Famous Success with Criminal Profiling
From 1978 to 1990, Andrei Chikatilo terrorized Russia raping, beating, and murdering over 50 women and children. In an attempt to narrow the suspect pool investigator Viktor Burakov asked psychiatrist Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky to create a profile of the unknown suspect at that time. Bukhanovsky developed a criminal profile so detailed with the exception of a broad age range of 25-50. He described the sexual inadequacy the suspect suffered driving his kills. Bukhanovsky also described in great detail why the suspect blinded his victims and abused their corpses postmortem. When Chikatilo was arrested with little evidence against him, Bukhanovsky was brought in to read his profile. Although profiles cannot be used as proof against a person in a court of law, Bukhanovsky's profile was so accurate that Chikatilo broke down and confessed before the profile was finished being said.
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Famously known as the "Baton Rouge Killer," Derrick Todd Lee killed five women in Louisiana. Although profilers did predict him to be a Caucasian male when in fact he was African-American, this was because they were given eye witness reports by local law enforcement that the man was white. Minus this set back, almost every other part of the profile was correct to Lee's life. For example, Lee was financially short, craved control, and lived a fairly non-threatening lifestyle. Although the profile was not directly linked to solving this case, it still proved to be highly accurate.
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Richard Trenton Chase, or the "Vampire of Sacramento," was quickly put behind bar due to the criminal profile created. Interpreting the manner in which Chase killed, as well as what was left behind at the crime scenes Ressler and Vorpagels determined Chase must suffer from an extreme paranoia disorder causing him to most likely be uneducated, unemployed, living alone, and without ownership of a car. Using the location of the two different crime scenes, Ressler and Vorpagels were able to estimate a radius in which Chase lived in, leading to extending the profile to a 25 to 27 year old white man most likely undernourished. This profile helped locate Chase in his apartment surrounded by evidence of his crimes.
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George Metesky gained the infamous name of the "Mad Bomber" through his bomb explosions that terrorized New York City for sixteen years. After police investigations led to dead ends time and time again, Dr. James Brussel used the bombings to create a criminal profile that lead right to the criminal. Brussel was the first to diagnose a mental disorder through a profile. He suspected that the Mad Bomber suffered from a paranoia disorder and because paranoia usually peaks in a person's mid-thirty's, Brussel expected the bomber to be in his fifty's. Upon looking deeper into the crimes Brussel thought the bomber might be a slob and mostliy lived with a female relative. The profile led right to Metesky's door and garage full of bomb making materials.
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