How do criminals think? This is how the Mossos d'Esquadra mindhunters work.

BarcelonaCriminals leave fingerprints, but also traces of what they feel, how they attack, and who they choose. This idea inspired, in the 1970s, a new method at the FBI to understand how the most feared criminals in US prisons thought, as recalled in the acclaimed Netflix series. MindhunterSince then, police investigations have never been the same. Behavior analysis deduces how an unknown offender will act based on the behavior they exhibit during a crime, and since its inception, this discipline has gained ground among elite teams and the most prestigious police forces around the world. Its essence: putting a magnifying glass on the motivations of attackers. "Historically, the police have been primarily concerned with the what, the how, the when, the who, and the where; but we left out the why," says Xavier Álvarez, the first behavioral analyst for the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police). A question that often connects the victim with the perpetrator.

A profiler speaks in court

The first major case in which Xavier Álvarez intervened within the Criminal Behavior Analysis Group (GACC) was the one of the Rider either Power GirlsIn Barcelona, immersed in the pandemic, five women were assaulted by a delivery man in their doorways. "In the second complaint, we were already clear it was the same attacker based on the way he approached the victim," explains Álvarez. And for the first time, a behavioral analyst's report not only helped identify the attacker but also became evidence in court. "We made history; never before had a profiler testified in a rape trial," she recalls.

The work of this police officer was also key in the Igualada case, in which a minor was raped and seriously injured in an industrial estate. The analysis confirmed that the perpetrator, Brian Raimundo, fit a highly dangerous pattern, a "homicidal" profile with a high risk of reoffending. The court included this in the sentence and applied the aggravating circumstance of gender discrimination, taking into account that, having suffered abuse in the family environment, he reproduced a pattern of "violent, abusive, and humiliating behavior toward women."

In both cases, criminological analysis served to support the story before the court. "Without this, these investigations are sometimes devoid of arguments," says Álvarez, who assures that magistrates increasingly appreciate a technical explanation of the modus operandi to pass sentence.

Each complaint is a clue and each victim is a map.

Every morning, the GACC reviews recent reports and calls to 112 to look for repetitive behavior, as if each victim were a piece of a larger puzzle. Sometimes, hundreds of old reports must be reread in disconnected databases until the final thread is found. This was the case that began on the Barcelona metro: an assailant attacked two girls with disabilities, but the profiles didn't match. "I told the investigators they were looking for the substance, but not the content," she recalls. In the end, they found two more victims. "I had to read more than a hundred reports because the database wasn't automated," Álvarez recalls. But in the end, the picture was complete, and the case with four victims could be tried.

An assailant's profile isn't created overnight. Sometimes it takes weeks. First, a basic x-ray to guide the prosecutor; Then, a more in-depth report defines the risk level, recurrence, past history, and everything that allows us to detect whether the patient has a unique profile. Ultimately, the work consists of determining the patient's age, economic level, whether they have suffered from any illnesses, whether they go to the gym, and what mode of transportation they use. Álvarez says, "It's a bit like playing Who's Who."

A discipline still in struggle

Behavior analysis has a long history. It was key, for example, in the capture of the terrorist Theodore Kaczynski, known as the "Unabomber," who for seventeen years spread terror by sending letter bombs in protest against technological development. He was identified by the FBI thanks to a linguistic autopsy of a manifesto that inferred that the man had lived in Chicago.

This was also the case with Rodrigo Nogueira, the "Unabomber."Don Juan the swindler", betrayed by the same messages with which he seduced and manipulated his victims, written from fake profiles on dating apps. Joaquín Ferrándiz, serial murderer and rapist of five women in the late 90s in Castellón, or José Bretón, who killed and burned his two young children in Córdoba, were also profiled before determining that they were, in fact, the criminals the police were looking for.

However, even today, many judges and prosecutors are still unaware of exactly what a behavior analyst does. And yet, more and more people are calling them. "The teams that try it, repeat it," explains criminologist Jorge Jiménez, author of the book Behavior Analysis Units, where he analyzes teams from six different countries. According to him, only 10% of investigations resort to it, but in complex or seemingly hopeless cases, it can be decisive. And although only 20% of profiles lead directly to the culprit, their contribution is essential to understanding the logic of the crime.

Jiménez assures, however, that they will be increasingly necessary. "The bad guys are getting worse and better because they search on Google for how to hide a body and certain traces," he says. However, nothing is as glamorous as shown in series like Criminal Minds"We're not fortune tellers; we work with probabilities," says Álvarez. That's why the greatest enemy is poorly connected databases. A single attack may mean nothing. But when you see three, five, ten... the pattern emerges. Profilers are like fingerprint or ballistics analysts: they contribute their two cents when relevant.

Neither monsters nor saints: humans

Perhaps to share his most intimate lessons after twenty years in the force, Xavier Álvarez also writes crime novels. Touching the darkest reality day by day, writing, like swimming and running, is a therapy. Both in Don't give up when the trail is hot (Amsterdam) as The Confident (Rosa dels Vents), Álvarez steps into the shoes of criminals gripped by pain and revenge. He also confesses to having been able to strip society bare and hold up a mirror to its everyday contradictions, hypocrisies, and injustices. "Fiction is the ideal platform for critiquing what's right and what's wrong, the police, the judiciary, journalists, or the way society judges victims; no one is safe," he asserts, claiming that the genre explores the gray area of ​​the human condition. "No one is that bad or that good," he concludes.

That said, Álvarez doesn't believe in hopeless cases: "I believe in reintegration, although it needs to be improved." Ultimately, he says, it's necessary to look further back. For police officers, criminals aren't born, they're made, and many have grown up amidst misery and abuse. "I'd like to know how people would behave if they'd had a life as hard as some criminals," he maintains.

Now, there are no magic formulas, and sometimes, in this field, two and two don't make four. While some sexual offenders, like Brian Raimundo, grew up in a dysfunctional home, others, like the Castellón murderer and rapist Joaquín Ferrándiz, were raised in loving environments. Therefore, for Álvarez, this isn't decisive. Good and evil don't always have an explanation—only paths and traces—and neither a difficult childhood, substance abuse, or a violent environment justify any aggression. "In the end, you choose who you are," the analyst concludes.