Free Why We Love Serial Killers by Scott Bonn

a US criminal investigation. In 1956, Dr. Brussel’s services were sought by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) after an unknown bomber had tormented and eluded them for sixteen years. The cunning criminal, who would become known as “Mad Bomber” George Metesky following his capture, was apparently driven to violence due to anger and resentment over events surrounding a workplace injury he had suffered years earlier. As a result, Metesky planted more than thirty small bombs around the city of New York between 1940 and 1956. His targets included Radio City Music Hall, Grand Central Station, Penn Station, movie theaters, telephone booths, and assorted other public locations. A total of fifteen people were injured by twenty-two of his bombs. Incredibly, no one was killed in his attacks.
    In 1956, frustrated NYPD investigators turned to Dr. James Brussel, a psychiatrist and Assistant Commissioner of Mental Hygiene for theState of New York, to study photos from the crime scenes as well as handwritten notes sent to the police by the bomber. Dr. Brussel developed a very detailed physical and psychological profile of the suspect based on the evidence he was given. According to Dr. Brussel, the perpetrator would be unmarried, a foreigner, self-educated, middle-aged, reside in Connecticut, suffer from paranoia and have a vendetta against the Con Edison power company. Some of Dr. Brussel’s predictions were based simply on common sense. For example, the first bomb planted in 1940 had targeted Con Edison’s 67th street headquarters in Manhattan, so a vendetta against Con Edison was a logical assumption.
    Some of Brussel’s other predictions, however, were based on his psychological training and medical expertise. Dr. Brussel knew that clinical paranoia tends to peak around age thirty-five in the general population. Therefore, he reasoned that in 1956—sixteen years after his first bombing—the perpetrator would most likely be in his fifties. As it turned out, Dr. James Brussel’s criminal profile proved to be dead on, including the fact that Metesky was fifty-three years old. His profile led the NYPD directly to George Metesky, who confessed to the bombings immediately upon his arrest in January 1957. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity in court and committed to a state mental hospital. Metesky remained there until his release in 1973 when medical experts determined that he was no longer a threat to society. He died in 1994 at the age of ninety.
    In the decades following the capture of “Mad Bomber” George Metesky, police in New York and elsewhere continued to consult with psychologists and psychiatrists on the development of criminal profiles for unknown serial offenders. However, authorities encountered a persistent and frustrating problem in the process. The problem was that all of the psychiatrists based their criminal profiles on their own individual experiences and knowledge. So, when the police drew upon several psychiatrists to assist them on a complex case, such as the Boston Strangler in the early 1960s, the psychiatric professionals often came up with very different criminal profiles. Many of the profiles developed by different professionals for the same offender, utilizing the same case evidence, contradicted one another and were of little value. In the early years, there seemed to be no systematic approach to profiling other than that belonging to each individual psychiatrist.
    Up until the early 1980s, profilers relied mostly on their own intuition and informal, anecdotal research. Harvey Schlossberg, PhD, former director of psychological services for the NYPD, described the approachhe used in the late 1960s and 1970s to develop profiles of unknown subjects by locating commonalities in closed cases—that is, where the perpetrator was identified and apprehended. Dr. Schlossberg said:

    George Metesky, center, flashes a big smile and displays a copy of a New York newspaper telling of his capture