by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: November 23, 2009

One of the most frustrating pursuits has been the attempt to find commonality of behavioral patterns, motivational causes, past history and other features of serial killers. But one clear distinction among serial killers is their pattern of organization or disorganization. This is determined at the crime scene when the scene exhibits elements of organized activity or disorganized activity. Even with this classification method, the majority, but not all serial killing crime scenes fall into one category or another, and may contain elements of both organized and disorganized activity.

Serial killers are generally found to have responses to past traumas in life, which range from emotional abuse to gross physical abuse.

The organized killer is patient, methodical, and has no personal feelings for their victims. Victims are likely to be strangers who live away from the killer. The killer will stalk, plan, and organize all aspects of the crime in order to control as much as possible of the evidence that is left at the scene.

Organized killers are sociopaths of very high functioning order. While irrational, narcissistic, irresponsible, and cunning, they are actually sane. While they do not relate to other human beings, they can convincingly turn on the amiability and charm when required to meet their objectives.

Organized killers have the capacity to be at any level in the community, from the highly respected and honored community leader and volunteer, to the "great person who lives down the street". The universal comment from friends, community members and others is that they had no idea that the individual could have done such activity. This is indicative of very well controlled, intelligent, cunning, charming, and manipulative individuals who compartmentalize their lives in very effective ways.

Organized killers will stalk, stake out, plan and attempt to control every aspect of their crimes, especially being careful to target strangers who do not live in their immediate communities. They strive to leave little evidence, carefully study the crime scenes and escape routes, and can be very resourceful in adopting various poses: as an injured party, an authority figure, or other acceptable person who causes the victim to lower their defenses until they can be effectively controlled by sophisticated and less violent means.

They are meticulous and take time to clean all evidence, sometimes vacuuming or using bleach to hide and damage evidence, and cleaning all fingerprints,

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