The Organized/Disorganized Typology of Serial Myrder: Myth or Model?

48 Pages·0.449 MB·English

University of Huddersfield Repository
Canter, David V., Alison, Laurence J., Alison, Emily and Wentink, Natalia
The Organized/Disorganized Typology of Serial Murder: Myth or Model?
Original Citation
Canter, David V., Alison, Laurence J., Alison, Emily and Wentink, Natalia (2004) The
Organized/Disorganized Typology of Serial Murder: Myth or Model? Psychology, Public Policy,
and Law, 10 (3). pp. 293-320. ISSN 1076-8971
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Organized / Disorganized Serial Murder

RUNNING HEAD: ORGANIZED / DISORGANIZED SERIAL MURDER

The Organized / Disorganized Typology of Serial Murder: Myth or Model?

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Organized / Disorganized Serial Murder
RUNNING HEAD: ORGANIZED / DISORGANIZED SERIAL MURDER

The Organized / Disorganized Typology of Serial Murder: Myth or Model?

David V. Canter1, Laurence J. Alison, Emily Alison & Natalia Wentink
Centre for Investigative Psychology, Department of Psychology, Eleanor Rathbone Building,
University of Liverpool, Bedford Street South, Liverpool, UK, L69 7ZA
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [email protected]

1 Corresponding author
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Organized / Disorganized Serial Murder
Abstract

The dichotomous classification of serial killers into either Organized or Disorganized is widely cited
and utilized. Yet only one, small-scale, empirical test of such a model can be found in the scientific
literature and that study is open to a number of serious challenges. Despite many obvious
weaknesses in the clarity and reliability of this typology it is commonly cited as a basis for the
production of ‘offender profiles’ to help police investigations and has, on occasion, formed the
foundation of some prosecution arguments in murder trials.
Murder scene information, available from law enforcement agencies provides the potential
for systematic analysis that can be used to test the assumptions underlying the
organized/disorganized dichotomy. Well-established psychometric procedures provide a basis for
testing the model by examining the underlying structure within the co-occurrence of those crime
scene actions proposed as crucial constituents of the model.
As a first step in testing this model the patterns of co-occurrence of 39 aspects of serial
killings were identified from the crime scenes of 100 murders committed by 100 US serial killers.
This information was subject to a multidimensional scaling procedure that examined the co-
occurrence of every one of the 39 aspects with every other. This analysis revealed that there are no
discrete sub-sets of offence characteristics that can be regarded as distinctly related to the
organization or disorganization of the killings. Instead there appears to be a sub-set of organized
features typical of most serial killings with disorganized features being much more rare and not co-
occurring as a distinct type. The general implications for testing typologies offered to support expert
opinion and to develop our understanding of crime are discussed.

Key words: disorganized/organized classification, serial killers, profiling, multi-dimensional
scaling.
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The Organized / Disorganized Typology of Serial Murder: Myth or Model?

The Organized/ Disorganized dichotomy is one of the most widely cited classifications of
violent, serial offenders. Although first introduced by the special agents of the FBI Training
Academy at Quantico in an examination of lust and sexual sadistic murders (Ressler, Burgess,
Douglas, Hartman and D’Agostino, 1986) the distinction has since been put forward to differentiate
all sexual homicides and also types of arson in Douglas, Burgess, Burgess, and Ressler’s (1992)
Crime Classification Manual. These authors make the distinction between Organized and
Disorganized offenders on criteria that they claim can be drawn from an examination of the crime
scene, the victim, and forensic reports. Ressler et al (1986) claim that ‘…facets of the criminal’s
personality are evident in his offense. Like a fingerprint, the crime scene can be used to aid in
identifying the murderer’ (pg. 291). They propose that offenders’ behavioral and personality
characteristics can be determined from evidence at a crime scene (Ressler et al, 1986). This
‘fingerprint’ is proposed to take one of two distinct forms, either organized or disorganized.
The organized offender is described as leading an orderly life that is also reflected in the
way he commits his crimes. Highlighting some proposed characteristics, he is claimed to be of
average to high intelligence, socially competent, and more likely than the disorganized offender to
have skilled employment. It is also claimed that he is apt to plan his offences, use restraints on his
victim, and to bring a weapon with him to commit the murder and to take the weapon away with him
from the crime scene. In contrast, the crime scene of the disorganized offender is described as
reflecting an overall sense of disorder and suggests little, if any, pre-planning of the murder. The
disarray present at the crime scene may include evidence such as blood, semen, fingerprints, and the
murder weapon. There is minimal use of restraints and the body is often displayed in open view.
The disorganized offender is thought to be socially incompetent and to have below-average
intelligence.
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The Disorganized / Organized Theory of Offender Characteristics
According to its proponents (e.g. Douglas et al., 1992) in general Organized offenders are
hypothesized to kill after under-going some sort of precipitating stressful event, such as financial,
relationship, or employment problems. Their actions are thought to reflect a level of planning and
control. The crime scene will therefore reflect a methodical and ordered approach. This is seen as
being a consequence of the Organized offender being socially skilled and adept with handling
interpersonal situations. Organized offenders are thus more likely to use a verbal approach with
victims prior to violence and all these aspects of the offender are presumed to be reflected in the
crime scene.
By contrast, Douglas et al. (1992) hypothesize that the Disorganized offender kills
opportunistically. S/he will live in close proximity to the crime scene. A lack of planning before,
during, or after the crime will be reflected in the spontaneous style of the offence and the chaotic
state of the crime scene. This mirrors the offender’s social inadequacy and inability to maintain
interpersonal relationships. The lack of normal, healthy, social relationships increases the likelihood
of sexual ignorance as well as the potential for sexual perversions or dysfunctions as part of the
homicidal acts.
In the Crime Classification Manual, Douglas et al (1992) introduced a third category to the
taxonomy, the ‘Mixed’ offender. They suggest that the reasons for those offenders who cannot be
easily discriminated as Organized or Disorganized are multifarious. The attack may involve more
than one offender, there may be unanticipated events that the offender had not planned for, the
victim may resist or the offender may ‘escalate’ into a different pattern during the course of an
offence or over a series of offences. The suggestion is that in this sort of crime, although there may
be some evidence of planning, there will be poor concealment of the body. The crime scene might
be in great disarray and there will be a great deal of manual violence committed against the victim.
The offender may be young or involved in drugs or alcohol.
The proposal of a ‘mixed’ category does, of course, raise fundamental questions about the
possibility of finding empirical support for the basic dichotomy. If a large proportion of actual cases
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are ‘mixed’ then the basic dichotomy is unlikely to survive systematic scrutiny. It will be little more
than a theoretical proposal of no real utility.
It is important to draw attention to the source and status of the reports typically used to
inform criminal investigative analysis, and crime scene classification, in particular. The information
is most often disseminated in the form of popular books, clearly intended for a non-technical and
inexpert audience, rather than in peer-reviewed journals. As a consequence it is less likely to be
subjected to informed examination and the form of critical conisderation usual within a professional
or scholarly framework. However, if anything, this enhances rather than detracts from the wide
uptake of these ideas by law enforcement practitioners who often have no scientific training.
Furthermore the mechanism, that Canter (2002) has called ‘The Hollywood Effect’, whereby loosely
formulated and often unsubstantiated theories and models are featured in widely disseminated
movies and given extra credibility by such broadcast, means that these ideas can become part of
apparently accepted expertise that juries and other lay groups will be prepared to accept. This also
can lead to the possibility that the ideas may be incorporated into practice casually and applied in a
less systematic manner than their original authors had intended. The organized/disorganized
dichotomy has probably suffered this fate being cited in a number of Hollywood films and drawn
upon as a valid model by police investigators around the world.
Part of the attraction of the dichotomy is that it was developed as part of attempts at
‘psychological profiling’, summarized by Ressler, Burgess and Douglas (1988) as, ‘ the process of
identifying the gross psychological characteristics of an individual based upon an analysis of the
crimes he or she committed and providing a general description of the person utilizing those traits’
(p.3). In essence, an examination of the crime scene is used to assign the crime to either one of the
two categories; ‘Organized’ or ‘Disorganized’. Then it is assumed that an ‘Organized’ crime will be
committed by offenders who have ‘Organized’ characteristics and a ‘Disorganized’ one by those
offenders who are ‘Disorganized’. Thus the dichotomy provides the central model that generates
inferences about offenders from details of the crime scene.
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Evidence for the way in which the Organized/Disorganized typology has grown to be
widely accepted as a conceptual tool for assisting police investigations, at the heart of ‘offender
profiling’ can be derived from a number of sources. For example, Jackson & Bekerian (1997) in
their summary of approaches to offender profiling report that, ‘investigative support, research and
training in behavioral analysis in the USA has adopted the FBI approach and psychological profiling
units in other countries such as Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands have been based to a large
extent on this approach’ (pg. 6). The approach they are describing relies, as far as can be determined
from published sources, on the Organized/ Disorganized dichotomy; indicating the importance of
examining the empirical evidence for this dichotomy.
Despite its wide citation, there appears to be little in the way of detailed explication of the
concepts and theory underlying this two-fold model. There are also ambiguities in its constituents.
Furthermore in his extensive review of the etiology of serial killing, examining biological,
psychological and social contributors to its occurrence, Stone (2000) provides no indication at all
that a dichotomy that might relate to how ‘organized’ or ‘disorganized’ the offender is has support in
any of the wide range of issues he considers. The distinction therefore remains a proposal in need of
careful definition and systematic testing.
Although the conceptual roots of the two-fold typology are unclear it seems to have its
origins in a ‘syndrome’ or ‘disease’ approach to classification. In this approach all individuals are
assigned to one sub-set of the categorical framework. This assignment is based on all the members
of the sub-category sharing a set of distinguishing features. In effect, a template is offered of a set of
characteristics, say disease symptoms, or components of a syndrome, and if the individual exhibits a
preponderance of those characteristics s/he is regarded as having the disease or reflecting the
syndrome.
Challenges to this approach, especially as it is applied to human behavior have been legion
over the past century. Indeed, whole areas of statistics and psychometrics have evolved to offer
alternative approaches to classification that find more empirical support. In general, these start from
the premise that human beings rarely fall into distinct types and therefore any approach that seeks to
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use a template for defining the characteristics of a distinct type is not likely to find much empirical
support. The general weakness of the typological approach adds further significance to reviewing
the organized/disorganized dichotomy in order to establish if it is any more likely to be valid than
other analogous typologies, such as the four-fold typology of ‘cardinal humors’ that now have
merely historical significance.

Problems with the Evidence in Support of the Dichotomy
The Special Agents at Quantico, who developed the dichotomy, report (Ressler et al 1986;
Ressler, Burgess, Hartman, Douglas, and McCormack, 1986) that it was derived from interviews
and case information on 36 murderers. However, many methodological flaws have been identified
in relation to the reliability and validity of these interviews and the ways in which conclusions were
drawn from them.
Important weaknesses of the interviews lay in their lack of structure or a predetermined
framework and in selection of the sample. The FBI agents conducting the study did not select a
random, or even large, sample of all offenders and then explore how they may be appropriately
divided into sub-groups. They had an opportunity sample of 36 offenders who agreed to talk to
them. They developed the interviews in an ad hoc fashion, depending on the particular interviewee.
To develop their ideas the FBI agents divided the people to whom they had talked into Organized
and Disorganized categories on the basis of behaviors and characteristics that they felt would
discriminate between the groups. They initially divided them into 24 organized and 12 disorganized
offenders.
From the start, then, they were illustrating how certain offence behavior and certain offender
characteristics combined in their sample. They never set out to test the discriminatory power of their
dichotomy on a sample that was not specifically drawn up to illustrate this dichotomy. Indeed, they
state themselves that ‘our study was an exploratory one’ (Ressler et al 1986, p.64). Since that initial,
limited sample of 36 offenders, no subsequent test of the reliability of the dichotomy on other
violent offences or offenders can be found in the academic literature. Thus, the widespread citation
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of this typology is based on an informal, exploratory study of 36 offenders put forward as
exemplars, rather than a specific test of a representative sample of a general population of serial
murderers.
This circular reasoning, involving reification of a concept rather than an empirical validation
of it, has the weakness of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Turco (1990) further criticizes these ‘validation
studies’ because of the atheoretical fashion in which the offender interviews were collated and
Rossmo (1997) for the lack of scientific method in the study design. Canter (2001) has gone further,
suggesting that the concept of Organized and Disorganized offenders is not a genuine
psychologically based distinction but, rather, is a commonsensical, day-to-day speculation about
differences between people. Perhaps this relationship to lay beliefs explains the enduring, often
unquestioned, acceptance of those ‘psychological profiles’ that are based on an Organized or
Disorganized framework.
FBI agents, other than those who proposed the dichotomy, acknowledge that further
research is required. Pinizzotto stated in 1984 that, ‘currently, the Behavioral Science Unit of the
FBI is developing a variety of research methods to statistically test for reliability and validity (of
profiling)’ p. 37. However, nearly 20 years later, there remains no further published evaluation.
This has not prevented the literature concerning offender profiling being peppered throughout with
references to the Organized/ Disorganized dichotomy as a clear and accepted way of distinguishing
offenders and their crime scenes (Hickey, 1997, Holmes and Holmes, 1998). In Holmes and
Holmes (1998), the reader is encouraged to accept that ‘what this approach does do, and it does
appear to do this well is to examine the crime scene characteristics and then, from that information,
describe the type of person who may have committed the crime’ p. 53. (Emphasis added).
Such endorsement of this investigative support tool can be found in a number of
publications beyond the Crime Classification Manual (Hickey, 1997, Schechter & Everitt, 1997).
For example, in an operational profile, published within Holmes and Holmes (1998), the following
advice is given:
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