As people grow older in life, they tend to attract specific obsessions on different issues, some with their careers, hobbies, and families. There are other categories of people whose everyday obsessions is to serially and meticulously plan some of the worst murders the world has ever seen. Psychologists and academics have tried for ages to study and understand social, economic, physical, emotional, and behavioral stressors that can make someone spend most of their days planning the most heinous crimes in the world. To understand the minds of such people who are willing to kill for pleasure and in the most sadistic means possible. Investigators, profilers, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have devised criminal topologies and patterns such as Modus Operandi (MO) and signature as means of making predictions of possible reoffending and understanding the mind of the offender to help in apprehending them.
Unfortunately, serial killings and the people who commit such murders have proved almost impossible to define. Even the term murder seems to have suffered from some academic neglect as researchers fail, again and again, to identify a single valid motive that would cause a human being to end the life of another. While homicide can be termed as any death that one person causes to another, murder requires motive and a sense of guilt that serial killers rarely exhibit. According to Yaksic (2020), serial killings are distinguished from homicide by the different types of killers, their motivation, the number of kills, and the violence of the killings. Others believe that the difference is only noticeable in the effort such a killer puts into planning, executing, disposing, and covering evidence. Due to the complexities surrounding serial killings, the FBI and other investigative bodies rely on Modus Operandi and signature to retrace the offender’s way of thinking, examine the crime scene, and observe the unique, almost ritualistic elements of each kill.
On the one hand, Modus Operandi is the study of a serial killer’s methods of committing a kill. It often entails the specific technique, behavior, or sequences of events as they happened while the offender committed the crime. An MO is tangible, visible, or practical evidence that can be inferred from a crime scene that helps to profile the offender. MO includes but is not limited to the victim’s choice, the method the offender used to subdue the victim, how they disposed of the body, and whether they left evidence at the crime scene or not. Therefore, Modus Operandi is primarily useful in assessing the crime scene to ascertain the possibility of reoffending. For instance, investigators use MO in a crime scene to identify whether the offender was organized or disorganized. It is vital to note that most, but not all, serial killers are highly organized. These people can spend months observing their victims, learning their routines, and finding blindspots on how to attack them. Following that, they intend to repeat such acts. They also study the police responses and involvement around the neighborhood and hatch a plan, almost perfect, to outsmart them. Yiksav (2015) explains that serial killers often have a “cooling off period” after their first kill. A cooling-off period is the time interval, at least a week, though a heated debate still exists on how long a cooling-off period should be when serial killers are planning and stalking their next victims. Further, a cooling-off period can occur after an offender realizes that he made a mistake, uses this time to improve their skills, and misdirects the investigators.
Using MO, profilers can associate an organized crime scene with a high rate of reoffending because it is a sign that the offender was meticulous, calculated, took time to plan the kill, and now that he has gotten away with it, he will try Disorganized crime scenes again are an indication that the offender is an amateur or his process was interrupted, which makes it easy for them to make a mistake and get caught MO is also quite helpful in understanding and explaining victimology at a crime scene For example, the offender can hold a vendetta against blonde, blue-eyed middle-aged women by associating them with something terrible that happened to their lives or viewing them as a source of evil in the community.
The victimology would identify the age, color, and gender of the victim and use the information to cross-reference with other databases to identify a pattern used by the perpetrator for victim selection The need for a pattern so as to identify the possibility of crime recidivism has resulted into the need of three kills to confirm murders as serial killings rather than homicides Therefore, when a pattern is established in three victims then possibility of recidivism increases significantly These murderers also study the location of the victims, making it easier for them to locate their victims These locations can be similar buildings even if they are in different districts The study of victimology and geographical locations can also be used by the investigators to determine where the next crime might occur Lastly, the degree of killing can be utilized to determine the offender’s MO Sexual sadists are commonly identified with an MO of an overkill where they abuse and torture their victims before killing them Sexual oriented serial killers relieve their sexual fantasies from torturing, killing, and displaying women and have a high chance of repeating the crime.
On the contrary, although Modus Operandi has been used successfully to predict and stop serial offending, it is almost impossible to distinctively predict future human behavior, especially with serial killers and their cooling-off periods. By the time investigators utilize Mo to identify a perpetrator, several other victims may fall at the hands of the offender as it takes a long time to identify locations and match probabilities on human behavior. Further, the cooling-off period gives serial killers time to sharpen their skills and tactics and change victimology. As a result, while profilers and investigators concentrate on different MOs, the offender adjusts the MO by adding extra details to confuse the police, giving them another chance to re-offend.
Another characteristic of serial killers that can be used to profile and apprehend these killers is the signature According to Schlesinger (2010), the signature is also known as ‘ritual,’ which is fantasy driven action that paint the physicological needs and desires of the offender These rituals exceed the practical Modus Operandi and represent a unique viewpoint of every killer They are not needed for the successful accomplishment of a kill but they are added for personal satisfaction of the killer This paper takes a look at one of Jack Ripper’s canonical five to paint a clearer picture of how serial killers are not sensationalized in films but are the pure evil of humanity that people ought to fight against The murder of Mary Ann Nichols, who was found lying on her back in a secluded footway in Buck Row She was displayed on the footway with clothes on but pushed from below up to her stomach, exposing her lower abdomen According to Wilson, (2015) her throat had been sliced o deep it almost detached from the head Her lower abdomen was almost ripped open Nichol throat was slashed from backward rendering her incapable of screaming and making Through overpowering her, the offender took his time to inflict deep torture on her.
The coroner officers confirmed that Nichol’s tongue was lacerated, she was missing five teeth, bruises on her cheeks which were probably caused by a fist or a thumb, the abdomen was ripped open from the bottom rib to the through her pelvis to the right side of the stomach, several cuttings on the surface of her stomach, and her private parts were stabbed twice In this case, Jack Ripper’s signature can be identified as his need to overpower his victims before engaging in other body mutilations When someone’s neck is sliced with an eight inches deep knife, they cannot run away nor ask for help, which is a signature of exercising dominance.
Picquerism is another signature in most of Jack Ripper’s murders, a state of sexual satisfaction which someone receives from slicing, stabbing, and cutting another people Postmotum results indicated that Nichols’s neck was first stabbed to immobilize her, while the other cuttings were made all over her body Some killers draw sexual satisfaction from engaging in ohysical sexual encounters with their victims alive or dead Jack Ripper’s signature therefore implies that he received sexual eroticization from dominating his victims, penetrating them with knives, cutiing and stabbing them as well as the sight of blood oozing from his victims Jack the Ripper employs another signature of target women who participated in prostitution Some serial killers believe that their heinous acts are a kindness to humanity as they are helping clean up the society of all the evil Rituals are an essential part of most serial killings, where the offender engages in some activities before or after killing the victim Some killers might dress up the corpse and disposal them in a way that sends a message Others collect trophies from their victim as a reward for their accomplishments Some killers ask their victims to call their loved ones or confess their sins, while others go to any extra effort to arrange the crime scene.
So far, research has shown how the perpetrator applies the signature to commit a crime. Law enforcers and profilers can also use this tool to catch the offender. In a crime scene, signature analysis is used to identify elements on the scenes that tell the profilers something about the offender and what he was thinking or feeling. Schlesinger describes how some victims of sexual killing are not only raped, but the offender goes as far as shoving dirt in their mouths, causing humiliation and torture, and collecting trophies from them. These are all signatures, meaning the kill would have happened whether they were performed or not, but their involvement helps specify the crime and paint a mental picture of the perpetrator’s psychological needs. Due to the repetitive nature of signatures, they serve as an effective investigative tool used to link a series of crimes to a single offender, thereby aiding in catching them.
Jack the Ripper is not the only prolific serial killer in history books One Theodore Bundy was also a sexual sadist who killed women for the eroticization of his sexual satisfaction Bundy used the most conventional means to lure women: outright manipulation He would pretend to be an officer of the law, someone who needed help, or a lost soul and women who helped him out were met with a fate they never imagined possible Bundy not only raped his victims, he used sharp objects to penetrate them, causing massive internal injuries He would also break into a house and bludgeon the victim in their sleep This man was so evil as to rape women even after they had died In this case, Bundy’s MO was to manipulate women to willingly follow him or sometimes break into their houses and bludgeon them His signature was the use of sharp objects to penetrate his victims, he physical sexual assault before and after his victims died It is noticeable that MO and signatures can sometimes overlap which blur the distinction between the two elements making it difficult to classify them When a clear distinction cannot be made between an MO and a signature, much vital information that could have been used to apprehend the offender is misunderstood, leading to delayed capture or lack of proof.
Further, signatures are limited because they can only exist with the crime. Profilers do not have a means of studying serial killers’ fantasies until they are displayed at a crime scene. Therefore, when the line between MO and signature blurs, it becomes almost impossible to catch these heinous killers because they are heterogeneous, exhibiting different behaviors, fantasies, and motivations (Walters, 201). Furthermore, just as MOs, signatures are limited when it comes to predicting the future, whether a crime will happen or not. An offender might engage the officers of the law with a compelling MO and signature in his first three kills but then significantly change both the MO and the signature.
There is no a one-shoe-fits all profiling mechanism that can be used to apprehend serial killers due to the heterogeneity of their personalities, behaviors, and motivations Therefore, for centuries, investigators and the FBI have deviced the Modus Operandi Mexhanism and use of signature to assess serial killer behaviors and predict their next kill somas to stop them By use of these mechanisms, the most prolific serial killers such as Jack the Ripper and Theodore Bundy were captured and subjected to death by the electric seat The capture of some of the meticulous and sadistic killers is a positive sign that they use MOs and signature work Unfortunately, it is impossible to predict the actions of people in the future, and these methods fall short of addressing it Other challenges facing MO and use of signature in apprehending serial killers include the ability for the two elements to blur, which can inconvenience the investigators Further, the data in national database represent information of killers who have been caught and incarnated, leaving out a large pool of information about the MOs and signatures of the killers who have not been caught yet Some serial killers are too clever to recognize that the FBI has a checklist of MOs and signatures to follow to catch a killer, so they create the unusual case The unusual case is a case that does not align with any of the profiling mechanisms that exists Cases like these do not have a database to make references to and from which makes seamless for killers to operate in the shadows MO and signatures work only to some extent; investigators need to be very intuitive, incorporate modern technology, and incorporate insights from another field of study such as medical, forensic, and behavioral analysis units.
References
Wilson, D., Yardley, E., & Lynes, A. (2015) Serial killers and the phenomenon of serial murder: A student textbook Waterside Press.
Yaksic, E. (2020) Addressing the challenges and limitations of utilizing data to study serial homicide In Reviewing Crime Psychology (pp. 353-379) Routledge.
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