Serial Murderers

The case of Ted Bundy is particularly instructive in any

consideration of the effectiveness and potential of profiling mass killers and other serious criminals, because of the fact that Bundy did not fit in any way the categories generally associated wit the typical mass murderer.

That is, as Richard Larsen makes clear in his book, Bundy: The Deliberate Stranger, the use of profiling in the Bundy case, as much as it was actually used or as much as it might have been used, could not have been especially effective because it relies on the formation of a suspected personality on the basis of the crimes committed. The horror of Bundy's murders caused the detectives on that case to suspect a man who was living an

isolated and outwardly and inwardly miserable life.

Bundy, however, seemed to most of those that knew him as a happy, energetic, generous and ambitious man who would inevit-ably succeed as a professional and well-educated man.

The problem with the profiling method, then, in the Bundy case, is precisely the strength of the method in many other cases. The basis of the success

. . .
with Ted Bundy, the profiling technique, based on the most elemental psychological beliefs about human behavior, can even hinder an investigation. The general arrogance of the psychological community with regard to its superior knowledge about the mind of the criminal is an important part of the reliance, which many police agencies have placed on psychologists in mass murder cases. The fact that in many cases the profiling turns out to be accurate is simply a result of the general psychological make-up of criminals and murderers in the first place. Those such as Bundy, who appear to have "everything going for them," are eliminated with little or no consideration at all. In the case of Bundy, in fact, it was a growing mass of circumstantial evidence which led police to conclude that he was the killer they sought, and not any indication from profiling work (Larsen, 1980, p. 165). Abrahamsen suggests that in those cases where profiling is thrown off the track and fails to come up with an accurate portrait of the killer, the failure is due to a lack of available evidence rather than to a fundamental flaw in the system of profiling itself. He writes that, One important insight I have gained in my many years of psychiatric work
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Approximate Word count = 1472
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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