Introduction to Forensic Science

Serial Killers

I. Definition

A. Serial murders - repetitive homicides, nearly always one-on-one murders, where the perpetrator is usually a stranger or has a slight acquaintance to the victim. (Historically, the majority of homicide victims knew their killer, but during the 1990's, this figure changed. Statistics from 1995's Uniform Crime Reports state that 55% of homicide victims have no known association with the perpetrators.1) The serial murderer’s motivation to kill is not based on crimes of passion, victim precipitation, personal gain or profit. Serial murderers are nearly always males prompted by sexual or aggressive drives to exert power through killing.2

B. Modus operandi - a characteristic pattern of behavior repeated in a series of offenses. The following are categories of modus operandi devised by Major L.W. Atcherley, an English constable in the 1800's. 1. Classword - the kind of property attacked, such as a house, a college dormitory, people parked in cars at lover's lanes 2. Entry - the point of entry, such as open bedroom windows, sliding glass doors 3. Means - implements or tools that were used, such as a pry bar, ladder, screw driver 4. Object - kind of property taken, such as bras and panties 5. Time - time of day or night, weekdays, non-work days, holidays (when people would not miss the perpetrator at work) 6. Style - the description the criminal gives the victim to gain entrance (plumber, cable TV repairman) 7. Tale - any disclosure the criminal makes as to his business/purpose 8. Pals - any co-conspirators 9. Transport - what type of vehicle was used in connection with the crime 10. Trademark - any unusual act committed by the suspect while in the commission of the crime (i.e. poisoning the cat, eating at the scene after murdering the grandmother)

C. Signature - the murderer's psychological calling card, unusual characteristics of a murder that are repeated at several crime scenes, i.e. intentionally displaying victims in a spread-eagle position. This behavior reinforces the perpetrators underlying psychological needs. 1. Examples of signature behaviors

1 Berg & Horgan, Criminal Investigation, 3rd edition, pg. 332 2 Osterburg & Ward, Criminal Investigation, 3rd edition, pg. 455

© 2008, Golden Lady Unlimited, LLC 1 Mod23A.doc a. Ted Bundy's choice of victims - young women with blond or light brown hair, parted in the middle b. John Wayne Gacy's victim type - adolescent boys c. Green River Killer's victims - young women, mainly prostitutes

D. The difference between modus operandi and signature may be explained by the following example. Two murderers both burn their victims by dousing them with gasoline. The first murderer does so as an anger-retaliatory act. This is a signature behavior. The second murderer douses the victim with gasoline to cover up the crime. This murderer does so to evade detection. This therefore is a precautionary act, and as such is a modus operandi behavior.

E. Serial murderer characteristics 1. Usually intelligent 2. Good appearance 3. Superficial charm 4. Able to differentiate right from wrong 5. Have no conscience 6. Enjoy victim's terror

F. Difficulties investigators face when attempting to solve serial murders 1. Serial murderers are often very mobile, traveling from one locale to another to find victims, extensive interstate travel 2. Lack of any prior association with the victims 3. Use of remote burial sites

G. Difference between mass murder and serial murder - Charles Whitman, the man who shot multiple people from the tower at the University of Texas, is a mass murderer, not a serial killer 1. Most mass murderers are taken into custody after taking part in negotiations at the scene of the crime, commit suicide shortly after the completion of their mission (Columbine High School), or are killed by police while in commission of the crimes a. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris committed suicide after killing 12 classmates and a teacher in the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history 2. “The FBI defines a serial killer as one who murders three or more victims, with cooling-off periods between each murder. Serial killers usually work alone, kill strangers, and kill for the sake of killing (as opposed to crimes of passion).”3

3 http://people.howstuffworks.com/serial-killer.htm/printable retrieved 4/21/08

A. Organized serial killers 1. In organized serial murders, the perpetrator plans the murder for months or years beforehand. 2. The offender is normally married, has steady employment, and is thought to be a good member of society (ex., BTK-Dennis Rader) 3. They bring the instruments of the crime (knives, guns, tape) to the scene with them. When Ted Bundy was pulled over for driving suspiciously (in 1975), police found an ice pick, ski mask, a mask made of pantyhose, rope and handcuffs in the trunk of Bundy's car. 4. These murderers are often highly intelligent and are knowledgeable about forensic evidence and law enforcement's investigative capabilities.

B. Disorganized serial killers 1. They do not plan their crimes in advance. 2. The disorganized murderer commits the crimes spontaneously. 3. They are often unemployed and without transportation. 4. They are more often of low intelligence or psychotic.

C. Psychological Types 1. Power oriented - these killers enjoy watching the terror of their victims as they kill them, i.e. Ted Bundy. Most common type of serial killer 2. Mission oriented - these killers feel they are improving the world by getting rid of undesirable people such as prostitutes, i.e. The Hillside Stranglers 3. Visionary - those who kill because they are directed by hallucinations, i.e. David Berkowitz - "Son of Sam" 4. Hedonistic - those killers who gain sexual satisfaction from raping, killing, having sex or sleeping with the corpse, mutilating, and sometimes eating the victim, i.e. Jeffrey Dahmer The following two categories pertain to female serial killers. 5. Comfort -those who kill for monetary or other material gain, such as insurance benefits, real estate, etc. a. This type of killer is often acquainted with his/her victims. b. The comfort killer is the most common type of female serial killer. c. Golay & Rutterschmidt, two elderly women were recently convicted of killing two homeless men by running them over with a car in order to collect millions of dollars of insurance 6. Disciple - those killers who kill under the influence of a charismatic killer, i.e. Lynette Fromme and Leslie Van Houten (Charles Manson's "family") a. These murderers want to be accepted by their leader. b. The leader decides who will be murdered.

© 2008, Golden Lady Unlimited, LLC 3 Mod23A.doc III. Background and Behavior of Serial Killers A. What is a Psychological Profile – a submitted report utilizing information and approaches from various social and behavioral sciences, focusing on a specific type of violent crime

B. Typical profile of a serial killer (FBI ) 1. Ethnicity - Caucasian a. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, David Berkowitz, and Jeffrey Dahmer all fall into this category b. Exceptions include Wayne Williams, the perpetrator of the Atlanta Child Murders and Cleophus Prince, Jr., known the “Clairemont Killer were both African American. 2. Sex - Male a. Bundy, Dahmer, Berkowitz, Richard Ramirez, Juan Corona b. Exceptions include female serial killers Genene Jones, a licensed nurse who killed babies admitted into the intensive care unit, the "Manson" girls who killed the LaBiancas and Sharon Tate, and Aileen Wuornos, the Florida prostitute who killed truck drivers 3. Age - 18-32 a. Age at which they began killing 1. Ted Bundy - 28 (may have killed earlier, unconfirmed) 2. John Wayne Gacy - 33 3. Richard Ramirez (The Night Stalker) - 24 b. Exceptions include Ray (75) and Faye (69) Copeland, two elderly murderers from Missouri. These two murdered farm workers on their farm. Faye later made a quilt out of the victims' clothing. 4. Victim of child abuse a. Aileen Wuornos, female serial killer, was physically and emotionally abused by her grandfather who raised her when she was abandoned by her mother b. Exceptions 1. No sign of child abuse could be found in the cases of Jeffrey Dahmer or David Berkowitz 5. Exhibits signs of McDonald triad - most serial killers exhibit at least one of these behaviors a. Bedwetting beyond the age of twelve 1. According to Robert Ressler (FBI), more than 60% of serial killers were still wetting the bed past the age of twelve b. History of arson 1. “The Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, had set many fires, kept a diary and even nicknamed himself the "Phantom Fireman". Berkowitz set 1,412 fires and switched over to killing because it gave him more excitement and power and got him newspaper and TV coverage.”4

4 http://www.essaysample.com/essay/000260.html (Retrieved 4/20/08)

© 2008, Golden Lady Unlimited, LLC 4 Mod23A.doc c. Animal abuse - Keith Jesperson, a serial killer known as the "Happy Face Killer" from British Columbia who murdered more than 160 victims, started with dozens of cats and other small animals, before he moved on to human beings5.

6. Usually killed alone a. The Hillside Stranglers, cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, were exceptions to this rule.

IV. Serial murderers A. Ted Bundy 1. Bundy was an intelligent, handsome man. While in high school, Bundy began his "peeping Ted" activities. He also began shoplifting expensive clothes and ski equipment. Bundy felt that to own things such as these was to have power. He later went to college at the University of Washington while working for a suicide hotline. One of his co-workers at the hotline was Anne Rule, who would later write a best seller "A Stranger Beside Me" about Bundy. She insists that Bundy saved lives while working at the suicide hotline. 2. The majority of his victims were young women with blond or light brown hair parted in the middle. His last victim was a 12-year-old child. 3. The smooth talking Bundy used several different methods to ensnare his victims, including faking injuries (arm in a sling or leg in a cast), and impersonating a policeman. He often entered the victim's bedroom in the early morning or after midnight. Many of his victims had their skulls crushed, were stabbed, raped, tortured, and had been strangled with nylons or panty hose. He desecrated their bodies and often dismembered them, throwing their remains to wild animals. 4. Bundy confessed to killing twenty-three women between 1974-1978, but the official toll may be closer to 100. Bundy was put to death in Florida's electric chair in 1989. 5. Dental forensic evidence of Bundy's bite marks on his victims from Florida State University sealed his fate.

B. Richard Ramirez (The Night Stalker) 1. Ramirez, avowed devil worshipper, randomly raped and murdered his victims in their homes. Most of Ramirez's victims lived near freeways. 2. On one day in July 1989, Ramirez killed one of his victims, beat and raped the man's wife, and then raped the couple's 8-year-old son. 3. While in eighth grade, Ramirez began sniffing glue and smoking marijuana. By the time he began killing, he had graduated to shooting cocaine. 4. Ramirez was captured shortly after a fingerprint lifted from a stolen car was linked to the Night Stalker. California's state-of-the-art fingerprint

5 http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-160104866.html (Retrieved 4/17/08)

© 2008, Golden Lady Unlimited, LLC 5 Mod23A.doc database had been up and running for only three minutes when the match was discovered. 5. Ramirez's picture was then run in newspapers nationwide. When spotted by citizens in a rough neighborhood in Los Angeles, Ramirez bolted from a liquor store running nearly two miles. Shortly thereafter, a group of people began beating Ramirez, until stopped by LAPD. 6. Other evidence leading to the Night Stalker’s capture and conviction included Ramirez’s AC/DC cap and a footprint from a size eleven and a half Avia sneaker. Lt. Gil Carrillo of the LA Sheriff's Department was the co-lead investigator on this case.

C. John Wayne Gacy 1. Gacy, a successful contractor and pillar of his community, was arrested for the murder of more than thirty young boys. These boys had been sodomized and strangled. They often were tricked into being handcuffed. 2. He buried 28 of his victims in the crawl space under his home. 3. He was put to death by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.

D. Jeffrey Dahmer 1. Dahmer, like Bundy, was calm, cool, and collected. He invited young boys to his apartment to drink and take pictures. He appeared to be so normal that two Milwaukee police officers actually released one of Dahmer's fourteen-year-old victims back to him after the victim had escaped and had gone to an area hospital. 2. Dahmer killed at least 17 people, by inviting them to his apartment, and then drugging, strangling, and dismembering them. He cannibalized some of his victims as well. 3. A prison inmate killed Dahmer.

E. The Zodiac (unsolved) 1. Most of the Zodiac killings took place in the San Francisco Bay Area during a five-year period from 1969 - 1974 and involved multiple homicides; assaults, and kidnapping with intent to kill. The Zodiac, has been positively linked to seven deaths even though he claimed to have killed nearly 40. The 1966 murder of Riverside college student Cheri Jo Bates was later thought to be the work of the Zodiac. 2. The Zodiac wrote letters to newspapers, the police, and some of the victim's families taunting them and describing how he had killed his victims. In the letters were cryptograms, "A cryptogram is a type of puzzle which consists of a short piece of text encrypted with a simple substitution cipher in which each letter is replaced by a different letter. To solve the puzzle, one must recover the original lettering"6 3. The Zodiac's modus operandi was to attack his victims (usually couples) on weekends, in areas near water, using a different weapon and

6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptogram retrieved 4/30/08

© 2008, Golden Lady Unlimited, LLC 6 Mod23A.doc a different automobile each time. Neither sexual molestation nor robbery was the motive. ("Zodiac" by Robert Graysmith, 1976) 3. Several suspects were investigated including: a. Lawrence Kane 1. Kathleen Johns, a woman who was briefly abducted by someone thought to be the Zodiac killer, identified Kane as her abductor. 2. Pam Huckaby, sister to Zodiac victim Darlene Ferrin, identified Kane as a man who followed Darlene in the months before her murder 3. Kane traded his car in five days after Ferrin's murder 4. Kane lived within three blocks of the location where Paul Stine was murdered in San Francisco. 5. In the summer of 1970, Kane moved to Lake Tahoe as did possible Zodiac victim, Donna Lass. Kane and Lass worked in the same building. 6. Kane's name can be clearly discerned in a cipher from April 20, 1970. b. Rick Marshall 1. Lived within blocks of the murders 2. Marshall worked as a projectionist at a silent movie theater. The Zodiac had signed one of his letters as "The Red Phantom", a silent movie. 3. Owned a Royal typewriter and a teletype machine - devices such as these had been used to create messages written to police and the newspapers 4. Owned a car with a stripped reverse gear (as used in the Vallejo attempted murders) 5. Physical appearance - crew cut and similar glasses to the Zodiac 6. Similar handwriting c. Arthur Leigh Allen - Allen's DNA, which was recently tested, did not match that discovered on the postage stamp on a letter received from the Zodiac

F. Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway murdered scores of women in the Seattle area. 1. Ridgway pled guilty to murdering 48 teenage runaways and prostitutes who he had strangled and dumped into the Green River in the state of Washington. 2. His murder spree took place between 1982 and 1998. 3. He was finally arrested in 2001 after DNA and paint evidence linked him with the crimes. a. Evidence collected in 1987 (saliva and hair) was used as evidence to obtain the arrest warrant. 4. Ridgway passed the polygraph test years before he was apprehended.

G. BTK – Dennis Rader, the Bind, Torture, Kill strangler murdered his victims in during a 25-year crime spree in Wichita, Kansas. Rader was apprehended after DNA evidence collected at a crime scene was tested against DNA collected from Rader's daughter. 7 1. Rader was married with two children 2. He was a Boy Scout leader, a compliance officer in charge of animal control 3. Rader was a psychopath who morphed into a serial killer, who easily maintained a family life while committing these heinous murders a. In typical psychopath style, Rader didn’t show a lot of affection or emotion

H. Robert Pickton – a Vancouver-area pig farmer who murdered as many as 60 female prostitutes 1. Pickton was found guilty of second-degree murder after the longest trial in Canadian history. 2. The investigation cost $100 million 3. Evidence found in and around Pickton's property include skulls cut in half with hands and feet stuffed inside, a garbage bag with remains from another victim, blood stained clothing, a .22 caliber revolver with a dildo attached that contained both his and the victim's DNA 4. In a videotaped recording played for the jury, Pickton claimed to have attached the dildo to his weapon as a makeshift silencer.8

I. Aileen Wuornos, a female prostitute, killed at least six men on the roads of Florida. She was the subject of the film "Monster", which starred Charlize Theron. 1. Wuornos pawned a camera and radar detector that belonged to one of her victims and had left her required thumbprint on the receipt. When the thumbprint was run through AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System), her thumbprint matched an outstanding warrant against a Lori Grody (one of Wuornos' aliases) 2. A bloody palm print of Wuornos' was also found in the vehicle of one of her victim's 3. Wuornos claimed she had killed each of her victims in self-defense. However, because of Florida's "Williams Rule", information regarding the other murders was presented to the jury, clearly showing the pattern to the murders committed by Wuornos.

J. Dorothea Puente was a 59-year-old boarding house owner in Sacramento, CA. who killed seven of her tenants and buried their bodies in her backyard. When neighbors complained about the stench coming from Puente's yard, she told

7 http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/27/btk.investigation/index.html - Obtained June 9, 2008 8 Accused serial killer 'fed bodies to pigs' - The Australian - Obtained on January 25, 2007.

1. When her boarders started disappearing, a concerned social worker tipped off police, who made a gruesome discovery: She had drugged and killed her frail boarders. 2. Puente's motive was to collect her tenants' government benefit checks

V. The Importance of routine investigative work in the apprehension of serial killers A. Bundy was arrested after a patrol officer noticed a vehicle prowling an area near a restaurant that had just closed. Bundy, who sped away, was followed and then stopped by the alert patrol officer. Bundy then provided a stolen credit card as identification, assaulted the officer, and attempted to flee the scene. B. One of John Wayne Gacy's victims worked in a pharmacy. He left the pharmacy briefly to speak with a contractor in the parking lot about summer employment. When he failed to return to his job, his disappearance was reported. Gacy had been spotted in the pharmacy between 6 and 8 PM the night of the victim's disappearance. C. David Berkowitz, better known as the "Son of Sam", came under suspicion when investigators noticed that he had received a parking ticket at a location near one of the murder scenes. When following up on the parking citation, an officer noticed a machine gun protruding from a bag in Berkowitz's car.

VI. Extent of serial killing in the U.S. A. There are two schools of thought on the extent of serial murder in the U.S. On the one hand, "The US produces more serial killers than any other country. Up to 85% of the world's serial killers are in America. According to an FBI Behavioral Unit study serial killing has climbed to an almost 'epidemic proportion'. At any given time, there are an estimated 20 - 50 active serial killers. Those who change their targets, methods, are often never identified. Experts speculate on what happens to unsolved cases of murderers. Some may commit suicide, die, be incarcerated, in mental institutions, relocate, or have stopped killing, a few turn themselves in." (http://www.karisable.com/crserial.htm)

B. Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) - In 1985, the FBI's ViCAP program became operational. This program's purpose is to eliminate the problems that prevent the apprehension of serial killers. 1. These problems include: a. Lack of cooperation between police agencies b. Lack of communication between local, state, and federal agencies c. Mobility of serial murderers d. Lack of prior association between victims and assailant

© 2008, Golden Lady Unlimited, LLC 9 Mod23A.doc e. Unidentified bodies 2. ViCAP submission criteria a. Homicides (solved, unsolved, attempted) appear to be random, sexually oriented, lack motive, and appear to be part of a series b. Missing persons may be submitted if there is a strong likelihood of foul play or the victim remains missing c. Unidentified bodies - may be submitted if it appears the manner of death is criminal homicide 3. Even if a suspect has been apprehended in a case, the report should still be submitted for two reasons. a. ViCAP's files can be compared against the case b. If the suspect apprehended is released for lack of evidence (or other reasons), the case can still be compared to others in the ViCAP system. 4. ViCAP system's advantages a. Can recognize a serial killing earlier in the investigation process b. May clear up other unsolved murders when suspect is apprehended c. Allows for the pooling of clues from a case, whereby allowing investigators to compile the list of suspects and eliminate as many as possible as quickly as possible, preventing further homicides.