Guest Blogger: Katherine Ramsland, PhD: Contextual Cues for Predatory Targeting

Contextual Cues for Predatory Targeting

Pattern repetition improves the speed and efficiency of victimizing. 

Elsewhere I’ve written about the predator’s advantage and six things that make us vulnerable to them. Essentially, predators keep their eyes open for certain types of people, behaviors, and situations. The more they watch for these things, the better they get at seeing them. There’s a concept for that.

It’s contextual cueing or honing the ability to spot desired targets with the repetition of specifically configured patterns. Repeated exposure to the pattern arrangement improves search efficiency. In other words, the brain develops mechanisms to increase its competence for selecting what it’s seeking.

We all have the ability to improve the efficiency of our scanning activity. That’s why we can find our way home, night or day, or locate our car in a crowded lot. We match the reality with our image. Our contextualized focus guides visual attention and object recognition, and memory of the context navigates attention toward future similar goals.

Recent research shows this is not a narrowing of focus but filtering. We use inner representations to filter out irrelevant data so we can better find what engages us. If certain patterns matter a lot, such as prey to a predator, our brain develops more sensitivity to them. In fact, before we’re conscious of the cues, deeper brain structures that form body memories and perceptual sets have already processed them. Perception serves action, so familiar configurations generate faster search performance than do novel configurations. Once the pattern’s set, we can act more quickly.

This means predators who stay vigilant for opportunities can develop a robust memory and visual skill for certain cues, which guides where and how they look. Repeated experience and expertise update their memory and yield advanced search benefits. The items (or people) they seek stand out faster and more precisely the more they work at it. They can cut quickly through the noise.

Serial killer Israel Keyes, who built houses, described what he’d look for before committing a murder. If he wanted time with a victim, he’d look for signs of an abandoned house where he could take them. A ‘for sale’ sign was a good indicator, and such signs always caught his eye. In Essex, Vermont, Keyes saw an isolated, abandoned farmhouse for sale. He broke in and looked around. Then he looked for a victim close by. He chose the home of Bill and Lorraine Currier because it had an attached garage and showed no evidence of children or a dog. Knowing house layouts, he found a window AC that suggested the master bedroom. He found a vulnerable entry point and went in. Waking the couple, he kidnapped and killed them that night. He was efficient because he looked for certain things.

For predators like him, contextual cues form a cognitive map or the representation of how we become habituated to a specific perspective. We encode, recall, and recognize our “situated existence” according to familiar parameters. We mentally “place” things so we can find them when we need them.

Researcher E. C. Tolman theorized long ago that successful learning occurred spatially. In the 1940s he ran rats through a maze, finding that once they became familiar with it, they could make their way through it with fewer errors during later trials – even with roadblocks placed in their way. If the maze was filled with water, for example, they still swam the correct route. Tolman surmised that the rats had internalized it and developed an inner field guide. Further research since then appears to confirm that the neurological system is set up to encode locations, distance, and directions. It likely also encodes contextual cues in the same manner.

The brain links our perceptual sets with our physiological systems. Researchers at London’s University College studied the size of the memory-consolidating hippocampus in cab drivers because they surmised that these cabbies must have an enhanced working memory of locations. Over the two years in which they trained, they had to prove they could locate thousands of sites all over London. Compared to a control group, their hippocampus showed greater development. The more years they’d been on the job, the larger its size. That is, they had developed strong embodied biological intelligence – grounded cognition.

Predators have this, too. They know what they want and remember how to get there. Other serial killers have similarly discussed what they look for to detect vulnerable victims. Some watch for young women alone, some lock on unsupervised children, and others zero in on people who need money or drugs. Con artists say the same thing, as documented in this book, The Confidence Game. The more that serial offenders work at a specific type of crime or focus on a specific type of victim, the more ingrained their contextual cues become. These encoded cues then enhance and improve their chance of success during their next predatory outing.

References:

Tolman, E. C.. (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review, 55(4), 189-208.

Callahan, M. (2109). American predator: The hunt for the most meticulous serial killer of the 21st century. Penguin.

Maguire, E., Gadian, I., Johnsrude, C. et al, (2000). Navigational Related Structural Change in the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97, 4398-4403

Costa, S., & Shaw, P. (2006). ‘Open Minded’ Cells: How Cells Can Change Fate. Trends in Cell Biology 17(3), 101–106.

Konnikova, M. (2016) The Confidence Game: Why we fall for it…every time. Penguin.

Junge, J. A., Scholl, B. J., & Chun. M. M. (2007). How is spatial context learning integrated over signal versus noise? A primacy effect in contextual cueing. Visual Cognition, 15(1), https://doi.org/10.1080/13506280600859706

Original Post in Psychology Today: psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/202010/contextual-cues-predatory-targeting

 

Golden State Killer’s Evidence Pilfered From Sheriff’s Office for “Book Research.”

Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, who authorities suspect is the so-called Golden State Killer responsible for at least a dozen murders and 50 rapes in the 1970s and 80s, is accompanied by Sacramento County Public Defender Diane Howard, right, as he makes his first appearance, Friday, April 27, 2018, in Sacramento County Superior Court in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

An amazing turn of events in the Golden State Killer case. Might this evidence “heist” impact his prosecution and/or plea deal? Is this a problem with evidence handling by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, another case of Hollywood getting special access, or both? We will see what happens.

The good news is that for crime writers this might offer you another plot point to work with. 

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/26/oc-sheriffs-investigators-smuggled-boxes-of-evidence-in-golden-state-killer-case-to-book-author-attorney-says/

 

Katherine Ramsland and Linda Fairstein in Suspense Magazine and on Crime and Science Radio

 

This month’s edition of Suspense Magazine features two of my favorite folks: Katherine Ramsland and Linda Fairstein.

First there is the transcript of Katherine’s visit to Crime and Science Radio where Jan Burke and me discussed her book on the BTK Killer. Check it out.

Learn more about Katherine and listen to the show:

http://www.dplylemd.com/csr-past-details/katherine-ramsland.html

Then a wonderful interview with Linda Fairstein, who was also our guest on Crime and Science Radio. 

Learn more about Linda and listen to the show:

http://www.dplylemd.com/csr-past-details/linda-fairstein.html

Check out all 70 Crime and Science Radio shows:

http://www.dplylemd.com/crime–science-radio.html

If you don’t yet subscribe to Suspense Magazine you should.

http://suspensemagazine.com

 

Guest Blogger: Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D.: Redheads and Serial Killers

Redheads and Serial Killers

Several killing sprees have targeted women with red hair.

Last week came news that police in Texas and Louisiana are investigating whether a serial killer is killing and decapitating redheaded women. The heads were discovered in plastic bags, tossed near lakes 150 miles apart. On March 1, one was found in undergrowth near Lake Calcasieu, and the other turned up three weeks later near Lake Houston. Witnesses described a man who got out of a pick-up truck and stood on a bridge to toss a trash bag over the rail. Investigators hope to track him down. 

If it turns out that the same person is responsible for both, the case might be similar to a few others, like trucker Charles Floyd. On July 1, 1948, he broke into an apartment in Tulsa, Oklahoma, attacking a woman and her two teenage daughters. He raped her, but a neighbor interrupted, so he fled before he killed anyone. Down the street, Floyd cut a hole into the door of another home, entered and bludgeoned a woman to death. The victims all had red hair.

A witness outside the second house described Floyd to police and they traced him to where he worked at a trucking company. Under arrest, he admitted that redheaded women triggered an overwhelming lust in him. In fact, he said, he’d killed before. Six years earlier, Floyd had murdered the redheaded pregnant wife of a fellow trucker. Later that year, he’d raped and murdered a mother and daughter, both redheads. Two and a half years later, he’d killed a redhead he’d seen undressing in her apartment. Due to Floyd’s low IQ, a judge sentenced him to life in a mental institution.

Glen Edward Rodgers also seemed to have a thing for redheads. The “Cross Country Killer” traveled from state to state between 1993 and 1995. He’d cozy up to women and ask for a favor. He even moved in with one, briefly. He was convicted of five murders, but bragged that he’d murdered more than 70 people, including Nicole Brown Simpson. Four of his victims were women with reddish hair. It turns out that his mother was a redhead and Roger’s brother says that she’d rejected and abused him.

Then there’s a series of incidents known collectively as “the Redhead Murders.” You’ll find different ideas about who should be counted among the victims, but according to one source, this set of murders started in 1978 and possibly continued until 1992. Some people identify three victims, but others say there are more (between 6 and 11). Most were strangled and their bodies dumped along major highways, as if they’d been hitchhiking or offering services to truckers. One young mother who disappeared from her home, mentioned on some lists, was found years later in a river. Most of the victims remain unidentified.

Many believe that a serial killer is responsible for all of the victims, and some have suggested links to Glen Rogers. Two truckers became suspects, but both were cleared.

The FBI got involved in 1985 to investigate possible links among victims found in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi. Linkage analysis turned up significant inconsistencies, such as their state of dress and evidence of sexual activity. The agency also ruled out a victim in Ohio and four in Texas. They did not solve the cases.

Jane Carlisle published a brief e-short, The Redhead Murders. She believed that the killer targeted victims who had no one who might come looking for them. This would suggest that the killer picked up redheads, queried them, and then decided to kill them based on satisfactory responses. Carlisle starts with a body discovery in 1983 in Virginia. The next one was in Arkansas. Several turned up in Tennessee in 1985. Only a few have been identified.

The murder in 1992 in Tennessee that some believe is linked involved a nun. An arrest was made, which undermined any link to the other redhead victims. Since most of the “Redhead Murders” remain unsolved, it’s not possible to know if a serial killer with a preference for redheads committed them, but it’s an intriguing mystery. 

Follow Katherine on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katherine.ramsland

Originally Posted on Shadow Boxing on the Psychology Today Blog

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/201805/redheads-and-serial-killers

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Charlie and Me

No, I never met Charles Manson, one of the many things in life for which I’m grateful. However, he had an effect on my life. I grew up in the South. We never locked our doors. I’m not even sure we had a key. Neighbors looked after neighbors and crime was not a common occurrence. A different world.

Then, 1969 came along. With the Tate-Labianca murders, the American psyche changed and Woodstock died. Flower power took on an entirely different aura.

When it was discovered that a diminutive miscreant named Charles Manson and his so-called hippie Family were the culprits, it sent the chill even deeper into our collective bones. If this strange assortment of losers could wreak such havoc, who was safe? Then, Vincent Bugliosi’s wonderful book HELTER SKELTER came out and the real story was revealed. This group not only committed murders but they prepared for them by doing what Charlie called “creepy crawling.” They would break into people’s homes at night, creep around, maybe rearrange some furniture, and leave. This was training, Charlie-style. This is when I started locking my doors.

My encounter with “Charlie’s World” took place in 1975. I was doing my cardiology fellowship at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. I came to California for the first time to run in San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers race and then on to Los Angeles to visit my friend Ben, who lived in Marina del Rey. I got in late at night and so the next morning Ben asked what I wanted to do on my first day in LA. The conversation went like this:

Me: Do you know where Benedict Canyon is?

Ben: Sure.

Me: That’s where I want to go.

Ben: Why?

Me: You’ll see.

And we were off. As we wound up into the canyon, Ben asked what I was looking for. My response: Just keep driving and I’ll know it when I see it. We soon came to Cielo Drive and told him to turn. We followed the road to its dead-end. Ben’s little orange Fiat was pointed at a high chain-link gate. I got out and walked to it, gripping the metal with my fingers. The property was only partially visible as was the house.

Ben asked where we were and what this was. I pointed to the house and said, “Rght there is where Sharon Tate was murdered.”

I had to see it. I had read the stories in the newspapers and of course Bugliosi’s book, but it all read like fiction. It was hard to believe that something like that actually happened. I had to see concrete evidence. And here it was. The scene of the crime.

So Charlie died. Good riddance. I’m just sorry he wasn’t executed long ago. He wiggled through the system thanks to Rose Bird’s court briefly overturning the death penalty in California.

But in the end, Charlie succumbed. AMF.

Charlie 2012

 

Burking Still Lives After 200 Years

Asphyxia is the interruption of oxygen (O2) supply to the body, particularly the brain. Normally, air contains O2 and, when breathed in, it passes into the blood, using hemoglobin as a transport molecule, where it is distributed to the tissues. Any interruption of this delivery chain can lead to death from asphyxia.

The air might be deficient in oxygen such as at high altitude or when another gas such as carbon dioxide (CO2) accumulates, depressing the O2 content to dangerous levels. Or flow into the mouth and nose could be restricted by smothering, choking, or strangulation, or by anything that restricts the expansion of the chest. Or the inhaled air could contain a toxin such as carbon monoxide (CO) or cyanide (CN), and these, in turn, interfere with O2 delivery to the tissues.

Burking is the term applied to asphyxial deaths that result from someone sitting on another in a fashion that restricts breathing. The victim dies from asphyxia. This is a form of Mechanical Asphyxia, where the movement of the chest wall is restricted to the point that breathing isn’t possible. Burking refers to the famous case of Burke and Hare.

 

 

From FORENSICS FOR DUMMIES:

Applying Pressure: Mechanical Asphyxia

Mechanical asphyxia results when some external force applied to the body prevents the expansion of the chest and leaves the victim unable to breathe. A person trapped beneath a heavy object, such as a car or a collapsed wall or ceiling, can die because the force of the external pressure prevents the victim from taking in a breath.

A boa constrictor kills in exactly this way. This muscular species of snake wraps itself around its prey. Each time the prey exhales, the snake coils a little tighter. So, each successive breath becomes increasingly shallower until the prey can’t take another breath. Death follows quickly.

 

 

Suffocation by “Burking” 

Experts have come to know a particular form of mechanical suffocation as Burking. William Burke was a merchant of sorts around Edinburgh, Scotland, in the early 1800s. In 1827, he hooked up with William Hare, who ran a beggars hotel in the village of Tanners Close. In December of that year, a resident of the hotel died, and Burke arranged to sell the body to a Dr. Knox, who needed corpses for his dissection demonstrations. Burke and Hare loaded a coffin with bark and buried it in front of many witnesses. They then delivered the body to Dr. Knox and received seven pounds and ten shillings. The men struck an arrangement whereby Burke and Hare would deliver the doctor more bodies for eight pounds in summer and ten in winter. (Apparently grave robbing was more difficult when the ground was cold.)

Burke and Hare began digging up fresh corpses for their new enterprise, but the local populace refused to die fast enough for the greedy men. They began kidnapping and killing people who were not likely to be missed. Burke sat on his victims, holding their mouths and noses closed until they suffocated, after which Burke and Hare delivered the corpse and collected their fee.

A lodger at the hotel notified authorities when she discovered the sixteenth and last victim beneath a bed. Police arrested the two men. Hare then cut a deal and testified against Burke. Burke was convicted and experienced asphyxia for himself when he was hanged on January 28, 1829, an event attended by as many as 40,000 people.

 

Burking is alive nearly 200 years later. It seems that 325-pound woman sat on her 9-year-old cousin to punish her for some indiscretion. Unfortunately, the child died from mechanical asphyxia—-“Burking.”

 

Psychopathic Brains and MRIs

 

Psychopath, sociopath, borderline personality disorder, choose your phrase as these are often used interchangeably but in the end they are terms used to describe certain criminal offenders. In many cases, the worst of the worst. These individuals are often impulsive, lack self-control, and have little, if any, empathy with others, particularly their victims. The annals of serial predators are filled with such persons.

Forensic science has for many years searched for a true lie detector and a reliable method of determining someone’s criminal tendencies. Most have not panned out. One recent investigative arena is the use of functional MRIs to determine segmental brain activity in both “normal” and “psychopathic” individuals. The hope is to discover reliable and repeatable differences that might prove useful in criminal investigations.

One current study at Radboud University in the Netherlands has revealed some interesting results. It appears that persons with sociopathic tendencies possess an overly active “reward” area of their brains while at the same time showing some loss of communication between this area and one that is used for “self-control.” Obviously this leads to a dangerous combination of psychiatric defects. If someone is reward driven, impulsive, and narcissistic, while at the same time lacking any sort of consistent control of these impulses, it is easy to see that criminal behavior could follow.

Though this study and none of the others that have looked into this area of psychopathology have delivered the “smoking gun” of psychopathic behavior, they are intriguing investigations.

 

Crime and Science Radio: Dangerous Instincts: An Interview with Senior FBI Profiler (Ret) Mary Ellen O’Toole Ph.D.

BIO: MARY ELLEN O’TOOLE, Ph.D. has spent her career studying the criminal mind. One of the most senior profilers for the FBI until her retirement in 2009, Dr. O’Toole has helped capture, interview and understand some of the world’s most infamous people including:

•Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer

•Derrick Todd Lee and Sean Vincent Gillis, both serial killers in Baton Rouge

•The Collar Bomb Case, a bank robbery and murder of a pizza delivery man

•Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber

•The Polly Klaas child abduction

•David Parker Ray, a serial sexual sadist

•The Red Lake School Shooting

•The Monster of Florence serial murder case

•The Zodiac serial murder case

•The bombing during the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, UT

•The mass murder in Florence, Montana in 2001
Dr. O’Toole also worked the Elizabeth Smart and Natalee Holloway disappearances, the Columbine shootings and many other high profile cases. Her law enforcement career spanned 32 years, beginning in the San Francisco’s District Attorney’s Office when she was a Criminal Investigator. Dr. O’Toole worked as an FBI agent for 28 years, spending more than half of her Bureau career in the organization’s prestigious Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU)—the very unit that is the focus of the hit crime series “Criminal Minds.”

During her time in the unit, Dr. O’Toole developed an expertise in Criminal Investigative Analysis (CIA) as well as offender behavior. She has provided assistance to law enforcement and prosecutors on a wide range of violent and criminal behavior including serial and single homicides, sexual assaults, kidnappings, product tampering, school shootings, arsons and bombings and extortions. Dr. O’Toole is also a trained FBI hostage negotiator and has a unique expertise in the areas of targeted school violence, workplace violence and threat assessment.

Dr. O’Toole is recognized as the FBI’s leading expert in the area of “psychopathy.”  Her work in psychopathy has put her on the forefront of mental health and law enforcement efforts to apply the concepts of this personality disorder to both violent and white collar offenders and their behavior and crime scenes. She lectures internationally on the application of the theory of psychopathy to real life situations. She continues to lecture at the FBI Academy on psychopathy and interviewing. She has served as adjunct faculty to the FBI’s Prestigious Leadership Development Institute (LDI) at the FBI Academy and also frequently lectures at the Smithsonian Institution about everything from Sherlock Holmes to personal safety. She is a Fellow with the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

LISTEN: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/suspensemagazine/2017/03/04/crime-and-science-radio-with-special-guest-mary-ellen-otoole

Link will go live Saturday 3-4-17 at 10 a.m. Pacific

LINKS:

Mary Ellen’s Website: http://maryellenotoole.com

Mary Ellen on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drmaryellenotoole/

Mary Ellen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/maryellenotoole

Dangerous Instincts: How Gut Feelings Betray Us: https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Instincts-How-Feelings-Betray/dp/1594630836

Dangerous Instincts: The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/dangerous-instincts-fbi-profiler-explains-the-dangers-of-that-nice-neighbor/2011/10/17/gIQAkvNCDM_story.html

Learning How To Read People: http://www.theironjen.com/learning-how-to-read-people-dr-mary-ellen-otoole/

Psychopathy: FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin: https://leb.fbi.gov/2012/july/psychopathy-an-important-forensic-concept-for-the-21st-century

Orlando Shooter Profile: CCTV America: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhTjGAsUuzk

Why Are American Cops So Bad At Catching Killers?: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/02/why-are-american-cops-so-bad-at-catching-killers#.PFh6oYRhF

 

Katherine Ramsland: What if Jack the Ripper Lived with You?

It seems that after many disturbing crimes, the family, friends, or neighbors, in shock at what happened, often say: “But he seemed so nice. So normal. We had no idea.”

Happens all the time.

My friend Katherine Ramsland addresses this in an excellent new blog post in Shadow Boxing on the Psychology Today site.

 

 

What if Jack the Ripper Lived with You? by Dr, Katherine Ramsland

An early Ripper tale depicts the role of denial in reframing the obvious.

I’ve long known about an early fictional story based on the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper, but only recently read it. The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes, was published as a short story in January 1911 in McClure’s magazine. Later, she lengthened it into a novella that focused on the female landlady. Alfred Hitchcock changed it somewhat to turn it into a film.

Reportedly, Lowndes was inspired by an anecdote she heard at a dinner party about an elderly couple who were certain that Jack the Ripper had lodged with them around the time of the murders late in 1888. During the Ripper spree, Lowndes had been a young aspiring writer. Although she was in Paris, not London, at the time, she followed the sensational news coverage. Years later, she used the unique context to write a story that drew out gender and class issues in London society. She also shows a keen eye for subtle psychological twists.

The plot is basic: The Buntings, an aging couple with financial problems, are overjoyed when a single man arrives and decides to rent several rooms. Without this stroke of good luck, they would have starved. The lodger, Mr. Sleuth, is an odd duck, but Mrs. Bunting can overlook this as long as he pays and doesn’t cause trouble. Her accommodating attitude foreshadows more dramatic allowances to come.

Mrs. Bunting attends to Sleuth, while her husband spends his time reading newspapers, especially when stories pop up about “The Avenger,” a Ripperesque killer of alcoholic women. Mr. Bunting has a friend on the police force, so he gets behind-the-scenes details. This also gives the author a chance to describe Scotland Yard’s Black Museum, founded in 1875.

Criminological museums popped up in several large cities during the late nineteenth century. Objects and pictures were exhibited to showcase theories about crime and its perpetrators. Into these museums went weapons, poisons, blood samples, fingerprints, hangman’s nooses, morgue photos, crime reconstructions, handwriting samples, police memorabilia, and even human remains.

Mrs. Bunting despises her husband’s obsession with the unsolved Avenger murders, but she begins to suspect that their lodger might be the guy. This is where the story’s genius lies. The more she discovers, the more she covers for him. She even ventures out to a coroner’s inquest – something only vulgar people did – to discover what the police actually know. (Great period detail!)

Mrs. Bunting knows the lodger has a satchel but she cannot find it when she cleans his rooms. She spots red liquid seeping from a locked cabinet, but accepts his hasty and implausible explanation. She begins to act in uncharacteristic ways, including lying to her husband. Each time she discovers something that implicates Mr. Sleuth as a killer, she tones it down.

In part, she needs to feel safe in her own home, and in part, she needs the money. If he’s arrested, she faces poverty.

In this tale you get some early criminal profiling (a “mission killer”), and even a glimpse of Madame Tussaud’s famous wax museum. But most interesting is the way Lowndes so subtly shows how anyone might accommodate the behavior of someone later unmasked as a serial killer.

I hear this question all the time. People just cannot believe that in the home of a serial killer there might be innocent parties. But it happens. Even if certain items or behaviors should seem sinister, denial is a powerful mechanism – especially when a personal investment in seeing things in a more flattering light is strong.

The best expression I’ve seen is in Lionel Dahmer’s memoir about his son, Jeffrey. When Jeff lived in his grandmother’s basement, she complained to Lionel twice about disgusting odors. Jeff had an innocent explanation: he experimented with chemicals on chicken parts from a grocery store. Lionel found a nasty-smelling liquid near the garbage cans that he thought was ordinary meat juice. Why would he have concluded that it was human blood?

“I allowed myself to believe Jeff,” Lionel mused in A Father’s Story, “to accept all his answers regardless of how implausible they might seem…. More than anything, I allowed myself to believe that there was a line in Jeff, a line he wouldn’t cross…  My life became an exercise in avoidance and denial.”

He accepted a stolen mannequin as a “prank”, a .357 Magnum as a “target pistol,” a charge of child molestation as an “accident,” and the request for a freezer as a responsible attempt to be economical. Who would have thought it was for dismembered body parts?

The Lodger sheds no light on the Ripper’s identity, but it does portray what can happen when bias and need infect our perception and beliefs.

Visit the original post: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing/201608/what-if-jack-the-ripper-lived-you

And check out Katherine’s recent interview on Crime and Science Radio:

http://www.dplylemd.com/csr-past-details/katherine-ramsland.html

 

 

Crime and Science Radio: The BTK Killer and Other Serial Murderers: An Interview with Psychologist and Author Dr. Katherine Ramsland

This Saturday at 10 a.m. Pacific Jan Burke and I welcome Dr. Katherine Ramsland to the show to discuss her years of research into one of America’s most notorious serial killers Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer and her wonderful book that has resulted form this work.

 

Dr. Katherine Ramsland

 

BIO: Dr. Katherine Ramsland, director of the Master of Arts in Criminal Justice program at DeSales University, also teaches the forensic psychology track. She has published over 1,000 articles, stories, and reviews, and 59 books, including The Mind of a Murderer, The Forensic Science of CSI, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, The Human Predator: A Historical Chronicle of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation, The Ivy League Killer, and The Murder Game. Her book, Psychopath, was a #1 bestseller on the Wall Street Journal’s list. With former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary, she co-authored a book on his cases, The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators among Us, with Dr. Henry C. Lee, The Real Life of a Forensic Scientist, and with Professor James E. Starrs, A Voice for the Dead. She presents workshops to law enforcement, psychologists, coroners, judges, and attorneys, and has consulted for several television series, including CSI and Bones.  She also writes a regular blog for Psychology Today called “Shadow-boxing” and consults for numerous crime documentary production companies. Her most recent book (August 2016) is with serial killer, Dennis Rader, called Confessions of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer. She will also publish The Ripper Letter, a supernatural thriller based on Jack the Ripper lore, and a textbook, Forensic Investigation: Methods from Experts (2017).

LISTEN: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/suspensemagazine/2016/03/30/crime-and-science-radio-with-special-guest-dr-katherine-ramsland

Link goes live Saturday August 13, 2016 at 10 a.m. Pacific

LINKS:

Website: www.katherineramsland.com

Blog: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Kath.ramsland/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatRamsland