by Elizabeth Hall
The crime of
serial murder is not just a problem in the United States; it is in fact a
global problem. In the United
States, the local jurisdictions have the
help of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and their Behavioral Analysis Unit
to provide profiles and expertise in solving these types of crimes. They also
held a Symposium on Serial Murder to help law enforcement learn new techniques
involving a Multi Disciplinary Approach. This Symposium involved mental health
experts, investigators in the law enforcement field, scholars, and
representatives of the media who have as separate groups, been studying this
phenomenon for years (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2005).
The 187 member countries of Interpol, held a
Symposium on Homicide and Serial Rape in 2008, and have come to the conclusion
that there should be more international cooperation and sharing of information
on these types of crimes (Noble, 2008). While a lot of serial killers tend to
stay in their comfort zones, there are predators who roam from state to state,
or even country to country because of their job or hobbies routinely, These
criminals are harder to catch because of the multiple jurisdictions, customs,
and state or country government differences. We will look at the investigative
techniques used in the cases of Andrei
Chikatilo from Russia, and Pedro Lopez to discuss foreign investigations while
comparing what their law enforcement did in relation to what the FBI describes
as “successful” techniques to investigate this type of violent crime.
While the
phenomenon of serial murder is more publicized in the United States, with
countless books, television shows, and movies, this violent crime happens all
over the world. The investigative techniques, and the way that the crime is
perceived varies from country to country depending on local customs, cultures,
and whatever advances in technology are present or lacking in that particular
society. These same differences in cultural society also influence the
techniques that the killer uses along with their motivations to kill (Hickey,
n.d.). The wide public interest in
serial murder began in Whitechapel
London in the late 1880’s with Jack the Ripper’s crimes which were never
solved, and continues today.
Unfortunately, most of the public’s knowledge of
these crimes is based on productions made in Hollywood, where they usually enhance the
facts of the crimes to sell more tickets instead of portraying the actualities
of the crimes. Public pressure to solve these crimes appears in the form of
elected officials leaning on the investigators. Pressure from the media arrives
in the form of sensationalized coverage of the crimes, along with conjecture
produced and aired by so called experts which are discussed later in this
essay. Law enforcement personnel are subject to misinformation from
professionals employed as pathologists, investigators, and prosecutors by
taking experience from a single case, and trying to advise law enforcement with
results and circumstances from their experience (Federal Bureau of
Investigation, 2005).
Another problem
presenting itself is the “talking head “issue. These people publicly state their
opinions as fact, and are given credibility by the media. They portray them
selves as experts, appear often on television and in the news, and hypothesize
the reasons a particular offender commits these heinous crimes or on the
character or physical traits of the offender. The sad truth, however, is that
none of these people have access to the confidential facts surrounding the
case. The badly chosen commentaries just promote more misunderstanding about
the subject, and can actually damage law enforcement attempts at solving the
case at hand (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2005).
The professionals
attending the Serial Murder Symposium all agreed that there is no generic
blueprint of a serial murderer; however, they did notice several traits that
they all seem to possess. These are: a need for sensation, a pronounced
deficiency in remorse or feelings of guilt, controlling nature, and impulsive
or predatory behavior. Because these traits are dependable indicators of
psychopathic personality disorder, it was noted of the importance of law enforcement
and any other persons involved in the criminal justice system to have an
understanding of psychopathic personalities and the relative nature that this
contributes to investigating serial murder. (Federal Bureau of Investigation,
2005)
The Symposium
participants recognized several successful analytical procedures to investigate
a serial murder case. These are as follows:
Identification- The identification of a series
of murders is the first and foremost step, and can prove to be the most challenging
step due to the multiple jurisdictions and transient nature of the offender and
the crimes.
Leadership- The challenges of investigation
crimes such as these is greater than that of most homicides because of added
pressure from elected officials, the public, victims families, and the media.
Because of this, members of the Symposium concluded that the most important
aspect of the investigation remains to be the analytical role because that is
what will catch the offender, and all other functions of the investigation are
secondary. A firm grasp must be maintained on the chain of command in order to
have a successful investigation, as the added pressures become a factor of the
job.
Task Force Organization- Lead agency must be
established to take on the main role in the investigation, all other law
enforcement organizations must have agents on the force, following this, a head
and co-head investigator is assigned to the case, from here, other officers and
liaison personnel are assigned tasks to perform for the head investigator.
There must be a clear line of communication between administrators and
investigators and maintain a definite rapport while keeping up with their own
tasks assigned on the case.
Resource Augmentation- While it is sometimes
better to have fewer people involved in an investigation, other personnel may
be required to complete tasks for the investigation either permanently or
temporarily, however the former is recommended over the latter to provide
stability to the investigation. The role of the head investigator is to run the
investigation while the role of the administration is to provide the
investigative team the tools and support they need to complete the task.
Communications- Daily briefings, face to face
case briefings, and submitting ViCAP
reports are effective communication measures.
Data Management- Reports should be compiled as
soon as the investigation provides information to ensure that all agencies and
parties involved have real time information, ideally the reports would be generated
by a computer. The FBI Rapid Start program is an effective tool in data
management.
Analytic Tools- Crime analysts assigned to the
head investigators to provide information sorting, charting, and analyzing
functions.
Autopsy- An autopsy provided by the coroner or
medical examiner is essential for these types of crimes.
Investigations of serial murder in
the United States
tend to have a clear plan and investigative tools are used which have been ascertained
by a group of people who have dealt with offenders of this type (Federal Bureau
of Investigation, 2005).
Interpol also had a 2008 conference on Homicide and Serial Sexual
Crimes, that involved 36 countries altogether. The main focus of this
conference was to discuss the fact that serial murder and rape are global
problems, needing a global solution and cooperation exceeding national
boundaries. The conference also addressed the need for global databases for
countries to collect DNA and fingerprints and be able to run them globally
instead of nationally. This conference
begins to address the issue of serial murderers having comfort zones across
multiple jurisdictions, countries, and cultures, laying the groundwork for
future globalization if data, through the utilization of Interpol (Noble, 2008).
Take the case of Pedro Lopez nicknamed “The Monster of the Andes”, who
was said to have killed over 300 girls in Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru beginning
in 1978 upon his release from prison. Pedro was born in Columbia, to a harsh upbringing with a domineering
prostitute mother whom he later blamed for all of his problems. In fact when
Pedro was only eight years old he was caught having sex with his sister and his
mother kicked him out telling him to find his own way in life. He ended up on
the streets of Bogota after a year of sleeping in alleyways, terrified of
strangers because an older man tricked him into believing that he was offering
him help, and instead sodomized him for days before turning him back out on the
street.
When he was in his late twenties he ended up in jail in Bogota. When he was
released in 1978 he went to Peru,
where he began stalking and murdering girls from the various Indian Tribes
located there. When the Indians turned him over to the authorities, they
deported him back to Ecuador
because they reasoned that they didn’t have time to waste investigating Indian
deaths (Lohr, n.d.).
 |
| Pedro Lopez photo credit biography.com |
During the time that Lopez was travelling Ecuador,
he would make frequent stops in Columbia
as well. Authorities were noticing the rise in cases of missing girls in the
area, but all dismissed the fact to a rise in human sex slave trafficking. It
was not until a major flood in 1980 in Ambato Ecuador, when
four bodies were unearthed by flood waters that authorities thought any
differently. A few days after the flood, Lopez tried to abduct a 12 year old
girl. Local merchants chased him down and held him until police could come get
him (Lohr, n.d.).
When confronted with some evidence and an interview with an informant
that had gained his trust earlier, Pedro confessed to 100 murders in Columbia, 110 in Ecuador,
and over 100 in Peru
(Lohr, n.d.). If the tools proposed by
the FBI and Interpol were in place when these murders were committed, these
countries would have had access to profiles, information, fingerprints and DNA
profiles. Armed with this information, the police in Peru might not have simply deported
him, because before they spent costly hours investigating, they could have
looked at information gathered on this suspect, and made the decision that
getting him off of the streets would have been well worth their time.
Another case worth looking at is the case of Andrei Chikatilo in Russia.
The globalization of information could have helped in another way to prevent
the loss of life in this gruesome manner. In the last two months of 1982, a man seeking
firewood came across the remains of a young girl in the lesopolosa which is a
strip of land forested to prevent erosion. It turned out to be the body of a
missing 13 year old girl named Lyubov Biryuk.
Major Mikhail Fetisov, head
investigator for the whole region of the country, ordered a search of the area,
inquired about other cases of people missing in the area, and had the skin left
on the body tested for fingerprints. For all of his work, the remains of the
girl were positively identified, however DNA testing was not available yet. The resulting investigation yielded no clues to the killer’s identity. This
girl had been stabbed 22 times after being hit hard in the head from behind.
Within two months, another body had been found near railroad tracks in another
town 20 miles from the original body.
Investigators noted that this body also
had the eyes lacerated, and a number of stab wounds. No persons of that
description had been reported missing, so this victim remained anonymous. Ten
miles and a month later, a soldier collecting wood came across yet another set
of remains of a woman face down on the ground. Despite showing the same type of
stab wounds and eye gouging, this victim also remained nameless (Ramsland,
n.d.).
 |
| Andrei Chickatilo photo credit biography.com |
Despite the evident connection, no one in the government would own up to
that fact. They were formally looked at as three individual crimes that were
not solved. The Major quickly, formed a task force. Among the 10 men chosen for
this assignment was a man from the criminology lab named Viktor Burakov, who
would prove to be especially diligent in his tasks of heading the criminal
investigation, providing the diligence needed to see this investigation to
the end despite numerous setbacks.
The killer had been picking victims of both
sexes, perplexing authorities even more. In 1984, the tenth victim was found, which
happened to be male. There was semen found in the anus of 14 year old Sergei
Markov. With the semen, blood antigens could be matched to eliminate suspects
who had the wrong blood type which turned out to read type A. This test
eliminated all suspects questioned so far in the investigation, so that left investigators
back at square one.
During 1984 another clue surfaced in the form of a size 13
shoeprint left in mud by the crime scene of a woman killed in the same frenzied
manner of the other victims. Semen and blood were found on her clothing. During
the autopsy, the medical examiner found evidence of pubic lice, an absence of
semen in the body, and her stomach still had food in the process of digestion
in it. Her eyes were also left intact, and she was missing a finger. This 18
year old girl was impoverished, and could have easily been led away by the
mention of food. During the investigation they learned that this victim had
actually gone missing in 1982 (Ramsland, n.d.).
It was during this time that the forensic scientists brought in from Moscow discovered the
semen type was type AB, and every person that had falsely confessed or any
suspects they had would have to be removed from suspicion. This caused some
confusion as to whether their killer was one person or two, based on the blood
type evidence. In March of 1984 he killed another young boy, and left the
biggest clue yet- witnesses. They described a tall man with hollow cheeks,
rather large feet, and a stiffened gait wearing large glasses.
None of the
witnesses had ever seen him before. By the summers end in 1984 the known body
count had risen to 24. All semen left behind showed the AB antigen. During this
year the killer started to accelerate his cycle to one victim about every two
weeks.
The investigators thought that he would make a mistake soon. Little did
they know that not only did this killer make very few mistakes, but there were
earlier victims still to be discovered, This killing spree was not to come
to an end anytime in the near future. During this time, the Minister of Defense
added 12 new investigators and brought the task force numbers up to about 200
men and women looking for this killer. People were watching train stations, bus
terminals, and walking in parks undercover (Ramsland, n.d.).
The authorities were convinced that they were looking for someone
falling in the age range of 25-30 years old, muscular and tall, no less than
standard intelligence, careful, and a smooth talker. He was itinerant, and had
a family life either still with his mother, or possibly married. They also
concluded that he may have been treated for mental illness, and that he might
be skillful in the areas of anatomy and wielding a knife. The task force
decided that anyone that had any of these characteristics and or traits would
be issued a blood test (Ramsland, n.d.).
During this time, the press was forbidden to write about the issues that
link these crimes together, and the public was not warned about the dangers of
walking alone. The authorities were still keeping a lid on the fact that they
had a serial murderer in their country. While watching the Rostov bus station, an older man was spotted
trying to talk to females there. The behavior seemed suspicious, and the man
was questioned. This would be the authorities first contact with the man named
Andrei Chikatilo who would later be found to be the monster everyone was
looking for.
In this instance, the officer let him go because Chikatilo simply
said that he was a former teacher, and just wanted to talk to younger people
again. When the officer saw Andrei again, he decided to board the same bus that
Chikatilo got on and watch him. The officer spotted him receiving oral sex from
a lady of the evening that he had hired; he was arrested for indecency in
public. When his belongings were searched, officers found Vaseline, a large
knife, rope, and a soiled towel. When they took his blood type, however they
did not find the AB typology, and therefore concluded since he had blood type
A, was an upstanding member of the communist party, and had nothing in his
background to suggest guilt, to release him (Ramsland, n.d.).
While pressure was mounting on the task force to solve this mystery, a
body turned up in Moscow, where in fact, three bodies turned up matching the pattern. The task force noticed that the killings in Rostov stopped as the bodies in Moscow turned up. The trail soon travelled
back to Shakhty
and other victims. More bodies piled up, along with false confessions.
Chief
Investigator, Issa Kostoyev, who had already investigated one killer of this
type, was brought in to investigate what had been done so far. He believed that
all of the previous methods had failed. That investigators had already
encountered their man, and let him go because they did not realize that they
were in the presence of the killer. Earlier on in the investigation, Burakov
had used Alexandr Bukhanovsky, who was a psychiatrist, to formulate a basic
profile of the offender. It was unusual to have one person killing members of
both sexes.
The result of the information was not received well initially,
however, Burakov turned to him once again. Only this time, allowing Bukhanovsky
access to all of the crime scene details in the hopes of receiving a profile
that would lead them closer to finding what Bukhanovsky ended up labeling
Killer X. What he found was that the killer was non psychotic, but fancied
himself gifted, showing arrogance and narcissism with only average intelligence
levels. Although he was a necrosadist
and killed to achieve sexual gratification by watching his victims die, he cut
the eyes out for reasons unknown, and was heterosexual, and not particularly
creative.
The profile was 65 pages long, with very detailed information naming
other various traits and characteristics of the offender. Burakov once again
did not feel that this information contained any clues to the identity of the
fiend. He sought the counsel of a
killer on death row, Anatoly Slivko, who was awaiting execution for sexually motivated murder. He had
hopes of understanding the mind of a criminal who is capable of these monstrous
acts, who was scheduled for execution in a few hours. While they did not learn anything new
directly, indirectly, they noticed the compartmentalization of his mind, which
allowed him to do things like murder young boys, all the while, still being
able to divide into complete moral outrage at the thought of doing something
simple such as being an adult and indulging in alcoholic beverages in the
presence of minors (Ramsland, n.d.).
1986 and 1987 were relatively quiet for the task force as far as new
bodies were concerned, and many people began to believe that the monster had
disappeared, until April of 1988 when more bodies turned up. They were also
learning from the Ministry of Health that the assumption that the typing of
blood from secretions did not mean that the blood type would match. In short,
there were documented cases where they did not match, and that any suspect
ruled out by blood type could in fact be the person committing the murders. Meanwhile
the body count rose to 36 by the end of August 1990 with the killer continuing
to evade capture or identification.
Finally, after the 36th body was
found, the investigators had information regarding men that were at the nearby
train station. A name on the list sent chills down the spines of investigators:
Andrei Chikatilo who had been questioned early in the investigation and
released because his blood type did not match the AB found in the semen
samples. This new discovery produced more evidence that they had found their
killer, in the form of witnesses having seen Chikatilo leaving the woods and
washing his hands at a pump. Along with this, he had a red colored smear along
his cheek and ear, and small branches attached to his coat.
The task force
arrested Andrei on November 1990, bit still had no real idea of the scope of
the killings. During the interrogation,
Kostoyev tried to get Andrei to confess unsuccessfully. During a medical
exam it was discovered that while Andrei’s blood type was actually A, his semen
produced a feeble B antibody, explaining the AB semen results. Kostoyev had 10
days to produce a confession from Chikatilo, and on the 9th day,
after achieving no success on his own, Burakov decided that maybe a different
person interrogating him would produce the desired result.
Bukhanovsky was the
chosen person to perform this task. The information, gained from Bukhanovsky
from the interview and from subsequent interviews, gleaned some facts. These included that the body count was 56 in
total, and that Andrei, due to the voracious natures of his crimes, the
movement to different locations to commit the crimes, and, that he quit killing
for a whole year during this time span was by the legal definition, sane
(Ramsland, n.d.).
After the killing spree of Chikatilo, Russian authorities have the
ability to study the phenomenon of serial murder in depth, and the permission
to confer with specialists from other countries including our own Federal
Bureau of Investigation (Ramsland, n.d.). If the measures discussed in the
Symposium in the United States, and the conference held by Interpol would have
been in place at the time of the first semen discovery, information about the
rare person who would secrete one blood type, and actually register another may
have been shared knowledge, and Chikatilo would have been caught much earlier
in his murderous spree. The other noteworthy aspect of this case is that had
the public been made aware that there was a killer in their midst, people would
have been more watchful and would have noted more of the strange behaviors
associated with this killer.
In conclusion, law enforcement in our
country and in other countries are beginning to understand the value of sharing
information for study, or cross reference in an active investigation. Pressures
from the media, elected officials, and the public caused by the heinous nature
of these crimes, enables them to be viewed
as high profile cases and makes them harder to investigate, and to keep public
fears at bay, due to the multitude of erroneous information coming from both
the media and the public’s perception of these offenders. Investigators and
officials alike are realizing those databases, profiles, and other various
information, should be shared globally in order to reduce recidivism in crimes
of this nature. (Hickey, n.d.)
References:
Federal
Bureau of Investigation. (2005). Serial Murder: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives
for Investigators. Retrieved from the World Wide Web, February 3, 2010.
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/serial_murder.pdf
Hickey, E. W. (n.d.) Serial
Murderers and Their Victims. Fourth Edition. Mason:
Cenegage Learning
Lohr, D. (n.d.). Pedro Lopez: The
Monster of the Andes. Retrieved from the World
Wide
Web February 1, 2010.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/pedro_lopez/4.html
Noble, R. K. (2008) Homicide and
Serial Sexual Crimes Conference. Retrieved from the
World Wide Web, January 1,
2010.
http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/speeches/2008/SGhomicideConf20081125.a
sp
Ramsland, K. (n.d.). The Devil’s
Trail. Retrieved From the World Wide Web, January 1,
2010. http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/chikatilo/coat_1.html
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