By Chris Bartholomew
A crime scene is looked at for evidence. The FBI uses the terms organized, unorganized, and mixed. These classifications are not the end all of classifications, some serial killers are both; some are one and turn into the other. This is not an exact science, and naturally, after observing more and more crime scenes, sometimes some of the definitions change, but these are the ones most commonly used when looking at a serial killer crime scene.
Crime scene investigators can look at these definitions and a real crime scene and get some insight on what type of person the killer they will be looking for is. The classification of the Disorganized/Organized dichotomy is a simplification of the psychiatric terms 'psychotic' (disorganized) and 'psychopathic' (organized) for the benefit of law enforcement investigators.
Organized serial killers, such as John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Ed Kemper, planned their attack. They selected a stranger and they personalized the victim. Organized demands a submissive victim, and they use methods of restriction such as ropes or handcuffs.
The crime scene reflects control, the body was hidden and weapon absent. They transported the body. The organized killer is of average or high intelligence, and socially competent. They prefer schooled labor. The father was in stable employment and there was inconsistent discipline during childhood. The organized killer often uses alcohol before the murder, precipitating stress, they usually live with a partner, and they follow the news about the case.
Organized serial killers have been known to lure their victims to themselves willingly, like Ted Bundy who pretended to have a broken arm to lure women to help him with his groceries. When they came over he would take off his fake cast and beat the woman to death with it. These types of killers also maintain a sense of control over the crime scene and in many instances over the entire investigation. Bodies are usually disposed of and sometimes in ingenious ways. Weighing them down in rivers, burying them with lime, and freezing the bodies to alter the time of death are just a few of the ways the organized serial killer controls the scene. They usually bring their weapons with them and take them away when they leave.
Sometimes, an organized serial killer may become disorganized because their impulses to kill take over. They sometimes get sloppy and careless and start to take on the characteristics of a disorganized killer.
The organized serial killer plans on not getting caught and goes to great lengths to make it so he won't. He's often the one neighbors talk so well of, the one no one would have ever thought could do such horrible things.
Disorganized serial killers, such as Ottis Toole, and Miguel Rivera, attacked the victims spontaneously, and the victim was chosen randomly. They depersonalize the victim and there is sudden violence. There is minimal restriction of the victim and the scene is chaotic instead of clean (organized). With a disorganized killer, there is usually sex after the murder, and the body is displayed instead of hidden. Most often the weapon is left at the scene, with the body. This killer is below average intelligence, socially incompetent and enjoys unschooled labor.
Disorganized serial killers are more likely than organized killers to use as a weapon whatever they find at the scene. They don't bring anything with them and rarely take anything away.
With unorganized killers, the father was usually unstable in employment and a strict disciplinarian. This killer is anxious during the murder, but there is only minimum use of alcohol and minimal stress. They usually live alone or with a parent. They are not interested in news coverage.
Mixed serial killers like Dennis Rader don't fit into one category or the other and so they are mixed killers. They display traits common to both organized and disorganized killers and can be far more difficult to track down because of the fact that they do not follow a pattern.
Editor's note: this article was written for the magazine in 2008 to 2009 and is reproduced as written, apart from the spelling of Dennis Rader's name. One passage does not match the record. Ted Bundy did use a false cast or sling to ask women for help, and this archive treats that as established, but he did not beat them to death with the cast where he met them. The ruse got the victim to his car, where he struck her with a crowbar and drove her away; the cast was a prop for the approach, not the weapon. The archive records Bundy at thirty confessed. The other names check out against the roster as illustrations, though the reader should treat them as illustrations rather than findings: Gacy at thirty-three, Kemper at ten, Toole at two convictions with hundreds confessed and almost all of them collapsed, and Rader at ten. Miguel Rivera has no entry in this archive; the roster's Rivera is Reinaldo Rivera, a different man convicted in Georgia. The organized and disorganized division itself is presented here as the FBI presented it in the 1980s, and the article is right to hedge it in its own first paragraph. It was drawn from a small number of interviews with imprisoned offenders and has been criticised ever since for sorting people more neatly than crime scenes actually sort.