One of the things that scares me about the US criminal justice system is that it relies almost entirely on magical thinking and torture to secure convictions. I don’t believe anyone is guilty unless they were literally photographed holding the bloody knife while standing over the body and even then I’ll need some convincing to rule out potential mitigating circumstances.
The one time I’ve really heard of a profile being accurate is Richard Chase(Big CW if you google him for mutilation, sexual assault and harming children), and thats cause some random cop who took a course in profiling once just made some kinda reasonable guesses like “this guy is probably really fucking filthy and covered in blood!” or “he’s probably white cause if he was black and skulking around white middle class neighborhoods we would have been called immediately” and “he’s probably done something weird and fucked up before this”.
And the profile also literally didn’t even fucking matter or make a difference in the slightest, because he just flat out left handprints and shoeprints all over, plus he was wandering around in a blood caked jacket, so IIRC someone just gave a tip about this dirty blood smelling weirdo going around bothering people and they checked him out. What a success story for the field of criminal profiling!