Word: serials
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...attention, profilers have long warned, to a serial killer's first strike. The first of the bullets that strafed the suburbs of Washington last week sliced through the air over a drab strip-mall parking lot in Aspen Hill, Md., and cracked a nickel-size hole in the front window of a Michaels craft store. It then arced through a leafy display of silk autumnal bouquets, zipped behind the head of a female cashier and pierced a hole through thelamp over the register of lane No. 5. Emerging on the other side, it whizzed over a Christmas-ornament display...
...indiscriminate shooting of strangers--and a twisted hunt for glory--has plenty of tragic precedent. But generalizations are hard to come by. Killers pick different victims and different M.O.s, depending on their motivation and mental state. In some cases, the victims fit some sort of pattern. Serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin, convicted of nine murders from 1977 to 1980, has said he was trying to start a race war by shooting African Americans and interracial couples. At the other end of the gory spectrum, notorious shooters like Texas tower sniper Charles Whitman initiate one uninterrupted orgy of violence--as opposed...
...leaving calling cards on the bodies of Viet Cong, was sent to the feds to be analyzed for fingerprints and DNA. The card, it would later be reported, also contained a request not to tell the media about its existence. "There is often an indignation on the part of serial killers at news reports about them that are inaccurate, so they start giving little hints about who they really are, what they have done," says Jamie Greene, a clinical and forensic psychologist. "They want recognition...
...What they're engaged in is one of the most perplexing cases of serial murder this country has ever seen - and one of the largest media stakeouts since the Chandra Levy case broke. Moose, who served for 27 years (including six as chief) on the Portland, Oregon police force, has some experience with the media, but nothing that could have prepared him for the blunt force of the cameras and microphones that confront him, sometimes four or five times a day, during his 20-hour shifts...
...been hearing a lot about this forensic technique, in part because it's one of the only ways officials have to track the sniper. Geographic profiling is generally used when investigating serial crimes - rape, murder, robbery - and depends on mapping the location of each crime in order to determine the most likely point of origin for the suspect. In other words, if you pinpoint the place each shooting occurred, you can deduce a "center" for the criminal's activity, and that often ends up being the perpetrator's home...