Paul Britton

Paul Britton (born May 1946 in Royal Leamington Spa , England ) is a British criminal psychologist and one of the founders of operational case analysis for the British police. He was involved in solving some of the most spectacular British criminal cases. His work provided the template for the British crime series " Fitz For All Cases ".

childhood and education

Paul Britton grew up in humble circumstances with his younger brother Anthony and his single mother. When he was twelve years old, his mother married a former Red Army major who had left the Soviet Union after World War II as a declared anti-communist .

After primary school , he failed the entrance exams ( Eleven Plus Exam ) to the high school branch of a secondary school. He later complained that only the children from the better families received sufficient support from the school to be able to pass this test, while the children of the lower classes did not receive this special instruction. As a result, all children of the lower classes failed the test, while those of middle-class families, regardless of intellectual level, passed it due to the thorough preparation on the part of the teachers. Despite the maximum school leaving certificate that he could now achieve, the British equivalent of the secondary school leaving certificate, the desire to study arose early on.

After school, Britton reported to the Warwickshire Police Department , which he quit after a year. This was followed by numerous jobs as salespeople and managing directors of smaller shops. In 1966 he married his wife Marilyn, a nurse. The marriage has two children. Other jobs followed, including as a croupier and from 1972 as a clerk in the ordering system of an automotive supplier.

With a solid professional and family background, Paul Britton decided to meet his wish for a degree. To this end, he made up his secondary school leaving certificate in evening school by the summer of 1973, initially with top marks, and then registered for the Abitur exams , which were to take place only eight months later, without having previously completed the two-year preparatory course . Despite the double burden of work and intensive self-study, he also passed his Abitur with top grades and began at the age of 27 in October 1974 a three-year, scholarship- supported study of psychology at the University of Warwick .

Professional background

After completing his studies, Paul Britton took an initially unpaid position as a clinical psychologist at the British Leicester Health Authority, a local authority of the National Health Service , where he got to know patients with a wide variety of trauma , psychological illnesses and personality disorders . Soon after, he moved to Leicester General Hospital , where he continued his work in clinical psychology and gained further practical experience with numerous patients. In the course of time, the treatment of victims and perpetrators of predominantly sexually motivated crimes developed into a focus of activity in criminal psychology . In addition to industrial psychology, this area corresponded to his interests and he saw his activity in the sense of crime prevention and victim protection as the most meaningful.

In 1984, Paul Britton successfully applied for the management of the Regional Office for Forensic Psychology in Leicester, the central closed facility of Maßregelvollzugs named Arnold Lodge for up sentenced to 40 offenders with severe or acute personality disorders for the counties of Leicestershire , Nottinghamshire , Derbyshire , Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire operation. Here he came into contact with the most serious cases of sexually or otherwise motivated offenders due to personality disorders and deepened his knowledge of the behavior of violent offenders. Since these offenders were almost always victims of abuse and / or physical or social violence in their early development, his focus was also on researching the causes of these personality disorders with the aim of developing concepts for recognizing and correcting these developments at an early stage can. In addition to managing the clinic, he is a lecturer in forensic psychology at the Universities of Warwick and Coventry .

Since 1983 he has been advising police services across the country on serious criminal cases free of charge in his spare time. The relevant international psychological literature as well as the results of his own studies serve as the technical basis of his work. In 1990 he was commissioned by the British Home Office to write an expert opinion on the use of psychological perpetrator profiles in the British police and their hitherto completely unknown real utility. At the same time, he should compare the use in the British system with that in the American and continental European systems.

The study, which was based above all on the questioning of all departments and the data of some criminalistic-psychological institutes of the Ministry of the Interior, shows a disillusioning picture of “ profiling ”. The majority of the effort was not effective or even counterproductive. Many creators of perpetrator profiles were incompetent or put other goals such as increasing their reputation and their own financial interests in the foreground. Nevertheless, promising approaches, especially from the university environment and the practical area of ​​clinical psychology, could also be identified. He was then given the task of developing recommendations for promoting the promising approaches. These included the expansion of a central database for violent crimes, a quality analysis of the perpetrator profile after each investigation and the drafting of a computer program in order to be able to find common ground in violent crimes of serial perpetrators earlier, as well as the training of investigators.

In the course of his consultancy work, he helped international corporations from the pharmaceutical, industrial, health and banking sectors in the event of a crisis and trained his clients in the event of hostage-taking, extortion, kidnapping and acts of violence. He advised both the American FBI and the Russian Interior Ministry . He was a member of an advisory body to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) for several years .

In 1998 Paul Britton wrote an autobiography detailing his participation in investigations into spectacular criminal cases from his perspective. In the book he presents his methods and does not ignore the emotional and family burdens that his work has brought him. He wrote: “ If you experience death and grief every day through your job, you can never escape this experience. Every time I get fully involved, it diminishes my ability to enjoy life. I still find the colors bright, the sun is still warm and people are still smiling, but somehow I step into an area that prevents me from really enjoying these things. "

Participation in the investigation of spectacular criminal cases (selection)

Caroline Osborne and Amanda Weedon murders

As early as 1983, Leicester local police reached out to Paul Britton for help in the Caroline Osborne murder case. The young woman had been brutally murdered the year before and found with satanic symbols on it. Despite the questioning of 15,000 people and the provisional arrest of 80 suspects, all investigations had previously been unsuccessful, and the police were now hoping for new investigations. This case was one of the first in the UK to consider the involvement of a clinical psychologist.

Britton was instructed in the details of the case and outlined a number of personality traits and characteristics that the perpetrator has with a certain probability based on the course of the crime, the crime scene and the temporal circumstances . When Amanda Weedon was murdered in a similar manner by the allegedly same perpetrator a year later, the police limited their investigations to the population group that matched the perpetrator profile and quickly identified a suspect .

Since the forensic evidence was insufficient, Paul Britton was again contacted to devise an appropriate interrogation strategy . The police leadership was breaking new ground, but was aware that the methods that were effective with the usual criminals would not lead to success with such groups of perpetrators. The interrogation strategy had a strong reference to the work of a clinical psychologist who concentrically and gradually approached the key points in order to make it easier for the perpetrator to admit his guilt and not to provoke a defensive attitude in the event of a direct confrontation. With the help of this interrogation strategy, an all-encompassing confession was obtained, which was supported by the available forensic evidence.

Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth murders

Two and a half years apart, teenage women Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth were raped and murdered near walking paths in Narborough . The police found a suspect who, despite confusing information, revealed specific perpetrator knowledge in one of the cases and more or less clearly admitted the crime. When the newly developed method of genetic fingerprinting unequivocally excluded the suspect as a perpetrator, Paul Britton was asked in 1986 to review the interrogation records. It was supposed to assess whether the perpetrator's knowledge was inadvertently revealed by the officer during the interrogation. However, he was able to rule out this after reviewing the logs. At the same time, he should create a perpetrator profile and clarify where the suspect could have got his knowledge.

One of the first mass genetic tests in history caught the real culprit Colin Pitchfork, who confessed to the rapes and murders . Above all, the hint from Paul Britton that such perpetrators would "increase" and in the past had often become suspicious of the police through more harmless sexual offenses such as exhibitionism , provided additional knowledge for future investigations. This was also the case in this case.

It has never been clarified why the previous suspect had perpetrator knowledge in the second case. One could only assume that he observed the crime and then carried out the mistreatment of the body, which the murderer denied despite admitting the crime.

Product extortion for Mars Incorporated and HJ Heinz Company

In August 1988 the subsidiary Pedigree Pet Food Ltd. from the pet food division of Mars Incorporated received a ransom note announcing the poisoning of Pedigree dog food unless a sum of £ 500,000 was transferred to various accounts previously opened anonymously by the perpetrator. Enclosed with the letter was a manipulated can of dog food that was contaminated with a toxic substance.

Paul Britton was asked to assess the seriousness of the extortion, to draw conclusions about the perpetrator and to act as a strategic advisor in the joint crisis team of the police and the company. He worked out a delay concept that should give the police the opportunity to conduct the investigation while not forcing the blackmailer to take escalating measures. No case of actual poisoning was reported during this period either. The software was expanded in the data center of the banks concerned, so that when the relevant accounts were accessed, a report was automatically sent to the police in real time. Attempts were made for several months to arrest the perpetrator while withdrawing money from ATMs across the country, and hundreds of ATMs across England were unsuccessfully monitored at the perpetrator's preferred withdrawal times. The surveillance measures ended up costing a million pounds a week. Due to the temporal and geographical distribution of the withdrawals, Britton concluded that he was living in the region and also that he was unemployed, but also assumed that he had detailed knowledge of police investigation methods.

When the press became aware of the case in March 1989, the blackmailer turned to the HJ Heinz Company and threatened to poison their baby food . He placed containers prepared with caustic soda and razor blades in the trade , which were bought and caused personal injury, including to small children. The HJ Heinz Company pursued a confrontation strategy against the advice of Britton and was faced with an increasing escalation, which led to the fact that the demands were accepted, all products were taken off the market and the packaging made tamper-proof. Britton addressed his theory during a senior investigator conference that the perpetrator could have come from the ranks of the police, as he has so far not left any forensic evidence and undermined all investigative tactics. In his opinion, this required a great deal of knowledge of internal processes and the current status of the investigation. The mode of transferring money via an ATM was also previously on record and, due to the resulting difficult determination of the perpetrator, was not disclosed to the public, so that the blackmailer either used this special method by chance, which was considered unlikely, or out of expertise. The police leadership then set up a second, secret investigation team made up of external forces, which in turn monitored ATMs and thus finally caught the perpetrator on October 20, 1989. It turned out that the blackmailer was an early retired criminal investigator who had excellent contacts with his old colleagues in the first investigation team and was therefore informed of their progress. During one of the surveillance he even kept the officers company as an old colleague.

Julie Dart murder, British Rail extortion, and Stephanie Slater kidnapping

Police in Leeds received a ransom note demanding in almost grotesque detail £ 140,000, otherwise announcing the murder of the casual prostitute Julie Dart, kidnapped two days earlier . In addition to the fact that the letter was addressed directly to the police, it was astonishing that the blackmailer described in the letter in advance what traps the police could set for him in order to immediately outline suitable countermeasures. The body of the 18-year-old woman was found nine days later after a failed transfer of funds. The autopsy revealed that the blackmailer had murdered her before writing to the police. Even after the body was found, further extortion letters followed, announcing future kidnappings and demanding money to avoid them. On the basis of the letters, Paul Britton created a personality profile of the perpetrator that ultimately turned out to be coherent and explained that the motivation was first and foremost to be seen as the failed existence of the police and to prove to himself how clever he was. The murder of Julie Dart was therefore planned from the outset to demonstrate the seriousness of his actions. The low monetary demand for such an act could indicate that he saw himself cheated out of this sum by the state.

Some time later, a blackmail letter to was British Rail one, the derailment of express trains announced, if not 200,000 pounds would be paid. A technical drawing of a derailment device was attached. The style and style of the ransom note clearly led to the conclusion that it was the same perpetrator who built a device to support his threats to tear off the pantographs of a train. This device, as well as the money transfer, failed. It became clear, however, that the perpetrator had a connection to the railroad in a certain geographical area of ​​Central England: All extortion letters were sent from mailboxes near train stations, all money transfer points had to do with disused railway lines, the location of the body was also due to one.

The real estate agent Stephanie Slater was kidnapped during a bogus apartment tour. Here, too, the extortion letters could again be assigned to the same perpetrator. After successfully handing over the money, whereby the perpetrator was actually able to outsmart the police with his chain of instructions, she was released nine days after the kidnapping. Based on their description, a phantom picture was created and published in Crimewatch UK along with a telephone recording . Michael Sams was finally identified as the perpetrator through information from the audience. Due to an indiscretion by the police, the press first became aware of Paul Britton's participation in police investigations.

Green Chain Walk rapists and murder case Samantha and Jazmine Bisset

From the end of the 1980s to the beginning of the 1990s, the population was unsettled by a series of rapes that took place in the parks in the southern green belt of London connected by the Green Chain Walk . In one case, the perpetrator broke into a residential building on the road, easily visible from the park, and committed the crime there. Although the victims sometimes gave very different descriptions of the perpetrator, the DNA traces revealed the perpetration of a single man.

Paul Britton was asked to create a perpetrator profile. In contrast to the investigating officers, he considered the act in the house to be the key act and suspected that the perpetrator must have already become suspicious of the police with property crimes, since the intrusion into the strange apartment took place with a certain routine without any signs of insecurity. However, his profile was rejected and the officials did not use it for further investigations.

In November 1993, Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine were found murdered in their apartment. The child was raped and then strangled. Her mother was previously stabbed to death and mutilated in the most extreme ways after abusing her daughter. It was only after Britton's suggestion to check whether some of the organs that had been removed were missing that a second autopsy revealed the loss of a piece of tissue, which the perpetrator had probably taken as a “trophy”. What was striking about the residential area was the proximity to a higher-lying green corridor from which the victims could be observed. The dactyloscopic examination was also faulty; During a check-up, it was found that palm prints that had previously been assigned to the victim belonged to the perpetrator. He was already known to the police for property offenses and could be arrested. Maps were found in his apartment that not only marked the Bisset's house, but also the crime scenes of the rape on the Green Chain Walk. There were also a few more markings that suggest that not every crime was reported. A DNA test confirmed the suspect Robert Napper's perpetration.

Britton regretted that the police hadn't considered his first profile, which might have prevented the later double homicide. Napper was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and found guilty and was placed in a closed facility as directed by the court.

Rachel Nickell murder case

→ Main article: Rachel Nickell murder case

In 1992, 23-year-old Rachel Nickell was brutally murdered with a knife in broad daylight in the extensive park area of Wimbledon Common in the presence of her two-year-old son and placed at the crime scene in an intentionally obscene and degrading manner. The crime probably happened spontaneously without a large privacy screen and with a high risk of discovery; the chain of events indicated an inexperienced first-time perpetrator. No physical harm was done to the traumatized child. This brutal crime particularly shocked the population, especially because this park is widely considered to be the home of the wombles , teddy bear-like characters from a popular children's television series.

Paul Britton was asked to create a perpetrator profile. It had the following points (quote from Britton):

• The perpetrator would have to be between twenty and thirty years old. Sexual assaults are mostly committed by young men. As for his general sexual behavior, this killer was well advanced; as far as the killing was concerned, however, it was probably still in its infancy. He had had enough time to develop the first, but not the second.
• He is likely to have only limited skills on a heterosexual scale.
• He should have a history of failed or unsatisfactory relationships, if he had relationships at all. In addition to his sexual abnormality, he is likely to have some kind of sexual dysfunction such as difficulty getting an erection or controlling ejaculation . [..] If so, there was no reason to believe that the malfunction would have subsided over time.
• He may be drawn to some form of pornography that plays a role in his sexual fantasies. There would be some violent aspects to it and he would fantasize about similar experiences.
• The perpetrator should not have a more than average intelligence and education. If he is employed, he will be an unskilled or manual worker. He will be single, have a behaviorally lonely lifestyle and live either at home with his parents or in an apartment to himself.
• He will pursue solitary hobbies and interests.
• He will live very close to Wimbledon Common and know the area inside out.

Coming into criticism, Britton later stated about his profile: “ Such statements are not out of thin air. Psychological experiments have been carried out on an empirical basis for at least 120 years ; as a result, there are now tens of thousands of papers on all aspects of human functioning and motivation, and a whole range of specialist areas, including my personal disciplines, forensic and clinical psychology. This huge database of knowledge from all over the world is essential to my work; What is crucial, however, is that you know where to look and what is relevant for the task at hand. Rachel's killer might not have committed murder before; However, he was by no means the first man to kill a stranger in a park, and unfortunately he will not be the last. With each of these murderers who are caught, we learn more about their background in life, their motivation and pathology . Some common denominators have been identified with them. Research has shown, for example, that highly intelligent killers tend to be better organized and more systematic. They plan down to the last detail and subject their victims to greater control. In Rachel's case, however, the attack had been brutal, hectic, and chaotic. "

The profile was partially published in the newspaper, whereupon thousands reported alleged perpetrators. Out of these perpetrators stood out a man on whom the profile seemed to fit perfectly. This meant that the investigation was only conducted against a small group of people. As a result of interviews with witnesses, the police turned their attention to Colin Stagg, who lived nearby and showed great agreement in all areas with the perpetrator profile drawn up before his suspicion. This suspicion was supported by an exchange of letters following a personal ad provided by a woman. There allegedly a sexually sadistic orientation of the suspect was revealed . Elements such as the use of knives were also addressed by the martial arts enthusiast Stagg.

After his arrest, Stagg denied the crime and had to be released for lack of forensic evidence. The police continued to see him as their main suspect and launched a covert investigation which, as a love trap, was supposed to elicit the perpetrator's knowledge. Britton was approached again and asked to work out a concept for this investigation. First, he made a list of the characteristics of sexual deviance that the perpetrator was likely to have. He put forward the thesis that, according to the law, there could probably only be one person living near the park to whom all of these characteristics should apply. If Colin Stagg had all of these characteristics, he would very likely be the culprit. According to his information, Britton emphasized in advance that he had doubts about the legal strength of this method, but these were dispelled by senior police officers at the highest level, their lawyers and the chief prosecutor .

An undercover agent with the code name Lizzie James contacted Stagg by letter under the guidance of Paul Britton and was supposed to pretend her own sexual deviance over the course of six months, which should serve as the basis for a sexual relationship sought by Stagg. Every further step in the approach was designed as a control point , according to Britton's thesis . If Stagg chose a different route than the one expected, the investigation should be stopped immediately and the suspicion dispelled. Should he - without having been encouraged - steer the communication about his sexual fantasies in the presumed direction by himself, a basis of trust should be created by gradually admitting a similar deviance from Lizzie James, which should motivate him to make further confessions do. In the end, the police hoped for a confession of the crime in front of the undercover agent. Britton drafted the concept for the respective letters and conversations, but left the formulation to the police, so that he had no knowledge of the specific content before they were sent.

In parallel to the correspondence, Lizzie James again under the guidance of Paul Britton in telephone and personal contact with Colin Stagg, who, however, never admitted the act to her. Instead, Colin Stagg got into a certain dependency on Lizzie James, who pretended to have previously had a relationship with a murderer and to find sadistic violence on him to be sexually arousing. To please her he devised numerous sexually deviant and sadistic fantasies for her, including parks, knives and humiliating poses. As a further lure, she confessed to him participation in ritual sexual abuse as a perpetrator and victim and in a ritual murder and demanded that he reveal an act of equal rank as a vote of confidence, whereupon he described a fictional murder of his cousin to her. This supposed murder also turned out to be a fantasy product. Colin Stagg always denied to her that he had anything to do with the Rachel Nickels murder case or that he had not even known her, although he regularly went for walks with his dog in the park. However, with reference to a police interrogation, in the opinion of the investigators, he still described the perpetrator knowledge that he allegedly should not have had.

The police decided that there was enough evidence and brought charges . After twelve months in prison, the undercover investigation and its methods in the trial were severely criticized by Judge Justice Ognall and judged to be unsuitable for providing evidence and rejected. In his judgment he wrote: " [..] I fear that this behavior not only betrays exaggerated zeal, but also represents a massive attempt to incriminate a suspect through clearly deceptive behavior of the most offensive kind. [..] Any attempt to to process and use the material collected through the undercover investigation was doomed to failure. [..] The prosecution tried to convince me that the purpose of the exercise was to get the defendant to either exonerate himself or to incriminate himself further I feel compelled to state that I consider this account of the action to be highly insincere. " Other experts who were brought in to the trials at a later point in time also said that the recorded conversations between Lizzie James and Colin Stagg had such a suggestive pornographic character that they could not believe it. The charges against Stagg were dropped. This in turn sued the police for compensation.

Paul Britton's involvement in this investigation was investigated by the British Psychological Society - expulsion would have banned him from practicing - but charges against him were dropped in 2002. Colin Stagg wrote several newspaper articles and books in which he accused Britton and the police of misconduct, damage to reputation and the destruction of his life and their methods as dubious and unscientific and publicly attacked.

After an improved DNA test in 2003, new leads were found and charges were brought against another suspect for the Rachel Nickel murder case: Robert Napper, who previously committed the Green Chain Walk rapes and the murders of Samantha and Jazmine Bisset. Undercover agent Lizzie James resigned from the police force a few years later and sought compensation from the police for the psychological distress suffered during the investigation . Colin Stagg was fully rehabilitated by the judiciary in 2008 after 20 years now. He was awarded high compensation. Paul Britton and his methods continued to be criticized for a long time, particularly from the media.

Rosemary and Frederick West

Paul Britton was also involved in the investigation of the serial killers Rosemary and Frederick West , arguably the most sensational criminal case in England of the second half of the 20th century. When three women's bodies, including a daughter, were found in the garden of the Wests, Paul Britton was asked to look into the case and the suspects. He studied the couple's career, criminal record, and unprovoked allegations from social workers and their children's teachers, and shocked the police with the suspicion that Frederick West buried three bodies in his garden because all of the spaces in the house were already occupied "be. There would probably also be corpses found in all of his other places of residence - an assessment that was confirmed after extensive search measures, which included the demolition of the house. In total, the police found twelve bodies in the house and in previous places of residence, which showed severe signs of abuse and some signs of cannibalism .

He recognized the couple as an unprecedented symbiosis of two complementary sadistic sex offenders who, for more than 25 years, had continuously committed the most serious offenses, ranging from the sexual abuse of their children to sadistic torture of abducted women to multiple sex murders. He assessed the bisexual Rosemary West as the driving force, who not only actively helped in the selection and kidnapping of the victims, but also sexually assaulted them and their children. Furthermore, he designed an interrogation strategy in order to induce his more passive partner, Frederick West, to make confessions. He predicted the possibility that Fred West suicide could commit if his wife would pass on all the blame on him or the contact would be prevented to it (by the adhesive). His prognosis also came true this time.

Further investigation

Paul Britton was involved in numerous other high-profile investigations, including the James Bulger murder , the kidnapping of the infant Abbie Humphries, the conviction of the Scottish serial killer Robert Black , the conviction of the five-time serial killer Colin Ireland and the appeal hearing of the Bridgewater Four .

literature

• Paul Britton: The Jigsaw Man. Corgi Books, London 1998, ISBN 0-552-14493-2 .
  • German: The profile of the murderer - The spectacular success method of the British criminal psychologist Paul Britton. Econ Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-430-11564-7 .

Web links

• Interview with Paul Britton: Why Murderers Kill
• BBC of October 30, 2002: 'Cracker' misconduct charge dropped
• BBC News, Oct. 30, 2002: Paul Britton charges dropped (with photo of Paul Britton)
• Review of " The Profile of the Murderers "