John Douglas, retired FBI profiler who was the pattern for Jack Crawford, the fictitious profiler in “The Silence of the Lambs.” This article contains sexually explicit material and is not suitable for all readers.
Criminal Minds the television series, the film The Silence of the Lambs, and other series and movies have profited mightily by portraying crime profilers. The latter are expert investigators–usually with psychology backgrounds–who examine crime scene details in order to define the type of person who is likely to have committed the crime. In 2007 author Malcolm Gladwell published an article in The New Yorker (November 12, 2007 issue) questioning the validity of profiling as a legitimate investigatory tool.
In “Dangerous Minds: Criminal Profiling Made Easy,” Gladwell discussed the FBI’s method of analysis, the basis for profiling techniques used in local police organizations and worldwide. According to Gladwell, profilers often do not record their predictions, but leave it to the requesting police organization to take notes. This, in fact, was the case in the Brannon murders, and certainly makes it possible for profilers to modify their opinions when the case is finally solved.
In addition, in 1972 when the FBI first created its Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, profilers classified murderers as either “organized” or “disorganized.” For example a murderer who brought a weapon to the crime scene as opposed to using an object found there, or a perpetrator who planned the crime or committed it spontaneously, were factors considered evidence of organization or lack of it. Later the classification was broadened to include mixed characteristics.
In the case of the Brannon homicides, the murder weapon was never found, but a neighbor’s missing knife was consistent with the wounds and may have been the weapon. That would have classified the killer as disorganized, which was consistent with the cloth and yellow twine left at the scene, but inconsistent with the planning that would have been required if the killer chose that night because he knew the neighbors would not be at home.
Gladwell further concluded that when profile reports are written, their findings are often ambiguous, as in “the rapist of the elderly woman was likely to be a young man who is insecure about his sexuality or an older man with a deep hatred of older women.” Gladwell also referred to Brent Turvey, a forensic scientist who is highly critical of the FBI methodology. Turvey believes that murders are almost always a mixture of organized and disorganized traits, and he concludes that it is not possible to look at one behavior in isolation. He gives a terrific example: A rapist in a park pulls the victim’s shirt over her face. Was he trying to prevent her from identifying him? Was he fantasizing she was someone else? Was he trying to incapacitate her so she couldn’t defend herself? Was he trying to look at her breasts? One behavior, pulling the shirt over her face, was only one small piece of the puzzle.
Not only did investigators need to consider multiple behaviors and factors, but they needed to take into account that different investigators would see things from different perspectives. In the case of the Brannon investigation, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office initially called in their regular forensic consultant, Dr. John T. Super, a young psychologist who had earned his PhD at Hofstra University on Long Island and was board-certified in Forensic Psychology. Super reviewed the crime scene and Sheriff Wells asked him to prepare a profile of the killer.
“That was especially difficult,” Dr. Super remembers. “because these were not serial murders but a single event, so I had only that one set of circumstances to consider.” From the violence of the crime, he concluded that Dewey Brannon, the husband and father of the victims, was not the perpetrator. Because he was able to overpower Sherry Brannon, he believed it was a male, and because murderers are generally the same race as their victims, he thought it was a white man, acting on his own. Dr. Super concluded the latter because he believed that more than one perpetrator would have had a moderating influence on the more confrontational and violent killer. He began preparing his written report within days of the murders, and recommended that detectives begin immediately canvassing area hotel dumpsters to see whether bloody clothes or a murder weapon might have been discarded there by a drifter.
Wells also invited three outside specialists to visit the crime scene and collaborate on producing a psychological profile of the killer: Dayle Hinman, Coordinator of the Statewide Crime Analysis Profiling Program of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Louis Eliopulous, Chief Forensic Investigator with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, and FBI Agent Joe Navarro. Their conclusions were consistent with those of Dr. Super.
One team member, however, had met separately with the Manatee County detective who was in charge of the investigation to offer preliminary observations. The person said the scene was consistent with domestic violence, and crimes of interpersonal violence most often occurred between people who knew each other. The perpetrator’s degree of anger and aggression was demonstrated by multiple stab wounds. The investigator said the remote location spoke of a targeted victim. Sherry was blitzed from the front; The perp knew her and could physically dominate her.
When the bodies were discovered, the front door had been locked. A stranger would have had no proprietary interest in locking the door. According to the expert, it is expected that a liar will change his story and in this case there were multiple and varied accounts of what happened at the house. Finally, the specialist concluded, Albert “Dewey” Brannon provided irrelevant information to the dispatcher during the 911 call. His emotions during the call should have been consistent with the exigency of the situation, however that was not the case. Whatever the majority concluded, at least one outside specialist was pointing a finger at Dewey.
Successful profiling is as much an art as it is science. Profilers are all privy to the same facts; each of them processes them through a different lens. Was Dewey the grieving father or his daughters’ killer?
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