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August
10, 2001 |
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Welcome! It’s hard to believe this year is more than half over. Where
have the months gone? I’m glad to finally welcome you to my website,
a project I’ve been working on in my free time, which has been pretty
rare these last months. I’d like to thank the people who’ve helped
me put it together. They’ve been great. You can read about
them if you like.
I hope you’ll find my site interesting and easy to use, and that
over time you’ll return to it to find out about ongoing investigations
into crimes you may be able to help solve. Public participation
is critical, as I learned in my years with the FBI. We can have
all the equipment money can buy, we can have the best people out
in the field and back in the lab, and we can have bags full of
evidence but without the public all that can add up to nothing.
A good example is with the Bureau’s sketch artists, who do amazing
work. Conceivably, one of them could create an exact composite
of a subject—such a perfect likeness that it’s as good as a photograph—but
without somebody out there to see it and recognize the subject
that sketch would be utterly useless.
The public has definitely gotten more involved in the last fifteen
years or so. I think John Walsh’s work and his phenomenal show
America’s Most Wanted and website,
deserve a lot of credit for that. Proactive techniques are being
used more widely by investigators and even by victims’ families,
who are becoming more and more aware of the power of the media,
and the ability it has to get pictures of their loved ones in
front of practically anyone who has a television or reads a newspaper.
Chandra Levy
The most visible example of this right now is the Chandra Levy
case. I know a lot of you have been reading and hearing about
Ms. Levy. I’ve been getting scores of calls, asking for my analysis
and opinions. My position has been not to comment. I don’t know
any more about the case than you do, and it wouldn’t help the
investigation one bit for me to go on the morning shows and speculate
about what might have happened to her. I think that would be irresponsible.
What I will say is that I am impressed with all the pressure her
parents have put on the media, and amazed at how the media has
responded. Whether they would have done so if Ms. Levy hadn’t
been involved with a U.S. Congressman is questionable, and makes
for a sad debate about what gets our attention. I hope the focus
on this case will make us all think more about the missing children
and adults, and about why we should care.
I certainly hope Chandra Levy is alright, and that her parents
find out something soon. What they’re going through is absolutely
unimaginable for anyone who hasn’t endured it, and it does not
get easier as the days pass. It gets harder, because you find
it difficult to hold out hope.
Missing Children
How many cases get the kind of ongoing national publicity that
Chandra Levy’s disappearance has received? How many pictures of
missing children have been flashed in front of us as often as
hers? A handful? I applaud the attention Ms. Levy’s case has gotten.
I just wish other cases, especially those involving children,
could get a fraction of it.
I used to suggest, because most child abductions are carried out
by family members, that we should put pictures of the relatives
who are suspected of kidnapping the children on milk cartons,
on television, and in the paper. The National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children ("NCMEC") posts abductor photos on their
website, and
I think it’s a great idea. An adult’s appearance doesn’t change
as rapidly as a child’s does, and adults have more contact with
other adults than children do, so they’re generally more recognizable.
The NCMEC is an important and progressive organization. According
to their site, “to date, NCMEC has worked on 66,350 cases, helped
recover 47,284 children, and raised its recovery rate from 60
percent in the 1980s to 93 percent today.” That’s amazing. You
should visit their site. At the very least, you can enlighten
yourself about how big the problem of missing and exploited children
is. You may want to donate money to help them in their efforts.
You may know about and need to report an incidence of child sexual
exploitation. And you may even recognize a missing child or an
abductor and help bring a family back together. You can also call
the NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST.
Goings On
My life has been pretty busy lately. Just last week, I taped an
interview with some folks from BRAVO for a special about the making
of the movie The Silence of the Lambs, for which I served
as a technical advisor. The special will be the pilot for a new
BRAVO series. I’ll post the airdates as soon as I have them.
I’ve spent a lot of time traveling this year, in the US, Canada,
and Europe, doing presentations for a pharmaceutical company.
It’s an interesting story. They sought me out because one of their
executives had read Mind
Hunter and knew about my near-death experience in 1983
and a later, also nearly fatal bout with blood clots in my lungs.
In brief, this company has developed a medicine that can prevent
blood clots in surgical patients, so they thought I’d be a good
representative for them.
They asked me to give some talks to physicians about profiling,
and about my feeling that arriving at a medical diagnosis is very
similar to coming up with a behavioral profile. The same “why
+ how = who” equation applies to both. A physician interviews
the patient, getting an idea of what her habits, sleeping patterns,
diet, job stresses, and so on are like. Similarly, profilers come
up with a victimology, either by interviewing the victim or those
close to her to get much of that same information and try to establish
a possible motive. That’s the “why.” A physician looks at how
these lifestyle factors have impacted the patient, i.e. what her
symptoms are, how her physical well-being has changed, and what
her test results show. A profiler looks at how the crime was perpetrated
against the victim and at the evidence gathered at the scene.
That’s the “how.”
Then a physician comes up with a diagnosis—the “who” in this case
being the disease or injury that’s afflicting the patient. For
us, that “who” would be the murderer, kidnapper, rapist, or other
criminal.
It’s been interesting. The 500 physicians I’ve met with have responded
very well to and agreed with the analogy, and I’m guessing the
500 I’ll meet with in the coming months will as well. It demonstrates
how difficult their job is. Like profilers, they’re drawing finite
conclusions from a virtually infinite number of factors.
Next Time
Like many of you, I’ll be taking a vacation soon. I have to go
somewhere really quiet and remote to keep myself from trying to
work, and I’m looking forward to it. Like the doctors say, we
all need our rest. But I’ll be back in a few weeks, and will have
another newsletter ready in the Fall, along with some other additions
to the site. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope the rest of
your summer is pleasant and, above all, safe.
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