Crime Day: Offender Profiling 'Railway Killer'

This long activity supports a ‘Crime Day’ for Year 8/9 launched by the school.
The activity is designed to last 1hour 20 mins. I have run the session several times and the activities work over an hour lesson but time can be reduced to make the lesson work for a 1 hour slot.

The aim of this session is to introduce students to offender profiling (they are not expected to have any previous knowledge). The activities introduce the idea of offender profiling and what it is. Students are then introduced to the real crimes of the Railway Murderer (Railway Rapist) where offender profiling was successfully used. The student copy powerpoint, is simply what I printed off for students and gave out at the relevant stages of the lesson.

I made students aware of two important things - 1. There is some relatively graphic content which I included because this information provided important clues. I made sure students knew that they had the option to leave the room if anything was upsetting. I have never had a student leave however! 2. At the end of the lesson, I made sure students were aware that I had used some poetic licence with some of the details. The events are true, but I have made up suspects 1,2 and 4, simply for the sake of the activity. There obviously were other suspects, but I did not have access to any details. I have also made up some of the information, for example the blood groups is entirely fictitious. So please do be aware of this!
The activity works well and is very effectively, creating lots of analysis, deduction and discussion.
The final slide is time dependent but provide a contrast where ‘offender profiling’ has not worked and actually been detrimental to justice.