Investigating a Serial Killer: The Development of the FBI’s Role Told Through Public Documents

Abstract

The number of serial killers, those who have murdered three or more people at separate times in the United States,1 has declined from its peak 128 in 1987 to just 15 in 2015.2 But people’s fascination with them has not waned. The Netflix drama Mindhunter aired in October 2017 and gave true-crime fanatics a Hollywood view of the early days of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) work on criminal profiling and its involvement with local law enforcement agencies on investigations.