Further reading for David Merhofer
Profilers: Leading Investigators Take You Inside The Criminal Mind
In the summer of 1973, in Three Forks, Montana The Jaeger family were spending time together on a camping trip, they had split the family up with the adults in one tent and the children in a separate, in the morning the family woke up to find 7 year old Susie missing, the tent around her sleeping area had been cut open and she was missing. There was no ransom note left, and no physical evidence.
At this time the FBI was just starting their new method of tracking killers using profiling and this was the first case that profiling helped solve. The profile was for a young, white male, who killed for sexual gratification and may have kept body parts of his victims as souvenirs, and that this was probably not his first crime.
David Meirhofer, 23 at the time was suspected in another murder and fit the profile but he denied the charges. The family then had no answers for a year, when on the anniversary of the kidnapping they received a phone call from the kidnapper and sadly the killer of their daughter. Susie’s mother, Marietta a devote Roman Catholic had spent the year dealing with her emotions and when she got the call she calmly spoke to the person on the other end saying “You know I’ve been praying for you ever since you took her,” she asked him how she could help him her compassion kept the kidnapper on the phone for over an hour giving the police enough clues to track him down.
The murderer ended up being David Meirhofer, and he confessed this time. He also confessed to three other murders. Sandra Dykman, a woman David had once dated and whom had call the relationship off. She had been found dead in her bed the same year Susie had been taken. He also confessed to the murders of two boys that he had committed as a young man after having a fight with one of the boys older brothers.
After his confession, David was taken back to his cell where he hanged himself.
As stated this was the first crime that offender profiling helped solve, solidifying a place for criminal profiling within the FBI
Marietta Jaeger went on to work with family members of murder victims and give lectures at schools and universities on forgiveness and reconciliation.
Episode 97
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