Richard Walter
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Richard Walter , is an American forensic psychologist for the Michigan prison system, a crime scene analyst and one of the creators of modern criminal profiling.[1] He is the developer of a number of psychological classifications for violent crime, and a co-founder of the Vidocq Society, an exclusive organization of forensic professionals dedicated to solving cold-cases. As a psychologist for Michigan's prison system , he has interviewed more than twenty-two-thousand convicted felons.[2]
He worked with Robert D. Keppel, the chief investigator for the Attorney General's Office in the State of Washington (now retired), and together they wrote Profiling Killers: A Revised Classification Model for Understanding Sexual Murder. Keppel created the Homicide Information Tracking Unit (HITS) database, of which Walter was a prolific contributor. Walter was the first to develop a matrix as a tool of investigation using pre-crime, crime and post-crime behaviours to help develop suspects.[3]
Author Michael Capuzzo has been given a sizeable advance to write about the Vidocq Society and its three co-founders.[4] The book is tentatively titled The Arms of Angels and is due for release in 2007. As well as this society, Richard Walter is also a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine/Clinical Forensic Medicine, A Fellow of the Australasian College of Biomedical Sciences and a 22-year veteran prison psychologist for the state of Michigan.
Walter gives lectures to police organizations throughout the U.S., England, Scotland, Turkey, Australia and Hong Kong. He has also been featured on CBS News 48 Hours, A&E, TLC and Court TV.
Notable cases
In 1989, Walter provided the psychological profile for mass murderer John List. List had been in hiding for 18 years and law enforcement had all but given up on the case. Using Richard Walter's profile, forensic sculptor Frank Bender was able to appropriately age the suspect in a bust displayed on America's Most Wanted, with List being captured the next day.
In Lubbock, Texas in 1999, City Police solved the murder of Scott Dunn with Walter's aid. This is a rare case where a conviction was garnered in the absence of a body. The case is chronicled in the book Trail of Blood" by Wanda Evans and in the television series Medical Detectives
In 2005, the Hudson, Wisconsin Police Department consulted with the Vidocq Society on the cold case double homicide of Dan O'Connell and James Ellison. With the help of Walter, the Hudson police solved the case. The murderer, Father Erickson, was a priest who was trying to keep molestation allegations from surfacing.
Notes
- ^ The Vidocq Society page retrieved on March 30, 2007
- ^ Mansfield University article retrieved on March 30, 2007
- ^ Robert D. Keppel Profiling Killers: A Revised Classification Model for Understanding Sexual Murder, the Institute for Forensics, retrieved on March 30, 2007
- ^ Publishers Weekly article retrieved on March 30, 2007
