Reddit reviews Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives- Paperback

Mind hunter is a great book if you like hearing stories of a profiler’s exploits.

But John Douglas, Robert Ressler, and Ann Burgess DID kinda write the book on this subject.

Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives


It presents the findings from their years studying, and interviewing convicted murderers. It’s full of statistics and tables of data. Some of the material is kinda dry, it’s difficult to make statistical analysis of questionnaires into a page turner. But, it does show how they began to be able to ‘profile’ an unsub. They put in a lot of work into studying crime scene and circumstance of the crime and correlating the background the actual criminal that CREATED that crime scene.

It reads like a college textbook. It’s worth a look.

My reading recommendations include, mainly, a lot of textbooks! Unlike a lot of the true crime novels, I've found that criminal psychology, criminology, victimology, forensics and other academic textbooks and research journals are generally far less sensationalistic than the true crime novels tend to be. Here are some of the ones that I highly recommend. As a side note: they may be textbooks, but they are all highly readable while being incredibly fascinating and enlightening.

Serial Murderers and Their Victims by Eric W Hinkley is a fantastic resource for the latest studies concerning serial murder, focusing on both the perpetrators and the fantasies and compulsions that contribute to their drive to murder, as well as on their victims. Now in its seventh iteration, this text has some of the most up to date statistics on serial killers in the US and worldwide. It's a must-read for anyone interested in serial killers.

Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters by Peter Vronsky is another similarly great book full of real life case studies of serial and spree killers and delves into the motives behind such aberrant behavior.

The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Michael Newton has entries on hundreds of convicted serial killers.

Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters by Peter Vronsky explores the rare phenomenon of female serial killers.

Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives by Ressler, Burgess and Douglas is an important and easily-read psychological textbook on the sexual impulses that lead to violence.

Sexual Murder: Catathymic and Compulsive Homicides by Louis B Schlesinger is a similar book by a prominent forensic psychologist.

Sex-Related Homicide and Death Investigation: Practical and Clinical Perspectives, Second Edition: Practical Aspects of Criminal and Forensic Investigations by Vernon J Geberth is a manual for law enforcement professionals investigating sexually-motivated homicides by a renowned former-detective. The images and case studies are directly from the author's archive of case files. I will warn readers that some of the content in this book is highly disturbing, even for I, a person with an interest in the psychology of serial killers. All in all, a fascinating book for those who can stomach it.

This book is amazing, though a bit dense. I'd recommend anything by John Douglas, the original psychological profiler, but this book is all about the studies of and interviews with the killers. Basically all you'd ever want to know about the topic.