DR. MICKI PISTORIUS

Psychologist, Author & Profiler
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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Why do some serial killers enter an insanity defense plea? Inside Bedlam, scene from William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress (1735) (Public Domain)
Feb 3 2024
Articles

Why do some serial killers enter an insanity defense plea?

In my YouTube channel, Micki Pistorius Profiler on Record, (episode 3) I discuss why some serial killers – and other criminals – enter an insanity plea, claiming not to be of sound mind, or to suffer from a mental illness in order to escape prosecution. The secondary gain of escaping criminal liability is a common […]

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I Understand Serial Killers The Old Bailey Criminal Court by Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Pugin (1808) (Public Domain). In order to testify on the behaviour of a serial killer, a forensic psychologist has to understand their behaviour
Feb 3 2024
Articles

I Understand Serial Killers

I have often been taken to task regarding my remark that I understand serial killers and this has often been interpreted by sensation-seeking journalists that I ‘agree’ with their reasons for killing, or have sympathy for their cause. On my YouTube series, Micki Pistorius Profiler on Record, (episode 2) I clarify that remark once and […]

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‘The Mentalist’ on a crime scene – hocus pocus or science? The Charmer by John William Waterhouse (1911) (Public Domain)
Feb 3 2024
Articles

‘The Mentalist’ on a crime scene – hocus pocus or science?

The psychologist Carl Gustav Jung defined intuition as “perception via the unconscious”: using sense-perception only as a starting point, to bring forth ideas, images, possibilities, ways out of a blocked situation, by a process that is mostly unconscious.  I prefer the term subconscious, because unconscious sounds like someone has been hit over the head and […]

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My New Best Friend – Serial Killers combating loneliness by keeping bodies in their homes Odd Nerdrum's painting Cannibals (Public Domain)
Feb 3 2024
Articles

My New Best Friend – Serial Killers combating loneliness by keeping bodies in their homes

I have often over and over emphasized that serial killers are normal human beings and underneath their bizarre behaviour lie very normal human needs. Permit me as a profiler and psychologist to explain one of the most disturbing behaviours that some of them exhibit – Why do serial killers keep bodies of their victims in […]

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