Profiler Diaries

In this gripping – and sometimes terrifying – account, former South African Police Service (SAPS) head profiler Dr Gérard Labuschagne, successor to the legendary Micki Pistorius, recalls some of the 110 murder series and countless other bizarre crimes he analysed during his career. An expert on serial murder and rape cases, Labuschagne saw it all in his fourteen and a half years in the SAPS. He walks the reader through the first crime scene he ever attended, his arrest of the Muldersdrift serial rapist, his experience as the head of the task team mandated to catch the Quarry serial murderer, his involvement with the Brighton Beach axe murders, and more. Despite often being stymied by a lack of resources, office politics and political interference, Labuschagne and his team were always determined to get their man – or woman, as in the Womb Raider case. The Profiler Diaries is a fascinating – and often hair-raising – glimpse into what it was like to be a profiler in the world’s busiest profiling unit.

‘I wanted to write this book before I forgot the finer details. As strange as that may sound, you can forget these things, and it is probably healthier to do so. You can visit the depths of hell – just don’t hang around there for too long.’ – Gérard Labuschagne

Dr Gérard Labuschagne was the head of the SAPS’s specialised Investigative Psychology Section, the only unit mandated to profile offenders, for fourteen and a half years. He is a clinical psychologist, criminologist, homicide and death investigator (trained by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department), a hostage negotiator, a US-certified threat manager, and an advocate of the High Court. He is a director of L&S Threat Management, an honorary associate professor in the University of the Witwatersrand’s Department of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, and the founder president of the African Association of Threat Assessment Professionals. He has given training to the Behavioral Analysis Units of the FBI and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and advised foreign law-enforcement agencies on their cases. Labuschagne is a regular speaker at international conferences and has published extensively in professional journals and textbooks.

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