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How Robert Ressler Changed the Way We Catch Serial Killers · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

0:42
Speaker 1: Today, the concept of a serial killer, even the very
0:45
Speaker 1: term itself, is so ingrained in our cultures and in
0:49
Speaker 1: our mindsets that it's almost impossible to imagine a point
0:53
Speaker 1: in time where we weren't constantly talking about notorious murderers
0:57
Speaker 1: and podcasts and learning about them and documentary. But the
1:01
Speaker 1: term serial killer has actually only been around since the
1:04
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, and before then it wasn't really even a
1:08
Speaker 1: thing that investigators thought about. That often hard to believe,
1:12
Speaker 1: but it's true. Before then, anyone who went on a
1:15
Speaker 1: killing spree went widely unnoticed, or at the very most,
1:19
Speaker 1: was believed to be a particularly deranged criminal and sort
1:23
Speaker 1: of a one off situation. The closest we'd come to
1:27
Speaker 1: thinking about the concept of potential serial killers was when
1:31
Speaker 1: the British were calling a string of murders crimes in series. Now,
1:36
Speaker 1: as we all know, that barely scratches the surface of
1:38
Speaker 1: what the term serial killer means today, because today we
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Speaker 1: have the general knowledge of who serial killers tend to be,
1:47
Speaker 1: what kind of childhood they usually tend to have, and
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Speaker 1: what kind of lives they usually live as adults. But
1:54
Speaker 1: where did all the facts and all the statistics for
1:57
Speaker 1: this particular crime profile come from. Who was the man
2:01
Speaker 1: that coined the term serial killer? Well, his name was
2:06
Speaker 1: Robert Wrestler. Robert grew up on North Memora Avenue in Chicago, Illinois,
2:11
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties, and from a
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Speaker 1: young age he found himself drawn toward the sensationalized stories
2:18
Speaker 1: and news articles about killers, rapists, and other violent criminals.
2:24
Speaker 1: Far from terrorized or even repulsed by the men who
2:28
Speaker 1: seemed to make these things go bump in the night,
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Speaker 1: Robert wanted to know what made them tick. This urged
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Speaker 1: to understand the very people who seemed to be wanting
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Speaker 1: to tear civilized society apart at the seams, only grew
2:41
Speaker 1: stronger when Robert found out that he actually knew a
2:45
Speaker 1: real life serial killer, John Wayne Gacy, had grown up
2:49
Speaker 1: in the same neighborhood as Robert Wrestler. They were even
2:52
Speaker 1: in the boy Scouts together. When Robert realized that he
2:56
Speaker 1: had been face to face with a man who would
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Speaker 1: later be convicted of a whopping thirty three murders, he
3:02
Speaker 1: knew he had found his true calling. Robert did whatever
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Speaker 1: he could do to piece together the puzzle of murderers
3:08
Speaker 1: and other violent crimes. They weren't being called serial killers
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Speaker 1: just yet, because society was beginning to understand that these
3:15
Speaker 1: murders had things in common with each other, and if
3:19
Speaker 1: they had things in common, then maybe there was a
3:21
Speaker 1: way to pick up on their trails sooner rather than
3:24
Speaker 1: later and potentially stop future killings. Robert set out on
3:29
Speaker 1: his journey. He first joined the Army, where he was
3:32
Speaker 1: stationed in Okinawa, Japan, for two years. He then enrolled
3:36
Speaker 1: in the School of Criminology and Police Administration at Michigan
3:40
Speaker 1: State University. With this degree under his belt, Robert was
3:44
Speaker 1: one step closer to becoming the man that would forever
3:47
Speaker 1: shape criminal profiling all over the world. But rather than
3:51
Speaker 1: jumping straight into a career in law enforcement, Robert first
3:54
Speaker 1: returned to the Army. He served as a military police
3:57
Speaker 1: officer from nineteen fifty seven to nineteen sixty two, and
4:01
Speaker 1: then he was the commander of a criminal investigation division.
4:05
Speaker 1: It was then his job to solve homicides, robberies, and
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Speaker 1: arson cases. And here is where we see the start
4:11
Speaker 1: of Robert's burgeoning criminal profiling career. Robert was finally getting
4:16
Speaker 1: hands on experience chasing, capturing, and interviewing the criminals that
4:20
Speaker 1: had fascinated him since he was a child, and it
4:24
Speaker 1: was only the beginning of what was to come. The
4:26
Speaker 1: Army then paid for him to return to Michigan to
4:29
Speaker 1: finish his master's degree in police administration, and after two
4:33
Speaker 1: more years of service, Robert retired. Maybe retired is not
4:38
Speaker 1: the correct term in this case, because it was more
4:41
Speaker 1: like Robert retired from the military only to head straight
4:45
Speaker 1: into the FBI. You see, the FBI were putting together
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Speaker 1: a new unit, the Behavioral Science Unit. This elite team
4:53
Speaker 1: of investigators were to go right to the source of
4:56
Speaker 1: some of the biggest and most heinous crimes across America
5:00
Speaker 1: and try to get to the root of the terror.
5:02
Speaker 1: They were charged with the task of gathering as much
5:05
Speaker 1: information and data as possible and putting together criminal profiles
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Speaker 1: on some of America's most dangerous criminals. It was almost
5:13
Speaker 1: a case of the chicken and the egg. Was all
5:15
Speaker 1: of this sum twist of fate and had the changing
5:18
Speaker 1: of times just made Robert's dream job land right in
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Speaker 1: his lap, or had Robert's previous work and expertise accumulated
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Speaker 1: in the perfect opportunity for him to pursue his passion.
5:30
Speaker 1: Either way, Robert was the right man for the job.
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Speaker 1: He found himself staring down the rap sheet of men
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Speaker 1: who had killed and killed again. They weren't standalone instances
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Speaker 1: of a deranged criminal simply being more cruel and more
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Speaker 1: dangerous than the others. These killers usually struck seemingly at random,
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Speaker 1: and usually in a burst of violent activity. This sudden
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Speaker 1: spree of murders that came out of nowhere reminded Robert
5:54
Speaker 1: of movie serials he'd watched as a child, and then
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Speaker 1: everything seemed to click. He started calling these criminals serial killers,
6:03
Speaker 1: and the rest is history. Well not quite yet. Robert
6:07
Speaker 1: was actually still in the midst of making history. Between
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six and nineteen seventy nine, he and his
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Speaker 1: partner John Douglas began the unenviable task of sifting through
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Speaker 1: data and statistics so that they could put together a
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Speaker 1: criminal profile for what a serial killer would typically look like.
6:25
Speaker 1: And to do that, they had to speak with known
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Speaker 1: serial killers themselves. Robert Wrestler and John Douglas found themselves
6:33
Speaker 1: sitting across the table from infamous men like Charles Manson,
6:37
Speaker 1: Robert Speck, and son of Sam himself, David Berkowitz. Together,
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Speaker 1: they flew all across the country and recorded thousands of
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Speaker 1: hours of interviews just trying to piece the puzzle together
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Speaker 1: and find out what all of these men had in common.
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Speaker 1: Robert claimed that during these interviews, where they were left
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Speaker 1: alone in a locked room with these men, most of
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Speaker 1: the time he didn't feel unsafe or uneasy when talking
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Speaker 1: with him, even though they were known and convicted serial killers.
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Speaker 1: But in his book Whoever Fights Monsters, Robert does recall
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Speaker 1: one incident where he felt his life was actually in danger.
7:15
Speaker 1: It was during his third interview with Ed Kemper, a
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Speaker 1: serial killer who was over six feet nine inches tall
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Speaker 1: and had decapitated his own mother. Over the course of
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Speaker 1: this interview, Robert discovered that the buzzer to call the
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Speaker 1: guards wasn't working. This alone would be enough to shake
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Speaker 1: most people, but Robert quickly found himself out of the
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Speaker 1: frying pan and into the fire. Not only did he
7:40
Speaker 1: notice that the buzzer wasn't working, Ed Kemper, a very
7:44
Speaker 1: smart man, did as well. According to Robert, Ed then
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Speaker 1: stood up and grinned, quote, if I went ape shitt
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Speaker 1: in here, you'd be in a lot of trouble. Wouldn't you,
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Speaker 1: he asked Robert, I could screw your head off and
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Speaker 1: place on the table to greet the guard. Robert left
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Speaker 1: the interview shaken, obviously, but otherwise unharmed, and continued his work.
8:08
Speaker 1: Work that has, needless to say, shape the course of
8:11
Speaker 1: American investigative processes forever more. But that is not all
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Speaker 1: that Robert did. Now, armed with all of this new
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Speaker 1: information and a criminal profile for serial killers that could
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Speaker 1: potentially help catch an untold number of serial killers in
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Speaker 1: the future, Robert needed a way to share it with
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Speaker 1: as many investigative agencies as possible. He and a retired
8:34
Speaker 1: detective from the LAPD named Pierce Brooks set up ViCAP,
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Speaker 1: the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. This is a centralized computer
8:44
Speaker 1: database for information on ongoing or unsolved homicides across the country. Again,
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Speaker 1: this may sound almost like common sense, or that should
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Speaker 1: be a given that law enforcement offices would have something
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Speaker 1: like this or even just share information with each other.
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Speaker 1: For America, this was a first. Up until this point,
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Speaker 1: it was incredibly common that serial killers would evadue capture
9:07
Speaker 1: by committing crimes across multiple jurisdictions, like we saw with
9:11
Speaker 1: people like Ted Bundy. Law enforcement from these jurisdictions would
9:16
Speaker 1: then individually investigate the killings, not knowing that their counterparts
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Speaker 1: across state lines were doing the exact same thing and
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Speaker 1: could potentially move the investigation along quicker with some collaboration.
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Speaker 1: ViCAP not only helped law enforcement offices communicate on ongoing investigations,
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Speaker 1: but it then helped piece together vital information on killer's
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Speaker 1: modus operandi and where they likely were to strike again.
9:42
Speaker 1: With this new program, Robert made history yet again and
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Speaker 1: became known as the father of modern criminal profiling. He
9:50
Speaker 1: worked on several huge cases like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy,
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Speaker 1: and Richard Chase, and was asked to confer on other
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Speaker 1: cases like the ABC murders in Johannesburg, South Africa and
10:02
Speaker 1: the ongoing murders in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. He officially retired
10:06
Speaker 1: from the FBI in nineteen ninety, but his work still
10:09
Speaker 1: continued as well as giving advice and council where he could.
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Speaker 1: Robert wrote several books, gave lectures, and traveled internationally to
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Speaker 1: aid and ongoing investigations. That was until twenty thirteen. Robert
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Speaker 1: unfortunately had Parkinson's disease, which had severely hindered his ability
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Speaker 1: to travel and work in his later years. He eventually
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Speaker 1: died because of this condition at his home in Sponsylvania County, Virginia,
10:35
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy six. That is ten Minute
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11:00
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11:04
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11:07
Speaker 1: Robert Wrestler during the course of this And if it's
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