You're listening to the mind over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. You're listening to the mind over Murder podcast. Welcome
to mind over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilley and I'm Bill Thomas. We're joined
today by doctor Katherine Ramslin, forensicsitcheologist, professor, author and all around awesome
person. Doctor Ramsland, Welcome to mind over Murder. Thank you for joining
us. I'm very happy to be here. I'm excited about your questions and
ready to go. Let's go ahead and start by having you tell our listeners
about your extensive professional background, both as a teacher and a writer. Okay,
it covers a lot of years. I actually just got a contract for
my sevendieth book. I have three others in motion. A writer is what
I am, even though I'm also a professor of forensic psychology. But I've
also been a philosophy professor. I taught at Rutgers University for fifteen years,
teaching philosophy. I've been a lot of different odd things, but mostly I
think my heart is in writing, and that is what I spend every free
moment doing writing and traveling and researching, so that would cover basically everything.
I have five date degrees. I just got one last year, and that
they in creative writing, where we went to Ireland and we are going to
Scotland, even though I already have the degree Criminal Justice, forensic Psychology,
clinical psychology, philo. Oh my gosh, I'd like to learn. Wow,
that's incredible. Oh my goodness. See you did talk about you're working
on your seventieth book, which is incomprehensible to me. I can barely get
one finished, much less seventy, so it would be impossible to just list
all of these publications, but what are some of the ones that you have
most enjoyed writing, either because of the subject matter or because of the process.
It's hard to pick, but certainly the one I wrote that came out
in twenty twenty, How to Catch a Killer, took the cases of thirty
serial killers and categorize them according to the things that had worked to catch them.
So one was forensic innovation, police procedure, mistakes, they witnesses,
and those that turn themselves. That was very interesting. I love the book
that I wrote for one of my classes. I teach a psychology EBB death
investigation course, and I have taught for twenty years and finally wrote the textbook
for it. So I talk a lot about the different procedures that involve the
psychological analysis. Profiling is the one most people know, but psychological autopsy is
the one I like best because that is where the psychologist really gets to be
a detective in many ways. And then part of it also involves teamwork.
So I have the students work on cases and we have a crime scene house
where we lay things out. They have to figure out the clues, etc.
So that's a lot of fun. And then the fiction has been fun
as well. I have a three book deal for a fictional series with a
forensic psychologist who operates her own private investigation agency in the Carolinas. By the
way, because I have out her banks, so I feel that way I
can go to the out of banks tax deductible anytime I want. It's all
research, and she also a lot of weather stuff involved in that because I
love weather, so I have forensic meteorologists involved, dog handlers, things like.
I'm having a blast doing that because it's all stuff that I really do
based on actual cases that are really bizarre. So that's been a lot of
fun. The first one comes out in August, and I'm already almost done
with the second one. So what's your title for the first book in the
series. It's called you actually almost have to see it. It's called Ice
scream Man, but it's I Scream Man. Okay, everybody make a note
of this. I Scream Man will come out in August twenty twenty two.
That's right, that's awesome. I hope we're not being too tough on you
with this question. So for the mind of our murdered listeners who are very
interested in learning which book of you or sixty nine almost seventy books. Should
they start with, what's a good introduction for someone who wants to learn more
about you and the work that you have written? One called The Criminal Mind.
You can still get that in an e form and that's covering forensic psychology
for writers, but it does give an overview of the kinds of things forensic
psychologists do. Also. I think the one that I spent the most time
on that has been very intensive is the book I did with the BTK serial
killer Dennis Raider. That was five years in the making. I've never spent
so much time on a book as I did with that one. And that
then also became a four part documentary on A and E. And I was
an executive producer watching a book that had that kind of unusual It was called
a guided autobiography. So he's telling his story but guided through my clinical background
because I wanted to extract from him insights for criminology, forensic psychology, and
law enforcement. That's an unusual vision right off the bat, But then to
watch this become a documentary holding that vision is a writer's dream. That's what
every writer wants to see. And the team that pitched themselves to me to
do this. Got it and I've had many people not get it, but
they got it. It wasn't from the point of view of the investigators,
which is the typical thing in the BTKA case. This is from his point
of view and the people he affected through this. So it was a real
sense of Wichita, Kansas, where he committed his ten murders, a real
sense of how he impacted people there. We talked to the DA who was
actually a friend of mine before I ever even started the book, so she
was very good about sharing things with me, talked to cops who had been
involved, talked to victim family members. It was quite a lot of work,
I will say that, especially because we were filming in August in Kansas
in one hundred plus degree all day long. That's certainly intense. But I
really enjoyed the whole process. Wow. Addition to the writing, I know
that you teach as well your teacher and assistant provost to Sales University. What
do you teach and then what treats do you look for any successful student of
forensic psychology. That question actually has inspired me to write a blog. All
right, yay were to be coming up this week because I had to really
think about that idea of the successful student in this particular field, because I
have had recently, I've had student candidates who've been asking me what can they
do with this, etc? At any rate. Basically, I run the
forensic track at the undergraduate level and also in the master's program and criminal justice,
so I'm in psychology and criminal justice undergraduate and graduate. I teach a
basic forensic psychology class, a death investigation class because I do investigation stuff with
local corners, and then of course on extreme offenders, mass murderers, free
killers, serial killers, and so they get the whole range there, and
then those kind of get repackaged as graduate courses at a more advanced level.
So that's what I teach. But now that i'm assistant probosts, teaching is
halftime and administrative stuff is all the rest. When I'm watching students, the
first thing that I think I like to see is the idea of a lifelong
learner who's curious, who wants to learn things, who isn't just going to
school to get it over with their go through the motions or because they can't
think of anything else to do, but they're there because it's what they really
want to do and they can't wait to dive in, and they're so excited
about whatever books are being they're asked to read or papers there as to write,
and they'll bring things into it. So that idea of the lifelong learner,
the curious person is most important. And one of the things I think
students really have a huge hurdle with these days, thanks largely to media,
is focus, because we and even I have experienced social media has taken a
lot of my ability to focus. I used to be able to write for
hours at a time, and now it's very choppy. And many of the
students I teach have come up on this stuff. They've been trained through Sesame
Street actually starting all the way back there, where the camera angles are always
very choppy and fast. That affects your brain, and so the ability to
focus is really difficult for them, and if they put their mind to it,
they can do it. But that would be one another thing that I
would definitely look for. And then someone who's confident enough to want to step
out in their own be self reliant in a way. I think I would
love to see more of that, but it's tough because they've just been through
this pandemic where they disengage or asked to learn in a way that they've never
done before, and now we're asking them to come right back in re engage.
So there's a lot of challenges right now for college students. But I
still think the ones who have a sense of self reliance and curiosity and sense
of purpose so they can set goals, those are the ones that are going
to succeed. Are you back at the Sales University? Are you back within?
We were always here learning. We just spent millions of dollars fixing our
classrooms, socially distantees and doing much more hybrid kinds of classes. Now,
I've been teaching online for years, so that wasn't any big leap for me
to do. But now the students wanted to be back on campus. So
yeah, we had a lot of rules in place masking up social distancing and
we were back on campus almost right away. Oh wow, was it successful?
And were people able to stay healthy? Mostly parties right where the discipline
begins to fall apart. I think, particularly when you're dealing with young people
have stayed healthy. So I'm happy about that. Although it's Funny and I
talked about this. The three of us saw each other at crime Con,
which was not a safe environment, and we know dozens of people that came
home from crime Con with COVID. We weren't as careful as we normally are,
so it does happen. And if you remember, I walked up to
you with the mask on you had. Was it the blood spattered mask or
what it? Yeah, I got that from the Savannah Crime Expo the year
before. That's right, Well, that appropriate one to wear. Yeah,
no, absolutely, But you were one of the few people that I saw,
and Kristen and I are usually very disciplined in our own lives, but
there I just felt, oh, here we go. No one else for
the most part, no one else was wearing a mask except for doctor Ramslin,
of course, the smartest person in the room. The rest of us.
I just herew my hands up in the air, and it wasn't very
smart, quite frankly. But I did think it was hard to make a
decision because if you're trying to engage with people, especially if you want them
to walk up to your table. So I didn't have that, Yes,
we had that issue. If you want people to walk up to your table.
You want to seem warm, open, as there's a lot of politics
involved that we choose or choose not to wear a mask, and so you're
trying to be as inviting to everybody as possible. So I think it was
a very difficult thing. I don't know that I would have had a table
in a circumstance like that myself, but I was able to stay away from
where crowded things happened. I didn't eat in restaurants. I really stayed away
from stuff. So I think that was helpful. And even on the elevator,
I had people appreciating when they'd seen me massed up. Thank you.
Because I'm an elevator obviously you're trapped in a small space, and I just
figured, who cares, I'll do what I want to do. Yeah for
us, because it was our first time with our Mind Over Murder podcast on
podcast Row. We've been there as participants, but we'd never presented our little
podcast. And also both of us wanted to be recognized. Oh yes,
hey Kristen, hey Bill. That kind of thing we felt was so important.
We were discussing it at length beforehand. What are we going to do?
We're usually so careful. It's even still difficult because I was just at
the Writer's Police Academy conference. That's a lot of hands on st four days.
Yeah, it's still difficult to know what to do. And in that
situation, same thing, you were careful. I was as careful as I
could be. But you're in closed spaces, you're in hotels, you're eating.
We had group breakfast and I tried to sit away from people, but
of course I was word of the speakers, so they wanted to come and
talk to me. I can't have your mask on while you're eating. They're
always going to be those situations. So far it worked, and at the
sales, you've managed to make it work without having the students go back home
or whatever. You stayed on campus. We stayed on campus certain we had
constant monitoring. We had a random selection where we had to go get tested
professors and students, so you never knew it to be singled out and you
had to go today to get tested. We had IP a student tested positive
or was near somebody, we'd get messages and then we'd have to add Zoom
into our classes so that student could come in on Zoom that they would be
quarantined. We actually rented hotel rooms to quarantine SOW, so we did.
We spent a lot of money. We did a lot to accommodate their desire
to be on campus. But yeah, it's tough. Do you feel like
it was maybe easier for them because they did not have to transition from home
to back to school. Do you feel like they maybe had an easier time
than other college And I don't think so, because social distancing. They want
to be in campus, because they want to have that campus experience. And
then we're saying, oh, but six feet apart, masks up. I
don't know that they actually did. Personally think it was still I think it
was still a challenging time. I think it still continues to be challenging time
for sure. So you talked a little bit already about working on the documentary
about bt K, But I know you do other work with the television industry,
both as an executive producer, consultant and on screen expert. So what
are some of the other productions that you've either worked on recently or have worked
on in the past that you particularly enjoyed. Thanks for the question, because
I'm so excited about Murder House split. That was my idea, came out
of one of my classes, and I pitched it to one of my buddies
at Sony and they and then we went all over the place pitching and everyone
thought, this is such a great idea. We had a sizzle reo,
we did all kinds of fun things, but it still took some time,
and then the pandemic. Jess says, we were getting season one underway.
The pandemic happened and killed the first network that picked it up. It got
picked up again, so season two is coming out in August. I'm so
excited about it. We have six houses that we redid, including the Jodi
Aria's house. Oh Wow, which was a stunning because they had not really
cleaned that up that murder site. When we picked up a rug there was
still blood. Oh my gosh, you are kidding. Never professionally cleaned.
Apparently not. And that's not the only one. We had another one where
a guy had dismembered his wife in the shower. Wow. And they basically
rest him while he's cooking around the stove. And so this young couple comes
along and finds this pretty little blue house overlooking the ocean and at a great
price as they buy it and find out it's the Blue murder House. So
when we went in and pulled up floor tiles and there was blood, still
holy slow. So I guess when you find that amazing phenomenal house with the
price too good to be true, just be ready. I think, still
buy it, but just be ready that there's gonna be some creepies up and
then call us great renovation for the murder site. I was wondering how people
might feel from a real estate perspective. Would they really want their house featured
on your television series. You wouldn't believe how popular this is, and they
get a really beautiful, expensive renovation for free. There is that. Yeah.
Now we have not really had any trouble with that, and most of
them excite from Joe to Aria's house, have been in California because of the
expensive travel and all the COVID restrictions and whatnot. But it really hasn't been
that hard to find houses. There are laws in place for if a murder
has happened, but after three years no longer in place, so people can
buy houses and not know they have a murder house, and then they find
out and they know something's creepy about that spot. They do want a completely
new look to it, and they love it. Everyone's been really happy with
all the work we did, and I just love the idea. I think
it's such a cool idea. It's like the coolest mash up ever. Pamela,
my partner and I are both really into all the home renovation shows.
Me too, and we have an old house and we continually work on it,
so we watch all these things at night. And then we're also true
crime fans meet more so than Pamela. This is like the perfect mash up
true crime and real estate slash old home fix. And I can see how
this is so brilliant. You think to yourself, how come no one else
ever thought of this? And I've had it pitched to me since then by
big production companies, and I've said, it is a good idea, and
we're already doing it. Anyone who has a Roku device just go to the
Roku originals and you see it for free. It's and it's amazing. It's
really fun and interesting. Our first house was the Dorothy Puente house where she
had buried seven bodies in the yard. Wow, and the people did not
want renovation because the house was cool with historic value and whatnot. And they
but I said, oh, I bet you want a new yard. Oh
yeah, Oh my god. They got a beautiful pergola and all kinds of
really cool stuff in their yard. Wow. So do you do an overview
of the case of what has happened at the house and make prime and design
brought together so you get first the case. Sometimes we find the original detective
and interview them. In a couple of cases, we've had forensic people come
in, Like the blood Illuminal we had a guy come in and do that
to make sure. And then after you get the sense of the case,
we bring our two designers in. They talk about what would they do,
and then they do it, and then you get the big revealed to the
owners. Very similar to the flip shows. Now we didn't flip and we're
actually doing makeovers because we didn't buy these houses, but it's still the same
idea that they leave and our people completely redo it and do beautiful stuff.
I love this idea murder house flip and it's available on Roku and I'm sure
online as well. Wow. So that's a fantastic idea. We're both sold.
We're there, So we had talked to you a little bit about this
before. You're a regular contributor to Psychology Today magazine. What are some of
the topics that you've covered that were important to you? Okay, so about
eleven years ago. Psychology Today. The magazine asks me to be one of
the bloggers, and there's a lot of them who are on the site,
so you're really on the website coming up with blogs, and they asked me
to choose a theme. So I chose shadow boxing because dark stuff is my
thing and for the past ten years I've been writing. I think I have
well over five hundred blogs on that site right now. Wow. I might
write about suicide because that's one of my special areas. I might write about
kids who kill because it's also something I study a lot. I might write
about is certainly right about serial colors? People who want to beat Ted Bundy.
That's a popular feature. I've done that three times because there's a lot
of people who want to beat Ted Bundy. He murderabilia collectors was a recent
one. I look at cold cases, I look at cognitive issues in investigation.
There's so many different things paranormal stuff I do, and that's one of
the things that my Annie Hunter, my character will do. She'll take on
cases with their paranormal dimensions just because she's a debunker, and yet she's not.
She's open. Okay, I'm first going to eliminate everything, but if
there's something, I'm open to it. So I talk a lot about those
kinds of things as well, because this is fun. I have a book
called Honta Crime Scenes, which is a lot of fun to do. In
fact, that's going to be part of the Savannah Crime Expo this year.
Agreed, We're looking forward to seeing you there. My co writer is going
to be there. I'm the scully of the team. They work with psychics
and all this stuff, and I'm like, okay, prove it to me.
I like it. And this Annie Hunter, is there any chance that
she's a tea blonde, whole degreed psychologist. Fight Yeah. And she's a
podcaster, very interesting podcast is called PSI apps. I have no idea where
you get your ideas. I really don't. It's like they come out of
ether somehow. It was actually I will tell you it was during a pitch
to a showtime crew and they turned down the pitch. But then they said,
why are you writing what you do stand yeah, you said, oh
yeah, in my copious free time. I think I'll do that. All
of my time is taken up with whatever I'm writing, because why not,
That's what that's my life, It's what I do. I love it.
You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back after this word from
our sponsors, We're back here at Mind over Murder. I was trying to
figure out, like, when do you sleep? You've written seventy books.
I don't know how you, but I do because I think sleep and exercise
are very important to being able to be productive. So yes, I do.
I definitely do. I know. Kristen and I are both still trying
to get out a first book done. So what's your book? Mine?
No Surprise will be the story of the Colonial Parkway murders, and Kristen's also
working on a book, and I love her idea as well. Mine is
called Battle Scars, and it is about the surviving victims of crime and how
they cope and how they ultimately get through the struggle of what happens once you
have lived with murder and its consequences. And so that's how I got to
know Bill as I cold called him and said, I'd like to interview you
from my book Good Idea. Yeah, it's a great I think it's a
good idea. School just ended, So Kristen has a little more time now.
I do need to do some writing, yes, percent, But then
she and I have twelve other things going on, all of them very exciting.
So we're going to try to figure out how to do them all this
summer. I get it, but it's really about managing your time. And
for me, I can't not write. Yes, I have. I understand
that. It just flows. I have to sit right down first thing,
start writing. Yeah, I love that. I definitely understand that. So
you had sent me a blog post that I particularly liked, and it was
from May twenty twenty one, and it was titled the Number one Blunder of
True Crime Sluice, which is a great title anyway, because we are victims
advocates and we're experts in the Colonial Parkway murders and we do have to field
tips on the regular. This was particularly interesting to us. So tell us
what the biggest blender is that citizens sluice make when they investigate a true crime.
It's a tricky title because there's several mistakes that all wrapped up into one.
But the first thing that this is about is the notion that logic equals
truth. Logic is a trickster. It's just a tool, but it makes
you feel good if you can build the cases that just feels like it's got
all that closure you need, then it feels like it must be right.
But that's really displaying a trick on the brain because the brain always seeks closure,
it always seeks coherence and consistency, which is not to say accuracy.
And one of the problems then becomes And this, by the way, isn't
just amateurs. Cops are also prone to this as well. I was looking
for I know a lot about cognitive errors like confirmation bias and whatnot. You
hear that all over the place, and I kept I was talking to this
cognist of psychologists and saying, how could it be one where you think you've
got all the facts of a case and so you build your idea on it,
and you're wrong. You don't have all the facts, and so you've
built the wrong idea. But you don't know what is that? And she
said, I don't know, I don't know, And then I was reading
Daniel Kaneman, the foremost cognitive psychologist in the world, and there it was.
Whizziati is how he describes it. Whizziati what is all there is?
And that is something that true crime slus are very grown to did not necessarily
of their fault is because the human brain is always reaching for closure. It
does not like ambiguity, does not like things open ended. And so what
use all there is or whiziati is the idea that you've done your work,
you've collected your fact and you think you've got them all, but you might
be wrong. And we're actually seeing that right now with many people revisiting some
of the old narratives. And what's happening is those people who bought the old
narratives are resisting any new stuff. I think the John Wayne Gaysi case is
a good example, this idea that this sex trafficker John David Norman might have
been part of what was going on, and the John W. Gaysi actually
had accomplices who never got charged by the police. And I've seen people who
think they are experts on GAYSI say that's just not true. None of that's
true. Oh, we have facts there are things out there that prove but
that's what's happening. People who cling to the old narratives have that whiz siati
thing. What I see is all there is those narratives must yield to new
evidence. They must yield to new evidence, and we have to rebuild them.
And sometimes the new evidence isn't new evidence, is just a new way
of looking at the case, new logic. So I think Jack the Ripper
is a great example. You ask me about a case, and I think
Jack the Ripper is one of the best. I think I'm the Ripper Ologists
of the Lehigh Valley. Anyway, I read a book of three hundred and
thirty three suspects for Jack the Ripper, and they didn't even have them all.
I immediately thought of two more that weren't in the book. Every single
one of those people who proposes their suspect believes they have exactly the right one.
Books like Case Closed and blah blah blah. Yeah, they've spuned the
narrative logically in a way that they have made sense out of it. But
boy, if you look at it closely, every one of those narratives takes
logically to ben at Whitechapels several times, and I've seen we might not even
have Jack the Ripper who killed those five, the canonical five as we call
them. I think a couple of them don't even belong in the next for
a variety of reasons, and that there are others who were not considered for
a variety of reasons who might well be considered if we change a little bit
about the way we look at this case. So Jack the Ripper is a
great case. The Zodiac is another one. How many suspects do we have
for Zodiac? I think every day I hear someone say, oh, we've
solved that one, and now we have not. But if somebody owns it,
there's this emotional investment. I've researched this more than anybody else, so
I know, I know the facts. And unfortunately, your emotional investment is
not a guarantee that you have the true story or the right suspect. And
so what's going on with now? Add in podcasting no offense to anyone,
but add in podcasting you have the pressure on because people want their podcast to
stand out. They want to be the one who solved. You know what
happens, and I know you guys have had, but people approach you about
the ones that you're very involved in. What happens is you get these debates,
you get people digging in. Its very much like our political scene today.
You get people digging in. You get some shallow thinking, you get
some deeper thinking, many logical leaps to make a case. And that's why
I chose actually the blog that I sent you the Elisa Lamb case. I
thought the documentary and the Cecil Hotel was fabulous in that it showed all these
amateur salutes who went into the hotel over and over. They were sure they're
going to solve it. It was such a bizarre case. She disappears and
there's footage and an elevator of her looking there's a ghost following her. That's
one of the theories are that she found a hole in the security system and
slipped out, or that somebody murdered her and stashed here in a room and
they identified as suspect and they contacted that person and they were all over him
to the point where he was suicide. And he was not the guy.
He did not do anything. He didn't even know her. But the logic
and the ownership and the emotional investment converged in that case where people were just
nuts about their own theory and they just she had to have been murdered or
she had to have been whatever, and even the police response by the end,
they missed a lot of stuff. But by the end, the I
guess it was the coroner's judgment I thought was wrong. I think it still
remains undetermined because I think it could have easily been suicide, but they have
accidental drowning. I don't think so that was a little too weird. But
even I don't know that I'm right either. Because there are big holes.
What happens is our brain fills in the holes to make it satisfying to us.
And that's I think people have to learn mindfulness about their approach, and
they can do that by teaming up with someone who can point out, oh,
you tend to jump to concludels really fast, so maybe you want to
think a little get some perspective on this. So they could team up with
someone, or they could just do a practice of looking at a case from
multiple angles and not just their favorite one. So there are things that I
do and I teach them my courses to try to avoid this instant closure,
this urgency and permanence that settle in with people who have what we find to
be a high need preclosure, and a high need preclosure is a personality trait.
A lot of police officers have it because they're attracted to law enforcement for
that versus wrong law and order, good versus evil kind of idea about law
enforcement. They're attracted to because they already have that sense of things are simple
and they want to put bad guys in jail, and they want to put
bad guys jail and be yeah, exactly. We're seeing this in the Colonial
Parkway murders, where investigators get so locked into a certain theory, and unfortunately
these are key players in the investigation, and when we bring them information which
we think is at least worth checking out regarding other suspects, they'll respond with,
oh, we'll put that in the file. And now, after years
of this, we realize that's code for we're literally going to put it in
a desk drawer and never deal with it because we're locked into and they still
can't prove that their leading suspect is the right one. And so I was
glad to hear you say that law enforcement investigators can fall into these same traps,
certainly, and there are programs training police officers about cognitive errors like this
to help them not fall into those traps. And those programs are devised by
other cops who have seen it happen to them, and they have worked with
psychologists to devise exercises braining to help younger officers avoid the trap of some of
these errors. But I was very struck by something you said a moment ago,
Catherine, which is we were talking about the at least a lamb case,
which obviously had great elements of mystery, and it had been hyped up
in that sort of thing. But even when you said a moment ago that
you believe this could be an accidental drowning or a suicide, then the next
thing you said was, but I could be wrong. And I don't hear
that very often with the investigators that we've worked with, particularly in the Colonial
Parkway murders, they get very definitive and they don't want to look at anything
that's outside their narrow focus. Second, guessing someone is to that to their
mind is tandemount to saying they're wrong, and that's not that doesn't go over.
It's difficult and my training's in philosophy. I was a philosophy professor,
so I can float with ambiguity, but you need to be trained in that
to be able to do it, and I don't find many investigators able to
do it less they've had some kind of training and awareness of mistakes made.
That's why I think some of these who are out there devising the programs who
had made these mistakes are the best teachers, because they're in law enforcement and
they saw what they did, They saw the assumptions they made. They saw
that they went down the wrong path and landed on the wrong suspect and harm
somebody's life. And then they had to admit where did they go wrong?
What were their blind spots? And that's not easy for anybody to do,
but in particular not someone with a high need proclosure. You mentioned Jack the
Ripper, of course in the Lisa Lamb. Are there some other cases that
you can think of? It seemed to be stymied, like under the weight
of too many competing theories and too many sleuths. Zodiac for sure, definitely,
I had somebody to tell me that BTK is is Zodiac killer, and
she wanted a book that was her mindset where she was going to and here
were her reasons why she was right, and all of them were ridiculous,
all of them. She nevertheless got a self published book. She got booked
out of it because she was certain she had made a good logical case.
Like, for example, he was in the Air Force, so even though
he was overseas during the Zodiac killings, he could have gotten on a plane
and flown over there and committed the mursion, gone right back to his base
with nobody knowing what was going on. And the reason he hasn't admitted to
them and added them to his list, which would, by the way,
make him ultra famous, which is what he wants. The reason he hasn't
done that is because he's afraid for his soul. Okay, I have talked
to him, and you have not not afraid for his soul. He spent
hours, years with the man. Yeah, and she has never met him.
But her theory was this is the reason he hasn't copped the Zodiac murders
night or did that come from? Because she needed something to fill in the
hole, and that was a convenient way to fill in the hole. It's
wrong, but it made logical sense. To her, so it worked.
That takes a lot of I see that a lot, but even I think
the Colonial Parkway as we took this on for our Haunted Crime Scenes weekend,
and we immediately saw just setting people up for confirmation bias by the very name
Colonial Parkway Murders and the Colonial Parkway serial Killer. You're setting people up to
think in a certain way. Yeah, and then you dig into the case
and go did this happened? And I have said on Mind over Murder in
more recent months, and I think this has made some people uncomfortable. I
have to say something. I am personally responsible for promoting the term Colonial Parkway
Murders, as is Kristin, although I'm putting more to blame on myself in
this example. I have a longer history. We've promoted that name, not
with a commercial band. Would just we know that the eight families have more
leverage together than we do a part. But now, interestingly, I've been
saying more publicly in the last year or two, I would say that the
more I learned, the less convinced I am that the Colonial Parkway Murders are
actually a murder series. And I think without question in my mind, and
I could be wrong. I'm pretty certain that some or all of the Colonial
Parkway murders will fall off the table. In other words, they're not all
related, and there's obviously things that we know that we can't necessarily talk about
on the podcast. But I actually said recently on our podcast that I think
the phrase Colonial Parkway murders is the biggest rabbit hole of all because it's actually
not helpful. These murders need to be looked at individually, and they may
be related, but I don't think so. And until you know what happened
to the missing couple, there's a shot that you can do with that absolutely.
Keith Colin Cassandra Haley's disappearance is looked at as part of a murder series.
I think given the fact that they've been gone for over thirty years,
they're not coming back tomorrow. I do think they were murdered, but is
it related to the others, I don't know. And even if they're murdered,
how are they murdered? Is it the same? Is it different?
Where are the bodies, what happened to them? All of that matters in
terms of profile. Wanted to string these together, you need to have more
about them in the mix, and you can't just dump them in there because
they were a couple. I've seen people do, and it's interesting. We've
had somebody contact us recently who and this has happened before, but this particular
gentleman is very passionate about this, and he's a smart guy. He thinks
the Zodiac and the Colonial Parkway case are related, that they are the same
killer. And it's not the first time we've heard it's it seems like a
long shot. We get it a lot. Then it's got to be Dennis
Rader. Yeah, absolutely, Just show Jack the Ripper in there and j
Chelms while we're at it, since he's the great grandson of Jack the Ripper.
Now Dennis Raider. Where is Dennis Rader? By the way, Dennis
Raider is elder Rodo Mattim Security Prison. In fact, I just spoke to
him a couple of days ago. I was going to say, if you
needed to run something past him, you probably could. Oh, we were
not laughing about the Zodiac thing on Sunday. As a matter of fact,
there you go. You asked already because he because it started with somebody calling
him and telling him that the graves of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were in
Florida. Oh, and those are the clutter killer two clutter killers. And
I said, no, they're not, because this no, this woman told
me they're in Florida and that they were dug up to prove that they were
the killers of this other family in nineteen fifty times. Oh my god,
I said, personal, No, is that where their graves are. Secondly,
that whole case has nothing to do with them. That was another case
of putting together some logic and making Oh, they were in Florida and they
killed a family four, so that makes sense that they must have done this
other one. And so all of the logical leaps were made to make them
be at the scene even though they never They said themselves they never were.
But then okay, but they and they said under a polygraph they never were.
So then it became polygraphs during the nineteen sixties weren't any good. You
know. I always had the ambiguity factor to move things around. Oh,
witnesses. Witnesses are their memory we know from research isn't very good. Always
have that ambiguity so that you can twist it to make your logic fit.
And that is the number one problem for amateur sleuths in cold case researches.
You're gonna have holes, and you're going to be tempted fill those holes with
logic and ideas that make a coherent story, and then you're going to believe
the story because it feels right, and that feeling is the most misleading part
of it. Does it ever make you frustrated when you talk to people like
that who were just okay, yes, but okay, yes, but here's
why I'm right, because that would infuriate me. I don't know how you
do it. Yes, in a way, it does, but it doesn't
because I know about cognitive psychology and the human brain automatically moves in that direction.
It just automatically wants those holes filled, and it will create stuff.
We know from jury research. If they don't hear things that they're listening for
from one side or the other when they go deliberate, they will fill in
the holes themselves. We know that, and not because they want to do
a bad job. It's because of the way the brain works. So I
think that knowledge helps me not to be frustrated. But there does come a
point where there's no reason to argue anymore, have a good day signing off.
That's it for now. Oh jeez, especially if they really are so
sure they're right that fin it becomes there's no point in really having a discussion
in those kinds. And I know you guys have experienced this because you're in
one of those cases where multiple people want to get at it and somebody wants
to solve it. Multiple people want to solve it. True Confessions. Before
we signed on today, five minutes before we signed on, Kristen mentioned something
to me about a guy who is insisting that he knows who committed the Colonial
Parkway murders. Yeah, all of this is based on his psychic ability and
nothing else. He hasn't provided us with a single nothing meaningful, And we
finally had to kick him off some of our Facebook pages, and now we're
looking at maybe kicking him off our YouTube pages because he keeps insisting this man,
with no evidence, is responsible for the murder of Donna Hall and Mike
Margaret, which is another couple's homicide in nineteen eighty four, a little bit
before the Colonial Parkway murders over in Henrico County, Virginia, near Richmond.
But this guy is just insisting that this former cop committed the murders with no
evidence to back it out. And I'm not saying he is one hundred percent
wrong, because I couldn't say that. But what's happening now is he's so
insistent that other people now are asking us what about this guy? What about
this guy? His name keeps coming up, and as recently as last night,
I was answering on social media and I was like, who is this
guy? And I realized, oh, yeah, this is the retired cop
that our odd ball, I'll call him that. Thank you, keeps insisting,
and it's amazing how this stuff, repeated at nauseum, begins to gain
traction. People are like, what about someone? Shouldn't he be looked at?
And we just spent two especially psychic yeah and special vision. We've just
thrown our hands up in the air. What do we do with this information?
And is it like he's providing us anything really meaningful that would indicate why
this retired police officer should be looked at for these murders. Now he's probably
done that thing. I've read enough and I put it together logically, and
now the patina of supernatural comes into play. I actually have a character called
Monroe the murder Mentalist and he calls him three Am and he has that,
but it's hard to tell whether he's a charlatan or he really has something.
But many followers because people love the idea that, in fact, I would
say our Hornda Crime Scenes Weekend is about the idea that once you had a
standstill with regular things, can you bring in other kinds of methods that are
not used by cops. And I think it's fun, but as I said,
I'm the Scully where I don't buy into it. And yeah, I've
seen some interesting things where people doing automatic writing over here and something else over
there and they come together and have something similar that had nothing to do with
any of the material we had in the case. That's interesting. I'm open.
I need a lot of proof. Sometimes people don't. We're going to
wrap this episode and continue with doctor Katherine Ramsland on our next episode of Mind
Never Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.
Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions.
Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by
Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over Murder is
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Murders on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas. Five six. Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder my