John Douglas: A Life Of A Serial Killer

Elizabeth Bender

Ms. Pueppka

English 1 Honors

March 6, 2023

The psyche of a serial killer is a dark and twisted subject, yet it continues to intrigue those who work in law enforcement and even regular civilians. Imagine exploring these demented roads of psychology full time. For those who work in criminal profiling, this is a daily reality. John Douglas was a proficient FBI agent, whose many contributions to the investigation process have created a base for most strategies used by law enforcement today. He was also the first Criminal Profiler ever. Now retired, most of Douglas’s research was conducted in the 70s and put into practice in the 80s. Having interviewed some of the most notorious serial killers of all time, including Ed Kemper,

Since the start of the book, I have been made aware of the advancements made in law enforcement since the 1970s. In some of his early cases, the author talks about things that he did, that he wouldn't have done now. He had changed his potential strategies on the case due to the new knowledge and findings from intensive research. Prior to reading this passage, I didn’t know much about the growth and changes of this particular branch of law enforcement. I had believed that most techniques used by the FBI were common sense and hadn’t really changed since the start of modern investigations. I now know that new information from studies demands that strategies be changed to better protect the innocent. I found the second quote in a passage where Douglas explains some of his interrogation strategies. He was dealing with a suspect that would have been charged with child molestation and murder. The death sentence was also legal and commonplace, at the time, which means that there was a lot of tension and weight placed on the outcome of the case. The author explains, “It doesn’t matter that I know what the overall strategy is in approaching me. It doesn’t matter that I’m the one who came up with it. If

In the 1950’s a series of bombings terrorized New York City. These crimes perplexed the police and, desperate, they pursued to the help of a revered doctor to offer any sort of assistance to the case. His advice ended up leading them straight to the perpetrator who was arrested and convicted of his crimes. Doctor Brussell, a psychiatrist from the late fifties, instructed the police, “Look for a heavy man. Middle-aged. Foreign born. Roman Catholic. Single. Lives with a brother or sister. When you find him, chances are he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit. Buttoned” (Douglas and Olshaker 23). Prior to my reading of this passage, I knew that profilers could tell a lot about a person from patterns of crime. I thought that they were able to tell big details, but from reading this, I now know that they can tell even small, minute details from the patterns found in crime scenes. This new information is important, because it was one of the earliest records of criminal profiling ever, and proves that it is a science and is reliable. Knowing this information was really important for me to understand the rest of the book, and I was really glad that it was made clear within the first few pages. During his time as an agent, Douglas did a lot of research on the psyche of serial killers, as it was required to support the newborn branch of criminal profiling.