How a criminal profiler helped catch Janelle Patton’s killer
FBI-trained criminal profilers like Kris Illingsworth look for the ritualised behaviour of serial killers to work out the signature aspects of a crime. This is how she caught Janelle Patton’s killer.
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Exclusive: Her body was found wrapped in plastic with multiple stab wounds.
Her clothes had been cut and Janelle Patton’s remains had been left in the open on Norfolk Island where she would be quickly found.
It appeared at first glance to be a psychosexual murder case.
But when Kris Illingsworth looked at the crime scene photographs, she knew immediately the killer was trying to deceive police investigators.
Ms Illingsworth said there are so many aspects to the infamous case that did not make “sense” in the latest episode of the successful Police Tape podcast series – Blue Sirens.
The podcast series talks to five policewomen around the country including detectives who worked on Melbourne’s gangland murders, the top cop dubbed the gang buster for smashing her way through the nation’s network of outlaw motor cycle gangs, Australia’s first female bomb technician and a Queensland Deputy Police Commissioner.
HEAR THE LATEST BLUE SIRENS PODCAST HERE
Ms Illingsworth is a former Detective Sergeant in the NSW Police Force who has worked on some of the state’s most notorious cases, including the “Granny” murders on Sydney’s north shore and Ivan Milat’s backpacker killing spree, now works as an independent criminal behavioural analyst and investigator.
She is one of only a handful of Australians to have worked at the FBI’s Behaviour Analysis Unit, made famous by cult movie The Silence of the Lambs and TV crime shows like Mindhunter and Criminal Minds) at the bureau’s Quantico academy.
Ms Patton, a 29-year-old hotel worker from Sydney, was murdered in a frenzied stabbing attack on Easter Sunday in 2002 – the first murder on the tiny Pacific Island in 150 years.
Ms Illingsworth was flown to the island by the Australian Federal Police when they were conducting a mass fingerprinting operation on the black plastic found wrapped around Ms Patton’s body.
She was flown in secretly because the police didn’t want the media to know criminal profilers were involved.
“It was an interesting case because she had a lot of different types of injuries, abrasions, lacerations, cutting and the stab wound to her chest,” said Ms Illingsworth.
“And clearly, she’d been in some kind of a motor vehicle collision of some kind, but there’s more to it. I don’t think anyone was totally satisfied as to how all the injuries occurred.
“It was clear that they had taken her to another location while she was alive and instead of getting medical help for her, spent more time there with her and ultimately stabbed her, which killed her. And then she’s been wrapped in the plastic and conveyed down to a reserve, and left out in the open. Which is interesting too, because there are cliffs all around the Island that you could drop a body off, but she was left out in the open, so she’s clearly going to be found. So this offender didn’t mind.”
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Ms Illingsworth said although Ms Patton’s clothing had been cut up the front, if it had been done during the initial attack it would have moved – and it hadn’t.
So she wondered the cutting of her clothing could have been done after she had been dumped, to make it look like a sexually motivated rime when it wasn’t.
It turned out she was right.
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“While we look at what is in the crime and the physical, verbal, sexual behaviour, what’s not in the crime is just as important. So what the offender does not do is just as important because it tells you more about the offender.”
“It is like a big puzzle.”
But she says profiling itself does not solve a crime. “Only a thorough and professional investigation solves a crime. Profiling is just one tool in the investigator’s toolkit that they can call upon,” said Ms Illingsworth.
New Zealand chef, Glenn McNeill was convicted of Ms Patton’s murder and he is serving a life sentence. Although some questions have never been answered, her murder was not found to be a sexually motivated crime.
Read more and listen to the podcast at truecrimeaustralia.com.au
Originally published as How a criminal profiler helped catch Janelle Patton’s killer
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