Dr. Katherine Ramsland teaches forensic psychology at DeSales University, and has published 24 books, including The Forensic Science of CSI; The Criminal Mind; and The Science of Cold Case Files. She writes for Court TV’s Crime Library and co-wrote The Unknown Darkness with Gregg McCrary (ret'd FBI). 

Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers: Why They Kill; Cold Case Files; and A Voice for the Dead are Dr. Ramsland's most recent books. Dr. Ramsland's 25th book, the entire history of serial killers, will be published in October.

See Archives for Web Mystery Magazine articles by Dr. Ramsland.

Her website is katherineramsland.com. Direct correspondence to Editor.

             Sherlock Holmes was a profiler! So were Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin and Dostoysevky’s Inspector Porfiry. The FBI didn’t train them, but John Douglas, chief of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit during its first decade, has observed that criminal profiling has fictional precedents in these early detective stories. That comment, it turns out, has been both positive and negative for the profilers, but that’s often because most people don’t know the history of psychology and crime detection.

             At first, the idea of an association between real-life behavioral analysts and fictional detectives made the little-known world of the profilers intriguing. People who loved those tales wanted to know more about the FBI’s approach, and books like The Silence of the Lambs cemented the connection. Yet with recent cases like the Beltway Snipers and the Baton Rouge Killer, references to fiction have helped to foster a media backlash that makes profilers appear to be amateurish characters stumbling around in a story they can’t quite grasp. They’re still doing the same type of analysis they always did, making both hits and misses, but the media has changed its focus to how short they fall from the image of the flawless detective. Once they were heroes; now they’re the Keystone Kops.

             With increasingly more media distortions occurring, it’s important to re-examine what behavioral profiling is ... and isn’t.

             As practiced by FBI agents with special training, behavioral profiling is part of a more encompassing program that, since Douglas’s time, has placed greater emphasis on utilizing clinical and research psychology. Not only that, this marriage of assessment with investigation has some solid precedents in law enforcement. While Douglas was correct that fictional detectives rely on the techniques of behavioral observation and deduction, he did not take the association far enough. Let’s look first at the precedent and then at the program.

             Those early tales of detectives who could see more significant details at a crime scene than the ordinary person were actually inspired by a detective in Paris who made his mark during the early nineteenth century: Francois Eugene Vidocq. Not only did this man found the world’s first undercover detective agency, the Brigade de la Surete, but he also incorporated many innovative forensic techniques, such as record keeping, ballistics comparisons, handwriting analysis, footprint casts, and the use of psychology to extract confessions and make plea deals. Thus, behavioral profiling can trace its origins past fictional characters to an astute criminal investigator. This man also inspired the world’s first crime lab, which eventually prompted the FBI to set one up.

The BSU, now known as the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), was developed in 1972 after founders Howard Teten and Patrick Mulaney put together a course for FBI agents on abnormal psychology. They then learned from psychiatrist James Brussel how he had used behavioral clues from crime scenes and letters to solve the difficult case of a long-running serial bomber in New York. So right from the start, the unit was grounded in principles of psychology.

             Yet as with all attempts to systematize human beings – especially the more elusive aspects – errors are inevitably made. Ideas based on accumulated data from past cases go only so far. If most past serial killers have been white males, it’s reasonable to suggest that a current UNSUB (unknown subject) will likely be a white male. With more data on female, black and Hispanic serial killers, the range of possibilities will become more flexible. Until that time, the suggestion may be mistaken, but as long as most serial killers remain white males, the probability analysis in a given profile is still going to favor a white male. Probability always has a margin of error and any other approach is just wild-ass guessing. 

             Much has been achieved in the BAU and those agents trained in behavioral analysis have made a significant contribution to the art of identifying criminals. (No one claims it’s a science.) There’s more to the FBI’s story than people who look to The Silence of the Lambs for their information realize.

             In his book, The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators Among Us, former FBI Special Agent Gregg McCrary explains how profiling grows out of what the FBI calls Criminal Investigative Analysis (CIA). Not only does he show exactly what steps are involved when agents are invited into a case, but he also illustrates the range of behavioral analyses that he must call on to make an evaluation: a rape case may as easily be a false allegation as part of a series of stranger rapes. A crime scene may be staged to look like a different type of crime than it really is. A series of murders may be linked or not, depending on certain factors. Analyzing these incidents is not as easy as fiction makes it look.

             Criminal profiling, McCrary says, may be defined as "a process used to analyze a specific crime or series of crimes in order to develop a behavioral composite of an unknown offender." Personality dictates behavior, so what an offender shows at a crime scene is what he or she will show in other facets of his (or her) life. In simplistic terms, sloppy crime scene, sloppy car and/or home. Meticulous crime scene, probably well-groomed and perfectionistic. Yet in truth, there’s generally a far greater range of behaviors to interpret in any given crime scene. That’s why an analysis involves more than just deductive reasoning from clues.

             So what is Criminal Investigative Analysis? And how is it distinct from behavioral profiling? For the answer to those questions, we can look at the stages of a criminal investigation. First, investigators must determine whether or not a crime has been committed. If so, they identify what type of crime it is, and then try to identify and apprehend the offender. The last stage is to present evidence in court. In each stage, behavioral analysis is involved, but only in the third stage is profiling relevant. That is, within the framework of an investigation, CIA commonly involves many psychological activities, such as crime scene analysis, investigative strategy, deception detection, interviewing techniques, probable cause in support of a search warrant, and threat assessment. Behavioral profiling is merely a sub-specialty of CIA.

             To be proficient with behavior analysis at any stage requires an in-depth education in both psychology and law enforcement. The more one assesses motive, the greater the need for understanding criminal psychodynamics and psychopathology. FBI profilers come from within the ranks of seasoned agents with years of investigative experience, and they then take two years of additional classes and training to qualify. These days, they often have extensive exposure to psychology as well, and may enter the academy with an MA in hand.

             Yet the tendency, thanks to the popular media, is to believe that profiling is simply a matter of acting like Sherlock Holmes. You'll even find untrained people offering accelerated weekend seminars on things like deductive and inductive reasoning that fraudulently promise certification to consult as a profiler with law enforcement. However, the attempt to conduct a thorough Criminal Investigative Analysis without comprehensive training in both psychology and criminal investigation –especially experience with crime scenes – can deflect an investigation onto the wrong track, derail it altogether, or undermine the case in criminal court. It can even help to put innocent people into prison.

             To get at the heart of many media misperceptions, McCrary makes a distinction between prospective or retrospective profiling, with each being the antithesis of the other. It’s often the case that the media expects profilers to come up with a blueprint against which to fit offenders – "Tell us the profile of a rapist" – so they can use it to select the most likely candidate. That’s the wrong idea, also known as prospective profiling, because it’s an attempt to construct a set of characteristics based on a character type. It ignores the individualized aspects of the crime scene(s).

             "These profiles are generally templates that are laid over a specific population," says McCrary, "in an attempt to predict who within that group might have an elevated potential to commit a certain type of violence." This procedure is vulnerable to stereotyping, which can result in faulty suspicions and racism.

             The FBI uses retrospective profiling, which occurs only after a crime or series of crimes has been committed. It’s incident-specific. The goal is to use the behavior patterns to help narrow the pool of suspects and prioritize leads. In one case of a serial rapist, the local police believed the rapist was riding the bus and getting off to follow his victims. In a large city, that gave them a hopelessly vast pool of possibilities. The FBI profilers were able to show them behavioral clues that indicated he was from a specific neighborhood, waiting at specific bus stops, which narrowed the list considerably. And they were right.    

It should be noted that those who devise profiles for law enforcement are quick to say that this item is just one of many tools, and is not even the primary investigative tool. A profile is based on probability analysis and does not alone solve cases. In other words, while a profile can help, it should be kept in perspective with other evidence.              "A criminal profile details the characteristics and traits of an unknown offender," says McCrary. "It's based on inferences we can draw about the choices the person made during the crimes."

             Profiling does not involve special vision. It utilizes what we actually know about criminal behavior. Behavioral clues are interpreted within that context, and the more clues the better. In the case of the Beltway Snipers along the I-95 corridor in MD and VA, the only clues were the random nature of the shooting, the shooting accuracy, the geographical area, and the type of rifle used. (Plenty of “profilers” showed up on television to comment, but some of them had no credentials for it, and that showed in their erroneous responses.) It soon became clear that the offender was listening to what the media and police were predicting, because whatever was concluded was soon undermined. So that was a bit of additional behavior, as were the quick getaways that suggested two people working together.

             McCrary points out that when there are few clues in a case, people can develop "tunnel vision," such as believing that the sniper drove a white van, based on a witness report. No one really knew if a white van was involved, yet the media and the investigators clung to it. They also clung to the notion from a profile offered that the shooter was white (because most lone snipers up to this point have been white).

             They were wrong about the van, the offender’s race, and the idea that they could publicly spout whatever they wanted without inflaming this UNSUB to keep killing. It turned out to be a team of black men and one of them has admitted that he shot certain people after watching the police chief on news programs try to anticipate what he would or would not do next.

             Because it was such an unusual spate of crimes, data from past cases that bore no relationship to it fueled erroneous conclusions. Yet all behavioral scientists know that human behavior is full of anomalies. While it was reasonable to say this shooter was white, but that did not eliminate the possibility that he was of another race – or gender.

             McCrary is quick to tell anyone who asks, and especially those with whom he works cases, that certain aspects of the profile can be wrong, notably age and race, so no suspect should be eliminated based only on the profile details. While there are times when those details are remarkably accurate, profiles aren’t perfect.

             Criminal behavior, like all human behavior, is complex and McCrary points out that there is no "one-size-fits-all" profile for any type of offender. They remain individuals. That’s why each profile must be kept within the context of the investigation. And if there’s a mistake in the information from the investigation, that will affect the profile.

             In the case of the Baton Rouge serial killer roaming LA for over a year, identified via DNA as black man Derrick Todd Lee, the media jumped all over the fact that the FBI profile had indicated that the local investigators were dealing with a white man. Yet that was partly due to eyewitness reports about a white man in the areas where bodies were found and to the fact that a black man had not been reported loitering in victim neighborhoods that were predominantly white. However, after Lee was caught, it turned out that two people who had in fact reported a black man near one victim’s home but the police had decided before the FBI even entered the case that this perpetrator must be white, so they did not follow up on those reports. That information was not given to the profilers. It would have made a difference in their analysis.

"You have to be careful that the information you’re using is accurate and complete," says McCrary. "If there’s information out there that hasn’t been collected, than can affect the profile’s accuracy."             For example, in the case of the Canadian killing team of Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, several witnesses "saw" two men in a Camero pick up the victim. All of them were mistaken, because it was a Nissan and a male/female team that picked her up, but until the police realized that, the eyewitness information affected how the profile was devised and the investigation conducted.

             Those who use this method of behavioral analysis know that they cannot predict every possible human behavior or trait from what they have at a crime scene. Yet with additional crime scenes and more behavioral evidence, profiles evolve. That happened in the Baton Rouge case. Just before Lee was identified as the UNSUB, "critical new information" learned from the fifth murder had redirected the police to look for a black man.

             A behavioral profile is just one of many tools in use when trying to solve a crime. Its primary function is to help prioritize leads. It's based on what is actually known about the behavior involved in a specific crime or series of crimes, compared with information gathered on other similar cases.

             So while it’s easy in fiction to develop an extraordinary detective who keenly deduces behavior from clues that others fail to see, it’s not quite that easy in actual cases. Behavioral profilers today blend the latest theories from psychology, professional experience, and the FBI’s enormous database about criminal behavior to offer their analyses. They will continue to make errors but they will also continue to get things right. In fact, while the Baton Rouge killer’s profile was mistaken on a couple of points, it was actually right on many more. But the media did not report that. They only pointed out the errors, and that’s what stays in the public’s mind.

             Profiling is here to stay, because it’s often effective and sometimes surprisingly exact. While it’s not going to provide the public with immediate and flawless information about ongoing crimes, it will serve law enforcement, as it was always intended, in helping to narrow down leads and catch offenders.

             Even Sherlock Holmes sometimes made mistakes, but we nevertheless remember him for his incisive observations. If the media would only learn what profilers actually do rather than expect them to be what they aren’t, we might have the same appreciation for their work.

Copyright 2003 by Dr. Katherine Ramsland,
Professor of Forensic Psychology, DeSales University

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