Rachel Corbett

And, you know, it didn't work, of course.

They never caught Jack the Ripper as well, as far as we know.

But they did kind of create a new way of thinking about a suspect, a way of thinking psychologically.

So if you fast forward to the 1960s and 1970s, a similar thing happened in the U.S.

in the FBI.

And so they began to look also for psychological clues.

Sometimes they call them psychological fingerprints or behavioral DNA at the crime scene.

So they'll look for, you know, what kind of

gratification might the perpetrator have gotten out of this crime?

You know, was it chaotic or was it really organized and premeditated?

And by looking at these types of clues, they could make certain predictions about who it might be.

The problem, of course, is that it doesn't tend to work like it's intended to.

It might create some interesting theories, but in practice, it doesn't tend to capture as many perpetrators as you might think.

And that's what usually happens when you do have multiple profilers looking at a subject.

I mean, Jack the Ripper, for example, while Arthur Conan Doyle thought he was a highly educated doctor, many others on the force thought he was a very low-class Jewish man living in the East End.

So what I think we find is that it's often a bit of a projection.

It's in the eye of the beholder who you think this perpetrator is going to be.

exactly exactly and i mean you know you can look at so there is certain data you know uh bombing suspects they're almost always men um they're typically white men they're typically younger i mean there are all these statistics that turn out to be true you can make certain broad guesses

But, you know, the the profile that you see on TV is like you said, you know, you know exactly where he gets this coffee every morning and, you know, what he's every every little detail.

And that's really that's really more of a fantasy.