Former FBI assistant director Chris Swecker said during an interview late this week that he believes that the 28-year-old man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students is like notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.
Swecker’s comments come after authorities arrested the suspect, who The Daily Wire is not naming in keeping with a policy to deprive mass killers of the notoriety they often crave, on Friday some 2,400 miles from the crime scene in the Pocono Mountains in Monroe County, Pennsylvania.
It had been more than a month since Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Ethan Chapin, 20; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Madison Mogen, 21, were murdered in their home on November 13.
Swecker told Fox News that the suspect “bears so much resemblance to Ted Bundy, it’s scary.”
“I’m not a behavioral scientist, but those that the FBI behavioral scientists have been studying this for a long time, and people like this, don’t just spontaneously combust overnight,” Swecker said. “I mean, there’s a build up to it. There are urges, as urges are latent, and then they’re played out in stalking and breaking and entering and creeping through people’s houses and that sort of thing. And, you know, peeping into windows, and that that urge becomes more overt, at some point.”
“Now he’s 28 years old, I find it hard to believe that his first kill is a violent quadruple homicide, using a large hunting knife. And, you know, it just doesn’t ring true to me,” he continued. “I think there’s a build up to this. I’m afraid that if you look back at his previous college … you might find some history there.”
Swecker said that serial killers with this type of psychological profile have an “urge to kill” and that they “can act normal for a period of time and then they go psychotic, then they go back to normal, or at least normal on the out[side].”
Heavy.com reported that the suspect, who was pursuing a Ph.D. in criminology at Washington State University’s Pullman campus, had conducted a survey seeking to “understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime,” the suspect wrote.
The suspect asked criminals to share the “thoughts and feelings” they had throughout the experience of committing the crime.
The survey asked criminals if they prepared before they carried out their crimes, how far they traveled to commit their crimes, and what steps they took to select their victim or target.
The report also noted that the suspect at one point had worked in “part-time security for the Pleasant Valley School District in Pennsylvania.”