The Thoughts of a Criminal in the Czech Basin

A terrifying journey into the minds of thieves and murderers with a renowned Czech criminalist

For more than thirty years, Jiřina Hofmanová has been investigating and solving particularly serious crimes, such as murder, robbery and rape. As an investigator, she was involved in cases like the Orlík murders. Her rich personal experiences and professional expertise led her to a method of gradually piecing together the story that unfolded between the criminal and their victim.

In this memoir of her most famous cases, she explores the thoughts of real criminals, actual serial killers from the Czech Republic, who confessed to their crimes and described the thoughts that accompanied them on their criminal path.

After graduating from the Faculty of Science at Charles University in Prague, she taught at a grammar school for 17 years. In 1992, she joined the Police of the Czech Republic and gradually became an investigator of general crime at the regional investigation office, a methodologist and analyst at the Office of the Criminal Police and Investigation Service, and head of the education and training department at the Police Presidium of the Czech Republic.

She introduced new methods into the investigation and solving of criminal offences, wrote two specialist monographs on behavioural analysis and offender profiling, and was a member of the research teams for several grants. She completed study visits with the FBI in Quantico and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Ottawa. For ten years, she was the only representative of a police force from the former Eastern Bloc countries in an international group of behavioural analysts. For three years, she represented the Czech Republic in the Council of Europe's expert group for mapping crime and criminal justice in the EU.