Criminal profiling uses information about crimes and crime scenes to develop a psychological profile of an unknown perpetrator in order to help law enforcement identify what type of offender they are looking for. Common motives for serial killers include a desire for domination, manipulation, and control as they often feel powerless in their own lives due to past abuse or neglect. While motives can include fear, rage, thrill, profit, or a desire for attention, psychologists and experts emphasize that there is often no single cause and the roots are complex.

1. Mindhunter: What Drives
Human Behavior?
BY MAGGIE JAMES

2. What is criminal profiling?
 “Criminal profiling is the process of
using available information about a
crime and crime scene to compose a
psychological portrait of the
unknown perpetrator of the crime.”
(Damon A. Muller, Criminal Profiling)
 Profiling does not solely solve a case,
however it is an investigative aid: a
tool that providers law enforcement with
important information about what type
of offender they are looking for, and
ultimately helps them solve the case.

3. Who could do this?
 One of the fundamental questions profilers attempt
to answer is Who could commit acts as malevolent
as these? What triggered the evil aspects of their
human nature to surface?

4. What motivates murderers?
While various motives- fear, rage, thrill, profit, and desire
for attention- stimulate the actions of a serial killer, each
murderer is driven by a desire to control
their psychological insecurities.

5. What motivates murderers? (watch until 0:16)

6. “Just taking care of business”
 Understandably, serial killers do not need to kill.
 However there is a psychological need, a demand
within their minds, which drives them to commit
murders.
 What drives this need?

7. How/Why does one become a serial killer?
 The author of my novel, John Douglas, does not
believe that an individual is or can be born evil.
(Similar to the “blank slate” ideas by John Locke)
 Serial killers are “manufactured”: something
dramatic happens in their childhood that corrupts
them, making this person emotionally unstable.

8. Common Motives
 “The three most common
motives of serial rapists and
murderers turn out to be
domination, manipulation,
and control.” (Douglas 179).

9. Common Motives
DOMINATION
MANIPULATION
CONTROL

10. Common Motives
 “… most of these guys are angry, ineffectual losers
who feel they’ve been given the shaft by life, and that
most of them have experienced some sort of physical
or mental abuse” (Douglas 128).
 Most killers are emotionally unstable as a result
of neglect or abuse.
 Most are also incapable in their daily lives: they
feel as if they have no power over their life situations.
This makes them upset and unsatisfied; they yearn
for a purpose, something they can control.

13. Common Motives
 Serial killers act using the “ID”; the pleasure
principle.
 They are motivated completely by their urges and
desires
 Murderers are egocentric: they dismiss all positive
morals and act keeping solely themselves in mind.

14. Individual Motives
Name: David Richard
Berkowit
Nicknamed: “Son of
Sam”, “.44 Caliber Killer”
Offense: killed six people
(and wounded others) in
the course of eight
shootings in New York
between 1976 and 1977

15. Video 1:
If you want to watch this, watch from 2:28-2:56,
but it basically just describes how he was neglected
and rejected by his families as a child and became an
arsonist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFX8_Il6SUU

16. Fear
Rage
Thrill
Profit
Desire for attention

17. Fear
Rage
Thrill
Profit
Desire for attention

18. Individual Motives
Name: Edmund Emil
Kemper
Nicknamed: “The Co-ed
Killer”
Offense: murdered his
grandparents when he was 15
years old. He later killed six
female hitchhikers, his
mother, and mother's friend.

19. Background
 Kemper had been close with his father and despised
his mother, Glarnell. When they became divorced he
was forced to live with his mother, and lived in fear
that he would never be connected with his father
again.

20.  Video 2
 If you want to watch the video: 3:44-4:56
 The first section describes how he perceived his
mother, second his childhood situation, third this
was manifested in his childhood behaviors.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTyIa6_4GFA

21. Fear
Rage
Thrill
Profit
Desire for attention

22. Fear
Rage
Thrill
Profit
Desire for attention

23. Helen Morrison

24.  “’What makes a serial killer? After all these years, I
still don't know…we try to give them motives, but
they don't have any. They just do it.’” (Helen
Morrison, Doctor Hunts For Motive in Brain of
Serial Killer).
 If you want to read the article:
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Doctor-
hunts-for-motive-in-brain-of-a-serial-1144308.php

25. Works Cited
Sharon Cohen. "Doctor hunts for motive in brain of a serial killer"
Seattle Pi. Friday, May 7, 2004. Web. June 1, 2012.
Douglas, John. Mindhunter. New York: Mindhunters, Inc., 1995.
Print.
Former FBI Serial Killer Expert John Douglas. Allan Gregg.
TVO, 1996. Film.
Arthur Shawcross: Serial Killer Documentary. TruTV, 2005. Film.
Edmund Kemper: The Co-Ed Killer. Crime and Investigation
Network, 2000. Film.