Dark Side: Kill Propel

 

The serial killer’s gratification and sexual experience was actually heightened, in some cases, by the activities of the police task forces  on their trail. Just knowing that a name had popped up on a missing person list, a name associated with a victim who was buried in a secret location or dumped off into the river at the killer’s special place, was enough to excite the killer out of a sensible and nonviolent equilibrium into a killing mode.

The analysis of the serial killer’s methodology in pursuing his crimes is dealt with in a discussion of the killer’s psychological crime scene calling cards. Many experienced homicide detectives have gut instincts when it comes to how a killer leaves his crime scene. If a scene has been scrubbed too clean or if there are indicators of a killer who’s acting out some fantasy driven drama on his victim, a detective can make a fair guess that this is  probably not the first murder the offender has committed. It’s also probably an accurate guess that this killer will strike again. But to go from that  gut instinct to a formal task force requires more than guesses. It requires  clear and convincing evidence for the detective’s superiors to take the next  step and form a task force.

Using gut instincts and adding information about the killer’s signature, detectives may discover that a person probably has killed before or is on a trajectory to kill again. The hard evidence of the killer’s signature may require an expert’s evaluation of the evidence. This can be done through signature analysis, one of the several outcomes of a formal crime scene assessment. As a look at crime scene signatures reveals, the MO of a killer includes only those actions necessary to perpetrate the murder.

We provide examples of previous cases in which signature analysis has been performed and the usefulness of that analysis to the investigation and prosecution of the killer. We also introduce our own specific type  of profiling based on what type of signature police can glean from the crime scene to show how MO profiling not only doesn’t work, but can wear investigators down by setting them along the wrong paths. Ultimately, we address the arc of the serial killer task force in order to understand the way serial killer investigations work. The formation of a task force officially represents a police consensus that  a serial killer is on the loose. That is an important psychological hurdle and establishes that the arc of the serial murder investigation is well under way. Once everyone agrees on the nature of the problem, far less time is wasted on extraneous investigation not germane to the “task” implicit in the term “task force.”

When you diagram the prototypical arc of a serial murder investigation, it begins with the first body discovery through the emotional highs and lows of hot leads that turn out to be dead ends. Along the way the frenzy of media involvement and pressure as each local news reporter decides to solve the case on the air contaminates the investigation. Maybe a final realization is that you’re locked into a siege mentality and that the case may take years to complete. You can understand how conflict and denial can often creep in, creating a sense of futility, that pervades the investigation after the serial killer task force has been formed and is at work.

The seasoned detective will expect that this killer will strike again or that he’s killed before, maybe in a different jurisdiction. But unless more bodies turn up that can be connected through the same type of killer MO or signature to this particular crime, most police agencies will not look for a serial killer. In fact, many agencies will be downright exclusive in what they consider related crime scene patterns, because they don’t want to create a serial killer case when there isn’t one. Therefore, the arc is broken before it begins.

However, once the separate homicide investigations in the case begin to stack up, evidence gets forgotten or lost, leads that might have been meaningful turn cold and become discarded, and witnesses tend to disappear. Because the sense of denial has pervaded the investigation, the investigation itself slows down from the very start and police lose a valuable ally—time—which sometimes starts out on their side but turns against them as the killer gets more confident of his ability to elude the police.

The goal of any serial murder investigation is to find the killer before he kills again. For the police task force, one of the most critical breaks they can get is to locate and interview a living witness, a victim of a serial killer who got away. In our exploration of the solution to serial killer cases through the discovery of living witnesses, we show how the identification of the killer lifts the psychological spirits of the investigators involved in the cases.

www.politie.nl  and a Chief Inspector – Mr. Henk van Essen©

www.aivd.nl       AIVD – Mr. Erik Akerboom ©

 

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