Although police and the FBI are just getting started on assembling a profile of a suspect, they already know enough to narrow the investigation.
The killer is probably an impulsive coward who hates women so much, he enjoyed knifing or choking each of his three victims to death after a violent struggle, Fox and other experts said. He also probably had committed lesser crimes before embarking on his killings, and he sticks to one area of the community because he feels comfortable there -- although he may branch out as his confidence grows.
That was the pattern of William Suff, the Riverside man convicted in 1995 of strangling 12 prostitutes. ``Hillside Stranglers'' Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who left a dozen victims scattered in California and Washington in the 1970s, worked that way, too. It's a personality type well documented by criminal researchers and feared by prostitutes.
Cowardly though it may be, the casual way the Pittsburg killer discarded his victims in the open indicates that he is feeling bold at his grisly craft.
``This man feels invincible,'' Fox said. ``Leaving the bodies like this doesn't mean that he wants to get caught, it just means he doesn't think he will get caught.''
Peter Smerick, a former FBI agent who specialized in compiling criminal profiles, said that probably, only one man is doing the slayings. Serial killers of prostitutes usually work alone, and they are almost always men. Copycats are rare.
``He'll also have enough superficial charm so that the prostitutes won't suspect him enough to not get in his car,'' Smerick said from his Virginia office. ``He won't look like a Charles Manson character, otherwise they would run screaming.''
The killer is probably from the area or at least familiar with it, although outsiders sometimes do commit such crimes.
