Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide And The Criminal Mind (15 page)

The killer had served in the army
.

The complexity and multiple components of his crime, plus the clear evidence of detailed advance planning, told me that this offender was of high-average or better intelligence, but I didn’t think he was educated beyond high school.

He was of high-average intelligence, and he had completed a high school GED while in the army
.

My research shows that these men typically appear friendly and outgoing, so I described him as an extrovert with a good sense of humor.

“Life of the party” was how his friends described him
.

In order to reduce their risk of capture, organized killers most often select total strangers as victims. I therefore believed this killer probably was a stranger to Kathy.

He was
.

Organized killers tend to hunt outside their neighborhoods. I surmised that this one resided a good distance from both the abduction and disposal sites.

He did not live or work within forty miles of either
.

The Art of the Profile

This sketch of Kathy’s killer did not require higher psychic powers: no ESP, second sight, intuition, or voodoo. It was a purely deductive exercise based on the facts of the crime and my experience with such crimes and offenders.

When I joined the BSU in 1978, profiling was a little-known and spare-time service some of us unofficially provided to local law enforcement officers if they specifically requested us to do so. Usually we were called in when police officers who had been selected to attend the FBI National Academy brought their files on strange and unsolved crimes with them to Quantico. We would review the records and then provide our best opinion of the UNSUB’s characteristics and traits.

At first we called our work “psychological profiling.” Mental health professionals immediately complained that this was misleading, and they were right. We were not licensed psychologists. So we began to call the process “Criminal personality profiling.” Once again, we ruffled sensibilities. After all, what did a bunch of FBI agents know about the human personality?

We again changed the title, this time to “criminal investigative analysis,” and when no one objected, the term stuck. Eventually criminal investigative analysis (CIA) came to describe not just profiling but all of the various operational tasks performed within the BSU.

Our informal franchise quickly evolved. Officers began calling to request a profile even if they had a suspect identified or in custody. What they actually wanted was our input on any number of matters where the outcome might hinge on personality and behavior, both the suspect’s and theirs. Sometimes investigators asked us to suggest interview strategies. Other times an officer would want to know what type of materials should be included in search warrant lists.

Could we suggest how a certain individual may have committed a murder, or how he disposed of the body? What type of investigative strategy might be most successful against a particular UNSUB? Or what type of trial strategy did we recommend for a particular type of case and defendant?

In response to this broad range of requests, one of the techniques we developed was IPA, or indirect personality assessment. In an IPA you collect as much detailed information as you can about a particular individual in order to identify his strengths and weaknesses. Then, joining that information with your knowledge of criminal behavior, you develop strategies for law enforcement.

You might advise a proactive investigative technique to draw out a particular type of offender. Then you might suggest when and how to interview him. Some types of offenders respond well to a patient, sympathetic approach. For others, a simple hand on the shoulder, from behind, can have a galvanizing effect.

Later, you might give advice to the prosecutor on the content of his opening remarks, his cross-examination strategies, or even his order of witnesses. Prosecution strategies used in the trial of Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams are a good example.

Another of our services was linkage analysis. Here, we examine behavior in a series of crimes in an attempt to assess the likelihood that one person was responsible for all, or some, of them.

Equivocal death analysis (EDA) also emerged as a BSU subspeciality. An EDA weighs the available evidence to determine if a homicide, suicide, or accident most likely occurred. The process is similar to profiling except that you deal with a lot more variables.

Profile
is among the most overworked terms in the law enforcement lexicon. There are drug courier profiles, child molester profiles, terrorist profiles, and even racial profiling. The usage has spread into society as a whole, so that today we often hear of medical profiles, mental health profiles, and even frequent flyer profiles.

In the BSU sense of the word, a profile is a listing of the characteristics and traits of an unidentified person. It is not meant to put a name and address on an UNSUB. But if done properly, the profile identifies the offender’s personality type in a way that helps police narrow the focus of their investigation.

Profiling is subjective rather than objective; more art than science; an investigative tool rather than a magical solution to crime. I would never testify that a particular person must have committed a crime because he or she fit my profile. Likewise, I don’t believe profiles should be part of an affidavit filed in support of an arrest or search warrant. The evidence that an investigator has compiled from experience or research (her own or that of others) is a far more valid basis for search warrants.

I also strongly urge anyone interested in entering this field as a career to be extremely cautious. There are a growing number of frauds out there who claim they can teach profiling, for a price. Some even claim that they will also find the student a position once he or she is trained. Proceed with caution!

While these sellers of magical elixirs may be superficially conversant in the lore and terminology of profiling, they’re selling fairy tales, not facts. One woman told me that she’d paid a thousand dollars for “expert” training plus a guarantee of employment. But when it came time to place her, she was told that unfortunately all profiling positions were filled at the time.

In my experience the
only
legitimate profiling courses have been programs within the FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) at Quantico, which includes the one-year police fellowship program begun at the Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) in the mid-1980s and the subsequent police understudy program taught by NCAVC-trained police fellows.

Setting Limits

When we first started to define what profiles could and could not accomplish, we established three criteria for a crime to be considered for behavioral analysis.

1. It must be a violent or potentially violent crime.
   
2. It must be unsolved.
   
3. All major leads must be exhausted.
   

While profiling unquestionably could have been adapted to nonviolent crimes, we wanted to restrict the types of cases we would examine in order to contain the volume of work.

A particularly upsetting example of why we restricted profiling to unsolved offenses came early in my career at the BSU. Two students of mine, both detectives, asked if I could spare some time to examine a homicide they were working. I agreed to do so after class. For several hours I studied the crime-scene photographs and the accompanying materials and asked the two men questions.

Finally, I presented an oral profile of the type of person I believed had committed the murder. After I finished, one of them said, “You are absolutely correct. That’s what he was like.”

I asked what he meant by that. They explained that the case was solved and the person responsible was awaiting execution. They just wanted to see if I knew what I was talking about! From that point on, the criterion of “must be unsolved” was added.

Another rule we established is that we would accept cases only from the agency responsible for the investigation or prosecution of the crime. This precluded the possibility of one jurisdiction requesting a profile in the hopes of proving a point or embarrassing another. It also ensured the cooperation of the agency with the necessary information.

Because the crux of profiling is behavior, certain crimes may simply not yield enough information to infer what the unknown criminal is like. Among the most difficult cases to profile are those in which there is (1) no known cause of death, (2) an unidentified victim, or (3) lack of behavior to study and analyze.

If I am brought into a case in which the only evidence is a skeleton, with no forensic information to indicate how the victim was killed, how can I arrive at opinions as to the type of person who committed the murder? I can’t.

An unidentified victim presents another set of obstacles. As in Kathy’s case, a profile often starts with what we know about the victim. If a female, was she a housewife, student, drug abuser, hitchhiker, alcoholic, prostitute, sexually promiscuous, or a saint? Each possibility would take the process in a different direction. How would she have reacted to a violent attack? Would she have gone home with a total stranger? If we don’t know the answers to such questions, we are only guessing and not analyzing.

I can hypothesize a case in which a rapist says nothing, commits no physical violence, and engages in no sexual behavior other than vaginal rape. This situation would provide insufficient behavior for me to study, and without that, I would have nothing to analyze. The same would be true of a homicide in which the only behavior is a single-shot murder. Profilers need something concrete. We don’t use crystal balls.

The Right Stuff

Clearly, profiling is not suitable work for everyone. Based on our experience at the BSU, here are some of the attributes we know are needed to be successful.

John Douglas, Bob Ressler, and I used to interview FBI agent applicants for positions within the profiling section of the BSU. Every one of them had excellent investigative records and came to us with the highest recommendation from his or her respective FBI field office. But that did not necessarily make the candidates suitable for the training or the work. We established criteria that are used to this day.

To begin with we looked for
life experience
. We wanted someone who was mature, had been successful in life before coming to the Bureau, and had at least five years investigative experience with the FBI. Consequently, almost every person we selected was between thirty and forty-five years of age.

Open-mindedness
was our second criterion. A profiler must be willing to consider different possibilities as well as the differing opinions of others. Too often an investigator locks in on one idea or explanation and refuses to budge. His self-worth seems to hinge on being correct. Such a person will not be able to profile successfully.

A critical attribute is
common sense
, which to us meant practical intelligence. Common sense isn’t all that common. For example, intelligent, educated people sometimes allow what they’ve been taught to get in the way of their common sense.

When I was stationed at the army’s Fort Rucker in Alabama, our family dog, Happy, developed mange and began losing hair in patches. I took the him to the vet, who gave Happy two injections. He also gave me salve to apply daily and a prescription for pills that the dog was to be given three times a day.

After a week of medication, Happy’s condition showed no change. My neighbor, a helicopter pilot from Tennessee, suggested applying “burnt lube oil” (that is, used motor oil) to the infected areas. He said that’s how his family had always treated mange at home on the farm.

Willing to try anything to help the long-suffering Happy, I purchased a quart of used motor oil and applied it. Bingo, the infection cleared up within a matter of days. When I later told Happy’s vet about the burnt lube oil, he said, “Oh, that’s what we used to do on the farm in North Dakota.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?” I asked, thinking of the expense and trouble of the ineffective pills.

“Roy,” he said candidly, “I have too much education to prescribe burnt lube oil!”

Another important criterion is
intuition
. Webster’s calls intuition, “The direct knowing of something without the conscious use of reasoning; the ability to perceive or know things without conscious reasoning; keen and quick insight.” Every criminal investigator will tell you about some legendary detective he or she knew who possessed uncanny intuition. Somehow this person just sensed the truth of a matter where no one else could. I’ve seen this faculty at work, and it is a critical asset to the profiler. I just don’t believe there’s such a thing as intuition.

I prefer to think of the human mind as an immense hard drive, a massive collection of data from which nothing of potential value to its owner is ever deleted. This information may not be dancing around in your forebrain, but it is ready when you need it.

I believe that what we call intuition is simply stored and forgotten experiences that the conscious mind somehow can instantaneously retrieve, combine, and process in a way that, superficially at least, seems miraculous or preternatural.

Next, the prospective profiler must be able to
isolate personal feelings about the crime, the criminal, and the victim
. Deviant sexual crimes often are horrible. The analyst must isolate himself from that horror or else run the risk of becoming a vicarious victim. One of my close friends in state law enforcement, a trained profiler, eventually was overwhelmed by the continuous stream of grotesque rapes and murders and finally retired in order to regain his peace of mind.

One way to keep the crime and criminal at a distance is to avoid using inflammatory language. As much as you naturally loathe the behavior you are analyzing, the use of slang pejoratives such as “weirdo” or “wacko” only threaten the dispassionate analysis necessary for accurate and thorough analysis.