The Anatomy of Motive: The FBIs Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals by John E. Douglas

The Anatomy of Motive: The FBIs Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals Reviews

• 
  Mizuki

  An interesting question that came to my mind:
  
  Our society and pop culture always encourages people to 'follow our dreams', everything is about our dream, dream, dream, dream and dreams coming true.
  
  But what if some people's dreams are to kill and maim other people, to take pleasure in torture and suffering?
  
  And these people are very, very real.
  
  Meet the serial killers, the mass shooters, the lone wolf bombers and the arsonists, their fantasies drove them to commit different sorts of crime, some of them were born with an incurable anti-social personality, but some of them were people twisted by troubled family background, mental problems, sense of failure and disconnection with other people and the society itself, etc.
  
  Most of them are not insane, most of them know what they are doing for the whole time, and like you and me who do different things with our own reasons, most of these criminals did their unspeakable crime against women, children and other innocent victims for a motive.
  
  This book gives us a look at these people's reasoning and their motives.
  
  And sometime the motive is quite similar: these people did what they did because it's what they had always dreamed of doing, it's what make them happy and satisfied.
  
  Welcome to the dark side of things, pal!
  
  Extra:
  
  Helpful Hint: if a killer tried to force you into a car, don't get in. Once you get into his car your chance of survival would drop significantly.
• 
  Shaun

  To look at my reading list, you might think I have an unhealthy fascination with the morbid. But the truth is my fascination, or rather intense interest, is the biological basis for belief and ultimately behavior. In short, why do we believe the things we believe (particularly the silly things) and why do we do the things that we do (particularly the bad ones).
  
  The book was written (with some help from Mark Olshaker) by John Douglas, a famous former FBI profiler who helped to shape profiling into what it is today.
  
  This was interesting as it went beyond serial killing, discussing the usefulness of the criminal profile as it relates to serial bombing, assassinations, product tampering, etc.
  
  But what I enjoyed most about this book was a subtext (which is something I often do.) While Douglas acknowledges that criminals are influenced by their past experiences and their genetics, he also writes

  Everyone's got something you can point to, but when you go searching for evil, it's pretty tough to pinpoint it on a map. It all leads me to once again pose the question I keep asking over and over again: isn't anyone responsible for anything anymore?

  
  
  Essentially, here and in other places in the book, he seems to be saying (almost as an aside) that while these factors may help explain an offender's behavior, they don't excuse it. The individual is still wholly responsible for his/her actions. In short, Douglass seems to be grappling with and leaning toward this concept of free will.
  
  This is a topic that I've put a lot of thought into, and while I agree that dangerous criminals need to be removed from society or otherwise dealt with to minimize risk, I'm not sure any of us has the "free will" we think we (or others) possess. Asserting that a criminal can choose not to be a criminal simply because he shows some restraint is almost as naïve as saying that I can choose to become a criminal. Such choices suggest that "we" are something beyond our biology, that our thoughts, feelings, impulses, and desires (or, at a minimum, some form of checks and balances) originate somewhere outside of the neural network that we call our brains and are wholly or partially under the control of this other thing.
  
  Douglas doesn't seem to consider that the criminal who does not kill a victim or commit a crime hasn't exerted free will. Perhaps instead, the complex firing of neurons in his brain has simply not resulted in him killing the victim or committing the crime this time under these circumstances.
  
  As much as it may feel like it, there is no driver in the driver's seat. We are not separate from our brains, and those brains are nothing more than a lifetime of nature and nurture. So while these criminals are guilty and responsible under the law and while their brains may be "damaged" and/or modified to a point where they are unlikely to respect social norms, I'm not sure we can blame the individual. I mean, how can you blame a system that is nothing but a set of inputs and outputs. This sense of ourselves is an illusion and nothing more than a construction of our brains, a brain that is influenced in many ways...including itself.
  
  Anyway, interesting and thought-provoking book especially given my interests and past readings.
• 
  Mike

  
  John Douglas, a former FBI profiler, is a guilty pleasure. This is probably the best of the three books of his I've read- it's better organized than Mindhunter and covers more ground than The Cases that Haunt Us- but it's not significantly better. Once you've read a Douglas book, you know what to expect. He writes directly, with a dry sense of humor. His books contain clear and meaningful distinctions. It's not rare that I come across a passage that teaches me something I never quite realized I didn't know, for example the distinction between MO and signature:

  If a bank robber tapes over the lens of a surveillance camera, that's MO. If he feels a need to tear his clothes off and dance naked before that same camera, that's signature. It doesn't help him commit the crime- in fact, in this case, it hurts him- but it's something he has to do to make the experience emotionally satisfying.

  The simple and seemingly intuitive formula that Douglas offers in The Anatomy of Motive is why? + how? = who. That is, if you can understand the reason a crime was committed, and if you evaluate the means, you are much closer to identifying the person who did it...or at least the kind of person who did it. Take the example of the still officially unsolved Chicago Tylenol poisonings in the 1980s. The bottles were poisoned on the shelves of different stores in the Chicago area; it could be inferred that the UNSUB (or "unknown subject", or, as Douglas writes with characteristic bluntness, "an inadequate, ineffectual loser") wanted to take revenge on a certain store, or on the parent company Johnson & Johnson, or society in general. The nature of the crime was such that the UNSUB would not only never have to face his victims and witness their suffering, but could not choose them specifically. The crime furthermore didn't demonstrate sophistication; it seemed that the UNSUB simply walked into a store, unscrewed the cap of a Tylenol bottle on a shelf, and introduced cyanide. Douglas writes,

  ...it's such a cowardly crime that you wouldn't expect him to contact the media...if he had to see the results of what he'd done at close range, I thought, this type would be emotionally distraught...like the arsonist, he would gravitate towards positions of authority or pseudoauthority, such as security guard, ambulance driver, auxiliary firefighter...but he'd have trouble keeping that job. Likewise...someone of this nature would gravitate to the Army or the Marines. 
  
  He'd be driving a five-year-old or older car not very well maintained. The way the crime was carried out, the way the Tylenol capsules were adulterated, all of this reflects a sloppy and distracted, rather than a meticulous, personality. And I thought this would be reflected in the car he drives. But it could resemble a police-type vehicle, say a large Ford sedan, which would represent strength and power- two characteristics he seeks but does not possess.

  The UNSUB, Douglas says, "may even have written angry letters to President Ronald Reagan." Convinced? No? Admittedly, it's sometimes difficult to follow what seem to be Douglas's intuitive leaps about, say, the kind of car a criminal probably drives; but they also tend to make some sense, once you've thought about them. That being said, I don't know if there are different schools of criminal profiling, if a 'Douglas school' for example routinely butts heads with some other group with a valid critique. Douglas strikes me as pragmatic, though. He doesn't claim that his approach to profiling is an exact science, but rather a system of useful classifications that investigators can draw on. At one point he says he'd even be happy to consult a medium, if he were introduced to one with a convincing track record. 
  
  Douglas traces the practice of criminal profiling on one hand back to fictional characters like Dupin and Sherlock Holmes, but in the real world to the case of the "Mad Bomber" who terrorized New York in the postwar years. In 1957, New York police asked the psychiatrist James A. Brussel to construct a psychological profile of the bomber. Brussel, after studying the evidence, predicted that the man would be "a paranoiac who hated his father, obsessively loved his mother, and lived in a city in Connecticut." Which is all familiar enough, except that I've never lived in a city in Connecticut. Brussel also predicted that the bomber would be middle-aged, foreign born, heavy, a Roman Catholic, single, etc. "When you find him, chances are he'll be wearing a double-breasted suit", Brussel said, "buttoned." Sure enough, when the police arrested George Metesky, the disgruntled former Con Ed employee, he conformed to almost every aspect of Brussel's profile. Furthermore, or so the story goes, the police allowed Metesky to get dressed in his bedroom before taking him to the station; he emerged wearing a double-breasted suit...buttoned.
  
  But why did it take so long to develop this kind of analysis as just one resource for law enforcement to draw on? Part of the problem, according to Douglas, was that the FBI of the Hoover years was in general resistant to change, and that most influential parties saw profiling as akin to witchcraft- or perhaps even sympathizing with the enemy (it's pretty clear, by the way, that Douglas does not sympathize with these people, but he does try to understand them). But he also says that the field has only lagged a little behind the necessity for it:

  One of the reasons our work is even necessary has to do with the changing nature of violent crime itself...Traditionally, most murders and violent crimes were relatively easy for law enforcement officials to comprehend. They resulted from critically exaggerated manifestations of feelings we all experience: anger, greed, jealousy, profit, revenge...But a new type of violent criminal has surfaced in recent years- the serial offender, who often doesn't stop until he is caught or killed, who learns by experience and tends to get better and better at what he does...I say "surfaced" because, to some degree, he was probably with us all along, going back long before 1880s London and Jack the Ripper, generally considered the first modern serial killer. And I say "he" because, for reasons we'll get into a little later, virtually all real serial killers are male.

  In The Anatomy of Motive, Douglas designates chapters mainly by the type of criminal studied- arsonist, poisoner, bomber, fugitive- but the distinctions start to overlap a bit in the later chapters, when we get to guys who "just snap" and what Douglas calls the assassin personality. I'm not sure I fully understood the difference between these two, but let's say that the latter is familiar to anyone who's seen Taxi Driver- a paranoiac who constructs an ideological mission for himself, but, in Douglas's view (there may be very rare exceptions, he allows, such as the various plots to assassinate Hitler), is simply acting against the anger and frustration of his life- of getting to his late 20s and realizing that life is not shaping up the way he'd planned (there is also another phenomenon Douglas calls "the dangerous 40s", but this is apparently a different classification). The target of that anger- though the perpetrator will naturally disagree with this assessment- will be largely arbitrary. In Douglas's view, Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh, Mark Chapman and Arthur Bremer- who stalked Nixon before deciding that it would be easier to try to assassinate George Wallace- are all assassin personalities. So is Ted Kaczynski, and perhaps the Tylenol poisoner, despite the fact that their crimes were outwardly different. Douglas uses both of these types to illustrate another point that he continually returns to in his books- violence is situational. In the case of John List, for example, a New Jersey accountant who "just snapped" and murdered his wife, mother, and three children, and was found nearly 20 years later living under an alias with another woman, seemingly stable, Douglas asks:

  
  How much of a threat was John List in his new life as Bob Clark? We teach at the Academy that the only truly reliable predictor of future violence is past violence. But this guy had only one violent episode in his life. Is it likely he could have had another and...killed his second wife? The answer is, it all depends on circumstances. If things went along okay, if he had the financial security and self-respect he needed, everything would probably be fine. But if similar circumstances occurred again, he'd already have in his mind the scenario that would get him out of it...

  Another surprising thing I've found while reading Douglas is that many of these violent crimes, almost always committed by men (women get some representation here only in the chapter on poisoning, and even then Douglas says that poisoning is not predominantly a female crime), are sexual in nature, even if they don't overtly seem to be. David Berkowitz, for example, even before he became a killer, was a prolific arsonist who would apparently return to the scenes of his crimes to relive what he'd done and masturbate. As Douglas notes dryly,

  As I began to understand the relationship between setting fires and self-arousal, I used to advise detectives to have a crime scene photographer take crowd photos at suspicious blazes and study them afterward. If you found a guy jerking off with a transfixed look on his face, there was an excellent chance he was your arsonist.

  A chart to keep track of all this might have been helpful. Which type returns to the scene of the crime to masturbate again, and how many days afterwards will that be? These books are written for a popular audience, and Douglas says that it takes about 2 years to train already-promising young agents in the nuances. It's for the same reason, he claims, although I'm not at all certain that this is true, that his books won't be of any help to criminals trying to evade capture. For those of us who have chosen alternative life paths, the last chapter, written mostly in the second person, presents four 'cases' that the reader should now presumably be ready for, and enables the fantasy that you are a promising young FBI agent, ready to spend the next 25 years having your mind shattered by proximity to violence and depravity, and John Douglas is your hard-nosed, no-nonsense mentor. Very minor complaint about this section: when my eyes drifted to the bottom of one of the pages for a second, I saw the solution before I could finish reading about the case. It would have been nice if the solutions had been written upside down, or maybe printed so you could only read them in a mirror, or something of that nature. Or just at the end of the chapter. That would've been fine, too.
  
  Douglas is in certain respects an old-fashioned lawman, and it's probably not a surprise that he supports the death penalty. At the end of the day, he has a Manichean view of life. An anecdote from Mindhunter that sounds almost too perfect to be true perhaps nevertheless best exemplifies his view of human nature. Douglas, early in his career, has just helped to bust a gambling ring. One of the gamblers, sitting in the back of the police car, points to two separate raindrops making their way down the windshield. He bets Douglas that the raindrop on the left will get to the bottom before the one on the right. "We don't need the Super Bowl", he tells Douglas. "All we need is two little raindrops. It's what we are."
• 
  Sara

  What makes a bomber tick? Why do arsonists love flames? What makes an assassin decide to mass kill? These are the questions John Douglas tackles, among others, within the pages of The Anatomy of Motive. Does he succeed? Hmm. Maybe.
  
  This had been my least favourite of all Douglas's books that I've read, and I think I can pinpoint two main reasons for this. One is that the information is really outdated, and uses a lot of 'old fashioned' terminology and old cases that although informative, feel a bit out of the loop. This was written before 9/11 and the Columbine high school shorting massacre for example, and the chapters on mass shootings and bombers really felt as though they were missing the insight that Douglas could have brought to the duscussion of these events. Even some addendums might have helped.
  
  The other main issue I had was that Douglas moves away from discussing his specialist subjects (other than himself) of sexually motivated crimes and serial killers for most of the book. Instead the main focus is on the different types of mass and spree killers he has encountered, and why they choose this type of murder over any other, and I just didn't find the topic as interesting.
  
  Some glimmers of interesting information, but I think this was just a bit too outdated. Watch some good true crime YouTubers instead.
• 
  Robert

  Writers often go to many lengths, in the name of research, to produce quality fiction for their readers. THE ANATOMY OF MOTIVE proved a rather enjoyable read, as I delved into the minds of serial killers, spree killers, and mass murderers. This book’s approach proved perfect for my research endeavor. It described the crimes that took place, analyzed many high profile incidents, and then it delved into the mind of the man or woman that would commit such an act. It ended with a series of four cases where the co-authors asked readers to judge who might have committed four alleged crimes.
  
  All in all, it was exactly the book I needed as I attempt to write my serial killer novel, and more than that, it gave me insights into another book I plan on writing in the near future. So if you’re looking for profiling, straightforward analysis, and a brief dip into the mind of a criminal, then this is the book for you. If you’re an author looking for your own research material, as you delve into the mind of a killer, then this is one book you probably want to add to your to-read list.
• 
  Danigerous

  I was really impressed by John Douglas's books (together with Mark Olshaker) 'Mindhunter' and "Journey into Darkness' when I read them years ago. It was interesting to follow his career in the FBI as the first ever criminal profiler as well as his detailed explanation about the motives behind the different crimes he had encountered. This book, however, did not seem to attain the same level of excellence as its predecessors. I found the facts and information to be rather dryly delivered. Maybe another reason was that it didn't offer anything new to me, maybe it was because my literary tastes have slightly changed since I last read something by John and Mark, I'm not sure.
  
  It wasn't a bad read, it's just that it wasn't exactly captivating, and I do realize that it's non-fiction and it cannot offer some mind-blowing fictitious story, but I'm merely speaking from the standpoint of someone who's moderately acquainted with the authors' work. It does present some famous, and not so famous criminals and it offers some insight behind the reasons why they did whatever they had done, but often it doesn't delve as deep into the psychological aspect as I expected.
• 
  Biljana

  John Douglas, uz pomoć svog kolege Marka Olshakera, (autora knjige Mindhunter) u knjizi nastaloj 1999. godine bavi se, kako i sam naslov govori, anatomijom motiva koji se javlja kod počinilaca krivičnih djela.
  
  Njihovi motivi u knjizi se razmatraju u nekoliko kategorija, pa se u veoma detaljnoj, ali i veoma zanimljivoj analizi autor osvrće na piromane, trovače, masovne ubice, nasumične ubice, itd., a sve to ispraćeno brojnim primjerima sa kojima se Douglas susreo u svojoj dugogodišnjoj praksi kao jedan od pionira profilisanja.
  
  Da li se ljudi rađaju zli ili njihova sveukupna iskustva i okolnosti u kojima žive dovedu do stvaranja iskre motiva, a zatim i realizacije svog rušuilačkog nauma, da li se nekim ljudima samo ''prespoje žice'' ili su svjesni težine svojih postupaka, samo su neka od pitanja na koja ova knjiga daje odgovor.
  
  Precizno i studiozno, opisujući neke od najpoznatijih zločina, poput ubistava Versacea, Kennedyja i Johna Lennona, autor nas vodi u mračne hodnike sociopatskog ponašanja, dajući uvid u godine rada i istraživanja, i pronalazeći objašnjenja za različite tipove zločina, u svojoj vječnoj težnji da profilisanje dobije značaj koji zaslužuje.
  
  Na kraju, preostaje samo želja da i David Fincher uvidi da serija Mindhunter ima toliko sjajnog materijala, da bi bila šteta da treća sezona ne ugleda svjetlost dana.
• 
  Liz Lazarus

  Be prepared for some chilling stories, that are also so fascinating. What makes a person become a serial killer versus a spree killer or a mass murderer? What is the criminal triad? How does the way a body is disposed of tell you about the relationship of the killer to the victim? What's the difference between an MO and a signature? What crimes are females more likely to commit?
  All of these questions and many more are answered by John Douglas. And, as I write my next thriller, this book provided some great insight into the mind of a killer - because Mr. Douglas and his team interviewed many of them.
  Furthermore, he does something that is quite remarkable - making his deduction look so simple ... until he gives you a few to try to figure out on your own. That was when I realized his true genius.
• 
  Leftbanker

  This was OK, but mostly just a bunch of cases I didn't care about, some of them extremely gruesome and violent. I was just hoping for some insight into criminal behavior to use in stuff that I write.
  
  The author's views on politics, especially the death penalty, don't interest me in the least and he should have left them out. As far as capital punishment, his views weren't interesting or insightful in the least, just the typical law enforcement view of frying people's asses. The only thing positive that I can see about the death penalty is that it gives prosecutors more leverage in dealing with defendants. The downside is that it puts the United States in some pretty fucking dreadful company among the nations of the world. Iran and Saudi Arabia come to mind, two total shit-holes we shouldn't look like in any way, shape, or form.
• 
  Benjamin Barnes

  This book was quite an Interesting read. I'd envourage anyone who Live true crime to read this. It helps make sense of Criminal minds!.
• 
  Charlene

  Why did it do it!?!?!?! I should never have reread this book. It ruined everything.
  
  Back in 1999 I was in awe of Douglas, who seemed to not only be a mindhunter, but a mindreader. I was absolutely captivated by his lectures on how to figure out who done it. He spoke of the Green River Killer (and how it almost killed him), the JonBenet Ramsey murder (after watching the incredible documentary that points the finger at the brother, I now wonder what Douglas really knew), and other famous intriguing cases. After attending his lectures, I read his books. This one seemed so great at the time. I was still in the afterglow of listening to him speak without the benefit of an actual education on method of crime solving. (If you love being excited by catching a killer, don't ever take classes on how crime statistics are gathered, methods by which handwriting and other forensics are matched to what is left at the scene, or the systematic (often unintentional) racism that puts black people on death row, quite often, for crimes they did not commit or puts them in cells for the *same* crimes that were committed by white people who walked free. Books like this become far less exciting.
  
  This book is big on speculation, big on emotion, big on retribution, but is really lacking any type of data analysis or any type of scientific process that would lead to getting the *right* person and not just getting *a* person. We crime fighters and citizens against crime want so much to stop the pain that violent crime brings to our lives. But, catching the wrong person does more harm. It not only leaves the actual violent person out in society to do more harm, it does harm to another innocent person, who is locked behind bars for something they did not do.
  
  The only way to ensure that we get the right person is to test it! To make sure the methods are solid and not at all based on intuition. Intuition could easily sway me to believe that someone who looks differently than I do is a threat. Intuition could lead me to believe a black teenager wearing a hoodie, with skittles in his pocket is someone I should chase down and kill. Intuition is the enemy of data. Gather the facts. Make solid methods. Then, and only then, should you try to gather mobs to your side to capture criminals. Douglas' methods are almost all based on speculation.
  
  The worst part about reading this book right now is that I LOVE the show Mindhunter. Before I took coursework about the faulty workings of the justice system (that is trying to be less faulty), I surely would have gone in -- guns ablazing-- to profile killers so that I could lock them behind bars. I mean, come on, who wouldn't? But now, I can't even enjoy Season 2 of Mindhunter because Douglas' methods are so terrible. I should have just left alone and watched my show in peace and happiness. Don't get me wrong, that show is hella good. I will be watching, but now I will be grouchy a lot of the time.
• 
  Sheila

  Have I never reviewed this before? I've read it like three times. Huh.
  
  John Douglas, along with fellow profiler
  Robert K. Ressler and forensic nurse
  Robert K. Ressler, put together the
  Crime Classification Manual: A Standard System for Investigating and Classifying Violent Crimes as a reference manual for law enforcement to apply the basics of profiling to their cases.
  
  This book is a narrative form of the above - less into the specific details, more about stories that exemplify each category. Some of them are the same as in the CCM. It's so sad that I recognize that. :)
  
  Douglas's nonfiction is always fascinating, but he cheerfully brings his ego to the table. I found this book to be more about the crimes and less about him, and that was a nice interlude.
  
  (p.s. kudos to one or both of them for making me freak OUT reading it after dark. yikes.)
• 
  J.H. Moncrieff

  All of John Douglas's books get five stars from me. What a fascinating man. If you're at all interested in why people commit crimes, how they commit them, and what factors in their personalities and lives led them to that point, you will love this book. Every crime is a murder mystery, and when Douglas breaks down each case and criminal, you get real insight into how FBI profilers work. He even includes sample cases for the reader to figure out at the end (although they would be more effective if the solution wasn't provided throughout the narrative).
  
  From snipers to serial killers to bombers and arsonists, this book provides chilling insight into some of the worst crimes in recent history and beyond.
• 
  Cath Murphy

  Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand criminal profiling. Especially eery because Douglas' analysis of Timothy McVeigh, who set off the Oklahoma bomb exactly matches the personality of Anders Breivik, who bombed and shot 84 people in Norway last year.
• 
  Stacy

  I think Douglas and Olshaker wrote this for people getting into law enforcement, but this is a great book for anyone--particularly writers--struggling to understand the mindset of a psychopath. Though Douglas never uses the word, most of the cases he worked on--including the Unabomber--involve psychopaths. (This doesn't mean that all psychopaths are murderers, or even criminals. Psychopathy is a mindset of control, and I think we've all known psychopaths who, by legal markers, would be considered fine, upstanding citizens.)
  
  But many of these psychopaths seek to control others, and they sometimes find the craziest ways to achieve that. OR they're just loser nutsos looking to make a name for themselves or forever link themselves with someone famous (such as John Hinkley wanting to be linked to Jodie Foster). By profiling UNSUBs (unidentified subjects) before ever laying eyes on them, Douglas was able to find most of the criminals he sought. One notorious one who was never caught was the UNSUB who tampered with Tylenol bottles.
  
  Douglas not only goes through some of the high-profile cases he worked on (and some he didn't, I think), he includes an amusing little exercise where you try to profile an UNSUB based on the facts you know about the case. I really enjoyed the read, learned a lot, and will definitely be reading more of his work. This book reminds me of those true crime shows I grew up with, but done better.
• 
  Beth

  Another excellent true crime book by John Douglas - you can't go wrong with him telling the tales. This particular book covers sections such as school shootings, spree killers and bombers, to name but a few, and is delivered with Douglas' typical no-nonsense style, whilst being organised into logical chapters which really help the reader to absorb and understand the stories being told.
• 
  Meg

  The profiling was interesting to read about. My main concern about these people, is that there were many signs in their behavior, that something was wrong at a very early age. I spent most of my life in education and can attest to the fact that counseling in elementary school is definitely lacking. If there was something done for these children, when they first exhibited peculiar behaviors, many lives would have been saved.
• 
  Lisa Robbins

  I find John Douglas and his work completely fascinating. This installment was a bit different than most of the others I've read. It focuses on motives involved in the cases he talks about. He uses the details of the crimes and the apparent motives behind them to find the perpetrator. I find the psychology of criminals to be intriguing and John Douglas never lets me down.
  
• 
  Casey Keen

  Again, John Douglas' books are the best when it comes to true crime facts of motives, operation and FBI techniques. I love his books!
• 
  AC

  Arsonists, guys who snapped, Cunanan, Charles Joseph Whitman — feels like odds and ends
• 
  Agatha Glowacki

  Very detailed and excellent book based on actual cases and research. Great companion to shows like Criminal Minds; like a study guide to each episode. Very intense, though, and dense. I found it a bit overwhelming at times, and hard to get through. But lots of great insights important to know.
  
  Just some notes another review shared that I wanted to keep to remember the key points of the book:
  
  *Basic Formula. Douglas’s basic formula for solving crimes = Why? + How? = Who.
  
  *Classification of Multiple Murderers. Douglas divides this group into serial killers, mass murderers, and spree killers. Serial killers are those who kill three or more people, with time-gaps between the killings. They expect to get away with their homicides and are motivated by the sex drive and the need for control. Mass murderers kill four or more people in one location and one incident; they don’t expect to get away with it and are usually making some kind of statement (often paranoid). Spree killers murder people at two or more locations, usually without significant lapse of time between killings, and play it by ear, not thinking their actions through to the end (“The spree killer’s rage is unplanned and unpredictable”). What do the three types of killer have in common? They’re losers who get a sense of power from the killings, and their murders are usually triggered by stressful life events (loss of job, death in family, desertion by spouse).
  
  *Modus Operandi and Signature. Douglas makes a distinction between an offender’s M.O. and his “signature.” The M.O. is the offender’s characteristic way of committing his crimes. His signature is any unique stamp he places on his crime: “When we talk about signature elements, we mean things the [killer:] does that aren’t necessary to the commission of his crime but are important for him to get emotional satisfaction out of the deed.” Examples: always stealing a piece of jewelry from a murder victim, or sending taunting letters to the police.
  
  *Organized and Disorganized. Douglas distinguishes between organized and disorganized offenders: how well an offender plans the crime. “The general rule is that organized offenders extort for money and disorganized offenders [commit crimes:] for all the other reasons.”
  
  *Reassurance Offenders versus Assertive Offenders. According to Douglas, some arsonists and rapists are “power-reassurance” types, whose acts of violence are attempts to convince themselves of their power and self-worth; these often feel guilty immediately after the crime, and sometimes even apologize to their victims. Other arsonists and rapists are “power-assertive” types, who take pleasure in exerting power and control over their victims and have no guilt and no regrets.
  
  *Internalizers versus Externalizers. “Both [internalizers and externalizers:] begin with the fantasy [of the crime:]. The externalizer [such as the sexual predator:] acts out directly. But the internalizer—the arsonist, the bomber—remains one step removed from the victim(s). The internalizer is the loner, the asocial…” Most violent offenders are cowards, but the internalizer is especially so—he operates abstractly, avoiding direct confrontation with the victim and usually depersonalizing her/him.
  
  *Sexual Predators. Virtually all sexual predators are men. Apart from more generalized antisocial behavior, there are three specific warning signs in childhood: late bed-wetting, arson, and cruelty to animals and/or small children. Most offenders develop predatory fantasies by early adolescence; “…50 percent described having their first rape fantasy between the ages of twelve and fourteen!" And: “The fantasy always precedes the predatory act.” During adolescence, most develop into paraphiliacs. The paraphilias include voyeurism (engaged in by 72% of offenders), excessive masturbation (79%), preoccupation with pornography (81%), fetishism (72%), indecent exposure (25%), bestiality (sex with animals) (25%), obscene phone calls (25%), cross-dressing (10-20%), prostitution (10-20%) and frottage (sexual excitement by rubbing against someone—crowds will never seem the same) (10-20%). Usually the predator starts with a paraphilia and then escalates, perfecting his technique (and perhaps his fantasies) as he progresses. For example, he may start as a Peeping Tom, then sneak into houses to steal panties (fetishism), then sneak into houses to rape women, then sneak in to rape women and then murder them. Apparently it is rare for a sexual predator to start out with a capital crime; he works his way up to it.
  Why do predators commit their crimes? “[They:] seemed to realize early on, sometimes even as very young children, that the power to manipulate others gave them a sense of control that they felt was so lacking in their lives.” “The crime—what he did to another person, the way he exerted power and control—was the most intense, stimulating and memorable experience of his life. By reliving it this way [talking about it while in prison:], he was reliving the peak sensation and bringing me with him inside his mind.” And: “They choose to do it because it makes them feel good.”
  How do predators select their victims? “Sexual predators home in on victims in whom they sense a lack of self-esteem and self-worth…the ones they feel they can entice, mold to their own purposes, and separate from family, friends and values.”
  
  *Assassins. “Assassin personalities” are typically white male loners with low self-esteem and functional paranoia [i.e. they experience delusions:]. They’ve usually had bad childhoods, are followers rather than leaders, often have a gun fetish, and usually keep diaries or journals (for example, James Oliver Huberty, the MacDonalds mass murderer, kept meticulous records on what he called “debts”: any perceived slight against him or his family). Other notes on assassin types: “Once [assassins:] decide on their course of action, stress and conflict are lifted.” [That is, they are often amazingly calm and collected.:] Of Lennon-killer Chapman: “The only thing going through his mind at the time, he later reported, was how gratified he was that the gun was working so well.” And: “Few recall ever seeing [Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh:] laugh or smile, which is typical of paranoid types.” And: “Any successful assassin has to get lucky.” And finally: “As with so many of these guys, the deeper-seated feelings of inadequacy competed inside him with equally strong feelings of grandiosity and superiority, of being better and more deserving than everybody else.”
  
  *Other Interesting Observations.
  
  —“Both rapists and artists usually start out as Peeping Toms.”
  
  —“The older the victim, the younger the offender.”
  
  —“If a violent, power-assertive or sadistic-type rapist embarks on the assault with no intention of killing his victim, he will often attempt to conceal his face or the victim’s, to prevent her from being able to identify him later.”
  
  —In abductions, “Killers don’t call, and callers don’t kill.” Because: those who abduct for ransom call to set up the payoff; those who abduct and murder out of rage have no reason to call.
  
  —It takes about two years to train a smart and seasoned agent to be a good profiler.
  
  —The “Dangerous Forties”: “When [losers:] get to that age, and take stock, if it doesn’t look as if life is going quite the way they planned it, they can pop.”
  
  —“…if you are…the victim of a crime and the offender orders you to get in a car with him—don’t do it!”
  
  —In his senior high yearbook, Andrew Cunanan was voted, “Most likely to be remembered.”
  
  —Serial offenders cut out newspaper articles to “document their ‘accomplishments’ and revel in them, reliving them in fantasy over and over as they read details of their exploits during their cooling-off periods.”
  
  —Many offenders “rehabilitate” in the highly structured environment of prison—but will revert if released into the outside world, with its lack of structure.
  
  —The claim of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski to be saving the world from the evils of technology seems to be a rationalization for more mundane hatred: as a graduate student at University of Michigan he wrote in his journal: “My first thought was to kill somebody I hated and then kill myself before the cops could get me.” Then he changed his mind: “[I was:] not ready to relinquish life so easily. So I thought, I will kill, but I will make at least some effort to avoid detection, so that I can kill again.”
• 
  Inga

  Dies ist eines der Bücher außerhalb meiner Lesegewohnheiten. Meine Poposugar reading challenge verlangte nach einem Buch über true crime und da ich Trueman Capotes Kaltblütig schon gelesen hatte, durchsuchte ich die Listen der Empfehlungen und stieß auf die Anatomie des Mörders. John Douglas und Mark Olshaker waren hochrangige FBI-Agenten, Douglas schrieb zahlreiche Bücher über seine Erkenntnisse als einer der ersten Profiler überhaupt und diente als Vorlage vieler literarischer und filmischer Charaktere.
  Der Originaltitel des Buches (erstmals erschienen 1999) benennt dessen Inhalt genauer: The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals.
  Es geht um die Motive, den Antrieb für die Taten der Gewaltverbrecher. Aus dem "Warum?" und "Wie?" lassen sich dann die notwendigen Schlüsse auf das "Wer?", also auf den Täter, ziehen. Die Autoren zeigen dabei grundlegende psychologische Zusammenhänge auf und beziehen diese dann immer auf drei bis vier Fallbeispiele. Die Verbrechen, um die es geht, sind nicht die spektakulären Sexualserientäter, um die es in Thrillern und Filmen häufig geht, vielmehr erzählt Douglas von seinen Erfahrungen mit Bombenlegern, Brandstiftern, Erpressern, Massenmördern (die heute wohl oft als Amokläufer bezeichnet werden) und einigen mehr. Dabei sind die Fälle durchaus spektakulär und der amerikanischen Öffentlichkeit sicherlich wohl bekannt.
  Den Autoren gelingt ein locker-unterhaltsamer Erzählton, der die über 500 Seiten umfassenden Beispiele nicht langweilig werden lässt. Gleichzeitig sind sie immer bemüht, bei allen psychologischen und sozialen Zusammenhängen für die Beweggründe der Täter, die sie beschreiben, den Leser immer wissen zu lassen, dass sich die Mehrheit der Täter immer darüber bewusst war, was sie taten und sich dafür entschieden haben, ihre Taten durchzuführen - und damit sind sie auch für diese verantwortlich. Zusammenhängend mit dem Strafverfolgungs- und Rechtssystem der USA ist die Sichtweise der Autoren manchmal sehr amerikanisch, beispielsweise, wenn es um Prozessführung oder die Todesstrafe geht, aber dies stört nicht weiter. Die grundlegenden Erkenntnisse über die Motive von Verbrechern und was zu ihren Taten führt, sind allgemein gültig. Ein interessantes Buch - einmal mehr gut, dass eine reading challenge mit ungewohnten Genres andere Perspektiven öffnet.
• 
  Lora Shouse

  The Anatomy of Motive is a book about criminal profiling by the man who virtually invented the practice. We are not talking about things like racial profiling, where the police harass people who look as if they don’t belong in certain neighborhoods on the off chance. This is about using the criminal’s behavior to uncover what kind of person might have committed a particular crime.
  
  Because John Douglas worked for the FBI, most of his cases (and he prefers to use the cases he worked on himself) involved particularly dangerous criminals or situations in which a large number of people might have been at risk - cases like mass murders or serial murders.
  
  I found the cases of product tampering and arson to be particularly interesting, although all of them were well told. Especially enlightening were the small differences between slightly different forms of certain crimes. As in arson for profit versus arson for revenge versus arson for the joy of seeing things burn up, and the slight differences in the behavior of people with these various motives.
  
  The point of all this criminal profiling is to create a picture of the mind of the person responsible for the particular crime without ever having seen this person. So that, among other things, when a particular suspect becomes the target of investigation, law enforcement agents can have some idea of how likely that person is to be responsible for the crime.
  
  Since John Douglas retired from active duty with the FBI some years ago, most of the cases he uses as examples are a little older. But these include most of the big serial murder cases and shooting sprees and the like that I can recall going back as far as the ’60s, and also such famous cases as the Tylenol murders and the Unabomber.
  
  I didn’t find any problems with the narration.
  
• 
  Shoshanah

  This book contained so many fascinating cases, this time arranged by method in order to explain why it correlates with motive and criminal profile. I knew a couple of the cases quite well before I picked up this book (Timothy McVeigh, Andrew Cunanan) and found quite a few minor details that were incorrect. However, I’m willing to give Douglas and Olshaker leeway since this was published in 1999. The authoritative book on Timothy McVeigh came out in 2001, and much of the material I have read about Cunanan is as recent as last year.
  
  What confused me were the cases he asks the reader to “solve” at the end of the book. He provides the culprit and motive at the end of each so I’m not quite sure what the exercise is supposed to be.
• 
  Heather Dee

  “Why” is the number one thing people want to know in the wake of a violent crime, and learning how to uncover the “why” is the subject of this book. Given that the subject matter should be so compelling, I found it odd how frequently I zoned out or lost interest during this book. That may not be Mr. Douglas’ fault; perhaps I’m over-saturated with this subject matter as of late. I’ve read other books that Mr. Douglas wrote and found myself on the edge of my seat. I can’t entirely tell if this book is not quite as good as the others, or if I’m just burned out. May be worth revisiting at a later date!
• 
  Helen Robare

  I've read all of John Douglas' books and this one is just as good as any of the others. This man never disappoints his readers. He explains about motive and intent in a knowledgeable manner and he also includes actual cases. This is not light reading so if you read it you WILL learn/take away something from this book. For any true crime aficionado, it's a must-read.
• 
  Gilbert Stack

  John Douglas was an FBI Profiler and in this interesting book he goes through a lot of cases of pretty terrible crimes helping the reader to understand what sorts of things motivate criminal behavior. What is perhaps most interesting aspect of the book is that you are likely to recognize many of the cases from the news, and it is fascinating to get into the “why” of the crime. It’s informative and entertaining at the same time.
• 
  Joanna

  Very interesting - and incredibly chilling. I honestly cannot imagine how people dealing with crime and criminals on a daily basis can live their lives without being terrified of everyone they encounter.
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  Amanda L

  Just as good if not better than Mindhunter.