CM - Manhunt - Colin Wilson

This book is titled Manhunt - The Definitive History of Serial Murder Investigation. Being a criminal justice major, we tend to love reading these twisted accounts of human evil. This book is both a look at the sadistic killers themselves and the innovative techniques detectives have used to track them down. It describes in detail how psychological profiling is used to read "personality fingerprints" and create a profile to help catch and stop serial murderers. Although serial killers make up less than 1 percent of murders each year, their crimes are usually so grumesome that it makes detectives and the public alike wonder how they commit these heinous crimes with no compunction about doing so again and again.

This book embodied the stories of some of the most notorious criminals...that being said, their crimes are not bedtime stories. To anyone with a beating heart and a shred of human emotion, their crimes are unthinkable. It included but was not limited to the following: Karla Homoika (who looked like your everyday blonde but was driven by a desire to present her fiance' with a "surrogate virgin"-schoolgirls to rape), the infamous Charles Manson, the "Boston Strangler" Albert DeSalvo, Ed Kemper (who once stated that "to have a particular experience with a person, and to possess them in the way I wanted to, I had to evict them from their human bodies", which he did frequently and was famous for his cruel acts of necrophilia), Gary Ridgway the "Green River Killer" who was charged with 48 counts of murder after being caught in what was once the largest unsolved murder case in American history, Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskins, David Berkowitz a.k.a. the "Son of Sam", John Wayne Gacy, and a slew of other "celebrities" that have gone down in history as the "worst of the worst" for lack of a better phrase.

I of course found this book to be enthralling and quite interesting, but it is definitely not for the faint at heart or the weak stomached. It's nightmare material for most. The only complaint I have about this book is that the print was incredibly tiny and hurt my eyes after awhile. Other than that, I can't exactly give ratings to serial killers individually, so if you're interesting in criminal profiles, serial killers, etc, this one was a good read.