Serial Killers

1. Over 90 percent of serial killers are male.

2. They tend to be intelligent, with IQ's in the "bright normal" range.
3. They do poorly in school, have trouble holding down jobs, and often work as unskilled laborers.
4. They tend to come from markedly unstable families.
5. As children, they are abandoned by their fathers and raised by domineering mothers.
6. Their families often have criminal, psychiatric and alcoholic histories.
7. They hate their fathers and mothers.
8. They are commonly abused as children psychologically, physically and sexually. Often the abuse is by a
family member.
9. Many serial killers spend time in institutions as children and have records of early psychiatric problems.
10. They have high rates of suicide attempts.
11. From an early age, many are intensely interested in voyeurism, fetishism, and sado-masochistic pornography.
12. More than 60 percent of serial killers wet their beds beyond the age of 12.
13. Many serial killers are fascinated with fire starting.
14. They are involved with sadistic activity or tormenting small creatures.
Source: Internal Association of Forensic Science, an article written by FBI Special Agent Robert K. Ressler
"The Serial Killer," Harold Schechter

Serial murders - repetitive homicides,

nearly always one-on-one murders,
where the perpetrator is usually a
stranger or has a slight acquaintance to
the victim.
Historically, the majority of homicide
victims knew their killer, but during the
1990's, this figure changed. Statistics
from 1995's Uniform Crime Reports state
that 55% of homicide victims have no
known association with the perpetrators.
Berg & Horgan, Criminal Investigation, 3rd edition, pg. 332
Osterburg & Ward, Criminal Investigation, 3rd edition, pg. 455

The serial murderers motivation to kill is

not based on crimes of passion, victim
precipitation, personal gain or profit.

Serial murderers are nearly always males

prompted by sexual or aggressive drives
to exert power through killing.

Modus operandi -. a characteristic pattern

of behavior repeated in a series of offenses
The following are categories of modus
operandi devised by Major L.W. Atcherley,
an English constable in the 1800's.

Classword - the kind of property attacked, such

as a house, a college dormitory, people parked
in cars at lover's lanes
Entry - the point of entry, such as open bedroom
windows, sliding glass doors
Means - implements or tools that were used,
such as a pry bar, ladder, screw driver

Object - kind of property taken, such as bras and

panties
Time - time of day or night, weekdays, non-work
days, holidays (when people would not miss the
perpetrator at work)
Style - the description the criminal gives the victim to
gain entrance (plumber, cable TV repairman)
Tale - any disclosure the criminal makes as to his
business/purpose
Pals - any co-conspirators
Transport - what type of vehicle was used in
connection with the crime
Trademark - any unusual act committed by the
suspect while in the commission of the crime (i.e.
poisoning the cat, eating at the scene after
murdering the grandmother)

Signature - the murderer's psychological calling

card, unusual characteristics of a murder that
are repeated at several crime scenes:

Intentionally displaying victims in a spread-eagle

position. This behavior reinforces the perpetrators
underlying psychological needs.

Ted Bundy's choice of victims - young women

with blond or light brown hair, parted in the
middle
John Wayne Gacy's victim type - adolescent
boys
Green River Killer's victims - young women,
mainly prostitutes

TWO MURDERERS BOTH BURN THEIR VICTIMS BY

DOUSING THEM WITH GASOLINE.

The first murderer

does so as an angerretaliatory act.
This is a signature
behavior.

The second murderer

douses the victim with
gasoline to cover up
the crime.
This murderer does so
to evade detection.
This therefore is a
precautionary act, and
as such is a modus
operandi behavior.

Usually intelligent
Good appearance
Ted Bundy
Superficial charm
Able to differentiate right from
wrong
Have no conscience
Enjoy victim's terror

Serial murderers are often very mobile,

traveling from one locale to another to
find victims, extensive interstate travel

Lack of any prior association with the

victims

Use of remote burial sites

Charles Whitman, the man who shot

multiple people from the tower at the
University of Texas, was a mass murderer,
not a serial killer

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the shooters

responsible for killing 12 classmates and
a teacher in the deadliest school shooting
in U.S. history, are also classified as mass
murderers, not serial killers

Perpetrator plans the murder for months or

years beforehand.
Offender is normally married, has steady
employment, and is thought to be a good
member of society (ex., BTK-Dennis Rader)
They bring the instruments of the crime
(knives, guns, tape) to the scene with them.

When Ted Bundy was pulled over for driving

suspiciously (in 1975), police found an ice pick, ski
mask, rope and handcuffs in his trunk.

These murderers are often highly intelligent

and are knowledgeable about forensic evidence
and law enforcement's investigative
capabilities.

They do not plan their crimes in advance.

The disorganized murderer commits the
crimes spontaneously.
They are often unemployed and without
transportation.
They are more often of low intelligence or
psychotic.

Power Oriented Ted Bundy and Dennis

Rader enjoyed watching terror of their
victims

Mission Oriented - killers feel they are

improving the world by getting rid of
undesirable people such as prostitutes, i.e.
Green River Killer Gary Ridgway

Visionary - those who kill because they are

directed by hallucinations, i.e. David
Berkowitz - "Son of Sam"

Hedonistic - gain sexual satisfaction from

raping, killing, mutilating, and sometimes
eating the victim, i.e. Jeffrey Dahmer
Comfort - those who kill for financial
gain, such as insurance benefits, real
estate, i.e. Golay & Rutterschmidt
Disciple - those killers who kill under the
influence of a charismatic killer, i.e. Leslie
Van Houten and Lynette Fromme of the
Manson family

A psychological profile is a submitted report

utilizing information and approaches from
various social and behavioral sciences,
focusing on a specific type of violent crime
According to the FBI, a typical serial killer is
a Caucasian male between the ages of 1832 who has been a victim of child abuse
and who has exhibited signs of the
McDonald triad

McDonald triad bedwetting after the age of 12,

setting fires, killing small animals

Most serial killers exhibit at least one of these

behaviors
According to Robert Ressler (FBI), more than 60%
of serial killers wet the bed past the age of twelve
The Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, set 1,412 fires
but switched over to killing because it gave him
more excitement and TV news coverage
Keith Jesperson, a serial killer from British
Columbia who murdered more than 160 victims,
started with dozens of cats and other small
animals, before he moved on to human beings

Intelligent, college educated,

handsome man who faked injuries and
impersonated police officers to gain access to
his victims.
His criminal activity began as a peeping Ted and
as a shoplifter.
While at the University of Washington, Bundy
worked for a suicide hotline with writer, Anne
Rule, who later wrote a bestseller A Stranger
Beside Me.

The majority of Bundys victims were young

women with blonde/light brown hair parted in
the middle. Many victims were stabbed, raped,
tortured, and had been strangled with panty
hose. He desecrated and dismembered them.
Bundy confessed to killing 23 women between
1974-1978, but the official toll may be closer
to 100.
Bite mark evidence from his victims at Florida
State University sealed his fate. Bundy was
put to death in Florida's electric chair in 1989.

Ramirez, avowed devil worshipper, randomly

raped and murdered his victims in their homes.
Most of Ramirez's victims lived near freeways.
In July 1989, Ramirez killed one of his victims,
beat and raped the man's wife, and then raped
the couple's 8-year-old son.
While in 8th grade, Ramirez began sniffing glue
and smoking marijuana. By the time he began
killing, he had graduated to shooting cocaine.

Lieutenant Gil Carrillo, of the LA Sheriffs

Department, was the co-lead investigator
of the Night Stalker serial murder case.

Ramirezs AC/DC baseball cap, his size

eleven and a half Avia sneaker footprint,
along with his fingerprint found on a stolen
car led to his capture and conviction.

Ramirez was captured

shortly after a
fingerprint lifted from
a stolen car was linked
to the Night Stalker.
California's state-ofthe-art fingerprint
database had been up
and running for only
three minutes when
the match was
discovered.

Ramirez's picture was

then run in newspapers
nationwide. When
spotted by citizens in a
rough neighborhood in
Los Angeles, Ramirez
bolted from a liquor
store running nearly two
miles. Shortly thereafter
a group of people began
beating Ramirez, until
stopped by LAPD.

Gacy, a successful contractor and pillar of his

community, was arrested for the murder of
more than thirty young boys.
These boys had been sodomized and
strangled. They often were tricked into being
handcuffed.
He buried 28 of his victims in the crawl space
under his home.
He was put to death by lethal injection on May
10, 1994.

Dahmer, like Bundy, was calm, cool, and

collected. He invited young boys to his apartment
to drink and take pictures. He appeared to be so
normal that two Milwaukee police officers actually
released one of Dahmer's fourteen-year-old
victims back to him after the victim had escaped
and had gone to an area hospital.
Dahmer killed at least 17 people, by inviting them
to his apartment, and then drugging, strangling,
and dismembering them. He cannibalized some of
his victims as well.
A prison inmate killed Dahmer.

Most of the Zodiac killings took place in the San

Francisco Bay Area during a five-year period from
1969 - 1974. The Zodiac, has been positively
linked to the deaths of seven students. However,
in letters written to San Francisco newspapers,
he claimed to have killed nearly forty people.
The Zodiac's modus operandi was to attack his
victims (usually couples) on weekends, in areas
near water, using a different weapon and a
different automobile each time. Neither sexual
molestation nor robbery were motives. ("Zodiac"
by Robert Graysmith, 1976)

Lawrence Kane
Kathleen Johns identified Kane as her abductor
Pam Huckaby, sister to Zodiac victim Darlene

Ferrin, identified Kane as a man who followed

Darlene in the months before her murder
Kane traded his car in five days after Ferrin's
murder
Kane lived within three blocks of the location
where Paul Stine was murdered in San Francisco
In 1970, Kane moved to Lake Tahoe as did
possible Zodiac victim, Donna Lass. Kane and
Lass worked in the same building
Kane's name can be clearly discerned in a cipher
from April 20, 1970.

Rick Marshall
Lived within blocks of the Stine murder scene
Worked as a projectionist at a silent movie theater.
The Zodiac had signed one of his letters as "The Red
Phantom", a silent movie.
Owned a Royal typewriter and a teletype machine devices such as these had been used to create
messages written to police and the newspapers
Owned a car with a stripped reverse gear (as used in
the Vallejo attempted murders)
Physical appearance - crew cut and similar glasses to
the Zodiac
Arthur Leigh Allen (recent DNA testing of saliva on the
postage stamp did not match Allens DNA*)

Zodiacs first murder*, two kids

out on a first date, occurred in
1968, near Vallejo, California.
A couple was attacked near
Lake Berryessa, another
lovers lane
Paul Stine, a San Francisco cab
driver was murdered and a
piece of his shirt was later sent
to the police as proof that The
Zodiac was the murderer.
At the time, the Vallejo murder was thought to be Zodiacs first

The 1966 murder of Riverside college

student Cheri Jo Bates was later thought
to be the work of the Zodiac.
This watch was found near the
murder scene.
It was sold at a PX in England.
(Post Exchange is a store that
sells merchandise to military
personnel )

The Zodiac signed his letters with the

symbol above

His letters included cryptograms, a type

of puzzle which consists of a short piece
of text encrypted with a simple
substitution cipher in which each letter is
replaced by a different letter. To solve the
puzzle, one must recover the original
lettering
[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptogram retrieved 4/30/08

Three of the
Zodiacs four
cryptograms
have never
been solved[1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptogram retrieved 4/30/08

Gary Ridgway murdered scores of women in the

Seattle area. The longest running homicide
investigation in U.S. history
Ridgway pled guilty to murdering 48 teenage
runaways and prostitutes who he had strangled
and dumped into the Green River in the state of
Washington between 1982 and 1998.
He was finally arrested in 2001 after DNA and
paint evidence linked him with the crimes.

Evidence collected in 1987 (saliva and hair) was used

as evidence to obtain the arrest warrant.
Ridgway passed the polygraph test years before he was
apprehended.

Dennis Rader, the Bind, Torture, Kill strangler murdered

his victims in during a 25 year crime spree in Wichita,
Kansas. Rader was apprehended after DNA evidence
collected at a crime scene was tested against DNA
collected from Rader's daughter. [1]
Rader was married with two children

He was a Boy Scout leader, a compliance officer in charge

of animal control

Rader was a psychopath who morphed into a serial killer,

who easily maintained a family life while committing
these heinous murders

In typical psychopath style, Rader didnt show a lot of

affection or emotion
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/27/btk.investigation/index.html - Obtained June 9, 2008

A Vancouver-area pig farmer who murdered as

many as 60 female prostitutes
Pickton was found guilty of second-degree
murder after the longest trial in Canadian history
and an investigation that cost $100 million.
Evidence found in and around Pickton's property
included skulls cut in half with hands and feet
stuffed inside, a garbage bag with remains from
another victim, blood stained clothing, a .22
caliber revolver with a dildo attached that
contained both his and the victim's DNA
In a video-taped recording played for the jury,
Pickton claimed to have attached the dildo to his
weapon as a makeshift silencer.[
1]

[1] Accused serial killer 'fed bodies to pigs' - The Australian - Obtained on January 25, 2007.

Aileen Wuornos, a female prostitute, killed at least six

men on the roads of Florida. She was the subject of the
film "Monster", which starred Charlize Theron.
Wuornos pawned a camera and radar detector that
belonged to one of her victims and had left her required
thumbprint on the receipt. When the thumbprint was run
through AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification
System), her thumbprint matched an outstanding warrant
against a Lori Grody (one of Wuornos' aliases)
Wuornos bloody palm print was also found in the vehicle
of one of her victim's
Wuornos claimed she had killed each of her victims in selfdefense. However, because of Florida's "Williams Rule",
information regarding the other murders was presented to
the jury, clearly showing the pattern to the murders
committed by Wuornos.

Puente was a 59-year-old boarding house owner

in Sacramento, CA. who killed seven of her
tenants and buried their bodies in her backyard.
When neighbors complained about the stench
coming from Puente's yard, she told them the
sewer was backed up, rats were dead under the
floorboards, or she blamed the odor on the fish
emulsion she put on her garden.

When her boarders started disappearing, a concerned

social worker tipped off police, who made a gruesome
discovery: She had drugged and killed her frail
boarders.
Puente's motive was to collect her tenants' government
benefit checks

Bundy was apprehended after a patrol officer noticed a

vehicle prowling an area near a restaurant that had just
closed. Bundy, who sped away, was followed and then
stopped by the alert patrol officer. Bundy then provided a
stolen credit card as identification, assaulted the officer, and
attempted to flee the scene.
One of John Wayne Gacy's victims worked in a pharmacy. He
left the pharmacy briefly to speak with a contractor in the
parking lot about summer employment. When he failed to
return to his job, his disappearance was reported. Gacy had
been spotted in the pharmacy between 6 and 8 PM the night
of the victim's disappearance.
David Berkowitz,known as the "Son of Sam", came under
suspicion when investigators noticed that he had received a
parking ticket at a location near one of the murder scenes.
When following up on the parking citation, an officer noticed
a machine gun protruding from a bag in Berkowitz's car.

A. There are two schools of thought on the extent

of serial murder in the U.S.
On the one hand, "The US produces more serial
killers than any other country. Up to 85% of the
world's serial killers are in America. According to an
FBI Behavioral Unit study serial killing has climbed
to an almost 'epidemic proportion'. At any given
time, there are an estimated 20 - 50 active serial
killers. Those who change their targets, methods,
are often never identified. Experts speculate on
what happens to unsolved cases of murderers.
Some may commit suicide, die, be incarcerated, in
mental institutions, relocate, or have stopped
killing, a few turn themselves in."
(http://www.karisable.com/crserial.htm)

In 1985, the FBI's ViCAP program became operational. This

program's purpose is to eliminate the problems that prevent
the apprehension of serial killers. These problems include:

Lack of cooperation between police agencies

Lack of communication between local, state, and federal
agencies
Mobility of serial murderers
Lack of prior association between victims and assailant
Unidentified bodies

ViCAP submission criteria:

Homicides (solved, unsolved, attempted) appear to be
random, sexually oriented, lack motive, and appear to be
part of a series
Missing persons may be submitted if there is a strong
likelihood of foul play or the victim remains missing
Unidentified bodies - may be submitted if it appears the
manner of death is criminal homicide

Even if a suspect has been apprehended in a case,

the report should still be submitted for two reasons.

ViCAP's files can be compared against the case

If the suspect apprehended is released for lack of evidence
(or other reasons), the case can still be compared to others
in the ViCAP system.

ViCAP system's advantages

Can recognize a serial killing earlier in the investigation

process
May clear up other unsolved murders when suspect is
apprehended
Allows for the pooling of clues from a case, whereby
allowing investigators to compile the list of suspects and
eliminate as many as possible as quickly as possible,
preventing further homicides.