Pat Brown has a list here of common myths about serial killers. Pretty interesting stuff.
I especially like this piece on Bundy and how he was pictured as being this brilliant and cunning sk the way the lisk seems to be portrayed. I bet after hes cuffed and in a cage we will all realize what a dope he really is and that he made some really stupid mistakes. Right truth? so that reminds me not to discount some of our pois because they dont appear so brilliant.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/profiling/s_k_myths/5.html
"My favorite choice for disproving the serial killers are brilliant concept is to take a look at Ted Bundy,*Americas most famous serial killer. It is said how terribly smart he was; that this is why it took so long to catch him. Is this the same Ted who couldnt make it through law school, who drove a GOLD Volkswagen to the lake in broad daylight and went up to women he was planning to kidnap saying, Hi! My name is TED!? Is this the same brilliant guy who nearly strangled his girlfriend who then found in his bureau drawer the plaster of Paris he used for fake casts in some of his abduction ruses? This same girlfriend and a couple of other people who knew him went to the police with their suspicions. The police ignored the information because he didnt seem the type. I think the movie Dumb and Dumber comes to mind for the killer and cops involved here. Ted was finally caught, not by clever investigative work but because he was caught speeding. He was so bright that he lied to the police officer about seeing a movie the cop knew didnt exist and then he let the police officer look into his trunk and note his rather obvious rape kit. Ted was by no means brilliant and it was the solid work of a beat cop that got a killer off the streets."
I would wish, things were so easy, as on one hand LE paints them or on the other hand, Pat Brown. I had my little dance with her profiling in the case of that Alabama diver.
But however, lets use rather Bundy as example, because of the TruTV article which does so as well:
1.) What everybody forgets is, that Bundy was active in a time, modern computers, as we take them as granted today, were not yet implemented. The LE agencies had pretty fast an idea how to catch the guy, but that meant to cross reference lists with thousands of possible suspects. They had to "abuse" the computer, they had for the book keeping in the DMV. It took weeks, even months to make a program to do this cross referencing, to nail all those cards and fed the machine. Pat Brown obviously has no idea how IT worked back then. No Penelope Garcia there and none of her "I take a look at this or that database". So, especially the Bundy case is to me still a case in which LE did what was possible and made a lot better figure than for example LE made later in IL with the Gacy case.
2.) It took so long because Bundy crossed state borders, it took so long because the connections became only clear AFTER Bundy was caught. No ViCAP back then. The interesting detail is, that LE made the connection pretty fast after they got the basic information. Today, we have databases and LE misses the connection often enough.
3.) Bundy was a child of his time. Means, all his strategies were adapted to what he knew in his time. He knew, even if he say to a woman, "Hi! My name is Ted", there was no way in hell, anybody could just start a computer program, look up all Teds and cross reference them with registered cars. Well, the thought, he knew, because LE did exactly that, but with the technology of the time, it took some weeks.
4.) Before Bundy went to law school, he studied psychology. He was a honor student. He worked for Washington State. He also worked for a suicide hotline (where he met Ann Rule). People who knew him (which excludes Pat Brown) described him as very intelligent. He was politically active and at least intelligent enough to be trusted also with some discrete work.
What is messed up in this article is the difference between knowledge of the time, arrogance and IQ. Someone with a high IQ can still lack knowledge, especially knowledge that would be only discovered 15 years later. Bundy was arrogant. He trusted his own knowledge, that there was no way to identify someone who is only known by his first name and a description of his car. And he was right in so far, that he had left WA before the police came even near.
However, on a more general look at the subject, some SKs have a real high IQ (for example Bundy, Rifkin). They are sometimes hampered by the own arrogance, sometimes by other factors like a disability to focus (pretty nice to see in the Rifkin case), but they have the IQ. For Rifkin, we know, he was tested with 128.
Some SKs are really stupid. Otis Toole for example was too stupid to be eligible for the death penalty, because he was tested about 75 and that was too near to the limit, that would be needed to count as "not retarded". Volker Eckert, one of my German SKs, was tested ab. 80. Not too bright either and Kroll made it just over 70. Too bad, nobody tested back in the days Freight Train Guatney. My bet was, he would be some kind of negative record-holder.
However, I sit on hundreds of cases, I gathered over the years and most of those SKs are simply in an average range of IQ. 90-110, the peak range of the bell graph. Which means, they statistical expectations for the IQ of SKs are the very same as for the regular population.
So chances are, LISK is of average IQ, but that doesn't hold him back from being well organized. So please, please, don't pour out the water with the baby here ... some are really bright, some are really stupid, most have very average IQ. And only because it was believed for a long time SKs had to be extremely bright doesn't mean, we have now to go in the other extreme.
And if this sounds a little desperate now, please forgive me. I spent years discussing with people in Europe, who attacked me for saying certain SKs would be dumb as a doorknob, I don't want to repeat that with people now suddenly believing ALL SKs are that dumb only because that is the new fashionable wrong rumor about SKs.
Peter
