Offender Profiling in South Africa

Transcript of interview with Dr Micki Pistorius

SKN

Hello everyone, this is Susanne Knabe-Nicol from Police Science Dr, and today we've got an exclusive interview with Dr Micki Pistorius and I'll tell you about Dr Pistorius, she's a psychologist, author and forensic profiler with 30 years of experience, and she initiated the investigative psychology unit in the South African police and profiled more than 30 serial killers. So, we're going to speak to her now, Dr Pistorius thank you very much, hello!

MP

Hello Susanne, thank you very much for your interview.

SKN

Can you tell us a little bit about your work and who you are and why people might know you?

MP

Well, as you've said I was the first profiler in the South African Police Service that was in 1994, and then I'm the author of the book Catch Me A Killer, several other books as well, then the book was turned into a television series with your British actress Charlotte Hope playing my role, which was quite a little bit weird for me, and that's who I am. I was in Britain at some time I lectured at Bramshill and I also participated in a crime conference in the University of Liverpool quite a few years ago. I've entered this field for about 31 years.

SKN

Today we're talking about offender profiling, can you give us a definition of what that is exactly, because we think we know what it is because we're watching all those films and those TV series but I'm talking to an expert now, please tell us what it is.

MP

Yes, it's very different than the television series and the films. Well, first of all I would like to give you just a little summary, not a definition. Animals do not commit crime - humans commit crime, people commit crime and psychology is all about people, and criminal psychology or criminal profiling is about the criminal mind and I think that's very important. Most people want to know why these people do this. That is motive, and motive and why is all about psychology.  In some crimes it's very obvious what the motive is, it could be robbery or revenge etc., but in the case of serial killers, there's a very deep psychological motive that not even they themselves are aware of. I think that's a very important aspect. Now, offender profiling is a tool for the detective and it narrows the investigation, to narrow down the scope of how many suspects there could be. In our first case, the Station Strangler case, there were over 2,000 suspects. So, you need something to narrow it down. The profiler should give the detective an indication of the person's behaviour, of their personality, their motivation. I usually had a thing about Freud's psychosexual development phases where I could pinpoint a fixation there according to the crime because it manifests there, and then I would also give them a tailor-made interrogation strategy or items that they could look for in their house searches and then we can testify in court because the judges often want to know why this person did it and it gives them a fuller picture. The profile obviously is not evidence, but the judges really appreciate a bigger picture of the criminal and they have in the past mentioned the criminal profile when they sentence the person, justifying sometimes why they give them a bigger sentence. They would ask ‘Is this person eligible for parole’ and I would usually say ‘No they shouldn't be’ or ’Will they do it again’ and I would say ‘Yes, they would’, so that's all important. I think that's a summary of what your offender profiler should be doing.

SKN

When I explain it to my students, when I teach on the criminology programs, I often say it's a prioritisation tool, and you just said for your first case you had two over 2,000 suspects, how did the police come up with that list of suspects? Where do they come from?

MP

It was generated by the community - in this community specifically, because the perpetrator was killing children, so the community was very very open in bringing suspects, I mean some suspects didn't fit at all, some people just had revenge about their neighbour, etc. they would they would put them up as a suspect but mostly it came from the community themselves.

SKN

That's quite interesting, tell us a little bit about policing in South Africa, what does that look like?

SKN

I joined the police in 1994 and I remember my very first day, I arrived in Cape Town by the aeroplane and I expected some policeman in a uniform with my name on a board, and at that stage I didn't even know that detectives wore plain clothes, so I was a real rookie at that stage. It was very different then, we didn't have really computers, mobile phones only came out and we had these big huge mobile phones that you had to charge, it was very difficult linking, we didn't have the computers and the sophisticated systems. It was very much boots-on-the-ground training for me at that stage but I think it was the best that I could ever have, so that's how it started in the police for me and on the very first day.

SKN

What was that role that you were brought in to do there and how did you get to set up the offender profiling unit, how did that come about?

MP

Well it's never something that I planned in my life, I never really thought about it, I studied psychology and I was just very much interested in the Freudian theories and managed to do this assignment on serial killers and matched Freud's theory according to that and decided I wanted to do my doctorate degree on that. And then somehow, the police psychologist called the Professor and asked if he knew of a candidate that he could suggest become a profiler. And then he said ‘Well Micki is busy with her doctorate's degree doing this and then they offered me the job, went for an interview and that's how it started. And then I was still in the psychology unit of the police and then one day I just happened to bump into a general whom I didn't know and he happened to be the Brigadier at that stage, he later became a general of the murder and robbery unit and he asked me who I was and he listened to me, and by then I'd already done the profile that was 98% correct, and then he said ‘But I think you should be working for me directly with the detectives’ and he stole me from the psychologists and gave me my very first unit, the investigative psychology unit. It sounds very great and impressive but there was only one person it was me. A few years later we doubled and we were two and that's how the unit started. And after that, I started writing curriculums because I was an academic and I started training the detectives, trained over 300 detectives and criminal crime scene processing and that expanded to people inviting me to France and all over the world to train them as well And that's how it started, with a bang, but I never planned it.

SKN

That sounds fantastic, that sounds like a dream come true, you get recruited to set up your own investigative psychology unit, fantastic. What were your processes when you were assisting in roles, what does that look like?

MP

Because I was a member of the police and of the detective services, I would be out there from the very first step on the crime scene. And that's where I prefer to be. So, when there was a crime scene, I was called out and there we would start, and my profiling would start on the crime scene. Just to give you an example, the Station Strangler killed little boys and what I noticed from him, there was an anal fixation, you know in the ages 2 to four years. The little boys were obviously molested but his crime scenes, strangely enough were very neat - if you can call it neat - but they were very neat, so I profiled him that he would have some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder, he would be very neatly dressed when we arrested him which was true, there was also signs of undoing. Now, undoing is the little boys had been sexually molested but they would be redressed, so he's undoing what he had done so that's something that you already pick up on the crime scene, undoing, On one of our other serial killers you could pick up staging. This person killed many sex workers, but on every crime scene he changed something so you can really start picking it up. The other one was a real sadist and on his crime scenes, he would tie them up that they would actually be strangling themselves while he was watching them, that's a prolonged extension of torture. So, there's a lot that you start with on the crime scene itself. And then we also attended the autopsies and then eventually you walk through with the detective right up to the trial and then even after, when these people are incarcerated, you research them and you interview them in prison. So, it was right from the beginning right to the end

SKN

How did the offender profiling help the police, and how do you know that it helped police because I know it's very difficult to show a success rate or a rate of benefit from offender profiling, but how were you able to tell what kind of impacts your work made?

MP

It was very difficult, I was mostly out in the field and less in my office. I think we had a crack team of detectives that worked really really hard and I remember the ex-FBI profiler Robert Ressler said you know that that we were catching serial killers ‘fast and furious’, sometimes within a week. Sometimes it took longer, three months, etc. We worked really hard and I think in the end, how did we help them? Well the fact that the killers are in prison, I think that's real proof that you need that it helped, and they all said that it helped. We did it fast, we did it effectively, the profiles matched the killers 95 to 98%. I think that's a very good track record that we had in the beginning. In the beginning we didn't have statistics, we didn't have anybody to do statistics for us. I don't know what the statistics are now, because we weren't interested so much in the paperwork, and actually getting the work done.

SKN

That's some really high success rates though there, can't argue much with that, fantastic. What would you say are the challenges with offender profiling, maybe limitations or hurdles?

MP

They're quite a few, I think the first is, I think people have this sort of Hollywood idea of a profile, like Jodie Foster. And often young ladies tell me they want to be profilers and they don't fathom that you're going to have maggots in your hair. I was on a crime scene once and a helicopter hovered above us and I was just showered with maggots all over. And they don't think the way it is, it's very very hard work and I don't think people realise. It's very easy to look at a crime scene photograph with some people, but on the crime scene you’re assaulted, your senses are assaulted, maggots eating a body sounds like a newspaper being crumpled, you smell it. I don't think people are prepared for that. One of our challenges at the moment, I don't think there is enough training in the world for profilers and that's also why I have my YouTube channel and why I have a Patreon channel, for a minimal amount people can go there and then I will really teach them the psychology behind this. I have an eclectic approach to it, historically and anthropologically and etc. where it fits in history. Crime has always been part of humankind, I don't know why we're surprised by it. But I think people using blood and guts as clickbait is disrespectful to the victims. I think they’re glamorising profiling, I don't think it's that glamorous at all. It's very, very hard work, I don't think we have enough training in the world, I think it's very hard to convince the detectives, it was hard for me in the beginning but I think because we were successful they believed it.  I think we can do more with the legal fraternity, with the prosecutors, realising what we can do for them as well. So, there quite a few challenges. Profilers need to be trained, they need to have experience and they need to be part of the police, not necessarily consulting academics all the time, that's a bit difficult.

SKN

You said earlier on that you were going around and training the police, what exactly were you teaching them?

MP

I was actually teaching them psychology, they understood Freud's theory, they could see how that could happen on a crime scene and if you really want to get into the killer's mind, then you have to understand the deep psychology. So, I taught them that, I taught them interrogation strategies because that's very important, it's a people skill when you interrogate somebody you know and you need to know the person in front of you very, very well and how they're going to react to something that you say and pick up on body language cues. So, I taught them all of that investigative method. They taught me, it was a sharing as well and I've taught detectives and profilers all over the world.

SKN

I personally have the view, and I don't know if I mentioned to this to you when we when we first spoke, I believe every police force here, I'm located in the UK, I think every police force here should have an internal investigative psychologist on their payroll full-time, doing three things: one is delivering training so that the entire workforce dealing with crime is up to date with the current best practice, current best knowledge that is published by academics and by other researchers, but doesn't get to the practitioners. The other thing that they could be doing is working on cases, assisting, that would be maybe the profiler role that you spoke about, to have that internally, and the third one is to do internal research. We have all this data in policing and there are academics and researchers who want to work with that data, but the police are very protective of the data. But if they already have someone on the payroll who has been vetted, who has been working there for a few years, I think there will be a lot of the barriers removed, so I completely agree with that approach.

MP

Yes definitely, there is another South African called Dr Brin Hodgskiss and he's in Britain at the moment and he came in slightly just after me and the police opened the dockets for him and he did the research, but he also went to the prisons and he interviewed incarcerated serial killers and criminals and he got a lot of his information there. We were too busy to do that, but if you can have academics do that or if you can have psychological students taking psychometrics in prison, that can help a lot. I think one of the big challenges that we have is red tape, people are so bogged down with red tape that you really need to get down and do the work. That's very important but as you say everyone needs one definitely.

SKN

Approval, data sharing agreements, vetting - there are good reasons to have all of these, but they can really sometimes hinder things actually getting done.

MP

And in the meantime sorry to interrupt, but this is usually sad for me, because while everybody's so bugged down with red tape, in the meantime, people are dying and this is sometimes where I lost my cool, for people too busy with allocating resources and this and that, and then I would say ‘Do you realise that people are dying when we sit here haggling about are we going to get a car or not, the killer could be killing somebody, could be your sister or your mother or your child. So can we please get on with it’, that sometimes upset me a lot.

SKN

I guess depending on your role can be quite easy to see the process and the procedure a lot more than what's actually behind it and the real lives that are affected. Moving from challenges in offender profiling to challenges in South African policing, what would you say are the major challenges in South Africa and law enforcement?

MP

That is a difficult question for me to answer because I resigned from the South African police about 25 years ago and I haven't lived in the country for a while. Generally speaking in the police I think lack of resources, red tape, sometimes police brutality, the unprofessional - they just don't know how because they're not trained, that's a big thing. When I was in Britain I’ve spoken to the police officers there, spoken to police officers in France to ones here in Mauritius, police officers, wherever they are in the world, they're detectives and they all complain about the same thing they don't get paid enough, they don't have resources, they work very hard, they don't have psychological support, it's the same everywhere.

SKN

What have you been doing since you've left South Africa 25 years ago?

MP

There was a time when I really needed to heal and I also have a degree in archaeology, so for about 10 years or so I completely went into araechology and I wrote about archaeology and I took tours and I travelled all over the world to very interesting and far-away places that nobody else ever goes to and that was really nice. And then I ended up here in Mauritius and then sort of a year or two ago when it really seemed like the television series was going to take off, I was nudged back into crime and psychology, which I accepted and started working in it full-time again, and at the moment I'm writing a lot of articles for my website and I hope that people can benefit from that, it's the only way that I can get my knowledge out there. I really want to share, so it's out there in the Patreon, I give guest lectures, I lecture at universities, I'm motivational speaker, anywhere in the world so I keep myself busy but much more from an eclectic and academic point of view. Sometimes I do consult or some of the public prosecutors ask me but I've haven't been on a crime scene for years, luckily.

SKN

Tell us a little bit about that series, so it's using actors but it's using real cases and somebody plays you and is it going through the actual cases you work through and how it was done? And how close to the real facts is it?

MP

Yes it's based upon my book and it's based upon the truth, of course here and there they veered away from the truth and I was never shot, but it is quite close. The actress Charlotte Hope is phenomenal and she really got me, I've never met her in person, I would like to one day meet her in person, she would call me at night and we would discuss things and we got on really well, we’re friends today, still. She really got me and everybody that watches the show says ‘Wow Micki, she's just like you’. It was real cases, actors playing the serial killers, etc. so most of the cases were very real. Here and there they took a bit of liberty with the plugs but read the book then you'll get the true stories. That's also why I launched the YouTube channel. The first 10 episodes in the YouTube channel is my review on what really happened but it's really, really good. Many people who watch it say ‘Well, this is not Hollywood, it's real, you can really see how we work, it doesn't just fall into place, the drama and the realness of it is there. So I'm really happy with it and especially happy with Charlotte.

SKN

I need to find out where and how I can watch that here in the UK, because I'm really intrigued now, I really want to see it.

MP

It's all over the world, it's been streaming everywhere, it's in America, it's in Japan, it's in Russia, it's Germany, France everywhere so I'm really happy with it.

SKN

My last question to you Dr Pistorius it's one that I didn't prep you for - if you had a magic wand you could wave it to make one change in policing or law enforcement or profiling, what would that one change be?

MP

Oh my goodness, I think I would go with your suggestion of having a profiler everywhere, in every district or in every station, not every station probably, but at least in every district. I would have a profiler and as I said in the beginning, animals do not commit crime, people commit crime and that is psychology, and offender profiling is about criminal psychology, I'm not just talking about violent crimes which I did, but I also later worked with white collar crimes, which is bigger sometimes. White collar crimes, anti-terrorism, organised crime, it's people. So, you've got psychologists we specialise in people and criminal psychologists, we specialise in criminal minds. There's so much you can learn from us, give us a chance and that's I think what I would do with my magic wand.

SKN

I totally agree with that, okay Dr Pistorius, thank you very much for your time today.

MP

Thank you very much, Susanne, thank you very much to all your listeners.