Tracker presents former police officer Maurice Godwin's method of psychological and geographic profiling which is revolutionizing the way police track and capture serial killers. Forget Silence of the Lambs; Hannibal Lecters and Clarice Starlings do not exist. The public believes that the FBI is protecting us from this most deadly of human predators, but the Bureau has never caught a serial killer. The profiles they turn out are based on interviews with thirty-six convicted killers, out of which only twenty-five were serial killers. Conducted in 1978, the study has since been condemned as statistically and demographically invalid. Recently courts have begun throwing out some profilers' testimony, with judges ruling that the profiles amount to little more than voodoo. In contrast, Maurice Godwin integrates demographics, environmental psychology, landscape analysis, crime site information, and other factors to create the most accurate targeting map available. In Tracker, we learn that "[Godwin's] work is based on the collection and critical analysis of over 100,000 data points and 2,000 different crime scene actions that could be used to profile the killer." Godwin explains, "Instead of relying on interviews with murderers, I studied specific pieces of behavioral information available from the crime scene or case file."
Dr. Godwin's perspective is unique. He was a beat cop in a small rural town in North Carolina. After a stop at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, TN and Indiana State University to obtain his bachelor and master degrees respectively, he traveled to England, where he studied in a one of a kind criminal psychology program at the University of Liverpool. Dr. Godwin is first American to hold a Ph.D. in Investigative Psychology. His expertise and scientific research in areas of psychology, serial killers, criminal behavior, and linking unsolved crimes distinctly sets him apart from the vast number of criminal profilers who rely on intuitive based opinions.
Dr. Godwin has written a highly regarded academic textbook, Hunting Serial Predators: A Multivariate Approach to Profiling Violent Behavior (CRC Press 1999) and edited Criminal Psychology and Forensic Technology: A Collaborative Approach to Effective Profiling (CRC Press 2000). He has published numerous academic journal articles on profiling and linking serial crimes. Dr. Godwin is also the co-author of Slave Master the true crime story of the first Internet serial killer - John Robinson, published by Pinnacle Books in February, 2004.
