Can the geography of a serial killer's crimes reveal where they live, how they hunt, and where they might strike next?
In this episode of UNMARKED: Case Notes, I sit down with Dr. Kim Rossmo, the pioneering criminologist who developed modern geographic profiling, a technique that has changed the way police investigate serial murder.

A former detective inspector with the Vancouver Police Department and now a professor at Texas State University, Dr. Rossmo developed a mathematical approach to analyzing crime locations that helps investigators identify an offender's likely home base, hunting grounds, and patterns of movement.

We explore the science behind geographic profiling, what the locations of murders can reveal about a serial killer's behaviour, how offenders select victims and hunting grounds, and how investigators use geographic patterns to narrow the search for an unknown killer.

#KimRossmo #GeographicProfiling #SerialKillers #Criminology #CriminalProfiling

Some of the biggest questions in true crime lead to some unexpected answers. In this Friday edition of UNMARKED, producer Jon Nadeau joins me to dig into your questions.

How did the FBI finally close in on Ted Kaczynski? What was Sam Little’s chilling process—and could he have gotten away with his crimes in today’s digital world? Plus, Buddy responds to an unexpected accusation: that he’s actually an AI personality.

How does a serial killer murder women across America for more than four decades, repeatedly encounter law enforcement, and keep getting away with it?

Samuel Little confessed to 93 murders, making him the most prolific serial killer in American history according to the FBI. But how many women did he actually kill? And how did he remain virtually undetected for so long?

In this episode of UNMARKED, investigative journalist and author Jillian Lauren, who spent years interviewing Little and helped uncover the staggering scope of his crimes, reveals what she learned from getting inside the mind of one of America's most notorious serial killers.

I'm also joined by journalist and former prosecutor Beth Karas, who has investigated Little's crimes and interviewed survivors, witnesses, and people who knew him.

Together, we trace Samuel Little's life, his childhood, his violent fantasies, and a killing spree that stretches across America from the 1970s until his arrest in 2012.

This is more than the story of a serial killer. It's an investigation into the failures of law enforcement, the victims dismissed as the "less dead," and the circumstances that allowed one man to become potentially the most prolific serial killer in American history.

Research in This Episode:
MacCulloch MJ, Snowden PR, Wood PJ, Mills HE. Sadistic fantasy, sadistic behaviour and offending. Br J Psychiatry. 1983 Jul;143:20-9. doi: 10.1192/bjp.143.1.20. PMID: 6882989.

Kim, A., Beauregard, E., & Chopin, J. (2023). “Strangulation in sexual homicide: Is it opportunity, victim’s vulnerability or sadism?” Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 94, 102488. DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2023.102488.
Marono, A. J., Reid, S., Yaksic, E., & Keatley, D. A. (2020). A behaviour sequence analysis of serial killers’ lives: From childhood abuse to methods of murder. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 27(1), 126–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2019.1695517

Show Notes:

If you want to go deeper into the Charles Manson case, my book Charles Manson: The Last Words documents years researching the story and speaking directly with members of the Manson Family — including Charles Manson himself.

Read it here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQ6QRVQ7

If you want to follow the cases as I’m working on them, you can find me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesbuddyday/

For those who want to examine the evidence directly, complete phone calls and documents are available inside UNMARKED: Case Files, our research portal, along with ad-free episodes.

Join here:
https://www.patreon.com/Unmarked_TrueCrimePodcast

UNMARKED: A True Crime Podcast is hosted by Audioboom.
#SamuelLittle #SerialKiller #TrueCrime #documentary #podcast