This content explores the concept and application of offender profiling, using the Washington Sniper case as a prominent example to illustrate its potential benefits and significant limitations in criminal investigations.
Mind Map
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So where do we begin? How are we going to find the person who committed this crime?
Obviously, we could look at the results of any forensic tests, we could talk to eyewitnesses
and so on. But, forensic tests take time, and don't always provide a conclusive result.
They might only provide part of the information you need, and eyewitness accounts are not
always available.
Now, obviously in our case, we have some eyewitnesses, and we will return to consider eyewitness
evidence shortly in a future episode. But let's start by trying to identify the suspect
from what we know about the crime itself. This is called offender profiling, and one
famous example of profiling, is in the case of the Washington Snipers. Between the 2nd
and 22nd of October in 2002, 10 people were murdered and a further 3 wounded in Maryland,
Virginia and Washington, DC in the United States of America. All victims were shot at
a distance, with a single rifle shot, and every time the killers disappeared in amongst
the confusion that resulted.
The shootings appeared random. They took place in grocery store car parks, at petrol stations,
while victims were mowing their lawns or sitting reading a book. There was nothing to link
the victims. These shootings appeared for all intents and purposes to be random. Now
understandably these shootings caused fear and panic in the community. The pressure was
on to apprehend the culprit, but for investigators there wasn't really that much to go on.
Eyewitness accounts were few and often contained conflicting information. The media was incredibly
interested in this case and many were called on to give their opinion as to who it was
that was committing these crimes. Those who commented ranged from forensic psychologists,
to criminologists, to homicide detectives to self-taught and FBI trained criminal profilers.
These publicly available profiles, while far less detailed than would be developed in use
for a typical case, give us a unique opportunity to look at what the profilers said the culprit
or culprits would be like. And we can compare these descriptions with the known characteristics
of those who were subsequently caught and convicted of these crimes. So, if we limit
ourselves to just those profiles provided by self-professed profilers or FBI trained
profilers we can see that there are some inconsistencies in their comments. So on the topic of who
is the sniper, Pat Brown, who is a self-taught profiler and author, stated on CNN on October
11, 2002, so at this stage 9 days and 9 shootings into this spate of criminal activity:
"This guy is a psychopath...He's involved in power control, and he might like Rambo movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
anything that gives him the feeling of power that he controls the universe."
Five days later on October 16, 2002, Candice DeLong, a retired FBI agent and field profiler,
was quoted in the New York Times as stating the following:
"I see him into all this stealth ninja stuff, walking around with a swagger, used to bossing people around, maybe a fireman or a construction worker."
So here we are starting to get a picture of what the perpetrator is like. And note that
both suggested that it is a single person committing these crimes. We are also starting
to get a hint of their possible occupation. Gregg McCrary, a former profiler and instructor
at the FBI Academy's profiling unit, is quoted in the Washington Post on October 23rd,
the day after what turned out to be the final shooting, as drawing on the demographic make
up of the Washington region to suggest the following:
"When you break down the demographics of the Washington region, there's a statistical probability that the sniper is a white man."
Now in terms of the geographical location of the perpetrator's home, Robert Ressler,
a former FBI profiler, commented on CNN on October 18, 2002 that:
"It is clear that this individual, and in my opinion, these individuals, were going to stay in the major metropolitan Washington area, which tells me that they're residents. These people are long-term residents."
Now note in this profile, Ressler makes it clear that he thinks that there is more than
one person involved in committing these crimes. And this is different to the assumptions
made by Brown, DeLong and McCrary in their profiles. Brown publicly disagreed with Ressler
and said on CBS on October 22, 2002:
"I have surmised from the beginning that he probably lives in the - somewhere about three miles from the Olney, Maryland area."
So from these few excerpts of the many profiles offered by trained and self-taught profilers
we can see there are inconsistencies. The same information has not led to an agreed
on perspective of the probable characteristics of the offender. For example, in this case,
the profilers cannot agree if it is a single individual or multiple people or indeed where
that person or people are likely to live. And in fact, when you consider those caught
and convicted of these crimes - that is, John Muhammad, a 41 year old Gulf War veteran and
17 year old John Lee Malvo, an immigrant from Jamaica, you can see that there are some other
issues in the profiles. For example, the assumption made on the ethnic make up of the Washington
region was that the perpetrator would be white. They were also not firemen or construction
workers, and no comment was ever made in regard to their love or otherwise of Rambo movies.
So why the mismatch?
Well perhaps we have biased our sample by only showing you those profiles that got
it wrong. It's a possibility, but there is nothing to suggest in the many articles
and books that have been written on this subject, that an accurate profile helped apprehend
the suspects. Rather, it seems in this case that a phone call from someone claiming to
be the shooter that linked these crimes to an earlier shooting, where a fingerprint had
been found and kept on file, was actually critical in solving this case.
Maybe the profiles offered differed because of the point at which they were made, that
is they were all made at different points in the sequence of the shootings, and possibly
more information about the characteristics of the shooter or shooters emerged as time
went on. And this is certainly true.
But there was a startling consistency in the way these crimes were committed, the modus
operandi if you like, that didn't seem to evolve over the course of the crime sequence.
It is also fair to say that at this point in time these were unusual crimes and so profilers,
like the police, really didn't have that much to go on. It is hard to comment on what
a perpetrator who commits this sort of crime is going to be like when you don't have
instances or examples where this sort of crime, or this type of sequence, has been seen before.
So now lets consider how profiling, in perhaps more typical crimes, might assist in investigations.
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