But the investigators ignored the information as they were focused on Steve Bechtel at the time. By not pursuing the lead, they may have allowed the notorious Great Basin Serial Killer to get away as on July 30, 1998, nearly a year after Amy’s disappearance Dale Eaton was finally arrested for another murder.

More often than not, they are as likable as you and me. A little reserved, perhaps, with a quirk or two. Like everybody else. Except that they kill and kill and kill again.

That's what police in Spokane say Robert Lee Yates Jr. His arrest in the murder of a troubled 16-year-old girl - with police saying he could have killed as many as 17 other women - may answer the question of who was responsible for those deaths. But it doesn't even come close to answering why.

If Yates is indeed the serial killer the Spokane police say he is, it boggles the mind to think that a man with a wife and kids could excuse himself from the dinner table some night - maybe tousle the hair on his son's head - and cruise off into the night to brutalize and kill. 'I don't know how it works. I wish I did,' said Steven Egger, a professor of criminology at the University of Illinois and an academic expert on serial killings. 'There is an amazing ability to compartmentalize their lives. The term we use is doubling,' he said - living two lives.

It was first documented in Nazi death-camp doctors who would leave their horrific experiments and go home to their families. Others have termed it a 'mask of sanity,' hiding the monster beneath. Profilers The phenomenon of serial killing is hardly new; Jack the Ripper prowled the streets of London in 1888. But much has been learned about a killer's psychopathology in the past quarter-century. Quicktech pro 59 iso file. Ironically, it was another case with Northwest connections - Ted Bundy - that sparked much of the interest. Today, the FBI runs the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, which tracks and consults on serial killers around the world.

It includes the so-called profilers, who look at new cases and, based on what they've learned from earlier examples, attempt to provide investigators with information on who may have committed the crimes. It's an unusual expertise and combines police work, psychology and a bit of the crystal ball. Sometimes, the profiles are eerily accurate, other times they're off the mark. And they can be fairly general. The profile for the Spokane killings, for example, said the killer was likely a white man between 20 and 40 who might or might not be employed.

Yates, whom prosecutors have charged in the case, was working and was 47. Because of their imprecision, some detectives don't find much use for the profiles. 'They're fallacies, and they are not a wise way to look at crime scenes,' said Bob Keppel, the former chief criminal investigator at the Washington Attorney General's Office and now a forensic consultant. 'They don't catch anybody.' Keppel says that accepting even the broad generalities accepted by many experts can be dangerous.

'These killers are individuals,' he said. 'You can't look at one and predict what another is going to do.' The Spokane case poses a perfect example, he said.

Serial killers almost never use guns. 'They tend to be hands-on,' Keppel said.

But there is always an exception: Witness David Berkowitz, the 'Son of Sam'.44-caliber killer. And Keppel said serial killers are rarely married while active. John Wayne Gacy and Kenneth Bianchi were long divorced before they started taking victims. But there's an exception there, as well: Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, killed 13 women while living with his wife. King County sheriff's Detective Tom Jensen, the last detective still looking for the Green River Killer, said profiles are 'imprecise at best.' Investigators who rely too heavily on them, he said, might dismiss clues that don't fit into the profile.

Had Spokane investigators done that, he said, Yates might have been dismissed as a suspect because of his age. Still, Jensen said, there is good information to be had, particularly if the crime scene is fresh. 'They can give you a lot of insight into the background and thought process going on,' he said. The sexual component Indeed, it is generally accepted that commonalities exist among most serial killers, said Mike Napier, a retired 27-year FBI serial-crime investigator who is a consultant with The Academy Group in Manassas, Va. Common among them all, he said, is a sexual component. Egger, the Illinois crimology professor, defines a serial killer simply as someone who commits two or more killings, usually of strangers, that are separated by time and place where the motive is power and dominance - almost always through sex. From there, however, Napier said, serial killers fall into two general categories: organized and disorganized.