Format: ARC, eBook
FBI Profiling. They have become adept at catching killers. The Behavioral Science Unit created a psychological profile to catch a serial killer for the first time in history when seven-year-old Suzie Jaeger disappeared from the tent she was sleeping in with her siblings.
June 25, 1973
The Jaeger family was vacationing in a Montana campground when their seven-year-old daughter went missing. A Circular cut was made in the tent where the children were sleeping, and seven-year-old Suzie was taken. No one saw or heard anything. The result – the largest manhunt in Montana’s history.
A year later, nineteen-year-old, Sandy Smallegan vanished as well.
Special Agent Pete Dunbar along with psychologist, Patrick Mullany and criminologist, Howard Teten created the Behavioral Science Unit. Mullany and Teten built the first profile an unknown subject “unsub” who took Suzie Jager.
Well written and engrossing, Shadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling details what happened to Suzie and Sandy, it also showed how the created profile brought down a killer. Criminal Minds and other shows make it look easy but finding clues and solving crimes do not happen overnight. In this case, the profile was near perfect, the investigators had to find clues and put the dots together with very little evidence, by following the profile and good old fashioned detective work. They also had one thing to go on, the phone calls that Suzie’s mother received from the man who took her daughter.
Fans of True Crime will not be disappointed. This book was extensively researched and well thought out. We get the human side, the missing females, the family members, those involved in the search and investigation and the science behind creating a profile. I found this book to be extremely interesting as I had not heard of these cases or how profiling came to be. This book also shows a killer so brazen that he would creep into a campground and cut a hole in a tent, not worried about being caught. He taunted his victim’s mother, enjoying the pain he caused.
Readers will breathe a sigh of relief when an arrest is made.
Thank you to Berkley Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.