Whoever fights monsters...

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)

Fantasy and serial murder

ALL of the murderers interviewed by the FBI, during their Criminal Personality Research Project had compelling fantasies where they could control their world.

They overcompensated for the aggression in their early lives by repeating the abuse in fantasy, but this time, with themselves as the aggressors. Fantasy is defined as a happenstance unattainable in normal life. “Normal” people learn to accept social control and moderation as limits on their behavior. The deviant person, having had very few true restraints on his behavior since childhood, believes he can act out his fantasy and that nobody will be able to stop him.

• The offender’s commitment to the fantasies deepens as he becomes a loner in adolescence, subject to the onset of puberty and sexual arousal. Aggressive, and with a feeling of having been cheated by society, he may channel his hostility into fantasies, which are characterized by strong visual components, and by themes of dominance, revenge, molestation, manipulation, and control. The other person is depersonalized, made into an “object”.
• Deviants feel the sexual urge without having learned that it has anything to do with affection.
• The cognitive mapping process is almost complete by now, It is the development of thinking patterns that affect how the person relates to himself and to his environment, it determines how the individual gives meaning to the events that happen in his world.
• He views the world as a hostile place. He becomes almost incapable of interacting properly with the outside world, because his thinking patterns are all turned inward, designed only to stimulate himself in an attempt to reduce tensions, which only reinforces his isolation: a loop has developed. The effects of his antisocial acts (i.e. cruelty to animals and other children, arson) become incorporated into his fantasies, which are pushed to a more intensively violent level.
• More retreat from society follows, and, eventually, so do more experiments with actualizing the fantasies

After rehearsals, and minor attempts at acting out the fantasy -all it really takes is a stressor for him to try and make the fantasy a reality.

FBI Profiler, Robert Ressler’s 1984 paper, presented to the International Association of Forensic Sciences, he and his colleagues listed the following as “general characteristics” of serial sex murderers:

• over 90% are white males
• they tend to be intelligent, with high IQ’s, in the bright normal range
• in spite of their IQ’s, they do poorly in school, have a hard time holding down jobs, and often work as unskilled laborers
• they tend to come from markedly unstable families: typically, with an absent father and domineering mother
• their families often have criminal, psychiatric and alcoholic histories
• they hate their parents
• they are commonly abused as children - psychologically, physically and sexually
• many end up spending time in institutions as children, and have records of early psychiatric problems
• they have a high rate of suicide attempts
• they are intensely interested, from a very early age, in voyeurism, fetishism and S&M pornography

In addition, the Homicidal Triad (McDonald Triad) is also noted (bedwetting, firesetting, cruelty to animals - or other children)

Serial Rape - a study by FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood

The research concerning serial rapists’ behavior during and following the commission of the crimes has determined that:

• The majority of the rapes were premeditated
• The “con” approach was used most often in initiating contact with the victim
• A threatening presence and verbal threats were used to maintain control over the victim
• Minimal or no force was used in the majority of instances
• The victims physically, passively or verbally resisted the rapists in slightly over 50% of the offenses
• The most common offender reaction to resistance was to verbally threaten the victim
• Slightly over one-third of the offenders experienced a sexual dysfunction, and the preferred sexual acts were vaginal rape and forced fellatio
• Low levels of pleasure were reported by the rapists from the sexual acts
• The rapists tended not to be concerned with precautionary measures to protect their identities
• Approximately one-third of the rapists had consumed alcohol prior to the crime and slightly less reported using some other drug.

The most common post-offense behavior reported by the rapists were feelings of remorse and guilt, following the case in the media and an increase in alcohol and drug consumption. These characteristics, although not generally applicable to every rapist, can be helpful in learning more about offenders, their behaviors and the heinnous crime of rape

(photo: Douglas Junco, serial rapist)

Fantasy

ALL of the murderers interviewed by the FBI, during their Criminal Personality Research Project had compelling fantasies where they could control their world.

They overcompensated for the aggression in their early lives by repeating the abuse in fantasy, but this time, with themselves as the aggressors. Fantasy is defined as a happenstance unattainable in normal life. “Normal” people learn to accept social control and moderation as limits on their behavior. The deviant person, having had very few true restraints on his behavior since childhood, believes he can act out his fantasy and that nobody will be able to stop him.

• The offender’s commitment to the fantasies deepens as he becomes a loner in adolescence, subject to the onset of puberty and sexual arousal. Aggressive, and with a feeling of having been cheated by society, he may channel his hostility into fantasies, which are characterized by strong visual components, and by themes of dominance, revenge, molestation, manipulation, and control. The other person is depersonalized, made into an “object”.
• Deviants feel the sexual urge without having learned that it has anything to do with affection.
• The cognitive mapping process is almost complete by now, It is the development of thinking patterns that affect how the person relates to himself and to his environment, it determines how the individual gives meaning to the events that happen in his world.
• He views the world as a hostile place. He becomes almost incapable of interacting properly with the outside world, because his thinking patterns are all turned inward, designed only to stimulate himself in an attempt to reduce tensions, which only reinforces his isolation: a loop has developed. The effects of his antisocial acts (i.e. cruelty to animals and other children, arson) become incorporated into his fantasies, which are pushed to a more intensively violent level.
• More retreat from society follows, and, eventually, so do more experiments with actualizing the fantasies

After rehearsals, and minor attempts at acting out the fantasy -all it really takes is a stressor for him to try and make the fantasy a reality.

Serial Rape - a study by FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood

The research concerning serial rapists’ behavior during and following the commission of the crimes has determined that:

• The majority of the rapes were premeditated
• The “con” approach was used most often in initiating contact with the victim
• A threatening presence and verbal threats were used to maintain control over the victim
• Minimal or no force was used in the majority of instances
• The victims physically, passively or verbally resisted the rapists in slightly over 50% of the offenses
• The most common offender reaction to resistance was to verbally threaten the victim
• Slightly over one-third of the offenders experienced a sexual dysfunction, and the preferred sexual acts were vaginal rape and forced fellatio
• Low levels of pleasure were reported by the rapists from the sexual acts
• The rapists tended not to be concerned with precautionary measures to protect their identities
• Approximately one-third of the rapists had consumed alcohol prior to the crime and slightly less reported using some other drug.

The most common post-offense behavior reported by the rapists were feelings of remorse and guilt, following the case in the media and an increase in alcohol and drug consumption. These characteristics, although not generally applicable to every rapist, can be helpful in learning more about offenders, their behaviors and the heinnous crime of rape

(photo: Douglas Junco, serial rapist)

Catching a Serial Killer - Investigative Recommendations

According to the experts, there is no common thread tying serial killers together—no single cause, no single motive, no single profile. But there are some common “best practices” that they recommend for investigations:

For example:

• Strong leadership throughout the chain of command that can withstand the external pressure sometimes brought to bear on serial murder cases by politicians, the victims’ families, and the media;
• Task forces that bring together agencies from the different jurisdictions to effectively combine expertise, resources, and information;
• An automated case management system like the FBI’s Rapid Start that organizes and collates lead information so investigators don’t get overwhelmed;
• A team of crime analysts who can help investigators develop timelines of murders and backgrounds on suspects, highlight similar case elements, etc. (note: if your agency doesn’t have such a team, ask for help from a neighboring jurisdiction or from our National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime);
• Consistent forensic services, which in the best case scenario means that the same crime scene team goes to each scene and the same crime lab processes all the evidence (but if that’s not possible, then enhanced communication between the teams and the labs is a must to ensure consistency); and
• A strong media plan that successfully straddles the line between giving out relevant information to the media and not compromising the investigation—while helping to raise public awareness about the killings

FBI: 2008

John Wayne Gacy, in an interview with retired FBI Profiler, Robert Ressler

Ressler: The media have called you a homosexual killer. What is your position on homosexuality?

Gacy: I have nothing against it. I am an outpsoken liberal. I don’t care for the labeling. I don’t care for any labeling, for that fact.

Ressler: Do you claim to be a homosexual?

Gacy: No, I would definitely not be homosexual. I have nothing aginst what they do, and I don’t deny that I engage in sex with males, but that’s - I am bisexual.

Ressler: You’re bisexual?

Gacy: Right. My preference is women, and I have been married enough times and have children, and I see nothing wrong with it. They blew this out of proportion, because, again, it enforced their sexual angle of the case. I am not homosexual, not in any sense of the word, I says, ‘cause I was married twice; and just because I didn’t get along in my marriages - My marriages went down the drain only because I was a workaholic, working seven day a week and that -

Gacy always expressed anger that he was accused of having sex with his victims. His second wife had reported that they rarely had sex, and their children were adopted. Gacy’s father reportedly often said to him, as a child, “you’re queer”, or “you’re going to turn out to be a queer”. Robert Ressler writes:

“Gacy had a great need in general for denial, and specifically to deny the notion that he was a homosexual. In our previous conversations, however, Gacy had indicated that homosexual acts were a matter of convenience to him: he was the sort of guy who’d put in eighty-hour workweeks, and because of this heavy schedule he didn’t have time for dating women…It was much easier for him to pick up a young guy to give him oral sex and it wouldn’t cost much; that would hold him for a few weeks and enable him to go back to work. But why didn’t he go to a female prostitute, which would have been accessible? Gacy goes to great lengths to deny his homosexuality, as though there were some aspects of homosexuality that he finds reprehensible”.

Profiling the Vampire of Sacramento

Psychological profiling proved its worth in the capture of Richard Trenton Chase, the so-called “Vampire of Sacramento.” After he murdered a woman and drank her blood in 1978, the FBI, concerned at the brutality of the crime, called in the profilers. They noted the disorder at the scene and, from a study of body type and mental temperament, concluded the murderer was white, thin, undernourished, and in his mid-twenties. As a disorganized type, he’d beunemployed and live alone. They also guessed he would kill again and, unfortunately, three days later he did. He murdered three people in their own home, stole the family car and then abandoned it. The second murder provided more information to refine the profile. Chase was soon found, living locally, and he fit the profile. He had a history of mental illness, admitted the crimes, but did not see he had done wrong. He told his interrogators that his own blood was turning to sand, so he had to become a vampire. The capture of Chase saved many lives - he had more murders planned and marked down on a calendar found in his room.