ShadowMan: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling

In the summer of 1973 in the small town of Manhattan, Montana, seven-year-old Susie Jaeger vanished from her family campsite tent in the middle of the night. After the largest manhunt in Montana history was unsuccessful, Pete Dunbar, the FBI special agent leading the investigation, contacted the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico for assistance. Psychologist Patrick Mullany and criminologist Howard Taten were teaching a course in psychological profiling and predicted that the killer was a white male and a former military veteran, and they offered other specific characteristics as well. Fifteen months later, David Meirhofer, a former suspect who had passed numerous lie detector tests, was arrested and convicted of killing Jaeger and three other people. Patty Neiman’s calm and clear narration effectively builds suspense and captures the chilling details of the case.