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Chapters Four and Five - How the project is carried out and how the data was obtained is discussed here. I still have concerns as to the validity of the data itself. First of all, these are obviously killers that were caught. As it is impossible to study those that weren't, we will always be stuck with this. However, most of the killers in this study had a fairly high body count. One wonders then if we are not studying those with a specific pattern that led to a high body count and arrest. We are not given any of the details of the data and who those killers are, so we have a hard time validating what is stated. In Earl James book "Catching Serial Killers" he includes the names and details of their crimes so that we may know what crimes he included and how he gathered the data. We are left in the dark here by Godwin and I for one want to understand what data he analyzed and how he used it.

Chapter Six - A quick run though of POSA, SSA and mapping. Too short to learn much.

Chapter Seven - Godwin describes the victims. His choice of age groupings is bizarre. One of his groups, the eighteen to fifty group is so large, it is hard to decide whether the 67% of victims coming from that group has any meaning. He goes on to note that while 67% of the victims were female and 32% were male. He doesn't elaborate on this but this leaves me with the question; why such a high rate for males? Are many killers homosexual? Are killers of males more prolific than killers of females? Do they get caught more? Godwin then shows that 80% of serial killers are White, 16% Black, 3% Hispanic and 1 % Asian. Again, this information is not that meaningful without relating it to the present composition of the American population. Also, one must take into account that investigations of Black victims have traditionally handled less aggressively than those of Whites. Also, many Black victims of serial homicide may not be recognized as such in an area of high crime volume where the crime may be misinterpreted. Godwin then notes 90% of the victims were strangers to the offender. Again, we have problems with this interpretation. On one hand, this statistic could be valuable in that often investigators of serial homicide will not follow up on a suspect that has no connection to the victim. Knowing that 90% of these victims were strangers might encourage them to take unconnected suspects more seriously. However, there is also the possibility that the stranger percentage is a bit too high. Sometimes what is thought of to be a stranger homicide is actually a brief acquaintance homicide and there has been some element of contact prior to the homicide and therefore, these leads should also be followed up carefully. Godwin's percent of victims working in prostitution is notably lower than Egger's and he does point out that may be because Egger included unsolved homicides. It is to Godwin's credit that he notes the studies of others for comparison and I found that very informative. Godwin makes an interesting issue of victim as stranger in connection with age. Very young children under age 10 were strangers to the offender only 5% of the time, similar to the over 50 age group. Ages 18-50 (the overly large age group) had 61% strangers and the 11-17 group had 20% strangers. The statistics on this are, however, very skewed as the age groups are of different sizes, a critical problem in comparing the statistics. The large group is over three times as large as the youngest group and even that is confusing because we don't know how many of the population we are discussing.

Chapter Eight- This chapter gives us statistics on serial murderer's ages. Again, questions pop up. Only 18% of murderers are above age 42. Why? Are they dead? Are they incarcerated? Burnt out? Disabled? Dead? Experienced and uncaught? Next we have statistics on gender. Godwin notes that his studies show serial murder to be a male phenomenon with 95% of serial killers being male. He does mention that he doesn't include forms of murder outside of the sexual homicide group. IF hospital homicides, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, and black widows were included, we might see the percentage of females rise dramatically. Godwin continues with statistics in this chapter with the employment history , marital status, educational status, mental status, sexual history and sexual activities, criminal history, violent offenses, sex offenses, drug offenses, fraud offenses, domestic offenses, parole and probation history, juvenile history, military record, emotional problems, suicide attempts and prior law enforcement work. These statistics are interesting and the graphics are excellent. However, two problems lessen the value of the statistics. The first is that we have no comparison to the population as a whole. We have no idea if these numbers are significant or simple average for nonserialkillers as well. Secondly, it would be useful to know which "kind" of serial killer exhibited which behaviors. If one is noting pornography use, is it higher for sadistic killers than nonsadistic killers? Let's say, for example, it is found that 95% of sadistic killers who like to tie up and torture their victims consume pornography on a daily basis as compared to anger retaliatory style killers of which 20% are found to use pornography. If these statistics were true (and this is purely made up for the purposes of this example), the impact on the investigators and the investigation of suspects is very important. With the statistics grouped together, it is hard to elicit any good use from the numbers.

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