“Fast forward to 2010, twenty years after the crime was committed. Somewhere in a Barnes and Noble, a middle-aged Walt Williams is picking up The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths and reading the first few chapters. What does he think? Does he stand there, rage building up in him that Pat Brown has laid the story out, detail for detail? Is he worried police detectives somewhere might think he could be linked to a case in their jurisdiction? Does he simply put the book back on the shelf, walk out of the store, and go back to his life or does he get in his car and drive the two miles from his present home to his old address, the house where Pat Brown lived and still lives. As I Pat Brown Criminal Profiler type these words, is Walt Williams sitting at the end of my driveway, waiting and planning . . .”
As I read the above from one of the few women in the world to become a profiler many thoughts crossed my mind including of all things the television series Criminal Minds.
Specifically, you may recall George Foyet otherwise known as The Reaper, who was a prolific serial killer that Hotch (for the uninitiated, Hotch is Aaron Hotchner, the FBI Unit Chief for the BAU), had once hunted ten years before in Boston.
Without going into great detail, The Reaper played convincingly by C. Thomas Howell, re-emerges and ultimately kills Hotchner’s wife because the Unit Chief continued to pursue him.
The Reaper
In a life imitating art twist, Walt Williams is Pat Brown’s Reaper who despite strong convictions in law enforcement circles that he is a cold blooded killer, freely walks amongst us today. As William’s Hotchner, Pat Brown not only launched her famed career through shining the light of scrutiny on Williams as a viable suspect, she continues to relentlessly pursue Williams.
It is a deadly tango of perseverance and the pursuit of truth and justice with the predatory survivor skills of a possible killer.
And while it is often true that narcissistic hunters rarely care enough about their prey to make it personal, the one certainty in the life of a criminal profiler is that nothing . . . absolutely nothing, is out of the realms of possibility.
As we consider the state of mind of Walter Williams, and the unpredictability of his possible reactions to being “profiled” in Pat’s latest book, the one question that invariably comes up again and again . . . will the accused killer that started Pat’s career also be the one to end it through a violent attack in the same manner as The Reaper ended Haley Brooks Hotchner’s life?
Has the hunter become the hunted?
If you were Pat Brown (or FBI Agent Hotchner), would you continue to pursue a cold blooded killer?
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NOTE: This is a guest post by Jon Hansen, who is an author and the host of the popular PI Window Show on Blog Talk Radio.
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True Profiler 