Page:FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 54 (8).pdf/20

 Chapter 4

Crime Scene and Profile Characteristcis of Organized and Disorganized Murderers

". . . there were significant differences in the crime scenes of organized and disorganized offenders. . . ."

When requested by a law en­forcement agency to assist in a vio­lent crime investigation, the Agents at the Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) of the FBI Academy provide a behavior­ally based suspect profile. Using infor­mation received from law enforcement about the crime and crime scene, the Agents have developed a technique for classifying murderers into one of two categories—organized or disorga­nized, a classification method evolving from years of experience and knowl­edge. In the service of advancing the art of profiling, the Agents were anx­ious to know if this classification system could be scientifically tested. This article describes the research study and statistical tests performed by a health services research staff on data collected.

Objectives of the Study

Thirty-six convicted sexual mur­derers were interviewed by FBI Agents for a study on sexual homicide crime scenes and patterns of criminal behavior. These study subjects repre­sented 25 serial murderers (the murder of separate victims, with time breaks between victims ranging from 2 days to weeks or months) and 11 sexual murderers who had committed either a single homicide, double homi­cide, or spree murder.

The major objectives of this study were to test, using statistical inferen­tial procedures, whether there are sig­nificant behavioral differences at the crime scenes between crimes commit­ted by organized and disorganized murderers and to identify variables that may be useful in profiling 18 / FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin