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Serial Killer Psychology Exposed: Inside the Real Mindhunter - Part 1 · Heroes Behind the Badge

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What he would do is he would drive around in his car.
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He'd see a co-ed hitchhiking.
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She said, "Where are you going?"
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And she'd tell him and he'd look at his watch and say,
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"Oh, I don't know.
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I don't know if I have time to take you there."
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"All right, get in.
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I'll take you there."
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And that disarmed the potential victim.
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So she would get in with him.
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And then she was his.
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And this is, as you said, Craig,
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this is a classic case of displacement.
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He would he worked his way up killing enough of these co-eds until
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he had a sense that he had accomplished and
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possessed them as he never could have in normal life.
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And then he killed his mother.
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He bludgeoned her to death in her bed.
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And then took off with a claw hammer and ripped out her larynx so
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that she could never yell at him again.
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Threw it down the garbage disposal in the kitchen and garbage
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disposal threw it back out again.
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And he said, "See, she's still getting to me."
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And what's very, very interesting about Ed Kemper, as opposed to
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almost any other serial killer we've studied, is that he drove
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quite a ways away from Santa Cruz, I
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believe to Las Vegas or somewhere in Nevada.
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He picked up the phone at a phone booth
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and called the Santa Cruz police and said,
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"It's me.
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I've done it.
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Come and get me."
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To understand how Mark Olshaker came to know that story this well
2:01
and dozens like it, we have to go back to the moment he walked into
2:05
Quantico with a film crew and met the man
2:07
who changed criminal investigation forever.
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Oh, Mark, on these episodes, we try to talk
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to all types of people in law enforcement.
2:18
Sure.
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We call it heroes behind the badge because we talked to a lot of
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people who have done heroic things.
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We've talked to people…
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And then, Dennis, I follow Craig's posts on Facebook too.
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Okay, good.
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So you're familiar.
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But today, I am delighted that we have somebody who
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not only knows about some of the biggest cases that we've ever
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heard of, but knows a little bit about the background of some of
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these serial offenders that everybody,
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unfortunately, their house of words.
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Everybody knows their name, unfortunately.
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So I'm fascinated, and I think our listeners and audience will be
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fascinated by what you have to say because your background, you
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teamed up with a guy named John Douglas at some point.
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Tell us a little bit about who is John Douglas and why was John
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Douglas important to you in your work?
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Well, the way it all started was I am a novelist and documentary
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filmmaker and non-fiction author by trade.
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I was writing and producing films for Nova, the PBS science series.
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Yes.
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And I had read, as many of us had,
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Tom Harris's books, "Red Dragon and the Silence of the Lambs," and
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after I finished "Silence of the Lambs," I called Paula Absell, the
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executive producer of Nova at WGBH in Boston.
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And I said, "Paula, this book is really good, and I understand
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they're making a movie out of it.
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And if the movie is anywhere near as good as
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the book, I think it's going to be a big hit."
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Of course, I had no idea how big a hit it would be.
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And I said, "Look, why don't we go to Quantico, the FBI Academy?"
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And I met this man named John Douglas, who was the unit chief.
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And the more I learned about him, the more I knew that he was kind
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of a living legend within the police and law enforcement community
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for having really been the pioneer of behavioral science and
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criminal investigative analysis as
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the FBI was starting to practice.
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And John Douglas had spent two stints as a street agent, one in
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Milwaukee and one in Detroit, where he'd learned a lot about
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criminal behavior, just observing
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the people that they were arresting.
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And the time he got to Quantico, he and
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another agent named Robert Ressler, Bob Ressler,
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were assigned to what they called road schools, which was they
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would go out for two weeks at a time and teach one week each to
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local law enforcement agencies and kind of give them a
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superficial but fairly in-depth orientation to what they were
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teaching in the behavioral science unit at Quantico.
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And John had the idea that, as he said, you know, you can only
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drink so many margaritas and hang out in the hotel so long.
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So he said, "Along as we're on the road, let's go into the prisons,
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the penitentiaries of the places where we are and just see if we
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flash our FBI badges if we can get
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to talk to some of these offenders."
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But what they were able to do by being very prepared by studying
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the case files ahead of time so that these guys couldn't say
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anything that wasn't really true or was they were able by talking
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to these people, by finding out what was going on in the minds of
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these offenders, violent offenders, predatory offenders, to claim
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what was going on in the offender's mind before, during, and after
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the offense, what was going on between the offender and the victim.
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Therefore, by having this for the first time profound understanding
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of what the criminal was like, they could start to profile them and
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figure out what it was that they were
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that the police should be looking for.
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And let me just say one thing.
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John has said in the beginning,
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profiling does not catch criminals.
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Profiling helps the local police or local investigators narrow
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their search, focus their investigation.
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They're the ones who catch the criminals.
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So in any event, so we started interviewing them.
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They let us go through all their case files.
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We came up with some cases that we thought were interesting.
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We followed them up and we ended up with a film called Mind of a
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Serial Killer, which was nominated for a national Emmy.
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And the first time it was on PBS, it got quite good ratings.
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And the behavioral science unit and specifically the investigative
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support unit started getting a lot
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more requests from local law enforcement.
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And so it was altogether a very positive experience.
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We're very proud of that film, even to this day.
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And then I would say several months
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later, John called me and he said,
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you know, I'm getting ready to retire from the bureau.
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And do you think anybody would be interested in my story?
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And if they are, would you be interested in writing?
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And I kind of immediately said yes and yes.
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And so let's see.
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And so called my agent.
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He encouraged me to write a proposal, which in a sense was, okay,
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this is the real story behind Silence of the Lambs.
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And John Douglas is the character that the Scott
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Glenn character in the movie is really based on.
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And Scott said very often that John was the one who really taught
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him, you know, how to be an FBI agent.
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And so he worked with Jodie Foster when they were doing the film.
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And
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so we went to New York, talked to a
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number of publishers, got several offers.
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And out of that came this memoir,
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history of profiling, if you will, which probably one of my most
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important contributions was somehow to come up
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with the name Mindhunter, which really stuck.
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And love the name Craig, you have it there, don't you?
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Yeah, look at this.
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We just wanted to hold it.
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There you are.
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And Dennis and Bill, I think I've told you in the past, but Mark
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Olshaker, when I did a radio show years ago here in the DC area, he
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was my favorite guest I ever interviewed.
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And I never forgot Mark.
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And Mark became a great supporter of the National Law Enforcement
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Officers Memorial and the museum that we were building.
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And I had to have him back as a guest on our show today.
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And we'll probably have him back because this guy is full of
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stories and of great interest to
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law enforcement and to the average.
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Looking at his profile, my gosh, we
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could do a whole series of interviews here.
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But for today, I think you've already, you've already profiled.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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I have profile.
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Not as good as John Douglas could have
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probably done it, but you know, in my own little way.
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But Craig, I would love, I know that you have a particular
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admiration for Mark and for his work.
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Why don't you lead us off?
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What do you think our audience would like to know that's inside
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Mark's book and inside Mark's documentary, but inside his brain?
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What do you think people want to hear?
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And let me jump right in.
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Mindhunter did well enough that we just continued.
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We did a second book called Journey into Darkness.
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And we've done, we have done a bunch of
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books over the, probably 10 altogether.
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We did one called the cases that haunt us, which talks about
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prominent murder cases throughout history, beginning with Jack the
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Ripper and ending with the JonBenét Ramsey case talking about,
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okay, what can we tell, what can we tell people about this from
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investigating it from a behavioral standpoint?
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Absolutely.
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Craig, why don't you, yeah, you've got a good handle on all this.
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Well, first of all, Mark, I'm interested
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myself, who was the first serial killer?
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Was it Jack the Ripper?
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Was the first serial killer here in the United States?
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Who was that?
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Well, it's a very, very interesting question, because we generally
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talk about the modern era of serial killers beginning with Jack the
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Ripper in the East End of London in the
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summer, spring, summer, and fall of 1888.
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But it's probably true that there
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were serial killers long before that.
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Probably things that we attributed to werewolves or witches or
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whatever throughout European history
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probably were early serial killers.
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We can't prove that, but it's logical.
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It makes sense.
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So we start in terms of our analysis with Jack the Ripper.
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And as I said, in our book, The Cases That Haunt Us, we take a stab
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at who we think Jack the Ripper really was.
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And one of the things I found out when I was doing research on the
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case at Scotland Yard in London is I firmly believe that the
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Metropolitan and the City Police, the two
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police forces in London at the time and to this day,
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a pretty good idea of who it was in spite
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of the fact that it's never been revealed.
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Interesting.
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Okay, so there's a question that I think you address in the book
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Mindhunter, and that is, are serial killers born to be serial
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killers or are they manufactured?
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In other words, the way they were treated by their mother, their
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father, something in their life that triggered
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this rage and forced them to go out and kill people.
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I'm just fascinated by that.
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Ed Kemper, for example,
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a huge guy, I think six foot eight, whatever, and his mother
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treated him as if he were a monster and
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made him feel that way his entire life.
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And women, his mother told him women would never
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be interested in dating you, so why even bother?
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That was the way he was treated.
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And he hated his mother.
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But instead of killing his mother, he goes out and kills all these
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other women before he kills his mother.
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I mean, it's an amazing story of violence and just the most
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despicable criminal that perhaps we've ever known.
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And yet you in the book, I think you and John
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talk about maybe it was he was manufactured.
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Maybe he wasn't born with all this violence in his mind.
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What's your theory on that?
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Well, Craig, I think you've hit on probably the most fundamental
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issue in the entire study of violent predators, which is, are they
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made or are they born nurture or nature?
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And the answer, again,
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it's generally almost always a combination.
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There's probably something hardwired
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into these people that makes them impulsive.
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It makes them violent if they if they're frustrated and all that.
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And yet at the same time, we have seen very few of these guys, and
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they're almost always guys by the way,
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we can talk about that later if you want,
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who do not have some kind of a bad background.
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And Ed Kemper is the perfect example.
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Usually they are either abused, they are neglected,
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they are abandoned, they come from abject poverty.
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There's usually something really bad in their background.
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And so what they grow up with is this resentment, this anger.
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And at the same time, because of what they've been through this
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feeling of entitlement, that the laws of society don't apply to me.
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And some of them develop, as we've talked
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about, a sense of grandiosity as a result.
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But that sense of grandiosity is at war with this deep seated
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feeling of inadequacy that they have.
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And then that's triangulated with this feeling that I've talked
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about, about resentment, about society, for not giving them what
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they wanted and what they thought they were entitled to.
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And the regular laws don't apply to them.
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Now, Ed Kemper is a perfect example of that because he was
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a big guy.
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He was felt very impotent growing up because of his mother.
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His mother couldn't handle him.
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He sent him off to his grandparents.
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He eventually murdered his grandparents.
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He actually liked him.
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At a young age, right?
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I think he was only 14.
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And living on their farm, he actually liked his grandfather.
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But once he'd killed his grandmother, you know,
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he felt he had to kill him to cover up the crime.
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Obviously, the crime was not covered up.
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He was institutionalized for a while, sent back to his mother, who,
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as you said, Craig, always said he was inadequate.
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He would never make it with girls.
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She felt he was dangerous to his sister.
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She essentially had him sleep in the basement
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next to the furnace and locked him in there.
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Now, this obviously created a tremendous amount of resentment.
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And what he did was classic displacement.
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When he became able to do so,
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his mother worked at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
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And he started killing young, beautiful co-eds at the Santa Cruz
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community to get back at his mother
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and say, "See, I can control them."
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And he was a very smart, intelligent guy and very cunning.
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I mean, one of the most chilling things about him was, I remember
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he went to a court-appointed or a psychiatrist appointment.
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The psychiatrist said he was doing quite well.
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He had the head of one of his victims
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in the trunk of his car at that time.
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He was also very, very smart.
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He would,
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his MO, his modus operandi, and we can
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make a distinction between MO and signature.
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Modus operandi is what you have to do to commit the crime.
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Signature is what you have to do to
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make it emotionally satisfying for you.
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So, MO is the way he got to get to
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these co-eds and rape them and kill them.
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And signature is what he did to them,
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which was emotionally satisfying to him.
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So, they had the local police check him out.
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And so, as I'm saying, as far as I know, he's the only one who once
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he'd gotten out of his system, he turned himself in.
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And he's still in prison after all
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these years, after all these decades.
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And last I heard, he was not interested in parole.
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He didn't think that he would do well in the outside world.
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And what he spends a lot of his time doing now, he's got a very
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nice voice, what he spends a lot of his time
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doing is recording audiobooks for the blind.
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Really?
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Really interesting.
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Mark, here's what was amazing to me is that John Douglas, going
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into these prisons, interviewing people like Ed Kemper, the worst
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of the worst, and he actually in the book
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says, "I found Ed Kemper rather likable."
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He had a sense of humor.
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And I just can't fathom that given the
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violence, the depraved nature of this man.
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I mean, how do you judge that?
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Well, it's just certainly can't
19:27
justify or excuse any of his crimes.
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But I think John felt a certain degree of sympathy and empathy for
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him, because he's one of these people, despite the way he was
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hardwired, if he'd had a different upbringing, if he'd had some
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support, if he'd had some encouragement from his mother,
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he might not have turned out that way.
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And that's the point that I want to jump in about right now is
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because, you know, during my time as a cop, and you'd handle all
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these kind of different violent incidents and whatnot, and you'd
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look at this guy that you just locked up, and you're thinking,
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"Wow, this guy's out of his freaking mind."
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Which, of course, certainly, makes sense to you, Bill.
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No doubt.
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But then my point is, based on what we're talking about, about his
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mother, then you'd go to these people's houses, and you'd look at
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the family, and you'd look at the parents, and you'd say, "No
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wonder this guy's freaking nuts, because she's nuts."
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Right?
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And so, clearly, I mean, I'm sure as you've written your books, and
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you've done these backgrounds and investigations,
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I'm sure that this woman, I mean, just based on what we've just
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spoken about, about how he treated, how she treated his son, her
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son, rather, growing up, she must have been nuts.
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And that's just kind of, you know,
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it's like a chip off the old block.
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Yeah, in fact, Bill, when we did the first book, my mother, who was
20:56
a school teacher and then sort of in mid-career, went to law school
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and became a lawyer, after she read Mindhunter, she came to John
21:07
and me and said, "So it's always the mother, isn't it?"
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And I said, "Not always, Mom."
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"Mostly."
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I said, "That can have a lot to do with it, yeah."
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That's great.
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Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
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I gotta tell you, we've got a few things in common, for sure.
21:26
And as you stated, you did some
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documentary films, and I did some documentary films.
21:31
But more importantly, is not too long ago, I was contacted by a
21:37
British producer over in London about Sam Little.
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And I'm sure you know about Sam Little.
21:45
You know, he is responsible, well, he confessed
21:49
at least to 90 murders to a Texas state ranger,
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who is referred to as the serial killer whisperer.
22:00
And they did do a show about that.
22:02
And we wanted to do a documentary about it, or
22:04
this producer in Britain wanted to do a show.
22:09
So this guy, Sam Little, was pretty interesting because, you know,
22:14
everybody has different motivational things.
22:16
And the case you just talked about was more than likely, you know,
22:20
this guy's mother wrecked him, and made him feel so insignificant
22:25
and impotent and any number of things
22:27
like you described, and created that.
22:30
This guy, Sam Little, though, he
22:32
was a different type of serial killer.
22:35
And I remember because we spoke to the Texas Ranger, who debriefed
22:43
him and sat for hours, you know, talking to him about these cases.
22:48
And he would show them, he would show
22:50
Sam pictures of the victims that he killed.
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And right away, he would get excited.
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And I think I know where you're going with this.
23:00
You know, I'm going with this, right?
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Because you probably, you know, you've heard this.
23:04
And he would get sexually aroused over this.
23:06
So that's a whole different ballgame.
23:08
Maybe you can expound.
23:10
Yeah, but I think you brought
23:11
up a very, very important point, Bill, which is that, as John says,
23:17
if you catch these guys, which you want to, because you want to get
23:21
them off the street as quickly as possible, you can lock up the
23:25
body, but you can't lock up the mind.
23:28
One of the reasons probably that a lot of these predators were
23:32
willing to talk to John and Bob is
23:34
they wanted to relive the crimes.
23:37
You take somebody like Dennis Rader, the BTK strangler who was, who
23:42
terrorized Wichita, Kansas for decades at a time.
23:48
He's in prison for the rest of his life.
23:52
I would be willing to bet that he spends his
23:55
nights reminiscing and reliving each of his cases.
23:59
Each of each of each of each of his murders, which he, which he
24:04
called his products, which John always said, you
24:09
want to understand the artist, look at the art.
24:12
And in this case, I'm not exaggerating.
24:14
In a lot of these cases, this is their art.
24:17
This is what's most important to them.
24:19
And Craig and I have talked about the fact,
24:21
are these serial killers who get away with it?
24:24
Are they brilliant?
24:25
You know, are they able to evade law enforcement?
24:28
Well, first of all, thank God
24:30
there's no Hannibal Lecters out there.
24:32
That's a complete myth.
24:34
Let's say at least none that we know of.
24:37
Could be Dennis though, you know,
24:41
never know
24:42
the guy next to you, right?
24:43
Well,
24:44
although let me just tangentially say
24:47
that John said with all that he knows about
24:52
getting away with murder, there's no way he could do it.
24:54
He said, everybody's got some kind of, he
24:57
said, everybody's got some kind of vulnerability.
25:00
Whether it's the post offense behavior.
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I said,
25:06
you know, what would be in your case?
25:07
He said, I don't have to go into murder.
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He said, you, you, he said, you know, I,
25:12
I was not the most exacting out of ways.
25:17
He said, you put in the FBI, you put an expense report in front of
25:21
me and I'll start to sweat, you know, what do
25:22
they found that I've gotten wrong, you know?
25:25
So, uh, yeah, that's funny.
25:29
I have an interesting question though, Mark, because, you know,
25:32
you, we talk about a lot of these serial killers
25:34
and, and, and most of them are historical, right?
25:37
I mean, they go back years ago.
25:41
What do you think about today?
25:43
I mean, you just don't hear about these prolific serial killers or
25:49
serial criminals, uh, today, like you did in the past.
25:54
And it's my belief that it's just because
25:57
you just can't get away with that anymore.
26:00
There's a, there's a video camera on every corner.
26:03
Every vehicle has a black box in it, like an airplane.
26:06
Now you can track everybody by their cell phones.
26:10
I just think it's just not as likely or
26:13
as possible, uh, as it was back in the day.
26:16
Yeah.
26:16
I think that's, I think that's very true.
26:18
I mean, we have a lot more law enforcement modalities to work with.
26:23
And of course, DNA has been, uh, has been a major issue because,
26:29
uh, you know, if you've got DNA, um, and look, a lot of crimes, you
26:34
don't have, you don't have, as you know, from your own experience,
26:37
Billy, you don't have all that kind of physical evidence.
26:40
Uh, there's what they call the CSI effect in juries where, because
26:45
CSI gets all kinds of, uh, scientific
26:48
evidence, juries expect you to have it.
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You don't always get it, but in the case of sex crimes and these
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kinds of predatory murders, very often there is DNA or something
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like that that you can, uh, that you can work with and use.
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So I think you're right.
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I think, uh, you don't have as many of these dramatic extended
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long-term, uh, excuse me, uh, serial cases.
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Um, and look, even in the case of BTK, uh, they got him on a
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computer disc, uh, something that didn't exist
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to begin with when he first started his crime.
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Mark Olshaker has spent 30 years inside the
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minds of the worst predators in American history.
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Next time we go deeper into the man who hid a serial killer behind
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a church pulpit, the question of whether these monsters can ever be
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predicted and the case that Mark says was never going to end well.