Serial Killers & Profiling

Autor: Markus Latzke

Serial Killers

There is a great deal of hype and myth surrounding both, the phenomenon of serial murder and the process of criminal profiling. Especially since Thomas Harris' book "Silence of the Lambs" and the great film that followed, this topic has been attracting attention to a lot of people.

1. A definition of serial murder

- A minimum of three to four victims, with a "cooling off" period in between;
- The killer is usually a stranger to the victim - the murders appear unconnected or at random;
- The murders reflect a need to sadistically dominate the victim;
- The murder is rarely "for profit", the motive is psychological, not material
- The victim may have "symbolic value" for the killer; methods of killing may reveal this
- Killers often choose victims who are vulnerable (prostitutes, runaways, etc.)

Statistically, the average serial killer is a white male from a lower to middle class background, usually in his twenties or thirties. Serial killers are sadists, seeking perverse pleasure in torturing their victim, even bringing them at the brink of death so they can torture them some more. So John Wayne Gacy, whose case will be described on one of the following pages, asked his victims as he strangled them: "How's it feel, knowing you're going to die?" They need to dominate, control and "own" the person. They are caught by a fantasy; there is something in them that we have to describe with unfulfilled wish. These wishes become part of their fantasy and urge them to their next homicide. The murder itself is never so perfect as it is in his fantasy, they try to correct their "work" and so they do one murder after the other. Serial killers feel omnipotent and perhaps like God, because they can decide over life or death. Serial murderers, who have an uncontrollable urge to kill, look like very normal people. So it could be the charming, the impeccable dressed, polite individual. He does not look different to other people. They hide behind a carefully constructed facade of normality. Serial killers do not know how to feel sympathy for others, or even how to have a relationship. Instead they learn how to manipulate others. When one is caught, the serial killer will suddenly assume a "mask of insanity" - pretending to be a multiple personality, schizophrenic, or prone to black -outs, anything to evade responsibility. Ted Bundy, a serial killer who murdered young women with brown hair, shows with the following question, how a serial killer truly thinks: "What's one less person on the face of the earth anyway?" Bundy could never understand why people could not accept the fact that he killed because he wanted to kill.

2. What makes a serial killer tick

That's the main question, forensic psychiatrists and FBI agents ask, they have tried to get inside the killer's mind. Especially the FBI centre in Quantico, tries to solve this question.

Howard Teten, and Pat Mullany built up the BSU (Behavioral Science Unit) and were the first FBI agents, who tried to do "profiling". Later there were two persons, who helped to transform profiling from an art to a science. These two people are Robert Ressler and John Douglas. Both wrote books about this topic, Ressler wrote "Whoever Fought Monsters" and Douglas "Mindhunter". The main work for the profilers is to reduce the amount of possible committers and to eliminate those that could not be the offenders, so that the agents can concentrate on a concrete circle of persons. One aspect of the modern day profiler's work is to examine a series of cases and advise as to whether there is a link between two or more cases based upon the crime scene and the victims. Ressler established the CPRP (Criminal Personality Research Project) For this project agents of the BSU undertook a large study in which they entered into correctional facilities and interviewed offenders about their backgrounds, crimes, crime scenes, and victims. He did these interviews with about 100 of these people. They also used more official sources of information like court transcripts, police reports and psychiatric and criminal records. The results were analysed, till they had the opportunity to document repeating patterns in their youth, surroundings and the behaviour of killers. To get the information the interviewer wants, he has to be taken seriously by the prisoner and has to build up a stable mutual trust. He has to inform himself about the case he will talk about, and he has to know when to ask the important questions. Ressler reports in his book about a scaring situation that happened when he interviewed Edmund Kemper. Ed Kemper is a very tall and heavy man. He murdered his grandparents in his youth, then he was in a penitentiary and after he was released he murdered seven people and his mother. He decapitated and fragmented all his victims. He was condemned for seven times life-long. Ressler sat with him in a very narrow room and wanted to get out. He pressed the buzzer, but the guard did not come. So he continued talking with Ed Kemper. Overall serial killers do this interviews for diversification, because their life in prison is too boring. After a few minutes Ressler pressed the buzzer a second time and again without any reaction, the same with the third trial. Kemper, who has a good sense for the perceptions of his opponent, felt the anger Ressler had. He said "I could tear off your head and bring it to the guard" Ressler was really in anxiety, but tried to be calm. So Kemper intimidated him, but finally the guard came and opened the door. Kemper said to Ressler : " You know I was only joking a bit" From that incident on, it was a prescription that two people had to interview this kind of offenders. So John Douglas and Robert Ressler found out a lot of useful insights from their interviews.

3. Organized and disorganized

They did a distinction between organized crime and disorganized one. Organized means that the traces the offender left, testify to a methodical operating committer. If the site of crime shows indications of a psychopathic person that is not able to plan, it would be disorganized. The crime is divided into four phases. The first one is the stadium before the crime. In the second one the crime is committed. The selection of the victim also lies in this phase. What concerns the crime, murder is not the only criterion. It can also contain procrastination, torture and rape. The elimination of the dead body would be the third one. The last one is the manner after the act.

First the targeting murderer: His crimes never happen out of a fancy. He takes a lot of time for the preparation. This behaviour comes from his fantasies, he has developed over years, till his outrage can not be subdued any longer. Systematic planning offenders mostly assail strangers, they have chosen before. His criteria could be age, looking, profession, hairstyle, or lifestyle. So David Berkovitz, the "Son of Sam" looked for women, who went alone or were sitting in a car with a man. The systematic offender often brings victims in his power with craftiness. It must be an articulate man, who is intelligent enough to lure others to a place, where nobody can help them. Control is the main symptom of this committer. Because he deals a long time with the planning, he knows how to come near the victim. He could offer a prostitute 50 Dollars, he could take a hitchhiking person with his car, he could tell a child, he would bring it to his parents. John Gacy pledged young men of the Chicago homosexual milieu money, if they came with him to his house. For the methodically working killer the victims get real persons, he talks with them and sees them as individuals before killing them. Before, during and after the crime he modulates his behaviour to the situation. After Ed Kemper had shot two students, he was alert enough to drive over the guards of the campus, where he had murdered them with the dying girls in his car. Flexibility and mental portability are characteristics of the planning offender. He learns in every crime and upgrades his method. Indicators for a planning offender are handcuffs, bonds and things like that. Their victim has to be defenceless and helpless. They try to do all to prevent the identification of themselves and of the victim.

The aimlessly working killer does not look for victims after logical criteria. He does not want to know, who is in front of him and tries to click out the personality of the victim, by beating it nonsentiently, blanketing or deforming the face. He has lacks of any normal logic. Before catching him, there is no possibility to reconstruct his thoughts. They often go on foot or take the public transports. If they own a car, it is like their home, scruffy and in miserable condition. The mentally disturbed killer perhaps finds a knife in the dwelling of their victim, ramming it into the pectoral and let it stick there. He does not care about fingerprints or other evidences. Chaos on the site of crime shows the psyche of the mentally disturbed offender. The victim features gruesome wounds, because the committer tries to deprive the personality of the victim. That makes representations in the trial to blemish the face or to mutilate it after death. Finally he lets the victim on the place, where he has killed it. This kind of offender normally does not perform the coitus or only on the dead, or motionless person. He kills quickly, in a fast attack. He is not interested in the determinations and does not take a souvenir of the victim.

Otherwise the planning offender. He misdemeans himself on the living person, he enjoys their torments by torturing and raping them. If the victim tries to defend himself he will become more aggressive. He tries to find force over life and death. He often takes a personal owning of the body, its like a trophy and by looking on it, he remembers the murder. After hiding the victim, he tries to watch the investigations, as closely as possible. In a special case the offender was the driver of the ambulance !

4. Childhood abuse

It is very difficult to reform a serial killer, because the damages they have experienced in their childhood. So the upbringing of a serial killer is seen as an explanation for their behaviour.

Many sadistic murderers portray their childhood as an endless chain of horrifying sexual abuse, torture and mayhem. Some killers use wicked parents as an excuse and try to get sympathy. But it's a fact that a lot of serial killers have suffered a lot of horrible abuse, but we must remember that many children grow up in similar conditions and these aren't lust murderers. Childhood abuse may not be the sole excuse for serial killers, but it is an undeniable factor in many of their backgrounds. Some parents believe that by being harsh disciplinarians, it would "toughen" the child. Instead, it often creates a lack of love between parent and child that can have fatal results. There is no foundation for trusting others later in life, if they do not have a normal relationship with their parents. This can lead to isolation . Robert Ressler wrote "Instead of developing positive traits of trust security, and autonomy, child development becomes dependent on fantasy life and its dominates themes, rather than on social interaction. When the child grows up all they know are their fantasies of domination and control. In their youth serial killers show similar behaviours, its called the "Triad" The first thing serial killers have in common is animal cruelty. Torturing animals is a disturbing red flag. Animals are often seen as "practise" for killing humans. Ed Kemper buried the family cat alive, dug it up, and cut off its head. The second is pyromania, Berkowitz became a prolific pyromaniac, keeping record of his 1441 fires. Pyromania is often a sexually stimulating activity for these killers. The dramatic destruction of property feeds the same perverse need to destroy other human. Because serial killers don't see other humans as more than objects, the leap between setting fires and killing people is easy to make. The third thing is bed-wetting. It is the most intimate of these "triad" symptoms, and is less likely to be wilfully divulged. 60% of multiple murderers wet their beds past adolescence.

When parents are blamed, the blame usually falls on the mother, who has been described as too domineering or too distant, too sexually active or too repressed. Perhaps mothers are more blamed, because the father has often disappeared. If a father is named by them, then mostly for sadistic disciplinarian tactics, alcoholic rants, and overt anger toward women. There is the case of Ed Gein, whose religiously fanatical mother convinced her son that women were vessels of sin and caused disease. He believed his mum and saw her as pure goodness and when she died he lost his only friend and one true love and was absolutely alone in the world. Then he spent his spare time reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories. At other times, Eddie would immerse himself in his bizarre hobbies that included nightly visits on the graveyard. He also read anatomy books, and from his readings he learned about the process of shrinking heads, exhuming corpses from graves and the anatomy of the human body. He did take a particular pleasure in peeling the skin from the bodies of dead women he had exhumed, and wearing it. He was curious to know what it was like to have breasts and a vagina. He acquired quite a collection of body parts, he made literal vessels out of women, using their skulls for bowls, and other domestic objects. On November 17, 1957 police in Plainfeld, arrived at the farmhouse of Ed Gein, who was a suspect in the robbery of a local hardware store. Inside junk and rotting garbage covered the floor and counters. The local sheriff felt something brush against his jacket, and when he looked up to see what it was he had ran into, he faced a large, dangling carcass hanging upside down from the beams. The carcass had been decapitated, slit open and gutted. He looked around and discovered a ghoulish inventory: an armchair made of human skin, female genitalia kept preserved in a shoebox, a belt made of nipples, a human head, four noses and a heart. These weren't only body parts of exhumed bodies, but also of women that have died at Eddie's hand. During the 1950's he gained notoriety as being one of the most famous of documented cases involving a combination of necrophilia, transvestism and fetishism. After spending ten years in the mental institution where he was recovering, the courts finally decided he was competent to stand trial. Because Eddie was found to have been insane at the time of the killing, he was later found not guilty by reason of insanity and acquitted. Soon after the trial he was escorted back to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. His condition was attributed to the unhealthy relationship he had with his mother and his upbringing.

Especially the bizarre handcraft made Eddie into a celebrity. Author Robert Bloch was inspired to write a story about Norman Bates, a character based on Eddie, which became the central theme of the Albert Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho. Years later, Eddie provided inspiration for the character of another serial killer, "Buffalo Bill" in "The Silence of the Lambs". Like Eddie, Buffalo Bill treasured women's skin and wore it like clothing in some insane transvestite ritual.

5. Lustmord

Is serial murder ultimately a quest for sex or power, or both ? Some believe that sexual domination is an expression of the need for power. For them sex is only an instrument used by the killer to obtain power and domination over his victim. Others believe that a deviant sexual drive is the cause, and power is the tool to achieve sexual satisfaction. Some identify with perceived sources of power. Some indulge in illusions of religious grandeur, be it Christ or Satan. Others look to the police and will mimic them, as if their borrowed authority gives the killer the authority to kill others. Most serial killers have a deranged relationship to sexuality.

For some of these killers, sexuality is equated with sin and death by overzealous parents.

Their libido drive was channelled into other deviant behaviour. It is difficult to tell where sexual lust leaves off and lust for blood takes over. Robert Ressler and John Douglas believe that there are two types of sexual homicide: "the rape or displaces anger murderer" and the "sadistic, or lust murderer."

Rapists who kill rarely find any sexual satisfaction from the murder nor do they perform post- mortem sexual acts. In contrast, the sadistic murderer kills as a part of a ritualised sadistic fantasy. Mutilation is "overkill", that means injuring the victim far beyond what is necessary to kill the victim. Psychopaths have a low arousal rate, so it takes more to stimulate them. Macabre mutilation excites the lust murderer. Masturbation generally occurs after death, when his fantasy is strongest. Mutilation often occurs when the victim is already dead a time when the killer has ultimate control over the victim. Many of the serial killers Douglas and Ressler interviewed admit to an abnormally strong sex drive. For example Ed Kemper, who often beheaded his victims before raping them. Before they begin their killings, many serial killers have a big fascination for death. So John Wayne Gacy worked in a mortuary, sleeping in the embalming room, alone with the corpses, but was fired after corpses were found partially undressed. David Berkowitz said :"I always had a fetish for murder and death - sudden death and bloodshed appealed to me." Another phenomenon that appears is cannibalism. Instead of making room in their hearts for the one they crave, the cannibal makes room in his stomach for the one they desire. Many describe it as a way to incorporate the other into oneself. Because psychopaths are incapable of experiencing empathy and love, this crude and primitive form of bonding becomes a sickening substitute. One particular gruesome example is the Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa, who killed and ate a Dutch student. He said :"My passion is so great I want to possess her. I want to eat her. If I do she will be mine forever."

6. The FBI's Crime Scene Analysis

The FBI's Crime Scene Analysis involves six steps that collectively make up their profiling process.

These steps are:

Profiling Inputs: This involves the collection and assessment of all the materials relating to the specific case. This would typically be photographs taken of the crime scene and victim, a background check of the victim, autopsy protocols, other forensic examinations relating to the crime, and any relevant information that is necessary to establish an accurate picture about what occurred before, during and after the crime. This stage serves at the basis for all others, and if it is incorrect or poor information, the subsequent analysis would be affected.

Decision Process Models: This stage involves arranging all the information that was collected in the previous stage into a logical and coherent pattern. It includes also to find out how many victims were involved, and to find out if the crime was the result of a serial offender.

Crime Assessment: This stage involves the reconstruction of the crime including the specific behaviours of both the victim and perpetrator. This should help the analyst finding out which "role" each individual has in the crime and should assist in developing the subsequent profile of the criminal.

The Criminal Profile: This is the process of providing a list of background, physical and behavioural characteristics of the offender. In this stage agents would be informed how to identify and apprehend the perpetrator.

The Investigation: Here, the actual profile is provided to requesting agencies and incorporated into their investigation. If no suspects are generated, or if new evidence comes to light, the profile is reassessed.

The Apprehension : It is stated that the purpose of this stage is to cross - check the profile produced with characteristics of the offender once they are apprehended. This would be extremely difficult because sometimes the offender will never be apprehended, he could be arrested on some other charge, or simply cease criminal activity. The rate of solved cases represents less than 50% of cases profiled and so this stage may never be tested.

7. How should a serial killer be punished ?

A lot of serial killers plead in mitigation by providing incapability of guilt. Incapability of guilt means that the state of mind of a person inhibits him to recognize the misconduct in his action. With other words: Did he know the distinction between right and wrong ? Most of condemned serial killers have psychological care. But there lies a big danger: A prisoner, who wants to be released precociously, has a personal interest to tell the therapist, what he wants to hear. In that way they succeed in deceiving them. Like Ed Kemper, who was in psychological care, when he did his murders and in the eyes of his therapist he made progress ! There are also other cases when released prisoners murdered other people. John Douglas writes in his book "Mindhunter": "The more I see the more pessimistic I am if I think about rehabilitation of this kind of offenders. What these people experienced in their youth is horrible. That does not mean that the damage could be repaired." He also says that he thinks in contrast to lawyers, attorneys and psychologists that proper behaviour in jail does not necessarily mean good behaviour out of prison. Why should a serial killer stop murdering, his damages lie in his difficult youth, lack of education, and his violent past. Ed Kemper, who is more intelligent than most other killers and has more insight in his actions, says properly, that they should not release him. When do they stop ? Either when they are caught or killed. They should never be release once being in jail. Carl Panzram's statement shows that: "I have no desire to reform myself. My only desire is to reform people who try to reform me. And I believe that the only way to reform people, is to kill em. My Motto is, Rob em all, Rape em all and Kill em all."

Many multiple murderers blame our violent culture for feeding their appetites. Some declared that the hard-core pornography was responsible for their murderous rampage. Many serial killers adopt violent figures as their role models. Both John Wayne Gacy and Ed Kemper worshipped John Wayne. To this day many homicidal acts are blamed on movies and music. Although there is no direct proof that violence in the media creates serial killers, it may activate the fantasy, and perhaps legitimises for some. Also the anonymity factor plays a role. It is easier for us to see others only as strangers, or stereotypes. We are creating strangers of each other and we begin to see others more as objects and less as human beings. Serial killers can easily troll for victims among the "forgotten": runaways, prostitutes, drug addicts, and the poverty-stricken. Perhaps the anonymity itself is a factor that creates a serial killer. He searches for "becoming somebody".

8. David Berkowitz - the "Son of Sam"

David Berkowitz illustrates this possibility. He had no stable identity - no achievements, no friends and no attachments. The "Son of Sam" identity gave him great notoriety and power over others.

He killed six people in the period of July 1976 and August 1977. He was adopted as a child and tried to find his real mother, but she did not want to take her child. He never could cope with the fact that his mother does not want him. Before beginning with the homicides Berkowitz committed about 1488 arsons. Berkowitz bought a gun in 1976 and began a series of impulsive killings that paralysed New York City. He shot people at point -blank rage. This reign of terror lasted for 13 months, resulting in 6 deaths and seven serious injuries. Police had no witnesses, no suspect, and no motive until the discovery of a letter at a crime scene. He wrote: " Dear Captain Joseph Borrelli I'm deeply hurt by you calling me awemon hater. I am not. But I am a monster. I am the "Son of Sam" I am a little brat. When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood.

"Go out and kill", commands father Sam. Behind our house some rest. Mostly young - raped and slaughtered - their blood drained - just bones now. Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic too. I can't get out but I look out the attic window and watch the world go by. I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wavelength then everybody else - programmed to kill. However, to stop me you must kill me. Attention all police: Shoot me first - shoot to kill or else keep out of my way or you will die ! Papa Sam is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart attacks. "Ugh, me hoot, it hurts, sonny boy." I miss my pretty princess most of all. She's resting in our ladies house. But I'll see her soon. I an the Monster - "Belzebub" - the chubby behemouth.

I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game - tasty meat. The wemon of Queens are prettyist of all. It must be the water they drink. I live for the hunt - my live. Blood for Papa. Mr. Borelli, sir, I don't want to kill anymore. No sur, no more but I must "honour thy father." I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don't belong on earth. Return me to yahoos. To the people of Queens, I love you. And I want to wish all of you a happy Easter. May God bless you in this life and in the next."

Police saw a man jumping in a car after a double murder. Police located the car and noticed a gun and a letter on the front seat, written in "Son of Sam's" handwriting. Berkowitz was on his way to his next killing he had planned but the cops ambushed him in his car When they caught him his only comment was: "Okay. You've got me. What took you so long ?" He told the police that he took his alias from a dog, whose barking kept him away from sleeping and not from his adoptive father. He pleades insanity and said the dog commanded him to kill. But he was judged sane, convicted of murder and sentenced to 365 years in prison. In jail he has recently found religion and become a jailhouse televangelist preaching via public-access TV. So David Berkowitz, better known as the "Son of Sam" made a career as a serial killer.

Perhaps he had the advantage in becoming a celebrity by living in New York, where everything is exaggerated.

9. Edmund Kemper

Towards the end of 1972 Santa Cruz in California seemed to be something like the capital of murders. Every month a new horrible crime was noticed. Once a corpse was fond another time a hitchhiker disappeared. In proportion to the population figure there were more crimes than in any other state of the US. Later it emerged that three serial killers were active at the same time and in this city. Their names are : John Frazier, Herbert Mullin and Edmund Kemper. Frazier and Mullin were caught but the murder happened till Easter 1973. On Tuesday, April 24th 1973, a man called the police and told them that he had murdered some students and his mother. If they come to the callbox, from who he did the phone call, he would show them the lairs of the bodies. And so they did. Ed Kemper had an enormous body. His height was always a problem for him. He never was allowed to be a child, because they thought his was older because of his enormous seize. He never had friends of the same age. He stems from a ill-functioning family. His alcohol addict mother favoured his sisters, a father was not present. His mother always blamed him for her problems. At the age of ten he experienced his strongest trauma. His mother and his sisters brought all his things in a dark room in the cellar. Supposedly it was not reasonable for his sisters, if he lived near them, they felt sexually assaulted. His fantasies got more violent, and he did bizarre experiments with his mother and 2 sisters. He went, armed with a hammer and a knife, in the room of his mother and thought about how it would be to kill her. He often was sent to his grandparents. One day he weaselled behind his grandmother and killed her with a knife. When he saw what he had done he decided to save his grandfather from this and killed him too. Then he called his mother and told her he had killed his grandparents. He lived for the next four years in a psychological treatment centre. He tricked the psychologists and was found mentally sane in 1969. Then he had the right to live at home with his mother. He moved into his first own tenement and bought porno-magazines and criminal-maganzines, because the presentation and sex and crime stimulated him. He always wanted to be a police man, but they did not take him, he was too big. But he had some friends, who were police men and one of them gave him an emblem and handcuffs. His car looked like a police car, and he often went to the Campus, where his mother worked. The relationship to his mother was very bad, once after a quarrel with her he went out to kill the first pretty women he would see. He started to take hitchhikers and he killed them. He always beheaded his victims and did necrophilia. During his homicides he was in psychological treatment! On Good Friday he went to the living room of his mother and killed her with a hammer, he also decapitated her. He cut out her throat and threw it into the sink, but it was too bulky for the pipe. He also killed a friend of his mother. Later he called the police. Before the trial he tried to commit suicide two times. He was sentenced to death, but this will never happen, because theoretically the death penalty exists in California, but it is never executed. So he will be in prison for the rest of his life.

10. John Wayne Gacy

John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago in 1942. He raped, mutilated and killed 33 victims in his house in Des Plaines, a suburb of Chicago. Never before in the American criminal-history so many people got killed by one offender. Most of them were young men between 15 and twenty. Officially Gacy was know as the most dangerous murderer of the 20th century. He was an intelligent man with a high IQ, because he knew how to manipulate others and to calm them down, if a victim created suspicion. In 1986 Gacy was in jail because of sexual harassment of a young man for two years, he was released earlier because of good behaviour. He lived a double-life. He was the boss of a building company and gained a lot of popularity. He also played the clown for the kids in his "Pogo the Clown" costume. He brought his victims at the brink of death and enjoyed the agony of his victims, enjoyed seeing them suffering before killing them. At the end of 1972 Robert Piest was missing and he told other people he would go to Gacy. So the police searched his house and found corpses under a trap door. He buried 29 victims and covered them with concrete, the four others he threw into the Plaines River. When he was on trial he tried to pronounce a split personality, but he was sentenced to death. The capital punishment was executed in 1994 through lethal injection.

11. Conclusion:

The serial killer lives on the other side of our social boundaries. He is an embodiment of the darkness, desire, and power that we must repress within ourselves. He is not a creature of reason, but of excess and transgression and voracious appetites - selfish, carnal desire. He breaks social rules that confine the rest of us. He crosses the line into a world of mayhem and depravity. We recoin at their bloody antics, but remain transfixed. We will never understand how a human being can act like them, but we can try to find out what made them into what they are.

From:

www.crimelibrary.com: what makes serial killers tick ? by Shirley Lynn Scott

criminal profiling: fact, fiction, fantasy and fallacy. By Wayne Petherick

criminal profiling: how it got started and how it is used by Wayne Petherick

Eddie Gein by Wayne Petherick

John Wayne Gacy by Rachael Bell

Son of Sam by Marilyn Bardsley

Whoever fought monsters by Robert Ressler and Tom Shachtman

Mindhunter by John Douglas

Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

Serial Killers & Profiling

Inventory:

1. A definition of serial murder
2. What makes a serial killer tick ?
3. Organized and disoranized
4. Childhood abuse
5. Lustmord
6. The FBI Crime Scene Analysis
7. How should a serial killer be punished ?
8. David Berkowitz - the "Son of Sam
9. Edmund Kemper
10. John Wayne Gacy
11. Conclusion