11/23 UPDATE: Profiling 101: Jessica Ridgeway, DC Sniper, How I Do It

Please Remember The Families That Mourn Their Lost Ones From Aurora,Co Today
Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6
AJ Boik, 18
John Blunk, 26
Micayla Medek, 23
Jessica Ghawi, 24
Alexander Teves, 24
John Larimer, 27
Matt McQuinn, 27
Alex Sullivan, 27
Jesse E. Childress, 29 
Rebecca Ann Wingo, 32
Gordon W. Cowden, 51

As readers here may recall, my very first 2 posts were on the topic of how Criminal Profilers of Genius Are So Often Wrong & Why. As demonstrated once again by The Jessica Ridgeway Case, where my profile was accurate & they were off as to all aspects despite the fact that Law Enforcement had the evidence to utilize & I didn't, just used logic as well as making simple deductions from public information. Also, I have a photographic memory which helps a lot in thinking outside the box.

Please Follow Me on Twitter. https://twitter.com/MarcieWogan where you hear first.
(FOR REVIEW OF MY PROFILING BEFORE PERP WAS TURNED IN BY HIS MOTHER):

http://formercriminalprosecutor.blogspot.com/2012/10/jessica-ridgeway-we-are-looking-for-her.html

                                                  Me, Thinking Outside The Box

A quick review: The D.C. Sniper, (strangely named as the start was in the Tacoma/Seattle area, which is physically located on the West Coast) represents yet another in a long list of FBI profiling bloopers that allowed the body count to rise while the Feebies (not a nickname I made up, in use all over police departments in the know) failed to think outside the box & terrified the public with completely idiotic information regarding area of danger, likely motive, etc. Will now expound.

1) Full Disclosure: as the 1st female recruit into the ranks, who was ultimately rejected because I lacked 20/20 uncorrected vision-I do take great delight in pointing out their blindness to why they get it wrong so many times. Ironic, isn't it? I didn't need perfect vision to operate unusual abilities that enabled my thought process to be superior to whatever person that was selected because she had perfect eyesight.

2) The way that the FBI came to develop all their theories started with a fatally flawed supposition: that by gathering information gleaned from serial killers already caught, a useful profile could be projected forward that would represent those not yet caught. Problem was, those that were in that group were mostly the "classic" white male loners.

3) That meant that a loop was created whereby no matter what evidence was found at the crime scene, ignoring all sorts of so called "signature" oddities indicating manner & nature of the death-the first supposition always left out the possibility that the person or parties responsible were anything other than the white male loners. I would suggest that there are number of serial killings that still have not been so much as linked as to a serial killer, in addition the reason why is because the perpetrator and/or the victims don't fit into the box that is the starting point. So right now, serial killers are enjoying the prowl, scanning the paper for news of the bodies if found, & laughing in a sick way because they know the FBI has not got them on the screen. Still to this day. The "Grim Sleeper" case is a sad example of this, just google it.

4) That is exactly what happened with the oddly named D.C. Sniper case. The older not Caucasian male mastermind dominant leader of the not Caucasian duo (it was sort of his own private cult) was following the inane lack of progress in the case with glee. He was not as they suggested a lone white male most likely trained in the military as a sniper, the only detail correct was he had served in the military- as a truck mechanic. He must have been really skilled at that, because getting a 9 year old car that he had purchased for $250 because it already had over 200,000 miles on it all the way across the United States (while looping back & forth) without major engine problems or other kinds of malfunctions requires a master of automobile mechanics. Which was the business he was running in Tacoma, auto repair.

5) The FBI was looking for the wrong guy entirely, the right guy had mad skillz at auto mechanics, not in any way a military trained lone white sniper. Later investigation revealed that he had originally scouted a 1965 Lincoln Continental at a Tacoma garage. His interest focused on the size of the car's trunk. But at $3,500, that hot rod Lincoln was out of his price range.

6) I wish I could find a mechanic that good as I am driving a 1999 vintage with electrical problems.

7) Most vehicles that are leased as so called "fleet" cars or vans for business purposes are selected in the default mode color, as it is the cheapest: white. Therefore, when the police started to realize that ballistics were matching up in shootings: uh oh, wait a minute, a serial killer is on the loose! Finally it occurred to them to start asking people at the scene what vehicles they remembered in the area.

8) And so the dumbness of it all was complicated by the FBI failing to process this in their warning to the public that ultimately suggested a white van was the most likely container of the serial killer. See, the indisputable fact is that there will always be a lot of white vehicles out there, whether fleet leased or personal modes of transportation, as white is the least expensive color & therefore the predominate color scheme on major roadways. I know this for sure because while it was ongoing since I live in the area, I would experiment in the real world by looking around to see what cars/vans were on the road to confirm my hypothesis that stating the killer is driving a white car/van narrows it down to just about 80% of the traffic in the area.

9) The vehicle was factually a kind of dark purple/blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice, which looks nothing like a white van unless you are on bath salts-which had not been invented yet.

10) Because I dislike the phenomena that takes place where the perpetrator becomes famous, while the public does not remember the names of the victims, I purposely omitted the name of the now executed evil demented killer.

A reader then inquired about the religious overtones, wasn't there a linkage to "Michael's" craft stores, which was a reference to The Angel Michael. I responded with this:

You are absolutely correct in remembering there was a "Michael's" Craft Store connection.

Also that religion got thrown into the stew. Several of the shootings took place in Michael's Parking lots, or near them. To the extent that the FBI, ATF & eventually The Secret Service, too was helping guide then Montgomery, MD Police Chief Charles A. Moose in the investigation (that a serial killer was on the prowl in the MD/DC/VA vicinity which escaped their notice until attacks took place in a fairly concentrated area); for reasons I have explained in my prior post, the aid wasn't all that useful.

In order to convince the public that the FBI was so confounded by this military trained sniper mastermind (we are engaging in a massive manhunt for a cunning former military operative, perhaps someone who was a former or washed out Navy Seal, Ranger, Delta Force type); it was all smoke & mirrors to cover their incompetence.

And didn't advance the investigation, the FBI & the rest of the high end of The Task Force was factually combing military records looking for that lone white sniper who must have been trained by the highest levels in the military. It was also a great PR strategy for the FBI, throwing shade at the military; why not consider the possibility that the cunning killer was a former FBI field operative to explain away how he was eluding & confounding the hunters with such finesse? Answer, well that would be kind of embarrassing: let's stick with the blaming the military; not good PR to mention that the FBI has agents that committed all kinds of heinous stuff while still actively remaining in the highest levels of the FBI. It must be the fault of the other guys, not the FBI. How patriotic of them.

Whenever an investigation reaches "multi-jurisdictional levels" with a task force
assigned including FBI involvement to lend expertise to the locals: you can read that as: This Is A Mess. And the only way the case will be solved is if the killer gets so bored by the investigation running cold & never even getting close enough to have the real perp on so much as a suspect list; he will actually turn himself in because the publicity, fame & attention died down. Which is what happened in the BTK case, the Bind Torture Killer of Kansas. His campaign of terror started in the 1970s, and continued into the 1990s, but the media wasn't all over it anymore, despite his sending taunting letters to newspapers as well as the police every now & then to stir things up. Frustrated by the concept that people were forgetting to be afraid of him, 30 years after his first known killing, he decided to confess everything on a floppy disk & mail it directly to the police department. He later claimed he didn't realize the police would derive his identity from the disk despite the fact that it had his name on it. Mind boggling, isn't it?

Back to the D.C. Sniper, as already mentioned, he had served in the military-as a truck mechanic. and never received any high level super warrior instruction or expertise. He had attained the highest certificate in marksmanship during basic training, as did my father, who was a dentist in the U.S. Air Force. He started utilizing Michael's as a terror target once he got closer to his always intended destination-his ex wife, Mildred who had taken the kids with her. Shootings at Michael's was a way to get her to fear him as he made his journey, getting closer & closer. To send a kind of secret message that she would understand was aimed at her. Mildred Muhammad had worked at a Michael's craft store & still liked to shop there.

The religious overtones were introduced by the killer as a distraction, to make the media attention even more frenzied. More danger! More drama! More excitement! We have got a super soldier sniper on the loose who is a deranged religious fanatic who believes he is God. What could be more scary? Cause greater panic? We know this because at one crime scene he deliberately left a Tarot card (the Death Card) inscribed with the phrase, "Call me God" on the front and, on three separate lines on the back, "For you mr. Police." "Code: 'Call me God'. The message he was trying to send was actually, why am I not known as "The Tarot Killer"? I am leaving tarot death cards at the scene AND I didn't start the killings anywhere near D.C., let's keep this real. As in real dramatic, invoking tarot cards, demanding he be addressed as "God".

To the extent that he was beginning to think he must have extraordinary powers, he had been encouraged by the fumbling of the case. Several times, radio patrol cars checked his license plates by the crime scene, but didn't even stop him because he wasn't driving a white van. More than once, he was still near the scene, watching the police descend while he & his brainwashed junior teenage protege stood there in a sort of amazed shock that no one noticed them at all. Part of the problem was that if you are near a place where you are close enough to witness the horror of an innocent person in an ordinary parking lot hit by a bullet, your attention is drawn to the victim, not to where the bullet came from.

In addition, his sending messages & leaving tarot cards was beginning to sound like BKT, he was frustrated by the inability of the task force to even suspect him. He was enjoying the fame, but starting to desire for people to know it was him, a lowly truck mechanic who was creating all the terror & panic. When would the big reveal finally take place? On October 3rd, the D.C. police actually stopped the Caprice for a "minor traffic infraction". A mere 2 hours before the fatal shooting of Pascal Charlot, witnesses reported seeing a Caprice near the scene. So you would think that it was kind of risky to continue driving around in that car, right? Wrong.

Reading that the possibility of the perp being inside a blue Chevy Caprice, not a white van, was now public knowledge made him nervous enough to drive north to Baltimore to let things cool down. Still the police continued to drop the ball. On October 8, a Baltimore City Police Officer saw a dark blue Chevrolet Caprice with a person sleeping inside near the Jones Falls Expressway at 28th St. in Baltimore. He was questioned & asked to produce his driver's license. This should have been a red flag of some interest as his driver's license was from Washington State, which did not match up with the New Jersey vehicle tag. Despite the fact that the circumstances of the vehicle was suspicious enough for the Baltimore City Police to ask him what was going on, coupled with widely publicized info that the vehicle fit the description of that blue Chevy Caprice now mentioned as a possible vehicle used in the shootings in D.C. five days earlier; the Baltimore City Police let him go after informing him that it was not legal to sleep in his car in that spot. Now that is fine police work.

(In fairness, they weren't part of The Task Force.)

Thanks to that incredible but true brush with the law where nothing was done, five more killings took place after the Baltimore City Police failed to so much as take him into custody for questioning or run his prints. As a final bit of irony, one of those victims was October 14th, 47-year-old Linda Franklin, an FBI intelligence analyst (I can't even begin to think of the words for this) who had been shopping at Home Depot with her husband. Well, that really took the cake, The Secret Service & ATF were now an even more jacked up part of the task force because a new theory of dumbness had taken hold. Perhaps the cunning military trained super soldier sniper had it in for the FBI? All hands on deck, he has taken down one of our own.

They were back to square negative nothing, examining surveillance tapes of Linda Franklin leaving work that night to see if the killer was stalking the FBI. He did not know she was an FBI intelligence analyst, he was randomly picking shoppers, school children, it didn't matter-the idea was to terrify everyone- at places like Home Depot & Michael's. They weren't being pre-selected by race, color, age, creed or occupation. Just innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time- in an area he had scouted as a good place to shoot. So the task force continued to ignore the obvious & the killings continued.

Until October 24th, when not one but two ordinary citizens were able to recognize the dark blue Chevy Caprice at a rest stop in Myersville, MD with 2 people sleeping in it. Without any intelligence training, or aid from the Task Force, they put together the connection mentally with the DC Sniper shootings & called the tip in that the suspects were in the car conked out, motionless, asleep. Please come and get them before they wake up & anyone else is killed.

So the moral of this story is never forget that a massive Task Force combining the FBI, The Secret Service, ATF as well as local police departments did not catch the D.C. Sniper. You, the kind of person who is reading this now, you did by calling in the tip. The real heroes are not the ones you have heard mentioned, not the local Police Chief & most certainly not The Task Force. The first tip came from Whitney Donahue, & I don't remember the other person's name. It was discussed in a dispute over reward money & Whitney Donahue was declared the winner as his tip came in minutes before the other. They both deserve equal credit for their ability to connect the dots & call it in. I salute them both.

Now it happens again, Jessica Ridgeway's killer was not located by the Massive Task Force, collecting 500 DNA samples everywhere their profiling suggested was a place that might yield the ID of the killer, an older, taller, biker, hiker, living alone.

Except they were, once again: looking in all the wrong places, his mother turned him in.

Quoting myself, I previously wrote that "(w)henever an investigation reaches "multi-jurisdictional levels" with a task force assigned including FBI involvement to lend expertise to the locals: you can read that as: This Is A Mess. The Hunt For Jessica's Killer Was Another Classic Blooper, The Bigger The Search Effort, The Farther Away Was The Truth.

Good hearted crowdsourcers Websleuths was working on it, too. Websleuths was looking for a seasoned predator: which made no sense. Some member there had a friend who was giving "their" profiling advice. So off they went in the wrong direction.

Quick wrap up of my approach to developing an idea of what kind of perp was at work:
 
I used to live in Colorado. This is the state that has the longest (as in earliest), most comprehensive DNA database in the USA.

So, they had DNA evidence collected, but NO MATCH.

1) This means the person isn't a genius, leaving DNA all over.

2) Also means they are young, too young to have a prior arrest where DNA was collected.3) Can't be a tall adult, had to be someone young who blends in with younger teens & kids.

4) Tip had to come FROM HIS MOTHER.

5) The young girl in NJ whose body was found recently was killed by other teens.

6) Their mother turned them in, too.

7) Young teens have to be living at home as they have no source of income.

8) Your mother knows something is wrong.

9) Starts bothering her the idea that her kid is the one who did it.

10) Very hard thing to do, call in THE HOT TIP MY SHORT 17 TEEN YEAR OLD HIGH SCHOOL DROP OUT SON is your genius, adult, seasoned predator.

Thank you again for reading as well as writing. Maybe someone else can explain how to sign up as a Member &.improve site functions. I just do what I know, stuff like criminal profiling. I don't know if his mother turned in the tip, but I'll bet you she did.

Here is a report on the family from The Denver Post as more is known:
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_21870983/enigmatic-portrait-jessica-ridgeway-suspects-family-emerges
My thinking was based on a case I had, as well as a case that had Maryland ties:

Lauren Giddings, may she rest in peace. Beautiful young woman.

P.S. Her parents would like to know where the rest of her is, because all that was found was her torso.

I didn't want anyone to go to crime profiteer site of "Blink on Crime", so I recommended Websleuths as the better option. They got this wrong, but still have do good work in many cases. It is very difficult to move away from traditional conceptual approaches.
People have asked me to expose Blink as a fraud. I am trying to write a post here.
So I am going to do this fast. Her real name is Shannen Stoy. A phony crime profiteer.

Tricia Griffith, of Websleuths.com is the real deal. Avoid Blink. Back to my post.
(For the record, I am not now, nor have ever been a member of either Websleuths or BlinkonCrime. I have no access to Websleuth's basement scanner.
I have no financial stake in either site of any kind. I recommend Websleuths, that's it.

There are lots of things I read, including The NYT, AboveTheLaw, Dealbreaker,The Washington Post, etc that have nothing to do with crime sites. I am a voracious reader, if you are interested in a roundup of strange crimes combined with very good investigative journalism: http://www.truecrimereport.com/
 
Blink is never right, makes up false info, don't read there. Ever. Back to Lauren.

I read a legal blog, "AboveTheLaw", for obvious reasons: it is a blog about the world of jurisprudence, not crime. Law Firms Are Collapsing, Prominent Partner Arrested For Tax Fraud, NYU Law Dean Steps Down, Law School Rankings. I read a lot, as that is one of the ways I learn & add new information to my inner database, you know: the one inside my brain. I try to increase my knowledge base constantly, use it or lose it is my philosophy.

"AboveTheLaw" got tips as the crime was unfolding as to Lauren Giddings.

For the strangest reason ever: Nancy Grace went to the same law school.
"AboveTheLaw" is always making fun of the fact that it is a bottom ranked law school.

Read here, to see what kind of connections I learn from, as Lauren Giddings was discovered as only a torso. Which made me think about what kind of person is involved in this sort of offense. The guy who did it was her neighbor, fellow law student & he ID himself as the suspect right away by giving a TV interview in which he rambled on about how he had looked in her apartment to check on her to explain away why his DNA might be found there AND mentioned he had a gun that he would have used to protect her (translation I forced her by holding a gun to her head) This is a must read to see similarities:

http://abovethelaw.com/2011/08/a-closer-look-at-stephen-mcdaniel-lauren-giddings-and-mercer-law-school/

I try to start with a clean slate, in order to prevent the loop of looking for an older white male loner preventing me from a logical progression of objective analysis as well as information processing. I noted that after 10 year old Jessica had disappeared, a 12 year old named Autumn Pasquale was missing in New Jersey. Also, that people on various websites were wondering if the 2 crimes were linked.

My immediate reaction was, no way. If a killer is traveling 2,000 miles on a spree of snatching young girls: there will be a lot more incidents as the monster is on the prowl. Why wait until you get to New Jersey to kidnap again? So, I discarded that possibility in 2 seconds. True stranger abductions are very rare, most "kidnappings" involve either non-custodial parents or parents making false claims to cover up the killing of their own child. JonBenét Ramsey was a classic example of this kind of behavior.

So parents are your first suspects, once they have been cleared: now the profiling begins.
In the case of Jessica Ridgeway, you need to think about what kind of person kidnaps & tortures children. I always consider the case of 2 year old James Patrick Bulger, who was snatched in Liverpool, England and suffered horribly: tortured, mutilated & murdered in 1993 by 2 ten year old boys. Two ten year old boys did that, not a lone older male.

Fortunately in England, the use of CCTV is very prominent: cameras are placed everywhere. That is a an acronym for "closed circuit television". Here, it as opposed as a violation of privacy, civil liberty proponents view the placing of CCTV in shopping centers, railway stations, post offices, etc as wrong. In determining who kidnapped the 2 year old, investigators had footage of them in many public areas: the shopping center, other stores to review. James Bulger's severed body was discovered on train tracks 2 days after he was killed.

The police were immediately looking at the CCTV images which enabled them to track down the ten year olds very quickly. They waited for forensic confirmation that the 2 were the killers & they were formally arrested 18 days after the discovery of little James Bulger. I want to emphasize that there was no real delay, investigators were positive & watching them so no other child was harmed; but the testing took a while to be completed back in 1993. That case would most likely be processed more quickly today.

Knowing that James Bulger was killed in such a horrifying manner by 2 ten year old boys makes me think right away that someone younger is responsible when I was considering all the known facts available to the public pertaining to Jessica Ridgeway. It had to be someone with access to a vehicle, stuff you would need to dismember a child, at the same time someone young enough that the person was blending in with younger girls, yet old enough to drive. Which placed the age range very precisely for me at 16 to 18 years of age.

Law enforcement was looking at an age range of 18 to 35. Not even close to my profile. There was speculation that the person was undetected because of fitness, biking or hiking with the body in tow. A 160 lb 5' 6" 17 year old is obese, not athletic. I was certain that the perp or as the FBI Profilers of Genius, past or current like to say "unsub" was driving; that is how you move a body & leave the backpack 7 miles away in a panic to create a diversion. Seriously. Someone local, driving, familiar with the areas: as well as young.

There was also public information as to more than 1 prior attempted abduction in Colorado in the months before this crime. Some involved boys, others adults. If this was a young person as I had theorized: then a practice run, or prior failed attempt was in that list. The question to ponder was which one caught my interest?

Well, I believe in geographical profiling, that the first place to start is with the concept that the person is operating in areas of familiarity: somewhere they live, or previously lived, or somewhere they worked, or previously worked. The Green River Killer is a great example of this: The Task Force were looking all over the place, theorizing the perp was flying in & out of Sea-Tac (The Seattle Tacoma Airport) to avoid detection. Ridiculous, wrong, wrong, wrong. He was living right nearby, not a genius, not a fictional character of amazing cunning. The Profilers of Genius were the Enablers of Stupidity. Another Great Job While The Killings Never Stopped For Decades.

There was an attempted kidnapping of a 22 year old female jogger on May 28th, who successfully fought off the attacker right in the open space of Ketner Lake, located in Westminster, Colorado. Which was where Jessica Ridgeway was headed when she disappeared. Also right near the open field were her partial remains were discovered.So that was the one I linked together. A younger smaller male, thwarted in his attempt to capture an adult female for sexual gratification turned to a child as she would be easier to subdue.

Oh, I was right about the other thing, too. I said parts of Jessica were missing & the killer had them. Why? Because they like to keep trophies & also sometimes relive the excitement by using them again. Gross, but true. Someone wrote me & asked where I was getting this information. I was deducing it from the lack of specification as to the odd phrasing indicating body parts were "not intact". I just checked CBS4 in Denver, guess what? "He allegedly told police that human remains were in a crawl space under their house."

I suspected he had her head, for various reasons too disgusting to explain here. Or sexual parts. I don't know, I never saw what remains were displayed, just came to the logical conclusion that all of them were not there, on purpose: he wanted to keep them. It was a sexually motivated crime, that was why he tried a female 22 year old first: more sexual stuff to enjoy. He wasn't able to complete that crime, it was not a "practice" run: it was a failure.

The reason why I ruled out a female as the perpetrator was that this reminded me of James Bulger, which had sexual elements (battery inserted in rectum, foreskin damaged) as well as so called "thrill kill" aspects. The two ten year olds wanted to feel what killing was like, to enjoy it. There was a case here in the US in 2009, in Missouri where a 15 year old girl savagely attacked & murdered a nine year old girl in her neighborhood.

That case was an example of a pure "thrill kill", without sexual motivation. Little Elizabeth Olten was stabbed, strangled, her throat was slit in a carefully planned crime to provide the seriously disturbed 15 year old with the excitement of the power of torturing, tearing a little life apart, to know what it "would feel like": but Elizabeth was not sexually violated or molested.

So I had to come to the conclusion that the motivation was a both "thrill kill" as well as sexual, with the prior attempt on an older female jogger: the "unsub" is male. Working with all the above as my thesis, I developed the following profile:

1) A male.
2) Age range 16-18 years of age.Not any older.
3) No prior felony arrests that were similar, as DNA was not in system.
4) Teen was living nearby right in the Ketner Lake area.
5) Most likely playing WoW in mother's house. (Always, WoW).
6) Suspected parents were divorced.
7) Had access to a larger vehicle like an SUV.
(It was snowing, so people utilize 4 wheel drive SUVs a lot in Denver.)
8) Was short, not fit, not jogging, running, or cycling with body.
9) Had a background that involved interest in thrill killing.
10) Most likely a lot of violent pornography in his computer.
11) Fit in & hung out with younger girls all the time.
12) Not a stranger, most likely some kind of previous contact.
13) Stated likely to have a girlfriend that was age appropriate.
14) I did not know, but thought younger siblings were the conduit.
15) As that is what happened to Elizabeth Olten:
 She came over to play with the younger sibling of the terrifyingly evil predator.

So there you have it, how I profiled this case correctly.

Oh, in mentioning WoW, I need to clarify that a bit.

For those of you not familiar with the online multi-player computer game
"Worlds of Warcraft", it is wildly popular with loners with terrible social skills.
That is not the same as suggesting that everyone who plays is a potential nutcase.
Chris Kluwe, an NFL punter is famous for 2 things:
He is constantly on there as "Loate" & he wrote a hysterical attack on anti-gay marriage:
http://deadspin.com/5941348/?post=52487943

Fantastic post that went viral, gay marriage won't turn you into "a lustful cockmonster".
Aimed at a Maryland Politician, which is where I live, so Chris Kluwe, Loate, WOW!

As Always ; M

Marcie S. Wogan "formercriminalprosecutor"
Tours of Duty
Carroll County, MD
Jerry F. Barnes
Thomas E. Hickman