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Profiling 'experts' way off target in portraits of sniper suspects

Profiling experts draw a faulty portrait of sniper suspects.

Date published: 10/27/2002

THANK GOD the sniper(s) has been caught! It was a trying three weeks. Even I was looking over my shoulder when I got gas.

Thank God, too, that we are through with these profilers.

Like everyone else, I was glued to CNN Wednesday night as word spread that there might be two suspects in the case. And as we waited, that news network dug up every so-called "expert" it could find.

One woman, in a very know-it-all tone, declared that the sniper was unnoticed because he was going about his life as usual. This guy was going to work every day, she said, and playing with his kids like the average neighborhood Joe.

Yeah! Right! The guy arrested didn't have a job and was sleeping in his car. He and some teenager were allegedly driving up and down the interstate shooting people.

Another profiler said the sniper would never leave the D.C. area because that was obviously where he was from and felt comfortable there because he knew the surroundings.

Right again! The bozos in jail were from Tacoma, Wash., and supposedly had already shot two women in Montgomery, Ala.

One "expert" was asked if the sniper was panicking after his name was made public (a stupid question to begin with). The profiler answered that the suspect was almost certainly afraid that he was about to be caught, that he was probably at that very moment deciding how he was going to effect his end, whether by shooting it out or killing himself.

The two suspects were really agitated. They were found asleep in their car at a rest area.

Then there was the retired Philadelphia police chief who was very much against making the names of the suspects and the make of their vehicle public.

Four hours after the announcement was broadcast, the two men were in custody. Give the public a break, folks. We are not idiots.

Thursday morning, some lady profiler listened intently as a TV anchor retraced the steps of the two suspects.

"That is so typical of serial killers," she said, as if she had known the two suspects' names from the first shooting.

OK, lady! If you knew who they were, why didn't you speak up?

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Date published: 10/27/2002