Even though a number of other animals are known to
deliberately kill members of their own species, the reasons for such killings
is often attributed to meeting one of a small number of basic needs, such as
food and water, territorial gain, or group dominance, which can sometimes
provide them with exclusive reproductive rights, as in the case of a dominant
male or female. Instances of chimpanzees, lions, lemurs and a number of other
animals, attacking and killing other members of their species have been
observed, although in most cases, the cause of the assault can generally be
ascribed to one of the previously mentioned causes.
However, for a large number of human killers, the
reason for their taking another person’s life are often not as straightforward,
as the basic need for food, water, shelter, territory, or the need to
reproduce, do not apply in many of the individual circumstances. Rather, most
human killers are thought to have been driven by a variety of reasons, some
that society might deem to be reasonable, such as those who kill in self
defence, to those whose motives are regarded as incomprehensible, such as the
spree killer who kills a large number of his fellow citizens for no apparent
reason. Within human society there are said to be a variety of reasons why
individual people kill other members of their species, including fear,
jealousy, power, love, rage, intolerance, perversion and greed, in fact the
full gamut of human emotion, as well as just plain and simple psychological
impairment.
Unlike some other countries, where murder rates
remain inherently high, Britain continues to enjoy a relatively low number of
murders every year, often only between five and seven hundred annually, the
vast majority of which are single incidents that are perpetrated by one family
member against another, rather than by a complete stranger. It is also worth
noting that of the five, six or seven hundred killings, which do take place in
the UK every year, most of them will be solved by the relevant law enforcement
agencies within a fairly short time, resulting in the perpetrator being caught,
tried and imprisoned for their crime. Until recently, the province of Northern
Ireland was reported to have been an exception to these wider British murder
rates, although the higher instances of unlawful killings in the province was
almost entirely caused by the ongoing sectarian violence which had plagued the
territory ever since the 1960’s. The preponderance of illegal guns and
explosives in the six counties, most of which were in the hands of the various
paramilitary groups that were resident in Northern Ireland, inevitably led to a
much higher murder rate in the province, as each side of the argument,
deliberately targeted members of the opposing religious communities, leading to
a much higher loss of life than might have been usual.
Under English law the criminal act of murder is
generally described as “causing the death of another person, the defendant
having intended to cause death or serious injury through their actions”. The
charge of murder only usually applies to those defendants who are deemed to be
of sound mind and of legal age, who are charged with intentionally killing
another person without just cause. Historically, a charge of murder could still
be brought against an individual, even if the victim did not die immediately,
but did so within a year and a day of the offence having been committed by the
perpetrator. However, in recent years, this period of criminal accountability
has been altered, so that a charge of murder can still be brought many years
after the event, although after three years any such charge must be specially
approved by the governments Attorney General. For a jury to successfully
convict a defendant of murder, the prosecution should be able to prove “beyond
reasonable doubt” that the accused carried out the offence and that they
intended to cause death or serious injury to the victim, which is often
referred to as “Mens Rea”, or “Guilty Mind”, previously known as “malice
aforethought”. This intention to kill or cause serious injury can often be
proved by both the defendant’s motives for their actions; and also when the
victim’s death is proved to be a certain consequence of the accused person’s actions.
For someone accused of murder there are a number of
legitimate defences permissible under English law, including a plea of
insanity, diminished responsibility, infancy or self defence, any of which may
be successful, provided that they are accepted by, or proved to the
satisfaction of the court. Prior to the passing of the Abolition of the Death
Penalty Act in 1965, a defendant found guilty of murder might well have been
sentenced to hang for their crimes, but following the abolition of the death
penalty, those found guilty of the charge are generally sentenced to a
mandatory life sentence, which should involve serving a minimum of fourteen
years in jail. However, ever since a mandatory life term was adopted by the
British judicial system, individual judges have been given the duty of
announcing in open court a particular defendant’s jail term, ostensibly on the
basis of reflecting the seriousness of the crime itself, any remorse shown by
the prisoner and whether or not they have chosen to plead guilty to their
offence, thereby sparing witnesses the ordeal of having to attend the trial.
Fortunately, serial killers, or multiple murderers,
which form the basis of this book project, are comparatively rare in Britain,
unlike countries such as the United States, which is reported to harbour the
largest number of and some of the most prolific serial offenders of all time.
Whether or not this particularly unwanted accolade is due to American society
itself, or the widespread availability of lethal weapons is unclear, but no
doubt a number of various factors, including poverty, mental illness,
geographical area and ready supply of available weapons all help to play a part
in creating the country’s high homicide rates. However, even though the UK has
some of the most stringent gun laws in the world, caused in part by the
extremely rare modern day massacres at Hungerford, Dunblane and in Cumbria,
which were committed by Michael Ryan, Thomas Hamilton and Derrick Bird
respectively. It is because incidents such as this are so rare in Britain that
they are so much more shocking to a general public that has sadly become
accustomed to terrorist outrages perpetrated by the likes of the Republican
IRA, or the new threat of Al Quaeda.
Such notable atrocities aside though, the vast
majority of murders committed within the UK are carried out by single
individuals, who tend to kill people that are either related or close to them,
such as an unfaithful or abusive spouse, a relative or family friend, with the
likelihood of a complete stranger committing such a crime being highly unusual.
In fact, such is the probability that a murder has been perpetrated by a member
of the immediate or extended family that in many cases they are the first
people to be investigated by the Police. Assuming that their enquiries do not
reveal a suspect within the victim’s family group, then detectives will often
move on to scrutinise their wider circle of friends and it is often within
these familiar groups of people that the perpetrator will be found. However,
where a victim has a less than conventional lifestyle, possibly being a
prostitute, drug user or involved with some form of criminal activity, then
investigators can find it increasingly difficult to narrow down a potential
list of suspects, unless of course they have access to easily identifiable
forensic evidence, such as fingerprints or DNA. Generally speaking though, most
of the serial killers featured in this project were comparative strangers to
their victims, having chosen them for their looks, way of life, or simply their
availability, rather than any sort of previous relationship that they might
have had. Although the likes of Jeremy Bamber was convicted of the murder of
five members of his immediate family, the likes of Fred and Rosemary West were
known to have murdered both relatives and stranger alike, whilst serial killers
like Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was said to have murdered
comparative strangers, some of whom were prostitutes; and others that were not.
The methods, motivations and mindsets of society’s
serial killers has inevitably evolved to understand, explain and where possible
to identify those who are driven to kill, leading to the emergence of the
forensic psychologist and criminal profiler, who are both dedicated to finding,
understanding and if possible treating, the very worst offenders. Law
enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, have spent millions of dollars trying to
get into the minds of such serial killers, ostensibly in the hope that such investigations
might provide them with new insights into the psychology of such multiple
murderers. Where once America was content to rid itself of its worst offenders
through the electric chair, gas chamber or lethal injection, today much more
time is taken to interview, record and understand the workings of the criminal
mind, regardless of whether they are executed or not. It is generally on the
basis of these investigations that law enforcement agencies throughout the
world, along with the mental health experts who advise them, are able to better
understand the killer that they are pursuing, helping to narrow the scope of
their enquiries and making it more likely that the perpetrator will be caught,
sooner rather than later.
It is thought to be as a result of such
investigations, studies and interviews that the FBI was first able to create a
general profile for serial killers, one that has been developed, amended and
improved over the past decades. Initially describing a typical subject as a
Caucasian male, aged between eighteen and thirty-two years of age, from a lower
to middle class background and with a previous history of sexual abuse, animal
cruelty and possibly arson, clearly not all serial offenders fitted this
profile, although many were found to fit a number of the specified attributes.
It was also as part of these same observations and studies that psychologists,
psychiatrists and profilers began to categorise several kinds of serial killer,
dividing them down into visionary, mission orientated, hedonistic or sexually
motivated, all of whom had their own personal motivations, methods and
justifications for their actions, but at the same time sharing many of the
negative personality traits of their fellow killers. Visionary killers were
reportedly driven to murder their victims, having been instructed to do so by
either God or the Devil, ostensibly to gain some reward, or to prevent some
catastrophe from occurring. Mission orientated killers were thought to have
deliberately targeted their victims, often choosing those involved in the sex
industry, or people whose sexuality or lifestyles was deemed to be different.
Hedonistic killers were said to have been driven by any one of a number of
causes, including lust, thrill or simply by profit and is thought to include
the likes of baby farmers, black widows and other killers who are motivated
purely by financial gain. The final category of serial killer is perhaps the
most commonly thought of and the most feared, the Power or Control killer,
which often includes some of the most dangerous sexual predators. According to
some sources, these murderers are entirely different to rapists who kill,
simply because they are completely driven by the feeling of power they
experience by having their victim under their control, rather than the sexual
act itself. Often, where rapists do kill their victim, it is as a result of
poor planning and blind panic, having suddenly realised that their victim can
and probably will identify them to the authorities. In the case of the Power or
Control killer, most have little consideration for their victim, as they have
little intention of leaving them alive in the first place and the act of
killing the victim is often used as the release for their own sexual climax.
In addition to classifying the various types of
serial killer, law enforcement agencies, psychologists and profilers also
collaborated to identify some of the main characteristics of actual and
potential murderers, some of which were based on real killers and their individual
life histories. Accordingly, it is generally believed that most serial killers
are of above average intelligence, a vitally important trait for anyone who
intends to evade the law for any period of time, although the fact that
murderer Denis Nilsen was caught because he chose to dispose of some of his
victims down the toilet, thereby blocking the local drains, suggests that many
killers are not out and out geniuses by any means. Yet another factor that may
help to form a potential serial killer is the absence of a father, or father
figure in the young person’s life, a necessary person for setting boundaries
and who can be used as a role-model for most young male children, assuming of
course that the father is an ideal model to begin with. Unfortunately, as has
been noted in a number of cases, the presence of a brutalising and damaging
father can often be more destructive to a child, than not having a father to
begin with, as can having an over domineering or over protective mother on her
own.
Such untypical role models, both male and female, can very easily distort
the psychological development of a young child through words or deeds, helping
to create an unbalanced young adult, who’s emotional and psychological
characteristics are completely at odds with the wider world, which can then
often isolate them from their peers and regular society. Likewise, a young
child, girl or boy can suffer catastrophic emotional damage, as a result of
being physically or sexually abused, events that can quite easily rob a child
of its natural innocence, self confidence and sense of security, whilst at the
same time filling them with self loathing, hatred and a completely misplaced
sense of right and wrong. Some experts believe that childhood traumas such as
brutalisation or exploitation by an adult can quite easily cause child victims
to reproduce such behaviour in their own lives, committing violent acts that
they believe will give them the respect, power and security, which they lack
and crave so badly.
Occasional characteristics of an abused child can
often include incidents of attempted suicide, as well as bed-wetting beyond the
age of twelve, although neither are entirely exclusive to an abused individual,
but may simply be caused by other factors, including low self esteem, or some
other highly emotional event within the family, such as bereavement or divorce.
Other more worrying practices, which may or may not be allied to self abuse and
bed-wetting are said to include an intense interest in voyeurism, fetishism and
viewing extreme forms of pornography, typically involving sadomasochism or
bondage. Other childhood habits that might indicate a potential for future
wrongdoing are thought to include instances of fire-starting, animal cruelty,
as well as appearing to be isolated from their peers, often resulting in the
child being bullied or taunted on a fairly regular basis. It has also been
found that in many cases, people who have gone on to become serial killers have
had a long history of law breaking, often on a petty level, ranging from
stealing, to setting fires, to bullying younger children, as well as bringing
themselves to the attention of the local authorities by their irresponsible,
inappropriate or reckless behaviour.
Significantly, a number of these same personality
traits are thought to form the basis for a diagnosis for a person suffering
from an Antisocial Personality Disorder, which is only generally carried out
once a person has reached adulthood. Typically, people found to be suffering
from such a disorder is described as having a “a pervasive pattern of disregard
for; and violation of, the rights of others, which begins in childhood and
continues through to adulthood”. Specifically, sufferers are said to display a
failure to conform to accepted social norms, with regard to legal behaviour,
typically by carrying out acts that would make them liable to arrest. Also,
deception appears to be a regular part of their behaviour, with sufferers
habitually lying or using deceitful methods in order to con people out of their
money or possessions. Those suffering from ASPD are often found to be highly
impulsive individuals, who regularly fail to plan ahead, but simply make things
up as they go along. Irritability and aggression are also reported to be a
common characteristic, with sufferers flying into a rage, often for the most
minor reasons, if for any reason at all, whilst at the same time displaying a
highly reckless nature, which may put themselves or others in danger for their
lives. Finally, constant irresponsibility tends to cause a sufferer to fail to
maintain their employment on an ongoing basis, honour their debts, whilst
always finding excuses to blame somebody else for their situation, rather than
accepting responsibility for their own actions. However, the most notable
character trait generally displayed by sufferers was their lack of empathy, the
ability to share compassion, solidarity and emotion with those around them, the
lack of which could sometimes indicate an inherent sadistic nature within the
individual sufferer.
Work undertaken by the likes of the Canadian
psychologist Dr Robert Hare, has helped to extend and clarify the
identification, assessment and treatment of those suffering from severe
Antisocial Personality Disorder’s, creating a widely used checklist, which is
often used by law enforcement and medical authorities around the world.
Indicators that form part of the Hare list include traits such as glibness,
pomposity, pathological lying, manipulation, lack of remorse or guilt, feeling
little or no emotion, lack of empathy, failure to accept personal
responsibility for their actions, constant need for stimulation, a parasitic
lifestyle, lack of behavioural controls, having no long term goals, impulsive
or reckless nature, a history of juvenile delinquency, early behavioural
issues, promiscuous sexual behaviour, significant numbers of short term
personal relationships and the everyday use of deceit and trickery in their
dealings with other people. However, it is important to note that many of these
personal traits might well be applied to large numbers of everyday people,
including those who are highly successful individuals in their career of
choice, such as salesmen. That said, the Hare checklist is commonly used to
assess those who have already come to the attention of the authorities, through
instances of violent or unusual behaviour, rather than searching through the
population at large, which would be virtually impossible.
According to most international authorities, the
definition of a serial killer is someone who murders three or more people, with a sufficient period elapsing between each crime, which is
typically referred to as a cooling off period. This is unlike a spree killer,
who generally kills a number of people in one continuous period, as was the
case in Hungerford, Dunblane and Cumbria, where single gunmen shot, killed and
wounded large numbers of people for no apparent reason. In the USA such
killings have become known as “going postal”, largely because a relatively high
profile incident was carried out by a Postal Worker, who shot a killed a number
of his work colleagues, although postal workers are not thought to be any more
likely to kill, than any other kind of worker. Another British murderer who
might fit into the spree killer category is Jeremy Bamber, who was convicted of
killing five members of his adopted family all at one time, ostensibly so that
he could inherit his family’s wealthy estate.
According to some studies, men are three times more
likely to become serial killers than women, although in reality this figure is
probably much higher, as most calculations are based on assessments rather than
actual cases. There is also a marked difference between the two sexes in
respect to the types of killings that each gender carries out, with males
typically accounting for more violent crimes, whilst women typically kill their
victims by stealth, including the use of poisons, through smothering or by
overdosing with medicines. The motives of both male and female are often
entirely different too, with men killing for sexual domination, anger,
resentment or intolerance, whilst women kill for jealousy, madness, but more
often than not for money, with many of the most prolific female serial killers
being driven almost entirely by the pursuit of financial gain, either as baby
farmers, or as insurance claimants. However, not all serial killers fit so
easily with the confines of the usual criminal category, with the likes of Myra
Hindley and Rosemary West both being convicted of what were deemed to be
sexually motivated murders, albeit as part of a killing team. Numerous
instances exist throughout the world of couples that kill, where the woman is
usually the submissive partner in the relationship, who then uses her femininity
to lure often previously known and totally unsuspecting victims to a location
where they can be raped, tortured and killed by the much more dominant male
half of the murder team.
In most cases though, female serial killers tend to
fall into one of several categories, including the Black Widow, the Angel of
Death or the Profit Killer, two of which are entirely driven by money, whilst
the third is reportedly driven by the attention they receive as a result of
their murderous actions, with almost all of them being found within the medical
or caring professions. Although the most deadly medical practitioner in British
judicial history is undoubtedly Doctor Harold Shipman, who was convicted of
murdering fifteen of his elderly patients largely because he was in a position
to do so. Opinions continue to differ as to Shipman’s actual motives for his
murderous actions, which are suggested to have led to the killings of well over
two hundred people throughout his medical career, but some mental health experts
believe that he simply enjoyed having the power of life or death over his
generally elderly patients, whilst other believe he saw them as an
inconvenience who needed to be done away with. However, in the context of the
more usually accepted Angel of Death, those medical carers who deliberately
murder their patients, then Nurse Beverley Allitt is probably Britain’s most
infamous killer, having attempted to murder an estimated thirteen children in
her care, but only succeeding on four occasions, using either potassium
chloride or insulin to end the lives of her young charges.
Of course the most feared category of killer is
thought to be the sexual predator, especially those who target the young and
the very vulnerable within our society, including murderers such as Brady and
Hindley, Fred and Rosemary West, Robert Black, Ronald Jebson and several other
notorious killers. Sometimes acting alone, or as part of a team, according to
some sources, such predatory murderers, simply start off as fantasists, whose dreams
escalate from unhealthy obsession, to inappropriate behaviour, to sexual
assault and finally to rape then murder. Regarded by society and most
conventional criminals as unspeakably vile, rapists, paedophiles and child
killers often exhibit the very worst traits of the human condition and seem to
lack any sort of compassion for their victims, regardless of their age or
vulnerability. On average, around eighty children a year are killed in the UK,
although of these, an estimated 80% are reportedly murdered by their parents,
either as a result of ongoing child abuse, or as part of a murder-suicide
incident. Where children are murdered by someone other than their parents,
their death is usually the result of the perpetrator trying to hide evidence of
their crime, rather than being the principal motive behind it, although that
can indeed happen occasionally. An example of such a deliberate child murder
was reported to have occurred in Britain a decade or so ago, when the
decapitated body of a child was recovered from the River Thames. Called “Adam”
by the detectives leading the investigation, there is a suggestion that the
young boy had been killed as part of an African ritual known as “Muti”,
although subsequent enquiries by the authorities thus far have failed to
identify the child, or prove conclusively that his death resulted from this
foreign practice.
Although the general public regard the label
“paedophile” as being someone that actively engages in sexual activity with or
against children, mental health experts do not apply the condition quite as
liberally. Defined as someone having a sexual interest in prepubescent children
under the age of thirteen years of age, even youngsters themselves can be
diagnosed as being paedophilic, provided that they have a sexual interest in
children at least five years younger than themselves. Therefore, although the
paedophilic stereotype might commonly be referred to as simply a “dirty old
man” that is not always the case; neither are they always dangerous to young children
specifically. According to some experts, paedophilia is a well recognised
symptom of an underlying psychiatric disorder, one that has existed throughout
history, but as yet has no clearly defined cure. However, based on a number of
studies, it has also been reported that not all of those diagnosed as
paedophiles actually present any sort of danger to young children, as they
continue to retain the moral and ethical standards to understand that such
feelings and sexual inclinations are unacceptable within a civilised society.
Even though they might derive sexual satisfaction from viewing child
pornography, or fantasising about imaginary situations, in reality, the vast
majority of those that we term as paedophiles, would never actually put
themselves in such a real life situation, let alone hurt or kill a child. As a
result, in recent years, a number of mental health and law enforcement agencies
have come to reclassify those that actually harm children as predatory
paedophiles, which include the likes of Robert Black and Sidney Cook, both of
whom have been convicted of causing various children’s death’s as a result of
their perverted and unlawful behaviour. However, as horrific as such
child murders are, at the hands of people such as Black, Cooke and Huntley, it
should be remembered that “stranger” killings are extremely rare and that the
vast majority of child killings are in fact carried out by family members, or
those who were previously known to the victim. High profile cases such as Maria
Colwell, Victoria Climbie’ and Baby Peter Connelly, are just three examples of
notorious child cruelty deaths, which have occurred in the UK over past few
decades, adding to the numbers of innocent children who are regularly killed by
parents that were suffering from underlying mental health issues, or in the
midst of ongoing marital problems. According to a number of newspaper reports,
between 2004 and 2008 alone, an estimated one hundred and eighty children were
killed by a parent or guardian, two-thirds of them either being beaten,
stabbed, smothered or strangled to death by their family member.
Even though advances in modern day forensics, routine
post mortems and mandatory inquests have all helped to reduce the incidence of
profit killings, for insurance payouts, etc; and reduced the likelihood of an
individual getting away with murder, it is probably advances in DNA
identification and analysis that have provided the greatest benefit to the
world’s law enforcement agencies. The fact that each individual person has
their own DNA fingerprint, something that is almost unique to them alone, has
helped to ensure that any genetic materials left by a killer can be attributed
to them alone, assuming that a potential perpetrators DNA can be obtained by
forensic scientists for comparison. In fact, advances in criminal forensics
have developed markedly since 1784, when the first scientific comparison of a
pistols paper wadding was used to help identify an assailant; followed in 1834
by Henry Goddard’s expert analysis of the mould used to create a musket ball
used in a deadly assault, marking the first ballistic comparison had been used
to convict a felon. Nearly thirty years later scientists were first able to
prove the presence of human blood at a suspected crime scene, after they
discovered that haemoglobin reacted with hydrogen peroxide to produce an easily
identifiable foaming, often despite the suspect’s best efforts to wash the
blood evidence away.
In 1880 fingerprint identification was reportedly used for
the first time to not only exonerate an entirely innocent suspect, but also to
correctly identify the guilty party for the local law enforcement agencies. And
in a related advance, in 1892, the first official classification of
fingerprints was published, helping to establish a new branch of criminal
investigation that would eventually be used by most countries throughout the
globe. In 1901 the first formal classification of different human blood groups
was published and in 1918 the world’s first dedicated crime laboratory was
founded in France, something that was quickly copied by most the leading
western nations. Finally, in 1986 the first legal conviction using an
individual’s DNA profile was achieved, when killer Colin Pitchfork was
successfully convicted of the murders of 15-year-old Lynda Mann in 1983 and
15-year-old Dawn Ashworth in 1986, for which he was sentenced to a life term.
Employing the services of Professor Sir Alec Jeffrey’s, one of the world’s
leading experts in DNA profiling, Leicestershire Police and the Forensic
Science Services were reported to have undertaken a large scale screening of
several thousand men in the local area, as a result of which the perpetrator
Colin Pitchfork was identified through semen stain that he had left at both
crime scenes.
Where once criminal conviction was almost completely
reliant on eye witness reports or confessions by the supposed perpetrator, both
of which could be highly suspect, depending on the individual case, in today’s
modern forensically armed world, the human factor often plays a generally
secondary role in helping to convict the likely suspect. Instead, forensic
evidence such as fingerprints, hairs and fibres are much more likely to provide
definitive proof of a perpetrator’s guilt, although occasionally even these
unmistakable markers can prove to be insufficient to prove a person’s guilt
conclusively. However, despite the best efforts of offenders to hide their
identity through wearing gloves, overalls or even condoms; or their barristers
best efforts to dismiss evidence as tainted, any sort of personal attack, be it
assault, rape or murder will require both parties to be in some sort of close
proximity to one another, allowing the opportunity for each to come into
contact with the other, so that skin cells, hair, fibres or DNA are transferred
and can then be collected. It is undoubtedly advances in such forensic
techniques that has not only led to the widespread demise of poison as a
potential murder weapon, but has also allowed law enforcers to attribute seemingly
unconnected crimes to the same single offender, although without the actual
perpetrator’s genetic profile being held on file, then their actual identity
still remains unknown to the authorities. However, apart from undertaking a
mass screening of a country’s entire population, which has been suggested, but
rejected on cost and privacy grounds, the fact that the DNA of a close
relative, taken for a relatively minor offence, might actually help to
point investigators in the guilty person’s direction, or indeed help to
exonerate a suspect completely.
At the same time that scientific advances have been
developed to help convict wrongdoers, so new techniques and treatments have
been introduced, to not only help those criminals with psychological disorders,
but also to help identify and track habitual offenders, most notably those
suffering from sort of serious psychopathic illness. The most modern and best
known of these new disciplines is that of the criminal profiler, whose task is
to help law enforcement agencies to gain a social and psychological assessment
of the offender and his environment, whether the offender is actually known to
them or not. Using the nature of the offence, as well as any unusual
methodology employed by the perpetrator, before, during and after the event has
been committed, should help the profiler to build up a picture of the offender,
from a mental, emotional and personality point of view.
According to some
sources, although some fairly rudimentary profiling had been attempted throughout
history, beliefs and prevailing investigation techniques, including the likes
of torture and dissection, largely made such conclusions and observations
largely worthless. It was only during the 19th and 20th
centuries that a much more serious and professional approach to psychological
analysis of law breakers began to be undertaken, with individual
psychoanalysts, doctors and mental health experts either being asked for, or
offering their insights into the minds of particular offenders. As the country
most affected by serial killers, America was reported to have employed some of
the world’s earliest and foremost psychologists to help profile some of the
nation’s most infamous killers, including the likes of the New York City
Bomber, George Metesky and the Boston Strangler, Albert De Salvo, both of whom
were profiled by psychiatrist, James Brussel. However, although such techniques
became increasing popular during the middle of the 20th century, it
was only in 1972 that a nationally dedicated bureau was brought into being by
the FBI, when their Behavioural Science Unit was established in Quantico in
that same year. Employing the skills and experience of psychologists,
investigators and seasoned homicide detectives, the FBI unit very quickly began
to develop new techniques and strategies for helping to identify potential
suspects in a number of high profile serial killings, at the same time using
such cases to improve their own knowledge and understanding of each type of
offender.
Elsewhere in the United States, professional police
investigators such as Robert Keppel and psychologist Richard Walter were
undertaking their own work in helping to identify and understand serial
killers, including the likes of Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgeway, who gained notoriety
as the Green River Killer, having killed anything up to seventy-one women
during the 1980’s and 1990’s. In Britain, where serial killers are
comparatively rare, far less study of such offenders were thought to have taken
place, although a small number of mental health experts, including Dr David
Canter were beginning to take an interest in the relatively new field of
criminal profiling. Beginning his career as an architectural psychologist,
Canter developed his skills into the area of human reaction in emergencies and
eventually became one of Britain’s leading experts in offender profiling.
His
first successful involvement with British law enforcement was reported to have
occurred in 1985, when he was asked to produce a profile on the infamous
Railway Rapists, John Duffy and David Mulcahy, team killers who initially began
as sexual predators, but whose need for gratification inevitably led to the
murders of three women, Alison Day, Maartje Tamboezer and Anne Locke. Dr Canter
was also thought to have created a profile for the serial killer later
identified as John William Cooper, who in May 2011 was sentenced to life for
the murders of Richard and Helen Thomas in December 1985, as well as the double
murder of Peter and Gwenda Dixon in 1989. The offender profile created by Dr
Canter was found to fit Cooper to some degree, although as is often the case
with such psychological profiles, much of the information provided by the
report could quite easily have been attributed to any one of the one hundred
and seventy potential suspects that the police had tentatively identified as
the possible culprit.
For many within law enforcement, this is perhaps the
greatest weakness of offender profiling as an effective means of correctly
identifying a guilty party, in that many of the criminal’s attributes can only
be fully proved once they have actually been apprehended by the Police and
therefore providing little concrete proof, which might lead to an arrest, never
mind a successful prosecution. Unlike ballistic, fingerprint or genetic
evidence, which is by its very nature specific to a particular weapon, person
or even place, a profile is often very general and can contain indicators or
references that might just as easily apply to a group of people, as opposed to
a specific individual, thereby making it useless to the course of a specific
criminal investigation. However, it is generally accepted that in some cases,
behavioural scientists can help to draw comparisons that might not be
immediately obvious to the police officers involved with a particular case, or
help to link seemingly separate cases by carefully studying the methodology of
each and the psychology of the perpetrator. It is also reported that in most
cases, criminal profilers are only used in the most serious types of cases and
after the police have exhausted all of their conventional methods of
investigation, which given the advanced levels of forensic identification,
means that profilers are usually only called in to help with the most difficult
and almost unsolvable cases.
The vast majority of information relating to the
psychological behaviour of serial killers has reportedly been drawn from
in-depth interviews and studies of such offenders in the USA, which according
to some experts in mental health can often prove to a flawed method of
investigation, as reliance on a perpetrators memory or honesty, can be
extremely difficult to test in any sort of independent way. However, such
methodology and their resulting conclusions are largely accepted by most modern
law enforcement agencies, albeit with the proviso that such conclusions only
represent the basis for individual cases, rather than any sort of conclusive
proof. British profilers, such as David Canter, are reported to take a slightly
different approach to criminal cases, in that he believes that the crime scenes
themselves should tell investigators a good deal more about the offender than
might at first be supposed, rather than just relying on a standardised model
for a particular type of perpetrator, which previous case notes might first
imply.
Rather than simply relying on previous cases, behaviours and practices
to inform his opinion, Canter is thought to believe that the crime scene itself
can often tell investigators much more about the individual offender than a
previous case history, offering information about the person’s character, their
personal traits and perhaps even helping to indicate some of the ways they
operate in their everyday lives. In the two most notable cases where David Canter
has been involved with building an offender profile, he is reported to have
been generally accurate regarding the perpetrators, although in both cases this
has only been proved to be the case after the offenders were brought to justice
by more conventional means.
In the case of the Railway Rapists, Duffy and
Mulcahy, although it became increasingly evident that two attackers were
involved in the multiple rapes of women in the region, with no obvious suspects
to investigate and following the murders of Alison Day, Maartje Tamboezer and
Anne Locke, Surrey Police invited Dr Canter to produce a profile for the
perpetrators, which would help the police in their search for potential
suspects. As it turned out however, in addition to his crime partnership with
Mulcahy, Duffy was also carrying rapes on his own and it was as a result of
these actions that he was arrested and interviewed by the authorities. Under
questioning by Surrey detectives, who were being advised by Canter, Duffy
eventually admitted his part in the earlier rapes and murders of the women on
the railway and was subsequently charged, tried and found guilty of four rapes
and two murders, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Both Surrey
Police and Dr Canter knew that Duffy had had an accomplice for the crimes and
under careful questioning, finally he agreed to name his partner in crime,
Mulcahy, who was then arrested and charged with the rapes and murders, with
Duffy testifying against his former accomplice, ensuring that he too was found
guilty and sentenced to a life term.
According to some reports, Dr Canter’s
involvement with the case represented the first time that a criminal profiler
had been asked to help an ongoing police investigation, a practice that has
become more commonplace in the years following his involvement. Interestingly,
it has been stated that of the seventeen observations made by Canter in
relation to Duffy’s habits and lifestyle, thirteen of them were later proved to
be correct, which was clearly much more than just lucky guesswork on Canter’s
part. The psychologist was later asked to create a profile for an offender who
was thought to have committed two double murders in West Wales during the mid
1980’s. The killer’s first two victims were brother and sister, Richard and
Helen Thomas were killed in December 1985, with their farmhouse being set
alight in an attempt to hide any evidence of the crime. In 1989, holidaymakers
Peter and Gwenda Dixon were killed as they walked along a coastal path in
Pembrokeshire; and their bodies were deliberately hidden in undergrowth to hide
any evidence of the murder.
All four murders completely baffled the police and
in the years before DNA evidence and offender profiling, there was very little
direct evidence that could help point the police in the direction of the
offender, or indeed to link the two apparently random killings. Having
undertaken extensive enquiries in both cases and built up a comprehensive list
of possible suspects, eventually the police invited David Canter to build a
profile for the killer, which he was able to do having visited the crime scenes
for himself. Although the culprit, John William Cooper, would only be brought
to justice some twenty years after he had committed the murders, it later
emerged that a significant number of the observations made by Canter fitted
Cooper perfectly, including the fact that he was a local man, was a habitual
criminal, had access to and a working knowledge of guns, as well as being
interested in field craft and survival techniques. Unfortunately, at the time
that the police first received Canter’s offender profile, they were thought to
have had several dozen potential suspects, many of whom came from the local
rural area and fitted the profile in a number of ways.
The breakthrough in the case was only finally brought
about by developments in DNA analysis and the fact that Cooper had continued
with his lawless lifestyle, being sentenced to prison in 1998 for a range of
robberies and assaults, which resulted in his DNA being taken as a matter of
routine. Whilst Cooper was in prison, the police in Pembrokeshire undertook a
cold case review of the two double murders, which resulted in existing crime
scene evidence being subjected to new scientific scrutiny, during which
previously overlooked genetic materials were missed. It was also around the
same time that Cooper’s DNA was compared to crime scene material and found to
match, giving the police grounds to search his home, as a result of which
further materials were found, adding strength to the case being made against
him.
In addition to the four counts of murder, Cooper was also subsequently
charged with rape against a 16-year-old girl and the sexual assault of a
15-year-old girl, who along with some young male friends were held up at
gunpoint by Cooper, who discharged the weapon as a warning the group of
youngsters not to tell anyone about the assault. It was largely on the basis of
this physical evidence that on the 26th May 2011 John William Cooper
was found guilty of all of the charges laid against him and was sentenced to
four life sentences, as well as terms of imprisonment for the rape and sexual
assault, with very little likelihood that he will ever leave jail alive. In
both cases however, Dr Canter’s offender profile, despite proving to be
generally accurate, were only proved to be so, once the perpetrator had been
caught by other means. However, there is a suggestion that subsequent
questioning of the subjects directed by an experienced psychologist like Dr
Canter, did play an important role in helping to persuade at least one offender
to disclose information about his accomplice that might not have been offered
in more usual circumstances.
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