The “Serial Killer” Fence

Attempting to classify the traits of a “serial killer” (or any criminal for that matter), in order to determine what causes them to become killers, is as stupid as trying to figure out why some snow flakes land on the edge of a fence by studying the characteristics of the snow that has landed there.
Yes, the snow there has certain properties that are distinctly different from snow that has landed in the yard. The snow on the fence is more loosely packed, but harder (colder) at the same time. But those characteristics are not what put the snow on the fence. They were developed only after the snow had landed on the fence, from the additional exposure to the cold and wind.
Actually, the snow flakes that land on the fence may be a bit larger, or perhaps more damp, on average, than other flakes, allowing them to stick better and not getting blown off again by the wind. But knowing these characteristics still won't help you keep snow off the fence. There will always be variations in the size and dampness of snow flakes, after all, “no two are ever alike”, remember?
And so it is with studying “serial killers” (or other “social flakes”). They might be “harder” and “colder” than the average “flake”, but that has little to do with why they kill. Killing causes a person to become that way. And sure, statistically, they may have more often been bed-wetters, or fire-bugs, or abuse victims, before they ended up on the “serial killer” fence, but that information is completely useless. More than 99% ot the people who wet their bed, start fires, or were abused as children, never become “serial killers”.
In one of the books, that I was studying for my case (“Using Murder: The Social Construction of Serial Homicide” by: Philip Jenkins), the author points out that the famous FBI Behavior Sciences Unit (B.S.U.) is as helpful to police as the Psychic Friends Network. The information they provide is generalized and useless. Any specific details that they do come up with are as often wrong as right.
The only reason for the B.S.U.'s popularity is due to movies such as, “Silence of the Lambs” and “Red Dragon”. But while the profiling techniques in those movies were authentic enough, the characters being profiled were fictitiously “shaped” in order to let the FBI profilers be the heros in the end. There was nothing authentic at all about the overall pathology of the killers in these movies. While the “Cannibal” and “Dragon” may have been based on real people, their psychology in the movies was a hodgepodge of unlikely combinations of various mental illnesses.
And yet after these movies came out the FBI Behavior Sciences Unit in Quantico, VA, received overwhelming public support, despite the fact that in the real world this Unit was floundering from a series of serious profiling errors, and no significant successes. The only thing positive most police investigators can say about the BSU information they get in a case, is that it helps them “think outside the box”. They say the same thing about consulting with psychics.
So, if we want to keep snow off the fence, then we'd be much better off taking a closer look at the fence itself! For example, how do we define a “serial killer”, and how does that definition help to actually put people on the “serial killer” fence?
The whole concept of “serial killer” is new, but there have been people who fit the definition all throughout history (see Jenkins's book, “Using Murder” for a really good analysis of this). So tearing down the “serial killer” fence wont stop “killer flakes” from falling out of the sky, but it would, perhaps, at least get people to start looking up!

P.S.: Incidentally, for what it's worth the FBI's profile report on my crimes (that was written after my arrest and “confession”) said that my case was anomalous. Almost none of the “elements” of my crimes matched up with their general profiles for other “sex killers”. I keep trying to tell them that my crimes weren't about sex, or even violence. (Believe it or not, I loath violence, and have only ever resorted to it after much deliberation. “Violence when there are alternatives is immoral. Violence when there are no other alternatives is survival.” I had alternatives to my own violent behavior in the past, but even after the most careful and maticulous deliberation I never saw what my alternatives were. At least not until a certain eight-year-old little girl named Shasta helped to open my eyes!)