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Douglas et al.: Criminal Profiling from Crime Scene Analysis agents whose task is to determine the behavioral patterns of a suspect through investigative concepts. Psychological Profiling In 1957, the identification of George Meteskv. the arsonist in New York City’s Mad Bomber case (which spanned 16 years), was aided by psychia- trist-criminologist James A. Brussel’s staccato-style profile: “Look for a heavy man. Middle-aged. Foreign born. Roman Catholic. Sin- gle. Lives with a brother or sister. When you find him. chances are he'll be wearing a double-breasted suit. Buttoned.” Indeed. the portrait was extraordinary in that the only variation was that Metesky lived with two single sisters. Brussel. in a discussion about the psy- chiatrist acting as Sherlock Holmes. explains that a psychiatrist usually studies a person and makes some reasonable predictions about how that person may react to a specific situation and about what he or she may do in the future. What is done in profiling, according to Brussel. is to reverse this process. Instead, by studying an individual's deeds onc deduces what kind of a person the individual might be (Brussel. 1968). The tdea of constructing a verbal picture of a murderer using psychological terms is not new. In 1960, Palmer published results of a three-year study of 5] murderers who were serving sentences in New England. Palmer's “typical mur- derer” was 23 years old when he committed murder. Using a gun, this typical killer murdered a male stranger during an argument. He came from a low socia] class and achieved little in terms of education or occupation. He had a well- meaning but maladjusted mother. and he experienced physical abuse and psy- chological frustrations during his childhood. Similarly, Rizzo (1982) studied 31 accused murderers during the course of routine referrals for psychiatric examination at a court clinic. His profile of the average murderer listed the offender as a 26-year-old male who most likely knew his victim, with monetary gain the most probable motivation for the crime. Criminal Profiling Through the techniques used today, law enforcement seeks to do more than describe the typical murderer, if in fact there ever was sucha person. Investigative profilers analyze information gathered from the crime scene for what it may reveal about the type of person who committed the crime. Law enforcement has had some outstanding investigators; however, their skills, knowledge. and thought processes have rarely been captured in the professional literature. These people were truly the experts of the law enforcement field, and their skills have been so admired that many fictional characters (Sergeant Cuff, BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES & THE LAW 10