Book Description

A serial killer is usually characterized by the fact that there is no connection between him or her and the victim. In other words, he does not know his victim before he chooses her, which makes it more difficult for investigators to find the perpetrator. This is why police officers and gendarmes will use the technique of profiling (or "criminal and behavioural analysis") to try to identify it. In particular, they will study the modus operandi used to commit the crime. This analysis can enable them to make connections between different homicides committed in the same region and possibly attributable to the same individual. Further research in the psychocriminological field may lead investigators to identify the criminal's "signature", which differs from the modus operandi in that it is unconscious. While this type of criminal seems to act without apparent motive, there is a deep motivation at work in each of the acts. Psychiatrists, psychologists and criminologists are working to decipher this motivation. Indeed, the serial killer does not kill by ideology (even if he can sometimes select his victims on the basis of ethnic, religious, sexual or other criteria), fanaticism, and generally not by profit motive either. The engine of the serial killer is often the all-powerful feeling of his crimes, which usually combine sex and death. It is true that a large proportion of serial killers suffered violence or sexual assaults during childhood. American scholar Philip Jenkins, who studied repeated crimes committed in the United States between 1900 and 1940, identified 24 criminals who committed at least 10 homicides with no apparent motive. At the time, none of them had been identified as serial killers. Philip Jenkins makes this observation:"A society that does not have the experience of such a notion is less likely to recognize the phenomenon when it occurs, and therefore tends to ignore the links between the crimes of the same individual. The National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC), established within the FBI, has had a tradition since 1979 of distinguishing four types of criminals, according to the number of victims, the number of locations and the chronology of repeated incidents: mass murderer kills at least four people in the same place in a single event. Victims can be relatives or strangers. The "free killer" kills various people in different places but in a limited time (a few hours or days). the serial killer kills at least three people in different places and times (a few months or years). mass serial killer commits at least two simultaneous homicides, repeated homicides in at least three events and at three different locations. This type of criminal is rare. For Holmes and Burger, a serial killer is one who commits at least three homicides over a period of more than thirty days. A police investigation manual published in 1988 is less restrictive:"Serial murder is a succession of two or more murders, committed separately, most often by an assailant acting alone. Murders are committed over a period ranging from several hours to several years." In 1991, Hickey classified serial killers according to where they chose to commit the crime. He distinguishes as follows: - the killer of a single place (place specific murderer), who always kills at the same place, in a place that is known to him (home neighbourhood, professional). the homicide of a local murderer, who commits homicides in the same region or state, of which he or she is usually a native. the itinerant killer (traveling murderer), who travels the roads of a country, crosses borders, making it difficult to find investigators and bring them together...