Manhunters: Criminal Profilers and Their Search for the World?s Most Wanted Serial Killers

by Colin Wilson

Author Colin Wilson opens this illuminating psychological discussion with the development of the 1977 Behavioral Science Unit, which was set up in order to answer the many questions surrounding serial How does someone become a serial killer? How do they choose their victims, and why do they not feel remorse? How are they caught? Wilson interviews FBI Special Agent Robert Ressler, coiner of the term “serial killer” and one of the pioneers of criminal profiling, as well as Ted Bundy and Charles Manson in order to figure out the motives behind their grisly actions.In Manhunters, by tracking the BSU’s development of psychological profiling and genetic fingerprinting, Wilson reveals the forensic investigations that caused the seizure and arrest of some of the most vile and villainous people in the world, including Jeffrey Dahmer, William Heirens, Peter Sutcliffe, John Duffy, Jerry Brudos, Wayne Williams, and many more. As he divulges the details of each case, the murderers’ fantasy worlds, sadistic motives, and monstrous psychological tendencies emerge.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Crime, Historical

377 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2014

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.

Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.

Reviews

[Eva Müller · Rating 1 out of 5]

While I have quite an impressive collection of books on Jack the Ripper by now I tend to avoid true-crime books that deal with more modern cases, most of them are extremely sensational and seem to be written for the shock-value.
I had high hopes for this book when I began it as it seemed to focus more on the history of profiling and how one man almost single-handedly started the FBI's Behaviour Science Unit. However it quickly turned into listing details of the murders in a way that made little sense to me: switching between giving names and exact circumstances of a victim's death and just saying 'and then he killed X more people. If I could have been sure that giving the names of quite a lot of the victims was done to remind the reader that they were real people and not just some faceless beings I would have been fine with it. Just...I did not get the feeling. I got the feeling of somebody who really needed to reach a minimum word count. I actually put the book down a couple of times with the intention of quitting but then changed my mind, picked it up again, only to get that uncomfortable feeling again that had made me put it down before. Eventually I gave up at around 30%
There is also the small matter of the author using Serial Killer and Mass Murderer interchangeable which they aren't...and which really shouldn't happen to a seasoned true crime writer in a book about serial killers.
Still I'm willing to acknowledge that perhaps I'm just the wrong audience for the book and came with the wrong expectations. This is not really a book about the history of profiling. It plays a role but the killers are the main focus. If you're searching for facts about those you could probably do worse than this book.

[Tonya · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are many great crime books out there, I would not consider this one.
Also, this book is more about sensationalizing the crime than about the profilers. He casually throws in some facts about the Behavioral Unit, but this does not focus on the profilers.
A quote :
"By the 1930s advertisements already made use of attractive young women in swimsuits , and in the postwar years these images extended to women clad only in their underwear. Nowadays anyone can access pornographic pictures on the web. If Patty Ann had been wearing a Victorian bathing costume with a woolen skirt down to her knees, Cochran would have driven past."
Seriously? Still, blaming the victim? This is in reference to a 15-year-old who was raped and murdered apparently because she sunbathed in her own yard. This book is very out of touch with actual reasons why serial rapists and murderers do the heinous things they do.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Old fashioned, behind on its thinking. It suffers from being written by an author who cares more for the sensationalism than the science.

PS, Colin Wilson: demon possession totally isn't A Thing.

The audiobook also has a very monotone narrator.

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ostensibly about criminal profilers, but really more about numerous different famous serial killers and their individual cases, at the end, the only conclusion that Wilson really solidly came to, was the belief that serial killers had at some point in their development been subject to head injuries.

[Mitchell Kaufman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Colin Wilson has written yet another book about serial killers. This one is ostensibly about profilers, but they are minor characters, as the bulk of the book is simply a repetition of the same stories Wilson has told in many other books.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Technically, I did not finish this book. I read about 90% of it and then just couldn't anymore. It was not very well written (I kept noticing how many times the author said "undoubtedly" - things like that). Although the book is called "Manhunters," it is more about the men they were hunting (i.e. it was about serial killers, not about profiling). It is completely misnamed and misleading.

Also, the author saying he thinks a serial killer is literally demonically possessed causes Wilson to lose some credibility...

I hate that I wasted my time reading this and wish I had given up on it sooner.

[Daphne · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting insight on the profiling of the serial killers but the book starts to falter for me when there is a pattern of the description of the killers where the urge to kill may be influenced from the environment i.e., having a domineering parents etc, a head injury sustained from childhood or through their growing up years which may be a contribution to the reason on why they became killers. Nonetheless, this book still provided insights for me and I am glad that there are units formed to bring down such scary crimes.

I would still recommend this book to others where it does provide on the profiling of the killers and the accuracy of the profiling.

[Andreea Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished listening to this book. It was 14 hrs. long and I didn’t have trouble continuing to listen. This book is exactly what it says it is. It’s about how criminal profilers came to be and which serial killers had the biggest impact in its development. Not sure why so many people thought it was different from the title or bad. I thought it was an interesting look into how criminal profilers became a thing and how they started to develop this technique and why it was such a game changer. I wouldn’t say I “enjoyed” the stories about each serial killer but I did find it hard to stop listening. Even when it got very graphic towards the point where they are talking about the most sadistic or horrific ones in history. Which indeed they were. I did like the sort of background and context they gave about each killer. You get to see how they grew up and what might have influenced them. A window into how they thought and where they went wrong. Why some of them were so hard to catch and what law enforcement did or didn’t do right at the time. It was confusing with all the names and the stories jumping around a bit. But I feel like it was written that way so that you could connect the dots and follow the development of profiling just as it must have been for the investigators at the time. It did go over motivations and it did cover some pretty graphic and disturbing topics. So not sure why so many people felt dissatisfied. Their motivation was a need for power and dominance, for some it’s because they like gore, sadism, bondage or killing. Others just wanted that ego boost of power over others. Some were just driven by their disturbing and twisted libido. But if you pay attention the book lays out exactly why that probably occurred. You can’t come to any definite conclusions about serial killers. It’s like a spectrum and you’re always gonna have outliers or some unique combination. That’s what makes these sort of crimes so interesting. So I don’t understand why some people didn’t like the book. The conclusion though? I think it was less blaming the victim and more pointing out that women being exploited is so prevalent now that many men feel they are objects to be owned and controlled rather than real people. That disconnect that comes with technology and having such easy access to anything you could possibly think of. The same way people forget that celebrities are real people, not just there for entertainment. They don’t owe you anything. Same with these killers. They think women owe them obedience, sex or worship. They never developed in a healthy way and many of them were abused and had damaged brains. They were exposed at a young age to twisted and toxic relationships and developed in an unhealthy way. Some tried to fight it others embraced it whole heartedly. My conclusion is that you have to have a strong stomach to read this kind of stuff. I can’t even imagine hearing it first hand with explicit details. And being a survivor or a family member of the victims? … heartbreaking

[Pearlyn Lim · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want descriptions of what various serial killers did, and how it matches the early FBI profilers' predictions, this job does it. The why is less explored and I am sceptical about the last bit on the presence of morphogenetic fields.

[Athaliah · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the book claims to follow criminal profilers, it tends to draw focus to the crimes themselves and spends more time on the perpetrators than on the process.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title is completely misleading because this book was more about the serial killers rather than the profilers.

[H. Woodward · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just meh. Rehashing of other sources. Only the ‘famous’ cases. Way too much focus on sexual aspects and sex in general. Someone has a hang up…

[Maeve · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was not well organized at all. Barely any mentions of the titular profilers, just continuous ramblings on the crimes of various killers.

[Nancy Day · Rating 1 out of 5]

OK, I think we can all agree that books about serial killers don't have to be, like, excellent writing. We're reading them to satisfy our prurient interest in horrible stuff. and, in my case, to find out just a little bit about the science behind what makes them and what detects them. So my expectations weren't high. While Wilson has obviously done his research, this is essentially a litany (not the good kind) of gruesome acts with no real analysis. The cover suggests it's going to report on the "manhunters" who are catching these weirdos, and although it does mention a few he's obviously interviewed, there's no critical discussion of how they develop their tools, what the state of this science is, or where it might be going. The book was written in 2007, and based on my minuscule knowledge of this field, the "science" of profiling has pretty much been debunked since then. So I can't blame him for missing that. But I kept getting the feeling that this writer never outgrew his adolescence and, while writing this lousy book, was sitting in a dark room at night getting off a bit and doing the kind of things adolescent boys might do given such a situation.

I read the Audible, narrated version of the book and the reader was - hands down - the worst narrator on the planet. In fact, frequently I suspected it may have been a computer. This guy hadn't done enough rudimentary research to know how to pronounce common British place names like "Thames" and "Yorkshire." For goodness sake.

Bottom line: Walk away, read, a more informed, less salacious author and a more scholarly book to get your serial killer fix.

[GP · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's fascinating, in a stomache churning way. Manhunters does not dwell on the details of serial killers, for which we should be grateful. Considering the raging egos behind serial murder, that's also a good thing. No, no torture porn here. However, I don't feel like I learned much about criminal profilers, just more about the basic history of profiling. I had a lot of problems with Wilson's conclusions regarding sex and serial killers. Whether or not killers get a sexual release, I don't believe that it's correct to say that sexual need is driving them. Although he does expand on this in the conclusion to arrive more at the level of environmental needs and it's influence on crime, I fear that for many, they'll stick with the more reinforced shorthand conclusion. I also am dismayed by the strangely pollyanna conclusion on the future of crime, and I'm fairly pollyanna myself. That being said, there was a lot of good details on motivation, methods and interrogation techniques developed. But you will sleep more soundly after starting if you check all your door and window locks faithfully and do not read before bed.

[Ria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive work on the history of the FBI's Behavioural science unit that was set up to psychologically profile serial killers.
The taskforce was responsible for creating an insight into serial killers minds thereby helping crime teams crack cases of all descriptions even cold cases.
In depth background information and even in some instances actual conversations held with the perpetrators once in custody of many of the world's most notorious killers gives examples of how with the aid of genetic fingerprinting, immense strides in forensic science and the techniques of psychological experts many of these murderers who would otherwise have still been at large have been brought to justice for their heinous crimes.
Staggering and very brutal information makes this book not for the faint hearted but I have to say it, gives a fascinating insight into the how and why these people killed and what led them to the turning point where these violent compulsions took over.
A very informative read for fans of true crimes.

[Stacee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm fascinated by serial killers, so this book was a definite request when I saw the title.

I liked the way it was broken down by each killer. The history and background of each person was well researched and chock full of information that I hadn't read before. Sometimes the prose was a bit dry, but it was a very interesting read.

**Thanks to Skyhorse Publishing and Edelweiss for providing the arc in exchange for an honest review**

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was just okay. Parts of this were incredibly interesting, but if you're looking for a book about profilers you'll be disappointed. It mostly lists the serial killers and their dirty deeds in a rather repetitive way. Also, it appears the book could have gone through another editing. Lots of errors and sloppy segues. In spite of all that, I enjoyed it somewhat.

[Ciara Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading his work and the profiles. I find the study on serials intriguing. There were some stories that were hard to hear so be prepared.

[Johnnysbookreviews · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was not a good book. Highly recommend other books like Mindhunter or American Predator about Israel Key's. It went from one killer to the next without any transition or warning.