Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI

A study of killers’ consciousness in order to understand the processes that push them toward crimes, and to identify who they are.

Robert Ressler—called “the Sherlock Holmes of the twentieth century”—in the 1970s founded the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI. He conducted the first study covering 36 of the most brutal crimes in the United States. Using deduction, analyzing evidence from crime scenes, studying victims’ characteristics, and interviewing well-known criminals such as Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Edmund Kemper, he classified types of killers and compiled their psychological profiles. Ressler’s psychological profiling methodology still helps in investigations of serial murders.

THIS BOOK WILL TELL YOU:

· the history of how the psychological profiling method was created;

· the psychological and behavioral characteristics of serial killers;

· details of the most brutal crimes: motivations, specifics, and victim selection;

· the “souvenirs” killers took from crime scenes;

· the seemingly minor details that helped victims avoid death.