Serial Killers

This book provides a critical examination of the phenomenon of serial murder including the most recent research, estimates on the number of killers, a discussion on victims, and the psychology of the serial killer. Case studies are provided on the police response to the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, the "Gay" murders in Indianapolis, and the case of Henry Lee Lucas. The problems that serial murder presents for law enforcement investigators are analyzed and the variety of police responses to this crime are described. The future of serial murder investigation and serial murder research are presented in concluding chapters.

In this book, criminologist Stephen Giannangelo offers an original theory of the origins and development of the serial murderer. The author constructs a two-part model of the serial murderer's development. The first part outlines biological factors and concomitant psychological anomalies that can predispose individuals toward homicidal behavior. Then, in developing the second part of his model, Giannangelo describes how a traumatic environmental stressor may trigger a cyclical pattern of violent behavior in those persons predisposed to kill. Having constructed his archetype of the serial killer, the author concludes by suggesting how diagnostic tools could be constructed and employed by psychologists, criminologists, and law enforcement officials to recognize the serial killer and to arrest the cycle of violence.

More suspenseful than a detective thriller, Profiles in Murder packs a punch that few novels deliver -- and this book is all true.t FBI legend Russ Vorpagel, along with Robert Ressler, helped put the FBI Behavioral Science Profiling Unit on the map, as immortalized in The Silence of the Lambs.

Here in this thrilling book, he reveals the inside story on how psychological profiling and old-fashioned detective work helped crack cases of serial killings, sex crimes, celebrity murders, hostage taking, terrorist crimes, and police cover-ups. Vorpagel -- the hard-boiled detective, yet disarmingly engaging guide -- takes us back in time to the actual scenes of the crime. His infectious enthusiasm not only inspires us to adopt his brilliant detective mindset and sleight of hand logic, but draws us in to experience the unbridled euphoria of solving the crime. This master detective skillfully transports us to the dramatic scenes leading up to each of these grisly crimes, subtly dropping clues, as he finetunes our own sense of detective logic.

While the short, lethal careers of serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Andrew Cunanan terrorize the public and provide morbid inspiration for the entertainment industry, few people realize that it is the female serial killer, seldom heard of, who deserves most to be feared. Murder Most Rare provides startling information about the female serial murderer, who is shown to be far more deadly and determined, difficult to apprehend, and complexly motivated than her male counterpart. While serial murder by women is relatively rare, a surprising number of female serial killers are identified by the authors, nearly 100 in this century, with half of them having committed their crimes in America. By examining these women's backgrounds, motives and methods of killing, the book sheds new light on dozens of overlooked cases of murder and uncovers callous crimes and passions gone awry.

Behind today's most lurid headlines. A timely look at the fascinating realm of high-tech sleuthing Beyond the Crime Lab The New Science of Investigation Revised Edition The science of criminal investigation is evolving at an astonishing rate. Gone are the days of merely dusting for fingerprints and checking for lipstick traces. Today's forensics experts use DNA typing, computer and physical anthropologic reconstructions, and other highly sophisticated techniques-techniques that some critics believe have dire implications for every citizen's right to privacy and individual freedom. Completely updated to address the latest trends and developments in the field, this revised edition of Beyond the Crime Lab takes you on an entertaining and sometimes alarming journey through the incredible and perpetually advancing world of criminal investigation.

Philip L. Simpson provides an original and broad overview of the evolving serial killer genre in the two media most responsible for its popularity: literature and cinema of the 1980s and 1990s.

The fictional serial killer, with a motiveless, highly individualized modus operandi, is the latest manifestation of the multiple murderers and homicidal maniacs that haunt American literature and, particularly, visual media such as cinema and television. Simpson theorizes that the serial killer genre results from a combination of earlier genre depictions of multiple murderers, inherited Gothic storytelling conventions, and threatening folkloric figures reworked over the years into a contemporary mythology of violence. Updated and repackaged for mass consumption, the Gothic villains, the monsters, the vampires, and the werewolves of the past have evolved into the fictional serial killer, who clearly reflects American cultural anxieties at the start of the twenty-first century.

Citing numerous sources, Simpson argues that serial killers' recent popularity as genre monsters owes much to their pliability to any number of authorial ideological agendas from both the left and the right ends of the political spectrum. Serial killers in fiction are a kind of debased and traumatized visionaries, whose murders privately and publicly reempower them with a pseudo-divine aura in the contemporary political moment. The current fascination with serial killer narratives can thus be explained as the latest manifestation of the ongoing human fascination with tales of gruesome murders and mythic villains finding a receptive audience in a nation galvanized by the increasingly apocalyptic tension between theextremist philosophies of both the New Right and the anti-New Right.

Faced with a blizzard of works of varying quality dealing with the serial killer, Simpson has ruled out the catalog approach in this study in favor of an in-d