Who Killed These Women? - The Hunt For A Serial Killer - Part Two
The Age
Saturday May 30, 1998
PERTH businesses, notably law firms, including Ciara's employers, have contributed to a $500,000 fund used by police to establish, for the first time in Australia, investigation links with national and international resources, including the FBI and British police data systems.
An important component of the Perth investigation involves the Melbourne-based experts, Forensic Behavioural Investigative Services International (FBIS), run by former Victorian police commissioner Kel Glare and former Victorian police detective inspector Claude Minisini, a founding member of the Victoria police rape squad.
But as the search for Ciara was continuing, Dr David Canter, from the Centre for Investigative Psychology at the University of Liverpool, was in Perth giving a seminar. He is considered by some as a brilliant psychological profiler and is said to have offered his services to Perth police, who were criticised for reportedly rejecting it. Canter says he never made any such offer.
But he was willing to provide his services, possibly free. He says he did not want to appear to be muscling in on the investigation by asking to be involved. He thinks police may have had a definite line of inquiry at the time and did not want to be distracted, but says it should have been clear from frequent contacts with senior police and law officers that he was available. He says he was not asked to help, despite the fact he had devised ProbPlot, a software package that, in examining a series of crimes, helps identify the area in which a serial offender lives and indicates and prioritises a potential search area.
While Canter and Minisini agree that criminal investigative analysis does not replace traditional investigative techniques, Canter is seen by some as having an important role to play in the Perth investigation, which mainly uses Minisini's expertise in FBI profiling techniques.
This issue has caused some controversy in academic circles. The Canter method involves environmental psychology: that everyone has a mental map of areas with which they are familiar. This means that killers or burglars operate within these mental maps, or "comfort zones", because they use local knowledge to help them carry out the offences.
The FBI theory works partly on the basis that behavior reflects personality: that in the analysis of certain crimes, behavior clues can be detected to help develop a portrait of the type of person being sought. This information is analysed with geographical and other information such as when and how the crimes were committed.
Canter respects the abilities of police who track down serial killers, and does not say his procedure will catch culprits, but he asserts results and research show they can play an important role.
"It would make sense that our system could contribute to the Perth case . . . but the police have many reasons for choosing their advisers, and I would not criticise them for not using us," Canter says.
But he adds: "There is an area of expertise that police forces are beginning to draw on and it is a shame the WA police are not drawing on it . . . It certainly would not have hurt to have this in WA."
Don Thomson, a barrister and professor of forensic psychology at Albury's Charles Sturt University and previously head of forensic psychology at Perth's Edith Cowan University, is a supporter of Canter's methods. "My critique of the FBI is that I have difficulty in establishing there is a method to employ them there (in Perth)," he says.
"I think the Canter method is a useful tool to supplement systematic investigations, (but) to some extent a number of the (WA) police service have allied themselves with the FBI and see Canter (an academic) as non-law enforcement, as an outsider."
Perth police say they have used the Canter method, and will use any appropriate science, regardless of its source, that would help the investigation. But the clear favorite is the FBI technique, and FBI-trained experts have been flown in to help.
David Canter believes a police devotion to FBI "gurus" is a mistake. "What is happening with some of the followers of the FBI approach is that they have a stronger belief in the masters, in the gurus, than the gurus themselves do," he says.
"The gurus know how much was based on their own experience, and they have now retired and written books and made a fortune. They are lovely guys, and (their techniques) open up all kinds of ideas about the various processes. But some of the followers see it as some sort of biblical testament, which they follow through without question."
Claude Minisini rejects suggestions that police in Perth blindly followed any techniques and says Canter's claims are ill-informed. "It highlights (Canter's) lack of knowledge about the professionalism and the meticulousness of the taskforce, and of the checks and balances they have set up internally."
Minisini says the FBI process is based on a clearly defined scientific research protocol involving interviews with serial killers and serial rapists and analysis of the crimes they have committed.
"I am still going into the prisons and interviewing a coterie of offenders simply to get insights, to understand, and to listen to their motivations and talk about what precipitated their crimes," he says.
Minisini agrees with Canter's "comfort zone" theories, and so does the FBI. He says the FBI researched the theories with a sample of more than 500 rapists - much larger than the Canter sample - but found the geographic theory was not consistent all the way through. "Why? Because we are dealing with human behavior," Minisini says.
He describes Canter's long-time opposition to the FBI as "fairly narrow and naive . . . I am not against any approach," Minisini says. "You incorporate all things that are good to ultimately achieve a result. The two approaches (Canter and the FBI) are not mutually exclusive. I am a proponent of both. "
Minisini says after 14 months with the FBI behavioral science unit in Virginia, he believed the bureau has an interesting concept. "I thought it could work if used correctly. I think at times it has been used flippantly and inappropriately, and it has suffered some discredit. That is because some practitioners of the processes, who have limited experience in the investigation of serial crimes and crimes of interpersonal violence, did not realise the limitations of the process and, further, they tried to make facts out of theories. And that is where some errors have been made."
But Minisini says the process involves much more than Canter's geography theory. "Once you identify the suspect, you have got to think of strategies and approaches and what sort of format you are going to take. That fact is all those things need to be taken into consideration. If you have not been out to talk to these people, and investigated those people, you will always have a limited understanding about how they think. I have found it extremely beneficial to know," he says.
The Victorian connection, through FBIS, with the investigation and the fact that Commissioner Falconer was a senior Victoria Police officer, leads some Perth officers to refer to the WA force as "Vic West." The reliance on the FBI technique was cited in the resignation from the WA force of Senior Sergeant Mark Devenish-Meares, who ran the criminal behavior analysis unit.
Devenish-Meares earned a masters of science degree in investigative psychology from Liverpool University under David Canter. He was involved in the early stages of the serial killer probe but resigned saying he was doing relatively little, despite his skills. He says he had been told by a senior officer he was too narrow-minded and should not be in charge of his area because he was anti-FBI.
Devenish-Meares also asserts the FBI technique is based considerably on personal experiences and interviews with convicted criminals, including serial murderers and serial rapists.
"However, as far as one can gather, as a research project, they had no framework, no theory, no hypotheses, and the material that was collected was never systematised beyond a few small studies carried out a few years later," he says in a recent paper.
W HILE the Claremont killings have so traumatised the community that some criticism of the investigation might be expected, praise for police is widespread. They have responded with huge resources and professional and personal commitments in the face of community demands for action against a type of killer that experts around the world say is exceedingly clever in evading detection.
They also continue the investigation in the face of a terrifying truth: the best indication of future behavior is past behavior. When serial killers kill and get away with it, it is very likely they will do it again. And, with his increasing experience, it will be more difficult to catch him.
But Tony Potts says he speaks for the taskforce when he asserts: "Without doubt, we are going to get him, or whoever is doing it." -- Additional reporting by David Reardon.
CLAREMONT
27 January 1996: 2:06am
Last known location of Sarah Spiers
15 March 1997: 1.15-1.30am
Ciara Glennon last sighted
9 June 1997: 1.04am
Jane Rimmer last sighted.
SARAH ELLEN SPIERS
She went to the Club Bay View nightclub with friends in the early hours of Saturday 27 January 1996, the Australia Day weekend. Last seen at 2.06am at a telephone booth on the Stirling Highway, Claremont.
JANE LOUISE RIMMER
On 8 June 1996, Jane went to the Continental Hotel in Claremont with friends. At 12.04am she headed home, declining to share a taxi with four friends, and disappeared. Her body was found two months later, on 3 August, alongside a dirt track at Wellard, 35kilometres south of Perth.
CIARA EILISH GLENNON
On Friday 14 March 1997, she went to the Continental Hotel with work colleagues. She left just after midnight on Saturday 15 March, and was last seen 15 minutes later on Stirling Highway. Two weeks later, on 2 April, Ciara's body was found by a bushwalker, semi-clothed, in bushland near Eglinton, about 50 kilometres north of Perth. It was 86 kilometres from where Jane Rimmer was found.
ON THE CASE ...
Sergeant Tony Potts with Detective Inspector David Caporn, the head of the Macro Taskforce investigating the serial killings. There is dispute among academics about the use by police of FBI profiling techniques and criticism of police handling of interviews. More than two years after the murders, Potts maintains: "Without doubt, we are going to get him, or whoever is doing it."
© 1998 The Age