On the case

We speak to renowned criminologist Professor David Wilson about why you should never trust a serial killer, the five serial killer victim types, the state of the sector, and training the next generation.

We also explore the rise of the armchair detective and why ultimately “The police can’t have it both ways. They can’t ask for the help of the public on one hand and then criticise armchair detectives on the other.”

It was an incident during a rugby match at university in Cambridge that prompted David Wilson to enter the world of criminology.

After being badly fouled, David punched the player and broke his nose. “A couple of hours later, we were best friends in the bar drinking pints,” he says. “He apologised for what he’d done and I apologised for what I’d done. I thought no more of it.”

But later that week, a local newspaper published a story about an unemployed labourer who, after being thrown out of a nightclub, punched a bouncer and broke his nose. The person in question was sent to Borstal for two years.

Comparing the two outcomes, David explains: “It was about class privilege, context and the ability of people or organisations to avoid being labelled as offenders that dominated our criminal justice system – it still does.

“That one incident changed the direction in which I was heading. I finished my degree on the Friday and by the Monday I was assistant governor under training at Wormwood Scrubs.”

Never trust a serial killer

“My entire career has been based on the fact that I don’t just study and read about criminology or violent offenders, but have worked with them,” David says. 

One was Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen, whose crimes spanned the 1970s to 1980s. “He taught me so much about the character of this type of murderer, which was that you must never listen to anything a serial killer tells you,” he explains. “Dennis talked endlessly, but not necessarily with any insight or purpose.”

Interestingly, the FBI approach to working with serial offenders in the mid-1980s was to interview them and apply what they discovered from those interviews. However, David recalls: “I was working with serial murderers, and I wouldn’t trust them to tell me how to cross the road. Why would you believe anything that they were going to say?”

But it was his time at HMP Grendon that proved most valuable. “It’s still the only place in Europe that operates as a psychodynamic therapeutic community, so all the prisoners are in therapy,” he says. “Every day, violent men would be talking about the circumstances in which they used violence and why, and I learned so much from that.”

David was then asked by the prison service to help design and manage the two units for the 12 most violent men in the country at HMP Woodhill. “These experiences gave me the best insight into violent men, killers and murderers, and serial murderers, rather than the experience of Dennis Nilsen,” he explains.

“There’s still a popular misunderstanding that you learn about the phenomenon of serial murder by entering the mind of the serial killer. Instead, I believe we should be looking at which groups of people serial killers are able to kill.”

Changing the debate

Indeed, this has been the basis of David’s research over the past 30-plus years. “My research demonstrates that in Britain, serial killers only kill from within five groups,” he says.

Four of these are dominated by women, including sex workers and women over the age of 60, while the only group of men targeted are gay, he adds.

“The research shows students and policymakers that if you want to reduce the incidence of serial murder, you challenge homophobia,” David explains. “You have a grown-up debate about how we police the women and men who sell sex as a living.

“Above all, you have to consider why older people in our culture are isolated, silenced and seen as being expendable.”

In his recent book, Murder at Home, David wanted to show that regardless of gender, people are most likely to be murdered at home rather than in an indoor or outdoor public space. “The most common room is the kitchen because of the presence of knives, but also because the design of houses has changed over history and we live much of our lives there now.”

In addition, he says: “Nine out of 10 murders get solved because the victim and the perpetrator are usually known to one another. So the ideas that we have about murder are shaped by popular culture, TV, film and tartan noir.”

State of the sector

Scotland has the highest levels of incarceration compared to its European neighbours, according to David. But with the current overcrowding in prisons, he argues: “We’ve got to reduce the numbers of people that we’re prepared to put in prison.”

The majority of male prisoners are functionally illiterate, he explains, with many of them having been excluded from school or failed as far as traditional education is concerned.

However, David adds: “We can’t abolish prisons. There needs to be an institution called prison because there are some people that need to be put in jail. But too often we’re putting people inside that could have been dealt with in other ways because they have addictions to alcohol or drugs, mental health problems, few employment skills and housing difficulties.

“We need to be much more focused on the ‘front end’ of our culture and society, as opposed to building ever more prisons and filling them incredibly quickly.”

Ultimately, he adds: “We have to think better about what we do with people before they get to prison and what happens to them after they come out.”

As for things he wishes he could change in terms of penology, David says: “I would like the success of Grendon to be used to think about how we could run other prisons. Grendon is the only prison in Europe that can demonstrate a treatment effect. If you go to there for at least two years, you are empirically and statistically less likely to reoffend.”

Educating the next generation  

David resigned from the prison service in 1997 after returning from a trip to Albania. There, he’d been tasked by the Council of Europe to advise the new government on setting up a prison system following the country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy.

“There was a greater tolerance and willingness to reintegrate people once they had been released from prisons than I had ever encountered in England and Wales,” he explains. “I came back and thought, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m justifying a system that isn’t improving and I should go somewhere else to use my skills to try and change that system.”

David became a professor of criminology at Birmingham City University that same year. “I have 400 new first-year students every year and I’ve asked the same question for the past five years – how many have watched a beheading video online.”

The answer? “All of them,” he says. “What’s changed over time is that cruelty of people to other people is now almost mainstreamed as something that can be consumed through social media.”

A lasting legacy

So, what’s next for David? Amid his Killer Books tour with novelist Marcel Theroux he says: “I start teaching again in September. I’ve got to finish a Channel 4 series with Emilia Fox, In the Footsteps of Killers, in November and next year I’ll have my new book, The History of Britain in 20 Murders.”

As for his legacy to criminology, David says: “I’m really proud that a number of criminologists are now willing to engage the media about crime and punishment, and what their research demonstrates.”

Above all, he adds: “I’m most proud that there are people in the criminal justice system I taught, who are trying to use some of the ideas I exposed them to and make change within their professional lives to help people in their communities.”

Armchair detectives

With the rise of armchair detectives and society’s love of true crime, David says: “The police can’t have it both ways. They can’t ask for the help of the public on one hand and then criticise armchair detectives on the other.

“We’ve got to acknowledge that there are people who will use their own skills and time on social media to try and uncover what might have happened. And they’ve been successful when the police in the past have given up.”

Citing the recent fatal stabbings in Southport, however, he adds: “What I dislike are armchair conspiracy theorists peddling disinformation deliberately so as to support the conspiracy that they espouse.”

Novels and murders

“Marcel Theroux and I met on a crime documentary, and we hit it off. He’s written seven novels – and I love novels. I’m a voracious reader. Marcel and I started talking about his world. He’s fascinated by my world. I’m fascinated by his. And I said, you know, there is a point of contact: there are some novels that have inspired real-life murders. And the example that I gave to him was The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, which directly inspired Mark Chapman to shoot and kill John Lennon in New York in 1980. After he shot John Lennon, Chapman didn’t try and run away; he took out a copy of The Catcher in the Rye and started to read it until he was arrested.

Written by Katie Smith