FBI Profilers and Serial Killers
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Posted by TK Kenyon Dec 20, 2006 |
Thomas Harris created some compelling characters in The Silence of the Lambs, but he inadvertently did the country a great disservice. He elevated profilers to the rank of near-mystical geniuses and exalted serial killers from the immature idiots they are to the level of brilliant super villians by inventing Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal has more in common with Lex Luthor or Voldemort than he does with Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, or even Ted Bundy.
Profiling serial killers is supposed to be an art, but it’s not. It’s certainly not a science. The entire profiling field, such as those profiles produced by the Behavioral Sciences Unit of the FBI, is based on interviews with 36 murderers, only 25 of which were actual serial killers. It’s all a fallacy, and profiles have done more harm than good in many circumstances, like when the FBI produced a profile of the sniper who was killing people around Washington, DC a couple years ago. They produced their usual cookie-cutter profile: one guy, a loner, 19-39 years old, white, social problems, high school dropout. Most of the time, that profile will be correct because statistically, most serial killers fit that profile.
(It’s like one of those mediums, who supposedly talk to dead people, asking you if you’ve lost someone you loved. You wouldn’t be at a medium if you didn’t have someone you wanted to talk to. Or a psychic who asks a woman, "Do you have one child or two?" Statistically, most women have one or two children, so most women will answer that question yes, and thus the psychic is correct.)
However, we know now that it was two guys, they were black, one of them was a teenager, and the other had been in the military. The profile was just wrong, and it might have cost lives because the police were looking for a lone white guy while the real snipers drove past them.
Serial killers, on the other hand, have more in common with a seven year old boy burning ants with a magnifying glass than with Hannibal Lecter. Most serial killers are idiots and get caught by their own stupidity. Even Ted Bundy, the paragon of the super-smart serial killer, couldn't get through an entire semester of law school. That's right: he was too dumb to be a bad lawyer.
Articles about a psychiatrist who works with serial killers and Ann Rule’s seminal work The Stranger Beside Me, about her relationship with Ted Bundy, can be found here and here.
An article, "Books Like American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis," is here.