Great Basin Serial Killer

Feb 4, 2010 - The facts of Jodi's case match up with a suspected serial killer on. The 'Lil Miss' murder in 2004 and is suspected to be the Great Basin killer. Apr 2, 2018 - From California's Zodiac Killer to the serial murderer of Long Island, join us. I also want to get the Early Bird Books newsletter featuring great.

More often than not, they are as likable as you and me. A little reserved, perhaps, with a quirk or two. Like everybody else. Except that they kill and kill and kill again. That's what police in Spokane say Robert Lee Yates Jr. His arrest in the murder of a troubled 16-year-old girl - with police saying he could have killed as many as 17 other women - may answer the question of who was responsible for those deaths.

But it doesn't even come close to answering why. If Yates is indeed the serial killer the Spokane police say he is, it boggles the mind to think that a man with a wife and kids could excuse himself from the dinner table some night - maybe tousle the hair on his son's head - and cruise off into the night to brutalize and kill. 'I don't know how it works. I wish I did,' said Steven Egger, a professor of criminology at the University of Illinois and an academic expert on serial killings. 'There is an amazing ability to compartmentalize their lives.

The term we use is doubling,' he said - living two lives. It was first documented in Nazi death-camp doctors who would leave their horrific experiments and go home to their families. Others have termed it a 'mask of sanity,' hiding the monster beneath. Profilers The phenomenon of serial killing is hardly new; Jack the Ripper prowled the streets of London in 1888. But much has been learned about a killer's psychopathology in the past quarter-century. Ironically, it was another case with Northwest connections - Ted Bundy - that sparked much of the interest. Today, the FBI runs the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, which tracks and consults on serial killers around the world.

It includes the so-called profilers, who look at new cases and, based on what they've learned from earlier examples, attempt to provide investigators with information on who may have committed the crimes. It's an unusual expertise and combines police work, psychology and a bit of the crystal ball. Sometimes, the profiles are eerily accurate, other times they're off the mark. And they can be fairly general.

The profile for the Spokane killings, for example, said the killer was likely a white man between 20 and 40 who might or might not be employed. Yates, whom prosecutors have charged in the case, was working and was 47. Because of their imprecision, some detectives don't find much use for the profiles. 'They're fallacies, and they are not a wise way to look at crime scenes,' said Bob Keppel, the former chief criminal investigator at the Washington Attorney General's Office and now a forensic consultant.