Meirhofer (June 8, 1949 – September 29, 1974) was an American serial killer who committed four murders in rural Montana between 1967 and 1974 — three of them children.
At the time of the crimes committed by Meirhofer, the FBI had actively been in the process of refining a method of psychologically profiling criminal offenders, and Meirhofer would be the first serial killer to be actively investigated using this technique.Offender profiling is now a contemporary method used to discover clues pertaining to the characteristics of an unknown offender from evidence at the scene of the crime, and to psychologically profile the perpetrator concerned.