Robert Ressler - wikipedia Robert Ressler Robert Kenneth Ressler ( February 21, 1937 -- May 5, 2013 ) was an FBI agent and author. He played a significant role in the psychological profiling of violent offenders in the 1970s and is often credited with coining the term `` serial killer. '' After retiring from the FBI, he authored a number of books on serial murders, and often gave lectures on criminology. Contents 1 Early life 2 Military career 3 FBI career 4 Life after retirement and death 5 Books 6 See also 7 References 8 External links Early life Robert Ressler grew up on North Marmora Avenue in Chicago, Illinois and graduated from Schurz High School, Class of 1955. He was the son of Joseph, who worked in security and maintenance at the Chicago Tribune, and Gertrude Ressler. At an early age Robert became interested in killers, as he followed the Tribune 's articles on `` The Lipstick Killer ''. Ressler claims that he was more fascinated than afraid of this notorious killer, as other killers fascinated him in his later years with the FBI. Ressler attended two years at a community college before joining the U.S. Army and was stationed in Okinawa. After two years in the army Ressler decided to enroll in the School of criminology and police administration at Michigan State University. He graduated with a bachelor 's degree and started graduate work but only finished one semester before going back into the army as an officer, having also completed an ROTC program at Michigan State. Military career Ressler served in the U.S. Army as a provost marshal of a platoon of MP s in Aschaffenburg, as he states in his autobiography `` Whoever Fights Monsters. '' He was in charge of solving such cases as homicides, robberies, and arson. After four years in Germany Ressler decided to leave the position and was reassigned as the Commander of a Criminal Investigation Division ( CID ) at Fort Sheridan. He then went back to Michigan State to finish his master 's in police administration, paid for by the army, in exchange for two more years of service after graduation. After he got his degree, he served a year in Thailand and a year in Fort Sheridan, where he finished out his career with the army as a major, and moved on to the Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ). FBI career Ressler joined the FBI in 1970 and was recruited into the Behavioral Science Unit that deals with drawing up psychological profiles of violent offenders, such as rapists and serial killers, who typically select victims at random. In the early 1980s, Ressler helped to organize the interviews of thirty - six incarcerated serial killers in order to find parallels between such criminals ' backgrounds and motives. He was also instrumental in setting up Vi - CAP ( Violent Criminal Apprehension Program ). This consists of a centralized computer database of information on unsolved homicides. Information is gathered from local police forces and cross-referenced with other unsolved killings across the United States. Working on the basis that most serial killers claim similar victims with a standard method ( modus operandi ) it hopes to spot early on when a killer is carrying out crimes in different jurisdictions. This was primarily a response to the appearance of nomadic killers who committed crimes in different areas. So long as the killer kept on the move, the police forces in each state would be unaware that there were multiple victims and would just be investigating a single homicide each, unaware that other police forces had similar crimes. Vi - CAP would help individual police forces determine if they were hunting for the same perpetrator so that they could share and correlate information with one another, increasing their chances of identifying a suspect. He worked on many cases of serial homicide such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Chase and John Joubert. Life after retirement and death Ressler retired from the FBI in 1990 and authored a number of books about serial murder. He actively gave lectures to students and police forces on the subject of criminology and in 1993, was brought in to London to assist in the investigation into the murders committed by Colin Ireland. In 1995, Ressler met South African profiler Micki Pistorius at a conference in Scotland and she invited him to review her investigation of the `` ABC Murders '', so - called because of their location in the Johannesburg suburbs of Atteridgeville, Boksburg, and Cleveland. A man named David Selepe had died in police custody while being investigated as a suspect for the Cleveland murders, prior to the discovery of the Atteridgeville and Boksburg crimes, and the authorities feared that they had killed an innocent man while the real culprit was still at large. Ressler believed that Selepe was indeed responsible for the Cleveland murders, either alone or with an accomplice, and that the Atteridgeville and Boksburg murders had been committed by the same offender, but that this killer was not involved in the Cleveland murders. He also pointed out that the Atteridgeville - Boksburg murderer was gaining confidence with each killing and would contact the media. As predicted, serial killer Moses Sithole called the South African newspaper The Star to claim responsibility for the Atteridgeville and Boksburg murders, some time after Ressler left the case. Ressler 's visit to Ciudad Juárez in Mexico to investigate the still - active femicides occurring there served as inspiration for the character Albert Kessler in Roberto Bolaño 's novel 2666. Ressler died at his home in Spotsylvania County, Virginia on Sunday May 5, 2013, from Parkinson 's Disease. He was 76 years old. He is survived by his wife Helen Graszer Ressler, his son Lt. Col. Aaron R. Ressler, daughters Allison R. Tsiumus and Betsy S. Hamlin, 3 grandchildren and 3 step grandchildren. Books Sexual Homicide : Patterns and Motives ( with John E. Douglas, Ann Wolbert Burgess ) ( 1988 ) Whoever Fights Monsters : My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI ( with Tom Shachtman ) ( 1992 ) Justice Is Served ( with Tom Shachtman ) ( 1994 ) I Have Lived in the Monster ( with Tom Shachtman ) ( 1998 ) See also Biography portal Crime Classification Manual FBI method of profiling Forensic psychology Investigative psychology Offender profiling John E. Douglas References Jump up ^ `` Illinois, Cook County, Birth Certificate of Robert Kenneth Ressler ''. Jump up ^ https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing/201410/who-coined-serial-killer Jump up ^ `` Sleuth Took A Serial Interest In Gacy ''. Retrieved 2016 - 08 - 03. ^ Jump up to : Ressler, Robert ( 1993 ). Whoever Fights Monsters. New York : St Martin 's Press. pp. 23 -- 30. ISBN 0312950446. Jump up ^ Pistorius, Micki ( 2012 ) Catch me a killer. Penguin UK, 209 pages. Jump up ^ Murray, William ( 2009 ) Serial Killers. Canary Press, 192 pages. Jump up ^ Marcela Valdes, `` Alone Among the Ghosts : Roberto Bolano 's ' 2666 ' '', The Nation, 19 November, 2008 Jump up ^ Author of article Free Lance - Star reporter Pamela Gould, http://www.covenantfuneralservice.com/obituaries/robert-kenneth-ressler/ External links Robert Ressler 's official site Robert K Ressler interview at www.sci-fi-online.com Robert Ressler obituary at Forensic Behavorial Science International Obituary VIAF : 34525007 LCCN : n87865773 ISNI : 0000 0000 8113 3139 GND : 1052829031 SUDOC : 137120109 BNF : cb12310321z ( data ) NDL : 00473678 Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Ressler&oldid=822512087 '' Categories : 1937 births 2013 deaths FBI agents Offender profiling Michigan State University alumni United States Army officers Deaths from Parkinson 's disease Hidden categories : Use mdy dates from July 2013 Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Talk Contents About Wikipedia Deutsch Eesti Español Français 한국어 Italiano Nederlands 日本 語 Português Svenska 3 more Edit links This page was last edited on 26 January 2018, at 20 : 15. 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Question: where did the term serial killer come from
Answer: Robert Kenneth Ressler