Journey into Darkness by John Douglas, Mark Olshaker Page B
Authors: John Douglas, Mark Olshaker
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thing we think of is a somewhat younger, unsophisticated, perhaps disorganized offender with a highly developed sexual fantasy that he is increasingly desperate to act out. For this reason, when we see a high-risk crime, we expect the victim to be kept alive for a relatively longer period of time, which the medical examiner told us had been the case with Kristen French.
But eyewitness accounts had spoken of two offenders, which changed the profile considerations. If two people were involved in a high-risk, daylight abduction, the evaluation changes and we’d boost the sophistication level significantly. The fantasy aspect remains just as important, but now it appears to be planned, organized, and carried out by older, more criminally experienced individuals. The stalking and surveillance of girls at both high schools spoke to this aswell. This type of crime perpetrated by a sole offender would likely be his first. Two people committing the same crime speaks to a more evolved and developed MO.
The body disposal methods in the two main murders under consideration were very different, suggesting the possibility of two separate killers. All things considered, though, Gregg thought this unlikely. More likely, the killer was getting bolder and/or smarter. He’d obviously gone to a lot of trouble and effort to dismember the body, mix and mold the concrete, put the blocks in a car, and drive it to Lake Gibson. In spite of all that work, the body had been found and identified relatively quickly. So next time, why bother? Another possible explanation for the change in this part of the MO was that the killer was growing more confident, flaunting his work to the police, letting them know that he was the same one who had killed Leslie Mahaffy and was therefore “burying” his latest prey nearby. Whichever was the explanation, or if both were correct, what was clear was that he was escalating, that he had begun to act out his fantasies and had convinced or coerced another person into working with him.
The cutting off of Kristen’s long hair and the evidence of sexual assaults on her body indicated a man with a hatred or contempt for women, an emotional need to degrade them in order to feel powerful or even adequate. This man would likely have difficulty with normal sexual function and if he had an ongoing relationship with a wife or girlfriend, he’d have the need to sexually dominate or degrade her in a similar fashion.
A couple of years before, Gregg had profiled an UNSUB in a series of murders of prostitutes and homeless women in Rochester, New York. From the facts he knew, Gregg had predicted the man would have some sort of sexual dysfunction, possibly on the order of erectile insufficiency. A further escalation of behavior in later crimes led Gregg to suggest secretly surveilling a newly discovered body dump site to which he felt the killer would return. This strategy ultimately led to the capture of Arthur Shawcross, who was convicted of multiple counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to 250 years to life. Interviews with other prostitutes Shawcross had visited revealed that he was unable tomaintain erection or achieve orgasm unless they played dead.
Gregg predicted that if there were two offenders working as partners as seemed to be the case, then one would be the dominant leader and the other would always be a subservient follower. Double offenders in rape and sexual murder aren’t common, but we have seen and studied them, going back to Kenneth Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono, who together terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s as the “Hillside Strangler,” and even before that, James Russell Odom and James Clayton Lawson, Jr., who met at Atascadero State Mental Hospital in California where they were both doing time for rape.
Clay Lawson would while away the time describing to Russell Odom the tortures he’d like to inflict on captured women when he got out. He himself wasn’t interested in
But eyewitness accounts had spoken of two offenders, which changed the profile considerations. If two people were involved in a high-risk, daylight abduction, the evaluation changes and we’d boost the sophistication level significantly. The fantasy aspect remains just as important, but now it appears to be planned, organized, and carried out by older, more criminally experienced individuals. The stalking and surveillance of girls at both high schools spoke to this aswell. This type of crime perpetrated by a sole offender would likely be his first. Two people committing the same crime speaks to a more evolved and developed MO.
The body disposal methods in the two main murders under consideration were very different, suggesting the possibility of two separate killers. All things considered, though, Gregg thought this unlikely. More likely, the killer was getting bolder and/or smarter. He’d obviously gone to a lot of trouble and effort to dismember the body, mix and mold the concrete, put the blocks in a car, and drive it to Lake Gibson. In spite of all that work, the body had been found and identified relatively quickly. So next time, why bother? Another possible explanation for the change in this part of the MO was that the killer was growing more confident, flaunting his work to the police, letting them know that he was the same one who had killed Leslie Mahaffy and was therefore “burying” his latest prey nearby. Whichever was the explanation, or if both were correct, what was clear was that he was escalating, that he had begun to act out his fantasies and had convinced or coerced another person into working with him.
The cutting off of Kristen’s long hair and the evidence of sexual assaults on her body indicated a man with a hatred or contempt for women, an emotional need to degrade them in order to feel powerful or even adequate. This man would likely have difficulty with normal sexual function and if he had an ongoing relationship with a wife or girlfriend, he’d have the need to sexually dominate or degrade her in a similar fashion.
A couple of years before, Gregg had profiled an UNSUB in a series of murders of prostitutes and homeless women in Rochester, New York. From the facts he knew, Gregg had predicted the man would have some sort of sexual dysfunction, possibly on the order of erectile insufficiency. A further escalation of behavior in later crimes led Gregg to suggest secretly surveilling a newly discovered body dump site to which he felt the killer would return. This strategy ultimately led to the capture of Arthur Shawcross, who was convicted of multiple counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to 250 years to life. Interviews with other prostitutes Shawcross had visited revealed that he was unable tomaintain erection or achieve orgasm unless they played dead.
Gregg predicted that if there were two offenders working as partners as seemed to be the case, then one would be the dominant leader and the other would always be a subservient follower. Double offenders in rape and sexual murder aren’t common, but we have seen and studied them, going back to Kenneth Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono, who together terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s as the “Hillside Strangler,” and even before that, James Russell Odom and James Clayton Lawson, Jr., who met at Atascadero State Mental Hospital in California where they were both doing time for rape.
Clay Lawson would while away the time describing to Russell Odom the tortures he’d like to inflict on captured women when he got out. He himself wasn’t interested in
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