When I wrote "my opinion" within my last post, I meant that I would not have been able to come up with my own sort of profile without Abby and Libby's video/audio. I would not have any profile opinion. I did not mean it was my opinion LE came up with their profile by using the video/audio. I am sure a lot more goes into it like the signature behaviors that none of us knows about. I believe I can come up with my own sort of profile based on Abby and Libby's video/audio.
I respectfully disagree that appearance matters very little. Haven't there been profiles released where LE thinks the person they are looking for is a white person or African-American or Hispanic? Isn't this based on appearance? I think profiles can be based on eyewitness testimony and that sometimes eyewitness testimony is wrong.
I agree that based on the grainy phone video/audio no one can say for sure what age bridge guy is or what he looks like. But we all have our own opinions about what we see when we look at the video. I agree with the people that think bridge guy is an older man.
I have heard LE refer to this man as a monster a few times in this case. I think that is very dismissive. Maybe the line between ordinary and strange people has gotten a lot closer for me since I am a few decades older than Abby and Libby too. As to how Abby and Libby viewed things on the day they died, I do not know. It is only my opinion.
I think I see where you are coming from - you are using the term "profile" like LE uses the word "description." A description of a suspect would include things like approximate or known age, weight, height, hair and eye color, clothing worn, ethnicity, etc. It's based on either known facts (they have a video) or witness descriptions (and therefore may be less certain). Of course, for quite a lot of murders LE has no description to work with at all because there were no witnesses to any part of the crime.
An offender profile is something quite different from a description of what the offender is thought to look like. The profile is a tool, designed to aid the investigation, all about how the offender behaves and what that might tell LE about his occupation, motives, etc. You may have heard in previous cases things like "believed to be a power-assertive type of rapist," or "organized killer." Those are profiling terms, considered older-style today, but generated based on offender behaviors.
There are different approaches behind making profiles, but the FBI uses a behavioral method that analyzes primarily the crime scene and the act itself and then analyzes
offender behavior and
offender-victim interactions. As I said in my first response, the things in the Delphi video that would be of interest to a profiler IMO would be how he carries himself across the bridge, what he says to the girls and how he says it, what he does to take control of them. As an example, if he pretended to be a cop (I'm not saying this is true, just using an example), that would be a fact that a profiler might use to say - this offender may fantasize about the power that police have. He probably doesn't have power in his own life. He may have committed domestic abuse against children or partners in the past. He may have tried to become a police officer at one point and failed, he may have attempted to work in a LE-adjacent field like security guard in the past, etc. If, instead of putting in a power act, the Delphi killer asked them if they wanted to see puppies down the hill (again, not what I think happened, but for the sake of argument), then that luring behavior would lead to different conclusions about the offender.
Just hoping to help people understand the difference between a suspect description and an offender profile. I do not claim that profiling is an exact science for solving crimes/linking related crimes. You can't make a profile without knowing what was at the crime scene, so none of us here could even attempt to make an amateur version of the profile.