On the whole, extant classifications of serial murderers reviewed in this article are determined to be inherently flawed due to weak operational definitions and inferred deductive assumptions made about offender actions and characteristics. This leads to empirically unsound profiling of serial murderers; for example, Prentky and Ressler suggest that fantasy is the motive for serial murder; however, they provide no supporting literature for their theory. Their claims appear to be deductive conclusions based on offenders' self-reports, which are highly susceptible to misleading and false information. In the serial murder models reviewed in this article, no explanations are given regarding exactly how the offender's criminal personality is formed; on the one hand, researchers argue that the offender is affected by some manifestation of mental illness or perhaps some other predispositions; other the other hand, fantasy is given as the motive for murder. The problem is that neither mental illnesses nor fantasies are motives; therefore, it is not possible to specify exactly what is responsible for the serial murderer's actions. As an alternative to classifying serial murderers into rigid types such as the FBI's organized and disorganized scheme, is an inductive thematic Facet Model that views the criminal's behavior as being shaped by daily life experiences and interpersonal relationships (Godwin, 1998). An advantage of an inductive and empirical classification approach is to use offense and offender variables that have been inductively related and empirically replicated as a basis for building computerized linking systems. 48 references