Introduction
Joel Rifkin, a notorious serial killer had killed seventeen prostitutes from 1989 to 1993. On June 28, 1993 homicide detectives interviewed Rifkin and a year later he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life. During the investigation homicide detectives had interviewed him. Interviewing is a fundamental skill that all members in justice related professions must be equipped with. Knowing how to effectively interview a victim or offender in a criminal investigation can go a long way. It can help establish important details that have occurred through out the case and help law enforcement establish a modus operandi for the offenders. In any criminal investigation the best evidence in court is a confession from the offender. This paper will analyze an interview that Mark Safarkis, a profiler for the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted on Joel Rifkin. We will analyze and critique some of the approaches the agent used. This paper will examine techniques used throughout the interview such as: verbal following, close-ended questions, open-ended questions, paraphrasing, summarizing and remaining soler.
Verbal Tracking
Verbal tracking or verbal following is when the interviewer is following what the interviewee is saying (Ivey & Allen, 2016, p. 102). The interviewer must not be off topic and the questions asked should be relevant to what the interviewee is talking about (Ivey & Allen, 2016, p. 102). During Rifkin’s interview Safarkis does an excellent
As if molded directly from the depths of nightmares, both fascinating and terrifying. Serial killers hide behind bland and normal existences. They are often able to escape being caught for years, decades and sometimes an eternity. These are America’s Serial Killers (America’s Serial Killers). “Even when some of them do get caught, we may not recognize what they are because they don’t [sic] match the distorted image we have of serial killers” (Brown). What is that distorted image? That killers live among everyday life, they are the ones who creep into someone’s life unknowingly to torture and kill them. The serial killers that are in the movies, Norman Bates, Michael Myers, and the evil master mind of SAW, these characters are just that
❖ Leadership: When doing a high profile investigation many problems arise in leadership. They are faces with pressures from victims’ families, media as well as political executives. The main goal is to catch the offender and arrest and prosecute them. They all agree that the cases should be handled by homicide investigators who know how to work the case and that supervisor need to intervene with higher up personnel.
Serial murder is one of the most baffling crimes that occur in the U.S. and all over the world. Knight (2006) defines serial murder as the killing of three or more people over a period of more than 30 days, with a significant cooling-off period. The cooling off period may be weeks, months or even years long. Researchers have proposed various psychological, biological and sociological theories that offer a partial understanding of the nature of serial murder. Some propose that the basis for criminal behavior is a predisposition to violence as well as a mix between environment, personality traits and biological factors. Serial killers are predominantly male. Only 3 percent of serial murders are committed by women (U.S. News and World Report,
Many of today’s interrogation models being utilized in police investigations have an impact on false confessions. The model that has been in the public eye recently is the social psychological process model of interrogation known as the “The Reid Technique.” There are two alternatives used by the police today to replace the Reid Technique, one is the PEACE Model and the other is Cognitive Interviewing. These methods are not interrogation techniques like Reid but interview processes.
Serial killers are the byproduct of many different things: trauma, death of loved ones, abuse, neglect, adoption, and even witnessing abuse (Are Serial). Serial killers have had to endure a massive amount of something such as trauma or abuse to an unimaginable extent to become what they are; the extent of the abuse, the trauma, the psychological damage they endure is incomprehensible to many. The destruction of one’s innocence can occur at any given time in his or her life, but he or she is more impressionable in his or her youth by the negativism of someone else’s actions (Scott, Shirley L. What Makes Serial Killers Tick ~ Childhood Event). People are susceptible to what they endure in their adolescence, and cruel upbringings, such as
The National Geographic film, A Portrait of a Killer, examines the types of stress that living beings can endure, and how it can thus affect the rest of their bodies. Severe chronic stress can lead even lead to the destruction of brain cells. Dr. Robert Sapolsky is a neurobiologist of Stanford University who has been researching stress for over thirty years. In order to study stress and its implications upon nonhumans, he went to Africa to study baboons. This species has only three hours of stress caused by eating, and the rest of their daily routine is consumed by about nine hours of free time. Much like Western society, baboons socially stress out one another, as they have social hierarchies to regulate how them interact with one another.
Have you ever wondered why some people love art and music, and some love science and math? These individuals love math or art because they get a sense of relaxation and excitement from these activities. Serial killers are the same way they love to kill people and have lots of different motives for why they kill them. A serial killer is a person who kills repeatedly. The one motive that drove Dennis Rader, to kill his victims was to gain power and control over them.
A serial killer is traditional defined as the separate killings of three or more people by an individual over a certain period of time, usually with breaks between the murders. (Angela Pilson, p. 2, 2011) This definition has been accepted by both the police and academics and therefore provides a useful frame of reference (Kevin Haggerty, p.1, 2009). The paper will seek to provide the readers with an explanation of how serial killers came to be and how they are portrayed in the media.
4. Serial killers also show signs of a psychopath though this is not always the case. Psychopaths lack empathy and guilt, are egocentric and impulsive and don’t conform to social, moral, or legal norms. Psychopaths have a distinct set of rules for themselves. They appear normal and are often very charming and charismatic.
An interview is a non-accusatory question and answer session with a suspect, victim or witness. The goal of an interview is to gather information and make an assessment of the subject’s credibility. Some of this information will be investigative in nature. Examples of investigative questions include, “When did you arrive home last night?”; “Do you have access to a handgun?”; “Do you know who Amy Taylor is?” Other interview questions are specifically designed to elicit behavioral responses from a subject such as, “Do you think this lady really was raped?” or, “Tell me why you wouldn’t force a woman to have sex with you?”
Serial killers have fascinated the imaginations of people for a long time. One of the most notorious serial killers is Jeffrey Dahmer whose gruesome murders shocked the nation. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer also known as Milwaukee monster was a notorious American serial killer and sexual offender in the 1980s and early 1990s. Between 1978 and 1991 Dahmer had murdered 17 men. His victims were usually raped, tortured, dismembered, and cannibalism was also involved. Jeffrey was a troubled child psychologically and his social skills had a lot to be desired. All the way through his childhood he was ignored and had queer fantasies of cadavers. In his adulthood this psychosocial status quo didn 't change and was in fact aggravated.
The objective of this case study is to examine the personality of one of the most notorious serial killers in modern history, Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy was alleged to have humiliated, tortured and murdered at least 50 women. Possibility more, but the true number will never be known. Because Ted Bundy kept the true number of his victims to himself and refused to inform authorities of the exact number of his horrific deeds, before he was executed on January 24, 1989 (Wikipedia, n.d.).
Creeping around the shadowy house, the predator found its prey waking to strange sounds. The victim lay facedown, with a sweating forehead pressed fearfully into the pillow, silently praying the noises would just go away. Suddenly the victim found himself straddled and pinned to the bed. He was unable to scream for help due to the pressure of the handle of a pick-axe against his throat, preventing any breath from escaping, much less any sound. The victim struggled beneath the weight of the assailant. The scant light from the sodium-arc street light outside cast a peculiar silhouette on the walls of the darkened room, projecting an image that looked oddly like that of a cowboy saddled upon
Introduction While watching the video An Overview of Investigative Interviewing, I was able to observe Mrs. Hobbs (the victim) being interviewed about a robbery. In order to conduct a successful interview there are 6 basic steps you must follow. You must have a positive attitude, good opening remarks, you must be able to remove doubt form the victim, have a ventilation period, ask investigative questioning, and carefully confirm the information you have been given (Dave Maze, 2015). The interviewer in Mrs. Hobbs case did follow most of these steps which lead to a successful interview.
Police psychologists’ assists in training law enforcement officers’ on how to conduct proper interrogations. The goal of investigative interviewing: (a) to obtain accurate and reliable information from the suspects, witness, and victims; (b) the interview needs to be objective