Can criminal profiling identify a killer?Can criminal profiling identify a killer?
All In The Mind
Criminal profiling promises a lot — being able to piece together a picture of a suspect through clues, intuition and psychology sounds great. But how reliable is it? In our first episode of Forensic, a four-part series unpacking the psychological tools used to solve crimes, we examine the history of criminal profiling. How it got popular in the 1950s after bombings in New York City, its shortcomings when scrutinised by researchers, and the techniques it is built on that police deploy today (but with a lot more data). Guests: Michael Cannell Author, Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling Former Editor, The New York Times Professor Craig Jackson Professor of Occupational Health Psychology Birmingham City University Dr Victoria Berezowski Lecturer, Forensic Science, Deakin University Credits: Presenter/producer: Sana Qadar Senior producer: James Bullen Producer: Rose Kerr Sound engineer: Isabella Tropiano You can catch up on more episodes of the All in the Mind podcast with journalist and presenter Sana Qadar, exploring the psychology of topics like stress, memory, communication and relationships on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. Further Information: Incendiary - Michael Cannell The Organized/Disorganized Typology of Serial Murder: Myth or Model? Is criminal profiling dead? Should it be? Psychology Today George Metesky, the ‘Mad Bomber’ – Wikipedia Unmasking the Mad Bomber – The Smithsonian, 2017 A 16-Year Hunt For New York’s ‘Mad Bomber’ – NPR, 2011 An overview of offender profiling – International Journal of Police Science and Management, 2024 Offender profiling: a review of the research and state of the field – Police Psychology, 2021 The Grit, Glamour and Gall of Criminal Profiling – The University of Arizona, 2021 Casebook of a Crime Psychiatrist – James Brussel, 1968 Dangerous Minds - The New Yorker
31:50•8 May 2026
Can a Criminal Profile Really Catch a Killer?
Episode Overview
- The famous 1950s New York mad bomber case helped launch criminal profiling through psychiatrist James Brussel’s strikingly accurate predictions.
- Early FBI profiling drew on interviews with violent offenders, but the data was never opened to scientific scrutiny and many of its claims have since been challenged.
- Simple labels such as "organised" and "disorganised" offenders often fail to match real offences or the complexity of human behaviour.
- Data-based methods like investigative psychology and geographic profiling use patterns from large numbers of crimes to estimate who offenders might be and where they could live.
- Modern forensic experts argue that intuition-driven profiling is limited, while approaches grounded in statistics, geography and clear theory are more reliable investigative tools.
“"I get students all the time saying they want to be a profiler, and I have to tell them that it's actually not a real job."”
What insights can experts and survivors share about addiction? Here, the focus shifts to another kind of human behaviour: how psychology is used to catch criminals, and how often it falls short. This episode of All In The Mind kicks off a four-part series called *Forensic*, where you'll hear how psychological tools are used to solve crimes.
The story starts in 1950s New York, with the "mad bomber" terrifying the city and a desperate police force turning to psychiatrist Dr James Brussel. Author Michael Cannell traces how Brussel studied bomb fragments and letters, then coolly announced that the offender would be a middle‑aged loner of Slavic background, living with an older female relative – and that "when you catch him, he'll be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned." When George Metesky was finally arrested, those uncanny details matched.
But the episode doesn’t stop at a dramatic success story. Professor Craig Jackson steps in to unpack how the FBI later tried to systemise profiling by interviewing notorious killers, yet never released their data. He explains how ideas like the classic "organised vs disorganised" offender have been heavily criticised and often don’t match real cases, such as the Green River Killer, where a profile misled investigators.
Lecturer Dr Victoria Berezowski then contrasts this with approaches grounded in data, especially geographic profiling. She explains how mapping crime scenes, victim locations and daily routines can help narrow a search area, using ideas like "activity space" (everywhere you can go without a map) and "anchor points" such as home or work. With a wry aside, she notes that many students say they want to be profilers, but "it's actually not a real job" in her context.
Anyone interested in how brains, behaviour and bias shape criminal investigations will find plenty to chew on here – and might finish wondering: how much of our own judgement is based on evidence, and how much on hunches?
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