Mark Safarik, M.S., V.S.M., will be the keynote speaker for Illinois State University’s 2022 Science and Technology Week. He is scheduled to talk at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 5, in the Brown Ballroom of the Bone Student Center. The event is free and open to the public.
Safarik was a senior member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s elite Behavioral Analysis Unit where he established himself as an internationally recognized expert in the analysis and interpretation of violent criminal behavior. His law enforcement career spans over 31 years. He has worked as a patrol beat cop and a detective working homicides. He served 23 years with the FBI, 12 of those as a criminal profiler. He began his FBI career working violent crimes on the Wind River Indian Reservation out of the Riverton RA, Denver Division. He transferred to the New York Division where he worked undercover assignments and was a behavioral profiling coordinator. He then transferred to the Sacramento Division, Stockton RA where he worked violent crimes and established the behavioral profiling coordinator position before promoting to the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI Academy at Quantico, where he remained until retirement.
He has conducted internationally renowned research on the sexual assault and homicide of elder females. He is a member of the highly respected Vidocq Society. He is well-published in international journals, including the Journal of Forensic Sciences, the International Journal of Homicide Studies, and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. He has authored numerous book chapters on homicide including in the newest text on sexual homicide, the Routledge International Handbook of Sexual Homicide Studies. His new book, Spree Killers: Practical Classifications for Law Enforcement and Criminology, has been hailed as the definitive textbook on this type of multicide.
He has appeared on Dateline, Court TV, Forensic Files, New Detectives, A&E, Oxygen, Discovery ID, and many news networks to discuss his cases. His television series, Killer Instinct, premiered in 2011. He was a longtime consultant for the popular television series CSI: Las Vegas, Bones, and The Blacklist. He has two seasons of Cold Case Homicide television shows in both Sweden and Denmark.
To learn more about Science and Technology Week, please visit the event website.
