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. Welcome to Mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilley and
I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined again by doctor Katherine Ramslin, author,
professor and a forensic psychologist. Doctor Ramslin, welcome back to the podcast.
I'm glad to be here. There is a great stimulating conversation. Well,
for we are so thrilled that you decided to join us. So when we
left off, we were talking about these fascinating weekends you do something called Haunted
crime Scene Weekends. So what is that all about? The Haunted crime Scene
Weekend came out of us a couple of books that I wrote with Mark Nesbitt,
who runs the Gettysburg Ghost Tours, used to be a park ranger at
Gettysburg. He's written many ghosts of Gettysburg books from stories of people tell them
as they come off the fields. And Mark used to be a skeptic.
You hear enough stories and see enough things changes you. But we thought,
because there's this really interesting case very close to Gettysburg, this is how it
all began. It was these three children who were killed and laid in the
woods, and then nobody knew who they were. There was no way to
find out who they were. This is back in the nineteen thirties, and
close by and al Tuna there was a murder suicide. Again, who are
these people? Were they related? Some clothing turned up in a suitcase,
etcetera, etcetera. So we thought we'll also would be a great kind of
case to bring people in. We can take them to those sites where the
children were, where their graves are, how they were related to the Altuna
couple, et cetera. Because we had the story from the police Museum.
We had a lot of stuff from that. That's how it started. We
thought, oh, we're going to do this, this same scene o burned
over again, but it turned out the same people kept coming back to the
weekend, so we had to mix it up a little bit, and so
then we began to actually build crime scenes they could they could look at it.
We did the one that's known as the Minister and the Choir Singer out
of New Jersey where this minister in Chuiir Singer were found laid out in a
lover's lane and her talking cut out. I remember about and as currently an
unsolved case, multiple suspects from approximately what era was this in tens Ish?
Yeah, I mean there was a family that was tried but acquitted wife well
to do wife of the minister, husband of the choir singer. So we
had and we had multiple suspects because there was a stalker on her as well.
There's a lot of really cool evidence for that. So then we thought,
okay, let's have them. Since it's unsolved, let's have everybody come
in and do what they need to do. So my part is the forensic
part. I do a forensic presentation. One time I brought the coroner with
me talk about autopsy reports and whatnot. That's my job is doing. Here's
the forensic part. Mark and Carol his wife, and Patty the medium come
in and teach people how to look at the scene from a different angle because
at this point we're at a dead end with traditional methods. Can we bring
paranormal methods into this and so that's what the weekend is comprised of, and
we've done so. Then we did the Colonial Parkway case past April. We
took that on because again multiple strands to it. We had, I think
we had enough people to each It was assigned one of the couples and that
they had to work on that case and then we would bring them together and
then put them back apart, and so it certainly was a long process.
My job again is too. We did maps, we did here's the evidence
that we have. Here are some of the We didn't give them suspect information
because we want them to come to it clean. But we also knew that
if they did sheet and look it up on the internet during the night or
something, they weren't going to get they weren't going to solve it. Because
it's not solved. So that's the idea of the weekend is we're coming together.
You're going to learn everything we know forensically about this case. You're going
to and I do also present cognitive errors, processing observation. I present the
forensic psychology of these cases as well, and we just we keep getting people
coming back. Were the same people, which is fine. We always have
to think of a new case. You need new content then, because you
have a lot of the same attendees, they love this obviously. So what
were some of the conclusions that your group of participants true about our case?
I'm really interested. One of the things that I did is I looked at
data from body Farms and the forgive Me. I don't know the names of
everybody aside from your sister, but the couple that was found with the blanket
over them Marian Daniel at body Farm information on body farms where they lay out
the dead and various dispositions to study time since death, decomposition, raised bug
activity, etc. And there was a case where they had laid out bodies
in a variety of dispositions and it was in the right climate and about the
right period of time to compare to that finding, And it was very clear
to me that the covering over the body on the body Farm yielded enough information
to know things about wounds and whatnot. And so what we have with the
was it the fourth couple were the fourth with the fourth couple is police saying
we got nothing off the Like, how did you get nothing off of that?
You would there would have been blood residue, There would have been human
remains on that covering. There would have been something that would have given you
information like if you're if you want to say, because there was a nick
on a hand that indicated maybe a knife was involved there, if someone had
been stabbed in the ribs or the heart, that blanket over them would have
had something on it to indicate that there was blood in that area. Because
the evidence from the experiment at the body Farm says bodies covered for this period
of time and this kind of a climate will leave residue on the covering.
And so I had that experiment that I brought to a case. I thought,
how can they say there's nothing that there's something there? Where is that
covering? There's probably still something you can get off well. So the investigators
current investigators in the case have said to me they'd love to get ahold of
the blanket again. As we understand it. By the way, that's an
electric blanket from Daniel's car, and the two bodies were laid out side by
side in the woods for a period of six weeks. We know definitely when
they disappeared, and we know when they were found, and it's six weeks,
very hot, very wet that fall. We also understand that there was
animal activity, so the blanket may have been pulled off the bodies at some
point by animal predators, but they weren't off when the bodies are found,
was partially covered. One of them was partially covered, and whenever blood would
have come from wounds would have still been on it even pulled off. And
there's also clothing as well. And we've seen the crime scene photos. Most
people have not, but the crime scene photos were leaked by the FBI,
and we've certainly seen them. It's pretty evident there are articles of clothing.
The bodies clearly are badly decomposed, and you can see a skull or two
in the photographs. It's been a while since I've looked at them. I
tried not to look at them. There are articles of clothing, and there
is the blanket. And one of the experts had said to me fairly recently,
I'd love to get a hold of that blanket and go back over it
using m VAC technology, for example. And we know the folks at m
BACK and they would love to help in any way that they could. There
would be something. I believe there would be something, but it's very difficult
to get a straight answer out of in this case, the Virginia State Police
and the FBI about what the status is of advanced forensic testing. I think
sometimes when they say we don't have anything, I think they're reflecting we don't
have anything by the standards of nineteen eighty nine. But I don't think that
phrase we don't have anything is operative in twenty twenty two, correct. So
that was one of the things that at least I brought to it. There
was some psychic impressions that the missing couple were buried in a specific location,
not close to the parkway, but again that's a psychic saying it. You'd
have to go to the site and do some DIC and take it a cadaver
dog. That's if I believed that information was good for any particular reason,
then I would take a human remains specialist dog in the scene to see if
there was anything to be found. Even though you're usually the skeptic when it
comes to the psychic, I'm an open skeptic. I'm not a closed sketter.
I want there to be ghosts out there telling us, Stubb, are
you kidding? The world would be an amazing place if that were too You
never know. I actually just Hollywood. I once they brought me into pitch
a show about this kind of idea of using paranormal techniques alongside forensic techniques,
and they were so excited, this is going to be a great show because
the ghosts solved it right at the end. Maybe the ghosts could guide the
forensic psychologists experts is a medium, this is real life. So in five
minutes my pitch meeting was over. Wow, did they want the ghost to
The idea is that if you separate people out in different rooms, you give
them different types of paranormal methods, and they come up with similar stuff although
they're not talking to one another. Did they come up that's interesting? Yeah,
it isn't necessarily mean anything, but it's interesting. If you're working with
the medium who has in fact had some success working with police. That's somebody
you could listen to. However, sometimes they overstate what they actually were able
to do. But I've talked to cops who say they have worked with mediums
and it has been helpful. I have talked to cops. You've said that,
so I'm open. I want something like that to happen, definitely,
And we have had people in recent years approach us, not the least of
which is our odd ball to which we were referring earlier, but we have
had people approach us and say, hey, I think you should have a
psychic command or I have talked to a psychic. I know that originally Dorothy
Allison, who was used by quite a number of police agencies, was actually
brought in to do some consulting work. And I would say that Bill and
I definitely belong in the hard skeptic category as well when it comes to psychics.
And we address this actually recently in our episodes about tips. When we
send a tip to the FBI, we told our listeners it can't start or
end with psychics because you can't prove it. There is no way to prove
it. One way or the other. But you can corroborate they say buried
here, you dig and find a body or whatever. But that's my problem
with the psychics that I've worked with, is you're right up to he's telling
me, Oh he's alway's gone. Now, yeah, okay, I got
that's the problem. Then why do you waste all the time telling you all
that? Why didn't you just give me the location? If you only have
so much energy to say something, why did he say the main thing instead
of wasting our time to the main thing and then disappearing. And that's there's
Annie's voice right there. That's as she's saying, I hate this thing because
they get me going and then they're out. Oh inconveniently, they just happen
to run out of steam. So I see that a lot, and I
definitely see psychics getting involved in cases, contradicting one another, using up resources
that may lead nowhere, but here and there, little tiny things happen that
make me think, okay, I'm at least going to stay open now.
I call myself a ghost repellent because they're never there when I'm there. They
sense your skepticism, Doctor Ramplin. Yeah, I was just in a car
ferry that I had my own little cabin that was going across Lake Michigan four
hours and the haunted cabins right next door. How high is it for the
ghost to walk through the wall and say hello, honestly and to say,
I understand your skeptic. So I'm willing to listen because there have been some
weird things, and I'll tell you what an example, and I'd probably say
one in Savannah there was a case where a woman was murdered, raped,
and murder and stuffed in a closet in this building. The guy who was
a janitor who ran the janitorial staff in the building, was in there one
day when he was shining a black top table and he saw an image in
the table and he looked up and this ghost was pointing to the table,
and he remembered that one of his staff at the time was a guy who
always wore a black shirt. And so he told polices. It turns out
that's the guy who raped and killed her, and that got into court.
That got into court. Wow, So was the perpetrator the offender found guilty?
Yeah, yes, he was based on additional information that they were able
to obtain an additional information, but the start of it was supposedly a ghost
telling the guy and he was allowed to say it in court. Canada.
Interesting, wo Canada. Anything goes up there, and there have been some
in the States. There have been dreams, there have been I love remote
viewing. I don't think of that as paranormal, but I think remote viewing
that the US Army used for decades is very interesting. Can you explain,
I don't know what that means. Remote viewing is the idea of being able
to somehow connect with I don't know, some psychic plane where you can see.
You send out a person and what's called an outbounder. That person goes
to a site where they can look at a building, or they look at
something that's distinct, and the remote viewer can draw it and then you can
corroborate is this what you saw? Oh wow? Some of the art is
unbelievably specific. And they have found fugitives that way, they have found murder
victims that way. There are stories that that's what keeps me in the game.
Folks has worked remote viewing. Remote viewing. The US Army used it
from I can't remember the exact years. But if you're interested. It was
a book called I Think Phenomena that documents the entire program where they used these
people to find things like drug imports. Once a guy was taken hostage in
another country. He was a high ranking officer. They found him. So
that there are a lot of interesting applications, but it is filled with hotball
characters too, There's no doubt about that. How to work? How is
this supposed to work? These two the person at the remote location and the
person here, do they are we saying they have a connection of a psychic
if you will connection? They do? Do these people know each other?
Are they? They might, but they don't have to. But the person
who in the experiments, the outbounder, would not say where he or she
was going. They would just be at the site. The reviewers would draw
what they what was the impressions coming to them, and some were very accurate.
And is this happening in real time? Yes, So the outbounder is
at a remote location, and let's say it's four o'clock in the afternoon,
so it's also at the same time in a different distant location. Another person
who's receiving this information is able to accurately convey what the other person in another
state or country or whatever is seeing. Yes, almost like they're connected telepathically.
That's what it seems like. I don't think, but wow, you
should read the army experiments. They're amazing. And then they had to shut
it down because taxpayers didn't want them putting money into psychics. They were called
psychic spies. Some journalists am in and dismissed the whole thing, and then
they had to shut it down, or maybe they didn't, who knows,
but they had. They ran it for several decades, and they had some
very talented remote viewers, but there have been some people who just go.
First timers can do it. They don't need training remote viewing and this is
a cross space but not time. Yes, thank yeah, that's what it
is. Yeah, wow, could it be done? Do you know?
Notice how I'm drilling down here. I'm really curious about this. Could it
be done at a later time as well? Do we know there was a
time where they actually one of them and a couple of them were psychically talented
and one of them saw into the future something that there was one story and
I tell this in my novel because Annie does like remote viewing. Okay,
yeah, it was one story and it's a true story where they were looking
were a fugitive and they thought this guy was in somewhere down south somewhere,
and he was, in fact, I think in Montana. And she was
able to say, he's by an Indian burial ground and if you don't get
him, he is about to leave, and she was able to describe the
camp ground that was nearby, and that turned out to be exactly right.
He was just about to leave when they napped him and they found the things
that she had described. Very cool, it's cool. I get very cool
when I get frustrated with the Colonial Parkway murderers. Psychics is it's always stuff
like I see woods, I see water, and you're like, it's Virginia,
nothing but woods and water. That's like in Gettysburg with the ghost centers
that were there in twenty degrees and they feel cold spots like me too,
A lot a lot of them. Some of them are my toes. Yeah.
I don't know if you're as much of a crime fiction aficionado as I
am in terms of TV series, But what you were saying about view it
reminds me of Fringe. Did you ever watch that loved Fringe. I love
Fringe. That was great. That was a fabulous series. I love that
one. It reminds me a lot because you think he used some of this
infringe in Fringe. It's not fiction. Look up. Miss Annie Jacobson was
the author. Phenomenon is a book. Is a very thick book. But
it's astonishing how this program developed. And there are people out there that when
they finally dissolved it, some of the people who were part of the man
named Joseph mcmonagle would run sessions teaching people how to do it. He's still
around. He's written several books about it, with illustrations showing these are the
things we got. I guess maybe I shouldn't be more skeptical about it.
But they did a lot of controlled and corroborated experiments with it. And that's
what I mean. You can corroborate if a psychic says to you. I
had one tell me this particular ghost had been there some things in water,
and he wanted me to buy some hip boots to go get it. And
I said, when you give me the location, I'll buy the boots.
Why do we need this elaborate framework, Why don't you just tell me where
it is and then already get it easy easy. They saw woods and they
saw water. Always woods of water, always woods and water. Yeah,
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. You'd said that you
like friends. You're alluded to medium earlier, and I know that you've written
books about CSI and criminal minds and the use of forensic psychology there. When
you watch TV series like this, are you able to turn off your training
and watch it for enjoyment or are you constantly scrutinizing are they getting it right?
Are they getting it right? When I wrote The Forensic Psychology of Criminal
Minds that that was a contracted book and they weren't getting it right. And
I wrote the book saying, here's the real story of the FBI's behavioral science,
Jana, here's the real stuff, because I've worked with some of the
early guys. I worked with wrestler in Douglas and some of the first generation
and second generation profilers. So the book was really about here's a case.
It's based on this true case. Here's where they twist it. But you
know what They don't have a private plane taking half a dozen profilers here and
there, Jim takeover cases. They don't. There's any number of things they
don't actually do. And I'll say that in the book. But still,
if the whole first year was based on actual cases, and I knew what
the cases were, so I would then say, here's how the case really
worked out. It's TV, and recognize that. But sometimes I can't keep
watching, and I can't keep watching that show. Particularly, do you find
yourself growing socks and other things at the television. No, I get on
the computer and write my own stuff. I just don't do it. I
think there was another one about a jury consultant bully. One episode. I
was out, this is bull fill in the blank here. Yeah, Nope.
The media is the media is glutted both with crime fiction but also true
crime. Do you feel like the media plays a role or how much of
a role do you think the media plays in perpetuating like misguided theories or untruths
about cases. Anytime a production company is making a choice about how to present
a story, they are affecting viewers. One of the things that bother me
about all the serial killer stuff out there is they're doing the same dozen over
and over. Leads to the idea that first of all, the serial killer
is a type of offender when it isn't. It's just a description of the
behavior, and that these represent the sum total of serial killers. There's that
with SIATI again, what is all there is? And so then people come
to me with these questions thinking, oh, to serial killers, do this?
To serial killers? To that, Like, we have over five thousand
documented around the world. I can't give you a general response to that because
there are so many. There's so much diversity in these cases and their developmental
trajectory and their motivations and their methods. Do they all have a victim type?
No? You know, there's so many myths perpetuated from the media emphasizing
certain types, and they're emphasizing the ones that they know are going to get
viewers. That's what they do. They're not going to pick a serial killer
to do a documentary on who's boring, right, They're going to do the
flashy ones. But they convey the impression that this is total serial killers.
And I get that when I start teaching my class. Here's twenty things you
think you know about serial killers that you don't. But that's mostly and it's
not just fictional media or documentaries, as news reporters and fiction writers novelists will
perpetuate those things from one thing to another. Criminal justice textbooks do as well.
There was one time, and I know the profiler who made up the
statistic that they're thirty five to fifty serial killers operating in America at any given
time. He made that up to get money from Congress for programs that yes
he did, yes, yeah he told me. Did that shows up in
criminology texts And I still hear people saying that, like that was a total
fabrication. Wow, okay, but it crosses over into being a reference point.
Yes, So yeah. Media definitely influences us into thinking that things are
a certain way, and we forget it's an entertainment. Then they are making
their decisions based on wanting audience share, and they're going to clip stories and
simplify stories because they want viewers to have satisfaction at the end. That becomes
a problem when viewers don't go look for more information because they tend not to.
Because there ever been a documentary or a show that you've been a part
of that once you got involved, you were like, I really don't like
the way they're portraying this, or I don't like they don't care what I
say. I've been a consultant on several shows. I was fired off one
for telling them they couldn't do a thing with a dead body that they wanted
to do. And I said that that's not the way soil works, that's
not the way decomposition works. But I can give you an alternate scenario to
help with your plot that would work. No, this is flash here and
so thanks very much, we don't want you anymore. Wow. And did
you really get fired I did? Yeah? Wow. Were there others where
you wasn't used on the rest of the show? Yeah, same thing,
isn't it? But I gave them a way to do what they wanted to
do that would have been scientifically correct, but they decided who can actually,
even though a body has been submerged in water, washed by corners, you
can still get a fingerprint off of them, Like no, not after burial
for twenty years now. But at the same time, you were offering them
a scientific way to move their story forward and they just weren't having it.
But even the writer of the show wanted to do that. The producers did
not. I suppish you would to throw anybody under the bus by telling us
what you think. So but still still work for people. And I want
to be sure. I noticed you were very circumspect a moment ago too when
you said this person that created this fictional thirty five to fifty serial killers operating
in the United States. Yeah, at anything being said. Let me just
I do want to give kudos to the team that worked with me in the
BTK because, yeah, they listened constantly. They didn't always. There are
a couple of things I said, please don't use this, and they did
out of four hours. That's not bad. And they were constantly asking me
about different people that we could use being introduced to them, how to frame
this. So there are teams that really are trying to get it right.
It's just that when you take the totality of true crime programming, and there've
been some great ones, by the way, I think the one that don't
f with cats. There's another amateur team, but they brought in skills that
helped them do things the cops not only couldn't do, but wouldn't do,
and they were able to assist in a way that you don't ordinarily see.
So that's a little different from the Whizioti thing I've talked about with true crime
amateurs because they were amateurs, but they contributed because they had a skill set
that was needed in that particular case. And that was a great documentary.
Yeah, it's hard to watch, but it was well put together. And
so they're out there. But you take the totality of documentaries and true crime
and also fictional crime scripted shows, and there's certainly impressions being made that do
give the wrong idea that things are simple, that we can solve these easily,
that all we need is genetic DNA genealogy will be able to solve everything.
I've heard people say Sharia killers are a thing of the past because I
have solved everything. They're completely wrong about that. And yet I've heard it
said by professionals in this field, and they're completely wrong about that. You've
also had got two hundred and fifty thousand cold case homicides to work backwards through,
exactly, so we have a lot of work before us, a lot
of work. By the way, you just mentioned Whizziotti is all there is
just for the benefit of someone who's listening to this episode, who didn't listen
to the last episode? Explain what is all there is again? Okay.
Whizziotti is a term coined by the foremost cognitive psychologist Daniel Kneman in his book
On Our Thinking Processes, and it is a cognitive error that is the amateurst
loose and police officers, any investigators, could be prone to in virtue of
the way the human brain operates. But the idea is that you've collected a
series of facts about a case and the feeling is that's all they're ever going
to be, and so now you have the truth about the case, but
you're not open to future discoveries that might shift the narrative, change the narrative.
And we need to be open. We need to drop the Whizziotti idea
and keep even though we think we're building case as well, always be aware
that there might be something we don't know that is going to change it dramatically.
And we've had cases like that, a lot of them, actually,
and we all do a lot of that right now with documentaries that are going
back to change the narrative and people, and what we're finding is people who
are still stuck on the old narratives. Refuse to entertain that this could be
changed at all. That's whizziety. That's a problem, and we all do
it in our lives from time to time, because permanence is security, it's
predictability, it's a sense of control. If I know exactly what happened in
a case, no one can change that. I can predict everything about it.
I control it. That's our tendency because it makes us feel like we're
not thrown into chaos. There's some degree of comfort and control and understanding of
these deep, dark, terrible things that happened. And for those who have
a high need preclosure, which there as a personality trait like cops like cops,
not all cops because don't but they, but people with high need proclosure
tend to be attracted to law enforcement types of professions where it's all feels pretty
black and white. They are prone to this, and that becomes a problem
because they may chase down leads they're absolutely certain about and they're wrong. Gut
instinct, by the way, this idea that your gut neveralized is totally off,
totally off, and that is a watchword that cops live by. Gut
instinct is just you. You've come into a familiar scenario. You recognize it
modily and it feels right. So it is right, but you could that
can be to your detriment. It could even lead you to your death if
you really trust your gut all the time and think it's never wrong, because
it can be wrong. What is all there is? And it's one of
the pitfalls that we see in investigations. Yeah, I wish he would have
come up with a better name than like confirmation bias. It says what it
is. It's very easy to remember. People get it, but WHIZIATI not
so much. I wish he would have, but it's so perfect and I've
searched for it for a long time. Like I talked with cops and they
think they have all the facts and then something comes along and it just throws
everything up. I mean, there was a great case I think it was
might have been Indiana where cops got called into this double homicide scene of a
man and intruder into a house who had murdered the guy's wife with a hammer
that he had picked up off of the kitchen table. He'd murder the hammer.
So it's the mark Winger case. So Mark Winger comes in and shoots
him and calls the cops and turns out there was a setup. It was
a setup by Mark Winger because he knew he could get the guy to the
house. It's a complagated case, but you get the guy to the house
and then tell that start and the most experienced cops bought it. He got
victim fund money. The rookie questioned it said, this doesn't make sense that
his guard dog was in the garage. It doesn't make sense that he's asking
for the pista back. It doesn't make sense. Let's just look at their
phone records. And he was ordered not to do any investigations. Wow.
His partner, the experienced one, said all right, I'm just gonna sit
and listen to you. I think you're totally wrong, you're overthinking, but
I'm just gonna listen to you. And as the rookie made his case,
they started going, oh, you know, the kids doubt that Mark Winger
wasn't back the murderer of both people. Wow, and he was having an
affair. So you throw that new fact into things at change the case entirely.
What are the big motivators again in murder it's money, sex, and
power. I think of the three bah power definitely control power. Yeah,
this has at least two of those, yeah, maybe three, probably three.
Actually he got victims yet, got victims spun. Yeah, and at
life insurance he was. If someone amateur or professional sets out to investigate a
case, what are some of the things that you would caution them about to
avoid falling into that trap, the confirmation bias trap, the WISIATI trap.
What would you tell people, here's what you need to do so that you
don't fall into that. There are trainings for specifically for this, for police
officers that were devised buy police officers who've already been down that road. I
think any department ought to put those trainings into effect, even though they will
get resistance. When I've done police trainings, I get resistance to some of
these ideas, but they'll also get some who will listen. And that's what
we need. People who will listen and then become mindful of their tendencies.
If my tendency is to want to close a case fast, get the answers,
be done, not be second guests. I need somebody to remind me
that I'm doing that. Yes, it's got strengths. That approach. It
can close cases fast, but it's got weaknesses too, and that person needs
to be reminded of the weaknesses. One of the things that they can do
is when the approach a case, they'll have a hypothesis going. They should
work an alternate hypothesis too, to see how any given fact might be interpreted
in a different scenario. So they should always stay open to those possibilities until
such time as they get such an abundance of evidence that they know which way
they want to go. But even you still need to stay open because a
future thing. Somebody who broke up with her boyfriend now has new information never
got out there before. Now she's mad and she's going to tell the tale
of what she knows. And whoa is that ever going to make all the
difference. We have to always stay open to something new that could happen.
I was gonna say, if you are someone like us who have been living
with this case for so long that we know every single facet in detail of
it, is there a way that we can readjust our thinking to look at
all aspects of the case and new. Is there a way to retrain your
brain to look at the facts again, I'm I'm curious you've already been talking
about that, because I know Bill was saying, here's how he had always
been talking about on the past year. He's relooked at some of that.
I think it's always good. But what I did when I approached it was
looked at several different people's ideas about it. I watched the Oxygen thing,
I read several of the books that have been put out there and thought,
which of these things makes sense and which of these things have flaws, Like
I know, one book really hung their case on an FBI profiler who was
operating out of nineteen nineties thinking correct, which is really old fashioned. And
I thought, right off the bat, okay, yeah, you're kind of
would buy your profile or friend. But you know what, that's stuff that
we've moved past. Yes, and even our investigators have said a lot of
assumptions that were made about types of victims and narrowly defining how what I said
was serial killer is not a type of offender. People think that they share
all the same traits and background and they all had head injuries and abuse,
and and that is far from the truth. We can't even begin to figure
out five thousand people. What they all have in common one thing, they've
killed at least two people on two different occasions. That's a behavioral description.
But you can have someone who's sexually compelled, so they're addicted to murdering,
and that is more the typical serial killer that we see versus someone like who
kills two people on two separate nights through a robbery. They're not necessarily going
to kill again. They just those are the circumstances. They're not addicted to
it. There's no real link except that this person killed once and then killed
again to get money. A spree killer is a different kind of individual than
a serial killer. For example, if they murder family and then they take
off on the road and they kill somebody to get a car and then they
kill somebody. So that's very different from a sexually compelled serial killer who's targeting
victims and stalking them and looking for some kind of sexual gratification. So there's
a lot of different types out there. A repeat offender who I would say
does not have the propensity to become a serial killer would be like that idea
of Gary Gilmour is a good example. If you remember back to those days
that's what he did. He wanted money to buy his girlfriend something. He
wanted a big shinny chuck. He was not going to be able to get
that. He just decided to kill somebody to get money, and then he
killed somebody else the next night. That's not really serial killer territory. Even
though he qualifies. Or for example, an accomplice to the serial killer who
does commit several murders under the leveraging of the serial killer, he qualifies,
but he doesn't have any of the motivational spectrum of the serial killer. So
he's a different he or she is a different type of person. Fascinating although
you're saying he or she, Although it is true that the vast majority of
people that are repeat offenders of this type are male, as that fair.
Yeah, And less they're in teams, then you have more female participation,
and sometimes it female is the leader of the team, and sometimes it's all
female teams. There's more females than people realize, because again that myth out
there that there are very few, if any, female serial killers. In
fact, there are not only are there, there are sexual serial killers who
are female. I've heard sexologists say that's not possible, but those are male
sexology just so women know better. Wow. Yeah, they're out there,
but you have to be in a position to study the cases and see.
If you're only watching documentaries and TV or reading a few true crime books,
you won't see the variation across this landscape called serial murder. Somehow, I'm
still stuck on Thelma and Louise and it's just not working for me. But
it obviously does happen, It has happened, and it will happen again.
Yes, if I was too, For example, I was an incoming student
to one of your classes, what are the books that you would recommend I,
as an incoming student read other than yours. It depends on which class
you're going to take forensic psychology. And let's say, for example, I'm
this year in my graduate class, I'm going to have them read the Caitlin
Rother's book on Rebecca Zahow. Oh, okays, what a bizarre case that
is. It's a lot more bizarre than it's been shown that the death on
Ocean Avenue with death and gathered a lot more facts than you typically see.
So I'm just going to put it out there for the students to work on
and see. What they make of the case as a psychological autopsy very cooling.
That's an expression, by the way, you've used twice now which I
found fascinating. What's a psychological autopsy mean? In the cases where a death
is ambiguous, Now we're manner of death is a natural accident, suicide,
homicide, or undetermined And the undetermined category it simply could be that you just
don't have enough information or that it's ambiguous and it can go more than one
way and you don't really know what to do with it. Psychological factors can
sometimes tip the balance toward one or the other. So like a suicide that
you think as a suicide could actually be a staged It could be a homicide
stage as a suicide. So you have to be pretty proficient at reading behavior
at the scene that's psychological. A psychological autopsy would often look a lot more
deeply into victimology than police officers will do, and using what experts know clinically
about people in terms of the questioning of relatives and friends and associates of this
person their mental state. We're looking at trying to figure out what could have
happened here, what's more likely to have happened here so that the coroner or
a medical examiner can make the determination. That's really fascinating. So you're going
to have your students read that one Jeff on Ocean Avenue also having to read
The Psychopath Whisperer by Kent Keel, who's one of the world's leading experts on
psychopaths and the neuroscience behard. He takes his traveling MRI machine into prisons to
show us and has shown us that the psychopaths brain is different. So his
book goes into how did that develop, what is a psychopath? How do
you work with psychopaths, etc. Having them read that, or I might
have them read something from Robert Hare, also another psychopath expert. I think
the one on Ted Bundy I have used often. Al Carlyle's the report that
he did when he was the Utah prison psychologist and he was tasked with deciding
if Bundy and this is before they knew who Bundy was. They had grabbed
him for burglary and attempted abduction, and Carlyle was tasked with deciding whether he
might be a future danger. So he went around talking to people and compiling
a report for the court and said Yeah, I think this guy's a liar,
quite the manipulator. Even though I really liked him, He's quite the
manipulator. And I think so. He published part of his report and I
often will use that in my classes for students to see an assessment on someone
that they recognize before anyone knew he was a serial killer. That's a great
that's a great book. I like that one. Wow. Oh, and
that's al Carlyle. We're gonna just put together a little Doctor Ramslin recommends reading
list here. We're gonna put it up on our Facebook page. This is
awesome. To wrap up, go ahead and just remind us the name of
your upcoming book about your new series. Tell us a little bit about that,
and then what is your most recent book that people can get from,
say Barnes and Noble or Amazon. The most recent book is How to Catch
a Killer, which came out in twenty twenty, and that's thirty cases of
the capture of serial killers and how it was done. And then the series
is the Nutcrackers series because they take on hard nuts to crack. That's my
Auntie Hunters series. The first one will be out in August. I scream
Man, I scream Man. That is about human trafficking and a juvenile detention
facility by sadistic corrupt politicians. And this is you transitioning over to fictional works
based, although I always use actual cases and I put my fictional twist to
it. But yeah, Annie Hunter is I guess my altar personality. I
would say psychologist who runs an investigation agency out of the outer banks. Yeah,
that's fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been
a thrill for both of us. We really enjoyed talking to you today.
Me too. I can't wait to see you guys. Mister Bannah, Yes,
we are very much looking forward to it. We'll look forward to it.
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
That's going to do it for this episode of Mind Over Murder. 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 Dewey. Our
logo art is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McCloud.
Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media. You can follow
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on the Colonial Parkway murders on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill
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Mind Over Murder.