When a Killer Calls: A Haunting Story of Murder, Criminal Profiling, and Justice in a Small Town (Cases of the FBI's Original Mindhunter, #2)

by John E. Douglas

We looked at a number of critical components, some of which we’ve mentioned previously: victimology, along with any known verbal exchanges between the victim and perpetrator; crime scene indicators, such as any evidence of antecedent behavior or how the crime itself was carried out, how the body was disposed of and left, and evidence of postcrime behavior; how many crime scenes were involved; environment, place, and time; apparent number of offenders; degree of organization or disorganization; type of weapon(s); forensic evidence; personal items missing from the victim or purposely left at the crime scene or body disposal site; and medical examination of the living victim or postmortem examination of a deceased one. All of these factors help us profile an UNSUB and anticipate his—and it was almost always a “he” when it came to UNSUBs we would profile—next move.