Can the amazing criminal profile expert in film and television dramas guess the appearance of the prisoner when he walks into the scene in reality?
1956 At 7:55 pm on December 2, 2019, an explosion occurred at the Paramount Cinema in Brooklyn, New York, and nearly 1,500 viewers fled and scattered.
● Paramount Theater in the 1950s
This is not the first time that horror has arrived in New York. In the past few years, more than 20 similar bomb attacks have occurred in local libraries, railway stations, bus stations, telephone booths, concert halls, cinemas and other places.
● From left to right, as time goes by, the controlled ammunition of the "bomb maniac" is becoming more and more dangerous.
It was the same person who created these cases. In addition to dropping bombs, he also delivered intimidation letters everywhere under the pseudonym of "F.P." and was called "the mad bomber" by the police and the public.
● Some bomb drop locations are marked. The initial two places were Edison
"Bomb Madman" wrote to the police station after the outbreak of the Pearl Harbor incident: "I will not throw bombs again during the war, this is out of my patriotism. But one day, I will make Edison retribution." In the face of the crisis, the New York police's investigation was at a deadlock. Although the police station established an "Explosion Investigation Team" and mobilized 350 law enforcement officers from various districts and nearly 23,000 police officers under their command to participate in the investigation, it was still impossible to find out the identity of the bomb madman, and it was only possible to determine that this person had a grudge against Edison.
At that time, Edison had acquired nearly 30 power companies, and countless former employees' files and complaint letters were scattered everywhere. Manually finding a "bomb madman" with no face is like finding a needle in a haystack.
In desperation, someone inside the police force suggested Howard Finney, the head of the crime laboratory, to consult psychiatrist James Brussel. Although the police did not have such a precedent, Finney, who was helpless, did not care about thinking about it and decided to try his luck.
At that time, probably no one could have thought that consultation on this case would become a famous practice in the history of criminal investigation. The method of solving cases represented by it is still stimulating people's inspiration and imagination to this day.
In the New York Police Force, Brussels was already famous for its erudition.
In addition to his career as a psychiatrist, he also serves as executive assistant at the New York Mental Health Center, responsible for analyzing and treating criminals with mental illnesses. Brussels also amateurly analyzed the works of Van Gogh, Dickens, Tchaikovsky and others, and speculated on their personality characteristics.
● Brussels (picture left) provides psychological assessment services for a minor crime case
However, consulting psychiatrists in crimes is not only a helpless move for the police, but even Brussels himself finds it a bit incredible: "In the past, all the living people in front of him are analyzed, but now a shadow is analyzed?"
But after checking several intimidation letters written by the "bomb crazier", Brussels really had some ideas. After 4 hours of analysis, he listed 10 characteristics that bomb madmen may have for the police and provided advice on action:
1. Male
2. Positive, medium-sized, not fat or thin
3. Middle-aged, 45 or older
4. Having at least two years of high school, with skills in metal manufacturing and electrician
5. It looks neat and polite, but in fact it is arrogant and stubborn, and is paranoid
6. Being alone, having no friends, not married, is likely to be a virgin - "I bet he has never kissed a girl"
7. Living with older female relatives
8. Slavic, Catholic, goes to church regularly
9. Living in Connecticut
10. Action Suggestions for Heart Disease
: Publish the above description. Because speculation may be wrong, the bomb maniac may be unbearable after seeing it, and actively exposes the information - he hopes that he is known to others.
In addition, when the visiting police officers were preparing to say goodbye, he called them and added the last judgment: "When you catch him, I'm sure he will be wearing a double-breasted suit, and it's tightly buttoned."
● "A Case Manual for a Criminal Psychiatrist" written by Brussels was published in 1968. The first case included is the analysis of the "bomb maniac".
It can be imagined that this method of judgment that looks almost like crystal ball witchcraft is very different from the police's practice of solving cases through intuitive human evidence and physical evidence at that time. They were by no means convinced of their first reaction to Brussels analysis.
In January 1957, the bomb maniac was finally arrested. Police found that almost all speculations in Brussels hit - the perpetrator George Metskey is a neat and decent, medium-sized Slavic middle-aged man from Connecticut, unmarried, living with two sisters and working as an electrician. What is particularly amazing about
is that he does wear a double-breasted suit.
● George Metsky, a former employee of the Edison branch, was fired for "passive slacking off" after taking a paid leave due to work injuries in 1931. Metsky believed that the work-related injury caused him to suffer from tuberculosis, and he repeatedly claimed compensation from Edison Company but failed. The complaint to the Labor and Social Security Bureau in 1936 also ended in failure. The pseudonym F.P. on the intimidation letter is the acronym of Fair Play: Fair Play.
Brussels, which is considered to be magical in ordinary people, made him hailed by the media at that time as " Sherlock Holmes on the sofa".
How did he infer these characteristics?
First of all, based on the content of the intimidation letter and the law of the spread of bomb drop locations, he found that the bomb madman was very consistent with the diagnostic criteria of paranoids, and paranoids had slow and continuous aggravated delusions of victimization, which generally only deteriorated after the age of 30. The Bomb Maniac was in a serious condition when he first committed the crime in 1940. Now 16 years have passed, and the conservative estimate should be over 45 years old.
In addition, most of these mentally ill people have a well-proportioned body, and 85% of bomb madmen may meet this characteristic; the handwriting on the intimidation letter is neat and clean and has almost no modifications, and this habit will be paranoid in all aspects of life, such as being neat and decent, being polite, and following the rules.
Moreover, paranoid and suspicious, always worried that others will persecute themselves, so they are likely to be alone and have no partners or friends.
other accurate analysis comes from Brussels’ rich experience in identifying people and stolen things:
1. The bomb maniac never uses spoken language and expresses old-fashioned English, which means that he may be an immigrant or grew up in a non-native English speaking community;
2. The bomb maniac uses bombs and knives at the same time, both of which are Slavs’ usual weapons, so he may be Slav, and he may be Catholic;
3. The intimidation letters are all from New York and Westchester, and the suspicious paranoia does not send letters directly from the place of residence. If he is indeed Slav, it is very likely that he will come from Connecticut, the largest Slav settlement near New York and Westchester, the possibility of being from Connecticut, the largest Slav settlement near New York and Westchester;
● Metski lives in Waterbury, Connecticut, delivers intimidation letters in Westchester or destination New York midway.
4. The "Bombie Man" said in the letter that he had been suffering from illness for a long time. The most common chronic diseases at that time were heart disease, cancer and tuberculosis . Over the past decade, there is little hope for cancer to survive, and tuberculosis could be cured by drugs as early as the early 1950s. Therefore, Brussels speculated that the bomb maniac suffered from heart disease - he was wrong. The perpetrator suffered from tuberculosis, but the paranoid who was blinded by delusions and hatred. How likely would it be that the hospital would be willing to cure his illness?
5. The most mysterious "double-breasted suit" comes from the imagination that emerges in Brussels' mind: a middle-aged man who is cautious and wearing a double-breasted suit. He believes that this image has a reasonable basis: paranoid, conservative and cautious, and popular dresses always wait until they are outdated before he is willing to try it. A double-breasted suit is such an option.
● Through the above story, we understand that all analysis has its origin. The analyst substitutes himself into the criminal himself and thinks about the reasons for various behaviors in the current situation:
. First: What did I do (current situation)
2. Second: What can do this bring me (purpose)
3. Then: What happened during the process (behavioral actions)
. And as the investigation deepens, details can be found in the characters' behavior and analyzed:
For example, in the story, the "bomb madman" wrote a letter to the police station after the outbreak of the Pearl Harbor incident. The detective gave a preliminary conclusion through neatness of the text and grammatical arrangement:
The bomb madman never uses spoken language in his letter, and expressed his old-fashioned English, which shows that he may be an immigrant, or grew up in a non-native English-speaking community, and is hostile to Edison, may be fired, or a person who is damaged by the company's interests.
These are because the behaviors and actions of the person under investigation reveal more information, and guides analysts to dig up clues from it to help solve the case. Of course, as for why this analysis is done and whether it is accurate, it must be summarized in the learning in the special field and the accumulation of a large amount of experience.
But insight into the human heart has been a technical job since ancient times.
