DR. MICKI PISTORIUS

Psychologist, Author & Profiler

Author: Dr. Micki Pistorius

Why do Serial Killers return to the Scene of a Crime?
May 8 2024
Articles

Why do Serial Killers return to the Scene of a Crime?

The aphorism that a criminal always ‘returns to a crime scene’ features in literature in Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment  of 1866, Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet 1887 and in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Links 1923.  Do serial killers return to their crime scenes? Yes, in my experience they do, for various different […]

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History repeats itself with South African serial killers The rustic peaceful ambience of Wynberg in Cape Town was brutalised in the 1940’s by Salie Lingevelt, a serial killer who randomly bludgeoned women to death in their homes (Public Domain)
May 8 2024
Articles

History repeats itself with South African serial killers

Revisiting historical South African serial killer cases, it seems as if someone discovered the script of an old case and re-enacted it out 50 – 60 years later.  Episode 6 of the television series Catch me a Killer, depicts the Cape Town Prostitute whom I profiled in 1996 and it is uncanny how many similarities […]

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Serial killers and Parole Open Breakwater Prison Door in Cape Town. (Lennon Fletcher/ CC BY-SA 3.0)
Mar 27 2024
Articles

Serial killers and Parole

To any Police Department, the cost of launching a serial killer investigation is excessive and often not budgeted for. It comprises extra manpower, overtime, setting up an operational room, vehicles, helicopters and gasoline, processing multiple crime scenes, deployment of alternative resources such as profilers, artists for reconstructing faces of unidentified victims, expensive DNA tests and […]

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New crime series coming soon | Catch Me A Killer  Catche me a killer - Youtube
Feb 3 2024
Personal

New crime series coming soon | Catch Me A Killer 

Follow South Africa’s first forensic and investigative psychologist, Micki Pistorius (played by Charlotte Hope), as she studies the minds of South Africa’s serial killers. #CatchMeAKiller is an adaptation of Micki’s autobiography that details her work as the first female criminal profiler in the country, which is brought to life as the events are depicted in […]

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A person killing more than two people is not necessarily a serial killer The body of Jack the Ripper’s las known victim, Mary Jane Kelly. Although she was eviscerated, the modus operandi shows planning, and concealment so Jack would have been an organized serial killer in my opinion. (Public Domain)
Feb 3 2024
Articles

A person killing more than two people is not necessarily a serial killer

Many people automatically assume when someone kills more than two people, he / she is a serial killer.  This is usually not the case, but the press love to sensationalize headlines with ‘serial killer’ as clickbait. It is the deep subconscious psychological motivation that drives and defines a serial killer – not the number of […]

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Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome – Even the Assyrians had it in 3500 BC Combatting PTSD is slaying the dragon inside your mind. Detail of St George slaying the dragon by Jost Holler (1445) Unterlinden Museum
Feb 3 2024
Articles

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome – Even the Assyrians had it in 3500 BC

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was first classified as a mental disorder in 1980 in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-lll) published by the American Psychiatric Association –the text book psychologists and psychiatrists use to determine diagnoses. But the disorder has a much longer history. Ancient Assyrian medical texts […]

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