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TV's number one drama, High Potential, returns with star Caitlyn Olsen as the crimesolving single mom with an IQ of
00:00:08
160. Every week, Morgan uses her unconventional style and brilliance to crack LAPD's most perplexing cases. It's
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the perfect blend of humor and mystery. She's breaking the mold without breaking
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a nail. New episodes of High Potential Tuesdays 10:9 central on ABC and stream on Hulu.
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limited time. [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] All right, with me I have the wonderful
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and very impressive, the brilliant Dr. and Burgess. And I also have Stephen, is it Constantine?
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>> Yep, you got it. >> Boom. Nailed it. All right. Um, they are here to talk with us about their new
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book, A Killer by Design: Murderers, Mind Hunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind. And for everyone out
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there that may not be aware, Dr. Anne Burgess is the real life woman and doctor behind the character, the female
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character from the hit Netflix series Minehunter. So, welcome both of you. Both of you are currently working at
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Boston College. Do I have that right? >> Yes. School of Nursing, Canel School of
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Nursing. >> And how long have you been there, doctor? >> I've been I started here uh back when
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this actually the pro uh study was going on. and then I left to go to University
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of Pennsylvania and then back in 2000. So essentially back since 2000. >> One thing that I find absolutely
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fascinating about this new book is Mind Hunter the show really kind of shows us and highlights some of the very infant
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the infancy of the behavior science unit. But your book really discusses a lot of stuff that was even pre behavior
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science unit and or behavioral science unit and sort of the genesis of how that all came about and a lot of the behind
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the scenes work as well as your transition because you were a doctor before this whole thing got started.
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Correct. >> That's right. I was. >> What was your expertise? because you find yourself at the FBI in a very
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different way than many find theirelves at the FBI, right? Most people like aspire to be an FBI agent and they they
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spend their whole life working toward that. They get educated, maybe they serve some time in the military. Uh
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they, you know, keep their nose clean, stay out of trouble and hope one day that they can be an agent. But for you,
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you're so brilliant that the FBI calls you on the phone and says, "Hey, we we need to talk to her." Tell us a little
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bit about that. Sure. Um I was at Boston College and this was back at a time when
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the issue of rape was just starting to be if you will put on a front burner. Uh the women's movement had been pushing
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for better treatment, better care for victims. And so I with a colleague Linda Lidle Holmstrom who was in the sociology
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department at Boston College actually approached me to see if I would join her in a project on u rape victims and she
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was having trouble finding rape victims which is still a problem. They are very they they're very hidden and very
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silent. But I knew that they would be coming into a hospital. And since I had access to the major hospitals in Boston,
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I said, "Let me see if we can get access somehow." And I did. I was able to uh work the project through the Boston City
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Hospital. And we were called every time a rape victim came in and we went right in at the time and we followed the
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victim. So that was over a um uh one-year period. We saw 146 people between the ages of 3 and 73. And
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that made up the basis, if you will, for the study. And out of that study came uh
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three rather important papers. One was the back in 1973 was just called the rape victim in the emergency room and it
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was published in the American Journal of Nursing which is our major journal. Uh the year later Linda and I started
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publishing uh what we called the rape trauma syndrome and that was distributed to a larger audience a psychiatric
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mental health audience. Well, at the same time as this was our study was going on, the um FBI was getting
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pressure to do something about teaching rape investigation. And so Roy Hazelwood
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got tasked with that. That was his assignment. And he happened to be out on the West Coast at the Los Angeles Police
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Department and was kind of bemoning the fact that he had this new assignment. Did anybody know anything about rape,
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etc. And after his uh he was actually uh talking on hostage negotiation which was
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the big issue for them at that time. Rita connect a police officer came up to him and said she had just read this
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article in the American Journal of Nursing. Now Rita was also a nurse. She was a nurse that then went on to become
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a police officer. But she told Roy that this article maybe he would like to look
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up the authors because they were on the east coast. And Roy did uh actually I got a call from Roy. I was a little bit
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unnerving because the way they ask uh for you they say this is the FBI and etc. And I'm sitting there thinking oh
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my gosh you know >> they make it sound like you've done something wrong. >> I know I know my income tax or
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something. And then I thought and then I thought uh he said, "Well, did you write
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this article uh the rape victim in the emergency room?" And I and I thought, "Oh my heavens, did I say something bad
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in that article?" And then he relaxed a bit and that uh very authoritative FBI voice uh went away. He was more relaxed
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and he said, "We'd like to invite you down to to teach our our agents about rape since this is a new area, etc.,
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etc." And that's it. That's how it happened. Um, I went down there. I was interested and told him. I wanted to see
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what they were teaching their investigators about rape because uh that's something that I I learned from
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the women's groups that they and rape crisis centers that they were not very happy with the way investigations were
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going. So that and once I was down there, they were being told by their new director who happened to be William
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Webster that they had to start doing their own research because the FBI Academy was the education arm, if you
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will, of the FBI. And so um I did I did do a project with Roy first and then Roy
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had introduced me to Bob Wrestler and to John Douglas. And once that happened, I
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I think the rest of the book kind of goes into how we worked. It was first called the criminal personality
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project because we wanted to do more than one type of criminal. And we actually started out with the serial
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killer uh which of course is what the um the book is based on. But also they were
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just starting a more uh organized way of doing profiling. And so that was a second pro
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that was a second objective of that initial project. >> Well, and you become so valuable to what
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it is that they want to do in the future, right? because they're bringing you in really in large part from and
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again I'm just some dumb guy here taking a guess but it looks to me like they bring you in because you have a a a
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wealth of knowledge and understanding in regard to these rape victims and rap, you know, sexual assault survivors and
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persons that had to go through that horrible experience. But they bring you in because they are
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now transitioning. The FBI is in a bit of a transition period where rather than just identifying and catching and
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stopping crime. We want to kind of learn and research why does this stuff happen
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and and who commits these. But to have a good understanding of that, we also need
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to have a really good understanding of the the victims as well. >> Absolutely. and victimology. If you
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notice in in their writings and even today, that victimology is almost the very first thing that they look for to
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analyze who the victim is when there's been a homicide. And and I think the other important thing is they were
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getting these cases in which they couldn't come up with a motive. >> Uh it wasn't, you know, like a white
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collar crime or it wasn't u a criminal enterprise or something like that. And so that really is where we put a lot of
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effort in analyzing the data that we got from the 36 killers that we specifically
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studied and that's where we understood that it was a sexual homicide. So we added a category to the existing
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categories for homicide and as you say yes it's very it was very important. I also had wanted to speak for the victim
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that didn't survive. I felt that uh we were Linda and I were speaking for obviously for victims who did survive,
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but there there had to be something that we could say about the victim that did not. So that that was one of my
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particular interests. And what I love and what I'm so fascinated and impressed by your work in in direct regard to is
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you seem to me to be the one that's going to have to organize all of the chaos like right like like Douglas and
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Hazelwood and Wrestler. They all are they they all know what they're doing. They, you know, maybe not educated in
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the same ways that you are and don't share the same expertise, but they certainly have a bit of a knack for it.
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And you're kind of brought in to not only help with the victimology and then understanding uh rape victims and and
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just the the crime of of rape anyway, but the but to organize what it is that they are already somewhat actively
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doing, right? It's it's it's applying kind of u >> it's applying not just organization to
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it but also how do we learn from what we're doing and then how do we teach others uh what we've learned.
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>> Right. That that that's exactly but even more important was to get it written
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down. >> They had a their profession was more um word of mouth. they would teach, you
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know, about cases and so forth, but a lot wasn't written down. And so I can remember asking them what they were kind
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of a script were they using for interviewing the serial killers and they didn't have one. It was like we just
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keep them talking. I thought, well, they certainly do talk. I mean, that is one characteristic of serial killers. They
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usually like to talk, but but they didn't have any categories, any organization. And so, as you say, that's
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exactly what the project was. maybe and Stephen was really good at pulling all of that out from what we did with the
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agents and he can probably speak better to that part of um of the book. >> Yeah, absolutely. I would just I would
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just add that um one thing that's important to remember is in the late 70s early 80s when Dr. Burge was doing her
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work with victims of sexual assault and sexual violence, it was actually one of the uh three most common crimes in the
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country at the time. Uh but it was unknown, unresarched uh and you know in response the FBI was
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under immense pressure to start figuring out what they could do about this how they could respond and that's the reason
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that they they really sought Dr. Burgess out and brought her in is because she was pretty much the only person out
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there at the time that had any expertise on the topic. And there's so much science and psychology involved,
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especially when we talk about serial offenders, right? whether it be a serial rapist or a serial killer, there's so
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much to to learn from from them and their their actions and how they kind of how they kind of become this because
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with a lot of them and you know it's probably as much nature as nurture in most cases,
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but there's, you know, they they rarely wake up one day and just decide to start
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killing people or to start sexually assaulting people there there is something that they are kind of created
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and there's a way to learn. We're never going to be able to turn the faucet completely off, right? But there's there
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is a way to kind of learn from it, not only to help us better detect these types of crimes, but also uh solve them
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and and have some resolve. >> Yeah. So then that was one of the points. How can we decrease the number
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of victims by understanding quicker what is uh triggering all this? And and one thing you said is almost exactly what
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one of the serial killers said to me. He said, you know, I didn't wake up in the
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get up in the morning and start thinking this is what I'm going to do today. >> Um but think and that's what we tried to
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get at. So if that isn't what happened, then what did happen that took you down that road for to kill so many victims?
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So that's why we were trying to explore the mind, the thinking patterns because thoughts drive behavior. And that's what
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this was all about is to try to find out what the thoughts were. >> And a lot of these creeps, they're
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fantasizing about this sort of stuff well in advance. And those fantasies are changing and evolving or devolving
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throughout a period of time until they end up actually and and I hate hate to phrase it this way because they're these
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are horrible acts, but once they finally get up the courage to to go out and and
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try to live out one of these horrible fantasies that they've created. >> Yeah, that's that's absolutely right.
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That's one thing that Dr. Burgers and the team really found in their studies was that fantasy was a common element.
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And these offenders practiced, rehearsed these fantasies over and over in their heads until
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fantasy itself became more authentic than reality. You know, fantasy to them was the sacred. And so they had to act
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that out. That was the their their compulsion. That was their need. >> Stephen, talk about the book a little
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bit. And I mean like the behind the scenes type of stuff with the book because there's no question about it.
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Dr. Burgess has led a very fascinating and brilliant career. So, it the the interesting level
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was going to be a 10 no matter what. But now you come in and we're going to we're
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going to piece this thing out and put together a story and and and add some storytelling to it. Tell us what is your
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role and your uh uh working relationship with Dr. Burgess. >> Sure. Yeah, it was wonderful to work
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with Dr. Burgess. um you know, she's smart, she's done amazing things, uh she's able to share her knowledge in in
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really easily accessible ways, which is uh very helpful for writing the book. Um
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and one of her ideas early on with this book was not just to tell the story of the individual cases, which is something
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that had been done before, but was to sort of fold these individual cases into the greater story of profiling itself.
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uh how profile how profiling got started, you know, how there was intense opposition to it at the beginning uh and
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what it took for it to become successful. So, that's a story that's never really been told and also telling
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it from her perspective uh as one of the few women that was in the FBI at that time uh and sort of that larger cultural
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context uh is really unique. Um and I learned a lot from her. I think readers will learn a lot from her as well. Uh,
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and it was just, you know, she's fantastic. She's really inspiring and I think a lot of that comes through in the
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book. >> Well, and Killer by Design is a fantastic book, but I want to give a little a little praise that uh needs to
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be given here. So, True Crime Garage, we've done 540ome episodes and then off the record, we've done over 130. So,
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we've covered a lot of cases uh on this show. And now one thing that I really strive to do is I really and this is my
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own sickness that I have and I don't think that there's a cure for it but I have this drive that I have to have some
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kind of intimate knowledge or understanding of a case and of a crime and maybe even the perpetrator and and
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victims themselves. and two tools that I keep in my my tool box here in the garage. And I these are two of the the
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most useful reference materials that I've collected over the years. One is the crime
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classification manual uh that Dr. Burgess, you are directly responsible for this. I I uh and as well as the
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sexual homicide patterns and motives. So, I wanted to make sure that >> Thank you. They gave us some u credit
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where credit is due and thank you for those wonderful reference materials. They're they're educational to me. The
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the the person that's never stepped foot inside of uh Quantico or any other FBI office for that matter.
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>> Very good. Very good. >> Let's talk about because Stephen kind of touched on this a little bit. You get
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the call from Roy Hazelwood. What what's going through your mind like after you get off the phone? Are you are
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you excited at do you look at this as an opportunity or do you look at it like it's the FBI I don't want to piss them
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off. I'm at least going to take the meeting to uh to to make them happy. And again, John Douglas told me at the time
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when he joined the FBI, and this was his joke, his words was that the FBI was male, Yale, or sorry, I'm going to I
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know I'm going to get this wrong. Male, Pale, and Yale is what he said the described the FBI as when he joined. So
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you you're a woman with this wonderful education and background and and and a superb expertise in something that they
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need to learn about. You have to feel very much like an outsider. Not just not just being a woman, but also your your
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background. >> Well, I was more curious, I think, is the word I would use. Um I felt uh I
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needed to do it because I had never gone before a totally male group. You know, I
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had only really up until that point uh talked to rape crisis centers, which is predominantly female, or nursing groups
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because we were trying to get all of the emergency room nurses educated on the care of the rape victim. So, when that
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came across uh my desk, I I thought, well, I I should do it. I want to be fair, right? Equal males and females.
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And then I said I I was want to know what they actually were learning. And I was always very curious about Quanico
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and all the stories I had heard. And I think it then getting there was really something interesting because you fly
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into uh into Washington airport uh dollar. No, not Dallas. We went to the other one and they put you in this car
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and you drive and drive and drive and it gets denser and denser and denser and it
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was at night and there were trees all and I where is this place? and it's about an hour's drive and finally it
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kind of pops up like brigadeon out of nowhere and uh that's it. So, uh you get there at night and of course
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you're on the next morning and that was a going to be an interesting uh episode because they're all sitting there.
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They're all in their little lookalike shirts, uh, pencils and, you know, looking like real students. And they're
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sitting at these desks that have buzzers on it. And they tell me that if I want to ask a question and get an answer, I
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can ask it. And they people have to buzz the right answer. And you can tell how many are getting your what you're saying
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and how many aren't. and they're throwing all of this technology at me, which I was really impressed with
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because I teach and of course I always looking for new things. But I I ended up not obviously asking them any questions
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because I really didn't want to know if they knew the answers. But um it turned out to be very positive and after the
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lecture and and going up for their it's just it's just like an academy you know you cafeteria walkth through and meeting
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all the people the others to in the behavioral science unit was really a very positive positive experience and I
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I really felt comfortable and uh felt like if they asked me again I I certainly would do it. So that was my
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first day, my first experience if you will, down at the academy. TV's number one drama, High Potential,
00:21:55
returns with star Caitlyn Olsen as the crimesolving single mom with an IQ of 160. Every week, Morgan uses her
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unconventional style and brilliance to crack LAPD's most perplexing cases. It's the perfect blend of humor and mystery.
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She's breaking the mold without breaking a nail. New episodes of High Potential Tuesdays 10:9 central on ABC and stream
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[Music] What is it like? Most of us will never experience this part. You've experienced
00:24:06
so many things that that most of us never will. But what is it like to turn on your TV and see somebody playing a
00:24:14
version of you or a dramatized uh create, you know, I know they took some creative liberties and things with with
00:24:21
some different directions on the show, but what is it like to be told we're making a show about a portion of your
00:24:28
career and you're we're making a character of you? >> Right. Well, see, I didn't even know
00:24:35
about the show until I started getting mind this Netflix series evidently came out and I started getting requests to do
00:24:42
interviews and I thought I better better watch this and and and you know the first session, the first season, you
00:24:50
know, they they do something which I think would never have happened in in a hostage negotiation. The guy that that
00:24:56
threatens to do what he was going to do actually does. And and that was I said that's not right. they would, you know,
00:25:03
no, no, neither Bob or John would ever do anything like that for hostage negotiation. So, I was a little that
00:25:10
that was kind of a a curious reaction. And then the second, nothing. And then the third is where this Dr. Wendy Carr
00:25:17
comes in. And I was really really interested to see how much they get right or not get right. And I was very
00:25:23
pleased to see that they got most of it right in terms of what actually happened. that really came through when
00:25:31
the agents came up. They wanted to talk. I was impressed with what they were doing. We talked about a book and that
00:25:36
whole scene where uh Douglas supposedly writes on his paper book did happen. Actually did happen.
00:25:45
>> Uh what I didn't like is I think you've already touched on that is the way they
00:25:49
portrayed our backgrounds of the three of us. They they couldn't have gotten them more more wrong, right? You could
00:25:56
say they that was really They really dressed up the personal life of of each individual. And you know, I've spoke to
00:26:04
John Douglas a couple times and and I know that they took a lot of liberties uh on his personal life. And I've had
00:26:11
people, >> you know, it's it's hard to distinguish for a lot of people the difference
00:26:16
between TV and real life. And some people were not even really aware that this is sort of a version of what really
00:26:24
happened. Um, and that there are real people uh behind some of those characters. And I've even had people ask
00:26:32
me because I have a decent knowledge or or or some knowledge of of the behind-the-scenes stuff back then just
00:26:38
because I've read so many of the books that have been available over the years. Uh, I love Roy Hazelwood's books and
00:26:45
wrestlers books and uh, of course Douglas, he seems like he he's peddling a new book every year and every every
00:26:52
one of them are fascinating. But, you know, so since I've read all the books, I've had people say like, you know, did
00:26:58
did wrestler really have those troubles with his child? And um, and I'm like, no, I like the personal life stuff is
00:27:05
really dressed up to add >> some added which wasn't even needed. I mean, the work that you guys were doing
00:27:12
and and and the cases that you guys were working on were so exciting in their own
00:27:18
that I don't think it was necessary to to dress that stuff up, but it it made for a very exciting show.
00:27:25
>> Sure. Well, my son called me after he watched it and he said, "Mother, what have you not told us?"
00:27:34
>> Like, you know everything, son. Don't worry about it. >> One thing. So take me through this real
00:27:40
quick, too, because when you first come on at the FBI, you're acting more in a role of almost like a consultant, but at
00:27:47
some point you become a a real life FBI agent. Is that correct? >> No, I never become an agent, but I do
00:27:55
I'd come in as a consult probably as a lecturer, then consultant. Uh but never it had nothing to do with with the FBI
00:28:04
as a agent. No. But you're working in in in the walls of of Quantico and you are
00:28:11
a very instrumental part in some of these meetings that they're having when they when the quote unquote mind hunters
00:28:19
are sitting around and kicking around ideas about uh the crimes, the the perpetrator and the victim. Like you you
00:28:28
you are every bit of a mind hunter as these the people that you worked with. I mean, you you provided so much knowledge
00:28:36
as far as like post uh crime behavior by the perpetrator um and and really added
00:28:43
a lot of the psychology of the the of victimology and and things of that nature as well.
00:28:51
>> Oh, right. um those sessions were so important and that's actually what we decided uh to do for this book is that
00:28:58
luckily we had transcribed all of these profiling sessions and anything that they had done so it was not left to
00:29:07
people's memory and um that looking at the crime I mean it was absolutely incredible to go to a session they'd
00:29:16
have all these crime scenes laying on the table they'd all be sitting around and they would just go back and forth
00:29:23
and they were trying to figure out would be an an unsolved case. And they would go back and forth to try to work out
00:29:30
exactly what they could then put together and what they called the profile and send it back to the local uh
00:29:37
police department that had request and that's what we were trying that and Steven can speak much more to that
00:29:43
because he helped in the writing it so that it made more sense. It certainly made sense in terms of being there but
00:29:51
to organize it into some categories and things like that is what we tried to do and get published because we we wanted
00:29:58
to publish not only that was the promise that not only publish the book which you've mentioned as a sexual homicide
00:30:04
but to get some articles out to the wider audience we publish some of the papers in American Journal of Psychiatry
00:30:11
and any of the other kinds of journals that would go out to not only law enforcement. Yeah, I think it's
00:30:18
important to remember too that uh in the Hoover era of the FBI, it was completely
00:30:23
closed to outsiders. You know, you you were either in or you weren't. And Dr. Burgess joined uh in her role just after
00:30:31
that. So for her to be there as you know, sort of in a consultant position was unheard of at the time. Uh so she
00:30:39
was, you know, she quickly carved out her own niche and she was every bit as uh important to the uh beginnings of
00:30:48
profiling and the BSU as any of the agents there. But just for her to be there in the first place was a really
00:30:54
big deal. Well, and one thing that I think is absolutely fascinating and it's kind of missed, I think, a lot is that,
00:31:02
you know, detectives or or beat cops will say, "Yeah, you know, there's a very big difference between FBI and what
00:31:08
we do and and we don't um uh you know, maybe I don't understand what the profilers do." But but in all reality,
00:31:16
beat cops and detectives have been using their own form of profiling for for decades before the FBI even started
00:31:25
really organizing the whole idea and and educating. I mean, that that's part of of solving crimes, and it always has
00:31:35
been, you know, uh coming up with with ideas about the victim, ideas about the perpetrator, why they did what they did,
00:31:42
and profiling the crime scene itself. You guys are just taking this, you know, a hundred steps further and and coming
00:31:51
back to local law enforcement and saying, "Look, we've we've kind of organized this. We've we've learned much
00:31:57
more about it." uh and and reinforcing, hey, you're kind of already doing it. Now, here's a way to do it better, more
00:32:05
efficiently, and and use it at the local level. >> Sure. In fact, I was always amazed at
00:32:11
one of the first things when I started watching them do this profiling, they were they were so focused on the car, if
00:32:18
this was a car was involved, and they would spend so much time on trying to figure out what type of car it was and
00:32:24
how they could help the local police find them. And it got so funny that they and they would match the car to the
00:32:31
personality of the suspect. And so it would get so that they would say to to one of us that were they were one of
00:32:38
these outsiders, you know, what type of car they thought that we we drove. So you're right that they but they were
00:32:44
using the tools, if you will, that they were most familiar with and most uh comfortable with, which of course were
00:32:51
cars. I always had to to laugh at that. But uh we we moved them a little bit beyond the cars. That's for sure.
00:32:59
>> So the book is called A Killer by Design: Murderers, Mind Hunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind. Um
00:33:08
tell me about one of the one of the murders in the in the book just a little bit uh about one of the murders that
00:33:15
that uh you discuss in the book. We we start off with the uh murdering of the little news boy out in Nebraska.
00:33:25
>> And we we like that to start because it was one that really caught the attention, we think, of the outside
00:33:32
group, if you will, outside of law enforcement. And that was where a uh the body of a of a young 12-year-old boy was
00:33:39
found. And there are no clues, no nothing to go on. And Bob Wrestler was the one that was a scientist. you know,
00:33:47
each each each um agent would get an assignment. Sometimes it was just they were rotating. But anyway, so he came up
00:33:54
with the we had profiled it as best we could when the information came in and it was like in September, late August
00:34:02
and then nothing happened until November, late November when the snow started and the two hunters had come
00:34:10
across this young boy uh half covered in snow. And that was important because the
00:34:17
way that the um victim had been left, they differed. And so they weren't sure was this the same person, uh the killer,
00:34:26
the suspect. And as they went through the things, they decided definitely it was and and worked and tried to figure
00:34:33
out how the why the leaving of the body was different in each of the um two places. one being right by the side of
00:34:42
the road and one being inside into a wooded area and you could begin to see the escalation of the kinds of things
00:34:48
that happened. So I think that was important because the whole community this was very very upsetting to the
00:34:55
whole community when the second profile Bob changed his uh profile uh to where he was even identifying that he thought
00:35:02
this was an airman off of Offet Air Base which was right there in in near the town. And he even got it to where I
00:35:11
think the only thing he was off was was it a airman third class or an airman fourth class. I
00:35:16
mean he was that close. >> And when they finally uh because they had used media to tell everybody to be
00:35:24
on the lookout for certain things, it was a very observant uh teacher who happened to notice a suspicious car. got
00:35:32
its license plate all except I think the last digit was able to call that in and
00:35:37
once they were they they quickly were able to figure out the last digit and uh sure enough they zeroed in on um uh this
00:35:45
job it turned out to be who was at offet air base and that was uh the other important thing about the case is when
00:35:53
Bob was presenting the case at two agents at um in law enforcement back to Quanico after one of the classes is the
00:36:02
detective came up to him and he said, "Boy, the case you just presented, Jo sounds so much like a case that I had up
00:36:10
in Maine." He was from Maine. And he went back, sent everything to Bob. They reviewed it again. And sure enough, that
00:36:17
had been John Sha's first victim. And he had been a teenager at the time. And that was after that. He u it was
00:36:26
unsolved. He joined the service. That's why he went into the service to get away. and ended up out in Nebraska. So
00:36:33
the congressional record was the place where this was written up and everybody was given um uh kudos for the work that
00:36:41
they had done on it. And I think uh Stephen you you you saw how the um the working of the groups
00:36:49
together was really really important. >> Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the reasons we you know chronologically it
00:36:54
made sense but also in terms of the effect that it had. That's why we kicked off with that case. uh there wasn't a
00:37:00
lot of inter agency cooperation at the time. People were uh you know a little hesitant to necessarily trust or allow
00:37:07
the FBI into their investigations. So, one thing that was really big about that case was it the Joear case was that it
00:37:15
did rely on these different agencies and local investigators collaborating with their materials and their insights and
00:37:22
sharing it all with the BSU so that the BSU could come up with an incredibly accurate profile which they did which as
00:37:31
you know was just said that's why it was recognized in the record of Congress and
00:37:35
once the word got out there that the BSU used profiling to help solve this case that you know was going nowhere. Uh that
00:37:44
was sort of a catalyst and people realized this is a tool that we could use as well. And so a lot of um local
00:37:51
law enforcement officials started reaching out to the BSU and asking for their help and that was a big push
00:37:57
forward in the eyes of uh the FBI and helping legitimize the whole process. And to kind of flush that out a little
00:38:04
bit for the listeners here, as far as the crimes go, the reason why the FBI, why Bob Wrestler has to be brought in
00:38:11
and profiling profiling was so important in this case, as both of you said, there's there's really no leads for the
00:38:19
local law enforcement to work off of at the time because basically you have a child abduction and unfortunately later
00:38:26
a body found, but we don't have witnesses to the abduction. We don't have witnesses to the uh the body dump
00:38:34
and um really there's no breadcrumb trail until the FBI gets involved and starts telling the the local detectives,
00:38:42
you know, here's what we can here's what we think about the the likely offender here. and and really that starts starts
00:38:53
them on the right trail to apprehend a very dangerous individual uh who's committing one of the scariest crimes
00:39:00
out there. >> Yeah, absolutely. There were not a lot of breadcrumbs. It was up to the the
00:39:04
agents to look at the crime scenes and that was all they had to work with uh and to, you know, take from that and
00:39:11
sort of parse information from that as to who the most likely suspect could be. >> Yeah. Why did he, you know, why did the
00:39:20
offender abduct at the the the time and date when he did? And what does the body
00:39:27
dump site tell us? And how the the body is found and the injuries to the victim and how the victim is tied or not tied.
00:39:35
Those are all things that uh wrestler and and the team are going to come in and and try to fill in those blanks and
00:39:41
and put meaning to those those different actions that were taken by the offender.
00:39:46
>> Absolutely. And then Dr. Burgess also has all the transcripts from that case from that profiling session and a lot of
00:39:53
other cases we talk about in the book. So you really get to see how the different agents thought about the
00:39:59
profiling process, what went into it and what makes that whole process tick. So it's it's really interesting to just
00:40:04
look at that in its uh rawest and cleanest form. >> Yeah. And the other the other thing is
00:40:12
John Jar when they when he was um arrested and and getting ready for trial gave many good interviews. He was very
00:40:20
open about talking that most of the talking about those two crimes. Don't forget he never admitted to or told
00:40:27
about the earlier crime. But he that was the start of finding out how we could inter have the agents interview the
00:40:36
suspects uh certainly after that they were convicted to get as much information as possible.
00:40:42
>> I felt like with this killer that he was in a weird way after apprehended or and
00:40:47
probably most of his life it sounded to me like he's trying to understand himself or why he does what he does or
00:40:54
why he has the fantasies that he did. That's a characteristic of of many of them that they don't know why. Uh
00:41:01
remember even Monty Rissell in the uh Mind Hunter series when they come in and they uh the agent said, "We're here to
00:41:08
study people uh like you and and why they do it." And he says, "Well, I hope you find out why I did it cuz I don't
00:41:15
know." >> And and that was so classic for many of the >> um serial killers. They didn't know
00:41:22
>> and they know that they're off and they know that there's something wrong with
00:41:25
them, but they don't know why they are the way that they are. >> Right. >> One thing that I thought was so
00:41:31
beautiful here, doctor, was you you kind of dedicated the book in memory of three
00:41:37
of your former colleagues. Would you would you wonderful people that that had fascinating careers and did such good
00:41:45
work? Could you tell us about each of those former colleagues just a little bit?
00:41:49
>> Sure. Sure. happy to um certainly Linda Lidle Holmstrom was most in influential.
00:41:55
She really got me into this whole field of um victimology if you will. And Linda
00:42:02
really taught me more of the research part. She was um schooled in the Chicago uh way of doing sociology where you took
00:42:13
very specific copious notes on everything when you're doing an interview. So, uh, when we would go in
00:42:21
to see a victim, each one of us would write up our own notes, type them up, and then share the the copy so that we
00:42:29
had her version, if you will, from the more sociological view, and then you had my more psychological one. So, Linda uh
00:42:39
was very very good at writing up. We actually did three books from that data set. We did rape crisis and recovery
00:42:48
just to get the uh rape crisis group notified. And then uh she did she took lead on the victim of rape which was
00:42:56
more of the sociological part. >> So she uh her career was in the health field in the feminist field. She was a a
00:43:05
pretty strict uh feminist and um she was just wonderful in terms of teaching me that and of getting our certainly
00:43:13
getting our material published in a variety of journals. That was the other thing is we published in I think we
00:43:19
published 25 separate articles from that whole data set and they went into a variety of journals and then Roy
00:43:26
Hazelwood was um certainly instrumental as we've already said to get me down to Quantico and I wrote uh a we wrote a
00:43:36
textbook Roy and I wrote a textbook for called Rape Investigation and we had five editions. I mean it was
00:43:45
a very uh well uh received book on the investigation. Roy was a very kind very uh caring kind of of uh agent always
00:43:57
interested in the victim and and um so that was and his career of course is pretty pretty much as is written up in
00:44:05
the book. And then the uh third person is uh Bob uh Wrestler. >> Mhm. >> And Bob was really the he he really was
00:44:14
the one behind getting this project going. He had started out by going in and interviewing criminals, saying that
00:44:23
if he was going to have to teach criminal psychology, he better talk to some criminals so he'd understand them a
00:44:29
bit. So he was spending time doing a lot of the uh let's see, like Squeaky From.
00:44:34
He interviewed um >> um that whole group out in California is kind of where he started and I think he
00:44:41
also started with Ed Keer. But he had the idea uh he was also the used he got into profiling well before John Douglas
00:44:53
because he John Douglas was really the junior of the two partners. But Bob was mentored by um Pat Molany and um Taton,
00:45:04
Howard Taton, who were the two agents that did what we called, I guess, more informal kinds of profiling. And so Bob
00:45:14
would sit in on those and started learning the profiling there. Then Bob came and um joined with Douglas for his
00:45:22
partner. They always had each all of the ages down there have have a partner. on
00:45:28
any all of the work that they do. So those three uh who were so instrumental in in terms of my career uh I certainly
00:45:38
felt it was uh I certainly wanted to acknowledge the work that they had done. >> Stephen, is there anything that I didn't
00:45:45
touch on that we want to make sure that we include for the listeners? >> Yeah, I think um one thing that that's
00:45:52
really interesting to note about this book is it's not an academic book. It does touch on the profiling process and
00:45:58
how that works. Uh, but it's definitely more about the experiences that Dr. Burgess and the agents had of going
00:46:04
through the the BSU and developing that in the late '7s and early 80s. And one thing that really stood out to me during
00:46:12
the writing process was today this concept of serial killers is just sort of a cornerstone of pop culture. You see
00:46:18
it everywhere. It's talked about a lot. Uh, but but back then nobody had interest in them. there was very little
00:46:26
uh attention even paid to them. Their crimes were considered sort of irrational and just dismissed as that.
00:46:35
And so for the BSU to actually say there's something deeper here and if we can understand the behaviors, the
00:46:43
psychology of this group, we can learn something that maybe we can apply to crimes at large and do something really
00:46:51
good and beneficial. Um that was that was incredibly innovative and uh it's just really curious and um sort of just
00:47:02
interesting to to to follow their thought processes as it developed and see the impact it made on um you know
00:47:11
investigations at large. Well, and one thing that I find that I think is really wonderful is that it the book features
00:47:19
some of some more well-known cases, you know, talks about Ed Kemper or BTK, but also some lesserk known offenders, the
00:47:28
ski mask rapist, the Taco Bell strangler. But the thing that I think is is wonderful right now and really the
00:47:34
timing of this fantastic book coming out is I feel like the general public is starving for more mind hunter on Netflix
00:47:43
and I'm I'm half well so I just completed the uh last night glass of bourbon in hand next to the fire I read
00:47:52
the a female killer chapter so don't tell me how it it ends doctor um I I'm about halfway through and I'm loving
00:48:01
every minute of it. It's It's like reading the show Mine Hunter for those that that want more Mine Hunter. It's a
00:48:08
must readad. Is there another book in the future though because your your career I is so fascinating and I know
00:48:16
Stephen wants to tell more of your story. Um I'm hoping that uh this one wasn't too painful to put together and
00:48:24
maybe that there'll be a another one here at some point. >> Stephen, you want to answer? Yeah, there
00:48:29
are there's definitely a lot of material. Uh, you know, as an academic, Dr. Burgess did save all these
00:48:35
transcripts as we mentioned, but also video recordings of interviews with killers. Um, photos, just all sorts of
00:48:43
really fascinating and horrific stuff to see. So, there's there's certainly plenty of material. Um, we will see.
00:48:50
Time will tell. >> And I want to thank both of you. Both of you are absolutely brilliant. I want to
00:48:54
thank you for tolerating me for the last 45 minutes and coming on here to talk about this fantastic book, A Killer by
00:49:01
Design by the great Dr. Anne Burgess and Stephen Constantine. Thank you both. >> Thank you.
00:49:08
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