FBI Profilers Look at Otis Byrd’s Death

The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit has been tapped to figure out whether the death of Otis Byrd, who was found hanging from a tree near his Mississippi home last week, was a murder or a suicide. The profilers’ unit “focuses specifically on criminal human behavior in an attempt to better understand criminals—who they are, how they think, why they do what they do—as a means to help solve crimes.” Byrd, who finished a 25-year prison sentence in 2006, had been missing for almost two weeks before authorities came across his body.