What he would do is he would drive around in his car.

He'd see a co-ed hitchhiking.

She said, "Where are you going?"

And she'd tell him and he'd look at his watch and say,

"Oh, I don't know.

I don't know if I have time to take you there."

"All right, get in.

I'll take you there."

And that disarmed the potential victim.

So she would get in with him.

And then she was his.

And this is, as you said, Craig,

this is a classic case of displacement.

He would he worked his way up killing enough of these co-eds until

he had a sense that he had accomplished and

possessed them as he never could have in normal life.

And then he killed his mother.

He bludgeoned her to death in her bed.

And then took off with a claw hammer and ripped out her larynx so

that she could never yell at him again.

Threw it down the garbage disposal in the kitchen and garbage

disposal threw it back out again.

And he said, "See, she's still getting to me."

And what's very, very interesting about Ed Kemper, as opposed to

almost any other serial killer we've studied, is that he drove

quite a ways away from Santa Cruz, I

believe to Las Vegas or somewhere in Nevada.

He picked up the phone at a phone booth

and called the Santa Cruz police and said,

"It's me.

I've done it.

Come and get me."

To understand how Mark Olshaker came to know that story this well

and dozens like it, we have to go back to the moment he walked into

Quantico with a film crew and met the man

who changed criminal investigation forever.

Oh, Mark, on these episodes, we try to talk

to all types of people in law enforcement.

Sure.

We call it heroes behind the badge because we talked to a lot of

people who have done heroic things.

We've talked to people…

And then, Dennis, I follow Craig's posts on Facebook too.

Okay, good.

So you're familiar.

But today, I am delighted that we have somebody who

not only knows about some of the biggest cases that we've ever

heard of, but knows a little bit about the background of some of

these serial offenders that everybody,

unfortunately, their house of words.

Everybody knows their name, unfortunately.

So I'm fascinated, and I think our listeners and audience will be

fascinated by what you have to say because your background, you

teamed up with a guy named John Douglas at some point.

Tell us a little bit about who is John Douglas and why was John

Douglas important to you in your work?

Well, the way it all started was I am a novelist and documentary

filmmaker and non-fiction author by trade.

I was writing and producing films for Nova, the PBS science series.

Yes.

And I had read, as many of us had,

Tom Harris's books, "Red Dragon and the Silence of the Lambs," and

after I finished "Silence of the Lambs," I called Paula Absell, the

executive producer of Nova at WGBH in Boston.

And I said, "Paula, this book is really good, and I understand

they're making a movie out of it.

And if the movie is anywhere near as good as

the book, I think it's going to be a big hit."

Of course, I had no idea how big a hit it would be.

And I said, "Look, why don't we go to Quantico, the FBI Academy?"

And I met this man named John Douglas, who was the unit chief.

And the more I learned about him, the more I knew that he was kind

of a living legend within the police and law enforcement community

for having really been the pioneer of behavioral science and

criminal investigative analysis as

the FBI was starting to practice.

And John Douglas had spent two stints as a street agent, one in

Milwaukee and one in Detroit, where he'd learned a lot about

criminal behavior, just observing

the people that they were arresting.

And the time he got to Quantico, he and

another agent named Robert Ressler, Bob Ressler,

were assigned to what they called road schools, which was they

would go out for two weeks at a time and teach one week each to

local law enforcement agencies and kind of give them a

superficial but fairly in-depth orientation to what they were

teaching in the behavioral science unit at Quantico.

And John had the idea that, as he said, you know, you can only

drink so many margaritas and hang out in the hotel so long.

So he said, "Along as we're on the road, let's go into the prisons,

the penitentiaries of the places where we are and just see if we

flash our FBI badges if we can get

to talk to some of these offenders."

But what they were able to do by being very prepared by studying

the case files ahead of time so that these guys couldn't say

anything that wasn't really true or was they were able by talking

to these people, by finding out what was going on in the minds of

these offenders, violent offenders, predatory offenders, to claim

what was going on in the offender's mind before, during, and after

the offense, what was going on between the offender and the victim.

Therefore, by having this for the first time profound understanding

of what the criminal was like, they could start to profile them and

figure out what it was that they were

that the police should be looking for.

And let me just say one thing.

John has said in the beginning,

profiling does not catch criminals.

Profiling helps the local police or local investigators narrow

their search, focus their investigation.

They're the ones who catch the criminals.

So in any event, so we started interviewing them.

They let us go through all their case files.

We came up with some cases that we thought were interesting.

We followed them up and we ended up with a film called Mind of a

Serial Killer, which was nominated for a national Emmy.

And the first time it was on PBS, it got quite good ratings.

And the behavioral science unit and specifically the investigative

support unit started getting a lot

more requests from local law enforcement.

And so it was altogether a very positive experience.

We're very proud of that film, even to this day.

And then I would say several months

later, John called me and he said,

you know, I'm getting ready to retire from the bureau.

And do you think anybody would be interested in my story?

And if they are, would you be interested in writing?

And I kind of immediately said yes and yes.

And so let's see.

And so called my agent.

He encouraged me to write a proposal, which in a sense was, okay,

this is the real story behind Silence of the Lambs.

And John Douglas is the character that the Scott

Glenn character in the movie is really based on.

And Scott said very often that John was the one who really taught

him, you know, how to be an FBI agent.

And so he worked with Jodie Foster when they were doing the film.

And

so we went to New York, talked to a

number of publishers, got several offers.

And out of that came this memoir,

history of profiling, if you will, which probably one of my most

important contributions was somehow to come up

with the name Mindhunter, which really stuck.

And love the name Craig, you have it there, don't you?

Yeah, look at this.

We just wanted to hold it.

There you are.

And Dennis and Bill, I think I've told you in the past, but Mark

Olshaker, when I did a radio show years ago here in the DC area, he

was my favorite guest I ever interviewed.

And I never forgot Mark.

And Mark became a great supporter of the National Law Enforcement

Officers Memorial and the museum that we were building.

And I had to have him back as a guest on our show today.

And we'll probably have him back because this guy is full of

stories and of great interest to

law enforcement and to the average.

Looking at his profile, my gosh, we

could do a whole series of interviews here.

But for today, I think you've already, you've already profiled.

Yes.

Yes.

I have profile.

Not as good as John Douglas could have

probably done it, but you know, in my own little way.

But Craig, I would love, I know that you have a particular

admiration for Mark and for his work.

Why don't you lead us off?

What do you think our audience would like to know that's inside

Mark's book and inside Mark's documentary, but inside his brain?

What do you think people want to hear?

And let me jump right in.

Mindhunter did well enough that we just continued.

We did a second book called Journey into Darkness.

And we've done, we have done a bunch of

books over the, probably 10 altogether.

We did one called the cases that haunt us, which talks about

prominent murder cases throughout history, beginning with Jack the

Ripper and ending with the JonBenét Ramsey case talking about,

okay, what can we tell, what can we tell people about this from

investigating it from a behavioral standpoint?

Absolutely.

Craig, why don't you, yeah, you've got a good handle on all this.

Well, first of all, Mark, I'm interested

myself, who was the first serial killer?

Was it Jack the Ripper?

Was the first serial killer here in the United States?

Who was that?

Well, it's a very, very interesting question, because we generally

talk about the modern era of serial killers beginning with Jack the

Ripper in the East End of London in the

summer, spring, summer, and fall of 1888.

But it's probably true that there

were serial killers long before that.

Probably things that we attributed to werewolves or witches or

whatever throughout European history

probably were early serial killers.

We can't prove that, but it's logical.

It makes sense.

So we start in terms of our analysis with Jack the Ripper.

And as I said, in our book, The Cases That Haunt Us, we take a stab

at who we think Jack the Ripper really was.

And one of the things I found out when I was doing research on the

case at Scotland Yard in London is I firmly believe that the

Metropolitan and the City Police, the two

police forces in London at the time and to this day,

a pretty good idea of who it was in spite

of the fact that it's never been revealed.

Interesting.

Okay, so there's a question that I think you address in the book

Mindhunter, and that is, are serial killers born to be serial

killers or are they manufactured?

In other words, the way they were treated by their mother, their

father, something in their life that triggered

this rage and forced them to go out and kill people.

I'm just fascinated by that.

Ed Kemper, for example,

a huge guy, I think six foot eight, whatever, and his mother

treated him as if he were a monster and

made him feel that way his entire life.

And women, his mother told him women would never

be interested in dating you, so why even bother?

That was the way he was treated.

And he hated his mother.

But instead of killing his mother, he goes out and kills all these

other women before he kills his mother.

I mean, it's an amazing story of violence and just the most

despicable criminal that perhaps we've ever known.

And yet you in the book, I think you and John

talk about maybe it was he was manufactured.

Maybe he wasn't born with all this violence in his mind.

What's your theory on that?

Well, Craig, I think you've hit on probably the most fundamental

issue in the entire study of violent predators, which is, are they

made or are they born nurture or nature?

And the answer, again,

it's generally almost always a combination.

There's probably something hardwired

into these people that makes them impulsive.

It makes them violent if they if they're frustrated and all that.

And yet at the same time, we have seen very few of these guys, and

they're almost always guys by the way,

we can talk about that later if you want,

who do not have some kind of a bad background.

And Ed Kemper is the perfect example.

Usually they are either abused, they are neglected,

they are abandoned, they come from abject poverty.

There's usually something really bad in their background.

And so what they grow up with is this resentment, this anger.

And at the same time, because of what they've been through this

feeling of entitlement, that the laws of society don't apply to me.

And some of them develop, as we've talked

about, a sense of grandiosity as a result.

But that sense of grandiosity is at war with this deep seated

feeling of inadequacy that they have.

And then that's triangulated with this feeling that I've talked

about, about resentment, about society, for not giving them what

they wanted and what they thought they were entitled to.

And the regular laws don't apply to them.

Now, Ed Kemper is a perfect example of that because he was

a big guy.

He was felt very impotent growing up because of his mother.

His mother couldn't handle him.

He sent him off to his grandparents.

He eventually murdered his grandparents.

He actually liked him.

At a young age, right?

I think he was only 14.

And living on their farm, he actually liked his grandfather.

But once he'd killed his grandmother, you know,

he felt he had to kill him to cover up the crime.

Obviously, the crime was not covered up.

He was institutionalized for a while, sent back to his mother, who,

as you said, Craig, always said he was inadequate.

He would never make it with girls.

She felt he was dangerous to his sister.

She essentially had him sleep in the basement

next to the furnace and locked him in there.

Now, this obviously created a tremendous amount of resentment.

And what he did was classic displacement.

When he became able to do so,

his mother worked at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

And he started killing young, beautiful co-eds at the Santa Cruz

community to get back at his mother

and say, "See, I can control them."

And he was a very smart, intelligent guy and very cunning.

I mean, one of the most chilling things about him was, I remember

he went to a court-appointed or a psychiatrist appointment.

The psychiatrist said he was doing quite well.

He had the head of one of his victims

in the trunk of his car at that time.

He was also very, very smart.

He would,

his MO, his modus operandi, and we can

make a distinction between MO and signature.

Modus operandi is what you have to do to commit the crime.

Signature is what you have to do to

make it emotionally satisfying for you.

So, MO is the way he got to get to

these co-eds and rape them and kill them.

And signature is what he did to them,

which was emotionally satisfying to him.

So, they had the local police check him out.

And so, as I'm saying, as far as I know, he's the only one who once

he'd gotten out of his system, he turned himself in.

And he's still in prison after all

these years, after all these decades.

And last I heard, he was not interested in parole.

He didn't think that he would do well in the outside world.

And what he spends a lot of his time doing now, he's got a very

nice voice, what he spends a lot of his time

doing is recording audiobooks for the blind.

Really?

Really interesting.

Mark, here's what was amazing to me is that John Douglas, going

into these prisons, interviewing people like Ed Kemper, the worst

of the worst, and he actually in the book

says, "I found Ed Kemper rather likable."

He had a sense of humor.

And I just can't fathom that given the

violence, the depraved nature of this man.

I mean, how do you judge that?

Well, it's just certainly can't

justify or excuse any of his crimes.

But I think John felt a certain degree of sympathy and empathy for

him, because he's one of these people, despite the way he was

hardwired, if he'd had a different upbringing, if he'd had some

support, if he'd had some encouragement from his mother,

he might not have turned out that way.

And that's the point that I want to jump in about right now is

because, you know, during my time as a cop, and you'd handle all

these kind of different violent incidents and whatnot, and you'd

look at this guy that you just locked up, and you're thinking,

"Wow, this guy's out of his freaking mind."

Which, of course, certainly, makes sense to you, Bill.

No doubt.

But then my point is, based on what we're talking about, about his

mother, then you'd go to these people's houses, and you'd look at

the family, and you'd look at the parents, and you'd say, "No

wonder this guy's freaking nuts, because she's nuts."

Right?

And so, clearly, I mean, I'm sure as you've written your books, and

you've done these backgrounds and investigations,

I'm sure that this woman, I mean, just based on what we've just

spoken about, about how he treated, how she treated his son, her

son, rather, growing up, she must have been nuts.

And that's just kind of, you know,

it's like a chip off the old block.

Yeah, in fact, Bill, when we did the first book, my mother, who was

a school teacher and then sort of in mid-career, went to law school

and became a lawyer, after she read Mindhunter, she came to John

and me and said, "So it's always the mother, isn't it?"

And I said, "Not always, Mom."

"Mostly."

I said, "That can have a lot to do with it, yeah."

That's great.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

I gotta tell you, we've got a few things in common, for sure.

And as you stated, you did some

documentary films, and I did some documentary films.

But more importantly, is not too long ago, I was contacted by a

British producer over in London about Sam Little.

And I'm sure you know about Sam Little.

You know, he is responsible, well, he confessed

at least to 90 murders to a Texas state ranger,

who is referred to as the serial killer whisperer.

And they did do a show about that.

And we wanted to do a documentary about it, or

this producer in Britain wanted to do a show.

So this guy, Sam Little, was pretty interesting because, you know,

everybody has different motivational things.

And the case you just talked about was more than likely, you know,

this guy's mother wrecked him, and made him feel so insignificant

and impotent and any number of things

like you described, and created that.

This guy, Sam Little, though, he

was a different type of serial killer.

And I remember because we spoke to the Texas Ranger, who debriefed

him and sat for hours, you know, talking to him about these cases.

And he would show them, he would show

Sam pictures of the victims that he killed.

And right away, he would get excited.

And I think I know where you're going with this.

You know, I'm going with this, right?

Because you probably, you know, you've heard this.

And he would get sexually aroused over this.

So that's a whole different ballgame.

Maybe you can expound.

Yeah, but I think you brought

up a very, very important point, Bill, which is that, as John says,

if you catch these guys, which you want to, because you want to get

them off the street as quickly as possible, you can lock up the

body, but you can't lock up the mind.

One of the reasons probably that a lot of these predators were

willing to talk to John and Bob is

they wanted to relive the crimes.

You take somebody like Dennis Rader, the BTK strangler who was, who

terrorized Wichita, Kansas for decades at a time.

He's in prison for the rest of his life.

I would be willing to bet that he spends his

nights reminiscing and reliving each of his cases.

Each of each of each of each of his murders, which he, which he

called his products, which John always said, you

want to understand the artist, look at the art.

And in this case, I'm not exaggerating.

In a lot of these cases, this is their art.

This is what's most important to them.

And Craig and I have talked about the fact,

are these serial killers who get away with it?

Are they brilliant?

You know, are they able to evade law enforcement?

Well, first of all, thank God

there's no Hannibal Lecters out there.

That's a complete myth.

Let's say at least none that we know of.

Could be Dennis though, you know,

never know

the guy next to you, right?

Well,

although let me just tangentially say

that John said with all that he knows about

getting away with murder, there's no way he could do it.

He said, everybody's got some kind of, he

said, everybody's got some kind of vulnerability.

Whether it's the post offense behavior.

I said,

you know, what would be in your case?

He said, I don't have to go into murder.

He said, you, you, he said, you know, I,

I was not the most exacting out of ways.

He said, you put in the FBI, you put an expense report in front of

me and I'll start to sweat, you know, what do

they found that I've gotten wrong, you know?

So, uh, yeah, that's funny.

I have an interesting question though, Mark, because, you know,

you, we talk about a lot of these serial killers

and, and, and most of them are historical, right?

I mean, they go back years ago.

What do you think about today?

I mean, you just don't hear about these prolific serial killers or

serial criminals, uh, today, like you did in the past.

And it's my belief that it's just because

you just can't get away with that anymore.

There's a, there's a video camera on every corner.

Every vehicle has a black box in it, like an airplane.

Now you can track everybody by their cell phones.

I just think it's just not as likely or

as possible, uh, as it was back in the day.

Yeah.

I think that's, I think that's very true.

I mean, we have a lot more law enforcement modalities to work with.

And of course, DNA has been, uh, has been a major issue because,

uh, you know, if you've got DNA, um, and look, a lot of crimes, you

don't have, you don't have, as you know, from your own experience,

Billy, you don't have all that kind of physical evidence.

Uh, there's what they call the CSI effect in juries where, because

CSI gets all kinds of, uh, scientific

evidence, juries expect you to have it.

You don't always get it, but in the case of sex crimes and these

kinds of predatory murders, very often there is DNA or something

like that that you can, uh, that you can work with and use.

So I think you're right.

I think, uh, you don't have as many of these dramatic extended

long-term, uh, excuse me, uh, serial cases.

Um, and look, even in the case of BTK, uh, they got him on a

computer disc, uh, something that didn't exist

to begin with when he first started his crime.

Mark Olshaker has spent 30 years inside the

minds of the worst predators in American history.

Next time we go deeper into the man who hid a serial killer behind

a church pulpit, the question of whether these monsters can ever be

predicted and the case that Mark says was never going to end well.