Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters (63 page)

When Orion went online in Vancouver, it quickly proved itself in catching a child molester who was attacking children in different parts of the city. The police had a vehicle description, but little else. After determining the traffic patterns at the times of the attacks, Orion plotted jeopardies, eliminating industrial, commercial, and other nonresidential areas. Based on census data and reflecting the probable socioeconomic background of the offender as identified by psychological profiling, Orion calculated a list of postal codes, in order of probability, where the offender likely resided. These postal codes were then filtered through motor vehicle registration and driver’s license files to match to the suspect vehicle described. A very short list of suspects was identified and subsequently investigated by standard police procedure, quickly leading to the arrest of the child molester.

As powerful and as automated as all these systems are, Profiler and Orion are no better than the information fed into them. The geographical targeting done by Orion depends on the quality of the psychological profile of the suspect, as different profile types behave differently in geographical space. Likewise, Profiler’s ability to analyze data is only as good as the artificial intelligence rules written for it by human programmers. Furthermore, if police on the scene do not recognize, note, and identify certain crime scene characteristics, there is nothing to input into Profiler. Finally, the output of these computer systems only provides high probability rates—it still remains up to human officers to interpret the data and fit them into their investigations in an effective manner.

TEN
SURVIVING A SERIAL KILLER:
Escaping the Monster’s Clutch

Take it from one who knows: It pays to be paranoid.
—
DANNY ROLLING
(The Gainesville Ripper)
People should learn to see and so avoid all danger. Just as a wise man keeps away from mad dogs, one should not make friends with evil men.
—
BUDDHA

Profiling still remains very much a human activity, because while a computer might process information faster than a human, the depth and flexibility of human thinking power exceeds that of the computer—including the mind of the offender. The criminal imagination is creative in ways that often can escape the strictly defined rules of a computer’s artificial intelligence—only the human mind can keep up. Profiling is as much an intuitive art, unapproachable by a computer, as it is a precise science. The information in this chapter is based on FBI interviews with serial offenders and their victims who survived.
This not a “how-to” guide to survival
—as much as there might be similarities between serial killers and their behaviors, in the end, each one is an individual capable of exhibiting entirely new and unknown characteristics. The information here is presented with the purpose of identifying some of the options available and the risks involved with each. They are not foolproof measures and if you choose any of them,
you do so at your own risk
.

Avoiding the Serial Killer

You might
already
be a survivor of a serial killer, without even knowing it. You may have sat near one in a movie theater or in a restaurant; you might have passed one in the street or parked your car next to one. One might have approached you—do you remember any odd requests from a stranger to help him carry a package to his car or look for a lost puppy? Some man whose attentions you turned away in a bar? A nice couple who offered you a ride in their car—they looked fine but somehow there was something not quite right, and you turned them down? Maybe you are alive simply because you chatted with a friend a minute longer instead of walking off alone, or because somebody else, whom you do not even recall, arrived in the parking lot as you were getting into your car. Maybe you are a heterosexual male who was invited home by a homosexual, and you turned him down; maybe you are gay, and turned down an invitation from a guy you just didn’t quite like for some inexplicable reason. The serial killer begins setting you up for death when he engages you in some kind of innocent contact—whether he gets to finish the job is often up to you.

Serial killers are frequently mobile, and the chances of passing one in the street or having casual contact with one might be not all that astronomical. I bumped into two that I know of. Your own deeds and actions, however, can dramatically increase those chances. The FBI categorizes serial killer victims as “high risk” or “low risk,” and often that category can depend on your behavior and simple choices you make.

From the descriptions of how serial killers select their victims, we see that various factors stack up together to determine risk. Some factors are not under the control of a victim, such as age or race, while others are.

Thus, based on the FBI survey of serial killers and their victims, we can say that being white in the United States immediately increases your risk: Ninety-two percent of victims were white (although recently there has been an increase in black serial killers and black victims). Being female (82 percent), unmarried (80 percent), and between ages fifteen and twenty-eight (73 percent) all put you at higher risk.
²³²

Beyond that, “victim facilitation” can then propel you into an even higher risk category. Factors such as residence in a bad neighborhood; activity as a prostitute; sex-industry employment; hitchhiking or a habit of picking up hitchhikers; employment at night; and employment serving casual customers, such as a convenience store clerk or waitress, all increase the statistical probability that you could come to the attention of a serial killer. (Checking into a cheap hotel in a bad neighborhood . . . ) These “high facilitators” are evident in 11 to 13 percent of victims of serial killers.
²³³
That means, however, that the remaining balance of serial killer victims were simply victims of chance—they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It should be noted that not being alone has at best a marginal effect on your safety: Thirty-seven percent of victims, or more than a third, had a companion with them when they were killed.
²³⁴
The presence of a companion could have even increased a false sense of security, contributing to their death. A child or a teen accompanied by one other is only marginally safer. Big groups—five and up, unmanageable by even a team of two serial killers—are safer, unless the offender can separate a victim from the group.

Trust Your Intuition

One very important lesson that comes forth from reviewing accounts of people who were approached by serial killers but disengaged from them is
never underestimate your instincts or your intuition.
Numerous accounts are given by women who for no explicable reason, other than an intuitive “bad feeling” or “women’s intuition,” refused to walk into a serial killer’s trap. In reality, female intuition or male “gut feeling” is not a sixth sense. You have probably perceived something concrete that spells out danger, but your brain has not caught up with your perception—you do not know yet what it is you have seen to have analyzed it logically. That is intuition.

Remember the woman whom Ted Bundy approached on campus wearing a cast and asking to help carry his books to his car? She reported that as she approached his Volkswagen, she noticed that the front passenger seat was missing. For some reason that she could not explain, she suddenly felt afraid and she placed the books on the hood of the car and hurried off, feeling embarrassed by her “irrational” anxiety. It probably saved her life because Bundy had precisely removed the passenger seat to more easily transport his victims, but she had not logically figured that out.

If something does not feel right, then it probably is not.
Never ignore such feelings; do not be embarrassed to act “irrationally” in front of a stranger or be afraid of appearing to be rude. Better rude than dead.

Never Get into the Car

The bottom line is, once they get into the car, few victims return alive. Nineteen-year-old Carol DaRonch was in a shopping mall when a neatly dressed Ted Bundy politely approached her, told her he was a police detective, and asked her for her car’s license number. He then informed her that he and his partner, who presumably was somewhere nearby, were investigating a number of break-ins into cars that had just occurred in the parking lot—would she mind accompanying him back to her car to see if anything had been stolen?

After “inspecting” her car, Bundy managed to persuade her to get into his Volkswagen to drive to the police station and “file a report.” She was annoyed, because nothing had been stolen and moreover she became suspicious about a policeman driving a Volkswagen. Brought up in a Mormon community to be polite and respectful of authority, DaRonch had the boldness to ask Bundy to show her some identification, but not enough to
demand
a good look at it when he merely flashed a wallet with a small gold badge in it. Despite her misgivings, the aura of authority that Bundy projected overcame her good sense. She got into the Volkswagen and they began to drive. Bundy told her to fasten her seat belt, but at this point she smelled alcohol on his breath and refused. Along the way Bundy suddenly brought the car to a stop at a deserted spot and attempted to handcuff her. She struggled and Bundy accidentally snapped both cuffs on the same hand. She managed to roll out of the car while Bundy attempted to hit her on the head with a crowbar or tire iron. Kicking, screaming, and blocking the blows of the weapon from striking her head, she luckily managed to escape from Bundy. Years later, she testified at his murder trial as the only survivor of an attack by Bundy.

A study of serial homicides indicated that in 78 percent of the cases, the killer used a vehicle directly or indirectly in the murder, and that 50 percent of the serial killers who did use a vehicle used it to offer their victims a ride.
²³⁵
In Canada, fourteen-year-old Leslie Mahaffy, locked out of her house by her parents as punishment for coming home late, encountered handsome and charming Paul Bernardo passing by her home in the middle of the night. After chatting for a few minutes, she asked him for a cigarette and he told her he had some in his car parked down the street. She was doomed the moment she sat down in the passenger seat to smoke it and continue talking with him, even while cautiously leaving the car door open and her legs dangling out on the curb. At one point Leslie turned toward the open door to blow some smoke out. At that instant Bernardo snapped the trap shut: He placed a knife against her throat and told her to lift her legs into the car. Bernardo pushed her into the rear seat, blindfolded her, and threw a blanket over her. He then calmly drove forty miles back to his house, where he and his wife, Karla Homolka, raped and murdered her. I repeat:
Do not get into the car!
(And don’t lock your children out of the house no matter how late they come home.)

Also do not be fooled by the presence of a baby seat or children’s toys in the vehicle—or even the children themselves. Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, once returned to a body dump site to have sex with the corpse of one of his victims while his son slept in the vehicle.

Dealing with Strangers and Recognizing Warning Signs of Duplicity

According to Gavin de Becker, a threat prediction expert who quotes the saying of Buddha with which this chapter opens, there are behavioral indicators of potential violence in some people.
²³⁶
When a stranger approaches you with ulterior motives, there can be underlying warning signs of duplicity. Learn to recognize the signs that there might be more to the contact than what appears on the surface. These signs include the following:

• Feigned weakness:
  The stranger makes a big deal of letting you know that he might be physically weaker than you. “Please help me carry this to my car. Ever since my back injury I can hardly move.” He is wearing a cast or walking with a cane. That’s how Ted Bundy trapped some of his victims.
  
• Too much information:
  The stranger gives you too much unnecessary and detailed information: “My sister has a sweater just like that. She was living in California but she moved home last year. Her boyfriend gave it to her for Christmas, but afterward they broke up . . .” When somebody is telling a lie, even if it sounds credible to you, he has less confidence in what he says; thus he tends to fill in more details than necessary to bolster it. This revelation of details also makes a stranger appear more familiar to you than he really is.
  
• The unrequested promise:
  “Just one drink and then I will take you home,
  I promise.”
  You never asked him to promise you anything. Sudden offers of unsolicited promises can be a sign of an underlying agenda.
  
• Friendly authority:
  The stranger projects some kind of nonthreatening authority: “I’m the park ranger here. I guess you didn’t see the signs; this part of the park is closed. I’ll escort you/drive you out of here.” “I’m a police officer. You shouldn’t be walking alone here; we are on the lookout for a serial killer in this neighborhood. Get in and I’ll drive you out of here.” You want to cooperate in the fear of turning the authority to an unfriendly mode. This is a tough one too, because some serial killers come tricked out with police identification and police-like vehicles. Insist that he call a uniformed backup if you have not done anything wrong and you are being “arrested.”
  
• Challenging your ego:
  The stranger labels you in a subtly critical way, hoping that you will be challenged to prove them wrong. “You’re probably not strong enough to help me lift this box into the back of my van.” “You’re not scared of me, are you?”
  
• Teaming:
  Often a manipulative stranger tries to “team up” with you. You and he suddenly become a “we”—“I hate drinking alone, I know a great place
  we
  can go to up the road.” “I’m going there too,
  we
  can get there in my car.” This is an attempt to somehow bond with you or quickly establish a familiarity—“we are in the same boat.”
  
• Feminine referencing:
  The stranger projects an image of himself in relationships with other females or children, therefore reassuring you that he is not interested in you and is harmless. “I’m supposed to pick up my wife from the campus—do you know where the night classes are held? Jump in, I’ll give you a lift and you can show me.” “My daughter wants a sweater just like that, and I’ve been looking for it everywhere. Where did you get it? Can you show me if I give you a ride?” References to children or pets also projects a friendly and harmless image: children’s toys in the car or the presence of a baby seat.
  
• Imposed obligation:
  A stranger imposes his help on you, and thus you feel an obligation to him. That obligation can then be manipulated into placing you into a vulnerable position. “Let me help you carry that to your car” can lead to “Can you give me a lift to the corner?” You come out of your home and find your tire flat. “Let me change that flat tire for you” can be followed up by “May I come inside to wash my hands?” But maybe he was the one who punctured the tire in the first place. Having accepted his help, you would feel bad to refuse a simple request like that.
  
• An appeal to a vulnerable third party:
  “Help me find my lost puppy before it gets away too far.” “I need to drop off this medicine to an elderly person but you can’t park there. Can you just come and sit in my car while I run up for five minutes?” “My little girl is missing—can you help me search for her?”
  
• Never taking no for an answer
  —A classic. No matter how many times you say, “That’s okay, I don’t need your help,” the stranger insists on helping you. If you give some weak excuse or sound unsure, he will persist. Do not be afraid to be blunt and rude: “I said, NO! Go away. I do not want your help.”