PRO505 Introduction to Criminal Profiling PDF

PRO505. Introduction to Criminal Profiling. Published by Evidentia University of Behavioral & Forensic Sciences 111 E Monument Ave Kissimmee, Florida, USA © 2022 Evidentia University of Behavioral & Forensic Sciences 1. THE HISTORY. MAD BOMBER’S CASE ¹ As happens many times in life, running into a w...

PRO505. Introduction to Criminal Profiling. Published by Evidentia University of Behavioral & Forensic Sciences 111 E Monument Ave Kissimmee, Florida, USA © 2022 Evidentia University of Behavioral & Forensic Sciences 1. THE HISTORY. MAD BOMBER’S CASE ¹ As happens many times in life, running into a wall is the best way to go forward. It was December 1956, the month in which the largest manhunt that the New York City Police Department had ever known began. Sixteen years earlier, a device nearly exploded in a window of the Edison Company in New York. Someone had sneaked into the building of one of the most important electrical companies in the US, had walked through the corridors and office floors until he/she reached a shelf where he/ she left the device abandoned. Miraculously, some workers noticed what looked like a suspicious package and called the police. Along with what was finally found to be a bomb, a note was also found with the following message: “Edison Company, thieves, this is for you.” This became the first one in a series of explosive devices that kept the citizens of New York and the police in fear for more than a decade. Today it’s very normal to hear news about explosions and attacks in our cities, terrorist groups have been accostuming us to this type of events for years, however, if we could travel back in time, we would realize what it meant at that time to face a situation like that. The following artifacts were placed in train stations, phone booths, and other buildings associated with the Edison Company. The artifacts were of little power, in fact, they never killed anyone, they just caused material damages and an occasional wounded. The most spectacular and dangerous explosion occurred at the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, where six people were injured to varying degrees. The next day, newspapers of that year took this event to their front pages and baptized this terrorist as “Mad Bomber”. ¹Extracted from the book: Jiménez, J. (2016). Perfilación Criminal. En la mente del Asesino. Madrid: Behavior and Law. With author’s authorization. 3 Paramount Theater. Nueva York 1955. The newspapers followed these events closely, in fact, they participated directly since, in addition to planting bombs, this guy was also writing letters to the most important newspapers of the city, so that they would be published. In these handwritten missives he made some petitions and attacked the Edison company. The citizens of New York, meanwhile, lived with panic and fear that one afternoon, a weekend, waiting for a bus or train, in a cinema or theater, a new device would explode. This fear pressured the authorities and they turned to the police chiefs who, until then, had been completely ineffective in capturing “the Mad bomber.” The police, with a very basic development of forensic sciences in that time, could do little to hunt down this bomber. They only had some unexploded artifacts and the handwritten letters. No one ever saw anyone suspicious, there was no robot portrait and, although it was thought to be someone related to the Edison Company, the chances of finding him were really scarce. So the years went by and the $26,000 reward that was offered for a clue that would help stop him, were as immobile as the lines of police investigation. 4 The case managers, Captain Cronin and Inspector Finney found themselves at an impasse, helpless and frustrated like someone who is unable to solve a puzzle. Fortunately, if there was any luck in all this, the mad bomber seemed to have no intention of killing anyone. If the 33 bombs had been lethal, the number of possible deaths could have been around a hundred and that would have been something completely unbearable. What was Mad Bomber looking for then? What was he up to? These are the questions that haunted the heads of researchers trying to find the answers to establish a path forward. On the other hand, there were the letters, in which he intended to send a message to those who he believed were guilty of all that. Who would be able to do this? Who would behave like this? These questions seemed easier to answer, in fact, the media and the general public had already answered them: obviously, an individual with a mental disorder. Someone who is capable of endangering the lives of innocent citizens, who uses explosives in such a dangerous way and who also allows himself to write letters and send them to newspapers must be out of his mind, that’s for sure. The researchers talked about all of this over and over again as they went through the photographs of the artifacts and the hundreds of letters one by one. Possibly in one of those revisions, Cronin and Finney came up with something completely new, possibly the last trick they had left to play. It seemed reasonable that if they thought this guy might be a crazy, deranged person and because they needed information and a clue to find and stop him, they thought asking someone who knows about mad people might be a good idea. As we say, this was a very original strategy in that time, the police had not used these resources before, their cases were resolved by talking with the victims and with people related to the investigation or simply with “snitches” who acted as eyes and ears in the streets. But they didn’t have much to lose either, the wall they were facing was getting higher and higher. It is easy to imagine what the rest of the colleagues and superiors must have thought when they made this new investigative strategy public. Sometimes cases get complicated and you have to use your imagination and innovation. As it was, the public pressure on the NYPD to stop Mad Bomber once and for all, any ideas were welcome. If they had to ask a shrink, well, they would. 5 Once they decided to carry out this strategy they had to think about who. They needed a professional who knew about mental illnesses, that’s what they were dealing with. A guy who knows well the ins and outs of the head of a deranged person like the one they were facing, an expert in knowing what a subject who behaves abnormally and dangerously is like, who is capable of planting explosives around the city, planting chaos and panic in cinemas, bus stations and telephone booths. They were looking for some information that might help them find him somewhere, some clue that would make him stand out or recognizable, something, anything that might help put him behind bars. They unknowingly needed a criminological profile. The chosen one was James A. Brussel, a Freudian psychiatrist who was a mental health consultant for the city of New York and who had contacts in the F.B.I. The investigators went to visit him and discussed their strategy. That day a new technique to support criminal investigation began, Criminal Profiling. Brussel had to face a somewhat strange assignment, describe someone without being able to have him in front of him, without being able to talk to him, or ask him any kind of question. Like any psychiatrist, he was used to offering a diagnosis after conducting a series of tests and interviews, after assessing the symptoms and the behavior. In this case, none of this could be carried out, the investigators had led Brussel to the same impasse in which they found themselves. He, therefore, had to transform his medical diagnosis methodology, he had to be able to reach the same result using another method. Investigators unleashed on the table everything they could offer him: photographs of the devices that had not exploded, the location of the explosions and the handwritten letters that he sent to the newspapers. These were “the symptoms” that could be offered to Brussel, with them he should “diagnose”. He worked with all this information doing what he knew to do, interpreting what his patient was like based on how he behaved, letting the photographs and letters tell them about their author, trying to draw a profile of characteristics that could help these researchers. When he had finished going over everything thoroughly, Brussel set out to offer them all the information he had been able to infer about Mad Bomber. The investigators listened with interest to everything that the psychiatrist had been able to discover in those photographs and letters that they had reviewed hundreds of times. They felt like when we play to find the differences between two photographs, we don’t find any no matter how hard we try to look at them over and over again, and later someone who discovers them appears, to our amazement. 6 Brussel indicated that he would be a man of adult age, around 50 years old, possibly of Slavic origin or at least an immigrant from Eastern Europe. He’s a neat guy, he told them, tidy, with an interest in appearance, with medium education and a job related to electricity or mechanics. In his work he is meticulous and a perfectionist. He is not interested in women, he will live alone or with a female relative but he does not have a partner or children. He thinks he is superior to others, he can be violent if criticized and he may have a heart condition. He may live in Bridgeport, Connecticut and is religious. The investigators listened in amazement and possibly with some uncertainty to everything that Brussel had been able to say about this guy by looking at the photographs and the letters. They continued chatting for a while and asking some questions about everything they had heard. As they were about to leave the office, Brussel called the investigators as if something had occurred to him and he hadn’t had the time to tell. The investigators turned and Brussel told them that when Mad Bomber was arrested he would be dressed in a perfectly buttoned double-breasted suit. It is easy to imagine the astonished faces of the investigators looking at Brussel while he predicts how this subject will be dressed when they arrest him, possibly he is a fortune teller as well as a psychiatrist, they must have thought. With all this information, the researchers set out to work with it. They thought that this didn’t really help them much to look for him, but if they published the profile in the newspapers, someone could recognize these characteristics in a neighbor, family member or co-worker and contact the police. They did so and the results did not take long to appear, only not as they expected. Hundreds of people called the media where the profile was published indicating that they knew that person or that they themselves were Mad Bomber. This did not help them, as they all turned out to be false alarms. They decided to do one last thing, to publish a last message in the newspapers asking him to turn himself in and to defend himself or explain himself publicly to society. A few days after that publication, another letter arrived at the newspaper. In it, Mad Bomber told that all this was the fault of the Edison Company, in which he had worked and with which he had had a serious conflict. At the same time, personnel from this company reviewed dozens of dossiers of employees who had been fired or who had had a problem with the company. 7 Among them they discovered a certain George Metesky, an employee who had suffered an accident after which he had developed tuberculosis. Given the refusal to offer him any compensation, Metesky had written to the company swearing revenge and using some words and expressions that appeared in the letters that Mad Bomber sent to the newspapers. George Metesky was arrested by the police on January 23, 1957. Of Lithuanian origin, he was 53 years old, lived with his sisters and was a practicing Catholic. In 1931 he was working at the headquarters of the Edison Company in Connecticut when a boiler exploded next to him, which caused serious consequences that prevented him from continuing to work. After several weeks of sick leave, the company decided to fire him without offering any type of compensation. They say that when they arrested him it was night, he was wearing pajamas and the policemen who were going to take him to the police station gave him a few minutes so that he could get dressed. When he returned, Metesky was wearing a perfectly buttoned double-breasted suit. Metesky is arrested. Brussel would later explain in a book on this case how he came to offer this Mad Bomber information simply by looking at the documentation provided to him by the police. Brussel said that a guy who wrote in such an offensive and delusional way should be someone with a paranoid personality disorder, which needs a time of development and accentuation that usually coincides with adulthood. The letters and artifacts showed that he was a meticulous, neat, orderly and perfectionist guy. He knew how to work with his hands and the construction of the explosives required some knowledge of electricity and mechanics. The “w’s” that he wrote in his letters had very rounded shapes as if they were women’s breasts, which led him to think that he would be in a pre-oedipal phase, following the Freudian theory, something that would prevent him from relating romantically with women. 8 Some terms and expressions used led him to conclude that he was an immigrant, possibly from Eastern Europe, where it is also more common to use explosives. The letters were sent from Westchester according to the postmarks, but he wouldn’t be stupid enough to send them from where he lives. The Bridgeport area of Connecticut is home to a large Eastern European population and going to New York requires going through Westchester. Thus, Brussel explained how he had come to deduce all this information about Mad Bomber without meeting him face to face. James Brussel with his book about the “Mad Bomber” case. If we review these contributions from Brussel, we realize that he was able to accurately profile George Metesky and, although this information did not serve directly to capture him, it did offer information to put a face on who until then was only a shadow. The investigators seem to have found it useful, because years later they turned to Brussel again for another very mediatic and shocking case of the time, that of the “Boston Strangler”. With this story of Mad Bomber, Criminal Profiling emerges as a support technique for police investigations. Today, the police forces of many countries use criminal profiling as a strategy to help investigators obtain information from the perpetrator or perpetrators of a crime. Criminal Profiling is not divination, as the researchers thought when they heard Brussel talk about the clothing that Mad Bomber would wear, it is behavior analysis, analysis of how the criminal behaves in his crime and that tells us about what he is like. The anecdote of the perfectly buttoned double-breasted suit shows us a faithful metaphor of what this technique is. Our behavior describes who we are. An adult man of 1950 would routinely wear a double-breasted suit, and the neatness, meticulousness, and perfection Metesky displayed in his cards and artifacts would be reflected in his clothing. A person with these characteristics would not wear it in any way, but would do it neatly, meticulously and perfectly. That’s how simple or how complex Brussel’s deduction was and that’s how Criminal Profiling works. 9 Nowadays, criminal investigations are very dependent on what we call “forensic sciences” and that are no more no less than the set of sciences and knowledge that the police use in their work to identify clues, analyze them and build evidence about criminal acts. It is what is also usually known as Criminalistics. The objective of its use is to provide information to the judicial system about what and how a criminal act has occurred and, most importantly, who has committed it so that it can be judged. The television series have accustomed us to these “CSI” for its acronym in English, Crime Scene Investigation, criminalists or also known as Scientific Police. They are technical professionals who have knowledge of biology, physics, medicine, computer science... and who analyze crime scenes in search of information that can explain what happened and who did it. These forensic sciences have evolved a lot in recent decades with very important developments, not only fingerprints but also genetic profiles or lately everything that has to do with cybercrime, from the field of computer forensics. Without this information, those in charge of solving a case find themselves with no leads to follow, at a dead end as the NYPD found itself in the Mad Bomber case. When the Scientific Police technicians work (“process” in police parlance) in a scene, what they look for primarily are traces that can allow people to be identified, mainly to identify the perpetrator of the crime. For this, it is very important to collect evidence of fingerprints or biological material (blood, semen, saliva...), since these evidence can be analyzed to extract information that individualizes, that is, that is capable of saying that it belongs to a single person in the world. We must bear in mind that the main job of the police is to stop the “bad guys”, therefore all the information that talks to us about him will be the most important. However, at the same time that criminology is developing, what we call “forensic awareness” is also developing, that is, the knowledge that a criminal possesses regarding police and forensic techniques and that he tries to use to avoid being discovered. For example, most thieves know not to touch objects at the scene of a robbery with their bare hands, because the police can collect their fingerprints and identify them, hence they wear gloves. However, it is possible that some thief does not know, does not have forensic awareness, that he should not leave traces of fiber from his clothes, since it can also be analyzed and verified that it belongs to the clothes he was wearing at the time of the events. Therefore, criminals also learn and develop in their way of committing crimes, so it is very common for them to try not to leave many clues, forensic evidence, at the scenes of their crimes. 10 If we remember the case of Mad Bomber, the researchers found themselves in this situation because in 1950 Criminalistics was not very developed and it was not possible to obtain forensic evidence from the artifacts or the letters. However, the researchers came up with something very novel at the time, resorting to the advice of a Behavior Analyst. When they establish that the person who is planting bombs around the city must be crazy and that a psychiatrist can provide information on what this type of person could be like, what they are doing is starting the story of Criminal Profiling, the analysis of criminal behavior. They understand that Psychology, or Psychiatry in this case, can also participate by contributing their knowledge to solve a case. This new work approach was fruitful on the part of the researchers, in fact, from this moment on, experts in mental health and behavior analysis were called upon again to support the researchers in those cases where it was thought that the perpetrator of the crime could suffer from a psychological or mental disorder. From then on, this current was spread and developed until in 1970 the F.B.I created the Behavioral Sciences Unit, a group of professionals that supports various US police forces in cases of serial rapes and homicides. We must bear in mind that at that time a very important social phenomenon was developed or accentuated, the “serial killers”, who were beginning to emerge and who shaked public opinion with their aberrant crimes. It is not that there were no serial killers before or that there were only in the USA, what happened is that certain sociocultural conditions and the development of the mass media put the focus of attention on this type of crime. Cases of serial rapists and murderers are usually very complicated investigations for the police, since the methods and routine operations used by agents are usually not useful to investigate these cases. Most of them present abnormal behavior, behavior that reflects a malfunction in the emotional, psychological and/or sexual sphere of the subject. An aberrant behavior that usually leaves its mark on the scene and on its victims. That’s where the interesting thing about being able to resort to a Criminal Profiler appears, so that, just as Brussel did, he can provide information regarding what he is like and what characteristics he may have on a personal, psychological, social level... In addition, it must be taken into account that most of murderers and serial sexual aggressors tend to select unknown victims, people who are not linked to them by any type of relationship, bond or knowledge. In these circumstances, the number of possible suspects becomes so high that the police need to be able to filter and reduce that number in order to catch the perpetrator. In these cases, profiling allows the number of suspects to be reduced to those that “fit” the profile drawn up. 11 From the F.B.I, many other police forces in other countries have created their own Conduct Analysis and Criminal Profiling Units. In addition, this technique has also generated interest in the academic and scientific field, which has led to its improvement, development and evolution. Nowadays, Criminal Profiling is not only used in cases of homicides and serial sexual assaults, it can be used in all those in which the criminal has reflected in his crime enough signs of behavior that tell us about what he is like and what characteristics he has. Obviously, those crimes that express more personal, emotional and psychological components are the most propitious to analyze using this technique. Criminal Profiling can be defined as a police technique with which, based on the analysis of the behaviors carried out by the criminal during the crime, we can infer different characteristics that said criminal is likely to present. These characteristics correspond to physical-personal, psycho(patho)logical, social, economic, geographic information... about the perpetrator of the crime. The objective is to offer useful information for criminal investigators such as: Demographic characteristics that help filter and reduce the number of suspects. Physical characteristics that can help identify him. Psychological characteristics that explain how he is. Geographical characteristics that allow us to search for him in a certain area of the city. Characteristics of crime that allow knowing how he acts at a criminal level and if he has any type of criminal record or career that allows him to be searched. Characteristics of the next crime. In case he acts again, the profiler can explain what we should expect from him and what evolution he may have in his criminality and in his way of committing the crime, what we usually call the Modus Operandi. Recommendation for researchers. The profiler can advise regarding decision-making in various areas of the investigation, such as the relationship with the media or with the af fected population. Likewise, the recommendations may imply opening new lines of work or supporting different phases of the investigation, such as the linking of cases or the inter rogation of a possible suspect. 12 In a nutshell, Criminal Profiling is shown as another strategy that police investigators can use to obtain information and knowledge when solving a case. Knowing how the perpetrator of a crime may be, what characteristics he may have, whether he is intelligent or not, whether he is married, has a job or a certain training, whether or not he knows the victim or has a relationship with the scene of the crime are data that will be of great value to researchers because it helps them to make a portrait, a profile of who they should look for. 2. THE BEGINNING.2 BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS UNIT IN THE F.B.I. To begin with the history of the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), we must start by talking about a person, Howard Teten, a photographer interested in criminalistics who ended up studying Criminology at the University of California in 1955. He worked in several local police forces before staying in Berkeley, where he became fascinated by the study of behavior and criminal psychology. Little by little, he became an expert in this matter, gaining the attention of the F.B.I Training Division where he began to work in 1969. Teten discovered that many of the things he had learned processing the crime scene could be related to aspects of the offender’s personality and tried to verify if this idea that he had in his head, had any basis. To this, he reviewed hundreds of homicides in different police agencies, comparing the crime scenes with the characteristics of the perpetrators once they had been arrested. In fact, in the year 1970 he worked on a murder case, where Teten offered one of his first criminological profiles on the author. Considering the success of this profile, together with the verification that his hypothesis of linking elements of the crime scene with psychological characteristics of the author was correct, Teten thought that it would be interesting to structure this knowledge and start teaching it to the officers in the Academy of the F.B.I from Quantico. The relevance and interest of these contributions culminated in a historic milestone within the field of Criminal Profiling and Behavior Analysis, the creation of the Behavioral Science Unit. The year was 1972 and Howard Teten was accompanied on this new adventure by Patrick Mullany, a New York police officer educated in psychology who had become interested in the work that Teten had been doing. ² From here, taken from Jiménez, J. y García, N. (2022). Unidades de Análisis de Conducta. Madrid: Behavior and Law. With author’s authorization. 13 Criminal Profiling, as a support technique for police investigation, gains support after the kidnapping of Susan Jaeger, a 7-year-old girl. Teten and Mullany offered a profile that led investigators to a suspect, David Meierhofer, who fit the profile but could not be apprehended at the time due to lack of evidence. Following the disappearance of another girl a year later, profilers determined that the offender would be the kind of person who would enjoy reliving his crimes and would be able to phone the families of her victims. On this basis, the lead agent on the case recommended to the Jaeger family that they keep a tape recorder near the phone. On the anniversary of Susan’s kidnapping, the Jaegers received a phone call from the kidnapper. A voice analysis identified Meierhofer and in a second call, Susan’s mother was able to do so as well, for which he was arrested and convicted (Hicks and Sales, 2006). From this case, the unit began to participate on a recurring basis in the most important cases in which the F.B.I. This Behavioral Sciences Unit was joined by other professionals in the first years of its creation, becoming an elite group within the federal agency. Another well-known couple of members of this unit were Robert Ressler and John Douglas, possibly even better known than Teten and Mullany, as they lived through the development of the unit from the famous Criminal Personality Research Project, through which, the members of the unit dedicated themselves to traveling through the prisons of the USA interviewing the biggest and most dangerous murderers of the time. Following a complementary hypothesis to the one already generated by Teten, knowing how the murderers acted and were could help to classify them through the creation of typologies, and therefore, to fight against them. According to Ressler, getting into the mind of the criminal could be useful for the police to know how to solve the cases of serial murders that surfaced in the USA in the 70s and 80s of the last century. His intention was to create a series of decision-making strategies and knowledge that could be useful in a criminal investigation, introducing some contributions from Criminal Psychology to the baggage of strategies that police officers usually use. From this study project the famous typology of organized-disorganized³ murderers arises and the Behavioral Sciences Unit is established as a benchmark in criminal investigation not only nationally, but also internationally. ³ For a description of this typology consult: Jiménez, J. (2011) Manual Práctico del Perfil Criminológico. Criminal Profiling. Valladolid: Lex Nova. 14 This pioneering unit at the global level changes its name years later and is now established with the current Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), being integrated into the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC), whose mission is to assist and advise investigators of violent, unusual, repetitive or of special relevance or interest crimes. They are often involved in cases of kidnapping and mysterious disappearance of children, serial murders, sexual assault, kidnapping, manipulation, extortion or terrorism. The NCAVC is organized into three components: Behavior Analysis Unit (BAU). Child Abduction Serial Murder Investigation Resource Center (CASMIRC) Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP). The BAU assists police forces at a national and international level with on-site support or remote advice in the cases listed above, also participating in training projects and conferences as part of said assistance to police operators. Although the best known and requested work of this unit is the preparation of Criminological Profiles, they also support other phases of the police investigation through the analysis of criminal behavior, participate in the management of critical incidents or support in investigative interviews or interrogations. The BAU consists of five units: Unit 1. It is dedicated to cases of terrorism, arson attacks and attacks. Unit 2. They are dedicated to cases of threats, cybercrime and public corruption. Unit 3. They are dedicated to crimes against minors. Unit 4. They are dedicated to crimes against adults and the ViCAP database. Unit 5. They are in charge of academic research and training tasks. In addition to being the behavior analysis unit with the longest history, it is undoubtedly the one that has undergone the most evolution and development, as shown by its organizational and specialized structure, the number of members and the budget it manages inside one of the most important investigative agencies in the world. The BAU has been and is currently a reference, an example that other police forces in different countries have tried to imitate to some kind of extent. 15 FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit logo. 3. NTRODUCTION TO CRIMINAL PROFILING. There are several terms that are often used to designate the Criminological Profile (CP): Psychological Profile, Personality Profile, Criminal Profile, Offender Profile... depending on the authors or schools that have worked in this field. These terms, which are often used interchangeably, come from the terms Offender Profiling or Criminal Profiling, which is how the profiling technique is known. Despite the indistinct use of various terms, it is necessary to establish a clear and differentiating definition of what a CP is and what it is not. It can be defined as a police technique with which, from the analysis of the behaviors carried out by the author of a crime, we can infer different characteristics that said criminal is likely to present (Jiménez, 2015). These characteristics correspond to physical-personal, psycho(patho)logical, social, economic, geographic information... about the perpetrator of the crime. The objective of this CP is to help police investigators based on this information about the offender (Hazelwood and Burgess, 1995). In this sense, CP is a police technique and it is in this context that it should be used, although derivations or adaptations have been developed for some years for its use at the expert-forensic level. 16 The CP is based on a premise widely used in the field of Psychology: in each behavior we perform we describe ourselves, we are what we do and we do what we are. Canter (1993) talks about this when defining the construct of criminal consistency. Human beings acquire throughout their lives a series of behavior patterns, knowledge, coping and adaptation resources with which they respond to their environment and with which they interact with other human beings. Although with changes and evolutions typical of human nature, these behavior patterns tend to remain consistent in different contexts and over time. Taking this into account and adapting it to the criminological question, a criminal will behave in his crimes in a similar way to how he behaves in other situations of his non-criminal life. In short, the criminal cannot get rid of his way of being, his personal conditions and his circumstances, so all this will be reflected in his crime. The mission of the profiler when making a CP is to be able to track and identify these elements. This is the basis of CP, what Canter (2003) calls the A→C profiling equation. The A corresponds to the actions that the criminal performs in the crime, the C are the characteristics that it shows and that we infer in our CP. The → would be the process of inference by which we relate certain actions of the crime with certain characteristics of its perpetrator. Although the whole equation has great complexity, it is evidently the inference process that shows the greatest difficulty. How to identify and assign a personal characteristic based on behavior identified in the crime? This becomes more complicated if we also want to offer information that is useful at the police level. To carry out this complex task, the profiler must analyze different elements of the crime to identify the evidence of behavior from which he will infer the characteristics of the criminal. These elements would be (Jiménez, 2011): Crime scene. The modus operandi (MO) and the signature (motivation). geographic behavior. The victimology. 17 The crime scene⁴ is the space where the crime takes place and where the victim and perpetrator interact. The crime occurs in the past, but the scene is the only element that remains, it allows us to reconstruct the crime in the same context in which it happened and recreate the behavior displayed by the criminal. The scene is the place of criminal interaction, but it is also a variable that provides information on its own. It is not a neutral element, it lends coherence and makes the crime compatible with the context. There are certain behaviors that the criminal can perform in one place and not in another. The place enables and conditions him to act in one way or another. From this approach, the profiler will try to link the aggressor and the victim with the scene, considering if it may have any meaning for any of them, if it is a chosen or opportunistic scene and what relationship that scene may have with each of them (it is the victim’s workplace, it is a place frequented by his/her, it is a place completely unknown to the victim, it belongs to the geography of the aggressor’s daily routines, it is a secluded place with difficult access...). The correct interpretation of the complex dynamics inferred from the behaviors at the crime scene, with the information obtained from the analysis of the available forensic evidence, can reveal interesting information about how and why the crime occurred (O’Toole, 2006). There are public places such as a shopping center or a park that can be associated with a large number of people, and other private spaces, such as a home, where the number of people who have access to it (apparently) is very limited. This will allow us to filter the number of possible suspects. The criminal interacts with the victim during the crime, but also with the scene, with its elements, objects and circumstances. In this interaction, his comfort in the place will be reflected, his feeling of security, his knowledge of the context and the conditions that surround him, his planning and ability to choose that place. ⁴ We are speaking in singular, but within a crime scene can be more than one. What we say here applies to each one of them. 18 As the situationist tradition of Psychology indicates, the behavior of human beings is influenced not only by their personality traits, but also by the context-environment that surrounds them (Polaino-Lorente et al., 2003). This context must be understood broadly, ranging from purely physical environmental factors to social or political conditions. If the offender has that ability to choose, he will choose contexts (scenes) that are the most conducive to his way of being, his motivations, tastes and needs. This happens when we choose our places of leisure such as going to a bar or a vacation spot. In a certain way, we seek to “feel comfortable” with those places, we identify ourselves in some way with certain characteristics of that place, which are compatible with our “way of being”. This simile can be extrapolated to criminal behavior. However, there are times when the criminal cannot select the scene where he is going to commit his crime, which implies that he has to accommodate himself to it. In this case, the profiler can analyze the offender’s ability to adapt to it, to face obstacles and solve problems. Another element of analysis would be the Modus Operandi (MO) that Gross (1924) defines as the way in which a crime has been committed. They are the actions and behaviors aimed at committing the crime. Burgess et al. (2006) follow the same line by defining it as the actions carried out by the offender during the commission of a crime. The MO responds to “the how” of crime and therefore is a fundamental element of analysis when making a CP. MO behaviors are perceived by the offender as necessary for the successful commission of a crime. There are three purposes for this type of behavior: first, it ensures the success of the crime; second, it protects the identity of the offender; and third, it facilitates the offender’s escape (Safarik and Ressler, 2010). A criminal develops a useful MO through trial and error and maintains that MO over time because it works for the criminal’s purposes. The modus operandi of an offender changes, among other things, education, age, the development of criminal sophistication and the fact of having to deal with contingencies of the crime that were not anticipated or that are beyond the control of the offender. The MO can also change as the offender becomes more experienced and confident. Offender MO behaviors are more likely to be intentional and purposeful because they are goal-driven (Safarik & Ressler, 2010). 19 Analyzing the MO we can obtain varied information: It can provide us with information about his intellectual/educational level. The behaviors that the criminal performs during the crime may reflect familiarity with a certain technique or knowledge. This, in some situations, can make us infer a certain type of profession or qualification that can help filter or search for suspects. In some cases, it can also tell us about their criminal career (Davies et al., 1997). According to these authors, sex offenders who rob their victims, clean their fingerprints, or avoid leaving traces of semen are more likely to have a prior history of arrests for crimes related to theft or sexual assault. In the same sense, Canter and Heritage (1990) show that sexual aggressors who rob their victims and use great violence in their attacks have a criminal record more likely. If the criminal activity continues over time, the offender will evolve his MO, trying to bsecome more and more competent. He will refine his methodology, adapting and perfecting it to achieve better results with less effort. That is, the MO changes as a consequence of learning or the self-confidence that the criminal acquires (Keppel et al., 2005; Douglas, Burgess, Burgess, and Ressler (2013). Since the mission of the MO is to protect the identity, help to complete the crime and favor the escape of the criminal, we can analyze the level of achievement of objectives that a certain MO has. Based on this level of achievement we can establish a level of risk. Thus, we will have a low-risk MO when there is evidence of great planning, great skill and optimal precautionary acts before, during and after the criminal act. The moment, place and victim are selected with great skill to favor their interests. (Example: choosing unknown victims can be considered a low-risk MO behavior since they do not know the offender and, therefore, make their identification difficult). On the other hand, we can have a high-risk MO evidenced by a great improvisation in their behavior, lack of skills, without precautionary acts and leaving a large amount of physical evidence at the crime scene. The criminal has not planned the place, the moment or the selection of the victim. The behaviors that he performs imply that he can be identified quickly by the police or that he cannot even commit his crime. (Example: Selecting a larger victim to attempt to rob without the use of a weapon may be considered high-risk MO conduct.) 20 In addition to behaviors of the MO, the criminal performs others that are related to what we call signature. The signature of the criminal can be defined as those behaviors that tell us about the final motivation to commit the crime, that reveal the psychological or emotional needs that the criminal intends to cover by committing his crimes (Jiménez, 2011) and that go beyond of carrying out the criminal act (Keppel et al., 2005). If the MO tells us about the “How”, the signature tells us about the “Why”. “Ritual” behaviors, often referred to as “signature,” are more static than MO behaviors, because they are not as influenced by elements of the situation or by learning issues as the others do (Douglas & Munn, 1992a; 1992b; Douglas & Olshaker, 1997; Geberth, 1996; 2003; Keppel and Birnes, 1997; Keppel, 1995a, 1995b; Keppel, 2000, 2004). In other words, the motivation that leads to committing a crime is maintained, even if it is done in a different way, that is, even if its MO changes. Ritual behaviors are unnecessary for the successful commission of a crime. These behaviors are need-driven and performed by the offender for various reasons. However, in general, in violent homicides, especially those with a sexual component, these behaviors are the result of psychological and emotional needs. Both unique and repetitive. These behaviors are manifested through physical actions and sequences of verbal actions. In serial crimes, the core ritual behavior of the offender does not change over time. However, it may evolve as the original ritual becomes more fully developed (Douglas, Burgess, Burgess, & Ressler (2013), Safarik & Ressler, 2010). Repeating a behavior in different crimes does not make it part of the firm. The cinematographic world has created an image of the signature as a sign that serial killers leave in their crimes as a “visiting card” to identify and individualize them. Obviously, this image is unreal and incorrect despite the fact that some authors in the field of Profiling have maintained and developed it.º 21 Ritual behaviors are sometimes very difficult to distinguish from OM behavior. A detailed and meticulous analysis is necessary. As elements or clues to recognize them, ritual behaviors usually have the following characteristics: They suppose an extra time for its development in the scene of the crime. They are not necessary to complete the crime. They are related to expressions of need, emotion or fantasy. There is less rationality, they are more visceral. They involve acts of communication between the criminal-victim or between the criminal-another person. Most of these behaviors materialize in the form of rituals (set up), acts of communication or emotional discharges. Sometimes, they want to show a specific image of the victim or the crime, which forces them to “explain” what happened by staging the place and handling the corpse. Other times, these ritual behaviors are acts of verbal or written communication. Sometimes the ritual is also reflected in behaviors that are an emotional discharge for the criminal. Excessive violence, brutality, and a large number of injuries or wounds can be examples of this. Therefore, if the MO informs us of how the crime is committed and helps us identify what he knows how to do, the ritual tells us about the why and helps us understand the crime and its final motivation. If we pay attention to the consistency (Canter, 1993) that we talked about before, the criminal behaves with his victim in the same way as he behaves with other people in his non-criminal life. If we extend this to other behaviors and attitudes, the motivation, needs and objectives that the criminal pursues with his acts will be similar to those that he pursues and characterize him in his non-criminal life. Therefore, the ritual will also allow us to outline motivational and psychological aspects of the perpetrator of the crime, which can help investigators filter or search for suspects. Another element that we are going to analyze for the elaboration of a CP is the geographical behavior displayed by the criminal. The crime takes place in a specific space, a place with a series of characteristics and conditions with which the criminal must interact and that force him to make a series of decisions and perform certain behaviors. 22 We are going to analyze actions in which variables such as distance, displacement or time are considered. The use of these quantitative variables has led to an elaboration of the CP that can be carried out from a more empirical point of view. With the help of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and certain mathematical algorithms, it is possible to carry out calculations and predictive models regarding the mobility and geographical activity of a criminal. The result of all this has been the development of a sub-discipline within criminological profiling and the creation of specific geographic profiling software that tries to offer information on the criminal’s area of action, their movement characteristics, temporal-spatial patterns and, at best, information about where the offender may reside. The information provided by a Geographic Profile (PG) is usually presented in the form of maps, which also offers a very important visual and operational appeal from the police point of view. This aspect has made the police forces more receptive to this type of analysis in the face of the inoperative information offered by certain criminological profiles. The theoretical bases of the PG and the mathematical analyzes carried out in this field arise mainly from the contributions of Environmental Criminology and various lines of research such as the Journey to Crime, which studies the movements made by criminals or the identification and analysis of criminal movement patterns (for more information, the reader can consult Jiménez, J. 2011). These studies have shown, among other results, that criminals tend to move very little to commit their crimes (Rossmo, 2000) and that, specifically, sex offenders tend to act mostly very close to where they live (Canter and Larkin, 1993; Canter and Gregory, 1994; Kocsis et al. 2002; Meaney, 2004; Paulsen, 2007; Tamura and Suzuki, 1997). This fact constitutes information of great value for the police investigation, since the fact that the majority of sexual aggressors commit their crimes in a nearby area makes it easier for the police to develop police persecution techniques and strategies, including the GP. The GP would therefore be a technique for analyzing the geographic behavior developed by the criminal and his decision-making at a spatial and temporal level in order to advise police investigators (Knabe-Nicol & Alison, 2011). The main objective is to identify a geographical area with a high probability that the offender’s base of operations is located within it, which is called in this area the anchor point. Generally, that place is usually his residence, but it can also be his place of work, a friend’s house, or a relative’s, among others (Rossmo in Canter and Young 2003). In some cases, this information about the probable place of residence can help the police to track possible suspects in the area through police databases (Rossmo, 2000). Other information that the GP can provide is the identification of the criminal action zone, an area where there is a greater probability that he will look for new victims and act again. 23 On this occasion, the police can optimize patrol zones and search strategies in a specific area of the city. Operationally, the GP is made from the georeferencing of crime scenes, which implies its use mainly in serial crime. From these scenes, mathematical calculations are made that try to identify in each point of the map the possibility that the anchor point is found there. The result is usually a map with zones of different colors depending on the greater or lesser probability that said zone harbors the anchor point of the criminal. This technique has been used by police forces for decades and has been implemented mainly in cases of homicide, robbery, sexual assault or arson (Rossmo, 2012). Finally, the last element of the crime analyzed for the elaboration of the CP is the victim. The hypothesis of the CP when analyzing this is that, knowing the victim partly, we will be able to know the perpetrator. This hypothesis is based on several premises (Jiménez, 2011): In some cases, the victim is selected for some characteristic or condition. The aggressor chooses this one and not another, thus, by identifying the selection criteria that he has used, we can learn something about him. The victim-offender relationship. Continuing with what we have mentioned previously, most of the aggressions are caused by people close to you or with whom you have some kind of relationship. If we know the victim we will be able to identify her aggressor and her surroundings. The type of person and her lifestyle relate her to a certain type of crime and criminal. Knowing how a person lives, where they move around and what lifestyle they lead can help us get an idea of what type of person has been able to contact them. Locard transfer principle. The criminal interaction between victim and perpetrator causes traces to be mutually transferred between them. This transfer can be physical traces and/or psychological traces. Shared space and time. During the crime, the victim and the perpetrator share space and time. As indicated by the Theory of Routine Activities (Cohen and Felson, 1979), the criminal selects his targets in the same geographical context in which he carries out his routine activities, so it is very likely that both share some area of that geographic context. If we know the space of routine activities of the victim, which is obviously more accessible to researchers, we can try to identify which areas of that context could be related to the perpetrator. Knowing the spaces and times related to the victim at the time of the crime, we will be able to assess what other people have also shared them, including her victimizer. 24 From these premises arises the victimological analysis in CP, which is made up of three elements: Risk and exposure of the victim. Analysis of the last 24 hours of the victim. Victim selection criteria. The risk levels of both the victim and the offenders are important components at a crime scene and it is important for the profiler to understand them when evaluating or profiling the period of the crime. Victimology is the study of the victim(s) of a violent crime or series of crimes. The premise for developing a victimological analysis is that the more we know about the victim, the more will the investigators know about the aggressor. The profiler should ask how likely it is that, considering the victim’s lifestyle, family, friends, habits, behaviors, and environment, this person has become a victim of a violent crime. It is a comprehensive assessment of her personal, professional, and private life. The victim’s level of risk should be assessed to determine if he or she is a high-, medium-, or low-risk victim. It is also important to understand the risk level of the offender. How much risk did the offender take by committing this crime in terms of where the crime occurred, the time of day it occurred, and the type of victim the offender selected? The review of these variables may suggest that there is a high level of risk of identification and apprehension of the offender. Therefore, why did the offender take this type of risk? (Campbell, J.H. and DeNevi, D., 2004). Knowing the lifestyle consists of knowing how that person lives in their day to day according to their characteristics, conditions and circumstances. Analyzing that lifestyle we can establish different levels of risk to become a victim of a crime. Thus we will have: Low-risk victims: These are people who are not usually exposed to risks that lead to probable victimization. The behaviors they carry out, by action or omission, allow them to be away from possible criminals. Medium-risk victims: These are people who are sometimes exposed to some type of risk that makes them a probable victim. Not all of them, but some of their life habits make them prone on some occasions to be the object of a crime. High-risk victims: These are people who are routinely exposed to many risks that make it very likely that sooner or later they will become victims. 25 After determining the level of risk, we will have to see how that can contribute to the investigation. A question that can help us would be: What kind of victim was the criminal looking for? Or, more specifically, what kind of victim has he finally chosen to commit his crime? At first, we could all think that he will always look for a victim that is the easiest and that poses the least danger to him. Following this hypothesis, high-risk victims would be the most indicated, since in many aspects they favor the possibility of being victimized at a lower risk for the criminal. Well, this does not happen on all occasions, since the offender cannot always follow the cost-benefit law. His characteristics, motivations, emotional states, and criminal fantasies cause him to behave differently, sometimes at the expense of his safety. A very impulsive or emotionally aroused criminal can commit a crime, even if the situation is very risky. As we have already commented in relation to the Theory of Routine Activities, victim and criminal usually meet while moving through their nodes of daily activities. When does the criminal enter the “life” of his victim? It is clear that, if both know each other, the relationship and distance between them will be closer, sharing many areas of activity and times. For example, if the aggressor is his partner, it seems obvious that they will share many spaces (house, leisure area...) and times (they have lived together for years). But in the event that both are strangers, it is evident that at some point they have come to meet and maintain a level of interaction. Especially in this type of crime, where the perpetrator is unknown, it is useful to make a reconstruction of the last 24 hours of the victim from the moment of the crime. With this reconstruction we will relate the victim to her environment and to other events close to her victimization. This reconstruction tries to know everything the person did 24 hours before becoming a victim, taking into account several details: Places visited. Schedules. Interactions with other people (routine and incidental). Performed activities. Emotional, psychological and physical state. Journeys made and means of transport used. 26 It is necessary to assess if in those 24 hours there is any fact or circumstance that is not included in her/his daily routines. We can try to answer some questions: At what point of the day does he/she meet the criminal? Where does she/he meet the perpetrator? Is it a place known or unknown to him/her? Is the crime scene within his/her routine activities? Is it possible to establish a relationship between the victim and the aggressor within the crime? Is it possible to establish whether it is a victim of opportunity or, on the contrary, has been selected? Undoubtedly, the 24-hour limit is indicative, the intention is to know all the information immediately prior to the crime that can provide relevant data for the performance of the PC and help in the police investigation. It is necessary to know past situations that may be related to the facts. Thus, it can be interesting to know if in recent weeks the victim has received any kind of threat, if he/she had a breakup, met someone... To carry out this reconstruction, the sources of information are multiple, from family, friends, documentation, photographs of the crime scene, telephone bills... We will use any source of information that we understand may be relevant. Although in the risk analysis section we have talked about the selection of the victim by the criminal, we are going to briefly expand on this issue. The potential criminal is motivated to commit a crime and waits for the right situation to act. Once this condition is present, he selects the victim. The killer who has a conscious plan or fantasy may require a victim who meets certain criteria, and many killers have been known to seek out a victim who is exactly the right fit for the fantasy. Access and location influence decision making. The risk the offender is willing to take often requires an assessment of the victim’s vulnerability and availability. The history and circumstances of the victim are often also important. The victim may be a symbol of someone in the past of murders, as in the case of the man who killed older women close to his mother’s age. 27 Other killers may look for certain actions in their victims. A man who chose her victims from hitchhikers said she was playing a part. The big beautiful smile and getting in the car was a bit tragic, but she had announced that she would be impressed. For the killer without a conscious plan or fantasy, a person can become a victim by eliciting certain responses. For example, someone may remind her/his belief in an unfair world. He may feel unfairly treated and this sets in motion the justification for killing. One killer felt that women’s continued rejection of him was an injustice. Other murders respond to the victims with rage and anger (Ressler R.K, Burgess, A.W., & Douglas, J.E., 1988, Safarik & Ressler, 2010). These criteria are not exclusive or exclusionary, it is necessary to carry out a good analysis to establish what selection criteria has been used. Knowing it can give us relevant information. For example, an aggressor who only takes into account the criterion of opportunity to select his victims will be more difficult to capture than another who is governed by more exclusive criteria such as selecting children under 5 who are good looking. The first can act in many places, the second will have to achieve its objectives in places where there are subjects with those characteristics, restricting its field of action, increasing its movements and, ultimately, taking more risks. The perpetrator, as the main element that motivates and generates the crime, grants a fundamental role to the victim who, in addition to causing the damages of the criminal act, assigns a role in the explanation of the crime. If that criminal becomes serial and continues to act, his objectives may change from one crime to another, the behaviors and actions he performs will not be the same from an operational point of view, but the assignment of roles and the theme underlying the crime will remain constant. This role of the victim can be identified from two behaviors: the type of violence inflicted on her and the interaction between her and the perpetrator. Depending on the type of violence inflicted, we can speak of expressive criminals or instrumental criminals. In the expressive ones, violence is the result of an emotional state, it arises as a response of anger, revenge or frustration. The goal is to hurt the victim and cause her suffering. In the instrumentals, violence is used as an instrument to satisfy some need of the offender (sex, money, trust...). This violence is cold, calculated and controlled by the aggressor, there is no emotion in it (Canter and Fritzon, 1998). 28 Taking into account the relationship established by the offender with the victim, we can speak of the victim as an object, the victim as a vehicle and the victim as a person. When it is treated as an object, there is a lack of feeling and empathy with it, the offender is not interested in interacting, it is little more than an object to be explored and played with (Canter, 1993). Sometimes, the criminal exhibits extreme control over the victim, which is usually opportunistic. The desire for power is especially intense and quite possibly deploys a great deal of violence against her in the form of mutilation and cannibalism. When treated as a vehicle, the victim serves to obtain some goal or desire for the aggressor. In this case, they are criminals who know how to manage, manipulate and deceive the people around them. In this role, the victim does not interest him, it is simply a means used to obtain something. We can exemplify it with a robbery with assault in the middle of the street, in which the victim only matters in case he carries money or valuables. The objective in this case is these elements and not the person, who can be attacked, but only with the intention of facilitating their cooperation. There is nothing personal in violence. Finally, when treated as a person, the criminal establishes a great interaction with the victim, it is a significant and valuable person for him, and it is very likely that he knows her. In this case, the example could be an attack for revenge, where a specific person and not just anyone, can be the object of that attack. Here, the violence on the subject that generates the feeling of revenge is personal, the victim is chosen, it must be her and not someone else. With the analysis of these elements of the crime, the profiler must try to develop a profile that characterizes the perpetrator of the crime. This profile must be of operational use for police investigators, as it is aimed at them. 29 The CP pursues two general objectives (Jiménez, 2011): Provide information about the perpetrator(s) of the crime that investigators can work with in relation to their suspects. Avoid blocking the police investigation by providing hypotheses and new lines of inves tigation. The specific objectives of the PC would be: Provide characteristics of the criminal that help recognize him or search for him. Inform about the possibility of him acting again. Indicate probable places of future action. Indicate probable place of residence or area where the perpetrator of the crime usually moves. Provide information to investigators to better understand the crime and its perpetrator, thus facilitating the investigation. Prioritize suspects and streamline the investigation. Optimize police resources (laboratory tests, patrols, information management...). Demonstrate interrogation strategies to suspects. 30 4. CRIMINAL PROFILING IN CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION. CP is not a technique that is used routinely within the criminal investigation process, it is generally used as a last resort when the material evidence is not sufficient to generate a fruitful line of investigation or when the number of suspects is so large that it is needed to prioritize them. CP is a complex and difficult technique. Complex because criminality, like any social phenomenon in which the human being is involved, is complex, multicausal and multifaceted. Compared to other forensic techniques that are dedicated to analyzing easily measurable and regulated physical or biochemical aspects, the CP is responsible for analyzing the human component of the crime, which exposes the difficulty that accompanies the human being as an object of study. In addition, it pursues a very pretentious objective: trying to offer information about the perpetrator of the crime through an indirect analysis of him, that is, based on the behaviors he performs during the crime (Jiménez, 2015). Furthermore, all of this is done indirectly, since we only have traces of behavior left by the criminal in the crime, which must be interpreted to provide characteristics that describe the criminal. Traditionally, CP has been used mainly in violent cases: murders or sexual homicides, where it is easier for the criminal to project personal and psychological elements on the victim or on the scene. By extension, sexual assaults, arson, high-risk disappearances or even terrorist acts are likely to be analyzed under this technique. As we will see in the units we will introduce throughout this book, profilers work in a similar way to how other forensic science technicians do. Their work begins when they are required by those in charge of a police investigation, providing their support and advice in the field of knowledge in which they are experts. Compared to what is usually shown in movies or television series, the profilers do not solve the cases nor are they in charge of capturing anyone. Generally, these profilers form specific behavior analysis units or are integrated, when appropriate, into multidisciplinary units together with other forensic technicians from other criminalistic areas. 31