Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.
When do you notice an individual murder least? When it is one of a series of related murders.
We think with horror now of the days when we burnt witches. I believe the day will come when we will shudder to think that we ever hanged criminals.
It’s at the back of a lot of crimes. The desire to assert one’s personality.
If you find a dagger planted by your pillow tomorrow morning – let the criminal who put it there beware!
There are criminals in high places sometimes.
The psychology of character is interesting. One cannot be interested in crime without being interested in psychology. It is not the mere act of killing, it is what lies behind it that appeals to the expert.
The great criminal (as you may remember my remarking to you once) is always supremely simple.
The crime passionel! The primitive instinct – to kill! So closely allied to the sex instinct.
That boyish type of criminal is usually intensely vain. Once prick the bubble of their self-esteem and it is finished! They go to pieces like children.
Some of the greatest criminals I have known had the faces of angels. A malformation of the grey cells may coincide quite easily with the face of a Madonna.
One has only to let the criminal talk – sooner or later he will tell you everything.
