Serial Killer Investigations: The Story of Forensics & Profiling Through the Hunt for the World's Worst Murderers

by Colin Wilson

This fascinating, in-depth account of how serial killers are tracked down and caught is by Colin Wilson, one of the world's leading authorities on the subject. Wilson's thorough tome covers the tried-and-true methods from the beginning of the 20th century to the cutting-edge, innovative processes now featured on shows such as CSI. The illustrated book includes 15 black-and-white images of victims, killers, and crime scenes. This is an exceptional book for a society morbidly fascinated by this unsettling topic.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime, Ebooks

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

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

[Catster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woah. This book gave me nightmares, turns out there's not a lot of scarier stuff than actual serial killers.

Will read more True Crime!

[Ria · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not so much enjoyable as it is absorbing.
It's written in a detailed narrative style that doesn't skimp on the grisly details but also doesn't come off as clinical.

There are certain sections that needed a quick reread of something light and not so fraught with evil intentions.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really intresting, I liked it's approch to the subject, and found it very enjoyable.

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

good but no match for John Douglas.

[Sawyer X · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is reasonably exhaustive. It includes many offenders with in-depth details of their crimes. It also outlines the formation of the BSU (Behavioral Sciences Unit) of the FBI with some interesting anecdotes. The book leaned heavily into sexual crimes.

For me, the book lacked the analysis of psychopathy within the realm of serial killing. Also, the book could not fully commit to either providing the gruesome details of the (undoubtedly horrible) crimes or whether to hold back. In some cases, it does the former, in some the latter, with no apparent distinction. Furthermore, and not to harp on the book too much, I missed the sense of the flow in the book. It felt at times as that it serves as telling the story of founding the BSU, outlining their successes, and at times that it is merely a reference to various serial killing crimes.

Still, despite it all, the book is solid for gleaning more into the world of both serial killing and the catching of serial killers. The information about the BSU was fascinating, and the analysis of the motives and history of each serial killer was fit.

[Dahoon · Rating 1 out of 5]

AWFUL! This book is basically theft. All it does is retell what former FBI agent Robert Ressler writes in his book on his research on serial killers. Nothing is new in this. it just tells what the he has read in other books on the subject like Ressler's. It should be banned for copyright abuse.

[a. · Rating 2 out of 5]

i always hope for more out of these kinds of books than i end up getting but this book was especially weird. from the title, the introduction, and like, maybe the first four or five chapters i was really expecting a history of serial killer investigations/the development of the technique/or maybe like, a breakdown of the way that modern law enforcement agencies conduct their investigations. and that's what i got for the first four or five chapters. i was particularly happy about wilson's comment that he didn't want to discuss the grisly details etc.

of course, what this book ended up as was a constant discussion of the grisly details (of course--anyone who writes this much about serial killers is going to go into the grisly details, this should be expected by this point) but also into the bizarre. as for the first complaint, that's really nothing new--it was just like every other book about serial killers. the crime, the details, the profile. i've read it a hundred times before and it's a little trite but nothing unbelievably bad. it got a bit disorganized and dragged towards the end but again, that happens. i feel like wilson puts a little too much weight on the accuracy and usefulness of profiling, considering numerous articles and books about it since (and even other profilers ripping each other to shreds).

however, as for the second complaint... i don't pick up this kind of book expecting to read about the author's fetish for women's underwear (like this was seriously brought up in a chapter in which he discussed how he could relate to a particular serial killer who also had an underwear fetish?!). and in another chapter, in which he discussed another serial killer, who is engaged to a friend of his (also a true crime writer) who claims to have been possessed by a demonic force and the author is like, "yeah, it could be true. i mean, i've seen a lot of shit."

... no.

[Bel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, it was an interesting read and through personal anecdotes and insightful speculation and conclusions, Colin Wilson establishes early on in the book that he knows what he is talking about. The amount of people introduced was slightly overwhelming but considering how many cases were discussed that's to be expected.
Read if you are interested in the establishment of the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit and the agents and cases which made it successful.
I will be reading more by Colin Wilson, this book also has introduced me to the works by Robert Ressler (former FBI agent) , John Douglas (former FBI agent), David Reichert (former sheriff), the true crime writer Sondra London as well as 'A report on the Violent Male' by A.E. Van Vogt who with this particular work seems to have inspired the insights of Colin Wilson.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a really interesting look into many different serial killers. Insight is given into their backgrounds, including possible motives, as well as explanations as to why they may have become such heartless killers.

[Shin Toyotomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

By read their histories of serial killers, we can know their twisted minds by abusing, childhood, etc. To know how to educate, we have to know these abnormal cases. And we know it is impossible to say these cases are only rare or by psychopath. These cases teach us the border normal and abnormal.