He called in the FBI’s storied Behavioral Analysis Unit, despite Bell’s skepticism. What Bell knew of BAU came from TV and the movies. He pictured clean-cut paper pushers who sat in headquarters, thousands of miles away from a crime scene, with a superior deskside air that somehow resulted in a detailed, bang-on profile of an unknown suspect. Like many of his fellow investigators, Bell thought these profilers were a notch above psychics. Their predictions of violent offenders were almost always the same: Your suspect will be a young man, probably white, with a low-level job, difficulties
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