The Real Story on FBI Profiling

By: Ronald Kessler

Article Font Size

When The Washington Post ran the first national story about FBI profiling in 1984, no one outside of law enforcement recognized the term.

Since I wrote that story, “profiling” has taken on a pejorative meaning: To “profile” is to single out someone for law enforcement attention because of race or ethnicity.

In fact, that is neither good profiling nor good law enforcement. To get the latest on how profiling really works, I interviewed Mark A. Hilts, who heads the FBI’s unit that develops profiles to help solve crimes against adults.....

Now the FBI has 28 such agents housed in an unmarked office building near Quantico in Stafford, Va. And television shows like CBS’ “Criminal Minds” and “CSI” routinely feature profilers helping to catch bad guys.

“There are certainly racial profiling issues, connotations from police traffic stops, which has never had anything to do with what we do,” Hilts tells me in one of the few interviews he has given since becoming chief of the profiling unit in 2003. “We look at a crime that has been committed, looking at characteristics of that crime, and interpreting the behavior that we see in that crime. We help to guide the law enforcement investigators towards the resolution of that crime.”

Hallmarks of the Profiler

Whatever they do, criminals and non-criminals act in particular ways. Some writers, for instance, use computers, others pen and paper. Some write in the morning, some at night. Each writer has a distinct style, with variations in grammar, sentence structure, and voice.

In the same way, criminals carry out their crimes in their own characteristic ways. Their actions, rather than their words, betray who they are. By reading those signs, profilers can often determine from the crime scene the kind of person who committed the crime and the fantasies that propelled him, in effect reading the perpetrator’s signature.

In some respects, profiling is simply good detective work.

Profilers look at every aspect of the crime, including interviews, photographs, investigative reports, autopsy reports, and laboratory reports. What sets profiling apart from good police work is that the conclusions are based on patterns that emerge by matching the characteristics of thousands of crime scenes found in similar cases with the characteristics of the actual perpetrators who are later apprehended.

Besides forensics and information gleaned from witnesses and other interviews, profilers look at motivation.

“Why was this particular victim the target of this crime at this particular time?” Hilts says. “We kind of get into the mind of the offender. And not in any kind of psychic manner, but just through understanding criminals and why they commit the crimes they do. How does the criminal gain control of his victim? How does he manipulate the victim? How does he maintain control? How does he select his victim in the first place?”

With a profile, investigators can narrow a search and begin focusing on one or two individuals. At times, profiles are so uncannily accurate as to seem clairvoyant. When police found the mutilated torsos of two teenagers floating in a river, they identified them as a boy and girl who had been missing. The profile the FBI drew up said the killer was a male in his 40s who knew the children.

He probably led a macho lifestyle, wore western boots, often hunted and fished, and drove a four-wheel vehicle. He was self-employed, divorced several times, and had a minor criminal record.

With the profile, the police focused on the children’s stepfather, who fit the description perfectly but had not previously been a suspect. They were able to develop enough additional information from witnesses to convict him of murders the following year.

No Stone Unturned

The FBI had found that a murderer careful enough to dispose of a body in a river is usually more sophisticated and often an older person. If the body is dumped in a remote area, the killer is probably an outdoors person with knowledge of the area. When the slashes on the victim’s body are vicious and directed at the sex organs, the assailant often knows the person.

If there is no sign of forced entry and the assailant stayed around at the crime scene to have a snack after killing the victim, the assailant probably lived in the neighborhood and knew the victim. In contrast, killers who don’t feel comfortable in an apartment leave immediately.

Thus, based on a few elementary facts, the FBI can draw a profile of the killer as an older man who likes the outdoors, is familiar with the area where the body was left, knows the victim, and lived in the neighborhood.

Using such analysis, the FBI over the years has helped solve thousands of cases so that serial murderers and serial rapists could not strike again.

To supplement their knowledge, FBI profilers interviewed offenders in prison. They began with assassins — Sirhan Sirhan, Sarah Jane Moore, and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme.

At one point, Bob Ressler was interviewing Edmund E. Kemper III, who had killed his mother, grandparents, and six other people. Kemper was serving multiple life sentences in California. Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer played by Anthony Hopkins in “The Silence of the Lambs,” was actually a composite of serial killers like Kemper, who removed people's heads and saved them as trophies; Edward Gein, who decorated his home with human skin; and Richard T. Chase, who ate the organs of his victims.

Harrowing Interviews

As outlined in my book “The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI,” when he was finished talking with Kemper in his cell just off death row, Ressler rang a buzzer to summon a guard to let him out. When the guard didn’t come, the 295-pound prisoner told Ressler to “relax.” He said the guards were changing shifts and delivering meals.