Reference no: EM132250934

150 WORDS AGREED OR DISAGREED

Profile of the offender:

1. Demographic features of the victims: The victims are elderly and women who appear to live alone. It seems as if the subject did his research as to who lives alone or fits a description to easily burglarize such as being elderly, alone, and women which makes it easy to link him to the string of incidents (Canter, 2004).

2. Relationships: TI would say the victim and offender were strangers or minimal acquaintances. I say this because if they were friends or family there would be no need to stab anyone if they caught you in their home. There are many excuses someone could make as to why they are in the victim house they are trying to steal from. Not only they if they were acquaintances or family they could find other opportunities to steal what they want like at a BBQ, coming over for dinner, or any other social gathering.

3. Patterns of the crimes (MO): The subject enters the rear of the house hold to avoid getting caught going through the front door or side doors or windows. This is a preplanned burglary for the subject and they identify not only the best prey, but the best time of day and location where to enter the house. The victim who was stabbed was probably not something planned, but a result of the subject being caught off guard. She was found without shoes on, but a house coat. It is likely that she got up to grab a glass of water during the night and/or even heard someone in her home and she went to investigate.

The subject could have heard someone moving around in the house and panicked, so he/she grabbed a knife from the knife block and reacted by stabbing the woman instead of fleeing the scene. It seems as if murder is not the subjects main motive but is still capable of such an offense due to the previous victim. The incident the next week where the woman was medically sedated, it makes sense the subject caused no harm because their main objective was to steal the items from the woman's purse. However, I have no doubt that if that woman would have done the same thing and got out of bed for a glass of water or to investigate a noise she would have died the same way.

4. Offender geographic location: Due to the pattern I would have to assume that the subject is within the local area and may even live in the same neighborhood. The subject has to identify which victims house and has to be able to do so without looking suspicious. If he was part of the neighborhood it would be easy to identify people's timelines and living situations.

5. Is he/she violent? Apologetic? Organized? Disorganized? I would say this subject is a disorganized offender who can become violent, but is not apologetic.

I believe this because based off the FBI's theory of Organized vs. Disorganized Offenders, he/she seems to not be driven with alcohol use, I believe they live near the crime scene and even a male witness saw a causation male running away from the scene, and they have minimal situational stress which is shown when they chose to stab the woman from one of the crime scenes (Canter, Alison, Alison, Wentink, & Goodman-Delahunty, 2004).

References:

Canter, D. (2004). Offender profiling and investigative psychology. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 1(1), 1-15.

Canter, D., Alison, L., Alison, E., Wentink, N., & Goodman-Delahunty, J. (2004). THE ORGANIZED/DISORGANIZED TYPOLOGY OF SERIAL MURDER: Myth or Model? Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 10(3), 293-320.