment, necrophilia, and cannibalism (so that a part of his victims would stay with him forever).
• Hedonistic thrill killers: Their primary thrill is to create fear and death. The act is usually not sexual and is not drawn out over period of time, they are solely interested in the kill. Hedonistic thrill killers often work in teams. The notorious “Zodiac Killer” claimed to be responsible for 37 murders but investigators have only been able to pinpoint 7 victims, two of which survived. The Zodiac killer sent taunting letters to the police, and was never caught or identified.