InsaneJournal

227 // Criminology Class // OTA
[ Another day another dollar Criminology class. For once there's nothing distracting the young Agent, which is a good thing indeed considering the mass of info he has to cover in today's class. ]

HISTORICAL SERIAL KILLER – John Wayne Gacy and Ed Gein

Edward Gein was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin. Gein confessed to killing two women – tavern owner Mary Hogan on December 8, 1954, and a Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, on November 16, 1957. Initially found unfit for trial, after confinement in a mental health facility he was tried during 1968 for the murder of Worden and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he spent in a mental hospital.

John Wayne Gacy, Jr., also known as the Killer Clown, was a serial killer and rapist who was convicted of the sexual assault and murder of a minimum of 33 teenage boys and young men in a series of killings committed between 1972 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.
All of Gacy's known murders were committed inside his Norwood Park Township home; his victims would typically be lured to this address by force or deception and all but one victim was murdered by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a tourniquet, although his first victim was stabbed to death. Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawl space of his home; three further victims were buried elsewhere on his property, while the bodies of his last four known victims were discarded in the Des Plaines River.
Convicted of 33 murders, Gacy was sentenced to death for 12 of these killings on March 13, 1980. He spent a total of 14 years on death row before he was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994.
Gacy became known as the "Killer Clown" due to his charitable services at fundraising events, parades and children's parties where he would dress as "Pogo the Clown", a character he devised himself.

[ Ed Gein • John Wayne Gacy ] 

PSYCHOLOGY — Organized and disorganized killers.

As you might've noticed, we're examining two historical serial killers today instead of one. There is a reason for this — today, we're going to go through the difference between an organized and a disorganized killer.

If you've attended these lectures before you'll know by now the importance of understanding the UnSub in question. We've discussed victimology and how the victims themselves can clue us in to what kind of killer we're dealing with. We've also talked about geographic profiling and what the crime scene or body dump location can tell us about our UnSub. The topic for today will tie in with both of these areas as the crime scene and state and location of the body gives us the information needed to determine the nature of the serial killer.

According to John Douglas, a former FBI profiler, organized serial killers usually share some common characteristics. They tend to be white males between the ages of 25 and 45, with above average intelligence and strong personal and social skills. They're able to maintain a normal family life, usually so well that their loved ones don't always suspect that something is wrong. They also tend to be employed in a menial position below their abilities and may make an effort to cover up their crimes, often dumping the body in a hidden location and cleaning up the crime scene. Some of them even have a working knowledge of forensics. Given their strong social skills they have a tendency to charm their victims to a secure location and it's not uncommon that they plan and bring murder weapons, gloves and other things used for the killing.

In contrast, disorganized serial killers are typically white men in any age range, but females are common as well. They have a below average intelligence and a habit of leaving the body at the scene, not bothering to cover up the crime. They have very few close relationships and are often referred to as a "quiet type". It's also not uncommon that they have a domineering family member, most notably a parent. Disorganized serial killers typically use blitz attacks to subdue their victims and may be difficult to catch due to constant relocation.

[ Organized vs disorganized killers ]


PRACTICAL APPLICATION

What I want you to do today is to take the information you've acquired through these lectures and find out as much as you can about the UnSub in these hypothetical scenarios that I'm about to hand out. First of all I want you to determine whether they're an organized or disorganized killer. I also want you to think about victimology and the scene itself — what does the method tell you? Their choice of victim? Of location? The more the better.

You can do these on your own, but I suggest that you work in pairs or even groups of three or four. Criminal profiling is all about team work and hitting the evidence from every possible angle. Good luck.

[ SCENARIOS]

Q&A

[ A Q&A thread can be found here for all your question-based needs! There is also a suggestions box available — just note that your character is dropping a note in the box in the subject header and it will be brought up during the next class! ]