It's 11:30PM and I check cnn.com to find another shooting has happened in the DC area. The sniper has now killed nine people. My mother just returned from business in the DC area... now my father and sister are in the Virginia area vacationing. I'd like to have them back in Atlanta. While these situations make for greatly dramatic and suspense-packet cinema, they're not much fun to see unfold. I suppose that this is the first serial killer that I've been old enough to watch unfold on television. I wasn't old enough to be cognisant of the Son of Sam or others. I find myself consistently checking cnn.com throughout the day, hoping to hear that they've found the killer. It's interesting to see all of the analysis of facts in the case.
Much of the lead investigator's job is in playing mind games... witholding information here, giving some out there... setting up modes of communication should the shooter want to use them... stressing certain elements of the investigation to trigger a possible response from the killer.
I've got an approach that I would try... I wonder what my approach would do. I'm not a criminologist so let me know if you are. Here goes:
Start making stuff up.
Why? I'm willing to bet that the killer doesn't care about the killing. He (I'll assume it's a he) cares about the control. The spotlight. The fact that he can write something on a tarot card and then kick back watching cnn respond to it, guess at it, print it, speculate on it, measure it, survey reader's views on it and archive it. They're giving the killer what he wants... a three ring circus. He's in the driver's seat.
Let's take that away from him. No, we can't shut down the media... that would be unAmerican. But we can Xxxk with it... that's very American.
If we find that he drops a tarot card at the next killing with the text "Sam I Am", report to the media that he left a roll of toilet paper with the text "Cleaning up" on it. As the lead investigator, say that a junior investigator found it and honor him on television for finding it. This will make the killer think that your story is genuine, but that you made a mistake.
The killer will be frustrated, but probably undaunted. He'll try again with another message. Maybe he'll write "Time for experts" on a tarot card. This time you should report that he used paper towels and wrote "stains of society". This will ignite media speculation for days as they try to tie the two similar, but fake, messages together.
The killer is now very frustrated. He is losing control. He's going through all this trouble to kill people but this stupid investigator is ruining it all. He's telling the wrong story. The killer is making headlines, but they're not his headlines.
So he'll get more and more desperate to communicate. For his legacy (and A&E Biography) he'll want to clear the record. He may try to contact the police directly, but that's risky. And they've proven inept (or so they've made the killer believe). So where's he going to voice his story?
The media. He'll boldly go to the people via the source of his enjoyment.
As investigator I'd put cameras on every media outlet in town... which is quite a few in Washington DC. This doesn't cover mailed communication, but this is a numbers game.
The name of the game is evidence. If we can get the killer communicating we can collect facts. We'll have something to work with. Paper types, ink selection, phone traces... whatever... it's better than what we've got. And the killer will be more likely to make mistakes because it's not going his way.
Take away what the killer craves and make him desperate.
It would be difficult to do. To implement this strategy you'd have to guarantee that everybody in the investigation would keep new facts secret. If you don't then the killer's real messages will go out along with your fakes. Confusion won't frustrate the killer as much as censorship. We're seeing a lot of this right now in the media, but facts always seem to leak through. Luckily the media is fairly gullible and would run with the toilet paper story.
One risk is that you push the killer over the edge and he goes into a shooting rampage at a shopping mall before taking his own life. He could take 30 people with him at once.
But if we wait he may take 40 with him over the next two months.
Of course, I'll donate joereger.com to the investigative team as a mass media outlet for any "creative" reporting that they want to do. We all need to do our part.
Enough armchair quarterbacking for tonight. I hope that they catch this guy soon... and that my father and sister make it home safely.
The 15 Mile Half Marathon