An intregueing read

The criminal mind is a mysterious thing. The anatomy of a motive is a look the mind of criminals. It goes thru cases in the career of John Douglass. This book explores the mind of everything from your serial arsonists to your serial killer.
John Douglas was a criminal profiler for the FBI for over 20 years. He's one of the greatest criminal profilers in history. He's also been able to write many books on what he knows about the profiling of criminals. The work he's done in his career has led to the arrest of many of the worlds most dangerous criminals.
The anatomy of a motive starts out when John talks about a period during his time in the FBI where he went around interviewing criminals. Many criminals would try to talk themselves up and show off who they were. Many of them would lie and talk about things they may or may not have done. It took John much effort to get past this to get what he wanted from the people he interviewed. He said that criminals I (p. 22)"main goals in life are to kill and to hurt- or as I've stated many times in my career, to manipulate, dominate, and control."
We then come to the issue of fire in chapter two "Playing with Fire." He explore's the mind of your arsonists. He goes into the idea that many criminals early in life will play with fire. They will also have other traits in common with each other. They usually have (p.47) "violent, antisocial tendencies often mistreat animals or smaller children. This chapter goes into the arsonists as sort of a "ticking time bomb." They will set fire after fire and if they don't get caught they will become more daring. They will take more risks and eventually evolve into a killer if not stopped. He also states how many of these arsonists will start out in a place they are comfortable in only. They won't go out of their "comfort zone" until they believe they are comfortable doing so. This was a major thing in the world of tracking criminals. That means they can look around the area where the fire starting began (or other crimes as it turns out) and get an idea who they might be looking for.
"Magnum Force" explores the idea of guns used in crimes. Many criminals get there ideas from other things such as kojack In one case two air force enlisted men tied up and tried to poison some people in a Hi-Fi shop. They tried using poison and it didn't work like it did in the movies. They eventually had to some of them because the poison didn't work fast enough.
In "Name your Poison" the book goes into poisoning by tampering. It goes into adding poisonous pills to a Tylenol bottle. This led all drugs to be covered with a safety seal. In this chapter John talks about the Tylenol poisoner as someone who was proud of what they were doing. John figured this UNSUB was a passive person who would be afraid of confrontation. He was also able to figure that this offender wasn't that organized or methodical about his poisonings. He would just introduce a cyanide capsule to a bottle and put it back on the shelf. John eventually came up with an accurate profile of the Tylenol UNSUB. John was able to get the UNSUB out by getting him to write letters into a newspaper about his opinions and what he hated about society.

"Guys Who Snap", "On the Run" and "Shadow of a Gunman" all run along the same area and are about people who one day just can't take it anymore and snap. They snap for a number of reasons. They may have lost their job. Maybe their wife/husband left them. Or maybe they just realized there life is at a dead end. They see they aren't really going anywhere. Once they can no longer deal with the idea they won't achieve the great things they have always wanted to receive they decide to either relinquish their current situation and move on or go out in a blaze of glory. One UNSUB in this section for example, kills his whole family and quietly sneaks away to start life anew. Another UNSUB realizes that life is doomed for him and decides to go out in a blaze of glory by getting on top of a building and trying to take out as many people as he can with him. He had no plans to escape this situation. He just wanted to not go out alone. In a story of Brad Bishop who kills and burns the bodies of his family, he wants to start a new life somewhere else. He goes onto do so and is eventually caught. He never wanted to kill his family, but felt that he had to.
"Shadow of a Gunman" also goes into killers who have obsessions with weapons. Many usually have large collections. At some point they just snap and decide to go out in the blaze of glory and kill whatever they can, using what they have and know about they're weapons.
In "Random Acts of Violence" John goes into the idea of random violence. A mail bomber mails bombs to random members of the academic community. Many of his devices will either kill or extremely mangle his victims. As he progress's in his killings his bomb style becomes his "calling card." The UNSUB also likes to show how he's evolved as he goes on in his bombings. His bombs get a little better every time. This offender is a well educated person who knows a great deal. This person is also patient and willing to put in a great amount of time in constructing his weapons. This chapter also goes into the Unabomber. It talks about Timothy Mcveigh and about how he's always been a loner who liked doing things alone. He was a quiet and passive person who couldn't confront someone face to face.
The book ends with a summary type chapter called "You Make the Call." This chapter has a few examples of cases talked about in earlier chapters and asks that you make the call and eventually tells you the answers on whether your assessment was right or not.
The Anatomy of a Motive was an intriguing look into the way killers think. It will give you multiple examples of how criminals work. It explores the development of a criminal. It can give you an idea of how to profile a criminal. After reading this book I believe I could accurately profile many people. If you know the way someone was killed or the way the crime was committed you can learn everything you need to know about the person who did it. You can get a personality profile just by looking at the case. In many cases you can tell if the UNSUB was associated in any way with the victims. You can tell if this person was passive and afraid of confrontation. You can also see if the UNSUB will be around the crime scene and will want to witness his/her work. This book can benefit criminal profilers and even someone who enjoys things such as "America's Most Wanted." This book is quite strong in areas such as arson and murder. It falls short to me in areas such as rape, and burglary. This book is a great look into how FBI profilers think and a look at some of the cases that they can see everyday. It explains how many criminals think and where they get they're start. If we listen to the people in our lives who appear to be on edge and befriend those who look like they're all alone, criminals will eventually cease to exists and the world will be a better place for the future generations.

Amusing

At first glance, profiling seems to be about someone trying to understand and decipher the mind of a person who kills. It's often promoted as entering the mind of this person and discovering why and how this person became and acts this way.
This is not exactly how it seems to be though. Throughout this book, the author points out common elements between the killers, things that reoccur. This appears to be the whole of his job. He interviews these people and collects patterns. He is very good at drawing similarities between killers and using this, but when it comes down to actually understanding "why" they did it, he falls hopelessly short. According to the author, they did it because they were "losers" or "inadequate". This is far too simplistic, and the author isn't able to understand the complex intereactions that make a person kill. He catches these people because they follow similar and predictable patterns, but not because he can put himself inside their minds and feel what they do.

This may be annoying to some readers, who I'm sure, have formed their own opinions of why they believe someone would kill. This book is basically an overview of the common patterns amongst killers, but in no way does it delve into deep discussion on why these patterns are the way they are.
The author has a large degree of anger toward these killers, which, I'm sure is a pretty normal reaction in his position when you think about it. The only thing is that most of us out here are trying to understand, but not to judge explicitly. We want to know why, we don't want to hear the author's emotional outbursts. On the other hand though, this makes the book slightly interesting because what we have here is not a discription about why killers do these things, but a depiction of a profiler and how he sees the world around him. How he percieves it, his personality and how it has effected him. Don't read this book for its analysis or you'll be dissapointed. Read it instead to gain insight into his life and the things around him.

The only other thing that might annoy some people is if they are assuming that because of his job, the author is highly intellegent. Because he isn't. He seems pretty average in that department, he is just very good at sussing out similarities. So, I'll say it again, there is no intellectual discuss on the complexities of human emotions and how or why they are the way they are. The authors world is very black and white, and you can't help but feel a little sorry for him.

Either way. Two stars because it is an interesting view port into this man's world. But no other three stars, because its just too childish.

Prompting your Sense of Insufficiency

I read this book back to back during the past few days and it was the first book by Douglas that I have read.

While fairly impressed by the author's approach (both in theory and in practice), to some of the most notorious crimes and criminals, I felt there were several things that need to be pointed out.

(1)Self-oriented. I would not terribly disagree if one said in this book, Mr. Douglas was too much ego-driven and self-glorifying. It seemed for all the cases covered, on the other end of the justice scale opposite to the criminals, there was only Mr. Douglas whose penetrating force in bringing them to justice, at least His theories of profiling were.

(2) Insufficient case files. Virtually all the cases covered in this book are outdated and hugely well known that publicized information of them means nothing much than a news report. To my recollection, the average age of these cases was somewhere between 15 to 20 years. In today's fast driven society with progressive crime diversifications, this is hardly enough for a starter's course.

(3)Basic. While retaining my tremendous respect to the author and his book, I felt the materials presented here were over simplified and sometimes far more insufficient than they should be. I acknowledge the argument that nothing sophisticated could be well expressed in just over 400 pages, but I did feel the limitation and insufficiency of the author as an interdisciplinary scholar a great number of times during the book.

(4)One View Street. Simply stated, the author did not elaborate any alternatives to his "profiling' in catching some of the most sophisticated criminals, despite the importance of these alternatives in both the theory and the field. I was even offended when Mr. Douglas devoted only one and a half pages to the JFK Assassination, determining, based on the "physical and forensic" evidence, that President Kennedy was assassinated by Oswald and Oswald alone. He declared him to be just another "paranoid loser" who happened to be able to murder the president, how convenient! Interestingly, the historical and political aspects, which were in fact the very foundation of this heinous crime, did not even come into subject! Despite of the fact that Mr. Douglas was still a very young man and certainly an outsider of the FBI at the time, he implied to blame, more or less scornfully, a paranoid public in believing a "conspiracy theory", to which the government bureaucracy could and would, in no way to hold up. In a landmark effort, the History Channel presented its most mesmerizing program to date, "The Men who Killed Kennedy" (DVDs available at Amazon). Virtually all aspects of that program, in a six-hour stride, contradict Mr. Douglas' one and a half pages' view on the event of the twentieth century America.

(5)Compromising - in detail. During the late chapters, when John Hinckley Jr. came into the subject, one inevitable spotlight was focused on Jodie Foster. While her early highly irresponsible and totally ignorant remarks of "encouragement" to Hinckley that without any doubt, partially prompted his attempt on the life of President Reagan, Mr. Douglas asserted her behavior to be ONLY "courteous". The reason, in a separate paragraph that ended the discussion (I did sense that earlier), Mr. Douglas told that he was pleased by the advice he offered to the actress during the filming of the "Silence of the Lambs", inconceivable, but true. Of course, one without a legendary record in crime fighting would have known, that Foster's attitude toward Hinckley was everything but "courteous" in a legal sense!

Overall, I would believe without the above drawbacks, the book could have been a better effort. However, I recommend this book to those interested in the subject and/or law enforcement officers, as a good starter on a never-ending journey into crime fighting.