Criminal Minds:
Predator Profiles

Predator Profiles (a psychological profile) of criminal minds helps you to "know your enemy" – an ancient military fundamental still vital today.

I’ve created this simple concept to give you a handy rule-of-thumb: a violent criminal is either a Force Predator or a Friendly Predator. You’ll instantly know a force predator – he’ll suddenly attack you from the open or from ambush, though he may first play cat-and-mouse while deciding whether or not to attack you.

However, a friendly predator will first try to get near you to isolate and trap you, then attack you. Many victims, afraid to appear rude, ignored their gut feelings and were trusting, easy, naïve prey for a friendly predator. Never forget that and you’ll never fall for a predator's lure.

Predators are so naturally devious that usually even their families don’t know of their double lives:

Mark Campbell, devoted father and happy family man, read about the rapes in the local Glasgow UK paper and commented to his wife with shock and pity for the victims. Little did she know that her loving husband was the Jekyll and Hyde monster who'd raped the women.

PREDATOR'S PROFILES

Criminal minds see other people as objects to exploit and know they may need to kill an innocent person to get away with their crimes. Your life means nothing to them.

Thieves, usually desperate drug addicts, have essentially no contact with their victims.

Robbers (muggers) and carjackers confront victims with force or threats. Up to 75 percent of them are desperate drug addicts prone to violence. An undercover narcotics police officer once said, “Everything a drug addict thinks, says, or does has only one purpose: to get more drugs. Absolutely nothing else matters.”

Victims should instantly give up their money or car and flee. Fortunately, drug addicts are usually satisfied with money alone and don’t ordinarily escalate the robbery to rape, though they may kill to silence a witness.

Incidentally, one in three robbery victims are injured and one in ten are hospitalized. One in eight robbers is female. Only three of ten robberies result in arrest. (US DOJ)

Rapists use force or threat to commit a sexual act upon a non-consenting victim and may escalate to further injury or murder. Serial killers are usually sexual predators who dominate, rape, torture, and murder to fulfill sexual fantasies of criminal minds. Psychological profiles of rapists are detailed in Rapist Types.

Incidentally, rapists average seven victims before their first arrest, and most flashers (exhibitionists) and window-peepers are (or eventually become) rapists. (US DOJ)

Murderers usually have close contact with the victim except when killing by means of long-range shooting, poison, arson, bomb, or trap. A mass murderer kills more than two victims at one time, a spree killer kills more than two victims over several hours or days, and a serial killer kills more than two victims over a longer time period.

Incidentally, one in ten murderers is female. Only six of ten murders result in arrest. (US DOJ)

SERIAL KILLERS

Most serial killers have the Predatory Mind of a psychopath, have above average IQs and are nice, quiet, normal neighbors (but often act robotic once they shift into killing mode). Anywhere from 50 to 2,500 are operating at any one time in the U.S.

Many serial killers have at least two of the three Macdonald Triad childhood traits in common: frequent bedwetting past age five, obsessive arson (desire to destroy with little risk to oneself), and animal cruelty (sadism toward helpless victims). 40 percent of serial killers have all three traits. The bedwetting, by itself, is innocent. But the other two traits, especially animal torture, are chilling omens of more evil to come.

However, many murderers aren’t “predators on the hunt.” Roughly one-third are the “risky people” discussed in Crimes of Passion – the human time bombs. They usually already know the victim (most are family members) and kill in the heat of passion on the spur of the moment. These killers usually have an inclination to violence and almost always give warning signs of increasing pressure and impending eruption, in retrospect making these murders seem almost inevitable.

PERSONAL SAFETY DEVICES

Deter a predator by carrying Personal Security Alarm (screamer or noisemaker) & Pepper Spray in plain sight. Those pages tell you how to use them most effectively.

Crime-Safety-Security > Criminal Minds Overview > Predator Profiles

Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.