Using Your
INTUITION
to Detect Criminal Minds

Safety Tips for Women: Intuition is your early-warning alarm to detect criminal minds scheming to entrap you.

Robin R. Mildebrath entered a tanning spa shortly before closing time, asked the female employee if he could use the lavatory, did so, then left. The young woman felt uneasy about his behavior – just a twinge, just a bit off. Her gut feeling proved prophetic. She mentioned him to a couple just leaving and they checked outside. Police found him waiting in the parking lot with a ski mask, handcuffs, a butcher knife, and sex devices. Police say Mildebrath, a convicted sex offender, had unlocked the spa's back door before leaving.

Nature’s most complex creation, the human brain, must first of all ensure its own survival. Thus, its early-warning-system – intuition – is its most sophisticated function, ruling the all-powerful survival instinct to detect criminal minds. Essentially, it's your inborn crystal ball.

Intuition senses without rational thinking – it guesses or feels with a "sixth sense." The subconscious mind constantly evaluates millions of bits of information, detects subtle conflicts within patterns, and alerts the conscious mind when something is awry. We call this awesomely complex process our gut feelings, suspicions, or hunches. It saved our ancestor’s hides throughout history.

But modern, socially-imposed good manners and political correctness have tamed you into trusting only logic and ignoring your gut feelings – as security expert Gavin de Becker pointed out in “The Gift of Fear.”

Real estate agent Lindsay Buziak's body was found in a Calgary home listed for sale. Her coworkers said Buziak had had a really bad feeling about the appointment.

Intuition – a faint wisp, a fleeting radar blip, a subtle nudge that something isn’t quite right – is ignored while the criminal minds of Friendly Predators, skilled in the art of deception, coerce and entice you into traps. Your intuition – the ultimate alarm – already shyly quiet, gets shushed down as mere silliness.

Since hindsight is 20/20 vision that makes the obscure seem obvious, only afterward do we recall and notice the piece of the puzzle that didn’t quite fit. That is, if we’ve survived with memory intact.

I once took a test to see if I could spot a serial killer's photo. The test had a pair of photos side-by-side – one of a serial killer and one of a Nobel Prize winner. Neither of them were well-known to the public. I had to guess which was which. There was a series of 20 pairs.

I chose correctly about half the time – which, statistically, is random chance. It blew me away. I'd always thought I had good radar for bad guys – but I didn't. It might've been because they were photos only and I wasn't able to judge their mannerisms (or "vibe") or the situation – otherwise maybe I would've scored a bit better. But probably not.

The point is: don't be too sure about your radar. It's better to err on the side of caution by playing it safe. See Spotting Danger

DEVELOPING INTUITION

Nonetheless, just as a smoke detector may sometimes give a false alarm, only a fool would ignore it in the future. So it goes with intuition. It’s a lifesaver if we pay close attention. Don’t explain away your suspicions. Remember that we tend to see and hear what we want to see and hear. Instead, LISTEN to your intuition: honor your doubts. Live by the street-savvy maxim: When in doubt, leave it out!

AMBUSHES, LURES, and TRAPS

After parking one evening in her apartment building’s parking lot, a woman heard what sounded like a woman’s voice coming from behind a garbage dumpster sobbing, “I’ve been raped. Please help me!” She rushed to the prostrate, longhaired figure only to be smashed in the face with a brick. A man with a woman's wig raped her then threw her, unconscious, into the dumpster.

A woman arrived at her Brooklyn apartment building to find an exasperated man standing outside, holding keys in his hand, lamenting having forgotten his keys. Assuming he was a neighbor who meant he’d forgotten the proper keys, she let him in with her. The con-man later pushed-in and raped a neighbor woman.

A Louisville woman discovered that her purse was missing from her parked car. The next day she received a phone call from a man who said he'd found her wallet and wanted to return it. When she arrived, she was robbed of additional cash and raped.

The criminal minds of predators choose the plan, the time, the place, and the prey. They have the advantages of deception, surprise, intimidation, and a familiarity with violence. Yet, clever lures and traps of criminal minds all depend upon one critical factor: the prey must be unwary, naïve, trusting, and easily bamboozled.

Paul Runge raped and murdered seven women in the Chicago area. He used various traps, such as seeing a room-for-rent sign and asking to look at it – or he'd post ads himself. He lured two of the women to his house with a promise of work as house cleaners.

Safety Tips for Women

Andrew Patti had a queasy feeling about the teenager at his door, claiming car trouble, asking to use his phone. His story smelled phony. Maybe it was Patti's intuition that someone had been watching him through the window. Patti refused – fearing a push in robbery. Patti instead offered to call a local garage. But when he picked up the phone, it was dead.

Robert Tulloch, 17, had brought along his 16-year-old friend, James Parker, crouched in a bush. They both had hunting knives. Before knocking, they had cut the phone line.

Months later, they conned their way into the home of Half and Suzanne Zantop, two Dartmouth professors well known for their kindness, and slaughtered them in a stabbing frenzy.

Some predators answer Lost and Found pet ads and insist that the owner come to an address to retrieve the lost dog or kitten – but are attacked instead. The endless varieties of traps of criminal minds have one common goal: to isolate the victim. That is your tip-off! Absolutely never let anyone isolate you – in your home or anywhere – not even for a moment!

See Scam-In home invasion.

INTUITION IN BATTLE & IN YOUR LIFE

The U.S. military and top universities are studying why, in a life-or-death situation, some people can sense danger and counter it long before others do.

They're focusing on how the brain interprets sensations in one’s own body and the body language of others – which is crucial to avoiding imminent threats.

Until recently, gut feelings – or intuition – were disregarded as obstacles to rational decision making. Now that position has reversed.

We now know that emotions can work to solve a problem, often before we’re even conscious of it. These processes are at work continually, in pilots, leaders of expeditions, parents, in all of us.

As the brain computes clues subconsciously, it sends out an alarm before you fully understand why.

Gut feelings about potential threats or solutions are not always correct, but intuition evolved for survival and more often than not saves lives.

Safety Tips for Women, Mind Games, Crime Prevention Tips, and Personal Safety Devices

Scare off a predator by holding Pepper Spray & a Personal Security Alarm (a.k.a. noisemaker or screamer) in plain sight.

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Wolf in Sheep's Clothing | Quick Tricks | Mind Games | Predatory Mind

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