Between 1967 and 1974, a spree of four murders occurred in Gallatin County, Montana. The victims included 7-year-old Susan Jaegar, 19-year-old Sandra Smallegan, 13-year-old Bernard Poelman, and 12-year-old Michael Raney. Even with multiple cases, local investigators were left with ZERO forensic evidence and no way to tie them together. Stalled by traditional methods, local detective Pete Dunbar took a leap of faith and reached out to the individuals who led the applied criminology workshop he attended.
Local police held strong skepticism toward this speculative science, and, with fear running rampant in the community, intense pressure was placed on law enforcement to solve the case immediately. In fact, these crimes still hold lasting trauma in the community of Manhattan, one local stating that “Even though these events happened 50+ years ago, please be sensitive as family members still live in the area. Some wounds never heal.”
This was the first profile ever created in an active investigation, and Teten and Mullany had little scientific basis for it. They constructed this profile solely on the early theories they believed they had found.
Local police made a revolutionary decision to arrest 23-year-old David Meirhofer based on how he compared to the mock profile. Upon being arrested, he instantly confessed, acting as a catalyst that established the BSU’s legitimacy. Profiling was the only way to link these seemingly unrelated cases to a single individual. It proved that behavioral analysis was an essential investigative tool before the scientific database existed to support it. This local success in Montana, of proving that an offender’s mind is a crime scene, became the foundation upon which the FBI built its national reputation for profiling.
