J. Reid Meloy

J. Reid Meloy is a forensic psychologist and academic known for his work in psychopathy, stalking, and threat assessments. Meloy is a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine and faculty member of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center. In 1975, he completed his second graduate degree, receiving a Master of Divinity in Theology from the McCormick Theological Seminary. He is an Academic Graduate of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center.

Career Meloy started in psychiatric social work and worked both in private and public practice in clinics and day treatment centers in Chicago and San Diego. In 1982, after receiving his Ph.D., Meloy became the director of the Psychiatric Security Unity at the San Diego County Detention Facility. Meloy has historically been retained by both the prosecution and the defense on various criminal and civil cases, typically involving single or multiple homicide victims. He continues to consult on threat cases for corporations, foundations, colleges, universities, federal agencies, and public figures.

Teaching

Meloy has held several teaching positions throughout his career, including a voluntary clinical appointment as a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. Meloy remains as a faculty member at the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center.

Research

Meloy has authored, co-authored, or edited over 260 articles and 14 books. and the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18). The TRAP-18 continues to be the most validated risk assessment instrument concerning lone actor targeted attacks, and is widely used in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Meloy is a founding associate editor of the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management. He was the Secretary, Vice President, and President of the American Academy of Forensic Psychology 1992-1998.

Meloy was the Yochelson Visiting Scholar at Yale University in March, 2015.

High profile cases Meloy has been retained as a consultant or an expert witness on a number of high profile cases, including the murder of Polly Klaas by Richard Allen Davis, the stalking of the pop singer Madonna and the film star Gwyneth Paltrow, the Oklahoma City bombing cases in the prosecution of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, as well as an erotomania case in Michigan, where an Army veteran opened fire inside a Ford manufacturing facility, killing a man and wounding three others.

Controversy

Wrongful conviction of Timothy Masters On February 11, 1987, Peggy Hettrick's body was found in a Fort Collins, Colorado field by a bicyclist. Timothy Masters, a fifteen-year-old who lived near the field, was brought in for questioning after he claimed to have seen a mannequin on his walk to school that morning. Masters consented to a search of his backpack, locker, and bedroom. During the search, police recovered knives, swords, pornography, maps of the crime scene, and over 2000 pages of graphic drawings and writings. Meloy, J.R. (Ed). (1992). "Violent attachments," Aronson. Gacono, C.B. & Meloy, J.R. (1994). Rorschach assessment of aggressive and psychopathic personalities. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Meloy, J.R., Acklin, M., Gacono, C., Murray, S. & Peterson, C. (1997). Contemporary Rorschach interpretation. Laawrence Erlbaum Associates. Meloy, J. R. (Ed). (1998). The psychology of stalking: Clinical and forensic perspectives. Academic Press, Inc. Meloy, J. R. (2000). Violence risk and threat assessment: A practical guide for mental health and criminal justice professionals. Specialized Training Services. Meloy, J.R. (2001). The mark of Cain: Psychoanalytic insight and the psychopath. The Analytic Press. Meloy, J.R., Sheridan, L. & Hoffmann, J. (2008). Stalking, threatening, and attacking public figures. Oxford Univ. Press. Meloy, J.R. & Hoffmann, J. (eds.) (2014). International handbook of threat assessment. Oxford Univ. Press. Meloy, J.R. & Hoffmann, J.(eds). (2021). International handbook of threat assessment, 2nd ed. Oxford Univ. Press.

Awards Meloy was awarded the Association of Threat Assessment's National Achievement Award in 1998. His latest awards, the American Academy of Forensic Psychology's Distinguished Contributions to Forensic Psychology award and the Manfred Guttmacher Award from the American Psychiatric Association were both presented to Meloy in 2022.