About Enzo Yaksic

Enzo Yaksic is an advocate for the open exchange of information. In August of 2010, after ten years of researching serial homicide, Enzo founded the ‘Serial Homicide Expertise and Information Sharing Collaborative’ (SHEISC) where he acts as the database coordinator. The SHEISC ushered a subset of the criminal justice community into the digital workspace to synchronize and standardize serial homicide data collection efforts. Through the SHEISC, Enzo and his team have made serial homicide offender data widely accessible to both academic researchers and law enforcement professionals.


Enzo has contributed to all three editions of James Alan Fox’s Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder and the fourth edition of The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder. Enzo worked with Eric Hickey to complete updates to the sixth and seventh editions of Serial Murderers and Their Victims (SMATV). Enzo co-wrote a profile on lesser known serial killer Samuel Dixon, along with Dr. James Reavis, featured in the sixth and seventh editions of SMATV. Enzo built the database referenced in the Slate article Blood Loss - The decline of the serial killer. Enzo was the first to offer possible explanations for the steep decline in serial killings since 1990, a notion in direct contrast to popular belief.


As a Northeastern University criminal justice student, Enzo completed a research assistantship with the Investigative Training Unit (ITU) of the FBI Academy. At the urging of the late Robert Ressler, Enzo constructed a survey while at the ITU that was designed to gauge the further usefulness of Criminal Investigative Analysis. The survey was disseminated around the world to the top minds in serial murder research. The results served as a catalyst for a poster Enzo presented at the 2006 Northeastern University Research Expo which attempted to break the misconception of the "white male" serial killer stereotype. This poster was the first academic source to assert that African American serial killers are as prominent as their Caucasian counterparts, a finding later cited in SMATV. Enzo was recognized for this work by his receipt of the Leonard S. Adelman Memorial Award. A proponent of the limited use of criminal profiling, on April 15, 2013, Enzo accurately predicted that the Boston Marathon Bombings would have been committed by two young men.


In 2010, Enzo introduced the idea of creating the first national serial homicide offender database. To realize this vision, Enzo partnered with Mike Aamodt of Radford University to help build and populate the ‘Radford/FGCU Serial Killer Database’. Enzo has been credited with Significant Professional Performance. A new initiative, the Consolidated Serial Homicide Offender Database, is critical to the further understanding of serial offenders and represents a significant collaboration among academic professionals in the field. Enzo’s efforts with serial homicide data were detailed in a Fast Company article. In 2011, Enzo partnered with Scripps Howard News Service reporter Thomas Hargrove to file a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the names and demographics of all serial killers known to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Although numerous academic papers that were written by agents of the bureau state otherwise, the FBI claimed to “not maintain a running list of serial killers.” The FOIA request was subsequently denied. A second request, filed in 2014, was also denied.


Enzo contributed to the investigation into serial killer suspect Felix Vail by providing assistance to investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell. Enzo’s behavioral analysis of Vail - coupled with Jerry’s tenacious pursuit - led, in part, to his arrest. If Vail is responsible for each of the cold case murders suspected, this would be the oldest prosecution of a serial killer suspect in U.S. history. Vail shares some commonalities with serial killer suspect Drew Peterson and may also be connected to a double homicide that occurred in Starkville, Mississippi. Enzo offered insight into Vail's state of mind after analyzing eighteen hours of audio tape captured by a private investigator. Vail's journals, of which there are 2,400 pages, also provided additional information of his mindset over the course of the past few decades. Enzo constructed an accounting of what was learned from Vail’s journal entries and his utterances on the audio tapes for Michelle McNamara’s True Crime Diary. Enzo also commented that sets of earrings retained by Vail could be mementoes meant to assist him in reliving past experiences. Enzo partnered with Todd Matthews of NamUs in the hopes of connecting the earrings with potential victims. Vail’s potential use of dismemberment as a means of body concealment would place him in the five percent of serial killers who have utilized this technique. Some believe that the discovery of dismembered remains instantly signals the work of a serial killer. Enzo publicly contested this narrow view when some attempted to link body parts to the Long Island Serial Killer. Enzo addressed the stereotypes and myths that surround serial killers in an op-ed piece that appeared in the Clarion-Ledger. Enzo offered additional insight into the ways in which serial killers differ from their Hollywood depictions. Enzo is in the process of designing a ‘massive open online course’ for Coursera.


After attending the ‘First Annual International Multidisciplinary Collaborative Conference on Violence Research & Evidence-Based Practice: Sexual Homicide’ in 2011, Enzo co-founded the ‘Multidisciplinary Collaborative on Sexual Crime and Violence’ (MCSCV) with the late Leonard Morgenbesser. The MCSCV, an active network of one hundred academic researchers, law enforcement professionals and mental health practitioners, allows members to communicate over a private and secure email listserv in an effort to come to a greater understanding of atypical homicide. On a monthly basis, a ‘Serial Homicide Digest’ cataloging various events related to serial murder is disseminated to the group. Enzo partnered with Dallas Drake of the ‘Center for Homicide Research’ to create a literature repository for members of the MCSCV. Enzo created the collaborative after participating in a Virtual Breakthrough Series. In 2015, the MCSCV completed the two year transition to Northeastern University and was renamed the Atypical Homicide Research Group after incorporating the topic of mass homicide.


Enzo wrote “A Special Dedication to Leonard Morgenbesser” for the seventh edition of Serial Murderers and Their Victims. As an anti-gun violence advocate, Leonard would approve of Enzo’s opinion on one way to address gun violence – reclassify multiple murdering gang members as serial killers, making it society’s problem rather than just a byproduct of being disadvantaged – that was captured in a USA Today Opinion piece on the subject. As a continuation of this point, Enzo contributed to Steven Daniels’ book chapter on creating a new class of multiple murderer. In 2014, Enzo gathered together an expert panel and applied the Modified Delphi Technique in an attempt to resolve the definitional issues that have plagued serial homicide research over the past forty years. In 2016, Enzo organized ongoing research collaborations with members of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit 5 and the Homicide Investigation Tracking System (HITS) of the Washington State Attorney General's Office.


Enzo collected data for University of California professors Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury for a follow up to Stochastic Modeling of a Serial Killer. Enzo is researching the potential use of an Electronic Surveillance Tool and Informational Dashboard to be used to collect serial homicide data in real-time. Enzo participated in a cold case panel discussion with Deborah Halber, author of The Skelton Crew and spoke at a conference titled ‘Confronting Homicide in a Changing World’. Enzo constructed a book review of Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World's Most Savage Murderers, a work that actively supports much of the flawed thinking about serial murderers. Enzo mentored Dr. Clare Allely on an ESRC proposal which aimed to discern the antecedents of serial murder. Enzo delivered a webinar on serial homicide data titled Serial Murder: Separating Fact from Fiction, hosted by the Justice Clearinghouse (password = Waterh0le). Enzo presented ‘Addressing the Challenges and Limitations of Utilizing Data to Measure Serial Homicide’, since published in the journal Crime Psychology Review, at the 2015 Homicide Research Working Group meeting. The paper was cited in Compulsive Criminal Homicide: A New Nosology for Serial Murder. Enzo presented on serial murder data and its uses at the 17th Conference of the International Academy of Investigative Psychology, guest lectured at Quincy College in late 2016 and will guest lecture at Boston College in 2017. Enzo is also working with Sarah Stein on unresolved homicides. Enzo co-authored a paper titled Violence is rare in autism: when it does occur, is it sometimes extreme? that appears in a special issue titled ‘Senseless Violence’ in the Journal of Psychology. Enzo is working on a Routledge book proposal about the utility of homicide data in the age of ‘Big Data’ and an anthology for Cognella. Enzo worked with ODSC to create two resources here and here and uploaded the database to Kaggle.


Enzo is a reviewer for the Journal of Criminal Justice and has reviewed two monographs, one for Routledge and the other for Prometheus Books. Enzo’s invited chapter will appear in the third edition of Violent Offenders: Theory, Research, Public Policy and Practice and a second in the Routledge International Handbook of Psychopathy and Crime. Enzo advised a group of Northeastern University graduate students during a seminar titled Special Topics: Serial Offending - CRIM 7260-01 (CRN 37450). Enzo serves on the Board of Directors of the Murder Accountability Project, a non-profit with the goal of exposing those criminal justice entities in non-compliance with federal Freedom of Information Act requirements. Enzo contributed to the Plain Dealer’s efforts to locate a serial killer, to The Globe and Mail’s investigation into the murders of indigenous women in the hopes of helping to identify the factors contributing to their victimization, stated that Quinton Tellis is likely a two-victim serial homicide offender and helped to decipher the true motives of a spree killer’s accomplice. Enzo offered insight into the psychology of serial murderers in USA Today and the Boston Globe. Enzo is a consultant for 48 Hours, Beyond Productions, Sirens Media, Atlantic Productions and the Technical Advisor for The Killing Season, an A&E television docuseries aiming to dispel the myths surrounding serial homicide. Enzo organized a successful campaign to petition Governor John Bel Edwards to rescind the parole of suspected serial murderer Samuel Galbraith. Enzo was profiled in April 2016’s Boston Magazine, mentioned in the Acknowledgments section of Mike Arntfield’s Murder City: The Untold Story of Canada’s Serial Killer Capital, 1959-1984, acknowledged by The Marshall Project as a person shaping the criminal justice conversation and showcased on the NU SCCJ website. Enzo is the recipient of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Justice Education’s 2016 Award for Innovation in Criminal Justice.


Enzo is working with the National Registry of Exonerations to compile data on instances where a serial murderer was responsible for the homicide that resulted in an innocent party being incarcerated. Enzo donated to the ‘Justice for Jaye’ campaign to secure funds for DNA testing in the hopes of identifying Beverly Jaye Potter Mintz’s killer, a case Enzo is currently consulting on, the campaign to provide Tiffany Sayre - one of Chillicothe, Ohio's missing women - a proper burial and the same for Jackie Vandagriff. The SHEISC was included in the article The Evolution of Serial Murder as a Social Phenomenon in American Society: An Update, Eric Hickey’s Serial Murderers and Their Victims (7th ed.), mentioned by Dr. Clare Allely in a radio interview and will be featured in Peter Vronsky’s book Serial Killer Chronicles: An Early History of Monsters. The SHEISC was recognized by DataKind for using #data4good and profiled in Routledge's CJ Update newsletter.


Enzo can be reached at yaksic.e@alumni.neu.edu or LinkedIn