Who Killed Precious?

by H. Paul Jeffers

Examines several key cases to reveal how psychology and high technology are used to track down serial killers

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime

Paperback

First published May 1, 1992

About the author

H. Paul Jeffers was an established military historian and author of seventy books. He worked as an editor and producer at ABC, CBS and NBC, and is the only person to have been news director of both of New York City's all-news radio stations. He taught journalism at New York University, Syracuse University, and Boston University.

Reviews

[Terry Cornell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of the history of the development of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, VICAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program), and the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Until the mid 1980s there was not any kind of national database to track violent crimes or criminals, and the FBI didn't have staff behavioral scientists to develop criminal profiles on violent crimes cases. The author breaks down the types of crime by chapters and gives examples of cases where FBI used behaviorist agents to develop profiles and help catch violent criminals. What could be very dry reading material, is saved by these examples. One example I had forgotten about was the 1989 explosion in one of the gun turrets on the U.S.S. Iowa that killed 47 sailors. FBI investigated the incident and the possibility that one of the sailors intentionally set the explosion killing himself and the others as a murder-suicide. Eventually the U.S. Navy had no explanation, but that it was most likely an accident.

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty good collection of serial-murder cases. In each case they used profiling to help catch the killers. The author is a little too uncritical of sloppily-handled cases like the Boston Strangler and the Atlanta Child Murders. Come on, man, even I know there were two little girls on the official list of ACM's victims!