 Colonel Robert K. Ressler Robert Ressler is a former FBI agent and author. He coined the term serial killer and played a significant role in the psychological profiling of violent offenders in the 1970s. Image File history File links Ressler. ...
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a Federal police force which is the principal investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). ...
An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. ...
Serial killers are individuals who have a history of multiple slayings of victims who were usually unknown to them beforehand. ...
Offender profiling, or more scientifically, psychological profiling, is a behavioral and investigative tool that helps investigators to profile an unknown subject (unsub) or offender(s). ...
The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ...
He served in the US Army before joining the FBI in 1970. Ressler was recruited into the Behavioural Science Unit that deals with drawing up psychological profiles of violent offenders who typically select victims at random, such as rapists and serial killers. He came up with the term "serial killer" both from the fact that the repeated nature of homicides committed by such individuals reminded him of television serials he watched as a child, and from the term "crimes in series" as used by British detectives. The United States Army is the largest branch of the United States armed forces and has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. ...
1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1970 calendar). ...
The purpose of the Behavioral Analysis Unit is to provide behavioral based investigative and operational support by applying case experience, research, and training to complex and time-sensitive crimes, typically involving acts or threats of violence. ...
In the early 1980s, Ressler helped to organize the interviews of thirty-six incarcerated serial killers in order to find parallels between such criminal's backgrounds and motives. He was also instrumental in setting up Vi-CAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program). This consists of a centralized computer database of information on unsolved homicides. Information is gathered from local police forces and cross-referenced with other unsolved killings across the USA. Working on the basis that most serial killers claim similar victims with a standard method (modus operandi) it hopes to spot early on when a killer is carrying out crimes in different jurisdictions. This was primarily a response to the appearance of nomadic killers who committed crimes in different areas. So long as the killer kept on the move, the police forces in each state would be unaware that there were multiple victims and would just be investigating a single homicide each, unaware that other police forces had similar crimes. Vi-CAP would help individual police forces determine if they were hunting for the same perpetrator so that they could share and correlate information with one another, increasing their chances of identifying a suspect. The 1980s refers to the years of 1980 to 1989. ...
Vi-CAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) is a nationwide computerized system implemented in 1985 by the FBI out of Quantico, Virginia. ...
A database is an organized collection of data. ...
He worked on many cases of serial homicide such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Chase. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Ressler retired from the FBI in 1990 and is the author of a number of books about serial murder. He is active giving lectures to students and police forces on the subject of criminology, and in 1993 was brought in to London to assist in the investigation into the murders committed by Colin Ireland. 1990 (MCMXC) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ...
This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ...
Colin Ireland (born March 16, 1954) is a British serial killer known as the Gay Slayer as he specifically targeted homosexual men as victims. ...
See also John E. Douglas, whom Ressler was a mentor to at the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, as well as a colleague and friend. John E. Douglas (born June 18, 1945) is a former FBI agent and one of the first profilers. ...
Look up Mentor in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
The Behavioral Analysis Unit or BAU, is a division of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. ...
It was not Robert Resseler but Pierce Brooks, of the LAPD, who coined the term "serial killer". It was also Pierce Brooks who headed the task of "inventing" and implementing the VICAP system, although Resseler, along with countless others - including author Ann Rule - assisted the project.
He and John Douglas parted philosophies and ways at some point in the late eighties or ninties.
Books by Robert Ressler - Sexual Homicide - Patterns and Motives (with Ann W. Burgess, John E. Douglas, Ann Wolbert Burgess) (1988)
- Whoever Fights Monsters - My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI (1992)
- Justice Is Served (with Tom Shachtman) (1994)
- I Have Lived In the Monster (1998)
External links | 
Feeds |
Contact