8.2.3Search and Attack

or who commutes or travels to another city during the victim search process.

3.Troller — An offender who, while involved in other, nonpredatory activities, opportunistically encounters a victim.

4.Trapper — An offender who has an occupation or position where potential victims come to him or her (e.g., nursing) or by means of subterfuge, entices victims into a home or other location they control (e.g., by placing want ads).

The following three victim attack methods were isolated:

1.Raptor — An offender who attacks a victim upon encounter.

2.Stalker — An offender who first follows a victim upon encounter, and then attacks.

3.Ambusher — An offender who attacks a victim after he or she has been enticed to a location, such as a residence or workplace, controlled by the offender.

Hunters are those killers who specifically set out from their residence to look for victims, searching through areas in their awareness space they believe contain suitable targets. This is the most commonly used method of criminal predators. Westley Allan Dodd, a serial killer executed for the murder of three children in the state of Washington, wrote in his diary, “Now ready for my second day of the hunt ... Will start at about 10 a.m. and take a lunch so I don’t have to return home.” He was worried, however, that if he murdered a child in the park through which he was searching, he would lose his “hunting ground for up to two to three months” (Westfall, 1992, p. 59). The crimes of a hunter are generally confined to the offender’s city of residence. Conversely, poachers travel outside of their home city, or operate from an activity site other than their residence, in the search for targets. The differentiation between these two types is sometimes an intricate task, requiring a subjective interpretation of crime location familiarity. The hunter and poacher categories are similar, though not identical, to the “marauder” and “commuter” designations (Canter & Larkin, 1993), described and discussed later.

Trollers are opportunistic killers who do not specifically search for victims, but rather encounter them during the course of other, usually routine activities (see Eck & Weisburd, 1995b). Their crimes are often spontaneous, but many serial killers have fantasized and planned their crimes in advance so that they are ready and prepared when an opportunity presents itself. This has been termed premeditated opportunism, and is related to the concept of pattern planning (Cornish & Clarke, 1986a). In an interview, Eric Hickey

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(1996), an incarcerated serial murderer responsible for 12 victims, discussed the details of one of his crimes. While it was an opportunistic attack, his assessment of the environment, victim approach, and con to move them to a more secluded area illustrate the killer’s rationality and adaptation.

It was the first time I ever abducted two at once, not the first time that I murdered two in the same day. I saw them out walking across a field. I was wandering. I was kind of in a controlled frenzy. I was certainly aware of what I was doing, in control, but inside I was desperate, and I would not have taken them had I not been there, anywhere else but there, I would have let them go. There was no reason. It was a cold day, no one was around. There was a secluded area nearby. In other words, it was a killing site, and I was in a very remote part of town. There were houses there but there was also fields off to one side. I had no vehicle there. (pp. 124–125)

Trappers have an occupation or position, such as a nurse or orderly in a hospital, where potential victims come to them. They also entice victims into their home or other location they control by means of subterfuge. This may be done through entertaining suitors, placing want ads, or taking in boarders. Black widows, “angels of death,” and custodial killers are all forms of trappers, and most female serial murderers fall into this category (Hickey, 1986; Pearson, 1994, 1997; Scott, 1992; Segrave, 1992).

Raptors, upon encountering a victim, attack almost immediately. This is the most common method used by criminal predators. Stalkers follow and watch their targets, moving into the victim’s activity space, waiting for an opportune moment to strike. The attack, murder, and body dump sites of stalkers are thus strongly influenced by the victims’ activity spaces. Jon Berry Simonis, the Ski Mask Rapist, attacked women in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and California from 1978 to 1981, becoming progressively more violent before he was arrested by the Louisiana State Police. Simon sometimes stalked his victims, and through his work at a hospital had access to victims’ medical records including their address, marital, and work details (Michaud & Hazelwood, 1998).

Ambushers attack victims they have brought or drawn into their “web”

— someplace where the killer has a great deal of control, most often their home or workplace. The bodies are usually hidden somewhere on the offender’s property.47 While victim encounter sites in such cases may provide sufficient spatial information for analysis, many ambushers select marginal-

47 Theoretically this does not have to always be so, but empirically it appears to be the rule. This probably results from the fact that ambushers are often also trappers, and the latter rarely exhibit significant mobility.

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ized individuals whose disappearances are rarely linked, even when missing person reports are made to the police.

This hunting typology resembles that for burglars proposed by Bennett and Wright (1984), which includes planners, searchers, and opportunists. Surprisingly, it is also remarkably similar to Schaller’s (1972) description of hunting methods used by lions in the Serengeti where he observed ambushing,

Figure 8.1 Raptor target pattern.

stalking, driving (direct attack), and unexpected (opportunistic) kills. Offenders may employ different hunting methods, but they usually adopt and stay with one, or at the most two approaches. For example, while trolling is not a primary criminal search technique, it is part of many offenders’ repertoires.

8.2.4Predator Hunting Typology

Target patterns are determined by offender activity space, hunting method, and victim backcloth. Hunting style is therefore helpful in determining which crime locations are the best predictors of an offender’s anchor point under different circumstances. Another purpose of this typology is the identification of those situations where an analysis of the relationship between offender activity space and crime location geography is appropriate. This allows for the elimination of those cases where such an analysis is either impossible or redundant. Poachers, for example, who live in one city and commit their crimes in another, may not reside within their hunting area. Stalkers, whose

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crime locations are driven more by the activity spaces of their victims than by their own, produce more complex target patterns requiring different analytic methods. Figures 8.1 and 8.2 show, respectively, hypothetical target patterns for raptors and stalkers.

Figure 8.2 Stalker target pattern.

Table 8.1 presents the 12-cell matrix produced by a crosstabulation of the 4 search and 3 attack methods. The suitability for geographic profiling (from encounter and body dump sites) is indicated for each cell. The matrix uses a sliding scale of designations (yes, possibly, or doubtful) to refer to suitability likelihood. A designation of redundant refers to a situation where such an analysis is possible, but trivial. For example, while body dump locations can accurately determine the address of a trapper serial killer (e.g., one who entices victims into his or her home, murders them, and then buries their bodies in the basement), there is no need to do so. The cases of Belle Gunness, who poisoned her suitors, and Dorothea Puente, who murdered elderly tenants, are such examples. As search and attack methods are correlated, some hunting styles are more common than others. For example, hunter/raptors and trapper/ambushers are more frequent than hunter/ambushers or trapper/raptors. Also, the suitability ratings in Table 8.1 are only suggestive as individual cases may vary significantly from each other in terms of their spatial details.

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Table 8.1 Criminal Predator Hunting Typology*

*From Rossmo, D.K. (1997). Geographic Profiling. In J.L. Jackson, & D.A. Bekerian (Eds.). (1997b). Offender profiling: Theory, research and practice (pp. 159-175). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Used with permission.

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