PRO510 Criminal Investigative Analysis I ENG (1).pdf

PRO510. Criminal Investigative Analysis I 1 Published by Evidentia University of Behavioral & Forensic Sciences 111 E Monument Ave Kissimmee, Florida, USA © 2022 Evidentia University of Behavioral & Forensic Sciences 2 1. INTRODUCTION As the violent homicide rate remains high and criminals become in...

PRO510. Criminal Investigative Analysis I 1 Published by Evidentia University of Behavioral & Forensic Sciences 111 E Monument Ave Kissimmee, Florida, USA © 2022 Evidentia University of Behavioral & Forensic Sciences 2 1. INTRODUCTION As the violent homicide rate remains high and criminals become increasingly sophisticated with their crimes, so must the investigative tools of law enforcement be sharpened. One tool that has been providing assistance to law enforcement since the 1970s is criminal investigative analysis. The FBI, specifically the Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU), first used the procedure in 1971, known as psychological profiling, to assist local police in finding the perpetrator of a homicide. Though the profiling was done on an informal basis in connection with classroom instruction, the analysis proved accurate, and the offender was apprehended. In the following years, profiles were informally prepared on many cases with a reasonable degree of success, and as a result, requests for the procedure by local authorities increased steadily. Detectives with cases that were unusual or exceptionally violent or evidenced a significant amount of psychopathology increasingly sought help from agents in the BSU. In the early 1990s, the operational component of the BSU that was responsible for the “criminal profiling” and traveling on various murder or rape cases was taken out of the BSU and placed in the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group and called the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). After the incident at Waco, Texas, the FBI placed all operational components needed during a crisis under one umbrella division. The BSU is still part of the training division but does not engage in operational behavioral crime analysis. As increasing numbers of cases were sent in for assessment, several of the BSU criminal profilers (Ressler, Hazelwood, & Douglas) began the initial efforts to understand the dynamics of serial murder and sexual homicide and the offenders who perpetrated them. Initially referred to as psychological profiling, it was defined as the process of identifying the gross psychological characteristics of an individual based on an analysis of the crimes they committed and providing a general description of the person using those traits. The process typically involved five steps: (1) A comprehensive study of the nature of the criminal act and the type of persons who have committed these offenses. (2) A thorough inspection of the specific crime scene involved in the case. (3) An in-depth examination of the background and activities of the victim(s) and any known suspects. (4) A formulation of the probable motivating factors of all parties involved. (5) The development of a description of the perpetrator based on the overt characteristics associated with their probable psychological makeup. 3 It is not known who first used this particular process to identify criminals; however, the general technique was used in the 1870s by Dr. Hans Gross, an examining judge in the Upper Styria Region of Austria and, according to some, the first practical criminologist. Dr. James Brussel, a New York psychiatrist, who provided valuable information in famous cases like the Mad Bomber and Boston Strangler, popularized a similar approach to criminal investigation. In 1957, the identity of George Metesky, the arsonist in New York City’s Mad Bomber case (which spanned 16 years), was aided by psychiatrist criminologist James Brussel’s staccato style profile: “Look for a heavy man, middle-aged, foreign-born, Roman Catholic, single, lives with a brother or sister; when you find him, chances are he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned.” Indeed, the portrait was extraordinary; the only variation was that Metesky lived with two single sisters. Brussel, in a discussion about the psychiatrist acting as Sherlock Holmes, explained that a psychiatrist usually studies a person and makes some reasonable predictions about how that person may react to a specific situation and what they may do in the future. Profiling, according to Brussel, reverses this process. By studying an individual’s deeds, one deduces what kind of person the individual might be. Constructing a verbal picture of a murderer using psychological terms is not new. In 1960, Stuart Palmer published a three-year study of 51 murderers serving sentences in New England. Palmer’s “typical murderer” was 23 years old when he committed murder. Using a gun, this typical killer murdered a male stranger during an argument. He came from a low social class and achieved little in education or occupation. He had a well-meaning but maladjusted mother and experienced physical abuse and psychological frustration during his childhood. Similarly, another study in 1981 studied 31 accused murderers during routine referrals for psychiatric examination at a court clinic. The profile of the average murderer listed the offender as a 26­year­old male who most likely knew his victim, with monetary gain the most probable motivation for the crime. The term profiling has many negative connotations, notably racial and drug profiling. Psychological profiling, a term not currently in use, has given way to the terminology and process of criminal investigative analysis. Techniques used by law enforcement today seek to describe a murderer in terms that provide identifiable characteristics incorporated into an investigative framework. Investigative behavioral analysts, often referred to by the public and media as profilers, gather their information from the crime scene to analyze what it may reveal about the type of person who committed the crime. 4 The criminal investigative analysis process, contrary to the belief by many law enforcement investigators and its portrayal in the media as a method of actually identifying a specific perpetrator, serves to focus a law enforcement investigation’s effort to narrow down the pool of potential offenders by identifying particular personality, behavioral, and demographic characteristics of the type of offender who could be responsible for a specific violent homicide or sexual assault. The type of analysis conducted in the behavioral assessment of serial murder and sexual homicide focuses on individual level case data, attempts to identify patterns and trends in connected cases, examines the behavior exhibited within each crime scene, and facilitates the identification of the significant personality and behavioral characteristics of the offender. Because of the case-specific nature of the assessment, it is problematic to engage in gross generalizations about a particular homicide without having intimate knowledge of the details of that crime. The profiler’s work, as with any forensic professional, must be based on evidence and reasoning. It must, therefore, be built by inferences, that is, conclusions based on evidence that has been demonstrated under the scientific method and argued with the logic of reasoning, thus, avoiding speculation, that is, conjectures, theories, or conclusions that are not based on firm evidence. To ensure that scientific and competent work is performed, the profiler must be aware of their biases and try to eliminate them. Many profilers, forensic personnel, and scientists do not realize that prejudices, preconceived ideas, and cognitive biases lie behind their analysis. When biases contaminate the work, then objectivity is lost. Sometimes the forensic professional modifies, alters, and misinterprets evidence to support their theories. This can be done unconsciously or consciously and deliberately (in the worst case). It is, therefore, imperative that forensic professionals be mindful that such biases can infiltrate their work and analysis and work to remove them from the investigation. The profiler must question with critical thinking all the information that passes through their hands in an investigation. They must not accept any evidence or conclusion without being sufficiently proven. They must be skeptical of the evidence and the examination and interpretation of the results that others may provide. What may appear to be evident to some must also be subjected to the same evaluation and process as all other physical, forensic, or behavioral evidence. 5 It is necessary to: Evaluate the nature and quality of the information being analyzed. Recognize the biases held by all those who have provided insight or opinion in the case. Separate verifiable facts from subjective opinions. Distinguish between primary sources (unaltered, direct from source) and secondary sources of information (altered, interpreted, or summarized). This is especially critical when reading witness statements or attestations. Synthesize the information. The information we provide must be accurate, clear, and relevant. Law enforcement has had many outstanding investigators; however, these investigators’ skills, knowledge, and thought processes have rarely been captured in the professional literature. These people were indeed the experts in the law enforcement field, and their skills have been so admired that many fictional characters (Wilkie Collins, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Mike Hammer, and Charlie Chan) have been modeled on these experts. Although Donald Lunde, a criminal psychologist, believes that the murders of fiction bear no resemblance to the murders of reality, a connection between fictional detective techniques and modern criminal profiling methods may indeed exist. For example, attention to detail is the hallmark of famous fictional detectives; the smallest item at a crime scene does not escape their attention. This trait is seen in Sergeant Cuff, a character in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, widely acknowledged as the first full-length detective study. At one end of the inquiry, there was a murder, and at the other end, there was a spot of ink on a tablecloth that nobody could account for. “In all my experience … I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet.” However, unlike detective fiction, real cases are not solved by one tiny clue but by analyzing all clues and crime patterns. One of the fundamental tenants of crime scene analysis is to evaluate variables that explain why this person became the victim of homicide. While analyzing the behavior manifested at violent crime scenes, it is essential to avoid becoming too focused on any aspect of the crime scene and ascribing singular importance to it. The effort is not concentrated on reconstructing the exact detailed sequence of events. Such an attempt is impractical because of the innumerable possible interactions between the victim and offender. It is the totality of the circumstances rather than a single crime scene variable that is important in assessing not only what happened but why and how it happened. 6 The most accurate way of assessing the overall victim-offender interaction is to consider the occurrence of various behavioral attributes in conjunction with one another. It is crucial to analyze the crime concerning what is seen behaviorally and to integrate that analysis with what is factually known through investigative interviews and forensic evaluation of the evidence. Ultimately, assessing the motivation for the murder and placing the variables of the murder into context is paramount to establishing a framework for understanding the dynamics of this crime. Criminal behavior profiling has increased in notoriety over the past three decades. The media have guided the public’s perception of this type of analysis, including fictional television shows such as Criminal Minds, CSI, The Mentalist, and the well-known film Silence of the Lambs. The proliferation of true crime episodes that heavily feature FBI profilers and other experts offering commentary on complex serial murders has helped spike its popularity. The Behavioral Analysis Team led by Aaron Hotchner on Criminal Minds gives viewers the false impression that each character on the show possesses some unique, specialized insight into offenders’ minds, perhaps, bordering on psychic ability. Instead, individuals who practice this specialized analysis have years of law enforcement experience and training to prepare them to examine criminal behavior. Nonetheless, debates persist, especially in academia, about the background, skills, and training needed to practice behavioral analysis in this arena. The lack of universal agreement regarding the definition of behavioral profiling lies at the heart of many contentions. A history of offender profiling and how it has advanced into a more comprehensive analysis, including additional services to assist law enforcement agencies, can provide insight. The growth of more widespread investigative assistance has led to the need for and debate concerning appropriate training in this area. Also valuable are observations derived from a recent study that examined the experiences of actual criminal profilers in the field as criminal investigative analysts. 2. BACKGROUND OF PROFILING Since the 1970s, the FBI has helped state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies investigate violent crimes. Students arrived at the FBI Academy with unsolved violent crime cases for analysis. Additional cases were received from law enforcement agencies throughout the country and many from many international agencies whose students had attended BSU classes. 7 Implementing a procedure to systematically handle the influx of cases became necessary. Bureau case management policies were put in place. It was not long before the caseload grew, and the need for additional personnel became evident. But Bureau administrators wanted to evaluate the program before proceeding. To ascertain the value of the profiling program, a study was undertaken by the FBI Institutional Research and Development Unit headed by Agent criminologist Howard Teten. One hundred ninety-two law enforcement agencies had submitted two hundred nine violent crime cases to the BSU for analysis. A survey followed them to see if, in the case investigators’ opinion, the crime analysis and subsequent profile furnished by the BSU had been helpful. These cases were primarily unsolved older cold cases where all traditional and logical investigative practices had been tried but failed to bring closure. It would have been remarkable if even 1 in 100 cases were solved. The survey showed that 88 suspects had been mainly identified because the profiling process had expanded and refocused the investigation. Even more remarkable was that in 15 cases, profiling was reported to have identified a suspect outright, leading to the immediate solution of the cases. The funds necessary for expansion became available. Since the informal initiation of the analysis process, the FBI has assisted (e.g., through crime analysis, case linkage analysis, statement analysis, and psycholinguistic techniques) with cases involving multiple types of crime, including hostage taking, rape, arson, and serial sexual homicide. In general, assistance requested in these investigations focused on developing characteristics and traits of offenders. These broader behavioral analysis applications illustrate this analytical approach’s evolution and utility in examining a broader spectrum of criminal behaviors. Experts within the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) initiated the practice of profiling, which involves providing a requesting department with a likely offender’s behavioral and personality traits. It began as an analytical method to identify offender characteristics based upon a thorough examination of the crime dynamics and crime scene. It continued to develop over the years as a practical investigative tool to aid officers in advancing their casework and sometimes narrowing down a suspect pool. Like many analytical approaches, offender profiling was a byproduct of the training programs offered within the BSU. Instructors encouraged students to discuss solved and unsolved cases in their classes. Then, the officers noted crimes involving similar offenders. In subsequent courses, students presented similar unsolved cases, and instructors responded with verbal profiles. Students then used this information when returning to their home agencies, reporting that the profiles assisted them in their cases by saving them time and focusing their efforts. In some instances, officers solved the case by using only the profile. As the news of the valuable assistance grew, so did the number of requests for offender profiles. However, the instructors were primarily responsible for training at that time, so they had limited time to conduct formal case analyses. 8 3. ADVANCEMENT OF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIVE ANALYSIS While criminal investigative analysis, now practiced around the world, is most well-known for producing offender profiles, the practice has expanded into a more comprehensive investigative aid providing various services to law enforcement agencies. Again, when the different types of analytic services available to law enforcement agencies increased, so did the need for assistance. Therefore, profiling was renamed criminal investigative analysis to reflect better the roles of those within the FBI assisting. Creating an unknown offender profile has become and continues to be just one of the many services within this analytical framework provided to law enforcement to assist with investigating violent crimes. As such, criminal investigative analysis has become an umbrella term encapsulating various services, including myriad behavioral advice from the FBI to law enforcement agencies. Indirect personality assessments Equivocal death analyses Investigative suggestions Interview strategies Linkage analyses Media strategies Threat assessments Search warrant affidavit assistance Trial strategies Expert testimony Geographic profiling Critical Incident Analyses To characterize criminal investigative analysis as only offender profiling is oversimplified and antiquated. This perspective is highlighted by the findings from recent interviews with criminal investigative analysts who noted that the consultative services go far beyond providing an offender profile and may be more useful during an investigation. According to one interviewee: The most important thing I used to do was [assist with] interview or investigative strategy. 9 In other words, if I do a profile saying you are looking for a white guy in his 30s, the proper response from the investigator was, that’s fine, but how do I catch the guy?’ And that’s the issue, so it’s an investigative or interview strategy if you have a suspect, several suspects, or a problematic witness. It’s interview or interrogation strategy and investigative techniques that are the nuts and bolts that move things forward. The primary goal of criminal investigative analysis is to examine all of the physical, forensic, and behavioral information in an integrated way that examines the totality of the circumstances and provides advice to the requesting agency rather than become involved in the actual investigative process. Occasionally a criminal investigative analyst or team will go out to the field and assist in the process or testify. Still, the investigation is left to the law enforcement agency requesting assistance. The FBI does not come in and take over the case; instead, assistance is provided to an agency in its investigation. That was the idea that we would go in and help these people. We didn’t claim the credit and the glory. If a homicide or other violent crime occurs and your agency has exhausted all investigative leads, you may think it wise to seek behavioral analysis assistance. But, do you know what kind of help would prove most beneficial? Often, the initial thought is to request a behavioral profile of the unknown offender. But, perhaps, a service other than a list of traits and characteristics of your likely offender would be most valuable. What may help the investigation more is a list of strategies to help narrow down your suspect pool, followed by possible search warrant affidavit assistance. Then, once you have a likely suspect, following up with the criminal investigative analyst for interview strategies would be most helpful. Later, suppose the case goes to court. In that case, a range of behavioral investigative strategies (e.g., jury selection advice, prosecutorial trial strategies, case presentation, or expert testimony) may assist with a successful prosecution. Definition of Problem Although criminal investigative analysis has become a more comprehensive investigative tool, no collective or agreed-upon definition describing this process exists in law enforcement or academic literature. This exacerbates subsequent debates regarding the methods and training required to deliver these services. Common questions are debated throughout the academic literature and highlight longstanding controversies within the community of practice. 10 For example, one question is whether this process should be empirical or experience based. The expertise of an individual who provides criminal investigative analysis is debated regularly in literature, including whether investigative experience is necessary. In addition, discrepancies were found in the literature pertaining to required skills and training, the profiling process, and criticisms of its application. If I want to practice criminal investigative analysis, do I need formal training? What makes someone who practices this analysis an expert? Is investigative experience essential? Is logic and objective reasoning more important than investigative experience? Are the methods used standard and reliable? What makes criminal investigative analysis effective? Is profiling successful? These illustrate the obstacles this work must overcome to become more accepted by the academic and law enforcement communities. With that said, these debates have been examined in an ad hoc manner with little systematic assessment. Criminal investigative analysis, or criminal profiling as it is popularly known, is a tool commonly employed by law enforcement to investigate unusual, bizarre, and exceptionally violent crimes. Since the 1970s, investigative profilers at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime have assisted local, state, and federal agencies in narrowing the focus of an investigation’s hunt for the offender by conducting behavioral analyses of all types of violent crimes. The types of crimes that lend themselves to this type of analysis include homicide (sexual, serial, and mass murder), serial sexual assault, kidnapping, and extortions. The criminal investigative analysis process seeks to assist law enforcement in narrowing the focus of violent crime investigations by generating leads relative to the type of person who may have committed the crime. Criminal investigative analysis does not provide the specific identity of the offender. Instead, it focuses on individual-level case data, attempts to identify patterns and trends in connected cases, examines the behavior exhibited within each crime scene, and facilitates the identification of the kind of person most likely to have committed a crime by focusing on the significant behavioral and personality characteristics of the offender. 11 Criminal Investigative Analysis from Crime Scene Analysis Criminal profilers and the process of criminal investigative analysis have often been portrayed sensationally in the media. The ability to focus the direction of a criminal investigation, especially one that involves a cold homicide, by describing the attributes of the offender is a skill of the expert investigative profiler. Violent crime scenes always tell a story written by the offender, the victim, and the unique circumstances of their interaction. During the crime, the offender acts a certain way because of many factors, including personality, motivation, criminal sophistication, the influence of drugs or alcohol, and attributes unique to that particular crime, including the victim’s response. Correctly interpreting the complex dynamics inferred from crime scene behaviors and information obtained from the analysis of available forensic evidence can reveal critical information about how and why the crime occurred. Special agent profilers in the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Academy have demonstrated expertise in crime and crime scene analysis of a wide array of violent crimes, particularly those involving serial and sexual homicide, mass murder, and serial sexual assault, as well as particularly compelling cases of single or multiple homicides not involving serial killers. Although commonly associated with unusual homicides and aberrant sex crimes, the methodology used to analyze and interpret behavior has been applied in other types of crimes, such as hostage taking. Law enforcement officers must learn as much as possible about the hostage taker to protect the hostages. In such cases, police are aided by limited verbal contact with the offender and possibly by access to the offender’s family and friends. The police must be able to assess the hostage takers in terms of what courses of action they are likely to take and what their reactions to various stimuli might be. The assessment of terrorists, their culture, religious motivation, and ideology have become a focus of research, especially considering the attacks on U.S. soil on September 11, 2001. The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit added an assessment unit in 2002 to address threat assessment and terrorism nationally and abroad. Profiling has also been used to identify anonymous letter writers and persons who make written or spoken threats of violence. In cases of the latter, psycholinguistic techniques have been used to compose a threat dictionary, whereby every word in a message is assigned, by computer, to a specific category. 12 Words used in the threat message are compared with those used in ordinary speech or writings. The vocabulary used in the message may yield signature words unique to the offender. In this way, police may determine that the same individual wrote several letters and learn about the offender’s background and psychological state. Bombers and arsonists also lend themselves to profiling. Common characteristics of arsonists have been derived from an analysis of the uniform crime reports. A detailed study was conducted by the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime to study causal factors, personality, demographic, and behavioral attributes of bombers. Rapist behavior with victims ranging from young children to the elderly has been carefully studied. Utilizing a careful and detailed interview of the rape victim about the rapist’s behavior, law enforcement personnel examine the verbal, physical, and sexual behavior exhibited by the offender during the commission of the crime as well as both pre­and post­offense behavior to build a profile of the offender. The rationale is that behavior reflects personality, and by examining behavior, the investigator may determine what type of person is responsible for the offense. Studies of the behavioral and forensic dynamics of particular types of crimes have focused on subgroups of offenders such as those who sexually assault children or the elderly. Knowledge of these various crime scene and behavioral attributes can aid the investigator in identifying offender typologies that describe potential suspects’ personality, behavioral, and demographic characteristics. This information can narrow the pool of available suspects and allow for a more focused approach to developing strategies for interviewing these suspects. The advances in the forensic evaluation of crime scenes using DNA, fingerprints, and trace evidence, as well as research in psychopathy and the behavioral sciences, have opened new avenues in cold case investigation. Criminal investigative analysis does not provide the specific identity of the offender. Instead, it indicates the kind of person most likely to have committed a crime by focusing on analyzing and interpreting crime scene variables and dynamic crime scene interactions to reveal the behavioral, personality, and demographic characteristics of the offender(s). 13 4. CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIVE ANALYSIS IN SERIAL SEXUAL HOMICIDES Criminal investigative analysis is instrumental in investigating the crime of serial sexual homicide. These crimes create great fear because of their random and motiveless nature and are also given significant publicity. Consequently, law enforcement personnel are under tremendous public pressure to apprehend the perpetrator as quickly as possible. At the same time, these crimes may be the most difficult to solve precisely because of their apparent randomness and the observation that no known relationship existed between the victim and the offender before the crime. There has been a considerable upswing in these types of murders. In the 1990s, the rate of serial sexual homicide climbed to an almost epidemic proportion. According to U.S. Department of Justice officials, estimates of these types of criminals indicate that 8 to 40 individuals are roaming the United States at large. Some of the more notorious cases have had victims numbering from 48 in the case of Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, to as many as 165 as claimed by Henry Lee Lucas in Texas and his co­conspirator traveling companion Ottis Elwood Toole in Florida. (Author’s communications with Henry Lee Lucas at Williamson County, Texas). Offender Motivation Some of the earliest attempts to capture the types of motives seen in homicides are noted in the Chicago Homicide data set. The conventional designations of motive recognized today were not described as such in the early twentieth-century research. When researchers spoke of motive, they were described as strongly related to the offender-victim relationship. These relationships were generally categorized as domestic, friends and acquaintances, business, criminal transactions, noncriminal, and unknown. The two categories that dominated the relationship spectrum were gang and criminal related and altercations and fights. Domestic homicides were noted to be infrequent. In the early 1980s, the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit attempted to develop a motivational model for the classification of homicide. Earlier work by FBI profilers delineated two categories, the organized nonsocial and the disorganized asocial, to assist in describing offenders who engaged in lust murder. 14 These categories were not meant to explain all sexual homicides or serial homicides but, in the ensuing decades, have been assimilated into the law enforcement lexicon, representative or not, as an assessment tool used to categorize all types of homicides, not just lust murders. This work led FBI profilers to refine further the design for a classification system for serial sexual murder based on crime scene characteristics. This work culminated with the publication of the Crime Classification Manual (CCM), now in its third edition. FBI agents in the Behavioral Analysis Unit and Behavioral Sciences Unit collaborated with numerous law enforcement entities to develop this classification system using the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) model. Homicide classification was structured by motive, and four major categories were identified: criminal enterprise homicide, personal cause homicide, sexual homicide, and group cause homicide. Each major category had several subcategories, further specifying motive based on the crime scene and forensic findings, victim characteristics, and investigative considerations. Louis Schlesinger, a professor at John Jay College in New York City, presented a motivational model for understanding sexual homicide based on an analysis of the motivational dynamics of the antisocial act of the homicide itself. He described external (sociogenic) factors that stimulate homicide at one end and internal (psychogenic) factors at the other extreme. Other dimensional motivational models have surfaced that look at, among other attributes, instrumental versus expressive violence and impulsive versus ritualistic behavior. These models, although useful, are dimensional in understanding a single aspect of the crime. Interpreting human behavior is complex and multifaceted, especially from a criminal perspective. When criminal behavior is described as homicide, specifically serial homicide, interpreting the offender’s motive based on crime scene behavior has been difficult at best. Homicides may be interpreted as sexual homicides when sexual activity is observed. The observed sexual activity, however, may be the external expression in service of the nonsexual needs of the offender and thus may be misinterpreted. Conversely, many sexual homicides do not have an overtly sexual component. When considering homicides without a distinct sexual component, the method used by the offender to kill the victim, attributes of the crime scene, or characteristics of the victim can be used to establish a motive in some cases. 15 These same descriptors are more often used when the appropriate classification for the type of homicide is being assigned. The usefulness of the identification of motive may depend on whether the approach is from an academic research perspective or an operational law enforcement interest for case solution. Law enforcement’s interest would focus on the usefulness of assessing motive as related to narrowing down a potential pool of suspects or providing investigative direction. Law enforcement investigators are in general agreement on several aspects related to the offender’s motive in a serial murder investigation: Motive is difficult to discern and too abstract a concept to definitively identify when examining a violent crime scene. Directing investigative efforts to discern the motive may cause the investigation to become derailed. Analyzing offender behavior and forensic evidence at the crime scene is more helpful in determining what an offender did and why. Motive is elusive and may not be helpful even when it can be reasonably determined. Complicating attempts to discern the motive in a crime is that there can be more than one motive, and they can be reprioritized by the offender, rising and falling in importance as the crime proceeds. An offender’s motives can evolve both within a particular crime and over a series of crimes creating problems during the early stages of an investigation. As stated earlier, there can be multiple motives, some of which may be easier to observe in the crime scene behavior than others. When considering the level of violence noted in most serial homicides, it may be tempting to differentiate the offender’s motives based on the level of injury. However, the motives in serial homicides do not appear as separate and distinct from other violent and nonviolent crimes. The offender’s goal in the crime should not be construed as synonymous with his motivation. External constraints not controlled by the offender can further obfuscate the offender’s intended motive. Collectively, assessing crime scene behavior, the context within which it appears, the temporal and chronological components, and the forensic evaluation of evidence is the key to successfully inferring the motivation(s) of the offender. An offender’s affect is often interpreted as the motivation (e.g., anger motivated) when it can appear as a subtext for different motivations. 16 This is a significant distinction when assessing sexual homicide cases because excessive injury is often misinterpreted as anger related and thus suggestive of a relationship. Although it is not entirely accurate to say that these crimes are motiveless, all too often, only the perpetrator understands the motive(s), and it is thus unknown to the investigating officers. Although the serial murderer may not know the victims, their selection is rarely random. Instead, it is based on the murderer’s perception of specific characteristics of those victims that are of symbolic significance to the perpetrator. An analysis of the similarities and differences among victims of a particular serial murderer may provide important investigative information concerning the “motive” in an apparently motiveless crime. This, in turn, may yield information about the perpetrator. For example, the murder may be the result of a sadistic fantasy or displaced anger in the mind of the murderer, and a particular victim may be targeted because of a symbolic aspect of the fantasy. In such cases, the investigating officer faces an entirely different situation from a case in which a murder occurs due to jealousy, domestic violence, or during the commission of another felony (e.g., robbery). In those cases, a readily identifiable motive may provide vital clues about the identity of a perpetrator. In the case of the “apparently” motiveless crime, the investigative profilers must look to other methods, as well as conventional investigative techniques, in their effort to identify the perpetrator. In this context, criminal investigative analysis has been productive, particularly in those crimes where the offender has engaged in repeated behavior patterns at the crime scenes. 5. ASSESSMENT OF MURDERERS Traditionally, two very different disciplines have used the technique of assessing murderers. The first involves mental health professionals who seek to explain the personality and actions of a criminal through a psychiatric evaluation and diagnosis. This is accomplished through a process often consisting of an interview, testing, and onsite assessment of the individual in question. The mental health professional usually is in a position to examine the offender and, through this examination, seeks to explain the offender’s behavior. The second discipline involves law enforcement agents who seek to determine the offender’s personality, behavioral, and demographic characteristics through analyzing and interpreting the behavioral dynamics and forensic examination of evidence left at the crime scene. The behavioral analyst who does not have the offender but only the crime scene behavior works contrary to the mental health professional. 17 Forensic pathologists and law enforcement professionals utilize forensic nurse examiners (FNEs) and sexual assault nurse examiners (SANEs) who work with victims and perpetrators of sexual assault to provide rape­homicide examinations in many jurisdictions across the United States. Because FNEs also work with homicide detectives during an investigation, this group of professionals needs to be knowledgeable about the actions and behaviors of those offenders who engage in a sexual assault of their victims and any evidence that may be useful in assessing and interpreting their criminal behavior. Criminal profiling has also been described as a collection of leads, an educated attempt to provide specific information about a particular type of suspect, and a biographical sketch of behavior patterns, trends, and tendencies. The profiling process can be beneficial when the criminal has demonstrated some form of psychopathology. The task of an investigative profiler in developing a criminal profile is similar to the method used by forensic clinicians to make a diagnosis and treatment plan: data are collected and assessed, the situation is reconstructed, hypotheses are formulated, a behavioral assessment is developed, and tested, and the results are reported. In many aspects, this method represents the nursing process applied by forensic nurses in their role as associates to forensic pathologists and law enforcement agencies in investigating trauma and death. The original behavioral analysts learned profiling through brainstorming, intuition, and educated guesswork. Their expertise resulted from years of accumulated wisdom, extensive experience in the field, and familiarity with many cases. During an investigation of an unsolved crime, the profiling process consisted of a detailed examination of all available case materials and was intended to answer four questions: (1) what happened? (a listing of all significant behaviors of offender and victim); (2) how it happened? (a reconstruction of the crime with supporting evidence for each step); (3) why it happened? (The reasons for each behavior and the formation of motive); and (4) who is responsible? (The type of person who would have committed this type of crime, in this manner, for these reasons). Characteristics of a perpetrator listed in the profile might include such descriptors as approximate age, gender, race, marital status, occupation, hobbies, vehicle information, appearance and grooming, arrest history, residential information, lifestyle, psychological features, and disorders, as well as intelligence level, emotional adjustment and ability to interact socially, etc. 18 A fifth question was added to the above four questions: Where would such a person, as described in the profile, be found in the environment? This question allowed for the extrapolation of behavioral information drawn from the crime to be applied to lifestyle. Answering these questions provided insights and practical suggestions to investigators, leading to a more comprehensive investigation. The following summarizes the steps in profile construction. DECISION-PROCESS MODELS Homicide type and style Primary intent Victim risk Offender risk Escalation Time of crime Location of factors PROFILING INPUTS Crime scene Physical evidence Pattern of evidence Body positions Weapons Victimology Background Habits Family structure Last seen Age Occupation Forensic information Cause of death Wounds Pre/postmortem Sexual acts Autopsy report Laboratory reports Preliminary police report Background information Police observation Time of crime Who reported the crime? Neighborhood Socioeconomic status Crime rate Photos o Aerial o Crime scene o Victim 19 CRIME ASSESSMENT Reconstruction of crime Crime classification Organized/disorganized Victim selection Control of victim Sequence of crime Staging Motivation Crime scene dynamics CRIMINAL PROFILE Demographics Physical characteristics Habits Pre-offense behavior leading to crime Post-offense behavior Investigation Recommendations 6. INVESTIGATION The discipline came under greater scrutiny from a research standpoint and by the courts. Behavioral profilers drew on their vast experience working thousands of cases independently and in group consultations (the experiential component). These analysts regularly attend postgraduate courses in forensic pathology, psychopathy, and forensic bloodstain analysis, among many others. As the discipline has grown, so has the base of empirically based research. Analysts of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit have researched diverse areas such as school shootings, sexual assault and homicide of the elderly, and the behavioral characteristics of bombers. A basic premise of criminal profiling is that the way a person thinks (e.g., their patterns of thinking) and their personality direct that individual’s behavior. A formulation is a concept that organizes, explains, or makes investigative sense out of information and influences profile hypotheses. An investigative profiler brings to the crime scene the ability to make hypothetical formulations based on their previous experience. These formulations are based on clusters of information emerging from the crime scene information, victimology, and the investigator’s expertise in understanding criminal behavior. As a best practice, forensic investigators should gather detailed information from the crime scene to assist criminal investigative analysts in determining the type of person who committed the crime. These investigators must be as mindful of the behavioral evidence as the forensic evidence they collect. 20 Generating a Criminal Profile Investigative profilers at the FBI’s BAU, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes (NCAVC), have been analyzing crime scenes and generating criminal profiles since the 1970s. Their description of the construction of profiles represents the offsite procedure conducted at the NCAVC, contrasted with the onsite procedure. The criminal profile–generating process is described as five stages, with the sixth, the outcome, being the apprehension of a suspect. The criminal profile generating process has produced hundreds of profiles. A series of overlapping steps lead to the final goal of apprehension. These steps include: 1. Profiling inputs 2. Decision process models 3. Crime assessment 4. Criminal profile 5. Investigation 6. Apprehension Criminal profile generating process. There are two critical feedback filters: (1) achieving unity with the evidence, decision models, and investigation recommendations, and (2) adding new evidence. Profiling Inputs The profiling input stage begins the criminal profile–generating process. The information recorded by local law enforcement officers at the site or location of the crime is gathered and detailed. A thorough inspection of the specific crime scene yields information about physical evidence, patterns of evidence, body positions, number of scenes, weapon use and disposition, and other pertinent information. Comprehensive information about the victim (victimology) is a crucial component of any crime analysis, especially for those homicides that appear motiveless. An in-depth examination of the victim’s background and activities provides information on their background, habits, family structure, occupation, and when they were last seen. A decision is made about whether or not the victim was of low or high risk or if their risk level had been situationally changed. If a low risk is the determination, questions about why the subject targeted the victim are formulated. More information on determining risk is discussed later in the chapter. 21 Forensic information is compiled about the cause and type of death, antemortem and postmortem wounds, and sexual acts committed with the victim. Laboratory and autopsy reports provide a clear picture of the nature and severity of the injuries, which allows the investigator to determine the degree (or lack) of control the offender exhibited over the victim during the crime. For example, stabbings randomly made to the body (as contrasted with stabbings in one part of the body) and identifying defensive wounds may suggest the offender had difficulty controlling the victim. Preliminary police reports and investigative documents include background information, police observations, time of the crime, who reported the crime, socioeconomic status and crime rate of the neighborhood, and photos (aerial, crime scene, and victim [at scene and autopsy]) are sent for evaluation. The personal observations of the officers at the scene and the circumstances under which they were dispatched are all important. These reports do not include suspect information from local law enforcement. Decision Process models The decision process begins with organizing and arranging the inputs into meaningful patterns. Key decision points, or models, differentiate and organize the information from step 1 and form an underlying decisional structure for profiling. Homicide: Type and Style A single homicide is one victim, one homicidal event; a double homicide is two victims, one event, and one location; and a triple homicide has three victims in one location during one event. Four or more victims were killed during the same incident, usually in one location with no distinctive time between the murders. Anything beyond three victims is classified as mass murder. Classic Mass Murderer There are two types of mass murderers: classic and family. A classic mass murderer involves one person operating in one location at one period. That period could be minutes or hours and might even be days. Classic mass murderers are usually described as mentally disordered individuals whose problems have increased to the point that they act against groups of people unrelated to these problems. The murderer unleashes this hostility through shootings or stabbings. 22 One classic mass murderer was Charles Whitman, a man who armed himself with boxes of ammunition, weapons, ropes, a radio, and food; barricaded himself in a rooftop tower in Austin, Texas; and opened fire for 90 minutes, killing 16 people and wounding more than 30 others. On April 20, 1999, in a Littleton, Colorado, high school, anger had been building in students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. On the 110th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birth, they swept through their high school corridors in a rampage before committing suicide, leaving 13 dead, 25 injured, and a community in shock. Some mass murderers remain at the scene of the killings and, rather than surrendering, engage in behavior that forces the police to kill them in a phenomenon known as “suicide by cop.” Family Member Mass Murderer The second type of mass murderer kills several family members (family annihilators). If more than three family members are killed, and the perpetrator commits suicide, it is classified as a mass murder/suicide. On Christmas Eve 2008, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo went to the home of his exwife’s relatives, where his ex-wife and her family were having a Christmas Eve party. Pardo had come dressed in a Santa suit. Pardo methodically killed his ex-wife, her parents, and five other relatives before setting the house on fire. He then drove to his brother’s unoccupied home, where he killed himself. Without the suicide and with four or more victims, the murder is called a family killing. One example involves Vincent Brothers from Bakersfield, California, who shot and killed his wife, mother-in-law, and three young children in 2003. He also stabbed his wife postmortem. He staged the crime to make it appear that they had been killed during a botched break-in robbery. Brothers rented a car in Ohio and drove nonstop to Bakersfield, committed the homicides, and then drove back to give himself an alibi that he had been out of state at the time of the murders and therefore could not be responsible. Brothers had been the vice principal of an elementary school in Bakersfield. He was convicted and eventually sentenced to death. John List, an accountant, employed as an insurance salesman, killed his entire family. In a front room, the bodies of List’s wife and three children (ages 16, 15, and 13) were discovered lying side by side and facing up. Each was meticulously covered with a white sheet, and their arms were folded across their bodies. Each had been shot once behind the left ear, except for one son, who had been shot 16 times. A further search of the residence revealed the body of List’s mother, also shot once behind the left ear. 23 Furthermore, she also had been neatly laid out and covered with a white sheet. Eighteen years after the murder of his family, New Jersey law enforcement approached America’s Most Wanted to air the case in hopes that List could be identified. Forensic artist Frank Bender created and age-progressed a clay bust that looked remarkably similar to List even though he had been missing for 18 years. Following the episode’s airing, List was identified and subsequently arrested in Richmond, Virginia. Spree and Serial Murderers Two additional types of multiple murderers are spree and serial murderers. A spree murder is three or more murders in two or more locations where a precipitating event fuels the continued need to kill. In 2007 at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, Seung­Hui Cho, using two pistols, killed 32 people in two separate events lasting almost three hours and then killed himself. While technically, this is considered a spree killing because of the different locations, most law enforcement professionals would describe it as mass murder, arguing that the campus was a single place and the three-hour time frame, for all intents and purposes, a single event. As a spree murder, this would be classified as a crossover spree, a combination of spree and mass murder. In 2005, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit hosted the first international serial murder symposium in San Antonio, Texas. One hundred thirty-five of the world’s experts on serial murder were invited to participate in the five-day event. The validity of spree murder as a separate category was a central topic of discussion. Many attendees had a problem with the current definition of spree murder, for which one of the requirements is no cooling-off period between the murders. The lack of a cooling-off period differentiates it from a serial murder. There was concern over the definitional problems relating to the concept of a cooling-off period, which creates arbitrary guidelines and is not well defined. Conference attendees advocated the discontinued use of spree murder as a separate and distinct category. In 2019, Spree murder was categorized and operationalized by this author and determined to be a helpful category that sits between serial and mass murder. 24 Since the late 1970s, law enforcement, academia, and researchers, among others, have used multiple definitions of serial murder. Although these definitions share common themes, they differ on specific requirements, such as the number of murders involved, the types of motivation, and temporal aspects. Attendees at the 2005 International Serial Murder Symposium examined these criteria to develop a single definition. Depending on the definition being used, the number of victims required ranged from 2 to 10 or more. Most definitions also require a period between the murders, which, as noted earlier, is commonly referred to as a cooling-off period or a period of emotional downtime. In 1998, the U.S. Congress passed a federal law titled the Protection of Children from Sexual Predator Act of 1998 (Title 18, U.S. Code, Chapter 51, and Section 1111). This law includes a definition of serial murder that has been universally accepted as the de facto definition and is defined as a series of three or more killings that have common characteristics to suggest the reasonable possibility that the same person or persons committed the crimes. This law, however, was not enacted to define serial murder but to set forth criteria establishing when the FBI could assist local law enforcement agencies. During the serial murder symposium, the consensus was to create a simple but broad definition to be used primarily for law enforcement. Researchers wanted the definition of serial murder to have a specific number of murders to facilitate meeting research criteria. From a law enforcement perspective, researchers argued that a lower number would allow essential resources to be allocated earlier in the investigation. The motivation for committing the murder was also considered a criterion. Traditionally, serial murder has been motivated by an emotional or psychological need; serial murderers were therefore regarded as different from those who murdered during a criminal enterprise, such as contract killers or gang and mob enforcers motivated by money or allegiance to a group. The definition of serial murder offered by the symposium attendees is “the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events.” The period between murders distinguishes a mass murder from a serial murder. The definition by design has been left broadly described. In serial murder, the killer usually premeditates homicide. The murderer plans and fantasizes, and the next victim is selected when the time is right and time has elapsed from the first homicide. This period can be days, weeks, or months. 25 The mass murderer and the spree murderer are usually not concerned with who their victims are. In contrast, a serial murderer selects victims. These murderers think they will never be caught and are more intelligent than the police who hunt them. Serial murderers control the events. They chose the victim, the place, the time, the manner of killing, and often the disposition of the victim’s body, whereas, in a spree murder, the events control the killer. The spree murderer can barely control what will happen next. The serial killer is planning, choosing, and sometimes stopping the act of murder. A serial murderer may commit spree homicides. In 1984, Christopher Wilder, an Australian racecar driver, went on a murder spree, starting in Florida and traveling across the United States for several months. Wilder would target victims at shopping malls or abduct them after meeting them in a beauty contest or through a dating service. While a fugitive, Wilder was investigated, identified, and tracked by the FBI and most police departments in the country. Wilder’s classification changed from serial to spree murderer because of the multiple murders and the lack of a cooling-off period. The tension caused by his fugitive status and the high visibility of his crimes gave Wilder (and other noted spree murderers) a sense of desperation. The acts of these murderers are open and public, and this usually means no cooling-off period. They know they will be caught, and the coming confrontation with the police becomes an element in their crimes. Often their goal is to have law enforcement take their life as they engage in their last desperate acts. Classifying Homicides It is vital to classify homicides correctly. For example, a single homicide is committed in a city; a week later, a second homicide occurs; and the third week, another single homicide. Three seemingly unrelated homicides are reported, but by the time there is a fourth, there is a tie-in through forensic evidence and an analysis of the crime scene. These four single homicides now point to one serial offender. It is not mass murder because of the multiple locations and lapse of time that create separate and distinct events and thus its categorization as a serial homicide. Correctly classifying homicides not only assists in assessing the crimes from a behavioral and forensic evidence perspective but may be the catalyst for releasing financial resources to assist in the investigation. 26 These additional funds can allow task force investigations to cover better the various jurisdictions in which related cases have been identified. Similarly, behaviorally assessing a single murder may reveal aspects of the motivation, victim selection, and offender victim dynamics that might suggest that it may be the first of a coming series or that this offender has likely committed other homicides. Primary Intent of the Murderer Murder may have both primary and secondary intentions. A killer may act on their own or as part of a group. The primary intent may involve criminal enterprise. Criminal enterprise includes people who are engaged in the business of crime. Criminal enterprise murders often involve a group (e.g., contract murder, gang murder, competition murder, and political murder). Their livelihood is through criminal business, and sometimes murder becomes part of it, even though there is no personal malice. For example, food may be poisoned during an extortion attempt of a business (i.e., extortion notes are written to a company demanding money and threatening the poisoning of products). The primary motive is financial. In 1998 in Los Angeles County, Jennifer Fletcher murdered her husband with the help of her then secret lover. They tried to stage the crime to make it look like gang members had murdered him during a home invasion robbery. Fletcher planned the killing to collect on several life insurance policies that she had taken out on her husband without his knowledge; the motive was the financial gain from the life insurance. When the primary intent of the murderer involves emotional, selfish, or cause-specific reasons, individuals may kill for self-defense and compassion (e.g., mercy killings where life-support systems are disconnected). Family disputes/violence may lie behind infanticide, matricide, patricide, and spouse and sibling killings. Paranoid reactions may also result in murder, as described in the Whitman case. Mentally disordered murderers may commit a symbolic crime or have a psychotic outburst. Assassinations, such as those committed by John Hinkley and Mark Chapman, also fall into the emotional intent category. Murders in this category involving groups are committed for various reasons: religious (Jim Jones and the Jonestown, Guyana, case), cult (Adolfo Constanzo’s Matamoros Cult killings), and fanatical organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers Party of the 1970s. 27 Sexual Homicide Finally, the murderer may have sexual reasons for killing. Sexual homicide is defined as one person killing another in the context of power, control, sexuality, and aggressive brutality. Individuals may kill to engage in sexual activity, dismemberment, mutilation, evisceration, or other activities that have sexual meaning only for the offender. The offenders who capture their victims alive to keep and torture them (sexual sadists) are among the most difficult and dangerous sexual predators to identify and capture. The psychiatric diagnosis of sexual sadism states that the essential feature of this deviant behavior (i.e., paraphilia) is the infliction of physical or psychological suffering on another person to elicit a response from the victim. It is this response that facilitates achieving sexual arousal. Occasionally two or more murderers commit these homicides together, such as in the case of Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, who raped and tortured five women in Los Angeles in a van, they called the “Murder Mack.” It is challenging to gather reliable statistics on the number of sexual homicide victims for several reasons: (1) the victim is officially reported as a homicide statistic and not as a rape assault; (2) there is a failure to recognize any underlying sexual dynamics in a seemingly “ordinary” murder; (3) those agencies that investigate, apprehend, and assess the murderer often fail to share their findings, curtailing the collective pool of knowledge on the subject; and (4) conventional evidence of the crime’s sexual nature may be absent. When law enforcement officials cannot readily determine a motive for murder, they examine its behavioral aspects. In developing techniques for profiling murderers, FBI agents have found that they need to understand the thought patterns of murderers to make sense of crime scene evidence and victim information. Characteristics of evidence and victims can reveal much about the murderer’s intensity of planning, preparation, and follow through. From these observations, the agents begin to uncover the murderer’s motivation, recognizing how dependent motivation is on the killer’s dominant thinking patterns. In many instances, a hidden sexual motive emerges that has its origins in fantasy. The role of fantasy in the motive and behavior of suspects is an important factor in violent crimes, especially sexual murders. Several studies have explored the role of sadistic fantasy, with other researchers suggesting that sadistic acts and fantasy are linked and that fantasy drives sadistic behavior. 28 Victim Risk The concept of the victim’s risk is involved at several stages of the behavioral assessment process. It provides information about the suspect’s operations and the risk they are willing to assume to commit the murder. Risk is assessed using factors such as age, occupation, lifestyle, and the physical stature of the victim and is classified as high, moderate, low, or situationally elevated. High-risk victims often engage in high-risk behavior such as prostitution, drug use and sales, and other criminal activity. Killers seek high-risk victims at locations where a particular type of victim may be found and where the isolated nature of the place makes an assault much less risky for the offender. The young and the elderly may have their risk situationally elevated because of their vulnerability and physical inability to resist an attack. Students may be classified as moderate risk, as it is known that predators may target college-age women because of their naiveté. Low-risk types include those whose occupation and daily lifestyle do not lend themselves to easy targeting or put them in contact with those elements of society who engage in high-risk behavior. An individual’s risk level can change from one situation to the next. Each victim’s situation must be evaluated individually, with care taken not to assign a risk level based strictly on one attribute, such as their occupation. A prostitute is at a high risk of becoming the victim of a violent crime when she is engaged in her trade. In this environment, she engages in one-on-one situations with men she does not know, often under cover of darkness and in an environment controlled by the customer. In this situation, the risk for the offender is significantly reduced. Contrast this with the same woman when she is not working but instead found within her locked residence. Her risk level in this environment is significantly reduced. For the offender, however, this scenario significantly elevates his risk of being identified and apprehended. Choosing to assault the victim when her risk is low, and his risk is elevated offers insight into the relationship dynamic. 29 Offender Risk Data on victim risk integrate with information on offender risk, and the two should not be considered in isolation. The risk the offender assumes to commit the homicide is the flip side of the same coin. Assessing both victim and offender risk to one another is critical to accurately understanding the size of the potential offender pool. It helps to generate an image of the type of perpetrator being sought. For example, abducting a victim from a busy street at noon is a high-risk activity. Thus, a low-risk victim abducted under high-risk circumstances gives us insight into what dynamics might be at play with the offender. Elevating their risk may indicate the stress under which they are operating, their lack of concern about being apprehended, or the excitement they seek in committing the crime. Escalation Information about escalation is derived from analyzing facts and patterns from the prior decision process models. Investigative crime analysts can deduce the sequence of acts committed during the crime. From this deduction, they make determinations about the potential of the criminal, not only to escalate the crimes (for example, from peeping to fondling, to assault, to rape, to murder) but also to repeat the crimes serially. One case example is David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, who started his criminal career with the nonfatal stabbing of a teenage girl. His killing escalated to the subsequent.44­caliber killings. Time Factors Several time factors need consideration in generating a criminal profile. These factors include the length of time required (1) to kill the victim, (2) to commit other acts with the body, and (3) to dispose of the body. The time of day or night that the crime was committed is also essential because it provides information on the lifestyle and occupation of the suspect (and also relates to the offender’s risk factor). For example, the longer an offender spends with a victim, the more likely the killer will be apprehended at the crime scene. In the case of David Parker Ray, a sexual sadist, he captured and kept his victims for days at a time. Ray chained and tortured his last victim, Cynthia Vigil, for three days at his home in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, before she escaped, nude, wearing only a dog collar and padlock. She alerted authorities, leading to Ray’s arrest. 30 A killer who intends to spend time with his victim, whether alive or dead, must select a location to preclude observation. Determining the chronological sequence of events is important, but assessing how much time elapses between various events at a scene (the temporal component) can also be an important consideration in any behavioral assessment. Temporal review can assist in differentiating between antemortem and postmortem activity and determining the injury sequence. Location Factors Location information—where the victim was first approached, abducted, assaulted, murdered, and eventually disposed of—provides additional data about the offender. This information can provide details regarding the victim’s transportation from one scene to another or when the death occurred. Research has linked the complexity of the crime and offender to the number of different crime scenes discerned from the crime analysis with moderate success. Crime assessment The crime assessment step in generating a criminal profile involves the reconstruction of the sequence of events chronologically and temporally and the behavior of both the offender and the victim. Based on the various decisions of the previous steps, this reconstruction of how things happened, how people behaved, and how they planned and organized the encounter provides information about specific characteristics that help generate the criminal behavioral assessment. Assessments are made about the classification of the crime, its organized/disorganized aspects, the offender’s selection of a victim, the level of planning and organization, the strategies used to control the victim, the sequence of the crime, the motive, and weapon use, as well as the most commonly identified behavioral manifestations at a violent crime, modus operandi (MO), ritual behavior, and the less frequently observed staging of the crime. Modus Operandi (MO) The offender perceives MO behaviors as necessary for successfully committing a crime. There are three purposes for this type of behavior: first, it ensures the success of the crime; second, it protects the offender’s identity; and third, it facilitates the offender’s escape. MO is dynamic and can change over time for a variety of reasons. 31 An offender develops a successful MO through trial and error and uses that MO over time because it works for the offender’s purposes. An offender’s MO changes based on, among other things, education, age, the development of criminal sophistication, and having to deal with contingencies of the crime that were unanticipated or beyond the offender’s control. The MO may also change as the offender gains more experience and confidence. The offender’s MO behaviors are more likely to be intentional and purposeful because they are goal driven. Ritual Ritual behaviors are unnecessary for the successful commission of a crime. These behaviors are need driven and engaged in by the offender for many reasons. Generally, though, in violent homicides, especially those with a sexual component, these behaviors result from psychological and emotional needs. They are both unique and repetitive. These behaviors manifest themselves through physical actions as well as verbal scripting. In serial offenses, the core of the offender’s ritual behavior does not change over time. It may, however, evolve as the original ritual becomes more fully developed. Staging Staging is the intentional and purposeful manipulation of the behavioral or forensic evidence found at the original crime scene. Staging at a crime scene is an effort by offenders to create a “new” or different scene and a new motive to misdirect the investigation away from themselves. The offender who stages a crime scene perceives that without an attempt to redirect the investigation, law enforcement would quickly focus on the offender as a logical suspect because of a preexisting relationship with the victim, the location, or both. The offender attempts to overwhelm what would otherwise be a law enforcement investigator’s logical deduction regarding what occurred. Determining if a crime scene has been staged helps direct the investigative profiler to the killer’s motivation and relationship with the victim. To determine if the offender has staged the crime scene, the analyst must consider the “totality of the circumstances” of the crime scene. In considering the “totality of the circumstances,” every observable behavior is analyzed and reconciled with the logic of the available forensic evidence, crime scene reconstruction, and victimology. In addition, logical crime scene attributes, both forensic and behavioral, that are noticeably absent from the scene must also be considered. 32 In one case, a 27­-year-­old mother of twins was found lying on the living room couch, shot three times in the upper body and head. Her sweatpants and panties were pulled down below her knees. She held the battery-operated controls in one hand to a sex toy vibrator. The vibrating component was lying next to her thigh. Located in the VCR was a pornographic sex tape. The house appeared ransacked, although nothing was taken. On initial examination, the victim appeared to have been engaged in autoerotic activity on the couch when the offender broke in and shot her. Both of her young children were reported to have walked through the woods to their grandmother’s house. Was this crime staged? The question was answered through both forensic and behavioral evidence. Blood spatter analysis revealed the victim had been shot on another part of the couch while sitting up and subsequently moved to a prone position. She couldn’t have moved to the position she was found because two of the gunshot wounds were immediately fatal. The position of her sweatpants indicated that she was not the one who had pulled them down. The VCR had not been in the play mode, and the vibrator was neither inserted nor turned on. Behaviorally, the victim’s response to an unknown offender breaking into her residence (not moving to an upright seated or standing position to confront the threat and pulling her pants up) is inconsistent with her expected behavior in responding to a threat to her and her children’s lives. Despite an attempt to make it look like a robbery, nothing was removed from the house. Investigators determined that the husband and the husband’s mother staged the crime. The victim had been planning to divorce the husband and take custody of the children. The husband tried to make it appear that a stranger had killed the victim during a robbery and then tried to taint her image as a good mother by staging the sexual aspect of the crime. The husband could not simply have killed his wife. Law enforcement investigators would have focused on him immediately with a potential divorce pending. With this information, the behavioral crime analyst hypothesized that by staging the autoerotic activity and robbery, the husband had hoped to create a new crime scene with a new motive that would throw the focus onto a stranger who broke into the house and killed his wife. The classification of the crime is determined through the decision process outlined in the first decision process model. Classifying a crime as organized or disorganized includes factors such as victim selection, strategies to control the victim, planning, and organization, and the crime sequence. 33 An organized murderer appears to plan the murders, target victims, display control at the crime scene, and act out a sexually violent fantasy against the victim. For example, Robert Yates, the Spokane Serial Killer, successfully abducted young prostitutes in his van and drove them to remote locations. He controlled them using a ruse and then, during sexual activity, shot them in the head. To prevent blood from leaking into his vehicle and leaving forensic evidence, Yates covered their heads with plastic bags after shooting them. He drove them to isolated locations and dumped their bodies. He did not care if the bodies were found, only that he had enough time to put distance between himself and the dumpsites. Ted Bundy’s planning was noted through his successful abduction of young women from highly visible areas (i.e., beaches, campuses, a ski lodge). He selected victims who were young, attractive, and similar in appearance. He controlled the victims through physical force. These dynamics were important in the development of the desired fantasy victim. In contrast, the disorganized murderer is less apt to plan the crime in detail, obtains victims by chance, and behaves haphazardly during the crime. Herbert Mullin, who killed 14 people of varying types (e.g., an elderly man, a young girl, a priest) over four months, did not display any specific planning or targeting of his victims. Instead, the victims were people who happened to cross his path, and their murders were based on impulse and fantasy. There are typically fewer scenes, and often everything—including the capture, assault, murder, and body disposition—takes place at a single location. Crime Scene Dynamics and Analysis Crime scene dynamics are the numerous circumstances common to every crime scene, which can be misunderstood or misinterpreted by investigating officers. Examples include the location of the crime scene, cause of death, method of killing, positioning of the body, injury severity, excessive trauma, and location and nature of the injuries. One of the fundamental tenants of crime scene analysis is to evaluate variables that explain why someone became the victim of homicide. While analyzing the behavior manifested at violent crime scenes, it is crucial to avoid becoming too focused on any aspect of the crime scene and ascribing singular importance to it. It is often impractical to reconstruct the exact sequence of events because of the innumerable possible interactions between the victim(s) and offender. Considering the totality of the circumstances rather than a single crime scene variable expands the analysis of the crime behaviorally. It allows further integration with what is known factually through investigative interviews and forensic evaluation of the evidence. 34 The most accurate way of assessing the overall victim­offender interaction is to consider the occurrence of various behavioral attributes in conjunction with one another. Evaluating the following variables provides the behavioral analyst with crucial information necessary to interpret the crime scene dynamics accurately: The victim’s perception or lack thereof of their risk exposure The offender’s level of risk, intent, degree of organization and planning, presence or absence of displayed anger, and degree of control exercised over the victims, the scene, and him or herself The offender’s choice of weapon(s), whether brought to or obtained at the scene and how he chose to dispose of them. The significance of the nature, location, and severity of the victim’s injuries Behavioral profilers analyze the dynamics of a crime scene and interpret them based on various criteria. They receive extensive multidisciplinary training in many related fields, including death investigation, forensic bloodstain analysis, forensic pathology, wound pathology, psychopathy, threat assessment, group dynamics, personality disorders, and paraphilias, to mention a few. This training, research, and experience provide the background for these agents’ success and confidence when assisting state, local, and international agencies with their unusual and complex violent crime cases. An FBI behavioral crime analyst is an experienced agent who has usually served at least ten years as a street agent and possesses excellent investigative and analytical skills. These agents also rely on the experiential component—they spend years examining and working on these cases and following the current research literature. Many analysts have conducted empirical research in this and other related disciplines. In-depth interviews with incarcerated felons who have committed such crimes have provided a vast body of knowledge of common threads that link crime scene dynamics to specific criminal personality patterns. Crime Profile The fourth step in generating a criminal profile examines the type of person who committed the crime and that individual’s behavioral orientation with the crime. It is a common misconception that the profiler is trying to identify a particular individual from the analysis and interpretation of the case data. Behavioral analysis is a law enforcement tool not unlike many other tools or resources that are employed to bring resolution to a homicide investigation. 35 The interpretation of the case materials assists in constructing a personality, behavioral, and demographic profile of the type of offender who is likely responsible for the crime. This construct helps law enforcement officials narrow the focus of the potential offender pool they may be considering and recommends one investigative direction over another. Once this description is generated, the strategy of investigation can be formulated. This strategy requires a basic understanding of how an individual will respond to various investigative efforts. The criminal profile includes background information (demographics), physical characteristics, habits, beliefs and values, pre-offense behavior leading to the crime, and post­offense behavior. It may also include investigative recommendations for interrogating or interviewing, identifying, and apprehending the offender, as well as the role of the media in furthering the investigation. This fourth stage has an essential means of validating the criminal profile, called means feedback 1. The profile must fit with the earlier reconstruction of the crime, the evidence, and the critical decision process models. In addition, the investigative procedure developed from the recommendations must make sense in terms of the expected response patterns of the offender. It is essential to consider the totality of what occurred before, during, and after the crime. If there is a lack of unity, all available data must be reviewed. Once the congruence of the criminal profile is determined, a report is provided to the requesting agency and added to its ongoing investigation efforts. The investigative recommendations generated in stage 4 are applied, and suspects matching the profile are evaluated. In cases where police have a continuing effort to identify and arrest a suspect, the investigative recommendations are used, and suspects matching those criteria are considered. If new evidence becomes known (e.g., an additional murder or new witness information), it will be evaluated within the framework of what is already known. Such information may or may not change the information already provided. However, in some cases, it may offer more substantial support for what has been provided. If identification, apprehension, and a confession result, the goal of the profiling effort has been met. Apprehension Upon the arrest of the suspect, an examination takes place, confirming the agreement between the outcome and various stages of the profiling process. When an arrested suspect admits guilt, conducting a detailed interview and affirming the whole profiling process for validity and quality is vital. 36 Quantifying Success In 1981, the Institutional Research and Development Unit of the FBI Training Division was asked to initiate a cost-benefit study to determine the extent to which the service was valuable to the users. Specifically, the analysis was undertaken to examine two questions: (1) What is the nature and extent of any assistance provided by criminal profiling? (2) what were the results of using a criminal profile in terms of offender identification or savings in investigative agent days? A review of the material submitted by the various field divisions for analysis revealed that requests had originated within the jurisdictional areas of 59 field offices in the United States and two FBI liaison representatives assigned to American embassies abroad. Although most of these submissions were from city police (52%), requests came from all levels of law enforcement, including county police or sheriffs, FBI officials, state police, state investigators, and state highway patrol. As might be suspected, most of the requests for profiling were submitted to identify the individual(s) responsible for one or more murders (65%). The second highest offense requested was rape (8%), with other crimes including kidnapping, extortion, threat/obscene communication, child molestation, hostage situation, accidental death, and suicide. Most cases submitted involved a single victim (61%), although 10% involved at least two, and 17 contained six or more victims. Based on the total requests (n = 192), the suspect(s) were identified in 88 or 46% of the cases. In these cases, responding agencies indicated that criminal profiling was helpful in the following ways: It focused the investigation properly. It helped locate possible suspects. It identified suspects. It assisted in the prosecution of the suspect(s). Only in 15 cases was the profiling stated to be of no assistance. In attempting to document the cost-benefit aspect, the study suggested that profiling resulted in a total saving of 594 investigative agent days. That number is considered a substantial figure when such matters as salaries, support costs, and availability of personnel for other assignments are considered. The success of the assistance provided to law enforcement by the FBI catalyzed law enforcement agencies worldwide to start and develop their behavioral analysis units. 37 The volume of cases submitted to the FBI continued to grow, and because the unit was relatively small, it simply could not address all the requests for behavioral assistance. The cases were triaged to determine where the limited resources of the FBI would be directed. In 1995, the FBI added a child crimes unit to complement the adult crimes unit, which had been providing profiling assistance for many years. Although the profilers had always worked on child homicides and abductions, this was the first time a unit was created to concentrate on child cases and specialize in various aspects of child victimization. In 2001, The Threat Assessment Terrorism Unit was created because of the attack on 9/11. In approximately 2010, a Cyber Crimes Unit was created to address the ever-increasing cyber-attacks directed at the U.S. government and businesses. Summary As forensic technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, so has the experience and dedication of those agents tasked with the behavioral analysis and interpretation of some of the most challenging cases in law enforcement, domestically and abroad. With agents allowed to specialize in particular types of crime, from rape and murder of the elderly to the sexual exploitation of children to the psychology of female suicide bombers, the behavioral analysis units continue to build on the initial work done by the profilers in the original BSU. Refining these investigative tools means faster suspect identification, apprehension, and prevention of additional victims. Further, research efforts by law enforcement agencies are essential to the refinement of additional skills in reading the seemingly inert characteristics of crime scene evidence. Understanding the motivational and behavioral matrix of the offender, victimology, and victim selection process, and the myriad of multidisciplinary attributes that impact the assessment of the crime dynamics increases law enforcement’s use of the connection between patterns of thinking and behaviors. Law enforcement agencies should take advantage of all the potential tools available in the ever-expanding discipline of forensic science and would be wise to develop operational agendas with forensic nurses, especially those trained as sexual assault nurse examiners (SANEs). The solution to complex and multijurisdictional serial murder and sexual homicide cases requires outside­the­box thinking and multidisciplinary cooperation to bring clinical and criminal investigation together as partners with a common goal. 38