Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: The TRUTH about the so-called "Happy Ending" of the Aisha Khan saga:

I don't see any happy ending here. I see a selfish narcissist who staged an abduction (this IS a crime) terrifying her family and community, possibly getting an innocent person in trouble and investigated, wasting tons of tax money, police manpower (which should have been spent helping real victims), wasting citizen's time that they took off of work and away from their families to help search, and she gives a black eye to true missing women and the Muslim community. The family now has to deal with the humiliation of being fools who claimed up and down Aisha was truly abducted and they have to live with the fact Aisha is not the girl they thought she was, but a user and abuser. That family I sure is shedding tears but not of true joy because there is something seriously not right with Aisha Khan. Khan should be arrested for staging a crime and required to pay back the money wasted on her search. The family needs to apologize to the community (after all, they claimed Aisha wouldn't fake her disappearance and they should have known their own relative better or not lied about the kind of girl she was) and they should donate equal time helping true victims of crime until they pay back all the time the community wasted on Aisha. They can give the $10,000 reward money they offered to the police or to a victims' organization. Then maybe there would be an acceptable ending.

A truly happy ending would have been the recovery of a truly abducted person before she had been harmed. If my daughter had committed an elaborate hoax (and this was an elaborate hoax) on me, my family, and the community, I would be madder than hell. What kind of person does that? I can tell you. Jennifer Wilbanks, Audrey Sieler, Emily Rose, and Bethany Storros. These are not nice women; they are selfish and cruel and the families cannot be "happy" that their daughters committed these vile acts, maybe relieved they are not dead (in the cases of the women who faked abductions) but not "happy." Let's not sugarcoat this rotten attention seeking act. If Aisha Khan really just wanted to escape an undesirable situation, she would have simply taken off, left a note, and gone on to live her life. She choose instead to abuse others and that is not acceptable.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Missing Aisha Khan: What's Being Muslim Got to Do with It?

Beautiful 19-year-old Aisha Khan went missing recently from an Overland Park, Kansas community college campus. Unlike most girls who go missing, religion is more than fifty percent of the discussion and debate raging on news and blog post comments. Some of the comments are just nasty crap attacking Muslims and Islam in general. Some people wonder if her family is involved in her disappearance, some kind of honor killing or Sharia related violence. Others wonder if the young bride of three weeks was forced into an arranged marriage and she ran away because she was unhappy or because she had a boyfriend she loves that she had to give up. Some people are getting mad because any cultural or religious issues are being brought up at all and point out that if this were a White, Christian girl gone missing, people would simply be looking for a serial killer considering that in her last phone message and text to her sister at approximately 11 am , she said she was being harassed by a creepy, bad smelling man who she had to slap to get him away from her and he had been mad. She said the incident was really scary and her heart was beating out of her chest.

That was the last she was heard from. Her cousin went to the campus and found her books, her cell phone, iPod, and some stories say her backpack (and it has not been mentioned if she has a wallet with ID and money) as well, laying on an isolated table where she had been studying. Aisha has not been seen since.

So what could have happened to Aisha? What should the police be doing? Well, all of those questions and theories being bandied about on message boards are not all unreasonable. There are three basic possibilities; one, she was abducted, two, she was murdered by family and an abduction staged, or, three, she ran away and staged an abduction.

We can eliminate the "murdered by family" one first. There WAS a phone call from Aisha and unless her sister was imitating her voice and making a phone call from Aisha's phone to her own, then Aisha was alive on campus at 11 am. Someone could have forced her to make the call and then killed her but this going pretty Hollywood. I watched her family on television and they seem very distraught. They are truly searching for Aisha and they have reached out to all religious communities. Aisah is Muslim but I see nothing in the family that leads me to believe they would have enacted any honor killing of any sort. She is seen with very proper Hijab and without and with her head covered with a headscarf but not tightly, her hairline showing. She seems to be a modest Muslim girl but not severely strict. I can't tell exactly where she is from but her name and her clothing indicate either Pakistan or India. I see no extremism of any sort that leads me to believe her family did her in and then staged an elaborate abduction.

On the other hand, the circumstances of the disappearance of Aisha are a bit odd. It was 11 in the morning when she supposedly was abducted. Kind of an odd time to grab a girl off of the campus. But could it have happened? Yes, because the location she was at is a bit isolated. She was studying at a table enclosed by three walls. The street was enough of a distance to find it hard to believe someone grabbed her and hauled her off to it without any trace of a struggle.

Then, we have the story of this creepy man harassing Aisha. He was smelly, maybe from marijuana or booze. She says she slapped him. She mentions being freaked out, but she says no more about the man. The message she left is odd. She says she is scared but she her voice is a bit flat; no sound of panic, no hyperventilation; she sounds more like she is just reporting a disturbing event that she was weirded out by but is fully finished and done. This would seem to indicate the man was long gone, off down the street and out-of-sight. Would she then sit back down at the table in this isolated spot and continue studying? One would think not unless she was totally confident he was not returning. More likely, even if he were gone from view, if her heart was beating like crazy and she was so upset, she would grab her books and go. Instead she makes six calls and texts over nine minutes from that same location after the alleged attack; a long time to hang around in an area one feels unsafe. This just doesn't sit well with me.

The alternative is that she slapped the man, he went around the corner out of sight, and then came right back to get her. But, there is no sign of a struggle Her phone is lying on the table, not smashed on the ground or missing. How did he take her away? If he was some messed up druggie or homeless guy as some have suggested, would he even have a car to take her away in? Was she taken in a car? Aisha didn't mention a vehicle at all. She, actually, didn't describe the man either outside of saying he was creepy and smelly and tried to kiss her. Was he old, young, White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Arab? So, there are a few things here that don't make a lot of sense. Why?

Well, it could be that we are missing a lot of information. Maybe there was a street right there. Maybe there is more in the text message we haven't heard about. Maybe Aisha sounds rather controlled even when she is in a panic. Maybe she has a tendency to minimize bad things and then go straight back to what she was doing. This is what the police need to find out by analyzing the evidence and in interviewing the family. There was another young woman, Kelsey Smith, abducted from Overland Park parking lot in 2007 who was later found murdered. However, the perpetrator of that crime was found and convicted, so he could not have abducted Aisha.

Could Aisha have run away? Yes, she could have. There is nothing as of yet to prove there was an abduction. Maybe she did have issues. Some say she might have been forced into an arranged marriage because she is so young. And Muslim. Possible? Yes. But, this doesn't mean she is unhappy. Many people in the world have arranged marriages and are perfectly content with them. Arranged marriages vary as much as nonarranged marriages. Nonarranged marriages can be anything from an impulsive Las Vegas marriage after a boozy night with a stranger, to a whirlwind romance ending in a marriage after three months together, or a very careful analysis of compatibility that ends in marriage after five or ten years. Some nonarranged marriages don't care what the parents of the partners think and others won't marry without their blessing.

Arranged marriages vary as well. Some bride and grooms never meet until the wedding day. Some have known each other for years. Some matches are arranged totally by the parents and the children have no say. Some set up matches but then allow the young woman and man meet and get to know each other and then agree to the marriage. I don't know what kind of marriage Aisha has; she could be very happy or extremely miserable, just like any of us a number of months into a marital state.

Would she run away? Well, she might if she were terribly unhappy and didn't know how to tell her parents and get out of the marriage. She COULD have a boyfriend. She could run away for reasons that have nothing to do with being married. She could want attention or just want a completely different life. Women who run away don't have to be Muslim women as Jennifer Wilbanks and a number of White, Christian women have proven.

I don't know at this point what happened to Aisha. I hope she is alive. She is a beautiful girl and seems to have a family who cares about her and is terribly bereft at her disappearance. I am sure they want her to come home. If someone has abducted her, the odds aren't good of her surviving and already too much time has passed without finding her. However, if they have done solid ground searches right in the area and have not found Aisha, she would have to have been taken in a car. This gives some small hope to her being kept captive some place rather than being dragged into the bushes and immediately being raped and murdered. The number of girls held captive is terribly minute, but it has happened and we can pray this is the situation.

If she has run away, I hope she calls home or is found soon. It is not right that that family has to think the worst if it isn't that way at all.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Why Madeleine McCann is Likely Dead

No one likes to think of an abducted child as being dead, least of all the parents. Even detectives on a case hold out hope that a kidnapped juvenile will be found alive and returned home to his or her family. Police officers deal enough every day with sad endings and they cross their fingers and hope that this time, they will save a child's life, not find her skeleton in the weeds along the side of a road. They would like to triumphantly reunite the child with her parents, not knock on the door and deliver the dreaded message to the poor mother and father.

But, then there is reality. Most stranger abductions don't end well unless you stop them in progress. Unfortunately, the statistics out there on child abduction are vague and distorted. In spite of stranger child abduction being a major fear of parents the world over, it is hard to the actual facts on the issue. Here are the only bits I could find on the statistics:

115 children were the victims of “stereotypical” kidnapping. (These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently.)

• 40% of children in stereotypical kidnappings are killed.
• 4% of children are never found.
• 79% kidnappings are carried out by strangers and 21% by acquaintances.

In 46 percent of non-family abductions, the child was sexually assaulted.Of abducted children who are ultimately murdered, 74 percent are dead within three hours of the abduction

Okay, so what do we actually have here? Of the 115 stereotypical kidnapped children, a good portion of these are pre-teens or teens that sex predators took and killed or enslaved as their little wives. A bunch are babies that some women wanted to pretend were their own. Some of these children were found quickly, within hours, and were saved from a worse fate. Some were kidnapped by a close acquaintance who was angry with the family for some reason.

Very few are toddlers or little girls from ages three to five. There seem to be no exact statistics on the age of the children abducted, by whom, and what happened to them. So, in lieu of finding these, I put out a challenge to the folks that believe statistics support Madeleine McCann being alive. I asked people to give me the names of little girls who had been abducted by total strangers who were found alive after months or years. So, far I have had only one name given to me; Tara Burke, a toddler who was found alive ten months after she was abducted by a sexual predator duo. This crime was 29 years ago in 1982.

I can, however, name little girl after little girl who was abducted by a stranger and was found dead in the following days, weeks, months, or years. But, so far, I have only been given the name of one child victim over a period of three decades who was found alive. I am sure there are a few more but the point I am making is there are incredibly few of these cases with a "happy ending" in comparison to little abducted girls who have been murdered by their kidnappers. Yes, a few preteen and teen girls have been found alive after being abducted: Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart, Natascha Kampusch - these girls were kept as sex slaves and were at an age the rapist viewed them as "young women" who should enjoy being taught sex techniques and could learn how to please the captor. Little three-year-old girls like Madeleine McCann are not going to do well in the "girlfriend" department and will lie there and cry and scream. Little girls are raped and murdered almost 100% of the time. Sad but true.

Therefore, if Madeleine McCann was indeed kidnapped by a stranger, there is very little possibility she was alive even three hours later. Does that mean a truly good tip should be ignored that points in the direction that she is alive and held captive somewhere? Of course not. She could be the one in whatever high number that wasn't murdered. But, detectives have to be realistic when it comes to using resources. They can't waste millions of dollars and massive hours of manpower running down ridiculous sightings and unlikely scenarios.

Likewise, Gerry and Kate McCann should tell donators that, although they hope Madeleine will be the miracle child recovered alive this decade, they recognize the chances of that happening are very, very slim. Then, if people want to contribute to finding a perpetrator who might have taken Maddie and killed her (to get justice and save other little girls), they can do that. If they want to give money in spite of the horribly poor odds of finding Madeleine alive, this is their choice. But the McCanns should tell the truth and donators should know it.

The McCanns, if they didn't have anything to do with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and want to find her and who took her, they ought to be using donations to look for a dead child in Praia da Luz buried in someone's backyard.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

_______________________________________________

My ebook, Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, removed from Amazon following threat of legal action by Carter-Ruck on behalf of Gerry and Kate McCann, can still be found online at Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. Keep posted for news of my upcoming legal action with attorney Anne Bremner against the McCanns for tortuous interference with business and libel.