The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,5
looked down at the lectern. The eye contact had been brief. She supposed he’d been studying someone behind her, but then she realized Agent Emerson was watching her. He hadn’t missed it.
Dupree looked up. “We all know the importance of establishing a victim profile, analyzing the criminal’s choice of known victims. But today I’m going to discuss the importance of identifying and registering possible victims as a means of detecting an unrecognized serial killer. We will first consider the type of victim chosen by the killer and cases in which the existence of a murder is in fact unknown.”
A shiver of excitement went through the room. Dupree looked at Amaia and directed every word to her. “One often supposes that a crime is the means by which a murderer purges his own suffering, since many killers were victims before they became executioners. Of all the possible assumptions, the most dangerous is the notion that, deep down, killers want to be caught, so their crimes are merely desperate pleas for recognition of their own suffering. This is certainly not true in the case of mental illness, but that is another question entirely.”
Amaia heard Emerson mutter in astonishment. “What the hell . . . ?”
Agent Dupree paused and looked around at the rest of the audience. “This hypothesis asserts that exhibitionism and savage behavior are cries for attention. Criminals resort to the same behavior again and again in their effort to be something, to be someone, to be important; their egotism is their undoing. Because they want attention and recognition, they take risks and make mistakes that give them away.
“But watch out. Assumptions are the investigator’s greatest enemy, and there’s ample proof that not all serial killers are compulsive and disorganized. Some of them are conscious of their own deviant behavior. Some serial killers, knowing something about police methods, use ruses and deceptions to throw us off the scent. This type of killer stages the scene carefully. He lays red herrings; he sends us down blind alleys. He takes his time and picks his opportunities carefully. He can go on murdering for years. He covers his tracks, maybe hides the bodies of his victims; perhaps he makes his murders look like accidents, suicides, or simple disappearances. Or maybe he selects vulnerable, marginalized individuals whose disappearances won’t be noticed: drug addicts, prostitutes, the homeless, illegal immigrants. Outcasts.”
He addressed the left side of the hall, where Amaia and her colleagues were seated. “The vast size of the United States gives the murderer a large territory to operate in. You in the European Union have had open borders for a decade now, so you face a similar situation.
“This killer has no intention of getting caught. Notoriety doesn’t interest him. He has his reputation and social status already.”
Dupree paused and fixed his eyes on Amaia again. He grinned. “Like the devil himself, he gains his satisfaction and power from the fact that we don’t believe he exists.”
A stir went through the room.
Agent Emerson was staring at Amaia, but she kept her eyes on Dupree and pretended not to notice. Gertha was harder to ignore when she leaned over and whispered, “He is talking directly to you.”
Dupree surveyed his audience. “Homicide detectives have their methodologies. They’re trained to look for discrepancies that raise questions in the usual areas of inquiry: jealousy, sex, drugs, money, inheritances, who stands to benefit, the possibility of blackmail. But serial killers don’t fit the usual categories; their gratification is psychological. We have to understand how the killer rewards himself, so as to determine what needs he’s satisfying. This presentation and your next training exercises will focus on the identification of common elements and discrepancies related to victim types, apparent accidents, murder scenes, and missing-person cases. Above all, we consider elements that might suggest that an apparent suicide or accident is nothing of the kind. We may in fact be looking at a murder or even one in a series of murders.
“How do we study a serial killer who hides the evidence of his existence? How do we create databases with information unknown to us? How do we describe the behavior of a phantom, a hidden predator who is thrilled by the fact we don’t even know he exists?” He looked around, as if expecting someone to reply.
“Victimology,” Amaia breathed.
“Victimology,” declared Dupree. “The science founded upon studies not only of actual victims but also of suspected victims, as well as those who disappeared into thin air. In such cases, victim profiling is necessarily