How Is a Serial Killer Like a Tornado?

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When I was researching weather events for my novel In the Damage Path, I noticed a phrase about tornadoes that yielded a vivid metaphor (and my title). In my story, a forensic meteorologist describes a tornado’s “damage path,” and the investigators recognize that the concept applies to what they see in the wake of a serial killer they’re pursuing.

Let’s examine how this comparison works. It’s all in the behavioral analysis.

In 1953, Tetsuya “Ted” Fujita traveled from Japan to the U.S. to study tornadoes. He gained the nickname “Mr. Tornado” as he surveyed the destruction from these fierce twisters. He’d travel to wherever a tornado had cut a path, take thousands of photos, and study them frame by frame. Fujita hoped to learn how they’d formed and how future tornadoes could be anticipated.

By 1971, he’d devised the Fujita Scale (F-Scale) to categorize tornadoes from 0 to 5 according to their degree of damage (little damage to demolishing solid structures). The National Weather Service later added new variables to turn the F-Scale into the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale.

Damage assessments rely on radar tracking, eyewitness accounts, photos, and videos. They include how far and how long the twister traveled, its width and wind speed, where it started and stopped, and the type of terrain through which it traveled. The ability to predict a tornado’s behavior can mean the difference between life and death for those in its path.

Profilers approach a serial killer’s trail of destruction in a similar way: They assess the killers’ choice of victim, what they did to them, when and where they did it, and how long they operated in each area. The behavior evident at a series of scenes reveals such things as the killers’ preference for certain locations, their decisions about concealment (or not), their apparent familiarity with the area, and the likelihood of them striking again.

For example, in the "Gilgo Four" murders, we can survey the remote terrain and the way the four bodies were bound, bagged, and concealed to gain a sense of whether the killer would have been familiar with the area. We can calculate his likely route to the dumping ground and determine the probability of being linked to all four (and possibly more) victims. His damage path is at least partially revealed in what’s apparent from his treatment of the victims before and after death.

Once killers are caught, we might learn more—such as motive, method of preparation, emotional response, and how they led lives that protected their secrets. However, what they did at the crime scenes or body dump areas before they were caught can show a lot. The more behavior that’s present for comparison and prediction, the more accurate the early warnings can be about future such offenders.

In a recent case in England, neonatal nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of killing seven babies and attempting to kill six. Several red-flag behaviors gathered into a database from earlier healthcare serial killers (listed in an earlier article here) show up: Letby was seen attending to a patient not assigned to her who later died. The victims were murdered by lethal items that are hard to detect. Letby spent time with (and tracked) grieving families. She blocked another nurse from assisting in a crisis. She was on duty when an unusual number of deaths occurred, and some coworkers grew suspicious of how she was handling patients. Administrators educated in the known behaviors of similar killers might have been able to surveil, document, and sideline a suspected killer more effectively.

Law enforcement training depends on these “damage path” analyses.

In 2014, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime issued a report, Serial Murder: Pathways to Investigation. It’s an extensive, multi-factor study of how offenders treated victims, with the goal of standardizing key items for investigative purposes. The monograph presents a database of empirical research on criminal motivation and behavior for serial killers that correlates aspects of crime scenes with suspects. It covers 92 offenders and 480 cases in the U.S. between 1960 and 2006 in which the FBI was involved.

The study’s goal was to provide investigators with situational factors associated with past serial murders based on specific behaviors gleaned from body dumpsites. The factors include offenders' approach to victims, evidence of sexual activity, treatment of the body, the nature of the relationship between offenders and victims, and offender characteristics and motivations.

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For example, the relationship in about 41 percent of these cases was one of client or customer (mostly in the field of sex work). One-third were strangers. Two-thirds of offenders had used a ruse. About seven out of ten had a limited hunting area. The list goes on.

As with learning the behavior of known tornadoes for the purpose of better prediction and response, we’ve learned from known serial killers how to identify patterns of unknowns that can help to predict a killer’s future behavior and stop them earlier. We can also alert communities for better preparation. The comparison isn't a perfect match and won't apply to all serial killers, but I find that it works for certain types.