It was an occupational hazard of criminal profilers that the general public thought of them as either useless frauds or all-knowing wizards, with not a lot of room in between. What they actually excelled at was both more concrete and more boring than was generally understood. They knew statistical trends of various types of criminals. They knew general behavioral patterns. They knew, for example, that it was common for arsonists to return to the scenes of their fires. With this knowledge, they could help detectives write reports to their superiors, requesting extra staffing and surveillance for those locations. It wasn’t romantic, but it was useful.
Morris was the only one who was familiar with the Eastern Shore. The ATF profiler, Ron Tunkel, had previously worked as a profiler on the Olympic bombings in 1996. One of his strengths was working with the police on how to devise the most effective media strategy and public communication. Tunkel knew there were two kinds of witnesses: those who had seen something and understood the significance of what they’d seen, and those who had seen something and didn’t even know it was important. With as many fires as there had been, Tunkel figured there had to be people in the latter category. Someone had finished making dinner and gone outside to dump the leftover cooking grease and had spotted a person walking through a field. The key was to create a public message in a way that would jog people’s memories without disclosing any proprietary information or leading all potential witnesses.
Eventually, they all submitted psychological profiles of the arsonist to the Virginia State Police. Morris reiterated his belief that the arsonist’s primary motive was vandalism; he also suggested that the arsonist likely had an immature personality, and that it would be wise to look into people who had vendettas against the police or fire departments. Tunkel’s report touched on the notion that people who committed arson were often people who felt powerless and were trying to regain authority in their own lives. He wrote, “The year 2012 was probably not a very good one in the life of the offender.”
A general synopsis of the profiles was provided to the media, and Carol Vaughn, a reporter for the Eastern Shore News, wrote a front-page article titled “Police Describe Arsonist’s Profile.” (Given that the Eastern Shore News had only three reporters on staff at the time, the overworked Vaughn was also responsible for two of the other three articles that appeared on the front page of that edition: “West Point Jacket, Unearthed on N.J. Beach after Hurricane, Returned to Owner’s Widow” and “Community Raises Money for Arcadia Chorus.”) “We feel certain that the person or persons responsible for these fires is a resident of Accomack County,” a captain from the Chesapeake Field Office was quoted as saying. The article also warned readers that the arsonist “likely talks frequently about the fires” and may “show an unusual pattern of leaving home during the night.” Privately, police had decided that the arsonist was likely not a teenager: someone so young would be noticed if he slipped out of the house at night. They were looking for someone who didn’t have to account for his whereabouts to a guardian.
Locals devoured the information and reposted it on social networks, but it also made them scoff. Of course the arsonist was likely talking frequently about the fires. They all were. It was the one thing everyone in the county was talking about. And of course the arsonist was a resident of Accomack County. Who would bother to drive all the way to a remote area of the United States just to burn it down?
MEANWHILE, lead profiler Jon Cromer was deciding how to accomplish a necessary but delicate task: interviewing the firefighters. Nobody could deny that there was a chance that the arsonist was a firefighter. At the same time, being the one to raise that suspicion was bad for community relations.
Cromer was a soft-spoken man with a gentle southern accent, the kind that made him sound, even when he was interrogating hardened criminals, like he was interviewing a four-year-old about the location of a missing cookie. But rather than talking to each of the firemen individually, Cromer decided the best thing to do in this situation was to go station by station and pass out a structured questionnaire, to each of the hundreds of firefighters.
He started with the company in Bloxom. That town was in the middle of the county, centrally located to the fires. Once everyone was seated around tables in the meeting room, Cromer and Kenneth Morris passed out the questionnaires and a bunch of pens. They told the firefighters that the reason for the surveys was because the firefighters were themselves invaluable resources: they may know things that they hadn’t previously thought to share. The volunteers found the explanations insulting. The police could pretend all they wanted that the purpose of the questionnaire was to get their valuable input, but most of them were pretty sure they knew the real purpose. A few of them refused to fill it out, others felt free to tell Cromer and Morris exactly how they felt about the questionnaire: it was complete bullshit.
The profilers remained calm. It was possible that the person they were trying to find was in that room. And if so, that he would give himself away with clues he wasn’t even aware of.
On the first page of the questionnaire, Cromer briefly recapped all of the fires that had been happening on the shore. He explained that he was on the shore with the state police as part of an investigation. “Tell us what you know about that,” the writing prompt said. It was left ambiguous, so respondents could say what they knew about either the fires or the investigation. The second page instructed the participants to “List the five most important things that could have created this situation.” Again, it was up to participants to decide how to interpret “situation.” The final page asked participants to put themselves in the shoes of law enforcement: “If you were in charge of investigating the fires, how would you do it?”