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Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI (St. Martin's True Crime Library) By Robert K. ResslerThomas Schachtman ( St. Martin's Paperbacks )
Release Date: 1993-03-15
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Product Description
Face-to-face with some of America's most terrifying killers, FBI veteran and ex-Army CID colonel Robert Ressler learned form then how to identify the unknown monsters who walk among us--and put them behind bars. Now the man who coined the phrase "serial killer" and advised Thomas Harris on The Silence of the Lambs shows how is able to track down some of today's most brutal murderers.
Just as it happened in The Silence of the Lambs, Ressler used the evidence at a crime scene to put together a psychological profile of the killers. From the victims they choose, to the way they kill, to the often grotesque souvenirs they take with them--Ressler unlocks the identities of these vicious killers of the police to capture.
And with his discovery that serial killers share certain violent behaviors, Ressler's gone behind prison walls to hear the bizarre first-hand stories countless convicted murderers. Getting inside the mind of a killer to understand how and why he kills, is one of the FBI's most effective ways of helping police bring in killers who are still at large.
Join Ressler as he takes you on the hunt for toady's most dangerous psychopaths. It is a terrifying journey you will not forget.
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Amazon.com Review
This book is an overview of the career of the FBI man who nearly single-handedly created the system for personality profiling of violent offenders. If there's a big-time multiple murderer from about 1950 until now who hasn't been interviewed by Robert Ressler, he probably refused the honor. Indispensable reading for serial killer mavens, and better written than John Douglas and Mark Olshaker's Mindhunter, this book is packed with fascinating details from dozens of cases: The killer John Joubert, for example, started his life of cruelty as a kid one day when he was riding his bike with a sharpened pencil in his hand. He rode up next to a little girl who was walking, and stabbed her in the back with the pencil. Ouch!
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The experiences of a profiler. ( moparmaxus )
"Whoever Fights Monsters" by Robert Ressler can be summed up with a quote from page 125.
"Every ounce of information we can extract from a killer about his mind and methods gives us more ammunition to track the next one."
Mr. Ressler chronicles his career with the military and eventually the FBI.
He is credited with coining the term "serial killer" and he gives the meaning and origin of the term.
In the book the author documents the start of profiling and his unsanctioned venture into prison interviews with violent criminals.
It was risky, but over time has paid off with some candid interviews and useful information for future investigations.
Some of the interview highlights that Mr. Ressler shares in the book come from Edmund Kemper, Charles Manson, Tex Watson, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, and Richard Speck.
He also gives examples of agent-interviewers who got too close emotionally to their subject.
He wrote about the compulsive confessor Henry Lee Lucas who never saw a murder that he wouldn't claim as his work much to the embarrassment of law enforcement agencies throughout the country.
Mr. Ressler's personal view of "Silence of the Lambs" and "Red Dragon" from his experience in the field was educational.
I was impressed with this author's writing style. Profilers have a reputation for being arrogant (whether that's just an impression or valid I wouldn't know) but Mr. Ressler humbly explains mistakes he has made over his career. He is efficient at detailing the psychology of the different types of violent criminals. A good book about criminal profiling!
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 A chilling, concise skeleton key to understanding serial murder ( murgatroydx )
In response to Michael J. Tresca's review, wherein he states:
"Alas, truth is stranger than fiction, and the tales Ressler tells are positively awful. There' just one problem: we've heard all of this before.
Where? That'd be "Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit," by John E. Douglas, a man I can only assume was Ressler's protégé. It's a bit murky as to their relationship (the two reference each other, but not often)."
...it should be noted that Mindhunter came out AFTER Ressler's book, not before.
Otherwise, much of his review is fine. I would note, though, that Ressler's book is far superior, and he is far more modest and measured than Douglas. Douglas makes himself the center of every story, often quite lovingly, and does an unsettling amount of grandstanding about his contributions. Ressler lets the stories speak for themselves and doesn't try to outshine his subjects in importance. I've also read that one of the killers Douglas claims to have interviewed angrily denied he ever spoke to him. Douglas's vanity makes him almost unbearable at times, and with the subject at hand, that can smack of being a bit mercenary and out of touch.
The stories Ressler tells about himself tend to be more interesting, too. For instance, he speaks of people mysteriously losing weight while working on cases, without seeming to change their diets or other habits. Frankly, the stories in this book are so distressing that I, too, experienced a sudden inexplicable weight loss after reading it. This is the kind of thing that is very hard to take.
Ressler dispenses this disturbing material very well. I've read more than a dozen books of this type, and Ressler's towers over the rest. I'd recommend anyone interested in the fascinating subjects of abnormal psychology and psychological profiling read this book first if they'd like a skeleton key to understanding aspects of human behavior so dark they can seem all but forever unfathomable.
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Whoever Fights Monsters
Although written in 1992 this work outlines the evolution of the VICAP program from concept through to implementation. It provides a hands-on insight into law enforcement's commitment to track and categorise violent criminal behavior. An interesting read.
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Awesome ( rbragg11 )
This is a great book for understanding how criminal profiling works and the depth of depravity of compassion in a psychopath!
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Robert Ressler Book
The book was fascinating. It gave a good insight into the origins of criminal profiling and leads the reader through a number of cases from Robert's career. A must read for people interested in abnormal psychology, forensics and profiling.
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Addiction
