01 A Vampire Story
Vampires appear in the city
Attempt criminal profiling
On the verge of forty-four additional murders
The reason I became a vampire
Start using firearms
illusions seen by criminals

02 People who fight criminals
Detective Agency for Nine-Year-Olds
Courses for the war on crime
Finally an FBI agent
Full-fledged criminal psychology education
Challenge for a Third Investigation
Look into the abyss of the murderer
What is a proper principle?
The interview program finally received permission

03 Interview with the Murderer
Trapped in a room with a murderer
I am also qualified for an interview
Interview Tips for Criminals
A group of pagans who call for murder
Only one survivor
Another type of beast
A man raised to be a murderer

04 Why I Became a Murderer
Why a person can turn into a murderer
An unfortunate childhood
Extreme complex about sex
Unfavorable circumstances can be overcome.
Crimes that pursue fantasy
The urge to kill is accelerating

05 Death of a Newspaper Boy
Sunday Morning Terror
Drawing a picture of the criminal
The nightmare returns
Remarkable agreement with analytical data
Criminal fantasy directed at a boy
The first murder discovered at the end

06 The Two Faces of Criminal Types
Organized and unorganized crime
Monsters moving under a thorough plan
anger towards women
Two women escaped from the forest
The bizarre acts of a disorganized killer
An era of unending tragedy

07 Results of Profiling
The criminal who passed the lie detector
'What' + 'Why' = 'Who'
Presidential assassin John Hinckley
Dawn Raid
Blood-drinking pervert
The child who disappeared from the department store

08 Criminal manipulation patterns beyond imagination
The Stocking Murder Case
The identity of 'Jack the Killer'
fake threatening phone calls
With the hope that I am still alive
The third criminal operation

09 Another murder?
A crime where heartbreak and fantasy overlap
'Mixed' criminals
The Devil's Play
Ongoing battles

10 Growing Pains for Better Criminal Investigation
Strengthening the criminal tracking program
Investigative agencies that deviate from the core
The establishment of a criminal justice system is finally realized.

11 Two killers on TV
Talk show with criminals
John Gacy, the worst serial killer of his time
A double life of 'murder' and 'service'
The ideal personality that defends itself
hostility toward one's mother
Sexual pleasure fulfilled through murder
Irresponsible psychiatrists
Is the death penalty the only way?

12 What's Left Now
The FBI project is being reported on incessantly
Two reactions to a criminal psychology lecture
Psychic Comes to the FBI
The real-life model for the film "The Silence of the Lambs"
Stand as a witness for the criminal
The fight against the monsters continues

A classic in the field of criminal psychology written by FBI psychologist Robert Ressler, famous for first using the term "serial killer"!

David Berkowitz… …he is the one who randomly ran over cars parked on the side of a quiet road in New York at night and killed six women in one night without reason.
There are six people who suffered injuries that almost led to death.
Before committing the murders, he committed 1,488 fires in New York City, which he recorded in detail in his [Arson Log].
Berkowitz was adopted as a child, and when his adoptive parents died at the age of 14, he searched for his biological mother.
However, he is shocked to see his biological mother and sisters who are not happy about his arrival.
From then on, he developed a hatred for his biological mother, that is, for women, and this grew into violent and destructive sexual thoughts.

Duane Samples… …when the woman he had in mind refused to return his love, he stabbed her repeatedly in the neck and torso, killing her. Police later gave a horrifying testimony that the corpse's intestines and blood were spilling out around it.
The friend of the woman who was with him also managed to escape with his life by clutching his split stomach.
Samples was admitted to Stanford University's psychology department on a scholarship, had an IQ in the top 5 percent, and defended himself with remarkable logic during police interviews.

Ted Bundy… … He committed over thirty murders, specifically targeting women with facial features that were “to his taste.” He not only raped them right before the murders, but also did not hesitate to defile the bodies afterward.
Before he turned into a murderer, he was a cautious law student.
However, after his financial support was cut off, he suffered from 'pre-crime stress' and gave up his law studies, so he relieved his sexual frustration by raping and murdering women.
But even if he had continued his law studies, it is possible that nothing would have changed.
This is because Bundy, who suffered sexual abuse from those around him as a child, may have always had a desire to kill lurking inside him.

Rather than looking for “who committed the murder”,
Find out “Who gave him the fantasy of ‘murder’?”

The above-mentioned characters are three of the many criminals introduced in this book, "Interviews with Murderers." I wrote about them not only to show the results of their bizarre murders, but also to suggest the causes of their murders and their unusual past experiences.


Looking at the behavioral patterns of these three characters, they are very similar to criminals such as Lee Chun-jae, Yoo Young-chul, and Kang Ho-soon, who committed serial murders in Korea and shocked the entire nation.
This is not only because of the surprising number of 'killed' people.
This is because the 'thing' within them that fuels the abnormal crime of murder, such as hatred for women, people (or the world) that do not accept their feelings, poverty, and lack, are the common elements that the murderers in 'Interviews with Murderers' have.


The subject of the movie [The Silence of the Lambs],
The Bible of Criminal Psychology, written by an actual FBI psychologist.

This book is an investigative record written by Robert Ressler, who worked as a 'criminal psychologist' at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and was known as an expert in investigating and interviewing serial killers. Since its first publication in the United States in 1992, it has been evaluated as the first book to deal with criminal psychology in earnest and as a great classic.
In his early days at the FBI, he was just a regular agent who investigated simple crimes and terrorist incidents, but as he dealt with a large number or variety of cases, he soon became a criminal psychology expert who could deduce criminal psychology and characteristic criminal patterns.


He was given the special task of being a 'criminal psychologist', and when he encountered a series of unbelievable murders that shook the United States, he used his sharp insight to deduce the identity of the culprit even under difficult conditions with no clues.
Above all, it showed surprising results in accurately matching the criminal's profile by using the 'Profiling technique' that analyzes the criminal's profile based only on the victim's condition, surrounding environment, and common evidence related to serial crimes, and served as a decisive guide in a difficult investigation that no one had been able to solve.

Although it was not recognized as a scientific method in the strict sense at the time, this technique has recently become a major player in criminal investigation research not only in the United States but also around the world.
To accurately perform this profiling, the analyst must guess the four stages of a murder: 'pre-crime stage', 'crime execution stage', 'body disposal stage', and 'post-crime stage', and draw a picture of the criminal's psychology and environment.
For example, let's look at the author's profiling technique when a criminal who killed seven people is found to have drunk the victims' blood.


White male, approximately 25-27 years old, gaunt appearance like malnourished, extremely dirty residence, history of mental illness and drug use, lonely person with few social contacts of either gender, spends most of his time at home, unemployed, possible receipt of some form of disability pension, if living with anyone, likely parents, but unlikely, no military service, high school or college dropout, likely to have one or more severe delusions of persecution… … .


Richard Chase, who was eventually caught as the culprit, matched more than 90 percent of the above predictions.
These achievements have evolved into cutting-edge criminal research, such as the 'Criminal Personality Survey Project' and the 'Violent Crime Prevention Program,' which are currently demonstrating astonishing accuracy in the United States, providing crucial clues to investigations that have become labyrinthine.


Moreover, author Robert Ressler is famous for first using the term "serial killer" to refer to criminals who commit murder once and then commit similar murders over time.
Also, popular novelist Thomas Harris visited the FBI to meet the author in person and heard about Robert Ressler's various investigative experiences, which led him to write novels such as "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal," which were also made into movies.

Two spectres that call for serial killings:
'Distorted Sex' and 'Abnormal Boyhood'

This book is divided into 12 sections and introduces various stories about the author's experiences and criminal research, but broadly speaking, it has three components.


First, the heinous crime itself is described with a sense of urgency, almost like a movie. Second, the author's perspective is introduced, as he analyzes the criminal's personality, encompassing scientific and psychological elements (based on the profiling technique mentioned above), just by looking at the condition of the corpse and a few surrounding circumstances. Third, the author personally visits the prison and has a deep conversation with the terrifying murderer, showing the readers the characteristics and inner state of the criminal.

This book is neither a simple crime investigation, nor a difficult and tedious social science book, nor is it a book with the excitement of a thriller novel.
But it is also true that it encompasses all of these things.
Even as you read the gripping, tense case records, the interviews with the criminals evoke a sense of human compassion, and as you engage with the author's profiling narrative, you gain keen insight and are drawn into his perspective.

What author Robert Ressler wanted to introduce to readers through this book was not simply to boast about his own successful record of solving labyrinthine cases.
As the title of the Korean version of this book suggests, the focus is not on catching the culprit by asking, "Who committed the murder?" through conversations with the murderers, but rather on "Why did they kill?" In other words, it is a slap in the face to the internal state of the murderers and the families or society that drove them to such a state.


People who have suffered serious trauma in childhood cannot live completely normal lives as adults.
An unloving mother, an abusive father or siblings, a school that just sits by and watches, a social welfare organization that is useless, and the child's own inability to have normal sexual relationships with others are all perfect conditions for creating a deviant personality.
In other words, flawed families and societies create a hothouse environment that fosters criminal behavior and fantasies, ultimately leading to horrific tragedies.


As society becomes more complex and advanced, it is said that indiscriminate killings of people one has never met before are becoming more prevalent than murders based on grudges.
The protagonists of these 'random murders' all have two things in common: 'distorted sexual ideas' and 'unfortunate childhoods'.
It is surprising that in no case has these two factors been involved as causes.
Of course, not everyone who had a difficult childhood or had sexual problems becomes a murderer.
But conversely, we should not ignore the fact that many serial killers share this common cause.

William Heirens, a serial killer and thieves, wrote this on a wall in the lipstick of a woman he killed.
“Please catch me before I kill any more.
I'm out of control (For heavens sake catch me Before I kill more.
I cannot control myself).”

Whether their crimes are meticulously planned or accidental, most murderers struggle with a split self, like the graffiti in Hirens.
The way to stop the behavior of those who have become uncontrollable is not to 'shorten the investigation time' by identifying and arresting the criminal as quickly as possible, but rather to prevent potential murderers through scientific and psychological research in the field of crime.