Robert Kenneth Ressler (February 21, 1937 – May 5, 2013) was an

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

agent and author. He played a significant role in the psychological profiling of violent offenders in the 1970s and is often credited with coining the term " serial killer", though the term is a direct translation of the German term "Serienmörder" coined in

1930 Events January * January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at in recent history, and the next one will be ...

by Berlin investigator Ernst Gennat. After retiring from the FBI, he authored a number of books on serial murders, and often gave lectures on criminology.

Early life

Robert Ressler grew up on North Marmora Avenue in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and graduated from

Schurz High School Carl Schurz High School is a public 4–year high school located in the Irving Park neighborhood on the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The school is named after German–American Carl Schurz, a statesman, soldier, and advocat ...

, Class of 1955. He was the son of Joseph, who worked in security and maintenance at the ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...

'', and Gertrude Ressler. At an early age Robert became interested in killers, as he followed the ''Tribunes articles on " The Lipstick Killer". Ressler claims that he was more fascinated than afraid of this notorious killer, as other killers fascinated him in his later years with the

. His fascination would be bolstered decades later by

John Wayne Gacy John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 young men and boys. Gacy regularly performed at children's hospitals and charitable events as " ...

, who had grown up in the same neighborhood as Ressler, and was in the boy scouts with him. Ressler attended two years at a community college before joining the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...

and was stationed in

Okinawa is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi). Naha is the capital and largest city ...

. After two years in the army Ressler decided to enroll in the School of Criminology and Police Administration at

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States. It i ...

. He graduated with a bachelor's degree and started graduate work but only finished one semester before going back into the army as an officer, having also completed an ROTC program at Michigan State.

Military career

Ressler served in the

from 1957 to 1962 as a provost marshal of a platoon of MPs in Aschaffenburg, as he states in his autobiography ''Whoever Fights Monsters''. He was in charge of solving cases such as homicides, robberies, and arson. After four years in Germany, Ressler decided to leave the position and was reassigned as the Commander of a Criminal Investigation Division (CID) at Fort Sheridan. He then went back to Michigan State to finish his master's in police administration, paid for by the army, in exchange for two more years of service after graduation. After he received his degree, he served a year in

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

and a year in Fort Sheridan, where he ended his career with the army as a

major Major ( commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicat ...

, and moved on to the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

(FBI).

FBI career

Ressler joined the FBI in 1970 and was recruited into the

Behavioral Science Unit The Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) is the original name of a unit within the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Training Division at Quantico, Virginia, formed in response to the rise of sexual assault and homicide in the 1970s. The unit was ...

, which deals with drawing up psychological profiles of violent offenders, such as rapists and serial killers, who typically select victims at random. Between 1976 and 1979, Ressler helped to organize the interviews of thirty-six incarcerated serial killers in order to find parallels between such criminals' backgrounds and motives. He was also instrumental in setting up Vi-CAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program). This consists of a centralized computer database of information on unsolved homicides. Information is gathered from local police forces and cross-referenced with other unsolved killings across the United States. Working on the basis that most serial killers claim similar victims with a standard method (''

modus operandi A ''modus operandi'' (often shortened to M.O.) is someone's habits of working, particularly in the context of business or criminal investigations, but also more generally. It is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as "mode (or manner) of o ...

'') it hopes to spot early on when a killer is carrying out crimes in different jurisdictions. This was primarily a response to the appearance of nomadic killers who committed crimes in different areas. So long as the killer kept on the move, the police forces in each state would be unaware that there were multiple victims and would just be investigating a single homicide each, unaware that other police forces had similar crimes. Vi-CAP would help individual police forces determine if they were hunting for the same perpetrator so that they could share and correlate information with one another, increasing their chances of identifying a suspect. He worked on many cases of serial homicide such as

Jeffrey Dahmer Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (; May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994), also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismemberment, dismembered seventeen men and boys ...

Ted Bundy Theodore Robert Bundy (Name change, born Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. After more th ...

Richard Chase Richard Trenton Chase (May 23, 1950 – December 26, 1980) was an American serial killer, cannibal, and necrophile who killed six people in the span of a month in 1977 and 1978 in Sacramento, California. He was nicknamed The Vampire of Sa ...

and John Joubert, and

Life after retirement

Ressler retired from the FBI in 1990 and authored a number of books about serial murder. He actively gave lectures to students and police forces on the subject of criminology and, in 1993, was brought in, in London, to assist in the investigation into the murders committed by

Colin Ireland Colin Ireland (16 March 1954 – 21 February 2012) was a British serial killer known as the Gay Slayer because his victims were gay. Criminologist David Wilson believes that Ireland was a psychopath. Ireland suffered a severely dysfunctio ...

. In 1995, Ressler met

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

n profiler

Micki Pistorius Micki Pistorius (born 19 March 1961 in Pretoria) is a South African forensic or investigative psychologist and author. She was the first woman in her profession and the first profiler in South Africa. She says she has "cryptesthesia", an extra-s ...

at a conference in Scotland and she invited him to review her investigation of the "ABC Murders", so-called because of their location in the

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to De ...

suburbs of

Atteridgeville Atteridgeville is a township located to the west of Pretoria, South Africa. It is located to the east of Saulsville, to the west of West Park; to the north of Laudium and to the south of Lotus Gardens. The settlement was established in 1939, and ...

Boksburg Boksburg is a city on the East Rand of Gauteng province of South Africa. Gold was discovered in Boksburg in 1887. Boksburg was named after the State Secretary of the South African Republic, W. Eduard Bok. The Main Reef Road linked Boksburg ...

, and Cleveland. A man named David Selepe had died in police custody while being investigated as a suspect for the Cleveland murders, prior to the discovery of the Atteridgeville and Boksburg crimes, and the authorities feared that they had killed an innocent man while the real culprit was still at large. Ressler believed that Selepe was indeed responsible for the Cleveland murders, either alone or with an accomplice, and that the Atteridgeville and Boksburg murders had been committed by the same offender, but that this killer was not involved in the Cleveland murders. He also pointed out that the Atteridgeville-Boksburg murderer was gaining confidence with each killing and would contact the media. As predicted, serial killer Moses Sithole called the South African newspaper '' The Star'' to claim responsibility for the Atteridgeville and Boksburg murders, some time after Ressler left the case. Ressler's visit to

Ciudad Juárez Ciudad Juárez ( ; ''Juarez City''. ) is the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It is commonly referred to as Juárez and was known as El Paso del Norte (''The Pass of the North'') until 1888. Juárez is the seat of the Ju� ...

in Mexico to investigate the still-active feminicides occurring there served as inspiration for the character Albert Kessler in

Roberto Bolaño Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (; 28 April 1953 – 15 July 2003) was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel ''Los detectives salvajes'' ('' The Savage Detectives ...

's novel ''

2666 ''2666'' is the last novel by Roberto Bolaño. It was released in 2004, a year after Bolaño's death. It is over 1100 pages long in Spanish, and almost 900 in its English translation, it is divided into five parts. An English-language transla ...

''.

Death

Ressler died at his home in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, on Sunday May 5, 2013, from

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms bec ...

. He was 76 years old.

Model for fictional characters

A screenplay adapted from his colleague John E. Douglas' book '' Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit'' was picked up by

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

. '' Mindhunter'' stars

Holt McCallany Holt McCallany (born Holt Quinn McAloney; September 3, 1963) is an American actor. He is known for portraying FBI Special Agent Bill Tench on the series '' Mindhunter'' (2017–2019) and has had leading and supporting roles in various television ...

, who plays the character Special Agent Bill Tench, a lead character based on Ressler.

Books

* ''Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives'' (with John E. Douglas, Ann Wolbert Burgess) (1988) * ''Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI'' (with Tom Shachtman) (1992) * ''Justice Is Served'' (with Tom Shachtman) (1994) * ''I Have Lived in the Monster'' (with Tom Shachtman) (1998)

References

External links

*
Robert K Ressler interview at www.sci-fi-online.com

Robert Ressler obituary at Forensic Behavioral Science International

Obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ressler, Robert 1937 births 2013 deaths Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Federal Bureau of Investigation agents Offender profiling Michigan State University alumni United States Army officers Neurological disease deaths in Virginia Deaths from Parkinson's disease