Serial homicide professor pays a visit to NipU

File photo of Thornsley with his Mansfield and Nipissing University students in 2005, attending a day long profiling seminar featuring FBI Behavioral Science Unit profilers Robert Ressler and Ray Hazelwood in Fairfax, Virginia.

Students in the third year serial homicide course at Nipissing University usually have their class with Dr. Scott Thornsley via video conference but on Thursday the students had a face to face session with the renowned expert.

Thornsley, the Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania, for a number of years now he has taught the course from a distance but travled to the Bay to teach the course in person this week. Thornsley brings a wealth of experience to the classroom, and there is no other course like this in Canada offering its students access to an expert of his stature.

Thornsley is noted for his assessment of the Beltway sniper attacks took place during three weeks in October 2002 in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, where ten people were killed and three others critically injured in various locations throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia. Thornsley was quoted in over 100 newspapers across the United States, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. His commentary appeared in the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, London Daily Mirror, USA Today and The New York Times.

Following the Beltway sniper case the media have sougth Thornsley for his thoughts on the conviction and sentencing of the Green River Killer, Coral Eugene Watts, Charles Cullen, and the BTK serial killer in Wichita, Kansas.

With his background Thornsley has been invited to train with the FBI's criminal profiling unit, an offer not made to many civilians.