Mary Ellen O'Toole
Director, Forensic Science Program
Affiliations
- Departments
- Dean’s Administration (Staff)
- Forensic Science Program
- Forensic Science Training and Research Lab
Education
About
Mary Ellen O’Toole has spent her career studying the criminal mind. One of the most senior profilers for the FBI until her retirement in 2009, O’Toole has helped capture, interview, and understand some of the world’s most infamous people including:
- Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer
- Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber
- The Polly Klaas child abduction
- The Red Lake School Shooting
- The Zodiac serial murder case
- The bombing during the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, UT
- The mass murder in Florence, Montana in 2001
O’Toole also worked on the Elizabeth Smart and Natalee Holloway disappearances, the Columbine shootings, and many other high-profile cases. Her law enforcement career spanned 32 years, beginning in the San Francisco’s District Attorney’s Office when she was a Criminal Investigator. O’Toole worked as an FBI agent for 28 years, spending more than half of her Bureau career in the organization’s prestigious Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU)—the very unit that is the focus of the hit crime series “Criminal Minds.”
She is recognized as the FBI’s leading expert in the area of “psychopathy.” Her work in psychopathy has put her at the forefront of mental health and law enforcement efforts to apply the concepts of this personality disorder to both violent and white-collar offenders and their behavior and crime scenes. Currently, she serves as the Program Director for Forensic Science at George Mason University.
