Obsession Read Free Page B

read the deeper message, the “subtext,” as actors call it, and here he was saying something profoundly accurate, not only about himself but about virtually all serial predators. And that is, on an everyday basis, they do appear to go about their business and ordinary lives just like the rest of us. Even though they’re monsters, they don’t look or act like monsters, and that is why they become successful. We see them, but we look right through them. What makes them monsters is not how they look; it’s that they “don’t lose any sleep” over what they do.
    He closed by appealing, “How about some name for me?” and suggested, formally this time, “SEARCH AND DESTROYER.”
    Technically speaking, I suppose, it should have beenSearcher and Destroyer, but even with the shoddy syntax, he’d managed to get his point across. He hadn’t spent much time on his style, but he’d sure as hell spent a lot of time working on his image. If we were going to catch him, we’d have to play his game.
    The police had already made a good first step before they even came to us. Not only had they formed a task force to assimilate all the evidence and leads and hunt for the killer, the same day the letter came in to the television station, the chief held a press conference and publicly announced the communication and the department’s belief in its authenticity.
    “I want to restate that there is no question in our minds but that the person who wrote the letter killed these people. This person has consistently identified himself with the phrase Search and Destroy and wants to be known as the Search and Destroyer. Because we are sure this man is responsible for six murders, we wish to enlist the assistance of each citizen of this community.”
    As new as I was at profiling and criminal investigative analysis, I already knew how good the chief’s instincts were, a feeling that has only strengthened in me throughout my law enforcement career.
    There is a tendency in this kind of work to want to withhold and control information, and sometimes, of course, that is necessary. In each open case, you have to keep certain details secret so you can evaluate and authenticate your various suspects and witnesses. Any sensational crime or crime series, and Search and Destroyer certainly qualified as that, is bound to have a bunch of crazies coming out of the woodwork claiming credit. In other words, you’re going to have confessions from people who’d like to have done what the killer did, but couldn’t, so this is an attempt to get the recognition and have the fantasy come to life as it had for the real offender. And there’s got to be a wayto screen them out before they waste too much of your time.
    But on the whole, I have found over and over and over again that the public is almost always your best and most effective partner in bringing UNSUBs to justice. Someone out there knows him. Someone out there has seen or heard something. Someone out there has the missing piece to the puzzle. “Douglas’s First Rule of Crime-Solving” states that the more you share with the public, the more they’re going to be able to help you.
    Partially because of this, I wasn’t the first to offer a “profile” of Search and Destroyer. The media went crazy with “Motivation X,” with psychiatrists and psychologists weighing in on what it meant and how the UNSUB had come to be the way he was. There was actually merit in some of what was stated, but our approach to profiling is, by its very nature, going to be much different from that of most of the mental health community. It’s their job to use raw psychological data to tell them how he became the way he is. It’s my job to use the material to figure out what he’s like right now, how we can recognize him, and what we can do to catch him before he does any more.
    For example, one psychologist wrote a column theorizing that the killer had studied extensively in medical or psychological journals